Episode 1341 - Kate Berlant
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast i'm broadcasting from a very awkward position i'm not in a hot air balloon or anything but i'm at the edge of a sofa in a
Marc:hotel room trying a different mic than i usually use on the road which requires a little stand and they don't have a desk in this room just a sort of round side table at the edge of this small sofa so i'm kind of leaning over the armrest and trying to get the angle right to speak into this mic correctly which sits in its own little stand on the table in front of my computer which seems far away to me a lot that
Marc:That's a lot of information that's unnecessary, isn't it?
Marc:Right?
Marc:Who gives a fuck?
Marc:As long as it sounds okay.
Marc:That's what we're concerned about here.
Marc:Okay sound on the road.
Marc:Not amazing sound on the road.
Marc:Okay sound.
Marc:I think it sounds pretty good.
Marc:Enough.
Marc:I'm in Charleston right now.
Marc:Charleston, South Carolina.
Marc:Have not done the show on Charleston yet.
Marc:But I have been eating.
Marc:I have been out in the South eating the food, doing the stuff, driving around the rural roads.
Marc:enjoying the scenery today on the show i talked to uh kate berlant uh she's a an actor and a comedian many of you may know her from sorry to bother you uh or or i think you should leave and once upon a time in hollywood she has her own episode of the netflix sketch series to characters and she's done a lot of sketch comedy with john early they have a new peacock special called would it kill you to laugh
Marc:which I saw.
Marc:She also worked with me on Easy.
Marc:She played, I think, a book publicist.
Marc:I had a lot of scenes with her.
Marc:She's an odd presence, but funny, and I didn't really know her.
Marc:I was a little intimidated, a little nervous in terms of couldn't figure out where she was calibrated, what was her trip, where's she coming from, and so this was an exciting...
Marc:conversation we had, but more about the tour.
Marc:Can we?
Marc:Can I talk to you?
Marc:So what did I do?
Marc:I did Durham.
Marc:I flew into Durham, took a minute getting out, about an hour and a half, two hours late on American, not complaining.
Marc:It happens.
Marc:It was weather.
Marc:There was weather.
Marc:And there was weather flying into Durham.
Marc:There's like a thunderstorm.
Marc:It was interesting because it's weird when you can feel the pilot take control of the plane before he usually does.
Marc:It's not just autopiloting in.
Marc:It's not just flip down the landing gear.
Marc:It's like, oh, he's got to maneuver around these converging storms to find the least heinous ride.
Marc:And he warned us.
Marc:He warned us.
Marc:He said, you know, we're going to get everyone seated a little early, going to get the flight attendants to close up shop about an hour early.
Marc:We're going to come into a thing, two converging weather systems.
Marc:We've got to sneak down the middle.
Marc:The last time I heard that on a plane, it was terrifying.
Marc:And it was going pretty well.
Marc:And this is the same pilot that before we took off said something along the lines of, yeah, we're all ready to take off, but we've got to get the ground crew to come over and start one of the engines manually.
Marc:The other one we started with the switch, but we got to get one started manually, and we should be on our way.
Marc:What does that mean?
Marc:Like, are they going to, you know, kickstart it?
Marc:Is it like a little, is it like a lawnmower ripcord thing?
Marc:What do you call those?
Marc:Is it...
Marc:Not a great thing to say without explanation.
Marc:We've got to manually start one of the engines.
Marc:So that's the same pilot that told us about the converging weather systems.
Marc:And he maneuvered us into Raleigh-Durham Airport.
Marc:A little late, but it was no problem.
Marc:I was okay.
Marc:I didn't have much to do.
Marc:But it did right when we were about to land, right when he could see the finish line.
Marc:I could see the ground and say, like, we're close.
Marc:maybe we wouldn't get hurt if we fell from here and it started to rock man some big drops and sways but i i don't know sometimes i'm in moments like that and i realize like or something in me says you know i'm not gonna this isn't gonna be how it goes this isn't gonna be how i die so here we go anxiety can we talk a minute
Marc:This happened.
Marc:This is a real-life story.
Marc:And then I'll bring Kate Berlant out.
Marc:I'm going to bring her out.
Marc:She's waiting backstage right now.
Marc:Some of you know I like pottery.
Marc:The last time I was down here, I went to Seagrove.
Marc:I bought a shit ton of pottery.
Marc:And I didn't get out to see Brian Jones, the guy who makes mugs for my guest.
Marc:He's a big fan of Mark Hewitt, who apparently was one of the kind of...
Marc:one of the godfathers of the new wave of Seagrove potters.
Marc:And his place is out in Pittsburgh, and it's by appointment only, apparently.
Marc:But Brian Jones thinks that Mark Hewitt's a genius and a great potter.
Marc:And I looked at some of the stuff.
Marc:It looked great.
Marc:And the last time I was in town, I made an attempt to go, but it was an appointment-only thing, and I couldn't go.
Marc:So now I'm driving.
Marc:I guess I'm driving from Durham, right, to Charlotte.
Marc:I'm like, well, fuck it, man.
Marc:Am I going to go look at pots?
Marc:I don't have much room for pots.
Marc:Maybe I'll go look at pots.
Marc:I texted Brian Jones.
Marc:Should I?
Marc:He's like, go see Mark Hewitt.
Marc:I'm like, I got to call.
Marc:I call the number on Mark Hewitt's website.
Marc:It's like, this is the home of Mark Hewitt.
Marc:If you want an appointment to see
Marc:The work, you have to call Carol.
Marc:So now I got a second number.
Marc:So now I'm dialing another number.
Marc:I'm writing numbers down in my car.
Marc:I call this other number.
Marc:A woman answers.
Marc:I'm like, is this Carol?
Marc:She's like, yes.
Marc:Who's this?
Marc:I said, it's Marc Maron.
Marc:Dropping my name heavy.
Marc:Just to maybe get in to see some jars and mugs.
Marc:uh yeah i just want to see like an appointment with uh with with the gallery to see some of the works he's like oh you've called on a great day we had a kiln opening it's a kiln opening this only happens like twice a year and today's the day from 10 o'clock to five it's a kiln opening all the stuff that we just that just came out of the kiln is going to be open uh it's going to be open studio from 10 to 5 or whatever i look at the the clock and it's like
Marc:It's 1030 and I'm an hour away.
Marc:I'm not going to get there to 1130.
Marc:So I say, OK, OK, I'm coming.
Marc:But I immediately went into like some sort of strange panic, like literally a spiral.
Marc:I'm like, oh, my God, I'm going to get there.
Marc:There's going to be nothing left.
Marc:Is there going to be parking?
Marc:Is there going to be a line for pots?
Marc:I mean, how big is the parking lot?
Marc:Is it out in the field?
Marc:How many people?
Marc:I mean, are there going to be bathrooms?
Marc:Like are there porta potties there?
Marc:I mean, what's going to be the situation?
Marc:I'm freaking out.
Marc:that there's not going to be a mug or a jar for me to buy at Mark Hewitt's because I'm going to be like half hour to 40 minutes late for the kiln opening show.
Marc:It's just going to be pandemonium.
Marc:Some ceramic groupie clusterfuck out there.
Marc:I'm picturing I'm going to get there.
Marc:I'm going to be on a long line to get into the studio.
Marc:People are going to be walking by with just quality ceramics.
Marc:I'm going to look at their pots and their jars.
Marc:I'm going to be like, fuck, goddammit.
Marc:I knew I'd miss it.
Marc:I knew I'd miss it.
Marc:There's not going to be any mugs or pitchers or jars for me.
Marc:No cool glazes.
Marc:I fucking blew it.
Marc:I get there.
Marc:Like 12 people there.
Marc:Some nice ladies come to see the glazes.
Marc:But I'll tell you, ma'am, stunning pottery.
Marc:Stunning work.
Marc:Huge wood-burning kiln.
Marc:Like, there's several.
Marc:There's an old one.
Marc:There's a new giant one.
Marc:It's like the size of a truck.
Marc:It looks like a giant oven made on the ground out of mud.
Marc:There's a gas kiln there too for other stuff.
Marc:But I got a tour of the kiln.
Marc:And I talked to Mark.
Marc:It's on my Instagram if you want to see it.
Marc:And I bought a bunch of beautiful stuff.
Marc:And he's going to ship it to me.
Marc:I don't even know where I'm going to put it.
Marc:But I had to have it.
Marc:Because I got there ahead of the curve, man.
Marc:I got there in time.
Marc:There was still stuff there.
Marc:But it was interesting to talk to him.
Marc:He's the guy.
Marc:He's the potter.
Marc:He's the one of the region.
Marc:There's a lot of potters down there.
Marc:A lot of good ones.
Marc:A lot of good work down there.
Marc:But a lot of these guys who are down there started out with him.
Marc:I imagine some of them are getting pretty mad if they're listening to this.
Marc:There's got to be some guys there, not unlike any other art.
Marc:They're just like, ah, fuck Hewitt.
Marc:Fuck that guy, man.
Marc:Look at the work I'm doing, man.
Marc:This is way ahead of where he's at.
Marc:He's old school.
Marc:Beautiful stuff.
Marc:It was beautiful stuff.
Marc:I'm excited to have it in my house.
Marc:Nice guy, too.
Marc:British.
Marc:Real gentleman.
Marc:Knows his shit.
Marc:So, listen.
Marc:Kate Berlant, she has a comedy special and
Marc:A stand-up special, which it's not clear whether or not it's going to be on or not, but I watched it.
Marc:But she's also got this other comedy special with John Early, and it's called Would It Kill You to Laugh?
Marc:It premieres this Friday, June 24th on Peacock.
Marc:And this is me talking to Kate Berlant.
Marc:So, wait, who tells you to not drink seltzer?
Marc:I mean, who is the lady?
Marc:What kind of person is that?
Guest:This, you know, kind of holistic woman.
Marc:General or a general holistic woman that you know in passing or somebody that you go to?
Guest:You know what I'm concealing?
Guest:It was a colonicist.
Marc:Oh, so you're hiding the colonic?
Guest:I was hiding it because I knew.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was hiding it.
Marc:Hiding the colonic?
Marc:I know.
Marc:I went to a colonic guy in New York once.
Guest:Yeah, that's where they really... Huge community there, apparently.
Marc:Really?
Guest:The Gravity Colonic.
Marc:No, I don't know what it was.
Guest:Was the water up here?
Marc:Well, no, it's like they... Yeah, there's a machine.
Marc:There's equipment.
Guest:That means gravity.
Guest:Like here in LA, there's like the ones where they're sideways, and those are supposed to be too intense.
Guest:Like the proper Ayurvedic way is like you want... It's called the gravity method.
Marc:Is it good?
Marc:I don't know if it's good.
Marc:We just had one?
Guest:I had two.
Guest:Oh.
Marc:So... What's driving that?
Guest:How much time do we even have?
Guest:Because what is driving it?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Yeah, you know...
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:People abuse them.
Guest:I was just sort of curious.
Guest:And then, of course, it like made me like, that gives you like a full body high.
Marc:It does it?
Marc:In sort of a way.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I like felt God.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:At the colonic?
Guest:Yeah, a little bit.
Guest:I had a little bit of, it kind of took, it really takes you out of the everyday embodiment kind of status.
Guest:But...
Marc:But was the high just of the sort of transgressive nature of having a tube in your butt and water?
Marc:Probably.
Marc:The idea of feeling really clean.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Well, because it's... I kind of... Alarms go off around being like, and I'm finally clean and empty.
Guest:I don't want to fall into that trap, but there is something...
Guest:the eating disorder trap yeah yeah sure i've just like you know every four days i go in there and that yeah but it's it's there is like an eating disorder thing where again the way she was talking to me about seltzer being a treat yeah i was like we're not going to connect like they're just automatically like i can't i am like a hedonist absolutely and like i can't pretend is this an older lady
Guest:No, well, by the way, she looks amazing.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And she'll say, you know, her thing is like the beauty elements of colonics.
Guest:She's like, I think she might be in her early 50s.
Guest:She looks like really beautiful.
Marc:Like a lot of liquid?
Guest:Naturally kind of like, yeah, hydrated, like color in the face.
Guest:But like stripped down bare, like no makeup.
Marc:Do you think she's a colonic addict?
Guest:Oh, I cannot imagine her bowels.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, she's stripped.
Marc:But isn't it, don't you disrupt your whole gut garden?
Marc:Yeah, that's the thing.
Guest:It can wash out the proper fauna.
Guest:It's something I have to hide from my mother.
Guest:Because if she heard, she'd be like, she, at one point, I mentioned, I was like, oh, I'm actually going to try a colonic.
Guest:And it was like, her face dropped.
Guest:And she was like, please talk to a doctor.
Guest:Promise me I'll talk to a doctor.
Guest:Like she completely, because like doctors were definitely like the religious figures in my house growing up.
Guest:So it was like, you know, the fauna.
Marc:Which one's the Jew?
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, well, the jury's out.
Guest:My dad's full, like, New York Jew.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:My mom's family's from Spain, but they were, like, secret Jews.
Marc:Oh, Conversos?
Marc:Like, from way back?
Guest:Well, her name is Mendez.
Guest:Like, my name is actually Mendez Burlant.
Guest:And Mendez, it's like having the name Cohen in Spain.
Marc:Really?
Guest:And my grandparents were diamond dealers in the south of Spain in, like, the Jewish ghetto.
Marc:But were they Jews that turned Catholic during the Inquisition kind of thing?
Guest:That's kind of the idea.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:And then apparently my grandmother on her deathbed was like, we're Jews and died.
Guest:Good luck.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so there are people in the family who are kind of like, nah.
Guest:But there isn't any, there's no darkness around that.
Guest:It doesn't feel like intrinsically anti-Semitic.
Guest:There's just sort of this, there was like no religion outside of just kind of like, oh, you go to church, you dress up and whatever.
Marc:You grew up here?
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The whole time?
Guest:I know.
Guest:I ooze New York.
Marc:Well, I mean, you spent time though in New York.
Guest:I lived in New York for like eight years.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But wait, what'd you do here as a kid?
Marc:Did you go to that school in Santa Monica?
Guest:No, I went to an all-girls school.
Marc:What's that one called?
Guest:Called Archer Crossroads.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I was supposed to go to Crossroads because my dad's an artist.
Marc:That's what I figured.
Guest:I was supposed to go to Crossroads.
Guest:I went for my half day.
Guest:I got too scared.
Marc:What do you mean?
Guest:Because the kids were so cool.
Guest:And I think I was scared.
Guest:There were boys and there were these cool girls being like, have you given a blowjob yet?
Guest:And I was like, I want to go to the girls' school.
Guest:So I went to the girls' school.
Marc:Really?
Marc:That was the first question?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Distinct memory is staring at their high heels and being like, oh no.
Marc:When does that start?
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:I mean, I was young for my grade, so I think I may have been 12 when they were 13.
Marc:What kind of artist is your dad?
Guest:He works in metal.
Guest:They look like paintings, but they're metal.
Marc:But he's like a real thing, right?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:He's a real thing.
Marc:Like he's in the Whitney?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I always want to be like, I'm from L.A., my parents aren't in entertainment, but my dad is an artist.
Marc:That was nurtured in me.
Marc:High level.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But not like Dustin Hoffman in that movie with Adam Sandler and Ben Stiller, right?
Guest:Which one?
Guest:Oh, which I love.
Marc:Yeah, it's great.
Marc:What's it called?
Marc:The Moskowitz.
Marc:The something stories?
Guest:When I tell you I wept, because they go deep into the, into the archive at the witness or something.
Guest:And I was like, well, there I am.
Guest:I was like, that will be me being like, he was important.
Guest:Damn it.
Guest:You know, he's like known in certain, like my dad's like known like certain groups, but like, but I like, of course now like relate to that more like, yeah, like, like his friends, they got like so huge and I'm like, and he's going to go find his little piece.
Guest:Absolutely.
Marc:Who were his peers?
Marc:Was he part of a thing?
Guest:So like the Ferris Gallery in LA, like his best friends were Ed Moses and Chris Burden.
Marc:Oh yeah.
Marc:Chris Burden?
Guest:Who now aren't alive.
Guest:But yeah, Chris.
Marc:He was like performance artist guy.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:That was crazy shit.
Marc:He was like way the fuck out there.
Guest:Yeah, that was like one of my first jobs was working for him.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, and he was sort of the thing that people know him for is like he got shot.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And actually what the performance piece was is a bullet was supposed to just graze his arm and cut him, but he accidentally got shot.
Marc:Right.
Guest:But yeah, he was that...
Marc:He did all kinds of stuff though.
Marc:Didn't he have like some sort of, was he out in Topanga or something?
Guest:Yeah, that's where I worked.
Guest:He had this beautiful, amazing studio in Topanga where he lived with his wife.
Marc:But he did visual stuff, performance stuff, all of it.
Marc:He was one of those guys.
Marc:Full P.T.
Marc:Barnum, art star.
Guest:absolutely like brilliant like loved his work so much and then he was such a like completely kind like yeah you always imagine like that guy shot himself he must be crazy he was like completely like just normal sweet what was some of the other work i don't know all his work so he did there definitely was a lot of body stuff and kind of endurance pieces him like being shoved in a locker and like kind of like living in it for however long and then he did
Marc:The anti-Houdini stuff where he can't get out and he doesn't want him.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:But then sculptures, like a piece that I worked on was he had an installation at Rockefeller Center.
Guest:The piece was called What My Dad Gave Me and it was an erector set skyscraper.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Guest:So I was like in this kind of assembly line making this like one little piece was like my job.
Guest:So it's like super gluing this little erector piece.
Guest:How old were you?
Guest:All day.
Guest:19.
Marc:So when you're doing that,
Marc:Are you sold?
Guest:1920.
Marc:Are you like, this is it.
Marc:This is art.
Guest:It actually was so fun because you're in a room in Topanga with interesting people.
Guest:You're just listening to music and talking all day.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So I had a blast.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But was it your future?
Guest:No.
Guest:I mean, I had jobs working for artists, but I was doing, at that point, I was already doing stand-up, and that was what I wanted to do.
Marc:Because you had jobs with artists because of your dad?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Your dad would be like, you want to work for, what's his name?
Marc:He's got to make something out of foam.
Guest:Yeah, totally.
Guest:It's a great day job for Ed Moses, stretching canvases, destroying paintings.
Marc:Destroying them?
Guest:Yeah, he'd be like, I don't want that one, rip it up.
Guest:I'm like, okay, it's kind of fun.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:He's like a big guy, too.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I kind of know his work.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Mm hmm.
Marc:I think I feel like I've seen it recently.
Guest:So he's a big like painter like L.A.
Guest:I mean, yeah.
Guest:He also, you know, died a few years ago now.
Marc:Ed Moses.
Guest:Ed Moses.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I feel a little.
Marc:I mean, I know more than I know some things about it, but not enough.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:For this particular specific conversation.
Guest:Well, you knew Chris Byrne did some wild stuff.
Marc:I did know that.
Guest:That's true.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:He made an impact.
Marc:There was a couple of guys that did sort of weird shit.
Marc:There was a guy, I remember reading about a guy back in, I guess it must have been the 80s, who went to Mexico, had sex with a prostitute, and then had a visectomy.
Marc:And that was his presentation.
Guest:That was the piece.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Have fun.
Marc:Everyone left their life change that night.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And said, what the fuck was that about?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I love it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I tend to like it myself.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because it's the poetry of it.
Marc:Even in telling the story, there's a sense to it where you're sort of like, a guy did that on purpose.
Marc:Like he conceived of it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And he decided he was going to spend his last load.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I wonder if it was, something tells me it might have been a corpse, not a prostitute.
Guest:No way.
Guest:Actually?
Marc:Maybe.
Guest:Well, that changes the narrative a lot.
Marc:Totally.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:That reframes the whole piece.
Marc:It's a better piece.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now there's something I can hold on to.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, at the Catholic school, was that a nightmare?
Guest:It wasn't Catholic.
Marc:Oh, I thought you said.
Marc:It was just a girls' school.
Marc:It was a secular all-girls school.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I loved it.
Marc:Yeah?
Marc:Was it just like bougie kids from Santa Monica?
Guest:Pretty much, yeah.
Guest:I mean, it was like very...
Guest:strangely i really liked middle school i think because it was it was small it was a small school it kind of felt utopian because it was just like friends and there was kind of a purity and innocence to that time like i didn't feel yeah i was like just so hypercharged and was like clowning constantly and like climbing the lockers and like i just was clowning like you mean you were screwing around you're actually consciously clowning as in you learned a clown thing
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Can you imagine?
Guest:Can you imagine?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I started to experience clown, which really is not to degrade clowning, but it is a dirty word in this industry.
Guest:No, I was just, like, manically, you know, joking.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I felt, like, free.
Guest:And I was completely at that age, too.
Guest:Like, my friends, my closest friends were really kind of these, like, beautiful girls who were, like, already on birth control.
Guest:And I was like, I want to go on it, too.
Guest:Like, I went on birth control before I'd ever been kissed.
Guest:I was like, I want to be ready.
Guest:You know, I just felt like that was in my future, but it was so not in my present at all.
Marc:And your parents were okay with that?
Guest:Oh, yeah, of course.
Guest:My mom's like, ortho tricycline low, here we come.
Guest:But, yeah, it was just, I mean, I remember feeling like utterly desexualized because I was sort of the clown.
Guest:I wasn't getting that attention, but there was something...
Guest:Like, liberating in that for me.
Guest:I don't... I mean, I was definitely, like, horny and, like, obsessed with sex, but, like, that was just not in my realm of experience whatsoever.
Marc:But it's happening around you.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So I got to get every detail and, like... But it wasn't happening for you.
Marc:No.
Marc:But you were obsessed with it.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So you had to be funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, well, I have, like... There is this, like, origin story of myself from, like, oh, yeah, that was big, which was...
Guest:I had this friend who was like, she was truly a PacSun model.
Guest:Like she was like a gorgeous, which is like a, you know, bathing suit company.
Guest:And so she was my friend.
Guest:And one day after school was like, we're going to go over to this guy's house.
Guest:And I was like, great, I'll be there.
Guest:And I went over to her house.
Guest:And I remember because we had uniforms and we were going to trade, we were going to change into cool clothes to go to this guy's house.
Marc:What kind of uniforms if it wasn't Catholic?
Marc:Just general?
Guest:Khaki skirt.
Guest:Like, no, you might look like a Catholic girl uniform, maybe.
Guest:But yeah, so we like went to her house.
Guest:None of her clothes fit me because she was so tall and lanky.
Guest:I remember she put me in a Hard Rock Cafe shirt and these like sweatpants that I rolled like six times.
Guest:And we went over to this guy's house and there was another guy there.
Guest:Maybe like, oh, one for you and one for me kind of a thing.
Guest:but like i think clearly it was apparent like that was not my energy and then um but i remember being in their room listening to neil young's harvest he was really into music like he he was like in la he's like i was the first guy to know that pavement was cool you know right like and so he was like this indie kind of god
Guest:The kid was.
Guest:Yeah, the kid was.
Guest:And I remember being in the room, hanging out on the beds, and I was making them laugh, and he was laughing, and he was like, you should be careful, though, because guys don't like girls who are funny because it reminds them too much of other guys.
Guest:And it was like, he said it to me in this very matter-of-fact, just kind of plain way, and I feel like I have four memories in my life, and that's one of them that is just so concrete for me, and I was like, okay, this is going in.
Marc:But you looked at it as a superpower.
Guest:I was kind of like devastated, but I already knew that was the truth.
Guest:It is the truth.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, in a certain regard, I was like already obviously like realizing that, that I wasn't.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That something was.
Marc:You weren't all, you know, you weren't insecure and sexed up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was just like, yeah, I took that and I was, it was confusing because it was him acknowledging that I was funny.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But also acknowledging that I was like a desexualized clown.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:A desexualized clown, I think, is better than a sexualized clown in a way.
Guest:We'll see.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, totally.
Marc:You don't want to be Baby Jane, you know.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:I mean, yeah.
Marc:Sometimes when I'm around L.A.
Marc:and I'm looking at women of a certain age, they're like, oh, my God, it's the whole Baby Jane spectrum.
Guest:Just painted in the sand.
Marc:Yeah, a little bit.
Marc:But some obviously do it better than others.
Marc:It's an art form.
Marc:I mean, my mother, I don't even know what her hair color is.
Guest:That is my mom is like my mom is really beautiful.
Guest:She's 78.
Guest:She really doesn't seem it.
Guest:She's incredibly youthful, but she hasn't done anything to her face.
Marc:She barely wears makeup.
Marc:That's great.
Guest:No.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she really is just like so youthful and gorgeous to me.
Guest:But the one thing like her hair has always died.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:So that's like the thing that that is like I've never seen her with gray hair.
Marc:I like gray hair.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think it's cool, too.
Guest:Like for myself, I'm like, oh, yeah, I'll go great.
Marc:You're going to let it happen.
Guest:Yeah, it hasn't hit me yet.
Marc:No, it hasn't.
Marc:No.
Marc:What's your mom do?
Guest:So my mom wanted to be an actor.
Guest:Something's devastating about saying that.
Guest:She wanted to be an actress, but she didn't fully go for it exactly.
Guest:But she worked a lot with this guy named Guy DeQuinte, who was a French Dadaist guy, and she was in his plays.
Marc:Here?
Guest:Yeah, in L.A.
Guest:He was here?
Guest:And then also did some stuff in New York with him.
Guest:Oh, really?
Marc:But yeah.
Marc:What's his name?
Guest:Guy DeQuante.
Guest:So it's G-U-I.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And he was a far out guy who... There was a resurgence of interest in his work like 10 or so years ago.
Guest:So she actually went and did...
Guest:Yeah, about six people.
Guest:But you'll be amazed what six people at the Pompidou in Paris can do.
Guest:So it was like, so she did was like performing at like the Tate and at MoMA, like this kind of, you know, and at this point she was in her late 50s, early 60s.
Marc:And it's great.
Marc:She was probably like, we got the old gang together.
Guest:Completely.
Guest:And like her, the women who were sort of his muses were like my aunts growing up, like the woman that really took care of me.
Guest:So it was really fun to watch them like perform these, these really beautiful, surreal plays where he was French, but he like learned English through watching commercials and daytime soap operas.
Guest:So his plays are all in this language of melodrama.
Guest:Uh huh.
Guest:But they're completely absurd.
Guest:So it's like a prop that's like a green cube is a telephone.
Guest:And the sets are all made by this amazing artist, Bob Wilhite, who's here in L.A.
Marc:So you grew up around all this stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:This was your world...
Guest:That was my world.
Marc:I like it, man.
Marc:I like reading about that stuff.
Marc:I like going to see things like that.
Marc:I don't do it enough.
Marc:It's not my life.
Marc:And as I get older, I get cynical about it.
Marc:And I start to sort of not dismiss it, but like, who cares?
Guest:Oh, sure.
Guest:Well, you're American.
Guest:It's an anti-intellectual society.
Marc:Yeah, but I grew up loving it.
Marc:And as I get older, even the stuff that resonated with me, I appreciate.
Marc:I just joined the Whitney again.
Marc:I'm still active about it.
Marc:But there is part of me that believes that it should be relevant on a level that it's not.
Marc:And then I get angry about that it isn't.
Marc:And then I realize that they don't want it to be.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Because it's a special world and it's insulated and it's weird.
Marc:And they're not trying to solve any big problems.
Marc:Right.
Marc:No, they're just they just want their friends to come and someone to write about it and a picture to be in art news.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Oh, no, it's hyper rarefied and very right.
Marc:There was a period where I think I'm disillusioned.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Well, I felt like because I was doing stand up for a while, like when I started, I was like, well, what is this?
Guest:Is this performance art?
Guest:And I was I was bristled at that.
Guest:I was like, it's not performance art, stand up.
Marc:People were asking you.
Guest:Or what people were seeing what I was doing, going, oh, it's weird, or it could be performance art, which I was like, I knew what they were saying, but again, I just didn't like it, because to me, that was associated with this kind of impenetrable echelon of like, oh, it's impossible to understand, and I was like, I'm crossing my eyes.
Guest:It's really, I'm like a ham.
Guest:I never understood that.
Marc:And also, at the time, when did you start?
Guest:Well, I started when I was 17.
Marc:Here.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, the weird thing about that is that I remember when I started,
Marc:And I saw comics who were doing something that didn't lock into what I thought stand-up was.
Marc:And it was somebody very, not mainstream, but it just struck me that when I started, I didn't really understand how big the umbrella of stand-up really was.
Marc:But then when I was coming up in New York, you had that whole sort of collective unconscious and all those spaces down below Houston that were holding on to this legacy of performance art, but it was really a cop-out.
Marc:Yeah, totally.
Marc:There really hasn't been any real performance art since the 70s or 80s, I think.
Marc:Maybe the mid-80s, right?
Marc:I mean, really conscious Karen Finley or that place that was in that woman's loft where they all did that stuff in New York or the Worcester Group or that, whatever.
Guest:Oh, yeah, like Harleen Schneemann.
Marc:Yeah, like that.
Marc:But the rest of it is sort of either stand-up or not good stand-up.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, completely.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So when you started, where'd you go?
Guest:so my first my first performance was at my high school really as a stand-up who are you who are you watching that made you want to do this i was um it's it's i so true like the first time i like sat down to write stand-up i had just watched david cross's um is it let america laugh yeah like his like touring like the like i had like the dvd of him tour and i i just couldn't believe that you could like live like that i was like oh my god touring the world and like interacting with these crazy people and you
Guest:It was so romantic to me.
Guest:I was like, that's incredible.
Guest:But I was very obsessed.
Guest:I loved Woody Allen and Steve Martin.
Guest:I liked all that stuff.
Marc:You're a comedy kid.
Guest:Yeah, totally.
Guest:And then I started becoming obsessed with the alternative scene in New York, the invite them up.
Guest:Right, with Eugene.
Guest:Exactly, the invite them up, Bobby Tisdale, the TV.
Guest:I memorized that and loved all of those people.
Marc:So that was already done by the time you're getting in.
Guest:Yeah, pretty much.
Guest:I was scheduled to perform at Rafifi in the East Village the week it closed.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So I was like late, but I was still there when I would see like, yeah, Eugene Merman and all those people.
Marc:That's weird because those were kids to me.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, like I'm already one generation removed from that, but you're coming in and that's already like, wow, this all happened here.
Marc:Yes, completely.
Marc:And it's done.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:I feel some Shapiro.
Marc:Did you know the Shapiro?
Marc:Did you know Rick Shapiro?
Marc:Did you ever see Rick Shapiro?
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:I'm feeling some Shapiro energy.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Great.
Marc:Yeah, in the stand-up special.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:You watched it.
Marc:I did.
Guest:God bless you.
Marc:Why?
Marc:I don't know if 15 people have seen it.
Marc:Are you not going to release it?
Guest:I would love to release it.
Guest:I mean, I shot it years ago.
Marc:No.
Guest:It's pre-COVID, yeah.
Marc:Really?
Guest:But it might come out now.
Marc:Is that at UCB?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And you put mirrors up?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Put mirrors up.
Marc:Well, I'm like, I know that space.
Marc:There's only one space that you're on stage with most of the audience.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:It's really small.
Marc:And structurally, I know it's the old UCB.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But you saw Shapiro.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, I love that.
Guest:You I love that.
Guest:You said Rick Shapiro.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I mean, I, you know, I've been doing this so long, you know, and I've known him forever, but I've known everybody forever.
Marc:And I know, you know, when when things soak into people a little bit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No one's going to accuse you of ripping off Rick Shapiro.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, but I'm just get a taste of it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You get a taste of the Shapiro.
Guest:When you were talking about also like performance art because I was like Brody Stevens.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:I like love so much.
Guest:I'm like, that's something that people would be like, well, that's performance art.
Guest:But he's at the comedy store.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Like he's one of those people for me that when I saw him, I was like, so I felt like liberated because he was so funny.
Guest:And what he was doing was like, like just unmatched.
Marc:Well, here's the thing about like that thing just from my perspective.
Marc:experience with it is like, I don't think that people who claim to, who say performance art know what performance art is.
Marc:It's just something they don't quite understand and they think it doesn't belong.
Marc:It's like a non-category.
Marc:Yeah, that doesn't belong here.
Marc:Like, you're too weird for here.
Marc:There was really never anything too weird to be done in stand-up venues ever, ever.
Marc:But I think the real thing with it, it's whether or not you're doing it on purpose.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Do you know what I mean?
Marc:Like, you know, sometimes there are people that are carried by the form in the community of it who aren't really intentionally doing something, but they're they're part of the family.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Do you know what I mean?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They can't do it any other way.
Marc:And it's almost like people are protecting them from being laughed at for the wrong reasons.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:So I've seen that a lot.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, but like, but Brody's persistence was, you know, it drove a lot of people.
Marc:People, it was, it uplifted people.
Guest:Totally.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I think about him all the time.
Marc:You do?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's so sad.
Guest:I know.
Guest:But I really like, I'm, yeah.
Marc:What do you think?
Guest:His, I mean, just not that I knew him well, but I just know him in the way that, you know, people for a million years to do comedy and his like sweetness, but also his, um, I love his insistence on like the push believe like, like, like that insistence to me was so like generous and real.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And now we're in this weird kind of, this language of positivity has been co-opted and become this other kind of vile, gross thing that is like, you can do it.
Marc:How about people who say storytelling?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It's like, it's just...
Marc:Authenticity is another one that I really don't know what that word means.
Guest:Never have.
Guest:Never will.
Guest:Don't buy it.
Guest:Doesn't exist.
Marc:And I think in your in the in the stand up especially you you you you I think you got the the most honest moment of what authenticity means.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:When you're when you're throwing up.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:oh my god oh yeah i haven't watched it in years it's like you're not really selling it it's great it's great folks it'll be out well i know but i know that's not really what you're out uh pushing no i'm thrilled that you're bringing it up because truly i did i did uh but you're talking about it like it's like everything's different now i'm not even that person oh no i am i'm still trapped on that stage because the special hasn't been out yeah i mean i shot it before covid
Marc:Fortunately for you, in a sense, you can be timeless.
Marc:You're kind of timeless.
Guest:Well, yeah, I wake up in a cold sweat.
Guest:I'm like, my special's not out.
Guest:And I'm like, well, good news that it's just you crossing your eyes, doll.
Guest:So you're fine.
Guest:There's nothing topical in it.
Guest:But no, it's, you know, Bo Burnham directed it.
Guest:He's a beautiful filmmaker.
Marc:Yeah, I think he's doing amazing.
Marc:I think this whole movement to make everything seem relatively uneventful is really the new thing.
Yeah.
Marc:Just a complete... Just like, hey, let's go in here.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Let's just go in.
Guest:Yeah, there's something going on.
Marc:Get a camera on.
Marc:Don't tell them we're taping.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, it'll... Well, folks, I think it'll be out this year.
Marc:You do?
Marc:Like, what's the conversation around that?
Marc:Nothing?
Guest:Pretty much nothing.
Guest:No, I think it's going to be out in the fall.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:Somewhere?
Guest:Yeah, somewhere.
Marc:Even if it's just you?
Guest:My language, I'm like, I can't say it.
Marc:Oh, you know.
Guest:I shot it for FX.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:Yeah, sure.
Marc:You can say it.
Marc:So you'll see what happens.
Guest:Sue me.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now they're not going to put it up just to spite you.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:But what was the weird... So that's the final cut that I saw?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, boy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, we're going to... That's exactly what you want to hear.
Guest:Yeah, I saw a version of it.
Guest:No, no, we're going to go back in there and sweeten it up.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:No, I don't mean that.
Oh, my God.
Guest:Yeah, Mark, that was the final catch.
Marc:No, because it cuts away to like... Because it was for commercials.
Guest:So it had to be shortened for commercials.
Marc:So that's all I mean.
Marc:So when you're going out to commercial, you do those behind the scenes moments?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because without commercials, it's just sort of like, what was that?
Marc:Do they know that?
Guest:Should we tell them that that's... Well, that's what the experience is going to be now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, we're going to confuse the audience.
Marc:Just going to leave it in there?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Fuck it.
Guest:You can't handle the abstraction.
Marc:Well, that's the thing is that you set a tone where it's sort of like, it's just a thing she's doing.
Marc:You're like, I get it.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's behind.
Marc:It's in front.
Marc:It's a mirror.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who am I?
Guest:Who are you?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What is this?
Marc:So, all right, so you graduate from the girls' school and you do comedy your first time in high school.
Marc:Oh, so I did it.
Marc:Oh, yeah, what did you do?
Marc:Were you straight up joked?
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:What do you remember?
Guest:Well, I remember and I have it on tape.
Marc:Oh, thank God.
Marc:Yeah, like on a Betamax?
Guest:It's like, yeah, it's on a DVD now.
Marc:Well, good for you digitizing your stuff.
Guest:I have to digitize it to something else now.
Guest:But it was very...
Guest:Now I realize so much on improvising, but that was hyper-constructed one-liners, really.
Guest:But the one-liners didn't really work or didn't quite make sense.
Guest:They were still kind of veering into this absurd place.
Marc:In high school?
Guest:Yeah, when I was 17.
Guest:But also, I came out on stage in a wheelchair, then stood up.
Guest:And that was my first joke.
Marc:Oh, that big prop piece.
Guest:Yeah, big old prop right up top.
Guest:I loved it.
Marc:Could you get away with that now?
Guest:Sure, I couldn't.
Guest:And so I did, and then I did the open mic at the Laugh Factory, which I still, I mean, I just weep at the thought of it.
Guest:I can't believe my strength.
Guest:Lining up, I had a fake ID to do it.
Guest:Lining up at five, I think it was 5.30 on Tuesday to do the open mic.
Marc:I don't know how we did what we did when we did it.
Marc:When I look back at me, I'm like, that poor kid.
Guest:We have to be kind to those versions.
Marc:We do.
Marc:What did we drag them through?
Marc:It's like nothing but trauma.
Marc:Unimaginable.
Marc:For like a decade.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I think about those open mics.
Guest:I mean, it's just.
Marc:I was driving around New England, you know, to like pubs and bowling alleys doing one nighters with, you know, with drunken headliners just going up cold in the middle of environments that weren't even for comedy.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, certainly not.
Guest:Certainly not.
Guest:And like in New York, you know, I think about like the basement at Maui Taco, you know, where I'd be like, I got four minutes, baby.
Guest:And I'd be like shaking from nerves, you know, I'd be like.
Marc:All day.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And then it's just.
Marc:No one's there, but three other comics.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And someone who didn't know there was a show.
Guest:Yes, completely.
Guest:And of course, now I romanticize that time so intensely.
Marc:Do you?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know, though.
Guest:I know, but I do.
Guest:I am like, oh, I fought tooth and nail.
Marc:That doesn't exist anymore.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:You know, I do have like a. Well, I think that's true, too.
Marc:I think that's true, too.
Marc:But I just in terms of like, you know, whatever my psychopathology is, whatever I was doing there, I have to look at it like that.
Marc:Like I got through it and it worked out OK.
Marc:But why?
Marc:I know.
Marc:And there was no other thing for me.
Marc:That's the weirdest thing about it.
Marc:I'm glad it happened, and maybe I've resolved some of the problems that I may have had emotionally and mentally, but not many.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:We can't hope to resolve.
Marc:No?
Marc:We can just change our behavior?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just, you know, turn it over.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, I get it.
Marc:Well, the cognitive thing.
Marc:It's like, I'm going to.
Marc:No, I'm not.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Just recognize and then move through it.
Marc:That's all you can do.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You can't push it down.
Guest:Just let yourself feel it.
Marc:And you know what happens, though, that I can tell you for sure as an old guy, an old-ish, is that eventually that becomes stronger.
Marc:Like you do things that you wouldn't have done that are better for you.
Marc:And the conversation's a lot, it's a lot shorter.
Marc:Like even exercising, it's like, I don't want it.
Marc:And then all of a sudden I'm like, I'm doing it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's good to hear.
Guest:Okay, great.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't know how that happened.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So you do it at the laugh factory.
Marc:Was it terrible?
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:Because you're dealing with that.
Marc:Then you're like right in the mainstream pocket of people.
Marc:But sometimes at those open mics on Sunset, whether it's the store or the lab factory, you've got guys in chef hats and people wearing mittens and, you know, people with big ideas.
Marc:I remember one time looking at the potluck, you know, crew out on the patio of the comedy store and there was just a guy in a garbage bag.
Marc:And I'm like, big night.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I mean, yeah, that time for me, I'm like, I remember it very distinctly.
Guest:And I, yeah, I kind of...
Guest:I got some positive reactions.
Guest:Thank God.
Guest:I don't think I would have kept going or like I was getting enough or something or people kind of go like, that's crazy or something.
Guest:I was like, okay, well, I'll just be the crazy one or something.
Marc:It's landing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I went to New York and I- For college?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I went to Bard for a year upstate.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:That's fancy smarty pants.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Your fancy smarty pants?
Marc:So what'd you do at Bard?
Marc:Why'd you run away from Bard?
Guest:So I went for a year, but then I transferred to NYU after a year, because I wanted to be in the city, and I was doing the open mics in the middle of the woods every night, or every Tuesday, rather, and I was like, I gotta get out of here.
Marc:In the middle of the woods?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, Bard is in the middle of the woods.
Marc:I know, but what were the open mics?
Guest:So it was at the cafe, it was the cafeteria.
Marc:Oh, at the school.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:At the school, yeah.
Guest:So I was doing that, and then I started going to the city a lot and going to see shows.
Guest:And I was like, I gotta get out of here.
Guest:I gotta go to New York.
Marc:What was the community at Bard, though?
Marc:Was it arty?
Marc:Did you feel like you had a place there, or was it just bro-y and they didn't know what you were doing?
Guest:No, it was arty.
Guest:I was like, no one will kiss me.
Guest:This sucks.
Guest:I was feeling very restless.
Marc:Dorky?
Guest:Were you feeling dorky?
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:Yeah, maybe.
Guest:But I was like, it's actually when I think about when I was 18, I'm like remembering my dorm wall and it was like a photo of Woody Allen and Steve Martin's like the book jacket to Cruel Shoes, like taped up on the thing.
Guest:I was like...
Guest:like white knuckle grip to like something so but then but then i did go but then i did transfer to nyu and then i was like doing stand-up a lot and then i i mean i went to grad school at nyu because i was like i'll just be like a teacher if i have to but then i oh that was the backup yeah yeah i thought i could i mean hey
Marc:Yeah, well, if you did the grad school.
Marc:I have the master's.
Marc:You did it.
Marc:Yeah, it's always there for you.
Marc:I used to keep that as an alternate thing, but I never went to grad school.
Marc:So as you get older, you're 45 and nothing's going on.
Marc:I think it's time to go back.
Marc:I would just vaguely go like, I could teach.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:But what would I teach?
Marc:I have to teach a class about me.
Marc:That's all I could teach.
Guest:Yeah, you would have to teach.
Marc:These are my favorite things.
Marc:Let's all watch them.
Guest:They could create something for you, like you would just be like the word, you know, like word, the word or something.
Marc:You could like... I'll create a thing.
Marc:Yeah, like something like... Where you read poems and watched two TV shows, a movie and some cartoons or something.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:No, the more abstract, the better.
Guest:I think, and I still kind of feel like teaching, like if I hadn't, like I always wanted to be an actor and a comedian, but if I hadn't done that, I think teaching...
Guest:is like you have a captive audience, it's still performance.
Guest:It is like the closest thing.
Marc:Sure, kinda.
Marc:But unfortunately, the audience doesn't really see it in the same way that they paid to be there.
Marc:Their expectations are minimal.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Unless they're really engaged in what you're doing.
Guest:You can really get a cult going.
Marc:Yeah, of two or three people.
Guest:Which really would have, I think that almost would have fed me enough.
Marc:What, the two do-gooders who just wanted you to like them?
Guest:Yeah, just having the teachers be like, God, you're brilliant.
Guest:You know, like, come over for spaghetti sundaes at my house.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:You know, being like that teacher.
Marc:Well, yeah.
Marc:I mean, you could live in that.
Guest:That could have been my future.
Marc:Well, it might be still.
Guest:We'll see.
Guest:Honey, the special's not out yet.
Marc:But Bart, so you go, but you know, you grew up in this like very specialized kind of upbringing and your understanding of the art world was, was, you know, like parents.
Marc:So like, it must've been a relief to get to New York city.
Marc:I mean, I don't know how much you engage that part of you, how sort of lowbrow you got with the standup.
Marc:Like, did you just sort of like erase your knowledge of working for Chris Burton?
Marc:Like that was another me.
Marc:Now I'm just a nightclub comic.
Guest:I was just like, Oh my God.
Guest:yeah i mean i was still you know absolutely around like the the arty kids you know i was like the indie kid yeah for sure so that was like i couldn't erase that absolutely but i also had a desire to be you know dirty or just like not even but just i wanted to to i felt an urgency around being able to make people laugh who of course didn't give a shit about strangers about yeah yeah strangers yeah yeah
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, it's good that you keep the arty friends because, I mean, it's so much a part of your ongoing kind of conversation.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I mean, the language surrounding art and all of that is like, I was very in that.
Guest:And I was in this hyper academic environment of like the seminar and discussing these kinds of like impenetrable texts.
Marc:And like, which ones?
Guest:Well, just, you know, you're reading like Lacan and Derrida and you're like, you know, and that would get me like,
Marc:Did you read Gleason to guitar?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, sure, sure.
Guest:I mean, as much as I can.
Guest:What the fuck is it?
Marc:To lose.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:What is that stuff?
Guest:Schizophrenic capitalism and all that stuff.
Marc:Yeah, I have that book.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:We all do.
Guest:I mean, it's just- No, we don't.
Guest:It's impossible.
Guest:We all do.
Guest:We don't.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:We don't all.
Guest:We don't.
Guest:We don't.
Guest:And I would get, like, to be clear, I would get, like, high on that.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Like, I would be, like, and I really did love school.
Guest:Like, I really did like that.
Guest:But-
Guest:like Foucault and I would get all jazzed up and walking in circles in my apartment being like, and that got me excited, genuinely.
Marc:But in retrospect, I get it, because you're a comic, and I used to do a joke about reading that stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And the joke was really just that, like, you know, the great thing about reading this stuff is when you're reading it, it feels like you're thinking it.
Marc:But, you know, I don't remember anything.
Marc:Oh, it goes.
Marc:But I couldn't contextualize it.
Marc:Like, I couldn't have an intellectual conversation and put any of that shit into context or what those guys were thinking.
Guest:Well, you can't read it alone.
Guest:That's impossible.
Marc:No, I know that.
Marc:But in retrospect, did you write papers on this shit?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, I find the papers and I go, oh, that's interesting.
Guest:I used to be smart.
Guest:Like I found this like paper that I wrote on like Foucault.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And I was like, it actually was like devastating.
Guest:I feel like this old self that I like because my attention span has been so, you know, destroyed by the phone and everything that I'm like, oh, wow, I used to have the rigor.
Guest:Like I do think it's important to sit down and read like a challenging text.
Marc:But do you really think that-
Marc:But you really think that your attention span has been ruined or you just haven't?
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Ruined might be too strong a word, but I do think, and it's like a constant thing in my life of trying to go back to that self because it is.
Marc:Well, you're also a student.
Marc:So you had to do it because you were in school.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So like, you know, to really, but, but I always, like, I was not good at math and there's some part of me, but there's some part of me that thinks like, I'm older now, maybe I should take up algebra again.
Marc:And like, I'm going to get it now.
Marc:I'm not going to get it.
Marc:No.
Marc:And I've tried to read some of those books again.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:The deluge and schizophrenia capitalism.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I mean, sitting down with the deluge in an afternoon.
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:I mean, no.
Marc:And I underlined a lot, but I didn't get nothing.
Marc:I don't know what they did.
Marc:I don't know who they were.
Marc:I don't know what time.
Marc:You can't do anything with that stuff unless you know the context of the language of philosophy that it's referencing.
Guest:You need help, and it does assume a certain amount of critical theory that you already have that I sort of once had.
Guest:And there are these remnants of it that I can kind of...
Marc:You do it in your act, and some of it is earnest.
Marc:It's just you present it as jokes because it's your way of controlling it now.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, I'm seduced by that language.
Guest:I always have been, and I think so just naturally, like, performing kind of expertise and knowledge.
Guest:I saw people doing that, and I was like, ooh, that's, like, fun.
Guest:That's sexy.
Guest:Like, yeah, being smart.
Guest:But then, of course, and now we're in a world where it's just, like, everyone knows four words, and they base their personality around that.
Guest:And no one is there to correct or actually probe it and be like, well, what do you mean?
Guest:No one says that, so it's just.
Marc:Authentic storytelling.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it's just this rhetoric around mobilizing change or- Proactive?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Doing the work, excavating oneself.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Trying to unearth or reveal to- Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:All of that.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Which-
Guest:And that is the dominant language.
Marc:It's helping.
Marc:I think if you just talked in that tone and just repeated about 12 or 15 words in a cycle, you'd get a following.
Guest:Peabody, like that.
Marc:Yeah, good luck with the Peabody.
Guest:I'm gonna get a Peabody as a joke.
Marc:Yeah, that'd be nice.
Marc:So when you're doing the standup, because I watch, and I read some stuff,
Marc:Not by you, but about you.
Marc:It's like it's stand up.
Marc:You know, you do stand up.
Marc:You're a stand up comedian.
Guest:Thank you.
Marc:But like, what did you study in school?
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:I mean, so I went to Gallatin at NYU, which is like the individualized study program.
Guest:So I was.
Marc:So it's like an inner read.
Marc:It's like read at NYU.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Like, yeah, it could be read adjacent.
Guest:Yeah, it's like very, you know, where I took classes on, you know, perversion in Japanese literature, but also like, you know.
Marc:Does that include anime or no?
Guest:Yeah, that would be touched upon.
Guest:Sure, it would have to be.
Guest:You can't erase that from the canon.
Guest:And then, but I would be like, you know, the history of the image and, you know, you read, which I really like.
Guest:Like there was this, you know, reading about like early essays on photography and people are kind of reckoning with like the double.
Guest:I got very into like Benjamin and this idea of mass production and,
Marc:Yeah, sure.
Marc:I tried to penetrate Benjamin.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Varta Benjamin.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:We're living it.
Marc:Yeah, we are.
Guest:Oh.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like, which part?
Guest:Well, just like the... I mean, also, you know, like the...
Guest:the reproduction of the image people hunting the animal like for the carcass and not and i'm sorry for the skin and not the carcass people like they talk about like shedding the animal skin and like that's kind of where we are now it's of course like this like image i'm so glad we we have a handle on where we are now that you you know i'm here to firmly anchor us in the now and there is no authenticity and um it's just it's pure just carcass yeah
Marc:It's all carcass.
Guest:Or it's not carcass.
Guest:It's the skin.
Guest:The carcass is the thing that's there.
Marc:Oh, that's the meaty part.
Marc:We rip the skin off and we worship the skin.
Marc:Just the rotting skin now.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So you're doing that.
Marc:There are things that have made impacts on me.
Marc:There was a book about the... I've not been able to source which book it was, but it was a book of photographs and the argument it was making was a feminist...
Marc:author who was capturing the history of images that suggest the objectification of women but through the atomic lens.
Marc:Like the Bikini Islands, the bikini, it's hot.
Marc:But that's where they tested nuclear wars and that's what the bathing suit is.
Marc:It was like the sort of pictures of the Mother Earth and minimizing that.
Marc:It was all about the objectification
Marc:through the lens of advertising.
Marc:And I don't know.
Marc:All I know is I was asked to leave a reading of it.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Marc:Because it was at a woman's space.
Guest:And you respectfully bowed and left.
Marc:I think I might have stubbornly sat for a minute.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then, you know, realized like... They kicked you out.
Marc:They did.
Marc:They're like, you know, you're welcome to stay, but...
Guest:But we don't love it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But this is a woman's space.
Marc:And this was like the 80s probably.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This was two weeks ago in Atwater Village.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I'm mad.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And you were right to me.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I'm a white man who just wants to sit and listen to the lady talk.
Guest:Talk about the objectification.
Marc:Women.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I'm part of the problem and I'd like to help myself.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But yeah.
Marc:So that stuff that blows your mind at that age is important.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was into all of that.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But what were you studying?
Marc:What was the deal?
Marc:What did you put together for yourself?
Guest:Well, I got really into the ritual process and liminality, which is like Victor Turner.
Guest:I don't know this stuff.
Guest:It's just about liminality and the liminal.
Guest:It's such an overused term now.
Guest:I don't even know what it means.
Guest:So liminal refers to like a space between spaces.
Guest:It's like an uncharted.
Guest:Yeah, it's between.
Guest:So it's like isn't here or there.
Guest:It's kind of defies category, which is something that I always liked that.
Guest:Like, oh yeah, what about things that are between spaces?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And also, I think just because I felt like that's where I was living creatively.
Guest:I was like, I'm a stand-up comedian, but I was performing in kind of art spaces or in conventional stand-up spaces.
Guest:What I was doing was considered more art.
Guest:I was kind of inhabiting these both places.
Guest:And now I realize that illegibility is actually really exciting to me.
Guest:That's kind of the stuff I gravitate toward anyway, is work that is kind of illegible or defying these categories.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was into that and then you know Richard Schechner was this NYU guy writing all about ritual and kind of the transformative nature of ritual when language actually does things like the performativity of language meaning like when you're in a courthouse and someone says something like it carries extra weight than on the they say it on the street.
Guest:It's like the way language actually can transform and can actually yeah.
Guest:And people talk about the law like the performance of the law the way the law performs.
Guest:So it's like
Guest:This is all going in.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So I got all hopped up on that stuff and was excited.
Guest:And then, you know, then, of course, there also was like this kind of like feminist readings of, you know, women and like comedy and how like stand up or like comedy kind of was this like like women classically were either like hyper sexualized or hyper desexualized.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But really, I mean, I just wanted to do stand up.
Guest:And so I kind of like I was considering going for like, OK, I could go deeper into this world, which is really gratifying to me.
Guest:And you meet like really smart people.
Marc:But you would end up teaching.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And like there was, yeah, like the head of the department was this writer, Jose Munoz, who's super brilliant, who like passed away shortly after I graduated.
Guest:But and I was like so into his work.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But like very into his work.
Guest:And it was like, oh yeah, that's like a world that like really feeds me in a certain way.
Guest:But I also was like, oh, but this is not what I want my life to look at.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It'd have to be your life.
Guest:I would write a book about, you know.
Marc:His work.
Guest:The fragment.
Guest:I mean, I was like, you know.
Marc:The fragment.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was like, I'm going to spend the next 30 years navigating the limits of the fragment.
Guest:And yeah, that'll do it.
Guest:Which, you know, God bless.
Guest:Could have had fun.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But do you...
Marc:What part of your brain do you think that speaks to?
Marc:Do you think that that is like an obsessive thing?
Guest:But I am diagnosed OCD.
Marc:Are you?
Guest:Who isn't?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I don't know if I am.
Guest:I'm not compulsive, just obsessive.
Guest:But yeah, what do you mean?
Marc:Well, I mean, because the dichotomy of like, you know, I find that stuff exciting and you were in it, it seems deeper than me.
Marc:But there's a part of the brain that it seems like you've got the best of it to do what you want to do.
Marc:Whereas if you would have stayed in it, you would have sacrificed some self, I think.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:I mean, it's a humorless endeavor in certain ways.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And there's also nothing more embarrassing than when something is implicitly intellectual and it tries to be funny as a way to appeal to the base senses or something.
Guest:It's the worst.
Guest:Let's get the regular people interested.
Guest:So that wasn't going to work.
Guest:And it's also the TED Talk thing of like,
Guest:No, that's not like it's the person on the stage being like, I know what you're thinking.
Guest:And it's like, you absolutely don't.
Guest:And get off the stage.
Guest:Like, it's very, it's that.
Marc:Take your dumb headset off and walk away.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or just be, do that.
Guest:Just do the kind of unfragmented intellectual thing.
Guest:That's when they try to...
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:It sounds complicated, but let me walk you through it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Just be complicated.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Maybe.
Marc:So you decided to walk away from that to be funny.
Guest:Yeah, that's right.
Marc:Yeah, I get it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I also, like, I was kind of inherently unfocused then.
Guest:Or, like, I... Yeah, I was doing stand-up, like, every night.
Guest:So I was, like, in school, but I was doing stand-up.
Guest:And so...
Marc:So it's weird because that's where you get that tension that I think is a lot of your voice.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, completely.
Marc:That there's some part of you that resents the fact that you didn't have the wherewithal to stick with it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Well, smart enough.
Guest:No, but I had- I don't know if that's true.
Marc:Are any of them?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It just becomes, you know, once you get your context and you find the limitations of it, you can talk the bullshit all day long.
Guest:Oh, it's an aesthetic that really- It's not like it's expansive.
Guest:Again, you have the certain words, you choose them, and then you're safe.
Guest:You have it.
Guest:But I will say, I mean, I make this clear.
Guest:I tried to go to acting school, Mark.
Guest:I was rejected.
Guest:I was rejected from Tisch.
Marc:So that's where it started?
Guest:So I wanted to go out of high school to acting school.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:And no one would have me.
Marc:Wow.
Guest:My Laramie Project monologue didn't.
Guest:They didn't take a shine to it.
Marc:I did that.
Marc:I auditioned at Yale and it was terrible.
Guest:But truly, I'm like, thank God.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I really think that if I had gone to acting school.
Marc:What do you think would have happened?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It would not have been good.
Guest:I really don't think so.
Marc:So that was the first thing.
Marc:And then you were like, well, fuck you.
Marc:I'm going to work on the fragment.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:I don't need your training.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I still like sometimes like, God, I would have loved to have like received some kind of acting training or something.
Marc:You still haven't?
Guest:No, it's impossible because you go to the classes and it's hell.
Marc:Yeah, I don't even know.
Marc:I thought about doing it as a grown-up, and I'm like, is that really going to get me anything?
Guest:You learned, you learned, you know, really by doing it.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Which, yeah.
Marc:It's better.
Marc:You're supposed to do an scene part.
Marc:Do you watch Barry?
Guest:I have never seen it.
Marc:You didn't watch Barry?
Guest:No.
Marc:That woman in that show is pretty great.
Marc:She plays like an actress actress.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I've never seen it done so painfully well.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I love, you know, it's taken me a long time to say this, but I love actors.
Guest:And I think, but and I have some of them are real fucking weirdos.
Guest:Oh, yeah, completely.
Guest:It's so much touching and all of this.
Marc:Well, just some of them are not unlike artists.
Marc:It's about the life that they live with the freedom that they're afforded because of the choices they made.
Marc:I mean, when you look at musicians or artists, it's like you just want to sit around all day and fucking smoke weed and talk to your friend or play guitar or look at your dog.
Marc:And you can.
Marc:There you go.
Guest:I know.
Guest:It's outrageous.
Marc:There's the artist's life.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So is that what you really want, the acting?
Marc:I acted with you.
Marc:You and I did scenes.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:It was good.
Guest:We've been in front of the camera.
Marc:Yeah, me and you.
Guest:I played your editor.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I think it was, weren't you a publicist?
Guest:I was a, oh, that's what it was.
Guest:I was your publicist.
Marc:Yes, you were, yes.
Guest:On Swanberg's Easy.
Marc:A publicist for the book.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, for the book.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Yes, I do like acting.
Guest:I want to act, sure.
Guest:But I mean, like, I kind of abandoned that.
Guest:Like, when I was getting to stand-up, I was like, no, no, no, that's, you know, what it is.
Marc:So you just did stand-up for a decade or two?
Marc:How long has it been?
Guest:Yeah, I just had my, if you're counting the first time, I'm 34.
Guest:So it was like my 17-year anniversary.
Marc:That's a long time.
Guest:The first time I did it.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So how did you meet this other guy?
Guest:John?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Because I don't know about the whole YouTube life.
Guest:Well, me neither.
Guest:I mean, we've put a couple of sketches on there.
Marc:What do you mean?
Marc:I thought that was a big blow up.
Marc:YouTube?
Marc:No.
Marc:No.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:I mean, I guess I associate YouTube blow up with like, no, I wouldn't say it was YouTube.
Marc:Cutie Pie?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or whoever?
Guest:John Early, who was trained formally at acting school, we did not meet in school.
Marc:But this is your partner in the special we're talking about.
Marc:That's going to be on something.
Guest:Yeah, so we shot a one-hour sketch special for Peacock.
Marc:Peacock.
Guest:Peacock, NBC's streaming service.
Marc:Now, was it always supposed to be a one-off?
Guest:No, so we were about to shoot a sketch comedy pilot right when COVID took over and it died.
Guest:Just kind of got swept off.
Marc:Did they tell you that it died?
Marc:A lot of times you don't even know.
Guest:Yeah, they were like, oh, that's not going to happen.
Guest:We were in pre-production.
Marc:Oh, you didn't hear?
Guest:It was like, oh, no, sweetie, that's gone.
Guest:Fucking worse business.
Guest:We shot a pilot years ago for Hulu.
Guest:There was a narrative pilot.
Marc:You and John?
Guest:Yeah, John and I, that also died.
Guest:And it was kind of like getting the text, like, it's not moving forward.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And John was holding the boxes that he had been told to bring to LA because he should move.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Anyway, so we haven't had anything that actually has been able to be seen in some years.
Guest:So, yeah, this is a sketch show.
Marc:It's a sketch show?
Guest:Sorry, it's not a show.
Guest:It's a special.
Marc:Yeah, see, like, okay, so, like, I watch this.
Marc:Like, honestly, if I hadn't watched your stand-up after it, I don't know how I would have been able to put it into some sort of perspective for myself.
Guest:Hey, I want you to like my stand-up more.
Guest:I do, actually.
Guest:Great, great, great, yes.
Marc:Because I don't always understand what's happening.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, sure.
Marc:Because I'm not great at understanding the kind of like... Whether it's anti-comedy or... Like I can appreciate things, but a lot of times I'm like, what am I watching and what is happening?
Marc:Am I missing something on a couple of things?
Guest:I hope it's not anti-comedy.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, John and I...
Guest:We met in New York and we just like became like instant sort of best friends.
Guest:There was like an uncanny kind of shared language.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And like similar references.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And yeah, we just became very close.
Guest:And yeah, we made videos.
Guest:Like I feel like we're kind of still like clinging on to this era of comedy that we came up, which was like the sketch, the short, the like six minute video.
Marc:Yeah, sure.
Marc:And also about weird shit too.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Marc:Because like a lot of times,
Marc:Like if I think like Tim and Eric, I understand Tim and Eric.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I understand Tim Robinson.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:And he makes me laugh.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I get Eric Andre.
Marc:I get a lot of things.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But sometimes like I can't help but think like, are they making fun of me?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Am I a fucking idiot?
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, these are like some sketches where we're playing different characters.
Marc:There's sort of a- But it's framed around this idea that you were once a comedy team.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:There's a through line that were like the most famous comedians who ever lived, and we suffered a very public breaking up, and now we're coming back together for this televised event hosted by Meredith Vieira.
Marc:Yeah, who you dragged into this.
Guest:Yeah, God bless her for saying yes, still a shock.
Guest:Convinced her we're gonna have to just hire someone to play an anchor.
Guest:Did she have fun?
Guest:Yes, she was so lovely and great.
Marc:Isn't she weirdly professional?
Marc:And you just look at her, you're like, oh, there's a, you know, she lives on television.
Guest:But she's so warm.
Guest:She doesn't have the kind of grading personality.
Marc:She's exactly who she is.
Marc:And when you meet her in person, you're like, I don't even know if I'm supposed to be meeting this real person.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was blown away by her.
Guest:And she just elevates the whole thing because it makes it seem suddenly real.
Marc:Legit.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Completely.
Marc:So the concept was that was the framework because you were once a comedy team and you guys are reuniting on Meredith Vieira's show.
Marc:And then you kind of fold in these other pieces.
Guest:And then we just have random sketches just as an excuse to do whatever characters we want.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And tell me about, this is going to sound like morning radio douchebag.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Tell me about the evolution of the idea of paying for things with caramel.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So there's another joke in it, folks, where John and I, it's imagining a world where hot caramel is money.
Guest:So that's truly just a joke that John and I for years have done because restaurants are like, you know, we spend a lot, we love restaurants and we're very obsessed with like kind of the social performance of like paying and who pays.
Marc:and all of that that goes into that.
Guest:So we used to have a joke of one time we were at a restaurant and I think John asked the waiter, do you guys take hot caramel?
Guest:And the guy was like, that made us laugh so hard.
Guest:We were imagining what if we just, to pay the check, we just poured caramel onto the bill.
Guest:Very stupid and should have just died there.
Guest:Now it's a running joke.
Guest:So we just kind of insisted.
Guest:So there were a few different sketches in the special where characters are paying for bills with hot caramel.
Marc:I like the idea that you have to bring your little hot plate.
Guest:Your little hot plate with you, yeah.
Marc:That's funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Because there's all these different ways to pay now, you know?
Guest:Yeah, and of course now, in retrospect, we're like, oh, could that be read as some kind of scathing criticism of crypto or something?
Guest:But we're like, no, it was truly just caramel.
Guest:But of course, money is inherently abstract or something.
Marc:So you do this with everything?
Marc:Do you think along those lines where you deconstruct it?
Guest:Abstract it to the point of impenetrability?
Guest:Yeah, I hope not.
Marc:Like when you write things, do you think about how it's going to be received or how it's going to be broken down?
Marc:Do you break it down?
Guest:Sure, I mean, I'm working on a new show right now.
Guest:What is it?
Guest:It's a stage show, it's a live show, so I guess I'm preventing myself from saying one woman show, but it's not my standup, but it is me on stage alone.
Marc:Doing what?
Guest:Oh God, yeah.
Marc:How is it different?
Marc:What are you gonna do?
Marc:Are you gonna talk about yourself?
Guest:Yeah, you'll see.
Guest:I mean, it's something that I'm taking to New York in the fall that,
Guest:you're writing it now yeah i've been working it out every like a lot at the elysian yeah down here on riverside and um what is that do you just rent the space no it's like a show it's a show so i've been doing like a million shows there trying to figure it out and it has like changed a lot it's been very useful i mean like doing what in 15 20 minute chunks or what hour are you oh so you're just really working out yeah yeah um but it's much more constructed than it really like isn't my stand-up it's um
Guest:It's more like actorly.
Guest:It's kind of about me or this version of myself putting on this show, but the show's not really working.
Guest:I'm realizing it's sort of like about failure.
Guest:Help me.
Guest:Yeah, it sounds so pretentious.
Guest:It's kind of about the aesthetics of failure.
Marc:The aesthetics of failure?
Guest:Yeah, but it's also not that.
Guest:I'm just using language to make it sound like something.
Marc:Are you putting something together to protect yourself from the possibility of your own failure?
Guest:Of actually being seen, yeah.
Guest:I'm just trying to evade actually being revealed again.
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:Don't you dare look.
Marc:Is that the whole thing?
Guest:I think that there is a thing in this show about where I'm talking about how I'm gonna reveal something and talking about something and kind of like setting the stages as to something new and more vulnerable.
Guest:Of course, I have no trauma to mine, and so I'm left with that.
Guest:I'm left with my degrees.
Marc:Do you not have any trauma to mine?
Guest:They're all lowercase t, which are still t's.
Marc:What if you put them all together?
Guest:It's a big T. Yeah, absolutely.
Marc:The string of little t's.
Guest:The little ones can put.
Guest:They're still wait there.
Marc:You mentioned that in the stand-up too, that
Marc:that you don't feel entitled to talk about your trauma in a way that defines you for reasons that you don't really like that shit anyways, but also your trauma's not big enough?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I think, like, I...
Guest:I typically don't talk about myself in my standup.
Guest:Like I never like autobiography, like I'm in there.
Guest:It's me talking.
Guest:Like I've always, I always struggle with that.
Guest:It's like, well, it's me and I'm there.
Guest:So it's going to be inherently about me.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I didn't speak explicitly about my life or the details of my life.
Guest:And part of that.
Marc:There's a lot of comics that do that.
Marc:I mean, of course, of course, like most of them.
Marc:I mean, maybe this generation, not so much.
Marc:It seems to be turning now.
Marc:I mean, I was always sort of autobiographical, but now it seems like it's such a righteous thing to do.
Marc:And it's like, is it?
Guest:You feel like there's a turn back to autobiographies?
Marc:No, I don't think that it was ever that... If there's a turn back to anything, it's a turn back to what was bad about the one-person show movement.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I don't know where we are now.
Marc:No, I think there's a whole side where there's a very defined kind of, you know, almost sort of groupthink fascistic tribalized comedy that is, you know, found its footing in a bad way in terms of.
Marc:what it represents culturally and then on the other side of that there's just a lot of people sort of like there's no unified voice there's no unified front against you know what is you know becoming the the bullying of of anything different
Guest:No, there's definitely, yeah, now the sort of goal seems to be like over-identification or, you know, to kind of like make yourself politically legible instantly so people can recognize like I'm like you or I'm not like you.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:And everyone's kind of, of course, divided into their little groups so they can be more easily marketed to on Instagram.
Guest:Right.
Guest:There is this like death of the monoculture in this way, which I think also is sort of like John and I, like there is something like I love working alone, but I love also having like a duo, like something about that thing for us is sort of romantic and harkens to this like other time.
Guest:And this sort of fantasy of like, like universe, like this, this myth of like the universal culture or something that would be like universally adored or loved.
Guest:Like that's a fantasy that we kind of play with at the beginning of the special.
Marc:It used to be that way.
Guest:Yeah, like there's something like, and now, you know, that's unimaginable.
Marc:It's weird, and it's happened very quickly, really.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And everything is, I don't want to use the word fragmented, because you already used it, and I might not be using it.
Marc:Use it.
Marc:I might not be using it correctly, but it does seem that everybody finds their own pocket, and that the idea of community or collective is limited, right?
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Well, it's like hyper individual.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it's odd because like what you do like as a stand up is stand up.
Marc:It's like, you know, it's like Sarah Silverman.
Marc:Sarah doesn't volunteer much about her life as a stand up.
Marc:It's jokes.
Marc:Totally.
Marc:And it's and she's doing a thing.
Marc:She has a character up there.
Guest:I mean, you were asked me earlier, like things that I loved.
Guest:It's like, well, Jesus is magic, like changed my life.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Because you can find a pocket like that where you don't have to hurt yourself to do comedy in a way.
Guest:Yeah, it's really because even when I think about it makes me feel like instantly sort of like senile or something.
Guest:I'm like, I was like, it's amazing just even in the last 10 years, of course, or I think about as we were talking about earlier, like doing these horrifying open mics in the basement at Maui Taco.
Guest:It's like that is already like an antiquated history.
Guest:Like that is no longer how people are.
Marc:Well, that's what I'm kind of talking about is that the entire sort of infrastructure of alternative comedy collapsed.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And nothing came out of it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Really.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, you know, like Kumail's wearing superhero outfits and, you know, and Jonah is, you know, doing MST 3000, you know, like, but like there's on the other side, there's a very sort of unified weird cultural phenomenon around bully comedy and anti-woke bullshit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But over here in this world, it's just a bunch of strangely self-involved people wandering around and showing up on stages.
Marc:And then Bo Burnham says, let's go in here with the camera.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I've been thinking about it a lot lately, though.
Marc:But what's interesting about you, though, in the idea that you're not showing yourself, but in the same way that Shapiro...
Marc:Like, whatever the fuck Shapiro was, he was honest.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And I don't think you're being dishonest.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:And I think that, you know, despite your unwillingness to address authenticity or vulnerability, that the way your brain works and what you are in the moment of improvising and those moments that you actually have in real time, which you're kind of addicted to, you know, mean something.
Marc:And they are revealing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's just it's a type of comedy.
Marc:But I don't think it's because Rick, you know, Rick was out of his fucking mind.
Marc:But on purpose.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because like, you know, when he turned it off, he's like, you know, he's just this mumbling little Jewish guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But when he was broken open, you know, where all the possibilities could happen and all the voices could come.
Marc:I mean, that's real shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So what I'm saying is you're being realer than you think.
Guest:thank you i'm i'm truly moved by the rick shapiro um comparison or that that that came up for you i love that i mean yes i would agree also that like i see i think performance are doing like there is an inherent vulnerability or attempt like of course so naked it's like i'm like please like you know it's it's so naked so of course i'm like utterly exposed in a way or yeah and i want to feel yeah
Guest:Like I want to I would, you know, the performers I love, like there's like a generosity or something like I always want people to be let in.
Guest:I don't want to shut anyone out.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you I think you leave room like I, you know, I write everything that I do on stage.
Marc:It all starts up there in conversation and improv.
Marc:But there's something about that, that like.
Marc:Like you're not like whatever you repeat, you know, there's no order to it necessarily.
Marc:And, you know, they're just old things.
Marc:You know, they're things that come up to spark other things.
Marc:But but I think that that doing it that way, it's it's it's alive for us.
Marc:And a lot of people don't really do it that way.
Marc:Because it's sort of like, here's the act.
Marc:But I feel that when you live in the present on stage and not just in a manipulative way, it is something unique.
Marc:Does that make sense?
Guest:I hope so, yes.
Guest:I mean, I think that...
Marc:How much of what you did with John is improvised?
Marc:A lot.
Guest:Like in the special, yeah, a lot.
Guest:We have a plan or something, but a lot of it ends up staying or being our favorite things are often improvised.
Marc:I like the sitcom stuff.
Guest:Thanks, yeah.
Marc:I like that stuff.
Marc:I like the whole look of it and the weirdness of it.
Guest:It's ridiculous.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But I love what you're saying about it being, I think this new show I'm working on is sort of like,
Guest:I feel myself insisting on the importance of live performance or being in the room.
Guest:I'm still... That really is... Sorry to use this word, but sacred to me in this way where there can be an anxiety that comes in, of course, of like...
Guest:Should I be making these videos or trying to reach more people or doing this?
Guest:But that anxiety for me never, thank God, fully takes hold.
Guest:Because I know, I have to believe that it really is valuable to make a show that's for an hour or entertain people for an hour in the room.
Guest:I think so.
Marc:important yeah it's theater and yeah it's performative yeah i mean i just had a conversation this morning where i'm 58 and i'm like do i need to be on tiktok oh my god yeah i've said that twice in three days what do they say to you yeah they're like i don't know it's for like 20 year olds but like for promotion
Marc:Like, they would like me.
Marc:I'm a weird old man.
Guest:And they're, you know, I mean, TikTok.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, I have people who I hear about TikTok through or something.
Guest:But then there are these things that make me optimistic.
Guest:Like, apparently right now, like, Portlandia is huge on TikTok.
Guest:These, like, 12-year-olds and 13-year-olds are discovering it because you can chop up the sketches into TikTok.
Guest:So, it's like, I do feel like things are persistent.
Guest:Things will persist.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, sure.
Marc:I see.
Marc:There's a life to it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:Yeah, you can't bother yourself.
Marc:I'm exhausted already.
Guest:You don't need to.
Guest:I'm going to tell you, release yourself.
Marc:I do my Instagram lives.
Marc:Sometimes I'll do hour and a half long Instagram lives and people will watch them, like full movies.
Marc:I don't care.
Marc:I started doing it during the pandemic and I've built this weird following of aggravated middle-aged women who come to my shows just from sitting with me during the pandemic when I'm on my porch.
Guest:It's intimate.
Guest:Yeah, some of the Instagram lives, I did a few of those in pandemic as well.
Marc:How'd they go?
Guest:It's fun.
Guest:It feels good.
Marc:It helped me connect and realize to be in audience brain.
Marc:Like, I'm doing a thing for people.
Marc:Because in the pandemic, that wasn't happening.
Guest:It was gone, yeah.
Marc:So it helped me a lot.
Marc:But people were very grateful for it.
Guest:Totally.
Marc:All right, so now during this talk, did I offend you or insult you?
Marc:No.
Guest:Yeah, that was really hard.
Marc:Which part?
Guest:You really, really.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Was I was I condescending and old minded in any way?
Guest:I'm going to need an incident report and I'm going to file it with SAG regardless of whether or not that makes sense in this context.
Marc:Well, I tried to fight this sort of like the my initial reaction to, you know, to.
Marc:Again, once I saw the stand-up, I'm like, oh, she's a stand-up.
Marc:Once I watched the sketch, I'm like, I'm not sure I understand what's happening.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:But now I understand what's happening, and I didn't want to be rude or be old guy.
Guest:No, that did not happen.
Marc:I didn't want to old guy you in the comedian way.
Guest:No, no, we talked about the Luz, and we talked about Eric Shapiro.
Marc:Yeah, we did.
Marc:It was nice talking to you.
Guest:Very nice.
Guest:Thank you for having me, Mark, truly.
Marc:And colonics.
Marc:We talked about it.
Guest:Oh, my God, I know.
Guest:We really went far.
Marc:We did.
Marc:All right Kate Berlant that was that was a good talk.
Marc:I enjoyed that I didn't know what to expect I didn't know what to make of her and now I know Okay, no music today, okay, just some sighs sighs
Marc:Boomer lives.
Marc:Monkey.
Marc:La Fonda.
Marc:Cat angels everywhere.
Guest:Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop.
Boop, boop, boop.