Episode 1392 - James Austin Johnson
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 wtf welcome to it uh james austin johnson is here and it's weird with this guy he's
Marc:Hilarious guy.
Marc:Great impressionist, but nice guy.
Marc:Smart guy.
Marc:Interesting story.
Marc:But someone forwarded me that Jimmy Fallon clip of him doing Bob Dylan, the three different Bob Dylans or four.
Marc:And I didn't really realize that it was the same guy who did Trump on SNL, but I don't really watch SNL.
Marc:And then when I was in Nashville, I was on stage and I was going back and forth with Chad Ryden, my Prince's Chicken experience.
Marc:You know, apparently James Austin Johnson was there, as was another guy and Chad and Ryan Singer to witness my face burning.
Marc:But I don't remember them.
Marc:And I don't know if that's just because of the the heat of the peppers annihilated a part of my memory, a sort of spice related blackout, which is totally possible.
Marc:But apparently we hung around most of the day, me and James Austin Johnson and a couple other fellas.
Marc:And I went back and I was watching those Trump videos he did, just the ones when he was on the street.
Marc:And they're fucking hilarious.
Marc:Hilarious.
Marc:So I talked to him when I was in New York, and it was a completely surprising conversation, to be quite honest with you, in the sense that he's got an interesting story, a unique story, a story that deals with Jesus.
Marc:Anytime Jesus can find his way into a story that isn't his, that's the whole goal of it, isn't it?
Marc:Jesus is designed to infect.
Marc:And James was infected with Jesus.
Marc:But it was good.
Marc:It was like one of those positive bacterias.
Marc:One of those good ones.
Marc:One of those gut bugs that you want to keep the Jesus.
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Marc:Who doesn't want me to shout out their name on the show or give you a gift?
Marc:I don't even know what the gift is going to be.
Marc:Maybe I do.
Marc:Maybe I know exactly what it is.
Marc:Maybe it's in my house.
Marc:Maybe it's a new car.
Marc:It's not.
Marc:Not a new car.
Marc:The special.
Marc:So we're getting right into the cutting of this thing.
Marc:And I don't know...
Marc:if you're in the kind of job where if you do your job at the end of the day you can just watch yourself do your job from a from an outside vantage point it's not great because you just want it you want to do a good job you want to be able to live with the job you're doing or certainly maybe even like the job you did but when you do tv it's taken me a long time tv or movies to sort of be able to watch myself with enough distance and enough comfort
Marc:to not be like, oh, fuck.
Marc:I fucked it.
Marc:So now, I don't watch myself and think like, oh, man.
Marc:God damn it.
Marc:I watch myself and go like, that was okay.
Marc:That was okay.
Marc:Oof, that one.
Marc:Well, what are you going to do?
Marc:One out of three.
Marc:Oh, look at that.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Two out of four.
Marc:Ooh, that was good.
Marc:So it becomes sort of like that.
Marc:But then if I watch it again, it's sort of like, all right.
Marc:I was in it.
Marc:The vibe was right.
Marc:So when I first watched...
Marc:Part of the cut the other day from Fine Arts, my director.
Marc:It's his name, Steven Fine Arts.
Marc:Within 15 minutes, I was like, man, I was like, I was not happy.
Marc:I wasn't unhappy.
Marc:I just thought like, yeah, it's a little, it's intense.
Marc:It's like, I can't, I just, you know, I'm not, it's not, I'm going too fast.
Marc:But I just couldn't process it because I just, it was too close.
Marc:It was just on, it was Thursday.
Marc:I wasn't ready.
Marc:But then I watched it yesterday and I was like, you know what?
Marc:It's all there.
Marc:It's solid.
Marc:Let's make it just sing.
Marc:Let's just tweak it.
Marc:We got to get it down a few minutes.
Marc:Let's figure it out.
Marc:Let's smooth it out.
Marc:But I was definitely in the zone.
Marc:I was where I needed to be.
Marc:And I was able to watch it and make notes and make decisions.
Marc:That's progress.
Marc:You know, when you don't automatically think you did a shitty job or you don't think that you're not, you know, good enough and you kind of live with that every day with your job, you know, that's it's bad no matter what your job is.
Marc:You know, ultimately, nothing matters.
Marc:It's all going to go away.
Marc:It doesn't end well for anybody.
Marc:Give yourself a fucking break, he said to himself.
Marc:Right?
Marc:Right?
Marc:Ooh, man.
Marc:Oh, man.
Marc:Cats are okay.
Marc:Fucking Charlie Beans.
Marc:Fucking Sammy Smushy.
Marc:Fucking Buster Kitten.
Marc:God damn cats.
Marc:I had the house cleaned yesterday and I just watched.
Marc:I was sitting at the counter having coffee and I watched Charlie Beans climb up on the counter opposite me, get into the sink and pee in it.
Marc:Could have been worse.
Marc:Could have peed someplace else.
Marc:That wasn't as convenient as a sink.
Marc:Just peed in the sink, looking right at me.
Marc:All right.
Marc:I don't think there's anything wrong with him.
Marc:We'll see if it happens again.
Marc:I'm not sure why he did it.
Marc:It had just been cleaned.
Marc:Maybe he was like, this doesn't smell like mine anymore.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Look, you guys, James Austin Johnson is a very talented man.
Marc:Very funny man.
Marc:Does great impressions.
Marc:Cracks me the fuck up.
Marc:There's a couple of things.
Marc:His Scooby-Doo Trump impression thing on YouTube or whatever it's on and the Dylan stuff.
Marc:I have to I have to not watch too often so I can get laughs from watching it for years to come.
Marc:He's a member of the Not Ready for Primetime Players.
Marc:The final SNL of the year airs this Saturday on NBC.
Marc:And we had a lovely conversation in my hotel room in New York City where the sun was glaring.
Marc:It was just glaring.
Marc:It was beating down on him.
Marc:I don't know why I didn't tell him to move or why we just didn't close the curtain.
Marc:But when we finished, he...
Marc:He had to step away.
Marc:I think he might have got a sunburn through the window.
Marc:So this is me talking to James Austin Johnson in New York.
Guest:I'll hold the mic away if I do something.
Marc:I can ride the fader.
Guest:See, that's how I know you're a musician.
Guest:You love the knobs.
Guest:Yeah, I'm on the knobs.
Marc:Well, I'm not, but I'm bad at this shit.
Marc:I mean, I've been doing, well, look, I've been doing this, where are we at, like 12 years, and I'm sitting in a hotel room with a Zoom.
Marc:How old's that Zoom?
Marc:This is not that old a Zoom.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Guest:Why, does it look old?
Guest:Well, you still got the plastic covering on the little LCD there.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I could take that off, but I think it would ruin something.
Guest:I think men have a fear about peeling the sticker off the LCD of something.
Guest:Well, you want to keep things pristine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My dad, like, every car my dad's ever had, he leaves the film on the leased car.
Guest:And he never takes it off the Sirius XM little screen thing.
Guest:And it gets nasty and gritty and full of his little gas station powdered donut.
Guest:Yeah, lint.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's a man thing.
Marc:It's a certain type of man thing.
Marc:I don't know what you're protecting, what you're holding on to.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Like it's going to stay pristine.
Marc:Yeah, the car's virginity, you know.
Marc:So now, I didn't realize this, and I feel bad about it, but...
Marc:I don't think this is the first time we've been in a hotel room together.
Guest:We met, Mark, in Nashville, where I'm from, what, 10, 12 years ago?
Marc:It must be.
Marc:Had I started, I was just the beginning of the podcast, because I was doing a show in Nashville...
Marc:At Polk, James K. Polk Center.
Guest:At the TPAC.
Guest:TPAC, yeah.
Guest:At the big theater.
Guest:And that's the one.
Guest:That's when you've made it.
Guest:Right, but no, I was in the smaller theater.
Guest:But I mean, still.
Guest:Yeah, it's nice.
Guest:That's where Jeff Tweedy plays.
Guest:That's where Jerry Seinfeld plays.
Marc:And you're in that genre.
Marc:I bet you Tweedy and I were in the same room, but Jerry was in the bigger room.
Marc:I think you're the Wilco of Jerry Seinfeld.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:I think that's true.
Guest:Can I pay you a compliment?
Guest:I think that's true.
Guest:Yeah, Ryan Singer was my buddy.
Guest:He was opening for you, and he invited...
Marc:right yeah because I was in the reason and I was just talking about you to my producer Brendan when I saw the Dylan thing you know I'm like this guy's great you know how do I not know this guy and he's like and then two days later I do I do the Nashville thing and Chad Ryden is there
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:And I hadn't seen Chad in forever.
Marc:I probably hadn't seen him since with you.
Marc:And someone asked me to tell that Prince's Chicken story.
Marc:And I said, who was with us?
Marc:It was me, you, and there was another guy.
Guest:John Thornton.
Guest:Was there John Thornton?
Guest:His name was John Thornton Jr.
Guest:And he was a comedian in Nashville.
Guest:He became a Baptist pastor.
Guest:Are you serious?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And then a socialist activist.
Guest:Wait, but weren't you there?
Guest:I was there too.
Guest:So there were five of us.
Guest:There was Ryan, me and John.
Guest:Chad.
Guest:Chad.
Guest:And me.
Guest:And you.
Guest:So what happened to the other guy?
Guest:He's not a comic anymore.
Guest:I don't think he's a comic anymore.
Guest:He was a Baptist pastor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He got frustrated because he was trying to use the emergency like social rescue funds that some churches some churches will have a especially the big fancy ones.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We'll have like a slush fund that is meant for.
Guest:Oh, we're getting 30 families who are evacuating a storm in Florida, and we're taking them in with some of our families.
Guest:So this money's for them, ostensibly.
Guest:But a lot of the big churches, you know, they hate socialism.
Guest:They hate handouts.
Guest:They're Republicans saying,
Guest:So they sit on the money and they get all this money.
Guest:So when he was a associate pastor at this one Baptist, I guess, megachurch or whatever, he said, well, we've got people in debt in our church.
Guest:We've got two people I know are homeless.
Guest:let's spend this money yeah and then that just began a constant fight of him wanting to help help and do christian shit yeah and uh so and that in itself is sort of a microcosm my own experience with the christian church which i was heavily involved in for most of my life do you know this kid andrew stanley
Marc:Andrew Stanley, no.
Marc:I think that's his name.
Marc:He opened for me in Nashville, and he comes from a family of ministers.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:His grandfather is somebody, Stanley, that writes books, and he's homeschooled.
Marc:A lot of his angle is the homeschooled angle, but he's great.
Guest:He's great.
Guest:See, I think I grew up super crazy Christian intensity.
Guest:And then I meet people who are like homeschooled.
Guest:And I'm like, I went to public school.
Guest:I sat at lunch table with Jews and talked about The Daily Show.
Guest:You did?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You found The Jews in Nashville?
Guest:I found The Jews in Nashville.
Guest:And they introduced me to Conan and The Daily Show and Steely Dan and the cool shit that I like as an adult.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:You lay that squarely on the Jews.
Marc:I don't know.
Guest:They happen to be Jewish people.
Guest:No, it's good.
Marc:It's good to hear positive things about Jews.
Marc:I'm not a huge Steely Dan fan.
Marc:I've tried.
Guest:Really?
Marc:You're not a Steely Dan fan?
Marc:Look, I am.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:But do I go to it?
Marc:Do you go to it?
Marc:No.
Marc:So anyway.
Guest:Sorry.
Guest:But you were brought up very religious?
Guest:Yeah, I grew up in the Church of the Nazarene, which is like if Methodists were really anti-fun.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, you know, like, we don't drink, we don't smoke, no bowling alleys, no engagement rings.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Let's exchange watches when we get married.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, women can't wear shorts...
Guest:This is all stuff that ended in, I guess, the 80s, but that was the legacy of this church.
Guest:But do you come from ministers?
Guest:No, I come from teachers and school administrators, but my dad worked at a Nazarene college, and my mom's dad was president of Trevecca, which is a Nazarene college in downtown Nashville.
Guest:Wow.
Marc:So Nazarene is just a subdivision?
Guest:It's just one of the denominations, one of the million denominations.
Guest:Is it a popular one?
Guest:They say that there are more Southern Baptists in Mississippi than there are Nazarenes in the entire world.
Guest:That's like the little aphorism that is shared to me.
Guest:That goes around the Nazarene community?
Guest:It's like the number one Christian church in Haiti or something like that.
Guest:It's like a missionary thing.
Yeah.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:So I love all those people.
Guest:A boutique Christianity.
Guest:Listen, Mark, I went through all of my, I've been through every phase of my relationship with that community.
Guest:With Jesus or just a community?
Guest:With the community.
Guest:With Jesus, it's like, great.
Guest:I'll never get rid of Jesus in my head.
Guest:You think I can get rid of Jesus at this point?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I don't think I can.
Guest:Well, I don't know.
Guest:I don't know what that feels like.
Guest:I don't want to be Christian.
Marc:Does that make any sense?
Marc:But I mean, I don't know what it feels like to have Jesus so far in your head that you can't extricate it.
Guest:Yeah, I get what you mean.
Guest:Well, religion, well, my wife and I, my wife grew up in a similar fashion in the Baptist church, and we watch these cult documentaries, and then when the credits are rolling, we both just, every time we look at each other, we go, we were raised in a cult.
Guest:We're brainwashed.
Guest:This is unhealthy.
Guest:One of us is going to murder someone at some point.
Guest:You don't know when you're going to be activated.
Guest:I don't know when it's going to kick in, and we're scared about that.
Guest:How many kids in your family?
Guest:I was the youngest of three boys.
Marc:So you actually had the best opportunity to become a free thinker in a way.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:You could see all the damage.
Marc:They're just taking the hits.
Guest:They're at the front of the ship.
Guest:Yeah, I know, right?
Guest:Well, it's also...
Guest:that you're also in the position to be the most of a people-pleasing, religious, like, psychopath.
Guest:Where, when you're the youngest, your whole mission is impressing people that are much older than you.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Right?
Guest:When you're the youngest, all of your attitude and your value comes from making two people in their 40s and then two big boys relate to you.
Guest:So that's where I think the...
Guest:Impressions and stand-up and all the stand-up stuff.
Guest:Just to get attention.
Guest:Just to get attention.
Guest:And then the Nazarene world is very elders-focused.
Guest:Those churches are all about the old man who is the most ordained and the most revered.
Guest:guy right so there's always like an old bearded guy there there's always an old bald man who is the most conservative hard-ass man you've ever met and he is the he is a bad he's a bad motherfucker yeah and he's the elder he's the elder and everyone respects him so it's always about the oldest man in the room it's when i go to these like i go to like liberal friends
Guest:houses, like kids who grew up with NPR and college professor parents, people who have kids late in life.
Guest:It seems like it's all about the kids.
Guest:It seems like it's all about life is totally focused on soccer and flute and their parties and their friends.
Guest:I did not grow up in an environment like that.
Guest:It was always about...
Guest:The doctor.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah, I do.
Guest:These people where the life is about the children.
Guest:I don't remember growing up.
Guest:I was always dragged to some kind of luncheon where a solemn man was talking about the work they're doing in China or whatever.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Marc:And you just sat there?
Guest:And I just sat there in a little suit.
Guest:We watch these VHS tapes where I'm squirming in a little suit at some Nazarene conference, you know, in Indianapolis.
Marc:But it's weird because I guess that's true.
Marc:I mean, I guess the ability to define yourself comes later as the third kid after you see your brothers go through a certain amount of hardship.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, I have to assume that at some point there's the people pleasing and then there's this sort of like, well, I'm not going to do that.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah, that's what I mean.
Guest:Like, you know, you I've already done my therapy thing and I've so now I'm at the new place where instead of like being a resentful participant in all of this stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now I'll go to church with my family and like try to see what they see in it.
Guest:I'm now I'm trying to have respect for who all these people are that love you.
Guest:Thirty three.
Marc:Well, that's good.
Marc:That's good because I think I'm just getting that now and my parents are very old.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Well, I don't know if it's respect, but there's something's given way.
Marc:You can hold on to this anger for so long, but I've been doing this on stage where I say, but at some point you realize, I kind of won.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I got what you wanted.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So let's let it go.
Guest:So let's let it go.
Guest:Show up for them a little bit.
Guest:Show up for them.
Guest:And I want their final years to be of value.
Guest:I see the value in other people's lives now.
Guest:You do?
Guest:I don't know, by like, yeah, right?
Guest:I do, yeah, I think so.
Marc:You get a taste of what you're working for, and then you're like, oh, I want.
Marc:Yeah, and also when you're 33, so I've got a lot of years on, and then all of a sudden it's like, you realize it's not gonna end well for anybody.
Marc:We all die alone, Mark.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:But you see these people, and there's that discomfort of like, look at this old asshole.
Marc:Why does he got to be like that?
Marc:And then you realize, who wouldn't be?
Marc:Right.
Marc:How do you go out with any grace?
Marc:Yeah, you don't.
Marc:Not really.
Marc:Even in thinking about Bob Dylan and the arc of your impression of him, it's like,
Marc:You know, for some reason, that guy, after all he's done, is just, he just is dead set on dying on a tour bus.
Guest:For real.
Guest:I know.
Guest:He loves, what musician, I think this is what truly made me love him after years of like going back and forth between liking him and not liking him.
Marc:Did you grow up with it or did the Jews give you Dylan too?
Guest:I got into Bob Dylan, I think at the time, most people do like in college trying to be smart.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Right.
Marc:What was your introduction?
Guest:What was the record?
Guest:My, let's see, it was actually high school, my high school girlfriend who was really cool.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Really cool high school girlfriend.
Guest:got me Blood on the Tracks.
Guest:That's the one, right?
Guest:And I listened to Blood on the Tracks a lot.
Guest:And I was like, oh, this is incredible.
Guest:This has what I'm looking for in books that I'm reading.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Plus what I want from the Americana Roots Rock music that I listen to.
Marc:Right, because that was already happening.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then if you move on to Blonde on Blonde and you listen to Visions of Joanna, if you have the same experience I did, it's like, it's all in here.
Guest:It's all in this song.
Guest:This is the song.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, that is the song, right?
Guest:That's like the song that has a lot of Bob Dylan moves in it, I feel like.
Guest:Blonde on Blonde, the way that the band is composed in the songs, the way that that band is put together, that session group or whatever in Nashville, to me, that's the Bob Dylan sound.
Guest:Even though he's had a million sounds, Blonde on Blonde is, I think, what most people are picturing when they hear a Bob Dylan, like when they are imagining a Bob Dylan song.
Marc:If it's not the original Dylan.
Yeah.
Guest:If it's not, yeah, the blowing in the wind.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:I don't think anybody really relates to that Dylan anymore.
Guest:That music to me sounds like such a fad.
Guest:Yeah, I guess.
Guest:And then the rest of his music is so timeless to me.
Marc:It's only if it sounds like a fad if you just let it hang there.
Marc:But if you try to wedge it into context, it makes perfect sense.
Marc:Of course it does, yeah.
Marc:But I thought that was the funniest.
Marc:For some reason, the moment that resonates with me in that impression you did, or that series of impressions of Dylan you did on Fallon was that, I think Calvin Coolidge said that.
Marc:I think Calvin Coolidge said that.
Marc:Like, of all the references of anybody in the world that's a public figure that no one gives a fuck about.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's Calvin Coolidge.
Guest:Yeah, he's... I think he was... I think he had... There's a youth to Bob Dylan's pretentiousness in a lot of the early songs where I think he's showing off how much he's read, right?
Guest:How aware he is of the outside world.
Guest:Well, I just think, like, you know, when I try to...
Marc:kind of wrap my brain around it, I think he was all hopped up on speed and- He was on drugs as well, yeah.
Marc:And sort of a vague sense of self, but he was obviously gifted with some kind of like, it's a talent, but he's like a vessel of some kind.
Marc:There are guys you meet, like even when you riff,
Marc:that if you're riffing Trump or you're riffing now and things fall into your head, there are just some people that it's so much content that is falling into them and through them.
Marc:You can't even understand it because you want to lock into some of these songs and like, oh, that's who he is.
Marc:Who the fuck knows who that guy is?
Guest:He's just this weird vessel.
Guest:He maybe doesn't know, yeah.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:He's full of all this beat poetry and, you know, I guess Minnesota folklore or whatever.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:And then there's this period where, you know, there's a documentary about Ramlin Jack Elliott.
Marc:Have you seen that?
Marc:No.
Marc:where they were peers.
Marc:And at the early time, Dylan used to look up to Jack, who was kind of this folksy guitar-playing cowboy storyteller guy.
Marc:And it becomes very clear, because I think Jack's daughter made it, that the early Dylan is some amalgamation of things he picked up, but it's mostly Ramblin' Jack.
Marc:I think Calvin Coolidge said that.
Marc:It's a Ramblin' Jack trip.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:This funny aside.
Marc:yeah yeah yeah that's when you start to like if you're like me that's your dog fucking Dylan stole it you know but then but then you realize like well he's been a lot of things yeah and you're not behind in whatever Rambo and Jack things behind every genius there's at least three people going like that fucker took my oh yeah you have to steal I think you fully have to steal right like well I think that it's something you're not conscious of
Marc:I think that when you're hungry creatively and you're talented, you just start to absorb things.
Guest:Yeah, even when you are kind of, when you're younger and you're just mimicking something that you saw another comedian do, which is how I started.
Guest:I started fully stealing.
Guest:I didn't realize that the stealing was bad or had a moral content to it.
Guest:Jokes or tone.
Guest:My first stand-up that I ever did.
Guest:How old were you?
Guest:Okay, let's see.
Guest:The first time I did my own stand-up, I was 14.
Guest:I probably started a little earlier than that.
Guest:Really?
Guest:In drama class at school.
Guest:High school.
Guest:In middle school.
Guest:Middle school.
Guest:In middle school, we did these competitions after school, forensics competitions, where you would memorize a monologue, and you would go do it at some competition at some other public school.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I got assigned humorous interpretation.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that was my category.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And I got some Three Little Pigs story or something.
Guest:My first year I did it.
Guest:I lost every competition.
Guest:My second year I said, can I do eight minutes from my favorite standup album?
Marc:Oh, that's a great kind of exercise.
Guest:And you're free to do it.
Guest:It's middle school.
Guest:My teacher was like, it just has to be a published work and you can do it at these competitions.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I transcribed eight minutes from, have you ever met this guy, Mark?
Guest:Brad Stein.
Guest:No.
Guest:Brad Stein's album Rebel Without a Curse.
Guest:What is that?
Guest:What do you think the title Rebel Without a Curse means?
Guest:Uh...
Guest:This is a clean comedian who is advertising himself as a clean comedian.
Guest:And he's also a rebellious clean comedian.
Guest:This guy is now... No fucks.
Guest:No fucks.
Guest:No fucks.
Guest:And also no fucks given if you don't like his... But was this a regional act or was he...
Guest:This was a guy, he was in L.A.
Guest:in the 80s comedy boom.
Guest:Brad Stein.
Guest:And then he settled in Franklin, Tennessee, outside Nashville.
Guest:That's where the rich Republicans live.
Guest:Okay, so he blew it in L.A.
Guest:and left?
Guest:I think he got religion or he got into conservative politics.
Guest:He found the record.
Guest:i found a guy i found the conservative clean comedy robin williams okay and i repeated his jokes about cars have too many airbags these days uh-huh you know his like stuff that i thought was cool sure and i started winning like gold medals by like repeating this guy's stand-up but you know what's funny is that you could have toured with that at 14 and no one would fucking know who brad stein is
Marc:And I've heard a lot of guys.
Marc:I don't know that guy.
Guest:I think you know what?
Guest:I think he's big in the in the Christian men's conference world.
Guest:And I assume now in this like growing right wing media streaming world to.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:Maybe he's doing guest spots or opening for Steven Crowder at certain venues.
Guest:Oh, God, I hope not.
Guest:I can say that as someone who grew up in Nashville, who grew up working in Christian media, conservative media, I guess you'd say, it's been an incredible shame to watch the slide to the far and alt-right of a lot of these people.
Marc:Well, I think even probably when you were growing up, it was more nuanced in terms of the politics.
Marc:But it was more of a family values trip, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, Bush, right, was at the time seen as like a W or the original W. Yeah.
Guest:This is 2000.
Guest:You know, that's when I 2000 is my year of I want to be a comedian.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's the year I can remember.
Guest:I was watching Saturday.
Guest:I was watching Daryl Hammond do Al Gore on Saturday Night Live.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Will Ferrell doing George W. Bush.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was getting into comedy albums.
Guest:And that's when I can remember all this kind of starting for me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I came from a W obsessed family.
Guest:This is a guy who's going to like, who's going to be a good, they called it compassionate conservatism, right?
Guest:We're going to let in immigrants.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So my family was obsessed with W.
Marc:It's weird, these guys with this kind of lughead charisma, how for regular people, like even my dad's wife, they're enamored with the charisma of this.
Marc:Because these are not smart people.
Marc:Even Trump has a weird, fucked up charisma.
Marc:It's a belligerence that people identify.
Marc:But it's really, at the base of it, it's this, they love them.
Guest:There's like a guerrilla sexuality to some of these guys.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Marc:But you don't feel it.
Marc:I don't find that Trump or W was necessarily sexual.
Marc:I don't sense a sexuality, but there's a sturdiness to what people project on them.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And they find them funny.
Guest:They're just empty enough that they can put a lot of their dreams into them.
Marc:And they're funny.
Marc:I mean, Trump, intentional funny.
Marc:I don't know how intentionally funny W was, but it was that buffoonery that was sort of endearing.
Guest:Disarming.
Marc:Yeah, as he's bombing Iraqis, he can't get out of a room.
Guest:It was a doorknob problem.
Guest:I mean, yeah, that was such a – I think that was like a fun –
Guest:And looking back on it, a good time, if you'll excuse me, to be in that right-wing world.
Guest:Like, it was post-9-11.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:People were praying before every sporting event.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Remember that time?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was like a very, like...
Guest:American conservatism is a good thing, right?
Guest:That was a widespread belief at the time, right?
Marc:Because of 9-11.
Guest:Because of 9-11.
Guest:It brought everybody together and Joe Biden supported the Iraq War.
Guest:Everyone did.
Guest:You know, it was this time.
Guest:It felt like a good time to be doing comedy, even though it was a horrific war period.
Marc:But so it's interesting, though.
Marc:So when you say you were...
Marc:dug into Christian media outside of the Brad Stein record who I I guess wasn't a Jew or maybe was and found religion but I mean but who how were you dug into Christian media just that was what you were taking in um so growing up in Nashville I always wanted to be a comedian or an actor or something and I got plugged into acting with um a friend of a friend at church
Guest:One of my friends at church, his dad had like a commercial production studio.
Guest:And I would take improv classes there sometimes.
Guest:And I met this woman who did a sketch review, educational sketch review called Janet's Planet.
Guest:Her name's Janet Ivy.
Guest:She's still working.
Guest:She's one of the best people ever.
Guest:And she got me hooked up with like an agent in Nashville.
Guest:And I started auditioning for little things you can audition for in Nashville, which is a really small market.
Guest:And you're what?
Guest:15, 14?
Guest:I'm like 12, 13, 14.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:So you wanted to do it.
Guest:I wanted to do it.
Guest:And my parents would just drop me off at auditions.
Guest:I didn't have stage parents.
Guest:I figured it all out by myself.
Guest:But they were supportive.
Guest:They were supportive.
Guest:And the only things to act in in Nashville were like Baptist propaganda videos.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like the Southern Baptist Convention is headquartered in Nashville.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Their publishing company is called Lifeway Christian Resources.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I started working as like an in-house player for Lifeway Christian Resources as a kid acting in little morality videos that they show at like Sunday school or youth group.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And...
Guest:And, you know, it's like a little cute little demonstration before the pastor brings it home with a terrifying admonition of sin.
Guest:So that's how I got my start.
Guest:And those are the first directors I worked with.
Guest:Those are the first crews I worked with were these like non-union guys who made Baptist propaganda.
Marc:And I guess they're all still out there, the propaganda videos, still in circulation.
Guest:They're somewhere.
Guest:I recently was able to watch some files of them, and they're not very propaganda-y.
Guest:I don't want you to imagine something USSR style.
Guest:They're little skits.
Guest:Magic prop.
Guest:They're little skits, but Disney style.
Guest:They're like Disney Channel looking stuff.
Guest:And they're for kids.
Guest:They're for kids and they're cute.
Guest:But here's the thing.
Guest:The longer I did them, the older I got, the age group that I'm making videos for scales up in content.
Guest:So by the time I'm 19, I'm...
Guest:No, I'm like 17, 18.
Guest:I'm in high school.
Guest:I'm acting in a video where my character is saying and separation of church and state.
Guest:That's not even in the Constitution.
Guest:That's from a letter Jefferson wrote.
Guest:So you don't even have to do that.
Guest:Like I'm arguing against the separation of church and state.
Guest:And that's sort of I think that's what made me go.
Guest:I think Christianity is maybe not my thing.
Marc:So it was like, that's how you had the realization is that you were a tool.
Guest:Well, it wasn't immediate because I immediately then went after that and did an anti-abortion major motion picture.
Guest:For what?
Guest:What was it?
Guest:It was called October Baby.
Guest:It opened number eight in America against the Hunger Games.
Guest:The Hunger Games sucked up so much money that our $2 million Christian movie snuck in there.
Guest:A lot of people saw it.
Guest:There's a huge market for that stuff.
Guest:it's growing apparently and it's I think it's growing like Lionsgate opened up sure opened up a little house with those guys that I worked with yeah wait till the movies come out like what about the Jews when's that movie coming what about the Jews so that was your whole life that was my life and I and I struggled between wanting to be in Hollywood and wanting to be a good Christian son
Marc:But after you do the, you know, you start doing the impression, the Brad Stein piece, and that sort of inspires you to do comedy because you realize the power of laughter and you were able to just get it by cheating in a way.
Marc:Yeah, a little bit.
Marc:But not really.
Marc:I mean, it's a script to script.
Marc:So what do you, you know, to catch up with it.
Marc:So how do you go on from there with the comedy thing?
Marc:You just start building impressions or?
Guest:Um, I didn't, I didn't grow up really a huge impressionist.
Guest:That sort of, that was like my first thing I would do to impress adults when I was young.
Guest:And then, you know, I can remember doing Daryl Hammond's Al Gore was one I would do at church, like for adults and they would freak out.
Guest:And I was like, I don't have no clue who either of these two men are, but me imitating it is making this grown man freak out that I'm making fun of Al Gore and saying SNL stuff.
Marc:I mean, last night I'm on stage and all of a sudden I'm talking like I'm from New Jersey.
Marc:I don't know why.
Marc:It's not an intentional thing.
Marc:But if I talk to somebody from New York, I'm going to talk like that.
Marc:You're going to start doing that.
Marc:Do you do that?
Marc:Yawling when you're in Alabama.
Guest:A little.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I would hope not.
Marc:The real problem with that is when I interview black people and I start not knowing that it's happening.
Guest:You're letting blackness into your... Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:But I don't mind it, but it's kind of odd.
Marc:Do you do that, though?
Marc:Do I code switch?
Guest:I find myself doing that sometimes.
Guest:Sometimes you can't help it.
Guest:I mean, I lived with two black comedians in LA for a few years.
Guest:What do you mean with anybody with a vocal, with a different sort of, do you glom it?
Guest:That I really try to resist the urge to.
Guest:What I do now with my wife is as soon as we walk away, I just, I lash into the person.
Guest:I'm immediately, you know, if we're walking down the street and we hear a snatch of conversation, I lean over to my wife and I'm like, well, he didn't even say that.
Guest:He didn't even say that.
Guest:And when I walked in, he looked at me like I was, and I said, Brian,
Guest:And that's all I heard from the woman who passed me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I do that to my wife every time we pass anybody.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I think that's maybe one of the things that makes New York the only place that you can be someone who does impressions for a living.
Guest:I have a job at one of the only places you can do impressions for a living.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But also, it's also something about... It has to be here because people are on their phones or they're crazy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But everyone's always shouting while they're walking.
Guest:And so you hear it all day.
Marc:But the nature of how you do it
Marc:which is, it's just sort of like this, you just kind of drop into the collective consciousness of this thing.
Marc:And you just kind of run with it.
Marc:Like a police scanner or something.
Marc:Right, yeah.
Marc:I don't think most impressionists have that.
Marc:I think your approach to it is different.
Guest:But let's go back.
Guest:Okay, yeah.
Guest:So I'm repeating this Christian Comedians Act.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And my dad asked me, hey, do you want to do some comedy at this next event at the college?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was the dean of students at the time.
Guest:At your college?
Guest:At the college I eventually went to, but it's the one that my dad worked at.
Guest:The Nazarene College.
Guest:At the Nazarene College.
Guest:I'm 14 now.
Guest:it's a singing competition they have to count the votes yeah for the singers and they need a little filler they need a little filler and i did 10 minutes i was 14 i have a tape of it somewhere i can't find it but brad stein stuff no this was me i said i'm gonna write my own jokes yeah and i guess 30 minutes before it i wrote my own material but it was like what a kid likes and stand like isn't it weird when you go over to your friend's house and it smells weird and
Guest:You know, like what is a 14 year old's observational comedy?
Guest:And then I finished it by doing like one of the most like alt comedy things I could do ever in my comedy, which was like I did, you know, the robots at Chuck E. Cheese that would play the birthday song.
Guest:You know, you go to Chuck E. Cheese and there's like the.
Guest:The robot band, you know?
Guest:I've never been in one, but I... You know what I'm talking about, right?
Guest:The Rock of Fire explosion or something.
Guest:These little amusement places have these robot bands that lip sync a song.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I did an impression of those bands, like of those robotic band members, but the song was Another Brick in the Wall, part two.
Guest:And that's how I closed, was like... And I'm like, herky-jerky movements like I'm playing the drums and...
Marc:Which gives it a darkness and a weight.
Guest:That's what I'm saying is like a 14-year-old doing that.
Guest:I look back on it and I'm like, I would be weird about doing that at UCB now.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I would be like, are they going to appreciate this?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Is this, does this translate?
Guest:It does.
Guest:Of course it would.
Guest:So, so I, I'm proud of myself that I had those instincts.
Guest:And then of course, you know, I would try comedy, uh, four or five times a year for the next like five years and do terribly.
Guest:Uh, I didn't start going up at Zany's until I was about 19 in college.
Guest:But, um, you know, I'd perform wherever talent shows and a boat one time, just like anywhere where I could find a way to do it.
Marc:So you kept trying, but not, not doing well at all.
Guest:The first time it went so good.
Guest:And then it was terrible every other time in front of real audience, in front of real people.
Marc:And, but it was it, uh, but you kept at it or you, you were like fighting with, but in the meantime, you're, you're acting, you're a big actor in propaganda.
Guest:I wouldn't say big, but,
Guest:But I was definitely, I was always working on these skills and like, I was the kid in college or high school where kids would be like, oh, he's trying to be funny, but he's not funny.
Guest:That's not funny.
Marc:It's funny because Chad Ryden was like, oh, he's been funny since he was 12.
Marc:But did you know those guys?
Marc:Were you hanging around comics early on?
Guest:Yeah, like I would say about at 19, that's when I started sneaking into bars to do bar comedy in Nashville.
Guest:Because I knew that I just couldn't do the Christian comedy thing.
Guest:I couldn't just perform in mega churches and...
Marc:Oh, but this is also after the propaganda realization.
Marc:This was after the.
Guest:Yeah, I'm coming out of that.
Guest:And this is embarrassing.
Guest:I'll tell you.
Guest:And we all have our ways into things.
Guest:I saw Judd Apatow's Funny People.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I saw this movie where young comics were in L.A.
Guest:trying to get up at the improv.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was like.
Guest:Oh, I can just Google where to do standup in Nashville.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I found Nashville standup.com, which was Chad Ryden's website.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I found like a calendar of places.
Guest:And one by one, I started sneaking out.
Guest:My college had a thing.
Guest:I signed a document saying I wouldn't even put myself in the presence of alcohol.
Guest:I won't even go to bars.
Guest:I can't go to somewhere that's.
Marc:Were you afraid of that?
Marc:I mean, like, because you signed it, were you abiding by it?
Guest:I wanted to be a good boy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My dad worked at the college.
Guest:I have this legacy of family.
Guest:I'm like Nazarene royalty.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I can't embarrass everyone.
Marc:And I guess on some level in that light, you know, Nashville is a relatively small town.
Guest:You could get caught.
Guest:I could get caught because there were legends of certain deans driving around at the popular bars looking for kids.
Guest:So I was one by one ticking off which bars I could get into without getting carded because I'm underage.
Guest:And then Chad saw what I was doing and he started sort of ushering me into some of these bars to be on the lineup.
Guest:And I didn't drink at these places.
Guest:I didn't drink underage.
Guest:I got the X on my hand at the places that did the X's on the hands.
Guest:And that's how I started performing performing.
Guest:I'm a good 20 years younger than everyone else doing comedy in Nashville.
Guest:Do you remember who they were?
Guest:Uh, Brad Edwards was my favorite comedian in Nashville.
Guest:I don't know if you've seen him.
Guest:I have recently.
Guest:He's, uh, he's really into woodworking.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:These days.
Guest:That's where he ended up?
Guest:He was incredible.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Incredible comedian.
Guest:I hope he still gets up.
Guest:Sean Parrott is an incredible comedian in Nashville.
Guest:Killer Bees?
Guest:Killer Bees.
Guest:I never even got to know Killer Bees very well.
Guest:You know, I would go to Zaney's.
Guest:Better save up.
Guest:Same up.
Guest:James Gregory.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Seeing all those guys like Zany's was this other thing that none of us could break into all the open micers.
Guest:We are doing these like bar shows.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Zany's was this thing that let in like one person every four years.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, right.
Guest:Be a part of the locals for the locals, you know, to be they had the sexy guitar comic.
Guest:They had the cute guy who did guitar comedy.
Guest:They had the fat guy who talked about going to McDonald's and then whoever the touring guys were.
Guest:Those are the guys that would open for Nick Cannon and James Gregory.
Marc:It's so funny.
Marc:It's all this basic Comedia Della Arte structure.
Marc:There's this handful of types that just refill.
Marc:You have the fat guy dies.
Marc:We got one waiting.
Marc:Yeah, we got the next.
Guest:got the next guy and ralphie's gone bring in the next heavyweight bring in the next heavyweight oh he was just you know he was just in a horrible car wreck and in the middle of nowhere doing some one-nighter like comedy just i grew up in in nashville this the comedy scene seemed so dangerous it seemed so un it just was so unlike the safe sort of christian world that
Marc:And also, unlike the Apatow movie on some level, you know, the sort of nuts and bolts of regional and road comedy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It doesn't look like show business.
Guest:No, it doesn't.
Marc:And, you know, it's really just it is what it is.
Guest:And it will be the exact same after the apocalypse.
Guest:Nothing will change about it.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:There'll be people going like, where is that club open?
Marc:Or is that...
Guest:A comedian with an arm sticking out of his forehead with green ooze coming out of one eye.
Guest:I got a hook.
Guest:I'm actually doing quadrant zone A4 tomorrow.
Guest:It's great, and they'll let you eat for free.
Marc:When did you decide the acting thing?
Guest:Did you just learn on the job?
Guest:Did you study it?
Guest:I never really took any formal training.
Guest:It was just like they both just happened.
Guest:You know, stand up was this thing where there wasn't an improv scene in Nashville, which I may have done if I was in Chicago or something.
Guest:So stand up just became I have to perform somewhere.
Guest:And that's how I got doing stand up mostly.
Guest:And I didn't do any impressions in my stand up almost ever until the last four or five years, probably.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, I just didn't really do it.
Guest:I would do like one line as Louie.
Guest:yeah you know i would do uh i would i would finish a five minute showcase set in la you know i was in la for the last 10 years i would finish a showcase set by like doing louis like uh born again louis ck oh yeah how's that yeah you ever uh do you ever go outside and the sky is blue and that's enough you ever have that moment with your creator however you define that presence in your that's amazing
Guest:That's amazing.
Guest:I think Jesus is great.
Guest:And I think the devil is a cunt.
Guest:And... How did that do?
Guest:It would do well.
Guest:I mean, that was the lesson, was like people didn't... After a certain point, to distinguish yourself from all of the... There's a thousand comedians in LA.
Guest:And to distinguish yourself, you have to start making moves.
Guest:Like...
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:And the impressions thing was a thing only I could do.
Guest:Not everyone else was doing that.
Guest:And I was like, if I can find a way to do impressions that's not corny, that is not Branson, Missouri, that is not Vegas.
Marc:Well, there's only ever been a handful of people that do it professionally that you know.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Or well.
Marc:You know, there was a time in the 80s, I think, where everybody had one or two.
Marc:That's where you get that Hack Nicholson trip.
Marc:Right, yeah.
Marc:But in terms of people that really can do it and be impressive, there's only been like a handful ever.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it's a it's it's a real sort of pocket of stand up and show business.
Marc:But like you said, it's hard to do.
Marc:And even some great impressionists are not that great.
Marc:But there's something about they get one thing right.
Guest:It's hard to do it cool.
Guest:It's hard to do it in a way that doesn't make you roll your eyes.
Guest:I mean, I was a comedy fan.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And when there would be an impressionist would come up, if I'm watching a show, I would get scared because I'm like, either this is going to be amazing or it's going to be really...
Marc:kind of uncomfortable and sad you know like because it can be yeah i remember growing up watching rich little i mean he was the guy yeah right and then there was a from the generation before him i think there were a lot more impressionists around you know i think that like you know uh like you know when you get sort of into the history of show business i remember when i was a kid you'd see rich little and then you'd see these old guys on these talk shows and someone was like you know frank gorshin was an impressionist
Marc:And I'm like, who the fuck is Frank Gorshin?
Marc:This guy plays the Joker on the Batman show.
Marc:I'm not that old, but I remember hearing that information and then you get sort of fascinated with it.
Guest:I think it comes from a nightclub tradition, right?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Where you have a song.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You have your jokes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, everyone did everything.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:The variety thing, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, before there were comedy clubs, before Bud Friedman and stuff, there wasn't just a place that was just the stand-up.
Guest:No, you're opening for music.
Guest:You had to do it all.
Guest:And Margaret's doing stand-up and then singing a song in Tahoe.
Marc:That was the one thing I always used to notice about Dana Gould.
Marc:I'm like, he does it all.
Marc:Oh.
Marc:I love Dana.
Guest:He's the best.
Guest:He's so funny.
Guest:He's so funny, but he can do all of it.
Guest:Funny forever.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's what makes this week is Martin Short and Steve Martin.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:At the show.
Guest:On SNL.
Guest:And Martin Short was like my number one.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:When I got hired at SNL, they were like, well, what do you want to do?
Guest:Like, what's your career?
Guest:And I was like, I want to be Martin Short.
Guest:I want to be funny for 50 years straight.
Guest:And like you're undeniable.
Guest:And the business does not know what to do with you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I mean, to me, the business is being on every talk show, murdering, and then popping up as a French guy in a movie for five minutes or whatever.
Guest:I think that is the height of being in this career.
Guest:In show business.
Guest:I think you're right.
Marc:I hope that those talk shows live long enough to where you can fulfill that dream.
Guest:I hope SNL lives long enough.
Guest:Well, you're good.
Guest:It's not going to go anywhere right away.
Guest:You know...
Guest:I'm not saying that's going to happen.
Guest:I just mean when I look out at the media landscape, I'm always like, well, what am I going to be doing in two years?
Marc:Where am I going to be doing it?
Guest:Where do I get to go next?
Guest:I mean, I want to do SNL as long as everyone gets to do SNL.
Guest:What are you, unfortunate?
Marc:now four years i'm this is my second season second season and i want to do it for forever you know okay so you're in nashville you're you're uh bordering on being a at least a lapsed christian and behavior um yeah you're doing stand-up so where do you get the wherewithal just to go to la do you meet somebody uh let's see i i
Guest:Yeah, because Nashville Comics would always go to Chicago.
Guest:But when I met you, so you hadn't left yet.
Marc:I hadn't left yet.
Marc:And you sat in a hotel room with me and Singer, and I recorded an intro?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:You recorded an intro, and then we went to Pied Piper for some ice cream, I think.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And we went to Grimey's, I think, to look at records.
Guest:Grimey's, yeah.
Guest:We had a full day.
Guest:We had a full Nashville day.
Guest:Were you talkative?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think I said one joke to try to get the respect, and I was not mature enough to be like, just ride out a nice day with Mark.
Guest:Don't bother the guy.
Guest:Precious had just come out.
Guest:This is the worst joke of all time.
Guest:Somebody brought up Precious.
Guest:From the back of the car, I said, Eddie Murphy can do anything.
Guest:And it did not get that response last time.
Guest:Damn it.
Guest:I think you went, ha!
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It was me.
Guest:It was me, you, and Singer driving up.
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:So that was like, well, I got to try.
Guest:Yeah, it was good.
Guest:You got to cast your lot.
Guest:I'm sorry.
Guest:I'm sorry.
Guest:Oh, don't apologize for that.
Guest:Mark, do you understand that those are the moments that lead to me achieving some sort of greatness?
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:All right.
Guest:It's like wanting to get...
Guest:the kill in the car with this visiting comic.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Did you do that with a lot of visiting comics?
Guest:Oh, not really.
Guest:I didn't hang out with it because a lot of them weren't the guys I was fans of.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was like, there was a couple years where I saw a lot of the people that I liked.
Guest:I saw you, I saw Louie, I saw Patton, Todd Berry, I saw Reggie Watts, I saw Conan.
Guest:I had this great little run in 2009 to 2011, where I got to, that was at the beginning of my open-miking, and I really got to see great acts that came through Nashville.
Guest:And then you moved to LA.
Guest:In college, I got to go for a semester to LA to be in some film school program for a semester.
Guest:What'd you do there?
Guest:It was like a Christian college thing where they had a semester exchange where you could go learn some video production in LA and intern.
Guest:I interned at Beavis and Butthead.
Guest:I interned for Mike Judge for a little one-season reboot of Beavis and Butthead.
Guest:He's a good guy.
Guest:He is a good guy.
Guest:I really respect him.
Guest:He's a Southerner who figured out how to do intelligent
Guest:You know, King of the Hill is an achievement.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:King of the Hill is an achievement to take Texas people, believably render real feeling Texas people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And do it in a way that's respectful and honest at the same time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like you show their faults, you show their compassion.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You don't hate Hank at all.
Guest:You respect Hank.
Marc:Empathetic treatment of that.
Guest:Of like a group that usually gets shit on all the time.
Guest:And so I loved that I got to work for Mike Judge for a little bit.
Guest:That felt very appropriate.
Guest:But then I got bad grades because I was just doing open mics all the time.
Guest:And I came back to Nashville.
Guest:In LA.
Guest:In LA.
Guest:Where at?
Guest:Like Nerdist and all that shit?
Guest:Yeah, I would go to.
Guest:Meltdown.
Guest:Meltdown.
Guest:all places yeah meltdown and i would go to holy fuck every tuesday that show in the theater the movie theater oh yeah did you ever do dave ross's movie i did do that yeah downtown right downtown yeah yeah and uh i would uh meltdown power violence and uh go to hang out at the improv on what was on like mel or santa monica yeah that was in that little theater
Marc:Who the fuck was that?
Marc:Was that Josh Adams?
Marc:Whit Thomas.
Marc:Whitmer Thomas.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And wasn't it two guys hosting it?
Marc:And wasn't it kind of chaotic?
Marc:It was very chaotic.
Marc:I remember doing it once, and I'm like, what the fuck is happening?
Guest:Well, you would see you or Bill Burr.
Guest:You would see...
Guest:you would see real comedians try do this punk show you know and um so la had these good little five dollar or free shows that i could see yeah real comedians at and so i i would hang out at all those and i was starting to get booked but then i chickened out went back to nashville didn't comedy in nashville for two more years met the woman who is now my wife yeah and then i moved back to la for 10 years what's she do
Guest:She is a counselor.
Guest:She is a therapist.
Guest:She's in college.
Guest:She's in grad school to be a therapist.
Guest:Oh, that's good.
Guest:She's worked in behaviorism and worked at schools with kids smearing shit on the walls.
Guest:So you're covered.
Guest:I'm covered.
Guest:You're going to be managed.
Guest:I found the one that is going to be able to ride this out however long it lasts for me.
Guest:And be helpful.
Guest:And be helpful and also hate it at the correct degree.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Hate it to a healthy degree.
Guest:Yeah, good.
Guest:So you just go on your own.
Guest:You just pack up and say, I'm going, Mom.
Guest:I'm going.
Guest:I'm going out this time.
Guest:I think I had like $1,000 or something from some regional commercial.
Marc:And your parents all along the way are okay.
Marc:They believe that you're going to maintain your decency.
Guest:You know...
Guest:to their credit, they let me go.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But from my perspective, I also believe that they were positive that I would fail, come home soon and teach poetry at a small private Christian college.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It'd be a respectable man.
Guest:Poetry.
Guest:Even after I'm like, I remember I had booked a Coen brothers movie.
Guest:I had two lines in a Coen brothers movie.
Guest:And I told my grandparents and my grandpa was like, well, you'll come home.
Guest:You'll teach history.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was like,
Guest:I'm in a Coen Brothers movie.
Guest:They don't know.
Guest:They don't know.
Guest:But that, which movie?
Marc:Hell's Caesar, right?
Marc:Hell's Caesar, yeah.
Marc:What a great movie.
Marc:I celebrate that movie.
Marc:And, you know, and people will not join me in it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I think it's one of the great Coen Brothers movies.
Marc:I guess everyone's kind of weird about Coen Brothers.
Marc:They all have their, like, I'm not a Lebowski guy.
Marc:I mean, I like it.
Marc:I've watched it many times, but I'm not in the cult.
Guest:You may be a Lebowski character.
Guest:That's true.
Guest:You may be believable as another man at that bowling alley.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I'm living that to a certain degree.
Marc:We all are.
Marc:I get the point of why it's so, why people love it.
Marc:But for me, you know, Hail Caesar and like a double feature of Hail Caesar and Barton Fink.
Marc:I see Hail Caesar as the sequel to Barton Fink.
Guest:The light sequel to Barton Fink.
Guest:well it's literally the capital pictures the fake studio yeah the michael lerner yeah studio i remember sitting next to joel cohen who you could play in a film and i was sitting next to joel cohen and i was like i gotta talk to him yeah and again i'm too green i gotta shut the hell up and let no you got it the guy you just gotta do it dude
Guest:So I'm sitting in a director's chair next to him.
Guest:We're on location in Agua Dolce.
Guest:We're in one of those movie ranches somewhere shooting the Western scene.
Guest:And I see the Capitol Pictures logo on some old-timey trucks in the way in the background of the shot.
Guest:I was like, oh, capital pictures from from Barton Fink.
Guest:That's pretty cool.
Guest:And then Joel Cohen, who is obviously thinking about the next sequence of shots that is going to compose with Roger Deakins.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like glances over distractedly and looks at him.
Guest:He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:It goes back to the important work that he's doing.
Guest:He acknowledged you.
Guest:You got the I felt like such a rat for bugging this artist.
Guest:Oh, come on.
Guest:Middle of his work day.
Marc:Come on.
Marc:What's my Coen Brothers movie?
Marc:I think it changes over the years.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I like Serious Man because as a Jew, it's such a Jew-y movie.
Marc:It's probably one of the Jew-iest movies since Fiddler.
Guest:Well, it does start with a tale of a dybbuk.
Guest:It starts with a folk tale.
Guest:Yeah, of the ghost.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:See, as somebody who grew up super Christian, I got a lot of value out of Serious Man.
Guest:I'm watching it, and I'm like,
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:The bonds that tie you to the entire history of your traditions, of your family's traditions.
Marc:Well, you know, a lot of Christians are very pro-Jew.
Marc:To a degree.
Marc:No, but it's an apocalyptic vision.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I talk about this with my Jewish comedy writer friends now, where we're like... When you get us all to Israel, then Jesus could come back.
Marc:Exactly, right?
Marc:I get it.
Marc:But it doesn't end well for one half of the equation.
Marc:Well, I've been playing with these ideas about how I haven't really... I connect them sometimes when I'm riffing, but the idea that if you believe in Jesus, you'll probably believe anything.
Marc:I mean, you have to sort of manage that door.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Because there's not... The spectacular sort of...
Guest:mythology of it enables q anon to a certain degree yeah i don't i don't know i mean i feel like i hang out with with christians and conservatives a fair amount because we're in nashville all the time right and so you you think that that's a faulty premise
Guest:I just feel like, I don't know a lot of the Q people or they're like hiding it, but I do know that Facebook has ruined so many people's brains.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like the, there is like a thing now where people are quick to believe the thing with the fewest sources.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And quick to negate a very thoroughly well-researched like New Yorker article about a real thing.
Marc:But that is, you just explained religion.
Right.
Guest:I know.
Guest:See, I think that's the thing that ultimately keeps me from re-engaging with Christianity.
Guest:But you can have faith, and you can have belief.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I don't know if I do.
Guest:I don't know if I believe the stuff.
Marc:But you've grown to be more forgiving and accepting of the community that you came up with.
Guest:I think religion is beautiful.
Guest:I think if you can actively engage in it, and I've seen it make people's lives better.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I had this intense respect for religion, and I followed the teachings of Christianity very closely, and I had respect for it.
Guest:It was that respect that led me away from it, because I came to a point where I was in an argument with a pastor friend, a really enlightened guy, cool, well-read, liberal thinker in the true sense of the word.
Guest:And I'm like talking to him about this stuff and I'm saying just some stuff I casually believe in.
Guest:And he's just like, yeah, well, I mean, Jesus did rise from the dead.
Guest:And I was like...
Guest:oh, I don't know if I believe the stuff.
Guest:Like it just hit me that I'm maybe not a Christian because you have to believe the stuff.
Guest:And I think I just realized maybe as soon as like five years ago or something, I was like, I don't think I believe the stuff.
Guest:And then that made me go, well, I've got to stop faking that I believe the stuff because this is disrespectful to people who do.
Guest:And so that's where I'm at with it now.
Guest:We have this little baby and we're like, are we going to raise him with the stuff?
Guest:Because, you know, and I'm like, he's got to know the Jonah and the whale.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:He's got to know the stories.
Guest:But that's the old stuff.
Guest:He's got to know the tales.
Guest:But I just don't want him growing up with crazy baggage and guilt guiding him through everything.
Guest:I was a virgin until I was 25, you know?
Guest:It must have been a good day.
Guest:It was, well, first two times were not, they were C minuses on my end of the bargain.
Guest:But the third and fourth time was like hearing the Beatles for the first time, for sure.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:But, you know, I don't want my kid growing up afraid of engaging with the world.
Guest:I mean, Christianity can do that to you, where you grow up thinking that everything that is not...
Guest:christian is pure evil and um i want to have a i want to have a love of discovery a curiosity oh good yeah the people that live in that five square mile radius that you're talking about i think it was the lack of curiosity that terrified me about living and they're and they're enforcing of that the the enforcing of like what you said like everything that's uh you know that we don't understand has got to be bad
Guest:And now it's and now living in the country is sort of a virtual experience.
Guest:Like we live in a monoculture.
Guest:We have the Internet.
Guest:All of us live in the same culture at the same time.
Marc:Yeah, but no one's on the same page of the Internet.
Guest:I know that is true.
Guest:But that is true.
Marc:The OK, so you're out there.
Marc:You did the Coen Brothers movies and you're showing up on things.
Marc:So when does the big break come?
Marc:Because you're not really are you working as a touring comic?
Guest:I'm like, I wouldn't say I'm working.
Guest:I'm like featuring for like Ryan sometimes or like Dave Stone or, you know, Rory maybe once or twice or so doing a Go Bananas weekend with somebody else making 500 bucks.
Guest:Right.
Guest:In Cincinnati.
Guest:In Cincinnati.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know.
Guest:uh so jeff tate jeff tate these are these are men that helped me out kyle canane yeah so so i'm going around with these guys sometimes and trying to learn stuff uh i got at some point i got an agent and i got uh jfl in 2017. is it interesting though that these guys so you held out you know you were hanging out and you know with some uh you know fairly um sweet demons
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I imagine they kind of took care of your sensibility.
Marc:They were not like, what's up, dude?
Marc:You going to do this?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, these are guys that read books and also are looking for fried chicken at every moment of the day.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And drinking.
Guest:And drinking beer.
Guest:So, so I, I was able to engage with guys that were like, Oh, they're half in my Tennessee world somehow.
Guest:And they're half in this punk comedy world too.
Guest:And that was a good bridge from my like Christian comedy.
Guest:Nice.
Guest:Those are good guys to the city.
Guest:Those are all good guys.
Guest:You know, Jeff and Ryan and Kyle, you know, I owe them so much.
Guest:I owe them so much.
Guest:And, and so at some point I got an agent in LA managers.
Guest:I did JFL and,
Guest:I remember I went into JFL thinking this is where the SNL people see you.
Guest:I got to do my SNL set.
Guest:So my five minutes of JFL was like an SNL audition.
Guest:I did Louie.
Guest:I sang a song.
Guest:I did like a sportscaster bit.
Guest:I did one liners.
Guest:You know, I had all and I didn't kill it.
Guest:I had a kill.
Guest:I got written up on some comedy blog.
Guest:I was like, this is a good JFL.
Guest:I didn't have a single meeting.
Guest:I didn't talk to anybody.
Guest:No call from SNL.
Guest:You know what I think it is?
Guest:And I don't mind saying this on WTF.
Guest:What I think it was is Sam Jay.
Guest:I had to follow Sam Jay every stage of JFL.
Guest:Sam Jay, just this murderer.
Guest:You know Sam Jay.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:Just a murderer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she would just... She would level the theater.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I swear to God, she was hired to SNL writing staff that night of our big JFL show.
Guest:I swear to God, SNL was just talking to her already backstage.
Guest:I don't think they were watching my set because she was like...
Guest:Oh, that's probably true.
Guest:I think that may have been what happened.
Marc:They just ran backstage right when you got up.
Marc:Whoever brought you up, they were already backstage talking to Sam.
Guest:Not that it's a guarantee that I was going to get SNL at that point.
Guest:And thank God that it didn't.
Guest:I'm so glad that it happened five years later when I was in my 30s and not my...
Guest:single in my mid-20s it took five years so what are you doing for that five years when do you start doing you know trump on uh on whatever instagram you know um i got together with my my my former girlfriend who's my wife now we got together again after five years apart i was happy i went to therapy this is the five-year interim this is the five-year interim yes and i started going to therapy i i made up with my family i i well how deep was that riff
Guest:It wasn't that much of a riff, but it was all on me.
Guest:It was all this like, ah, I hate all this stuff.
Guest:They didn't even know, really.
Guest:They barely even knew.
Guest:They didn't know that I was on Prozac, and I had anxiety, and I had all this.
Guest:So I think it was just I worked on myself, and I kept plugging away at stand-up.
Guest:I started a show in Highland Park at a bar called La Quavita, Little Cave.
Guest:We started a show called Rod Stewart Live.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Didn't do that one.
Guest:Well, you know.
Guest:You didn't ask me.
Guest:i don't think you would have wanted to do this one because we had to pummel our way through to the laughs i mean it was a loud that's a loud biker cocaine bar oh wow that is that is why'd you choose that place that is a goth bar because they would let us they would let us do the show and for five years where is it every wednesday night it's at um you know where triple beam pizza is and yeah hippo yeah yeah it's like right next okay okay
Guest:And, um, so I, I kind of did roadhouse comedy in Highland park every Wednesday night for five years.
Guest:While you were going to therapy, going to therapy and in love and being in love and doing commercial auditions for Taco Bell and stuff.
Guest:And that's, I think really where I got my standup chops finally was doing fighting through conversations and getting the attention of people.
Guest:And that's where I started doing Trump on stage.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I the first couple times I did Trump in 2018 2017 impression was okay and people would stop and listen because it kind of sounds like him but I'm doing the angry you know I'm a liberal and I'm doing the angry Trump we're gonna kill everybody blah blah blah yeah
Guest:and not getting laughs, but they are quiet.
Guest:And I was like, I never want that.
Guest:I never want to silence a, a biker bar and not get laughs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that's when I started abstracting the Trump and I made him like a guy from Lord of the Rings.
Guest:And then like, that's, that's where it took on the thing that it is now where I remember being like, yeah.
Guest:And I would just do like, he's, that's like a guy from medieval times.
Guest:Like he's, he's like trying to scare peasants.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so then I would be like, we've got to do something about the mermaid king.
Guest:The mermaid king.
Guest:By the way, only I have the amulet that will allow me to breathe underwater and defeat this mermaid king.
Guest:Wouldn't it be great if we got along with the dragons?
Guest:So by abstracting it and making it silly, then I started getting laughs with it and getting confident with it.
Guest:And then COVID happened.
Guest:We lost our show.
Guest:We're all stuck in our houses.
Guest:My wife and I had a miscarriage.
Guest:We were bummed out.
Guest:You got married during that time?
Guest:We got married in 2018, yeah.
Guest:And then COVID happened.
Guest:We were trying to have a kid.
Guest:We lost the pregnancy.
Guest:Sorry.
Guest:We were, happens to everybody.
Guest:We were just depressed in our home.
Guest:And I just started making videos for Twitter, walking around my house because I had to do comedy somehow.
Marc:Yeah, that's what I did with Instagram kind of, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And everyone kind of started doing that a little bit because there was nowhere to perform.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was an election year and my Trump impression was something silly that didn't piss people off.
Guest:It was like a release.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they just started getting picked up and getting shared by celebrities.
Guest:And and at some point and then I started a podcast where with my buddy Zach Pugh.
Guest:And on this podcast, What Things Are What Things, I would call in as a celebrity at the end for like 20 minutes and be Bob Dylan or be Bobby Flay or Joe Biden.
Guest:You'd do Bobby Flay?
Guest:I would do Bobby Flay, yeah.
Guest:What is that?
Guest:That's it.
Guest:Now stick around because there's going to be a lot more ribs where that came from right after this.
Guest:You know how like Bobby has like the TV Bobby?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Where he's reading a cue card.
Guest:He's really excited and he's speaking at huge volume.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he's a little New York.
Guest:He's kind of not ready to be on TV, but it's not he's going to take any elocution classes or anything like that.
Guest:But he's excited to make a brick oven pizza.
Guest:And then there's the cutaway where he's sort of snidely explaining what a red sauce is because Food Network is for people who've been hit in the head 20 times.
Guest:So he's like, well, you know, a red sauce is usually composed of diced onion, a little bit of garlic, and San Marzano tomatoes is sort of packaged at the peak of the freshness.
Guest:And I just kind of want to start sweating all the aromatics and get that started in the saucepan.
Yeah.
Guest:He has like the quiet, shy guy in the cutaway.
Guest:And then the big theater kid who can't wait to show you how Guy Fieri makes his ultimate barbecue queso.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I would do Bobby Flay a lot and Trump a lot.
Guest:And the big clip that took off for me that I think got me on SNL was I did Trump pretending to be a New York comedian in the 2000s, remembering how good the Rafifi scene was.
Guest:Oh my God, it's pretty specific.
Guest:So that was an episode Whitmer Thomas was on, and that's just how the conversation ended up.
Guest:And Whitmer was like, well, Trump, you were in the New York comedy scene around that time.
Guest:And then I was like, the whole clip was just like, oh yeah, it was me, it was Burr, it was Patrice, and...
Guest:You know who we all thought was amazing was A.D.
Guest:Miles.
Guest:We loved A.D.
Guest:Miles and Tisdale.
Guest:Tisdale.
Guest:So that clip, I think, somehow, like, Seth Meyers and John Mulaney and, like...
Guest:A few of those guys ended up on their group chat.
Guest:Oh, so that's interesting.
Marc:Because those are the guys who were on the inside.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And they were kind of locked into that world, right?
Guest:Yeah, they were kind of coming up around the time of Burr and Patrice.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:And Rafiki.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so that clip got passed around.
Guest:And I think it was like, oh, he's good at impressions.
Guest:and he has like a knowledge of comedy he's obviously like a comedy fan and so when i sent in a tape when i got invited to send in a tape to snl um almost a year later yeah um they watched it and i i watched them watch it i watched the view count on it it was like a private tape so like when you send a link and you send it a private link oh okay to your vimeo is that how it works
Guest:Yeah, you can see if no one has the link, no one's watching it except for the people you sent it to.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I just watched it get watched like a dozen times one week, and I was like, oh, they're watching it at SNL.
Guest:You were just kind of checking it every other day?
Guest:My agents would tell me.
Guest:I was trying to forget about it.
Guest:I was trying to get jobs, and I was like, this isn't going to happen.
Guest:A year later.
Guest:Honey, it's not going to happen.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This is at least six months after I made these clips.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Whenever it was hiring time.
Guest:They start watching tapes in July or something like that.
Guest:And, and, um, and I was like, honey, it's not going to happen.
Guest:Don't, don't worry about it.
Guest:Cause we're already pregnant.
Guest:We're already nesting in LA.
Guest:We're in Highland park.
Guest:We got a good, a condo.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've got my little routine.
Guest:I filmed a couple of self tape auditions.
Guest:I grabbed my Kindle.
Guest:I go down to the pool.
Guest:I read my Keith Richards book.
Guest:Great book.
Guest:And I, uh, it was a great one.
Guest:And, uh, and I go back upstairs and we eat dinner.
Guest:And I was like, I had a great life where I was making 30, 40 grand a year as an actor once or twice a year.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:I've been acting one little thing.
Guest:I'm in the background of a George Clooney Nespresso commercial.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, oh, it's playing in Germany now, so I think we can go to that wedding or whatever.
Guest:Nice, yeah.
Guest:So that's how I'm taking care of things.
Guest:And I was like, honey, SNL, it's not going to happen.
Guest:But are you miserable?
Guest:You're okay.
Guest:We were so happy.
Guest:That's why we got pregnant.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I mean, we were, we were truly happy and, um, making little videos.
Guest:I'm doing Trump and Jeff Goldblum on cameo.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:People buy my cameos and I, I'm just famous enough on the internet that I can be on cameo and sell a hundred dollar cameo of me doing a little, uh, happy birthday to a very beautiful person.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, my terrible Goldblum and stuff.
Guest:And then they invited me, they saw the tape and they invited me to audition in LA.
Guest:And I was on a job.
Guest:I was shooting an Adam Conover Netflix show.
Guest:So I had to drive back from Santa Clarita to make it to the SNL audition.
Guest:Everything shoots in Santa Clarita.
Guest:I don't know why.
Guest:It's wild, right?
Guest:That's where they shoot everything.
Guest:And I had to haul ass in my 30-year-old truck to make it to WeHo for my call time.
Guest:the fully coveted lockdown groundlings theater where they're having this this showcase there's 20 people on it me and sarah squirm or i don't know if you know her but she got hired my same year great comic and um i was like honey don't worry about it it's i'm gonna do well but it's not gonna lead to anything snl jerks all my friends around we all go up three times in front of them and none of us get hired it's okay
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Every, every, it's a good thing for a comic to end up in the casting mix for SNL, but it never happens.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I'm just like telling her who are those friends that you knew who've been run up the, I felt like any friend of mine that was already doing cool things like, like Whit was one of those guys who I knew had auditioned and came back and, um, you know, um,
Guest:i i had friends that had gone and tested and just come back yeah and it was like a thing it's like a uh like jfl it's like a mark of success that you got in the mix right um and then um i had i did it had a great set i went up like fourth at this showcase and i just had a great set yeah i did like 15 different people i did
Guest:I was like, my way into SNL is the characters and impressions.
Guest:It's not the, it's not just standup.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I was like, I'm not going to do standup.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so, um, so I did, you know, I did, uh, uh, Trump talking.
Guest:I think my first thing was Trump saying happy birthday to Frankenstein at like some event.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:He's a great guy.
Guest:Look at him.
Guest:Frankenstein.
Guest:One of our favorite people.
Guest:And he has beautiful bolts.
Guest:I love the bolts.
Guest:It's so beautiful.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he's so tall.
Guest:You know, I was talking to Babadook.
Guest:And our wives are friends.
Guest:And Babadook is also tall.
Guest:So that was the first thing.
Guest:And then I think I did Lindsey Graham, Bobby Flay, Michael Rappaport.
Guest:I did Chris O'Dowd.
Guest:What's your Rappaport?
Guest:These fucking guys with the spaghetti arms and the little chicken finger toes who always up at Starbucks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, it's that.
Guest:It's one volume.
Guest:Have you met many of the people that you do impressions with?
Guest:Mark, the other day I said goodbye to my wife.
Guest:I head into SNL.
Guest:I lit a joint on the streets of New York.
Guest:and I took one puff of it and almost ran into Michael Rappaport.
Guest:He's holding a microphone.
Guest:He's got some guy.
Guest:He's going to make something for his Instagram or something like that, and I just got to talk to him for a second because he follows me.
Guest:He's like, I like how you do me, and I'm talking to him.
Guest:Yeah, man, and they had Natasha doing me instead, and I was like, they got to let the James guy do it.
Guest:He's really all right.
Guest:I got to talk to him for five minutes and I just have this lit joint in my hand.
Guest:You didn't want any?
Guest:I should have offered him some of my joints.
Guest:He's fun to be around.
Guest:I knew him from movies all growing up.
Guest:He just seemed so New York to me.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:But he's all lit up all the time.
Guest:He's always on.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, okay, so you get... I did all these things.
Guest:And you killed.
Guest:I had a great set.
Guest:Sarah's backstage.
Guest:Sarah Sherman is backstage.
Guest:She's going to go on in a little bit.
Guest:And she's like, I don't know if I want to do this.
Guest:I don't know if I'm supposed to be here.
Guest:And I was so full of that comedy juice.
Guest:This is COVID.
Guest:We're not performing live a whole lot.
Guest:To get a kill in front of 30 people is like... I felt like I was on...
Guest:drugs or something and i poured it all into sarah i was like you are incredible you are a performer you're going to crush i just gave her all of my like vibes and then she crushed too and we both got invited to new york uh i when i got the call that i was invited to new york i'm like honey it's not gonna happen don't worry about it yeah you're not gonna have to move just
Guest:I said, go to Nashville, hang out with your mom.
Guest:I'll meet you.
Guest:We'll cool off from the disappointment of not getting the show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was the plan.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I went up to New York.
Guest:The first day was the- In studio?
Guest:In studio thing.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And I-
Guest:I was a little nervous about it.
Guest:My dad gives me these unhelpful baseball metaphors all the time.
Guest:I don't watch a lot of baseball.
Guest:I love going to it live, but I don't know what any of the stats mean.
Guest:I wish I did.
Guest:I'd love to be a sports guy.
Guest:But my dad always gives me these baseball metaphors, and they always help, even though I don't have a tangible attachment to baseball.
Guest:But his thing is always like, if I have a big show, he gives me the same speech where he's like, you know, the great hitters.
Guest:They're not swinging all the way through.
Guest:It's right before that ball makes contact with the bat.
Guest:You let up just a little bit.
Guest:And it's that little bit of give that knocks it out of the park.
Guest:You want it to have a little bit of flexibility.
Guest:And...
Guest:So, you know, the tests are on the home base, you know, where Tom Hanks stands and says, we have a great show.
Guest:Hoobastank is here.
Guest:That's Zach Galifianakis' joke.
Guest:And I just remember, I was like, oh, they'll give me a moment.
Guest:So my heart's slamming, but I took a moment to like do breathing exercises and come down.
Guest:So I think I took 30 seconds to... While you were standing there?
Guest:I'm standing there and I just go...
Guest:I'm like counting in four and breathing out eight.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like the things that my therapist taught me about making it through bumpy flights.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I'm doing bumpy flight neck breathing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I came down enough and then I just jumped into the Trump stuff.
Guest:I did the exact same audition I did in LA and everybody told me they weren't going to laugh.
Guest:They laughed the whole time.
Guest:As soon as they were laughing, I was like so relieved, you know, by the end of it, I'm doing Willie Nelson and, um,
Guest:So Lauren's there and everybody?
Guest:Lauren's there and everybody.
Guest:It's so weird.
Guest:The camera's dead on.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're supposed to play to the camera.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Stage manager's standing next to the camera.
Guest:All the writers and producers are way over in a corner to your left.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I think it's like possibly is like a performance test.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:to see if you're going to end up playing to the live audience.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Or if you're going to play to the camera.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you're supposed to play to the camera.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And not get distracted that all of the laughers are over here.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know if that's part of their psychology of this process.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I had heard from, I think Hannah Einbinder told me play to the camera because she had auditioned the year before.
Guest:And so I gave it all to camera.
Guest:That was the right move.
Guest:It went great.
Guest:that night I got a call to meet producers.
Guest:And, um, the next day, you know, there's like a group of us waiting in the writer's room and we're all getting like called off to different offices.
Guest:And I met Lauren pretty quickly.
Guest:I said, maybe my second meeting was with Lauren.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And did you have to wait to meet Lauren?
Guest:I didn't have to wait very long.
Guest:He made me wait in the middle of it.
Guest:I got called in.
Guest:He talked to me for about 10 minutes.
Guest:And then it was like, he's sort of like, you know, and it's the Lorne way where he's kind of like a sphinx a little bit.
Guest:He's like speaking in kind of temple riddles, like a Zelda boss or something.
Guest:So like I come in and he's walking to his desk and he's like,
Guest:He was like, oh, well, we were in New Mexico and Will Ferrell, excuse me, Forte, showed me one of your videos and we were having a good time watching it.
Guest:And that's sort of like the Lorne hello and have a seat and all that.
Guest:And so I was like, this guy has a vibe.
Guest:This guy has a way.
Guest:He does these meetings.
Guest:His whole job is meetings with people, with artists.
Guest:So I'm like, this is... It was just surreal.
Guest:It was very surreal because you hear everybody's story about meeting Lorne.
Guest:And then halfway through it, he was like...
Guest:telling me some historical anecdote or something like that where i i think i was just making conversation with him about i had just been in montreal i knew he was canadian so i was like do you like montreal do you like quebec so well i like quebec city a great deal and he starts looking at his phone there's a hotel there he's just looking at his phone where that looks out on a field where
Guest:looks at the phone a little bit closer where the British where the British defeated the French this is the network I have to take this and he sent me he sent me he sent me out and I think I stood outside of his office for 25 minutes or so while I talked to the president of NBC of the world yeah yeah yeah
Guest:And, and I got called back in and, you know, he was like, well, the purposes of these meetings is to see if you're funny.
Guest:I think you're funny.
Guest:Um, you'll be wearing a lot of wigs.
Guest:Um, you'll get used to it very quickly.
Guest:Um, you're seasoned, so I'm not really worried about you.
Guest:Um,
Guest:uh are you married i was like um yes i'm married he's like children i said i have uh we're five months pregnant he's like when's the baby due and i said christmas eve and he like looked at the calendar on the wall of all the when the shows are yeah he's like well you have a show on the 18th and then you'll have a little bit of a break and you'll have a you'll have the baby on the break and
Guest:And, like, I'm washing my hands in the bathroom after that, and I'm just like, oh, is that it?
Guest:Is that the show?
Guest:Like, I'm on SNL now, and I have to call Becca and tell her, like, you are moving.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:At the height of your pregnancy, you will be in a dead winter in New York.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In the first apartment we could find.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we will deliver a baby halfway through like the most intense work period of my career.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Have that land.
Guest:She, when I, so I was still afraid of flying.
Guest:So I took an Amtrak, a 24 hour Amtrak to Birmingham to go back to the South.
Guest:Oh, you have this horrendous fear of flying?
Guest:I did.
Guest:I think show business is thoroughly beating it out of me now.
Guest:Now I love it.
Guest:Now I really enjoy it.
Guest:Relax into it.
Guest:Well, I get to go on first class now sometimes.
Guest:So, you know, the champagne, the reading the book and looking at the clouds.
Guest:Now I love it.
Guest:And also I've just, you know, I try to work through the, try to face the stuff that scares me and work through the stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No control of it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's just like, Oh, you don't know how to fly a plane.
Guest:I don't know how to fly a plane.
Guest:And if I die, that's awesome.
Guest:Then I get to die.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Then it's, then I never have to worry about stuff.
Guest:It's like a dead guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Maybe I'll get there.
Guest:That seems like a good way to look at it.
Guest:Let's do mushrooms sometime and talk to death.
Guest:But there was some fear still in me that I had to get on the trip.
Guest:I think I wanted to just veg out and not think and talk to anyone.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I had just done... You needed some time.
Guest:I needed some time.
Guest:I had just done this Netflix show.
Guest:I had just...
Guest:I had, in between the Netflix show and getting this SNL audition, had gone to New York separately to play Donald Trump in the Carey Mulligan movie that just came out, that she said.
Guest:You know what she said about the Harvey Weinstein investigators?
Guest:I've got to see that.
Guest:Is it out yet?
Guest:It's out, yeah.
Guest:And I guess I'm still in it as Trump over the phone.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:But they wanted me as a live actor screaming at Carey Mulligan.
Guest:This is a drama Trump.
Guest:This is not a comedy Trump.
Guest:And so to have done that already and then get invited to come back to New York to audition for SNL was just so strange.
Guest:And so I think I had just gone back and forth doing all these things.
Guest:And I just had this really intense period of my career that felt really intense to me at the time.
Guest:And I wanted to be alone.
Guest:I was on an Amtrak train, 24 hours, coach, no sleeper, just sitting there staring.
Guest:And I was like, and they didn't call.
Guest:Sarah got the call.
Guest:They hadn't called me.
Guest:And I was like, maybe I didn't get the show.
Guest:I never got the official pickup call.
Guest:And halfway through this Amtrak train, I got the Lorne Michaels call.
Guest:I think I had written my number down wrong on the contact sheet when I got to New York.
Guest:They had left a voicemail on some other Tennessean's cell phone.
Guest:I got the call.
Guest:I talked to him.
Guest:He was like, where are you?
Guest:I was like, I'm on an Amtrak train.
Guest:He goes, oh, what a glamorous life you lead.
Guest:I immediately called my wife afterward and told her.
Guest:She just sobbed hard.
Guest:it was just like oh just ugly sobbing yeah and um i came back and it was just like she was just like i knew it was gonna happen i was dreading it the whole time i like dreading that it would kind of yeah yeah because we were very happy in la and we were nesting she was nesting she was building and we had a we had a closet with all of the baby cabinets like everything was baby proof yeah you know what i mean
Guest:And that's what she was grieving.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:You put all this work in.
Guest:She had hormonal like nesting grief that her bird's nest was destroyed.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It was like her house was burned down to her.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:But I was like, I know this is hard for us right now, but like...
Guest:this is how I feed us for the rest of our marriage.
Guest:Like, yeah, I, even if I flame out spectacularly, even if I fuck everything up for us and I'm, even if I become an absolute piece of shit, yeah,
Guest:From now on, it'll say SNL in the corner of my poster and some people will come to my show.
Guest:I was like, even if I ruin our lives, I'll always be able to feed us because that's what SNL does.
Guest:It's like...
Guest:I'll always be able to draw somewhat of a crowd.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because that's like it's like the comedy Supreme Court or something.
Guest:It's like the Olympics.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Of comedy for America.
Marc:But it's like it's interesting that you saw it, you know, in relation to, you know, your life that, you know, this is, you know, despite how however we feel and whatever happens, this will provide for us.
Right.
Guest:I was fully in dad mode.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was only thinking... I was only in the terrified pre-baby zone.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's probably the best zone to be in.
Guest:Because it could have went selfish.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:If I had gotten this job and I was 24 and just a psycho and single and stuff, I don't know that I'd be able to mentally...
Guest:be able to ride it.
Guest:That's interesting.
Marc:Your whole life prepares you like in terms of responsibilities and experience, even if it was with Christian broadcasting and this or that, that by the time you get to this place, you're emotionally grounded and professionally, you've seen a lot of stuff.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like there's nothing intimidating about the situation other than the, the pace and the requirements.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's, I had to learn all that on the job, how to like keep up with, I mean, I had done jobs before, but it was like,
Guest:As an actor, I was the two days on the courtroom show guy.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:I'm a lawyer with one line, number one.
Marc:You guys sitting in a trailer.
Guest:I'm a guy sitting in a trailer reading a Stephen King book.
Guest:I wasn't used to the pace of SNL.
Guest:That's really, I think, what prepares you for the rest of your career is doing SNL.
Guest:Now I can...
Guest:Now I actually do have what I feel like the skill set and sturdiness to deliver.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:In any situation.
Guest:In any showbiz situation.
Guest:Not going to be afraid anymore.
Guest:Not going to be afraid and not going to get up in my head too much about something because it's like...
Guest:When you're waiting around all week for your show or your opportunity to get up there, you can stew about it and truly get yourself to the point where you're going to suck.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And SNL, you don't have the time to do anything but the first funny thing you think of.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:It's like if a writer comes into my office and says, can you do Eugene Levy?
Guest:I have 20 minutes to get something together for the table read.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I can't worry about if it's not good enough.
Guest:And it's usually funnier that way.
Guest:It's usually an impression.
Guest:I know this through SNL truly now.
Guest:An impression is funnier if you kind of grab it and just do your best with it rather than meticulously fine tune it over and over.
Marc:But the thing that makes you gifted in that zone is what makes Impressionists good or bad is that you have this instinct about which beat of their being to hit.
Guest:To hit, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, that's the whole trick.
Guest:That's, I think, why Dana, even though Dana Carvey doesn't focus fully on sounding exactly like the person, Dana finds the joke in them so quickly and so spectacularly
Guest:that that i think what's that's what makes him the best like yeah um they told me i was biden the week i got there and i had to do it the first the cold open of my first show i was by yeah and after i did it once which was just like i blacked out i don't even remember it
Guest:I asked for Dana Carvey's number and I talked to him for an hour and, and he, he just told me that's what that place is like.
Guest:He's like, you just, sometimes you just, you just figure it out on the fly.
Guest:You figure it out in front of everybody on TV.
Guest:And my HW took me a year.
Guest:I was doing it.
Guest:I was doing it a lot and I didn't know what to do.
Guest:And he said, all the, the hands and the,
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Wouldn't be prudent.
Guest:All of that stuff he just found after doing it 20 times, you know?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so that really calmed me down.
Guest:I was like, I'm going to find this Biden.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I already knew kind of what I'd like to do as Trump, but Biden to this day is the one that each time I do it, I try something new because I want to, I want to kill with it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And how's it going?
Yeah.
Guest:You know, other people tell me I'm great at it.
Guest:I will never be happy with any of my work.
Guest:I'll never truly be chill about it.
Guest:I'll always go, there's... Yeah, I know.
Marc:I feel that sometimes.
Guest:Do you know what I'm talking about?
Marc:Yeah, I just did two shows last night taping an HBO special, and today I'm like, ah, did I?
Yeah.
Guest:Fuck.
Guest:You taped an HBO special.
Marc:Last night, yeah.
Guest:And you can't just love it.
Marc:No, because, but yeah, but see, it's a similar thing that I realized too, is that like I've been doing these jokes for, you know, a year and a half now.
Marc:So on a very basic level, it was another night of that.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And, you know, and like second show only because new things happened.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Like I had a little more looseness and things happened on stage that had never happened before.
Marc:I feel good about that.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But it's just like, what was good about it?
Marc:Like this one line, like it never was there.
Guest:And it'll never, and that should be, that should be a beautiful thing about it.
Marc:It is.
Marc:No, I'm happy about that.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know, whatever.
Marc:You beat yourself up.
Guest:You beat yourself up and truly the job is that show that night.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's what scares me about doing a special myself is like, well, I'll never like it as much as looking back on my year and remembering that one time in Boston.
Guest:Yeah, where that one thing happened.
Guest:Where it felt kind of right.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:Yeah, it's weird, though.
Marc:But to find stuff in a high-pressure situation, which you're doing all the time, is very exciting.
Guest:It's really exciting.
Guest:And there's something that removes that self-critical element from it, at least the negativity of it, to truly know, like, all I can do is the live show.
Guest:The live show is really all it is.
Guest:And what happens at the live show is what it is.
Guest:And that is that clip.
Guest:And they're taping it.
Guest:You're lucky.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:They're taping it.
Guest:You sort of release, you do get a release from the perfectionism.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You, you, you, and also they're not gonna, the fans kind of don't like you, uh, like until they know you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:they're still getting to know you.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:You can kind of be there, and you're listening when they're doing the opening credits, and you hear who's getting screams on their names, and you're like, they're just not going to scream at my name until they know me, and they're still getting to know me.
Guest:Yeah, and you just got to accept that.
Guest:You just go like, I'm a part of an ensemble, and
Guest:And at some point it won't be the third date anymore.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Second or third date.
Guest:It'll be, they'll be married to me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they will just know.
Guest:Here he is.
Guest:They'll know me.
Guest:Yeah, there he is.
Guest:They're just excited to see me the way my baby's excited to see me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then you just wait until they resent you.
Guest:And then you wait until they hate you.
Guest:I've always hated him.
Guest:Yeah, they go, I've never liked him for a couple years.
Guest:And then the middle of your third season, they're like, I've always liked him.
Guest:I've always ridden hard for him.
Guest:And then around your fifth year, they're like, he should have left two years ago.
Guest:I know I'm generalizing all of the YouTube comments and AV Club reviews and all of the things that you can look at after an SNL.
Guest:Do you look at it?
Guest:I'm really learning not to.
Guest:Good.
Guest:Because I just want to be a comedian.
Marc:Good.
Marc:Well, congratulations.
Marc:You're doing good.
Marc:It's good talking to you.
Guest:Was this a good one?
Guest:Did I achieve it?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:It was great.
Guest:How did you feel?
Guest:It was great talking to you.
Guest:This is really fun.
Guest:Good.
Guest:Honestly, it's on that list with JFL and SNL.
Guest:Oh, thank you.
Guest:The three-letter things that you can do.
Marc:Yeah, thank you.
Marc:I think we did the whole thing.
Marc:I got choked up in a couple places that you wouldn't have known.
Marc:It was good.
Marc:Thanks, man.
Marc:There's a story.
Marc:Jesus.
Marc:This Saturday is the final new episode of Saturday Night Live for this year.
Marc:That was, if you're just tuning in for whatever reason, at the end of a podcast, that was James Austin Johnson.
Marc:All right, look, you guys, hang out for a minute, will you?
Marc:Here's a reminder, if you're a WTF Plus subscriber, check your email today for the special promo code we sent you, all right?
Marc:You can give that code to as many people as you want, and they'll be able to get a free month of WTF Plus when they sign up.
Marc:And when you have any tier of WTF Plus, you get every single WTF episode ad-free.
Marc:So you can go all the way back to 2009 for episode 38, where I sat in a car with Kyle Kinane and reviewed the original Avatar.
Marc:I think we're going.
Guest:All right, so I'm having a hard time breathing.
Guest:I'm in the car right now with Kyle Kinane, and we just got out of Avatar.
Guest:All right, I went.
Guest:You bullied me into it.
Guest:Not you, Kyle, but people who were saying that I could not judge a film prior to seeing it.
Guest:I can't breathe.
Marc:I'm having a hard time adjusting to the Earth's environment and the atmosphere.
Guest:Three minutes out of Avatar, we pledged not to say anything from the time the movie ended.
Guest:Everybody stayed to watch the credits because those were in 3D as well.
Guest:My mind's a little fucked up.
Guest:I'm having a hard time adjusting to breathing.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Well, we saw it in 3D.
Guest:It was pretty...
Guest:Was it worth $100 million an hour?
Guest:Was it $300 million?
Guest:Is that the price tag of it?
Guest:I hear that's the low end, that possibly it's going to be higher than that.
Guest:Could they have spent more than $2,500 on the script?
Guest:Can I ask that much?
Guest:An army guy saying you're not in Kansas anymore?
Guest:That's where I checked out the first time.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:Well, there were definitely some archetypes.
Guest:And I'm using that word in lieu of the word hackneyed.
Guest:That's generous.
Guest:Hackneyed archetypes.
Guest:Hackneyed characters.
Guest:What were they trying to get that they couldn't get?
Guest:I mean, it was kind of a vague name for something that you wanted to have, but it was difficult.
Guest:Oh, it was unobtainium.
Guest:Unobtainium.
Guest:Because hard to getium, I think, was used in another movie already.
Guest:Tough to dig upium.
Guest:Can't find any of them.
Guest:The stuff we want is under these indigenous people's homeium.
Guest:Unobtainium.
Guest:Go fuck yourself.
Guest:Come on, really?
Guest:I thought that that was a joke the first time he said it, and I guess we can't be too much of a spoiler.
Guest:$300 million, you couldn't have paid somebody to come up with a better word.
Guest:You could have given me $100 and I could have come up with a better word for something you were looking for that was tough to get other than unobtainium.
Guest:Unobtainium, yeah.
Guest:Or I hope there's some there left him.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Not much left him.
Guest:Unobtainium.
Marc:Wild.
Marc:I barely remember that.
Marc:Next week, it's director week.
Marc:Rian Johnson is on Monday.
Marc:Scott Cooper is on Tuesday.
Marc:All right, you guys.
Marc:Open G. I finally locked in to Open G. So here's a little of that.
guitar solo
.
.
.
guitar solo
guitar solo
Guest:Boomer lives.
Guest:Monkey in the Fonda.
Guest:Cat angels everywhere.