Episode 1442 - Jeff Stilson
Marc:Lock the gates!
Marc:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck, buddies?
Marc:What the fuck, Nicks?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my podcast.
Marc:Welcome to it.
Marc:Today I'm going to talk to Jeff Stilson.
Marc:Jeff Stilson was a guy, he was almost a mythic character.
Marc:A great comic, a very well-respected comic back when I was coming up.
Marc:But he was always, you know, he had gone to Australia.
Yeah.
Marc:I just remember he's one of the first guys to just jump ship country wise.
Marc:It wasn't because of for political reasons.
Marc:It was a relationship.
Marc:But as I found out, but it was just sort of like great comic, you know, was on Letterman.
Marc:And then he, you know, he went to Australia and it was like, what?
Marc:And I just remember him hearing his name again.
Marc:He came up when I was talking to Kathy Ladman and he's been a writer on Letterman, Chris Rock, The Daily Show, George Lopez, lots more writing gigs, lots more shows.
Marc:And he's kind of this mythic stand-up and writer, but he's not.
Marc:He's real, and I'm going to talk to him.
Marc:But he was a great stand-up.
Marc:I think that might not... He's made a life as a writer, but he was always a very funny, very sardonic kind of stand-up.
Marc:I always liked him, and I was reminded of his existence by a couple of people who had been on the show, and I reached out to him, and now we're going to have the conversation.
Marc:Are you OK?
Marc:I know New York is it's the East Coast having a little little haze, huh?
Marc:Having been out here on the West Coast for many years where we've had the particle ridden orange haze of unbreathable air, I got to say, suck it up.
Marc:What choice do you have?
Marc:Suck it up.
Marc:Get used to it.
Marc:Make those lungs adapt.
Marc:Stay inside if you have to.
Marc:Go out there with a mask, whatever you got to do.
Marc:But this is it, man.
Marc:This is the way it is.
Marc:That's one of the horrible realizations.
Marc:And certainly I've covered this in comedy specials.
Marc:It's apocalyptic looking.
Marc:I know it is.
Marc:And I think ultimately if I lose my...
Marc:glib demeanor here, it's horrifying.
Marc:And it's horrifying in such a deep way that you almost can't process it.
Marc:I mean, you could have your moment where you're outside and you're like, holy fuck, this is terrible, this is terrible.
Marc:But there's really nowhere to go with that.
Marc:This is where we've arrived.
Marc:This is what we've arrived at.
Marc:And sadly, no matter where the fires are, there's always, at this time of year, a good chunk of North America burning, burning.
Marc:Thousands of acres burning.
Marc:I mean, I have to assume that it's going to happen in California, but we did get a lot of rain and also a lot of California burned in the last couple of years.
Marc:And there's nothing you can do but get used to it.
Marc:The time for action may have passed.
Marc:So now it's just adapt or die, man.
Marc:And it's kind of grim.
Marc:I understand it.
Marc:And you may think of it on some level, depending on what degree of denial or understanding you have of climate, that this is the way of climate.
Marc:The forest, the way of the world, stuff burns off, it regrows, it happens.
Marc:You can look for historical precedents that, hey, there were the great fires of 200 B.C.
Marc:according to rock sediment or whatever kind of information you want to gather in order to somehow put it into perspective or find some other time.
Marc:where half the world was on fire.
Marc:Knock yourself out if it makes you feel better.
Marc:But bottom line is, all you can do is fucking deal with it.
Marc:And it's horrifying.
Marc:So I feel bad for you.
Marc:My heart is with you.
Marc:We had it here, and it's one of the scariest things I've ever had to live through, really, this ongoing drought and constant fires that were literally miles away from my home, not knowing how fast or how much they would spread.
Marc:The idea that, hey, but I live in a sort of town.
Marc:There's not a lot of trees around, but when fire rips through, it rips through, man.
Marc:It just goes.
Marc:It blows through, leaving nothing but ash.
Marc:I'm sorry.
Marc:I'm sorry, East Coast.
Marc:You know, we've processed it.
Marc:And look, if you've got some ideas, if there's some action to be taken, if you think we can gather enough people together, like maybe it would probably take at least half the planet worth of people to,
Marc:to shake their fists at the sky and say that they're not going to take it anymore.
Marc:It's going to take a lot.
Marc:So again, back to square one, suck it up.
Marc:This is it.
Marc:This is how we live now.
Marc:I will be at Largo in Los Angeles tonight, but I believe that show is sold out this Saturday.
Marc:I'm a dynasty typewriter and I'll be back there on Saturday, June 24th.
Marc:The June 24th show is available.
Marc:Then I'm at Largo on Sunday, July 1st for a music show.
Marc:So that's happening.
Marc:So what do you do, people?
Marc:What do you do when there's, it seems like, as the late Pat Cooper would say, it's over.
Marc:It's over.
Marc:Pat Cooper passed away.
Marc:He was no youngster, but he was one of the greats.
Marc:He was one of the great comics and a great personality.
Marc:And I've talked about him on this show before.
Marc:It's over, David.
Marc:He used to say, it's over.
Marc:But he was... I've mentioned him.
Marc:I've referenced him many times before because I was... I think I was on a show with him or just after him.
Marc:It was a Danny LaBelle show back in New York, you know, out of Borough College, I think it was.
Marc:A comedy radio show, pre-podcast, I believe.
Marc:And he was explaining...
Marc:something amazing that never left me.
Marc:It was one of those bits of information, bits of wisdom, bits of insight that I found to be tremendous in that he was, yeah, I think Danny might've called him a star.
Marc:He said, you're a star.
Marc:And, and, and Pat said, I'm not a star.
Marc:Frank Sinatra is a star.
Marc:I'm a name.
Marc:I'm a name.
Marc:Frank is a star.
Marc:I'm a name.
Marc:So beautifully put, so precisely correct.
Marc:There are names and there are stars.
Marc:And, you know, I think I'm a name.
Marc:I'll take it.
Marc:It's better than being nobody.
Marc:I'll be a name.
Marc:R.I.P.
Marc:Pat Cooper.
Marc:God damn it, he was funny.
Marc:I've even got some of his old records.
Marc:What else can I tell you?
Marc:The vegan thing is going fine.
Marc:It's going fine.
Marc:I usually bring a brisket to this party, to this person's house I'm going to on Sunday, but I'm going to make a vegan chili.
Marc:vegetarian chili from the Angelica cookbook.
Marc:And I'm looking forward to it because it's challenging.
Marc:It's new.
Marc:It doesn't look like a recipe I'd make.
Marc:There are some, you know, dubious ingredients that I'm curious about, but you know, fuck it.
Marc:I'm going to make some cornbread, some vegan Southern style cornbread.
Marc:I have the recipes.
Marc:It's fine, man.
Marc:It's fine.
Marc:And don't email me about how there are people with, you know, LDL cholesterol of a thousand, but because of their genetic predisposition to something that has to do with triglycerides and HDL,
Marc:There's no indication that that high in LDL has any effect on their heart, and they have no plaque in their heart.
Marc:That's an email I got based on 100 people or something.
Marc:People pushing back on the seemingly, to them, limited understanding of LDL cholesterol and heart disease.
Marc:Well, here's the deal.
Marc:I have plaque.
Marc:I have some plaque.
Marc:I got some gunk in my pipes.
Marc:So I'm just going to go ahead and keep trying to keep my LDL down.
Marc:I appreciate all the research and all the homework and that there are people that never get high cholesterol and that they have no plaque in their heart.
Marc:That guy is not me.
Marc:But fine, send the information if you want.
Marc:Do what you want.
Marc:Then another guy says you should have your LDL at around 50.
Marc:It's not speculative.
Marc:Can I just listen to the cardiologist?
Marc:Is that okay?
Marc:Can I?
Marc:Just because there are these small numbers of people that are getting away with it because of their hereditary dispositions, it doesn't mean everybody.
Marc:And you just got to take whatever course of action you need to for yourself.
Marc:I guess.
Marc:So, Jeff Stilson, not here to plug anything, only here because I felt like I had overlooked him or I'd forgotten to get him.
Marc:And I've known him forever, or of him.
Marc:Met a few times along the way.
Marc:So he's got nothing to plug.
Marc:You can watch some of the shows that he's written for, like The Last OG and The Ali G Show and the Chris Rock documentary, Good Hair.
Marc:And this is something like inside...
Marc:baseball writing stuff, but it's also writing for these type of shows and also just, you know, comic life, a comic life.
Marc:This is me talking to Jeff Stilson.
Guest:How's my level?
Guest:Great.
Guest:I got all the levels here.
Guest:Just correct me if I get too loud.
Guest:I get excited talking about shit.
Marc:I don't... Don't worry about it.
Marc:Most people can't fucking talk at all on mics.
Marc:They talk so well, I don't even know how to... I don't even get a signal.
Marc:Oh, I get excited, and I start yelling, and I don't know I'm yelling.
Marc:That's all right.
Marc:I'm like that, too, until someone's crying.
Marc:That's when you know... When someone cries... I've seen some of that lately.
Marc:That's...
Marc:So, you know what?
Marc:It was so weird because I talked to two people that brought you up.
Marc:And I was like, I don't know.
Marc:Did I talk?
Marc:I've done 1,400, 1,500 of these.
Marc:Have you really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, did I talk to Stilson?
Marc:And it's like, no.
Marc:And I'm like, how is that possible?
Marc:The mythic Jeff Stilson?
Marc:It's very possible.
Marc:The mythic Jeff Stilson?
Marc:No, I don't know about mythic.
Marc:No, I mean, I have talked to lesser beings.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I hope so.
Marc:In comedy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I just don't know how that oversight happened because- Yeah, you're interviewing Obama for God's sake.
Marc:I know, but I also interview Rich Voss.
Guest:You know, it's not, you know, there's not- Well, and I literally interviewed- That's the only time Rich Voss and Obama will ever be mentioned in the same- No, he was like the next episode.
Guest:Voss is hilarious, by the way.
Guest:He was the next episode.
Guest:Dude.
Guest:Rich Voss is one of the funniest- Yeah.
Guest:Just purely funny people I've been around.
Marc:That seems very funny.
Guest:He is.
Guest:I worked with him when Rock was hosting the Academy Awards.
Guest:Rock always hires just comedians.
Guest:Not all comedians, but he loves comedians in the room.
Guest:So Voss...
Guest:wrote on the Academy Awards.
Guest:And God damn it, it was fun having him in the room.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And just to have him there, it felt like comedians, not a stuffy award show.
Marc:Well, that's the way Rock is.
Marc:Rock is a guy who always... He'll always take a punchline if you offer him one, and he likes it.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:He's a joke machine.
Guest:He loves jokes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, we're...
Guest:We write jokes and we perform jokes.
Guest:And so when you get to work with someone like that, you're grateful.
Marc:One of the biggest regrets of my life, but I have to frame it as not a regret, was I gave him an idea once.
Marc:And it was a great idea and it became a huge bit of his.
Marc:And I guess I'm happy that it got out there, but I don't get any credit for it.
Guest:You know, it was funny how that happens, isn't it?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I mean, I imagine as a writer, you got to live with that.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:I'm telling you, and I'm not... Working with Rock was the best experience of my life because, first of all, he's a good guy.
Guest:Second, he's hilarious.
Guest:Third, he's brave.
Guest:It's everything you want if you have to work for someone else.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But easy to be around.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I've worked for other people where...
Guest:your idea morphs into their idea.
Guest:And there's, at first it's, oh, we thought of it together.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then all of a sudden you're cut out completely and it's their idea.
Marc:But you've got paper.
Marc:I know, but isn't that the nature of it?
Marc:I mean, if you're like doing a working, like for me, you know, I wasn't even sober yet and it was a Catch a Rising Star, not the old one, but the middle one, the one down by FIT.
Marc:And, you know, he's working on this bit
Marc:about how come they can't find a cure for AIDS.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Guest:Right, yeah.
Marc:And then I told him at the bar, I said, there's no money in a cure.
Marc:So that kind of triggered that whole plant obsolescence bit.
Marc:But I mean, I definitely, and I don't even know if he'd remember it, but I remember it.
Guest:Oh, you remember everything you ever thought of and wrote.
Guest:I mean, that's what we do.
Guest:It became a big bit.
Marc:And it's like, it was okay.
Marc:I'm glad I helped him out.
Marc:But there was part of me that's like, ugh.
Marc:But I wouldn't have gotten it out there in the world, and it was an important bit.
Guest:You quickly learn never, if you're still doing comedy yourself, not to share your really good ideas.
Marc:A couple of guys have given me tags.
Marc:Guys have come up to me and tagged a couple of bits, and I've used them.
Marc:But, you know, it's not like at the end of a joke you're going to say, like, thanks, Tom Rhodes.
Marc:You know?
Marc:No.
Guest:No.
Guest:It's just that...
Guest:You kind of you just even know you don't expect anything on stage or on the show.
Guest:You just want to you want to hear that.
Guest:Oh, good job on that bit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I'm really grateful instead of man, that bit I wrote was spectacular.
Guest:But but it happens.
Guest:And I mean, that's why I think it takes a certain focus.
Marc:forced to to become the front man of a show yeah so it takes you really have to be driven and you have to be incredibly courageous i know but also just to like this is the why i i think you're mythic because i mean when when did you start like you're a little older than me in the business like you were doing comedy i think by the time i started doing comedy when did you start in 84 was my first open mic
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:So when was your first paid gig?
Guest:I hit at the right time as far as going on stage.
Guest:I was full-time within nine months of my first open mic.
Marc:84.
Marc:So I was full-time in 88.
Marc:So it's not that big of a difference.
Marc:But you were already established by the time I started doing... Barely.
Guest:I think I did my first Letterman in 89.
Marc:I started in like 86, but I did Evening at the Improv in 89.
Guest:Wow, you got going fast.
Marc:Well, yeah, but they had nothing but shows to fill.
Marc:It wasn't like, you know, it wasn't some great—it wasn't because I was amazing.
Marc:It was because they were churning out Evening at the Improvs in Caroline's comedy hour.
Guest:Are you vested in AFTRA?
Guest:What does that mean?
Guest:To qualify, you have to have a certain number of qualifying years to get a pension.
Marc:Oh, yeah, I think I am, yeah.
Guest:I get a tiny pension, enough to pay for my meds at some point, from after just because of those shows.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think it's five years you have to make a certain amount of money.
Guest:But in the WGA, you've got to be all set.
Guest:Oh, I'm good on that.
Guest:I have like 108 qualifying quarters.
Guest:So that's great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In fact, I, yeah, no, the WGA has been great, but you know, there were so many of those shows that you could.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:You could get MTV half hour.
Marc:Oh my God.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:We did all the same one.
Marc:Comedy on the road.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was just, they were just never ending.
Marc:Never ending.
Marc:By 89, I think I'd done two Evening at the Improvs and two Caroline's Comedy Hours with less than four years into it.
Guest:And then they did Improv Tonight on top of Evening at the Improv.
Marc:I kind of remember that.
Marc:You just find a new word to put in front of me.
Marc:Remember the Comedy Central ones, the A-list?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:You did that, too?
Guest:Oh, shit, yeah.
Guest:I did anything.
Guest:I did that Fox, what was it called?
Guest:The comic strip?
Guest:What was it on Fox?
Guest:It was on a broadcast network.
Guest:I think I did that 10 times.
Guest:And the only reason I did it was, well, of course, the money paid better than the cable ones, but they give you a present.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:They give you a gift.
Marc:Well, you judge it now, like the swag you get.
Marc:Like, I just did Fallon last week or two weeks ago.
Marc:And I'm like, and I actually, I didn't have enough room in my luggage to bring back the hoodie and the water thermos and the bag.
Marc:But I had them send it.
Marc:I'm like, I don't even know if I'm going to wear it.
Marc:But it's so nice.
Marc:It's so nice.
Marc:The presents are so nice.
Guest:Oh, it's great.
Guest:I mean, I think that's in our blood.
Guest:Free shit?
Guest:Free shit when you're, because as a, you were a road comic, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I did the road.
Guest:Eight years in a row, more than 300 days, right?
Guest:So if you go anywhere and you're treated kind of nicely instead of having to stay in a condo or whatever.
Marc:Oh, when you would do a club where they're like, you can get anything you want off the menu and it was good food, you're like, really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like anything?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Can I bring some shit home, back to the hotel?
Marc:And the bad clubs wouldn't let you eat.
Marc:there or make you pay they go oh you get half price right yeah fuck you yeah exactly I started weird because I did the one nighter scene like I came up my first year or two in comedy was doing you know one nighters in New England you know at two man shows yeah so like I started having to do a half hour there was no evolution Jesus
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, it was just that was the way that I started.
Marc:And then I went out as a middle, but I never got I never dug into the road somehow or another.
Marc:I went from from Boston to sort of headliner over time.
Guest:Man, I went out.
Guest:I just decided at a certain point I'm not equipped for any other job.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So when I started in 84, I was committed to it because I tried some other jobs.
Guest:I hated them.
Guest:And this is what I always wanted to do.
Guest:And it's still the only thing I could ever see myself.
Guest:And you're a great stand up.
Guest:Well, I wouldn't say great.
Guest:No, dude.
Guest:I kind of wish I would have... I went into writing when I got... I had two goals going into stand-up.
Guest:I don't know what yours were.
Guest:Mine, I wanted to be on The Tonight Show or Letterman.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I wanted to write on Letterman.
Guest:So...
Guest:That was a goal.
Marc:Those were my only two goals.
Marc:But you knew that.
Marc:See, that's what I was going to say is that like when you were talking about guys who front shows or guys who have the wherewithal to really throw their hat into the ring and just commit to comedy only to see if they can be one of the 10 guys that can actually make a living at that.
Marc:is that the point I'm making is that when I was coming up, or by the time I'd worked a little bit and I was in Boston, you were writing at Letterman.
Marc:And it was one of these moments where I'm like, oh, that's another way to go with this.
Marc:Because in retrospect, a lot of the smart guys that I started with all went into writing.
Marc:And I was the only idiot.
Marc:I never wanted to write for anybody.
Marc:But you're smart in the long run.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Look what you're doing now.
Marc:Dude, it could have so went bad.
Marc:By the time I started this, dude, I had nothing.
Marc:I couldn't sell tickets.
Marc:I wasn't working the road much because this kind of happened.
Marc:I had some cosmic timing.
Marc:But no, no, no, it's not cosmic.
Guest:All of it's cosmic, by the way, but you innovated.
Guest:You had the balls to try this, and that's what it takes.
Guest:You have to have... There's that... Look, all of us are courageous when we go on stage and try to make strangers laugh.
Guest:Courageous or desperate, whatever you want to call it.
Guest:It takes a certain amount of courage to do that.
Guest:But then there's that...
Guest:that other level.
Guest:And, and, and that's when you innovate and, you know, rock rock was this way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He just, he had balls and I, I, I ultimately didn't.
Guest:And I, I can, I can tell you a story about what happened to me at Letterman.
Guest:I was, I was two writers, great writers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Spike Ferriston, Donna Kerry, they're staff writers.
Marc:I remember, I knew Spike kind of.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And Spike, they went to Dave and said, we want,
Guest:Jeff, to host the 1230 show after you.
Guest:This was when Dave went to CBS.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they needed, and he had the, he owned the- Oh, that's what became Ferguson?
Guest:No, Tom, it became Ferguson, but Tom Snyder was the first one, then Kilbourne, then Ferguson.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:So they pitched- But they wanted you.
Guest:They pitched me, these two writers, great writers.
Marc:Spike was a Seinfeld writer.
Guest:He wrote, yeah, he wrote the Soup Nazi episode.
Guest:And then Donick wrote on The Simpsons and some other, really funny guys.
Guest:I mean, the writers on that show were just on another level.
Guest:So they pitched me and Dave rejects me.
Guest:And, and Dave was my idol.
Guest:Dave is white.
Guest:So when Dave rejected me, I accepted that as the truth.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Who knows better than Dave Letterman that I'm not equipped to front a show.
Guest:And, and that was it.
Guest:I gave up.
Guest:I don't know if I wanted to front a show or not, but I gave up on me ever pursuing an on, not an on camera.
Guest:I was on camera on Michael Moore's show.
Guest:as a correspondent.
Marc:Was it TV Nation?
Guest:TV Nation, yeah.
Guest:But I didn't have the balls to go out and pursue anything after that because Dave said I shouldn't.
Guest:And Dave is cool, by the way, and I trusted him.
Guest:He's my idol.
Guest:But if you want that gig, you're not going to let a person tell you no.
Guest:He could have been having a bad day.
Guest:Yeah, he was right.
Guest:He was right.
Guest:He was right.
Guest:I mean, what he went through, I've never seen, those people, what they go through when they're in that grind.
Guest:Have you talked to him recently?
Guest:The last time I saw him was a couple years ago.
Guest:We did this thing for the Mark Twain Prize, and he was great.
Guest:Nice guy.
Guest:Look, it was hard working there.
Guest:I've never worked like that.
Marc:I'll tell you, it's very funny, though, when you're programmed,
Marc:Or when you love Dave, right?
Marc:Because I love Dave too.
Marc:Was he your idol?
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Well, I mean, he was the guy I wanted to be on his show.
Guest:Yeah, me too.
Marc:I didn't think I could do what he did.
Marc:He wasn't my comedy idol, but he was my guy.
Marc:I watched his show, and I wanted to do comedy on his show.
Marc:I wanted to do panel.
Marc:I mean, I used to see Richard Lewis do his thing, and Jay would do the thing.
Marc:I really saw myself as a good panel act, you know?
Marc:But nonetheless, I ended up doing panel, but it was I was well into, you know, it was towards the end of him.
Marc:I'm trying to think when the first letterman I did for, you know, over a series of six or seven years.
Marc:But nonetheless, did you start did you do the NBC show or the CBS show?
Marc:No, I never did the NBC show.
Marc:I just couldn't get on.
Marc:I did a lot of Conan's.
Guest:Well, you just started.
Guest:I guess so.
Marc:But here's the point.
Marc:I've interviewed Letterman.
Marc:He's been to this house.
Marc:He was in the house up here.
Marc:They were still working on this
Marc:on the construction.
Marc:I was doing it in the second bedroom.
Marc:It was just so funny to see Dave walking up my sidewalk.
Marc:I'm like, this isn't fucking happening, you know?
Marc:Oh, God.
Marc:But it was great.
Marc:It was a great interview.
Marc:But a couple years later, recently, within the last year, he came to the improv, or not the improv, the comedy store.
Marc:I never go to the improv.
Marc:for some reason, with other people, to see me.
Marc:And I don't even know how they knew I was on the show.
Marc:It was a comic show.
Marc:But it was one of these situations where I'm waiting to go on, and the manager comes backstage, he goes, Dave Letterman's here.
Marc:And I'm like, what?
Marc:He's like, he's here.
Marc:And then my only thought in that moment was, am I in trouble?
Marc:God, that's so great.
Marc:But here's what I was going to say.
Marc:Afterwards, I'm just talking to him on the porch, just having regular conversation.
Marc:He was very complimentary in my work.
Marc:But we're just kind of talking, and I got a laugh out of him, and it's that Letterman laugh, right?
Marc:So this is just casual conversation, but still that laugh is like, it was like the most important thing in the world in that moment.
Guest:When I got to hang out with him, what, two years ago or whatever for this thing, and we shot a little piece for the Mark Twain Prize,
Guest:That's what you do.
Guest:You're still trying to make him laugh.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Like you're on panel on the show.
Guest:It's the best.
Guest:He's... I still... Do you ever go down the rabbit holes where you watch either Carson or the... Sometimes.
Guest:I watched yesterday.
Guest:I don't know what the hell it was.
Guest:I ended up watching Jamie Lee Curtis on Letterman, Sally Field on Letterman, Mr. T on Letterman.
Guest:And he had a reputation for not being a great interviewer.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I beg to differ.
Guest:He's really good at it.
Guest:And, and, uh, I mean, I just, I'm fascinated because I do think that was the golden era of late night when you had Carson on at 1130 in the traditional show, Dave at 1230 kind of deconstructing the, the, the traditional show.
Guest:And then Arsenio.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:On Fox?
Guest:On whatever it was.
Guest:What was it?
Guest:I think it was syndication because I think he owns it, but I think it probably aired on Fox.
Guest:But you had three very different shows and they were all innovative.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, I loved it.
Guest:I mean, that's what I live for.
Guest:Where'd you grow up?
Guest:Spokane, Washington.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:There's a club up there now.
Marc:Is there really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I liked it.
Marc:I like Spokane.
Marc:That's where White's Boots is.
Marc:The White's Boots are made in Spokane.
Marc:Oh, I didn't know that.
Marc:No one knows about them, but I love them.
Marc:I'm looking for some new boots.
Marc:I'm going to go to my hometown.
Marc:You can get measured up there.
Marc:Do you go to Spokane ever?
Guest:I do.
Guest:I have a cabin, you know, like an hour and a half from Spokane in the woods that I bought from my dad.
Guest:It's my favorite place to be in the world.
Guest:And I have all my friends from Spokane.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:I went to college in Seattle, the University of Washington, and then, you know, I've lived in big cities since.
Marc:But Spokane's great.
Marc:I love Spokane.
Marc:They got a legit club there.
Marc:And it's a pretty good room.
Marc:But, like, you can tell the town is, like, beat up.
Marc:And it's trying to sort of come back.
Marc:But I thought it was pretty charming.
Marc:And I had a good time up there.
Marc:And Seattle I worked in a lot.
Marc:But so you were a Pacific Northwest guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I started in Seattle.
Guest:Really?
Guest:At the Comedy Underground?
Guest:Comedy Underground with Drake Sather.
Guest:We started at the exact same time.
Guest:A really funny comedy.
Marc:No one ever talks about him, man.
Guest:Nobody does because the way he went out, you know?
Marc:Yeah, but also, like, you know, there wasn't enough stand-up around.
Marc:Like, you know, he was a great writer and stuff.
Marc:Great writer.
Marc:But the stand-up's so limited, it's hard to find Drake Sather stand-up.
Marc:Yeah, it's, uh, he was... He was a predecessor to Jezelnik.
Marc:Jezelnik reminds me of Sather.
Guest:Yeah, no, I think that's fair.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Yeah, just stand there with solid jokes and knock out.
Guest:Dark shit, though.
Guest:Really dark shit.
Guest:Drake was dark, but such a great guy to come up with.
Guest:And, you know, we'd led parallel lines for a long time.
Marc:So when did you, like, start hammering, like, doing the open mics and shit?
Guest:I started in 84.
Guest:At Seattle Underground.
Guest:Seattle Underground.
Guest:The first one I did was at a place called Blocks on Queen Anne.
Guest:And then the Underground was the next gig I did.
Guest:And then I had this little thing worked out where I'd do...
Guest:I do blocks on a Thursday night and I do all new material.
Guest:This is how stupid I was.
Guest:I do all new material every time I went up.
Guest:10 minutes of new material at blocks.
Guest:And then I do the best of when I went to the underground because there was more pressure.
Guest:That's where you wanted to get better.
Guest:What was the name of the building it was in?
Guest:The bar?
Guest:Swanee's.
Guest:Swanee's, right.
Guest:Pioneer Square.
Guest:Do you know the story behind Swanee?
Guest:No.
Guest:Have you ever seen The Battered Bastards of Baseball?
Guest:No.
Guest:It's this great documentary.
Guest:Kurt Russell's dad bought a team in Portland.
Guest:Oh, yes, I knew about them.
Guest:Swanee was the catcher on that team.
Guest:And we all knew he played baseball, but I only saw that documentary a few months ago, and he's in it, and he's a left-handed catcher, which I guess is unusual.
Guest:I'm a baseball fan, but I didn't know that was a big deal.
Guest:And, you know, he would hang out.
Guest:He's a great guy.
Guest:And he put comedy underneath his bar.
Guest:And it was a great room.
Guest:The original room.
Marc:No, it was there.
Marc:I'd done it.
Marc:It was dank and weird.
Marc:And it was a basement, so it had low ceilings.
Marc:And it was almost moldy in there.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, Seattle's a great town.
Guest:I love Spokane.
Guest:I'll probably move back there at some point.
Guest:You think so?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I just do.
Guest:Because now you can kind of work...
Guest:You can work Zoom if you're going to write.
Marc:But did it bounce back?
Marc:I mean, do you feel like it's... Because there was definitely... It felt like a kind of meth-y contingent, and it was still pretty beat up.
Marc:But I could see the framework of the city was charming.
Marc:When I was there, I thought, yeah, I could kind of live here.
Marc:But then a couple hours away, there's nothing but Nazis.
Guest:Well, the Nazis have kind of been run out, believe it or not.
Guest:That was Hayden Lake, and they had this compound there.
Guest:And...
Guest:they got sued and they lost their compound.
Guest:So now they've gone either, I don't know if they found some other state, but they've gone way off the grid.
Guest:So yeah, that's kind of, that stuff's gone.
Guest:I can't say it's gone, but it's not.
Marc:It certainly doesn't have... Well, no, now it's your neighbor, and they don't talk about it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:No, it's... A little lighter than the full Nazi.
Guest:It's... Spokane is... I like Spokane, and, you know, the truth is I want to get some acreage.
Guest:I want a place where...
Guest:What are you waiting for?
Guest:This is a pathetic fantasy, but, you know, for my dogs to run free.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And they do that, and I have a cabin in the woods.
Guest:So then where do you move first?
Marc:after when you started doing comedy?
Guest:I went to... Okay, so I started in Seattle.
Guest:Always wanted to live in New York my whole life.
Guest:All my favorite sports teams were from New York for some reason.
Guest:And so my goal was... So within a couple years, I had moved to New York.
Guest:And that's probably where we met because I think I moved to New York in 87 after spending two years on the road.
Marc:I was like... Yeah, I wasn't quite...
Marc:going down there yet i mean in 89 that's really where i started you know unless you came up to boston to work which i did i worked uh stitches a lot and i think i did the comedy connection yep and uh yeah those two clubs and yeah so i probably i might have met you up there but wait in seattle other than drake were there guys you came up with that made the cut um out of our class
Guest:I don't think so.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, it was, you know, and not because they weren't funny.
Guest:It's just that you had this scene at that point, Vancouver Island, really rough gigs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So the comics would kind of...
Guest:you know, build an act that would work in those rooms.
Marc:It's so funny though, when you say Vancouver Island, the reason a gig like that is tough is because it's a transient population of vacationers or just local island people.
Guest:That's Victoria.
Guest:But then you also had like the fishing communities up in Nanaimo and stuff.
Guest:And it was, it was like a microphone.
Guest:One-nighters.
Guest:One-nighters.
Guest:A microphone on a disco floor.
Marc:That's what I did in New England.
Marc:Yeah, we'd go all the way up into Maine.
Marc:Yeah, that's how the first years of my fucking career started.
Marc:Yeah, and it's rough.
Marc:You walk in and you're like, where am I doing it?
Guest:Yeah, and then there was one, it was called the Tally Ho.
Guest:It was actually in Victoria, so you thought it would be halfway decent, but it was at noon on a Sunday, right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they turn off the hockey game.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And they go, it's time for comedy.
Guest:And I know.
Guest:And it's like, and they go, boo.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it went on for like 15 years.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They never stop.
Guest:Why do you seem to hate this?
Marc:It's like there was one in Lowell called Derby Park, the Derby Park in Lowell, Massachusetts, which was one of my first gigs.
Marc:It was a similar thing and just an awkward situation.
Marc:Went on forever.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So you go to New York.
Guest:and where are you working uh my home club was catch a rising star but i but my second club that i loved was the strip those are the two and then the cellar and but the cellar wasn't what it was now then no and then i and i also did um uh god this is pathetic uh stand up new york sure yeah so those were carrie huffman carrie huffman oh my god
Guest:What a character.
Guest:He's a Sinatra impersonator.
Guest:He's unbelievable.
Guest:He was such a character.
Guest:I loved Carrie and I love that room.
Guest:And then it got really bad.
Marc:I never loved that room.
Marc:The ceilings were too high.
Marc:It was weirdly, you know.
Guest:No, it was a weird room, but the audiences were good.
Marc:Yeah, somehow he put it on the map, you know, but he was sort of a cunt.
Guest:A lot of people hated Kerry.
Guest:I have a lot of, but just were annoyed by him.
Guest:I just found him so odd and interesting.
Marc:He came up to me and said, you know, comedy is really not about what you're doing anymore.
Marc:I'm like, what?
Guest:Isn't that great when you got advice from from club managers?
Marc:Ultimately, just by virtue of me surviving the business, a lot of these guys that were not nice to me have come around.
Marc:You know, I guess that's just what happened.
Guest:It beats you up and you kind of... I mean, look it.
Guest:It really is like a TV show survivor.
Guest:I mean, it beats you up and you realize you're a dick at times in your life.
Guest:I think I was a total dick for years.
Guest:I was very opinionated about my shit.
Guest:And it was like... And I was wrong a lot of the time.
Marc:Like how?
Guest:What was your... Oh, I just had these notions about comedy and I didn't... I didn't...
Guest:I thought you stripped comedy down to your bare self, right?
Guest:So I never added any performance to my show.
Guest:And so it's like, really?
Guest:You want to watch this guy?
Guest:It was all on the jokes.
Guest:It was all on the jokes.
Guest:But you can, you know, people, this is what rock, let me just tell you a quick rock story just because it was so impressive to me.
Guest:So working on the show, the Chris Rock show, and he told me about after he got fired from SNL, he decided, well, no one's going to ever hire me.
Guest:again so i better be a good stand-up comedian right so he started studying preachers and stand-up comics and he decided he had had to add performance to his show and so he reinvented himself if you remember when we early on chris would just stand there like us he still does it you don't stand there though do you move around i move around but but chris when he's working out joke yes does that does that yeah that's his that's his default position yeah but then when he figured out i gotta you know i gotta perform here yeah and
Guest:So he, most comics, how they started is how they end, right?
Guest:If you started this way, you end that way, and you wait for the world to change and all of a sudden discover you.
Guest:Rock said, no, I only reached this level of success.
Guest:So he completely, when he did Bring the Pain, he's pacing across the stage, he's like a panther, and it's like...
Guest:You know, that's, that's amazing to me.
Marc:But yeah, but it was like a conscious decision because, you know, I've always known that about him because when you talk to Chris, you know, he can barely maintain eye contact.
Marc:He's looking down, he's soft spoken.
Marc:And then when he gets up there, that's like the other thing that's, you know, this is the construction of Chris Rock of who he is on stage.
Guest:And he, it's, he's not, it's not, you know, you watch Eddie Murphy.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:He's just, it's just part of who he is, that movement, all that shit.
Guest:Chris, I have more respect for Chris because he had to work at it.
Marc:Right, he had to come up with a persona.
Marc:Murphy's just one of those guys where it's like, no matter, he's just going to be funny no matter what.
Marc:Isn't that crazy?
Marc:There's only a few of them, you know, but... I know.
Marc:But it's kind of great to watch.
Guest:I watched him on Letterman 2 yesterday, and it's just like...
Guest:Man, that's crazy.
Guest:It was his first appearance.
Marc:There's just people that, you know, are effortlessly hilarious without seemingly not trying, you know?
Marc:Will Ferrell's like that.
Guest:Will Ferrell's unbelievable.
Marc:Where he just, like, he throws a switch and it's fucking over, you know?
Guest:Tracy Morgan can be like that.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:I mean, he does this weird... Yeah, he's a savant.
Guest:He does this weird thing, especially on talk shows where, you know, he's just... You also don't know what he's gonna do.
Marc:No.
Marc:No.
Marc:He's just like, is he okay?
Marc:There's always sort of like, where's this going?
Marc:There's something menacing about his kind of, you just don't know what the fuck that guy's gonna say or do.
Guest:No, and you know what's weird about it?
Guest:I've worked for him, you know, not working together anymore, but I worked with him for 10 years.
Marc:On what?
Guest:On his TV show, on his stand-up, everything he did, I, you know, I would work on with him.
Guest:You were his guy?
Guest:One of his guys, but I think at a certain point I was his guy.
Marc:What did he want out of you, jokes?
Guest:Jokes and just, you know, he knew I thought about shit more than he was going to.
Guest:So, you know, I mean, Tracy just wants to be funny.
Guest:He sent me, like, on his phone once, he just...
Guest:a little video of him taking a pie and putting it in his face and going, I just like to be funny.
Guest:You know, and it's like, that's, you wouldn't believe who his influences are.
Guest:I mean, he goes back to the 50s.
Guest:He loves Jackie Gleason, right?
Guest:Well, that makes sense if you watch him.
Guest:But he kind of absorbed this stuff not in a, you know, the way we would.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Where I would study comedy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Tracy just absorbs it.
Guest:And he's just, I mean, that's, he's just funny.
Marc:No, yeah, he's an oddball.
Marc:And he's a little crazy.
Guest:Not a little crazy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You got to understand, he got sober like 20 years ago.
Marc:I know.
Guest:He's so crazy, he doesn't appear to be sober.
Marc:When he wasn't sober, I remember when he wasn't sober, and it was way out there, dude.
Guest:And really funny.
Guest:One of the funniest alcoholics I've ever seen.
Marc:All right, so you get to New York, and you're just hammering stand-up?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I loved it because...
Guest:I'd do 20 sets in a week.
Guest:I'd do five sets on a Friday, seven on a Saturday.
Guest:I took Mondays off, but every other night I'd do three.
Marc:And you're not married then?
Marc:No.
Marc:I mean, you're just doing the thing.
Guest:I'm just doing, I'm just doing and loving it.
Marc:And so when do the first breaks come?
Marc:You still got it in your mind that you want to do Letterman.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:Maybe right on Letterman.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I may, I think may...
Guest:May 10th?
Marc:Because you did a Comedy Central half hour and all that shit, right?
Guest:I did a HBO half hour.
Guest:Yeah, me too.
Guest:Yeah, those half hour comedies.
Marc:They barely did them.
Marc:You were in that crew?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:At the Fillmore?
Marc:Yes, at the Fillmore.
Guest:Do you have a poster?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay, I was going to say, I have extras if you don't.
Guest:But I think we were in different weeks.
Guest:It might have been.
Marc:Because my poster's a clock, and it was me and Mancia and Judy Gold and Dana Gould.
Marc:Yeah, I wasn't in that one.
Marc:Janine Garofalo, Jonathan Katz.
Guest:That's so funny.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, so you did those.
Marc:That was like 195, though.
Marc:When did you do them?
Guest:I think about 95.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Yeah, because they didn't last... I think I did it.
Marc:They didn't last long.
Guest:Yeah, they didn't last long, and they were fun.
Guest:The film war was unbelievable, right?
Marc:It was great, yeah.
Marc:It was a very exciting thing for me.
Guest:Yeah, I did Letterman for the first time in May of 89, I think the 10th.
Marc:That's so funny.
Marc:I just remembered something where...
Marc:David Cross, like he, I remember he told me this, that he was so drunk at my Fillmore taping for the half hour, like he was up in the balcony and I was on stage.
Marc:And at some point he decided like, I'm going to go up on stage and fuck with him.
Marc:And this was a TV taping.
Marc:And he was walking down to do that.
Marc:And he somehow got hold of himself.
Guest:that's so great oh yeah i think david was part of mine yeah that makes sense yeah it was probably the week after yeah but it was um you know uh no so new york was spectacular and that if you were first of all i had this notion in my head that that's where you went to do stand up and then it's coming true and it was every every night was
Guest:a dream come true for me.
Guest:It was, I couldn't believe that I'm on stage at Catch a Rising Star.
Guest:All these great comics are, are still there.
Guest:Are there.
Guest:Dangerfield used to come in all fucked up.
Guest:And it was, it was hilarious.
Guest:And all these, all these people, Seinfeld was, you know, just breaking in and, um,
Marc:Was Larry around?
Guest:Yeah, Larry, but Larry would never make it through a set.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Without storming off.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we would sit in the back and, you know, it was like an over or under six minutes.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And Kevin Meany.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Do you remember Kevin Meany?
Marc:Of course.
Marc:I was in Boston when he was coming up.
Marc:I remember Kevin.
Guest:God.
Guest:I mean, nobody could blow a room out.
Guest:I mean, he did this 20 minutes and it was.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was spectacular.
Guest:And you can't even explain to people what Meany was.
Marc:He just had this.
Marc:It was almost like Ethel Merman.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It was.
Guest:I mean, it was, it was, it was fantastic.
Guest:So, so I did that.
Guest:And then, you know, they, they had that weird audition process.
Guest:Do you remember the Letterman audition process where the producer would come in a million times, Morty and.
Marc:Barbara Morton.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I, I just remember catch.
Marc:Like I couldn't get in there.
Marc:I, and I, I eventually was too proud to kiss Louis Ferranda's ass.
Marc:So I, I, I did, I wasn't part of that thing.
Guest:Well, every room kind of had its favorite comedians, and you'd find the one that really liked you.
Guest:A comic strip, Lucian wasn't a big fan of mine.
Marc:No, he said to me, he said, I already have enough angry white guys.
Guest:Yeah, they put you in these categories.
Guest:See, now, I was the opposite.
Guest:I was the laconic.
Guest:Right.
Guest:laid back.
Guest:You need some, with Lucian, who ended up being a good friend.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:So, but he passed me and then, you know, I kind of worked my way up the ladder a little bit, but it was, it was, he didn't, you know.
Marc:I was working at the, at the original improv with Silver.
Marc:See, I never did that.
Marc:Yeah, well, that was because it was this weird kind of ghost town of a place.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And Silver Friedman was running things and was sort of like a weird collection of guys over there.
Marc:But that was the place.
Marc:But she would let me work.
Marc:And Barry Katz had that room downtown, the Boston Comedy Club.
Marc:And he let me work.
Marc:But like she didn't let me in the cellar until I did an HBO half hour until 95.
Marc:And then Lewis, I never played the original catch.
Marc:I just didn't.
Guest:Well, they all had their prejudices or whatever it was.
Guest:But Lucian let me in.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, put it there.
Marc:And Carrie let me work, yeah.
Guest:Boston Comedy Club was a weird room, I thought.
Marc:It was like barely a room.
Guest:It was just run by, you know, like kids.
Guest:Such an odd choice to name it, the Boston Comedy Club, when people in New York hate people for a while.
Marc:Well, the idea was all these comics that, you know, Barry had come down from Boston.
Marc:And you remember, there was all those regional guys that stayed up there, dude.
Marc:Don Gavin, Steve Sweeney, Kenny Rogerson.
Marc:You know, great fucking comics up there.
Marc:Joe Yannetti, Lenny Clack, you know.
Guest:I ran into Kenny.
Marc:George McDonald.
Guest:And reconnected with him.
Guest:I just love Kenny Rogerson.
Guest:So funny, dude.
Guest:So funny and a great guy.
Guest:And, um...
Guest:Ran into him last year in... Playing golf?
Guest:No.
Guest:I opened for Louis Black on the road.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So, you know, Louis has this incredible following.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, he's been doing it for 35.
Guest:Greatest guy in the world, by the way.
Guest:Nice collection of older people.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:No, it's, I mean, our audience is older.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I bet you yours is younger because you have this.
Marc:Well, I mean, what's interesting is, like, because I did this special on HBO, you know, like, I've done two at Netflix.
Marc:I've done here, there, there.
Marc:But HBO, it's like, it's people my age and older have HBO still.
Marc:It still means something somehow.
Marc:It's kind of interesting.
Marc:I'm just noticing that.
Guest:So, how many specials have you done?
Guest:How many hours have you done?
Marc:A lot.
Marc:Thinky Pain, More Later, Too Real, End Times Fun.
Marc:I think I've done five.
Marc:Five.
Marc:Televised hours.
Guest:That's amazing.
Marc:And then another five CDs.
Guest:You're very prolific.
Marc:Ten hours.
Guest:Yeah, I would love to do an hour sometime, but I don't think I'll ever get the shot.
Marc:No?
Guest:No.
Guest:I don't think... No, you got to be... You have to have the guts to go out on your own to do that.
Marc:What do you mean you can do that?
Marc:You headlined for years.
Guest:Yeah, but that was years ago.
Guest:I mean, once... I headlined...
Guest:Until I took the writing gig at Letterman.
Marc:See, this is the thing about you writing.
Marc:It's like there was like at some point it was like, yeah, you know, Stilson's writing for Letterman.
Marc:I'm like, oh, fuck, man.
Marc:You can just do that.
Marc:And then all of a sudden it's like, what happened to Stilson?
Marc:I think he's in Australia.
Marc:And I'm like, what?
Marc:Yeah, that came later.
Marc:But OK, so how do you get the job at Letterman?
Guest:Uh, audition after audition after audition.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you're talking about getting the show and then they decide.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then they decide if you're ready or not.
Guest:And then just do the show to do the show and you craft the set.
Guest:And then I did.
Guest:And I, you know, I did a few of those and then they offered me a writing job based on that.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So when the show went to CBS.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then so I thought, well, that's the second part of my dream.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I was an idiot.
Guest:I had never written on a show before, and I just stepped into the fire.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've never...
Guest:Dave's starting up at 1130 on CBS.
Guest:He wants to be the king of late night.
Guest:And we worked, you know, if you're a comic, I worked hard as a standup compared to most standups.
Guest:I'd write three, four hours a day and do my show and try new jokes every night.
Marc:But I would actually sitting for three, four hours.
Guest:I did.
Guest:That was my favorite thing.
Guest:I never got tired of the road, by the way.
Guest:I love seeing the country.
Guest:I love traveling with my word processor, I think, at that point.
Guest:And I would write, and I'd drink a whole pot of coffee, write jokes, and then crash, take a nap, and then get up and get ready for my show.
Marc:Yeah, this is what I do now.
Guest:And I talk to people.
Guest:Yeah, good for you.
Marc:I would do it forever if I could.
Marc:I wish I'd written more jokes for me, like in the shower today, like I had an idea, you know, and my jokes always start with ideas.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But then you go on stage and work them out, right?
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:See, I, I never developed that muscle and I should have because you get bits that way as opposed to just jokes.
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:So I never did that.
Guest:I, I got in this thing with index cards and I'd write the jokes.
Marc:That's like Carlin style.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I do index cards and, you know, learn the joke, you know, and still know no better feeling in the world than a new joke that works.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But like, it's weird because when I do that, in my experience of having actually having jokes that are kind of their own thing, like because they just happen occasionally.
Marc:I don't write them, but I'm like, well, this is a joke.
Marc:And it's like, ba-doom, ba-doom, ba-doom, ba-ding.
Marc:It's like I do it a couple of times.
Marc:I'm like, all right.
Marc:You know, because it doesn't go.
Guest:No, you've got to, you have to develop it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You have to develop some kind of chunk.
Guest:But if you remember, our whole thing, or maybe it wasn't for you, but it was for me, was to get on The Tonight Show or Letterman where you did jokes.
Marc:well yeah well you had to figure out well I mean I eventually realized that I had jokes within what I was doing and I did those shows that people don't even realize that challenge or maybe they do but you know to do five and a half minutes weird right so fucking weird yeah and then like when you do Letterman you got Eddie Brill whoever was you know the comics producer or the booker saying like you gotta change that one and I'm like what do you mean it works it's like that language isn't right it's like you're gonna kill me he's like don't worry about it the audience is hot as fuck just do it like I told you don't do it
Marc:And then you do it, and it worked, and you're like, all right, but still didn't feel as good.
Guest:I didn't have to deal with Eddie.
Guest:By the time Eddie was there, I'd done enough that I would just go to Bill Sheft and say, Bill, what do you think?
Guest:Because he was still opening?
Guest:Well, Bill, no, he wasn't, but he was a writer on the show, and Bill was a stand-up, and Bill's just fucked up.
Guest:And I trusted him completely.
Guest:Recently in the news for quoting Belzer's last words.
Marc:I don't even know if those were really Belzer's last words, but Chef is quoted everywhere saying his last words were, fuck you, motherfucker.
Guest:Motherfuckers, yeah.
Guest:No, I talked to Bill after that because we're still really good friends.
Guest:Were those really his last words?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So he's, I mean...
Guest:Sheft is one of those... I couldn't have survived that show, Letterman, without Sheft, because he was... I wasn't used to that, being in that environment.
Guest:It was such pressure.
Guest:We would write 60 jokes before...
Guest:lunch.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it was, you'd eat all three meals.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You'd eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner on the show.
Marc:And how long were you there?
Guest:I was there two years from 93 to 95.
Guest:And, and it was a crash course in television, but I couldn't, that's kind of when I became an insomniac, I couldn't sleep.
Guest:My mind was racing all the time, coming up with material ideas and stuff because you just want to survive it.
Guest:And plus it was,
Guest:Dave was so funny.
Guest:You didn't want to disappoint him.
Guest:And, but he, you know, the truth is he didn't, he didn't give a lot back.
Guest:So you're, you're like the kid who has the dad who doesn't love you.
Marc:You know, daddy, I hit a home run today.
Marc:He was that for everybody.
Guest:I think that was what made him popular.
Guest:I know he was.
Guest:And, and, but the great thing about Letterman is even though he's hard on you, he's harder on himself.
Guest:Whereas some people in show business are just hard on you.
Marc:They're just assholes.
Marc:But he's like, oh, no, look, he's beating the shit out of himself.
Guest:He's beating the shit out of himself.
Guest:Oh, we can't even put this on the air.
Guest:He'd talk about, you know, he'd watch a tape.
Guest:I don't know how you do it.
Guest:Do you watch yourself after you do something?
Guest:I can't do it.
Marc:I have to just to make sure that cuts good.
Marc:Like with a special, you have to.
Guest:Yeah, with a special, yeah.
Guest:He would just pound himself after each show.
Guest:This is horrible.
Guest:You can't put that on the air.
Marc:What else are you going to put on the air?
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:How did it end there?
Guest:Well, I didn't get picked up.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, and then I, yeah.
Marc:But it established you because then it seems like you've written for a very eclectic bunch of stuff.
Marc:A lot of black dudes and also like, because you wrote for Tracy, you wrote for Chris, you wrote for what other shows?
Guest:Oh, well, I've written for George Lopez.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:No, you know what happened was, okay, so after I left Letterman, it's like, okay, I can't do Late Night anymore.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And then Rock, who was, you know... Rock, but somehow or another, you got into the cycle of black comics.
Guest:Because it was so interesting to me.
Guest:I'd led my whole life as a white person, right?
Guest:So now...
Guest:Rock opens up this world to me that I wasn't even aware of.
Guest:I didn't know what fucking hip hop was, right?
Guest:And then so rock was great because he loves jokes.
Guest:You'd write these jokes and you'd go, all right, well, let's just, nice try.
Guest:It's not a, it's a, let's make this a Lil' Kim joke.
Guest:So because our world wasn't the world that every other late night show was,
Marc:So you were there with Sklar and Louis C.K.
Guest:and Agna.
Guest:And Agna and Wanda and Olly Leroy.
Guest:Olly Leroy, yeah.
Guest:I mean, Frank Sebastiano, Nick DiPaolo.
Marc:What an eclectic crew.
Guest:Eclectic.
Guest:That's what Chris liked.
Guest:And great writers.
Guest:And the Letterman writers were unbelievable.
Guest:Was C.K.
Guest:the head writer?
Guest:No.
Guest:Louis kind of...
Guest:Came and went on his own.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I was Ed Ryder.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And then Ali was like the sketch guy.
Guest:I was the monologue.
Guest:Agnes.
Guest:I came up with Agnes.
Guest:What an oddball.
Guest:And he's in Thailand.
Guest:I know.
Guest:He's a great guy.
Guest:Stay in touch with Tom.
Guest:Is he all right?
Guest:Yeah, he's great.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:He's got a kid.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, Tom is, you know Tom.
Guest:He's in his own head.
Marc:What the joke he used to do about like, you know, I saw a belt.
Marc:That would cost $300.
Marc:He says, if I bought a $300 belt, that's pretty much the whole outfit.
Guest:Right.
Guest:No, he was... Agnell was hilarious and a great writer, too.
Guest:A really good writer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that was an amazing staff.
Guest:And then it opened my eyes to, oh, well, I don't just have to write for... And I don't want to sound racist or whatever.
Guest:I don't want to just write for white people.
Guest:I want to experience...
Guest:different cultures.
Guest:So I wrote for Ellen.
Guest:I wrote for Ellen.
Guest:That was, you know, everyone's pounding on Ellen now.
Guest:I don't want to do that.
Guest:I don't want to pile on her.
Guest:But she was so much fun to write for.
Guest:Ellen has her own voice.
Guest:And I wrote on one of her sitcoms and I also wrote on the Emmys, Academy Awards.
Marc:It's a specific weird thing that I think she developed in San Francisco.
Marc:It's sort of a, like, cause like I used to, early on, I used to think like, you know, her and Johansson,
Guest:Yes, absolutely.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Kind of this odd stream of consciousness, right?
Guest:So you get to write for Ellen.
Guest:It's not like anybody else.
Guest:I used to love it and I'd time it.
Guest:And this is my theory is that she drank Chardonnay at night.
Guest:So I'd wait until I thought she had her second Chardonnay.
Guest:And that's when I'd send her.
Guest:my jokes and I get these great emails back about how she loved them.
Guest:And, and, and so I had, I had a very positive experience with Ellen, even though she could be hard.
Guest:Right.
Guest:How many of these people aren't rock is really the only one.
Guest:George Lopez wasn't hard.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I got to write for Lopez on his sitcom.
Marc:You wrote like, you wrote like a hundred episodes of that thing.
Guest:And we didn't make it.
Guest:It was this weird 1090 thing.
Marc:Oh, that's right.
Marc:So you just came in right under it.
Guest:And we just did the 10.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:Yeah, we did the 10 because a certain number, it was based on Tyler Perry.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:that you'd make 10 episodes, no pilot, and you had to get a certain rating.
Marc:And then if you did, you get 100.
Guest:And then if you got the rating, the back 90 kicked in.
Marc:Right, it was syndicated.
Marc:So that was pretty recently.
Guest:No, it was for FX.
Guest:And ours and then Martin Lawrence and Kelsey Grammer had one together, and neither one made it.
Guest:It was the wrong network.
Marc:Charlie Sheen's made it.
Guest:Charlie Sheen made it.
Guest:I think that was the only one.
Marc:Yeah, that wasn't that long ago.
Marc:I thought you wrote on his original show.
Marc:I didn't.
Guest:But I've worked with, George and I used to play golf as road comics together.
Guest:And I just love George.
Guest:George is another guy.
Marc:He's another guy that has a very sort of unique and menacing voice as a comic.
Guest:Oh, he does.
Guest:He's got a deep voice.
Marc:But I mean, he's like a killer, man.
Guest:Oh, you watch him take that stage, he's another guy who just doesn't take hostages.
Guest:And he's funny, and he's smart, and he's a really good guy, and I've had the good fortune of working with him a lot.
Guest:You did Larry Wilmore's show.
Guest:I did that.
Guest:That was a Showtime thing, but I think it led to him getting... Did you meet him at Rock?
Yeah.
Guest:Larry Wilmore, no.
Guest:How did I know Larry?
Guest:I don't even know how I knew Larry.
Guest:I think we did stand-up together.
Marc:Oh, and Wayne Brady was just in here?
Guest:Oh, Wayne was, yeah.
Guest:That was a thing, part of a Brillstein Grey overall that I had, and they assigned me to that show.
Marc:And you were on The Daily Show before John?
Guest:No.
Guest:I was with John briefly after Chris Rock, but I moved to L.A.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And to be honest with you,
Guest:I just didn't find The Daily Show interesting.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I didn't.
Guest:It was too... You don't got to tell me.
Guest:I mean, I didn't find it interesting.
Guest:It was... After working on Rock, it just never was my thing.
Guest:I just thought, like, okay, you take a joke.
Guest:And nothing... A lot of people loved it.
Guest:It just... After Rock and Letterman, the bar was...
Guest:just high and different.
Guest:It was just different.
Guest:Those shows were so exciting for me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And what, what'd you do for Ali G?
Marc:I was a writer and producer.
Marc:So, but my God, but that seems like a completely different world.
Marc:Is that guy looking for jokes?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:It's so brilliant.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, you talk about someone who's hard to work for.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Here he is in the eye of the storm.
Guest:Every time he does those interviews, people think he's real.
Guest:That character is real.
Guest:Whatever character it is.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You get him out of that environment?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's like, he's crazy.
Guest:And you're going, you can handle this, but you can't handle checking into a hotel.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, but he's... No one... You talk about being innovative.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No one had ever done anything like that before.
Guest:No, it was crazy.
Guest:And it was so, so much fun.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But also awful because a lot of the... You know, I liked Ali G, the character, because he...
Guest:would take down people with power.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But Borat kind of preyed on rubes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, you get 50 bucks and then they'd stand there and.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's where you drew the line.
Guest:Well, I mean, I did it on the Daily Show too.
Guest:And it's like, I don't like to.
Guest:And even on TV Nation, we did that a few times where you take down some guy in Alabama who's dim witted and has no idea what's happening to him.
Guest:That he's going to be on national television.
Marc:You felt bad for him.
Guest:I felt horrible, but I didn't have the balls to walk away from it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I still wanted my check.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, when did you go to Australia?
Marc:Because we're talking to Ronnie Chang the other day.
Marc:He's like, oh, Stilson was a major influence kind of thing.
Guest:I saw Ronnie Chang.
Guest:when he first started out.
Marc:He's solid, dude.
Guest:He's good.
Guest:He's funny as hell.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he did, it was, when he first started out, he was like this.
Guest:In Melbourne.
Guest:In Melbourne.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was like this Asian Fonzie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, it was the opposite of the stereotype.
Guest:He'd come out and he'd challenge the audience.
Guest:And it was just like brilliant and funny and a great guy.
Guest:And yeah, I felt, you know, my friend Glenn Robbins, who was a TV star in Australia, a comedy star there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:saw him first and we used to do shows together and um anyway so yeah i was there uh my what my ex-wife uh uh is australian and we went to um live there because her family was there what years was this 2006 to 2013.
Guest:So you're there, man.
Guest:Seven years.
Guest:And I did stand-up there, which was fun, and I worked on some TV shows there.
Guest:But I also would do shows, American shows.
Guest:I worked on it with Seinfeld on The Marriage Ref, which was the ill-fated Seinfeld, the only ill-fated Seinfeld show.
Guest:But Jerry was really good to me, and I had fun on that show.
Guest:And I could come back.
Marc:I didn't completely... But you must have done a lot of stand-up, more than you had been in a long time when you went to Australia.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it was with these two guys, Glenn Robbins and Mick Molloy, hilarious guys, by the way, who have high profiles in Australia.
Guest:And I had a little bit of a profile from doing this one TV show there, but I was basically riding on their coattails.
Guest:And we'd go to theaters, and I got to see all of Australia, these great old historic theaters.
Guest:But you're back in the saddle with the stand-up.
Guest:Loved it.
Guest:And I've never been completely out of the saddle.
Guest:Like I've been opening for Lewis now the last five years.
Guest:And he lets me do- How's he doing?
Guest:He's doing great.
Guest:Good.
Guest:And he's hilarious, by the way.
Guest:And I mean, you talk about a pro.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He did after the pandemic.
Guest:We didn't do shows for 500 days.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He came out with-
Guest:a brand new hour.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he just did it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the only other person I've seen do that is rock on this tour.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The first week he went back out, I went with him and, uh, I couldn't believe it.
Guest:What, the polish?
Guest:Punch up?
Guest:Whatever.
Guest:He just likes having comics around him, but yeah, you pitch jokes, you pitch ideas, he wants to hear what you think of bits.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, um,
Guest:He, the first night, he hadn't done a full hour or whatever in five years or whatever.
Guest:The first night, he does 55 minutes of all new stuff.
Guest:Who, Chris?
Guest:Chris.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then the next night, he's over an hour, never goes under an hour again.
Guest:And it's like, who in the fuck can do that?
Guest:If I do, you know, if I do five new minutes in a night, I'm pretty happy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm really happy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And here's a guy who does that.
Guest:And the only two people I've seen do that are- Lewis.
Guest:Are Lewis and Rock.
Marc:So-
Marc:When you do these award shows, which you've done a lot of, you just get a call and it's a room full of joke writers.
Guest:Can be.
Guest:Yeah, sometimes it's that.
Guest:I mean, look, there are two ways to write on award shows.
Guest:I love them, by the way, because, you know, we grew up with comedy variety, right?
Guest:Flip Wilson.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Sonny and Cher, Johnny Cash.
Marc:Tony Orlando.
Guest:All that.
Guest:Tony Orlando and Don.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so...
Guest:When I first started doing them, you had these producers like Don Misher.
Guest:Did you ever do anything for Misher?
Guest:No.
Guest:He's like a pro.
Guest:He did the Super Bowl show.
Guest:He's just like unbelievable professional.
Guest:And I loved it because there are all these different elements.
Guest:But you can either be the host writer, you know, like when Rock did the Academy Awards, I wrote for him.
Guest:I did when Ellen did, I wrote for her.
Guest:The host gets...
Guest:his or her own writers, and then you can be the show writer, which is just where you're writing for presenters and all that stuff.
Marc:And don't you also have just sort of this grab bag of jokes that you could pitch to any presenter almost?
Guest:You try to tailor, you know, it's interesting when you're writing for presenters, they usually come in with an idea and you try to, you know, you pitch ideas on that.
Guest:Honor their persona.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:And, you know, sometimes you come up with just stuff.
Marc:I think I'm more thinking about the roast.
Marc:With roast, it's sort of like you just make all these fucking roast jokes.
Guest:Yeah, roast jokes are fun.
Marc:And it's sort of like, who wants this one?
Guest:Yes, roast jokes are fun.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And, um, uh, but yeah, I, I like those and yeah, are they the best?
Guest:I mean, especially now it's just a dying animal.
Marc:Movie star culture is different.
Marc:You know, when we were younger, you know, there was, everything was smaller.
Marc:So like, you know, you got used to Jack sitting up front, you know, some of the old people were still alive.
Marc:Now I don't know who half the people are just by virtue of the business is so expansive and you don't get to see everything.
Marc:Everything's different.
Guest:And there's no mystery.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Right, there's no mystery, and we don't hang the same thing we used to on movie stars.
Marc:I mean, like when Jack stopped showing up, it was a drag, man.
Marc:I know.
Guest:I mean, you're absolutely right.
Guest:There's still, I don't know, a few, I mean, I guess Clint's kind of gone now.
Guest:I haven't seen him for a while, but there's still, now we've got De Niro.
Guest:It's hard to believe, right?
Guest:Yeah, he's the old guy?
Guest:De Niro is old.
Marc:Yeah, but he seems to have gotten funnier and more willing to fool around than he used to.
Guest:Oh, God.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So what did you do for Stewart's Kennedy Center thing?
Guest:Oh, the Mark Twain Prize?
Guest:So you just help the people who are giving the tributes with their speeches, or whatever you want to call them.
Marc:So the week before, you meet with them, like almost as a producer?
Guest:You kind of... Call them up.
Guest:You hear them.
Guest:Some of them...
Guest:just want you to write it for them, right?
Guest:And you basically give them a draft of what you think, and then you let them play with it.
Guest:Others, you know, they come in and then ask you what you think.
Guest:But it's basically that.
Guest:They need laughs.
Marc:They're looking for laughs.
Guest:They're looking for laughs.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Right?
Guest:I mean, I've worked on, it's the American humor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think, yeah, this year it's on CNN, by the way.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And it's Adam Sandler.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So it's going to be Spade and Rock.
Guest:I'm working on that one, too.
Guest:Yeah, who's on it?
Guest:And that's on CNN.
Guest:So, yeah, Rock, all of his buddies, right?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:Um, and, uh, those are fun to write on.
Guest:I mean, I, because look at, I'm old and I enjoy seeing all these people I've crossed paths.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:It's just like, it's the best, right?
Guest:You know, like just to say hi, that's it.
Guest:Like you, I, you did a lot of appearances on Conan, right?
Guest:How many do you think you did on Conan?
Guest:50.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So Conan's on this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I got to talk to him and I, I did, I only did a few, I did four Conans back in the day.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I got a great Conan story, by the way.
Guest:He's such a good guy.
Guest:What?
Guest:Oh, it's, um, well, when Drake died.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He had four kids and.
Guest:And he was going to take them to the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Guest:And I've always been tight with Drake.
Guest:So I didn't know what to do, you know?
Guest:I knew these kids from the time they were born.
Guest:I don't know how to deal with this.
Guest:They're young too when he dies, right?
Guest:Yeah, I think...
Guest:Yeah, they were young.
Guest:Rudy was older, but everyone else is younger.
Guest:From that first marriage?
Guest:He had one from the first marriage and then three from Marnie, a beautiful woman, great woman.
Guest:I'm still really tight with her and the family.
Guest:So I go, all right, I'll take him to the Hall of Fame.
Guest:Which is where in Massachusetts?
Guest:The Basketball Hall of Fame?
Guest:It's not Boston.
Guest:It's close.
Guest:But then we decide...
Guest:Well, why don't we, they love basketball.
Guest:Why don't we go to, um, some basketball arenas too?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, and, and then we got to figure out stuff to do during the day.
Guest:You went to the garden and stuff?
Guest:Went to the garden, went to, went to Philly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:DC, the garden.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Um, the Boston garden, um, Madison square garden.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And where the nets used to play.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, but then you had to figure out stuff to do during the day.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So we get to New York and,
Guest:And, uh, I go, well, I know guys at Conan.
Guest:I'll take them to a TV taping.
Guest:Rudy loves Conan.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Conan is Rudy's idol.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I, you know, Mike Sweeney sets it up for me.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Great guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we go and hang out in the office.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:During, before the show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I don't expect to see Conan.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I just want to show him the writers and how a TV show works.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm talking to Sweeney.
Guest:And Conan walks into the room.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I got these kids there and he just starts being funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Rudy's just in heaven, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because this is his idol.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Conan doesn't know about the circumstances.
Guest:He doesn't know, even though I think, I don't know if Drake ever did a Conan or not.
Guest:I don't think he did.
Marc:I don't think he, I think he was dead before.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so he's just being a good guy, entertaining these kids.
Guest:And then at the end of it,
Guest:He goes, he just looks at Rudy and he goes, Hey, you want to come to the show tonight?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Rudy goes, yeah.
Guest:And so he arranges for us to be backstage.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then right in the wings, Conan comes off stage.
Guest:The first thing he does is ask Rudy, what'd you think?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then Rudy goes, well, I really liked this.
Guest:And he goes, yeah, I think I could have done this.
Guest:But he has, he has this like normal conversation with Rudy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Unlike, you know, Letterman would come off stage and go, what'd you think?
Guest:And then, you know, Rudy would go, I think it's great.
Guest:And Letterman would go, I think it sucks.
Guest:And then walk off.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Conan has this great conversation with Rudy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:About the comedy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then, you know, they bond and it's like this cool thing.
Guest:Conan still doesn't know why we're there.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That it was, you know, their dad.
Guest:Was a comic.
Guest:Was a comic and died.
Guest:Committed suicide.
Guest:Yeah, committed suicide.
Guest:So...
Guest:And afterward, you know, we leave and that becomes, forget about the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Guest:That's the highlight of this trip is Conan just, I mean, Rudy was in heaven and I was in heaven.
Guest:And the kids, I mean, the kids were younger.
Guest:They didn't know who Conan was, but it was cool.
Guest:And, you know, years later, I used to go to Tracy's appearances on Conan.
Guest:I had to help him.
Guest:whatever yeah and i told conan that and i said you you don't know what what a what a nice guy you are and then i explained that to him he goes well i try to do nice stuff but you didn't know you were just being nice he genuinely at the time he genuinely wanted approval from the kids exactly he's just like here's some people i'll make them laugh and he was really funny in a conference room sure
Guest:So anyway, that was like... That's a sweet story.
Guest:Isn't that amazing?
Marc:A nice thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, you know, yeah, Conan, I'll always... I've always found Conan really funny.
Marc:So what are you working on now, man?
Guest:I am... Well, Lewis and I are going to go back out on the road.
Guest:And by the way, that's still... I think when you're a comic...
Guest:You, uh, that's a standup.
Guest:That's what you, that's what you feel most comfortable doing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we're gonna go back out on the road next month.
Guest:Um, and then I'm doing this Mark Twain.
Guest:In the meantime, I'm doing the Mark Twain prize.
Guest:With Adam?
Guest:With, um, uh, for Adam.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then, uh, I'm also, uh, writing on this, it's called the show before the show on Netflix.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It airs right before Rock's live concert.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So that's a one-off?
Guest:It's a one-off, yeah.
Guest:And we'll see what happens with that.
Guest:But I'm slowly, you can feel yourself at a certain point.
Guest:You know, there are no press conferences where you announce your retirement from show business.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You're just kind of slowly ushered to the door.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:By yourself, though.
Marc:You're the one who's ushering you.
Guest:Well, no.
Guest:I think, you know, after a while in show business when you're
Guest:our age, unless you've done what you've done and innovated and created your own thing, you become, the people that you work with look at you as if you're a docent in a museum.
Guest:It's that kind of like, oh, he used to do something back in the day and now he talks about it.
Guest:But you're still doing something.
Guest:I'm still doing something.
Guest:I love it.
Guest:I'll always write.
Guest:I'll always try to do stand-up.
Guest:I remember when I was in my 30s and 40s and I'd see someone my age, I'd just think, yeah, what is that?
Guest:Just be nice to him.
Guest:Yeah, be nice to him.
Guest:Talk about his kids because they're about my age.
Marc:Well, no, but I don't think that's quite happening.
Marc:You still seem to be at eight.
Guest:You just feel yourself kind of living from gig to gig.
Marc:But you're not desperate.
Marc:Right?
Marc:It can't be.
Marc:No, but I mean, you saved some bread.
Marc:You're not a dumb dumb.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:I've done it.
Guest:Look, I never expected it.
Guest:When I was in my 40s, by the way,
Guest:I expected this thing to fizzle out.
Guest:And so now I'm into my 60s and I feel like, well, when it dies, it dies.
Guest:And I've had a great run.
Guest:I don't know if you've ever seen the Ed Bradley interview.
Guest:With Bob Dylan?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Isn't that brilliant?
Marc:It's the best.
Marc:Where he says, I did it once.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:That's the greatest thing ever.
Guest:Like, aren't you sad that you can't write that song anymore?
Guest:He goes, no.
Guest:I feel blessed that I was able to write it the first time.
Guest:It's like, that's the right attitude.
Guest:I love that whole Dylan interview, by the way.
Guest:The idea of that, like, I'm the one who did it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was just... But Dylan's always been that way.
Guest:He's always...
Guest:It's so easy to get caught up in the show business bullshit.
Guest:Dylan never did.
Guest:He always thought it was a big joke.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He never thought he was a singing prophet.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He goes, I like to write songs.
Guest:He's a prankster.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I love, he is a prankster.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I love Dylan.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was great talking to you, buddy.
Guest:Oh, it was fantastic.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:And, uh, I hope I didn't blab too much.
Marc:No, this is, well, that's sort of what drives this thing.
Yeah.
Marc:It's the non-blabbers that I have a problem with.
Guest:I can talk about comedy forever.
Guest:I just love it.
Guest:We're blessed to do it.
Guest:Could you see yourself doing anything else other than comedy?
Marc:No.
Marc:You're one of those guys that there is no other choice.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I didn't.
Marc:And when things got dark and I was on my way down the fucking drain after that second divorce and before I started this, like, there wasn't some sort of, like, I could always go do this.
Marc:There was nothing else.
Marc:Because you get to a certain point in life where you're like, what else am I going to do?
Marc:I'm not prepared to do anything else.
Guest:Did you ever have a moment, though, when you... Okay, I had one moment, and I want to hear if you had this.
Guest:In Kansas City...
Guest:I had to do a show.
Guest:I was just new in the game.
Guest:Had to do a show in front of, I think it was eight people.
Guest:The club owner made us go on.
Guest:It was horrible.
Guest:It's a place called Stanford and Sons.
Guest:And I went home in this kind of, at least I had a hotel room.
Guest:It wasn't a comedy condo.
Guest:But I remember looking myself in the mirror.
Guest:And I mean looking in a mirror and asking, is this what you want to do?
Guest:Can you do this again?
Guest:Can you get on stage tomorrow night and do this?
Guest:And then I...
Guest:I woke up and decided I could.
Guest:And then, you know, I didn't have a moment like that again.
Guest:That was my moment where I had to decide, okay, do you continue on or not?
Guest:Did you ever have one of those early on?
Marc:Early on, I just was so hard on myself and so compulsive and so hung up on, you know, just, you know, overcoming the fear enough to do it.
Marc:Like, I don't even know what was driving me.
Marc:But how do we do it now?
Marc:I don't know, but I can never answer that.
Marc:But back then, you know, I'm doing one nighters in Boston and I'm an angry Jewish guy who's heady and I can't talk about anything casually.
Marc:And I'm yelling at people as an opening act in the middle of a disco floor with a microphone.
Marc:And I'm like, I don't know who that fucking kid was or what it was, but I wasn't really thinking like, is this the right job for me?
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:It always came down to the question of, okay, do I have the courage to do this?
Marc:Well, for me, it just became like, why the fuck can't I be the guy who's making it?
Guest:Oh, good for you.
Guest:I never had that attitude.
Guest:I never felt that I deserved it.
Guest:I always...
Marc:I don't know if I felt like I deserved it, but I knew I felt resentment towards people who were getting it.
Guest:I couldn't understand why I couldn't.
Guest:I just was, I don't know.
Guest:I was always just, you know, if you ever think about it too much, you're standing up in front of people and making them strangers laugh.
Marc:What I think about more is like, who the fuck would go to these places?
Guest:Right.
Guest:No, I think that too.
Marc:When you're in an audience full of eight people, how could you still sit there?
Marc:Because I used to see that all the time when you're starting out.
Marc:There's 12 people in the room.
Marc:I would walk into that club and be like, we don't have to go to this show.
Guest:There's nobody here.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Do you like your friends and family coming to see you?
Guest:I know mine.
Marc:Over time, my dad gets a real kick out of it.
Marc:That's great.
Guest:Yeah, I don't like it.
Guest:I used to hate it.
Marc:I wouldn't let other comics in the room.
Marc:I would perform at the cellar.
Marc:And if a tell was sitting there, I'm like, could you just get out?
Marc:I'm trying to do something.
Marc:I can't worry about whether you're going to like me or not.
Marc:You know, I like my jokes.
Guest:Yeah, me too.
Guest:I don't want that.
Guest:I don't want that.
Guest:Something that's happened over the last few years, which I'm very happy about, is now I...
Guest:I feel blessed that I get to make people laugh.
Guest:It's not a survival thing for me anymore.
Guest:It's like, I love that these people, that we're all having a good time together.
Marc:I've grown, like, after this last special, which is heavy in places, and it's behind me now because it's out there and it's doing okay.
Marc:Like, now I'm like, there's something I'm enjoying about just, you know, playing with my point of view.
Marc:And to see if I can, you know, talk about not-so-menacing things and just sort of... Like, I'm just back in the process.
Marc:Within days of, you know, shooting the special, I didn't take any time off.
Marc:I'm like, I've still got 30 minutes that I didn't put in there.
Marc:Maybe we can start building that out.
Marc:You know, and like, I've just been...
Marc:Yes, I've been a little lighthearted about it, which is new.
Guest:And it's, you know, it's 40 years in, so... But that's the frustrating thing about being an older writer, is you know you can still outwrite these motherfuckers.
Guest:But you're perceived as being, you know, you're used by date having passed.
Guest:But I find in stand-up, I have more things I want to try than ever before.
Guest:Yeah, me too.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Like, lately, because there's, like, certain things...
Marc:Like I very consciously, you know, I'm like, I need to embrace my physical, my physical comedy more.
Marc:And I think in this special, you know, it's there where like, you know, there is a way to deliberately do physical timing.
Marc:Some guys are just natural.
Marc:You know, look at Kevin James or somebody like he just, you know, so like, you're like, what the hell do you do that?
Marc:But like, I know I must have it in me.
Marc:I have timing.
Marc:So like, I was very sort of intentional about playing with physical timing.
Marc:And now there's part of me that wants to just do a whole clean hour of mundane shit.
Marc:Like my version of Seinfeld in a way.
Guest:Oh, that's great.
Guest:No, I think try everything.
Marc:That's my new thing.
Marc:Because I love Nate Bargatze.
Marc:And he's a guy who used to open for me.
Marc:And he's truly funny.
Marc:not a filth word in it and nothing, you know, he's not provocative in a political way or any other way.
Marc:Like he's not pushing envelopes, but he's so funny.
Marc:It's like, and I've like, I'm, I'm not lazy, you know, but I'm dirty sometimes.
Marc:And I, you know, I, I, I push buttons.
Marc:Like, is there a, is there a version of me that can just do a kind of pleasant, clean hour?
Guest:Well, when we started out, I mean, I was clean when we started out because my whole objective was to do something on The Tonight Show or Letterman.
Marc:I was never really clean.
Marc:I had to clean up all the time.
Guest:Well, I did just because Larry Miller once asked me, he said, well,
Guest:You know, that joke.
Guest:Now, that joke needs the word fuck to get a laugh.
Guest:You have to ask yourself, do you want the word fuck to get the laugh?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it made sense to me.
Guest:But then at a certain point, I realized people are paying money to see you live.
Guest:Why give them something that they can see on TV?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So.
Guest:Um, I get it, but, and, but there is an audience out there that wants to be entertained and not, doesn't want to hear curse words.
Guest:I get, I get that too.
Guest:But, um, you know, the reality is I think people come out and they want a little, something a little special.
Guest:And I could, by the way, I could...
Guest:i find that a lot of times when they want that special thing i'll try to disappoint them right aggressively right right well that's that's that's the side of the comic that we all have you know i mean there are a few out there make make them pay i remember vince champ he wasn't that way at all oh jim vince is he still in he's in prison oh he's in prison yeah but he was he was the nicest i know he was the nicest guy on stage ever
Marc:He had like prop glasses and stuff like that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:So.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Maybe it's not.
Marc:His dark side would have been better if he just disappointed audiences occasionally.
Guest:Right, exactly.
Guest:As opposed to rape women.
Marc:Let it out there.
Marc:In studios.
Guest:Colleges.
Marc:Holy shit.
Marc:Well, weird place to end, but.
Guest:Yeah, sorry.
Marc:I shouldn't, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, no, it's always the Vince Champ tag.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, good to talk to you, man.
Guest:Mark, thank you.
Marc:Right?
Marc:That was solid.
Marc:Solid.
Marc:Jeff has nothing to plug, but I love talking to the guy.
Marc:Great guy.
Marc:Hey, I forgot to tell you at the top, I watched some weird movie on Criterion with Ben Gazzara called The Strange One.
Marc:It's sort of this character study of Machiavellian narcissistic personality disorder, and he looks... It's Ben Gazzara's first movie, and he looks insanely...
Marc:a lot like Ron DeSantis.
Marc:It's called The Strange One.
Marc:It's on Criterion right now.
Marc:It's a weird little movie.
Marc:I recommend it highly.
Marc:All right, hang out for a minute.
Marc:Hey, Succession fans, if you're going through some withdrawal, you can listen to me and Brendan talk about the series finale and a lot more Succession stuff on this week's bonus episode for full Marin subscribers.
Guest:When this episode starts, there's been some problem with this guy Ravenhead at the News Network, who's like the Tucker Carlson clone.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:They're talking about how there's these, you know, fascists rallying around this guy.
Guest:And, you know, Shiv is questioning it.
Guest:Tom, it's a great quote here.
Guest:He's like, no, he's grown up now.
Guest:He lives in Connecticut.
Guest:He's crazy about the Knicks.
Guest:He's a lovely guy.
Guest:And, and he skews younger.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And there's that other great line when he's grilling or interviewing or trying to figure out what's really going on with that newscaster or whatever he is, that personality.
Marc:And the guy reels off all the deaths that happened in World War II, the millions of Russians.
Guest:Seven million Germans, 20 million Russians, five million Poles.
Marc:And then Tom goes, aren't you missing a few?
Marc:What did he say?
Guest:He says, just checking the till here, Mark, but it seems you're short a few million.
Yeah.
Marc:Sign up for the full Marin to get new bonus episodes every week and every episode of WTF ad-free.
Marc:Click on the link in the episode description or go to WTFpod.com and click on WTF Plus to sign up.
Marc:Next week, I talk to Rami Youssef on Monday and comedian Felicia Michaels on Thursday.
Marc:Here's some muddy rhythm for you.
Marc:And I don't mean muddy by muddy waters.
Marc:I mean muddy by muddy.
Guest:music music
Yeah.
.
.
.
Marc:Boomer lives.
Marc:Monkey and the Fonda.
Marc:Cat angels everywhere.