Episode 188 - Christopher Titus

Episode 188 • Released June 29, 2011 • Speakers detected

00:00:00Guest:Lock the gates!

00:00:07Guest:Are we doing this?

00:00:08Guest:Really?

00:00:08Guest:Wait for it.

00:00:09Guest:Are we doing this?

00:00:10Guest:Wait for it.

00:00:12Guest:Pow!

00:00:12Guest:What the fuck?

00:00:14Guest:And it's also, eh, what the fuck?

00:00:16Guest:What's wrong with me?

00:00:17Guest:It's time for WTF!

00:00:19Guest:What the fuck?

00:00:20Guest:With Marc Maron.

00:00:24Marc:All right, let's do this.

00:00:25Marc:How are you, what-the-fuckers?

00:00:26Marc:What-the-fuck buddies?

00:00:27Marc:What-the-fuckineers?

00:00:29Marc:What-the-fucking-nots?

00:00:30Marc:What-the-fucking-ucks?

00:00:31Marc:And the what-the-fuck-quas?

00:00:34Marc:What-the-fuck-quas?

00:00:36Marc:This is WTF.

00:00:38Marc:Thank you.

00:00:38Marc:Thank you for coming.

00:00:39Marc:Thank you for hanging out.

00:00:40Marc:Thank you for being here.

00:00:41Marc:Today on the show, Christopher Titus...

00:00:45Marc:My dad loved Christopher Titus.

00:00:47Marc:Christopher Titus was a guy my dad once said, you got to go see this kid, Christopher Titus.

00:00:52Marc:He talks about real shit.

00:00:55Marc:So he's on the show today.

00:00:57Marc:Okay, so I was in Entertainment Weekly.

00:00:58Marc:That happened.

00:00:59Marc:They came and took a picture.

00:01:00Marc:I was nervous about the picture.

00:01:01Marc:I thought the article was nicely done.

00:01:05Marc:Great.

00:01:06Marc:I enjoyed it.

00:01:07Marc:I was humbled and flattered and excited, and I liked the picture, and that is rare.

00:01:11Marc:I had nothing to do with the fact that

00:01:14Marc:that a bit of fan art is just to the left of my head if you're looking at the picture in Entertainment Weekly.

00:01:21Marc:It just says nerd, and then there is the huge head of a cock right there in the pages of Entertainment Weekly.

00:01:29Marc:I had nothing to do with that.

00:01:30Marc:It was not my job.

00:01:31Marc:I didn't put it there on purpose.

00:01:33Marc:But we got a cock into Entertainment Weekly.

00:01:36Marc:I have been a little aware, three times, aware of my nose because I've detected another basal cell on my fucking face.

00:01:47Marc:The shit I went through with that four years ago, do you know what it's like?

00:01:50Marc:It's a non-killing cancer that you get from the sun if you get them.

00:01:56Marc:I had one on my nose a while back.

00:01:58Marc:I believe early on I talked about the Mohs procedure.

00:02:02Marc:Now I've got to go do that again.

00:02:04Marc:It's like in the exact same place on the other side of my nose.

00:02:08Marc:So I've got to go get a nickel-sized hole dug into my face to dig out this thing that's growing through that layer of skin.

00:02:15Marc:Hey, look, I don't want to bum people out.

00:02:17Marc:But I was bummed out, so come on board.

00:02:21Marc:Why not?

00:02:22Marc:Not saying misery loves company.

00:02:24Marc:Anyways.

00:02:25Marc:Some other business.

00:02:27Marc:I was in Denver a week or so ago, and I forgot to thank Jason for the Jonathan Winters records, a very thoughtful gift.

00:02:36Marc:And quite frankly, Jason frightens me.

00:02:38Marc:So I wanted to make sure that I thanked him.

00:02:41Marc:He's a comedy fan.

00:02:42Marc:And when I say fan, heavy emphasis on the fan.

00:02:47Marc:There's a line that one can cross, but Jason has always been there.

00:02:52Marc:He showed up at Denver.

00:02:53Marc:I'd met him in Aspen.

00:02:54Marc:He had Jonathan Winters records for both me and Ryan Singer, and he was also proudly wearing his laminate from the Aspen Comedy Festival that he worked at.

00:03:05Marc:I don't know if he still thought he was working there, but he didn't bring me a Jonathan Winters record.

00:03:14Marc:Now, if there is any potential that Jason may tip one way or the other, I'm sure this monologue isn't helping anything.

00:03:22Marc:But thank you, Jason, for the Jonathan Winters records.

00:03:26Marc:And don't fucking kill me.

00:03:32Marc:All right.

00:03:33Marc:All right.

00:03:34Marc:Stop it.

00:03:35Marc:Everyone's going to know you're here.

00:03:37Marc:Ryan Singer's in the room.

00:03:39Marc:He's reading something.

00:03:40Marc:I can't have him on every show.

00:03:41Marc:He's already been on nine.

00:03:44Marc:So let's get down to some other stuff.

00:03:46Marc:I know we're having a good time here, but I did survive Edmonton.

00:03:48Marc:I'm back from Canada.

00:03:50Marc:I'm back from the West Edmonton Mall doing the comic strip at the mall.

00:03:55Marc:I was at the mall for Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

00:03:59Marc:At the mall, no car.

00:04:01Marc:Was able to get out a bit, but I didn't have a car, so I was at the fucking mall.

00:04:05Marc:So I would walk from the hotel, which was at the mall, to the comedy club in the mall.

00:04:12Marc:It's a big mall.

00:04:13Marc:It's got three roller coasters.

00:04:14Marc:It's got a beach.

00:04:15Marc:It's got a pool.

00:04:17Marc:It's got a gym.

00:04:18Marc:It's got movie theaters.

00:04:20Marc:It's got a fire-breathing dragon at the movie theater that was broken when I was there, as was the most scary roller coaster.

00:04:26Marc:Not that I'd get on a roller coaster in a mall.

00:04:29Marc:Just it doesn't seem right.

00:04:32Marc:So I'm at the mall, and Canadian audiences, though polite, will drink.

00:04:35Marc:And it's one of these clubs.

00:04:38Marc:It's a great club.

00:04:39Marc:It's a beautiful setup, that comic strip.

00:04:41Marc:A lot of video before, some lights and sounds, and big loud music, and bang, the show starts.

00:04:46Marc:But those second shows, Friday and Saturday, that was some serious hands-on, crowd management, let's fucking have a battle shit that I haven't done in a while.

00:04:54Marc:Though I like it.

00:04:55Marc:I know how to do that.

00:04:56Marc:I have those chops.

00:04:57Marc:I think it's important that one learns.

00:05:00Marc:To do crowd work.

00:05:03Marc:I can do it, man.

00:05:04Marc:I can fucking do it.

00:05:06Marc:Friday night, second show.

00:05:08Marc:I'm at it.

00:05:08Marc:I'm going at it with a guy that I was told paid $200 to the doorman in order to sit pretty far away from the stage.

00:05:15Marc:Came with some other people.

00:05:16Marc:very vocal started out right away just uh chiming in nothing hostile just drunk chiming in here and there i got into it with him i did a certain number of steps some uh some crowd work jiu-jitsu why do you need this much attention from a crowd of people you don't know when you don't have a mic and it's not your job were you poorly parented bang boom we're going back and forth i cut pretty deep when i'm doing that kind of stuff eventually got to maybe you're not clear who you are sexually

00:05:42Marc:because it seemed that he was needing something from me, that he loved me in a way.

00:05:46Marc:It just went on.

00:05:49Marc:And I thought it was over.

00:05:50Marc:I really thought it was over until all of a sudden there is a hush in the room and then an outburst of laughter.

00:05:57Marc:And I look there hanging over the balcony area.

00:05:59Marc:It's not a tall balcony, just more like a tier.

00:06:02Marc:But there's the back of the chairs, the floor of the room, and then there's a second tier hanging over the back of the chairs was an ass.

00:06:09Marc:Was this heckler's ass.

00:06:13Marc:Like I had to put my hand over my head to protect myself from the spotlight to see an ass.

00:06:19Marc:That is mooning the last refuge of a heckler.

00:06:26Marc:How am I going to fight an ass?

00:06:28Marc:And how am I supposed to take?

00:06:29Marc:I have never had that happen.

00:06:32Marc:Really?

00:06:32Marc:That's what you have to say?

00:06:33Marc:Well, how about my ass?

00:06:36Marc:That was that.

00:06:37Marc:Looking at the ass, and I said, all right, I don't know where we go from here.

00:06:40Marc:Perhaps you should be taken out of the club.

00:06:42Marc:And now apparently this was the third time the guy had shown his ass.

00:06:46Marc:I got news reports.

00:06:48Marc:No one tweeted it from the back of the room, but there were news reports that the ass had come out two or three times.

00:06:52Marc:And it's just a difference in terms of, look, you can manage your room however you want, but I'm thinking once the ass comes out once, that might be grounds for a dismissal just on a legal premise.

00:07:03Marc:But he was a good-hearted guy, and I believe that he was mooning me in good fun.

00:07:07Marc:And he was removed from the club, but it was 50 minutes into the show, and there was so much excitement and energy around his ass that that was my closer.

00:07:16Marc:So he helped me out.

00:07:17Marc:I want to thank the guy that showed his ass at the second show Friday at the mall.

00:07:20Marc:So then after that, I walked through a series of hallways.

00:07:23Marc:No matter how good the show was, I walked through a series of hallways to get out into the mall, a back way into the food court, which, of course, at that hour is closed.

00:07:31Marc:So I walk into an empty food court

00:07:33Marc:But there are fountains still going, so there's still some life.

00:07:35Marc:There's water saying, look, we're still doing it.

00:07:38Marc:It's not all sad.

00:07:40Marc:Walk by the closed McDonald's, the closed Starbucks, the closed Sparrows, down a hall to my hotel in the mall, which is a theme hotel.

00:07:49Marc:Did I mention that?

00:07:50Marc:Theme hotel, the Fantasyland Hotel, has several floors, I guess.

00:07:57Marc:I was told that I would have had more fun in the Roman room with the columns, but I was on the western floor.

00:08:04Marc:So after a show, no matter how great a show you had, no matter how much you love show business, you walk through a maze of hallways out into an empty food court down to a hotel where you go up to your floor and you walk down the hall of your floor, which has a painting of a Western theme.

00:08:19Marc:And each door is painted like a stable door.

00:08:22Marc:And there's a horse on the door as if it's looking out of the stable door.

00:08:25Marc:And it's all the same horse.

00:08:27Marc:I'm way down the hall.

00:08:28Marc:So I've walked by about eight or nine of the same horsey.

00:08:32Marc:And I get to my horsey, horsey 735.

00:08:36Marc:And through that arc from whatever happened on stage, maybe this particular night, it was a guy showing his ass to me that I had to close with.

00:08:43Marc:And I get to my horsey door.

00:08:45Marc:What does one do when they enter their horsey room?

00:08:50Marc:Kill yourself.

00:08:51Marc:I mean, that's really the first thing that comes to mind.

00:08:54Marc:It's a mall, and this would be the place to do that.

00:08:59Marc:And I thought, well, that's a little extreme.

00:09:00Marc:You know, it's just another hotel.

00:09:01Marc:Put it into perspective.

00:09:02Marc:Then I thought, well, maybe I'll do that David Carradine thing.

00:09:06Marc:Never done that before.

00:09:06Marc:I have a belt.

00:09:08Marc:Maybe I could take jerking off to the next level here.

00:09:10Marc:I don't even have the energy to that, and I didn't want to Google it.

00:09:13Marc:I don't know what you Google.

00:09:14Marc:Do you Google belt, jerk off, don't die?

00:09:18Marc:I don't know.

00:09:19Marc:Am I being too candid?

00:09:21Marc:Maybe I am.

00:09:23Marc:I was going to read an email from a guy.

00:09:24Marc:This guy came to my show.

00:09:28Marc:Hey, Mark.

00:09:30Marc:It's subject line Edmonton Moon.

00:09:33Marc:It's clever.

00:09:33Marc:Poetic.

00:09:34Marc:Hey, Mark.

00:09:34Marc:I was at your show on Thursday night in Edmonton.

00:09:37Marc:I said hi a couple of times.

00:09:38Marc:I was the nervous kid with the white shirt.

00:09:40Marc:During your set, you joked about the Fantasyland Hotel and the Western-themed room.

00:09:45Marc:I visited the hotel once.

00:09:46Marc:I left my house in the middle of the night with nothing but a bottle of whiskey and an urge to end it.

00:09:51Marc:I was kneeling in the room next to faux Roman columns with blood and vomit on my clothes clutching the hotel phone.

00:09:58Marc:There's something about this city that breeds loneliness and alienation.

00:10:02Marc:It might be the ravaging of the environment just north of here.

00:10:04Marc:It might be the high wages and the widespread drug use.

00:10:07Marc:It might be the conservative philosophy that has strangled this province for years.

00:10:11Marc:It might be the intense cold that descends on this city for eight months.

00:10:15Marc:It might be something else.

00:10:16Marc:I'm not really sure.

00:10:17Marc:I do know, however, that it took so long for that man to be thrown out of that room because we've come to accept that behavior.

00:10:26Marc:The mooning.

00:10:27Marc:We've built places like the Fantasyland Hotel to house our alienation and loneliness, to house ourselves at a price we can fall asleep and stay asleep in the Wild West or Rome or ancient Egypt.

00:10:41Marc:All that matters is that we're no longer here.

00:10:44Marc:If you're feeling lonely or alienated right now, that's normal.

00:10:47Marc:That's this city.

00:10:48Marc:That's what it does.

00:10:50Marc:But don't ever think that you are alone in this city.

00:10:54Marc:Hope this finds you well.

00:10:56Marc:Andrew.

00:10:59Marc:And I hope you feel the same way, Andrew.

00:11:00Marc:It was great to see you, it was great to meet you, and I'm certainly glad that whatever gripped you that night at the Fantasyland Hotel didn't pan out.

00:11:11Marc:Stay on board, buddy.

00:11:13Marc:We're doing okay, no matter where you are.

00:11:23Marc:You know, I don't know if I'm scared of people, but sometimes I don't know how to behave properly with people.

00:11:29Guest:Well, that's my big problem is I actually have a tendency to... I don't suffer bullshit well.

00:11:36Guest:I have a tendency to just say what I... I'm learning this.

00:11:39Guest:I didn't have a filter for so long.

00:11:40Guest:I've had one implanted recently because it got in the way of my TV show.

00:11:45Guest:My TV show got canceled because the network president wanted to change it, and I just said what I wanted to say.

00:11:49Guest:Now, wait, wait.

00:11:50Marc:Okay, first of all, Chris Titus is here in the Cat Ranch garage.

00:11:53Marc:Good morning, people.

00:11:54Marc:Yeah, and... Well, that, you know, it's weird because...

00:11:57Marc:In my knowledge of you, the first time I heard of you was my dad had seen you somewhere at a comedy company.

00:12:02Marc:He's like, this guy seems to be doing the kind of thing you do with the honesty and everything.

00:12:06Marc:You think you would like him.

00:12:08Marc:And then I sort of poked around a little bit and found out who you were.

00:12:10Marc:But really, what I did here, and we can start there, is you had...

00:12:15Marc:a show, a relatively popular sitcom.

00:12:18Guest:Yeah, we were killing it.

00:12:18Guest:Yeah, Titus.

00:12:19Guest:And you fucked it up.

00:12:20Guest:I fucked it up, exactly.

00:12:22Guest:You know what?

00:12:22Guest:You've been so concise.

00:12:24Guest:A lot of people aren't as concise with that.

00:12:25Guest:You just went right to it.

00:12:26Guest:I like that.

00:12:27Marc:I didn't know if it was true or not.

00:12:29Marc:I'd heard this rumor that Titus became such a megalomaniacal douchebag that he fucked up his show.

00:12:35Guest:You know what's weird is the problem was, and I will own that, I'll say, yeah, okay, let's, yeah, yeah.

00:12:40Guest:What happened was I was there, I...

00:12:42Guest:About 12 years after I started stand-up, first of all, I didn't start out.

00:12:46Guest:That your dad said anything like that to you is like a huge compliment.

00:12:49Guest:That your dad said anything like this guy does what you do with the honesty and stuff.

00:12:52Guest:I was like, wow, that's a huge compliment.

00:12:53Marc:Well, my dad's a manic depressive.

00:12:55Marc:And your dad was an alcoholic, right?

00:12:58Guest:Right.

00:12:58Guest:My mom was a manic depressive, schizophrenic, and I talked about it.

00:13:01Guest:Oh, you win.

00:13:01Guest:Yeah, I did.

00:13:02Guest:Jim Brewer did that.

00:13:03Guest:We were on a road one time in Greenville, and we were trading stories, and I go, yeah, my mom shot and killed her last husband, and Brewer just puts his hands up, and he goes, you win, new dealer.

00:13:13Guest:So we had the show.

00:13:15Guest:I had a deal with Fox a couple years earlier, and they'd hired this writer guy, and he came in, and the weird thing was is that I'd started to find out who I was.

00:13:24Guest:I did this thing called the Landmark Forum, and I kind of got that, okay, what's the deal?

00:13:27Marc:Okay, let's stop there a minute.

00:13:28Marc:The Landmark Forum, which is what Est became.

00:13:31Guest:Yeah, and the thing is about this company is they keep making it better and better.

00:13:35Guest:The Landmark Forum.

00:13:36Guest:Yeah, it really changed my life.

00:13:38Guest:Dude, man, I think we never talked before because we did San Francisco Comedy Competition a couple times, and we didn't talk because I was like this, hey, you ever go to the store and you buy stuff?

00:13:46Guest:I was that comic.

00:13:47Guest:Really?

00:13:48Marc:But we were in the competition together.

00:13:49Marc:We were.

00:13:50Marc:Yeah, we were.

00:13:50Marc:We were.

00:13:51Marc:Yeah, we were.

00:13:51Guest:And you had not become you yet?

00:13:54Guest:No, I hadn't.

00:13:54Guest:It took me like 12 years in.

00:13:56Guest:12 years in I got to this place where I was going to quit comedy.

00:13:58Guest:I'm like, you know what?

00:13:59Guest:I call it growing a tumor on my soul.

00:14:01Guest:I just, like every time I was on stage, like I'm doing the shit that works, but it's just the self-hatred is pouring out of me.

00:14:07Guest:And I'm just like, God, I get off stage and it's a good show.

00:14:10Guest:And I'd be like, fuck you.

00:14:11Guest:I like, I hated people.

00:14:13Guest:You shouldn't even laugh at that.

00:14:14Guest:And I knew that what I was doing wasn't,

00:14:17Guest:It just wasn't me.

00:14:20Guest:Bruce Smith, I give this great credit to Bruce Smith at Omnipop.

00:14:23Guest:Yeah, I know him.

00:14:24Guest:Bruce took me aside one day.

00:14:25Guest:I auditioned for Montreal, and I'd been there before, and I auditioned for Montreal.

00:14:29Guest:The weird thing is that eventually you can't stop being who you are as a comic.

00:14:33Guest:Eventually, it's going to creep out.

00:14:34Guest:Hopefully.

00:14:35Guest:Yeah, hopefully.

00:14:36Marc:And it's a good thing.

00:14:37Marc:It's not the bad thing.

00:14:39Marc:There are guys who are doing their set, and then they creep out, and they ruin everything.

00:14:42Guest:Yeah, that's true.

00:14:44Guest:That is true.

00:14:45Guest:Yeah, those are damaged guys.

00:14:46Guest:Yeah.

00:14:47Guest:But eventually you'll start to become who you are.

00:14:49Guest:Yeah.

00:14:49Guest:And I'd written this bit about my mom in a mental hospital.

00:14:52Guest:My mom was, you know, sometime I was a little kid.

00:14:55Guest:But I was doing it like, hey, anybody's mom in a mental hospital?

00:14:59Yeah.

00:15:00Guest:How many people?

00:15:02Guest:Let me see the hands.

00:15:03Guest:So you ever notice when your mom's in mental hospital and she won't take her medication?

00:15:07Guest:So there's two guards beating her.

00:15:08Guest:Anybody?

00:15:09Guest:So what happens is I'd written this bit, but I was doing it like that, and Bruce takes me aside after this.

00:15:16Guest:And that was a relatively good audition, although there was a weird moment when I was doing that bit.

00:15:19Guest:And Bruce, I get off stage and I've never had someone just be so clear.

00:15:22Guest:He just looks at me and goes, what the fuck are you doing?

00:15:25Guest:And I just thought I had a good audition.

00:15:26Guest:I go, what do you mean?

00:15:27Guest:And he goes, you're up there talking about your mom in a mental hospital.

00:15:29Guest:You're talking to her about your Seinfeld doing a Tonight Show set.

00:15:32Guest:He goes, the audience doesn't know what you're doing.

00:15:34Guest:They don't know if you're telling them the truth.

00:15:35Guest:They don't know.

00:15:36Guest:That's a good option.

00:15:37Guest:They think you're making up some bizarre story to be cool or whatever.

00:15:42Guest:But he goes, I know you.

00:15:43Guest:I know that's what happened.

00:15:43Guest:He goes, you've got to be yourself.

00:15:44Guest:And I told him, I said, they won't understand who the fuck I am.

00:15:48Guest:I go, if I let out who I really am on stage, they're going to hate my guts.

00:15:51Marc:So you just had to figure out how to plant yourself in it and frame it.

00:15:55Marc:Like you know how to own it and set it up so they don't feel like I do material like that and they don't know whether it's too much information.

00:16:02Marc:They're shocked.

00:16:03Marc:They don't know whether to feel bad for you or laugh uncomfortably.

00:16:06Marc:To make them laugh for the right reasons at that type of material is a trick.

00:16:10Guest:Yeah.

00:16:11Guest:You know, I always call it, when comics ask how I pull it off, I go, look, anything's funny if you lead them down the right path.

00:16:16Guest:But you can't just open the door to a different world.

00:16:21Guest:You've got to kind of look.

00:16:22Guest:We're going to go through this entryway in the foyer, and then you're going to walk, then we're going to meet the hostess.

00:16:26Guest:Then we're going to go out there.

00:16:27Guest:So get prepped for the world.

00:16:28Guest:You have to lubricate.

00:16:28Guest:Yeah, you have to prep them for the world, exactly.

00:16:31Guest:So now, okay, so coming back around, I guess- So I hit Titus.

00:16:35Guest:So I changed my act.

00:16:36Guest:I literally went home that night.

00:16:37Guest:I wrote this bit.

00:16:38Guest:By the way, I wrote a bit- Completely fueled by self-hatred.

00:16:40Guest:To stuff it up his ass.

00:16:41Guest:Actually, I'm one of that guys.

00:16:43Guest:He actually told me at this point, Mark, he said, I will not represent you if you don't do this.

00:16:48Guest:He goes, if you don't start telling the truth on stage and being who you really are, he goes, you know that happy guy you're on stage?

00:16:53Guest:He goes, I never met that guy.

00:16:54Guest:He goes, he's never been in my office.

00:16:56Guest:I don't know who he is.

00:16:57Guest:Yeah.

00:16:57Guest:That's a good manager.

00:17:00Guest:Yeah, I went home that night and stayed until 4 in the morning.

00:17:04Guest:I wrote this bit called We Need Comedy to Get Rid of Our Desire to Kill.

00:17:08Guest:And you know how comics all go, hey, how you guys doing tonight?

00:17:09Guest:You guys are pretty good?

00:17:09Guest:And then they start their act.

00:17:11Guest:So I walked on stage and I go, do you people even know why you're here?

00:17:14Guest:Because let me tell you why.

00:17:15Guest:You're not here because you like paying four bucks for one beer.

00:17:17Guest:You're because comedy gets you the right desire to kill.

00:17:19Guest:It was like a transitional bit that got me who I was.

00:17:22Guest:Right.

00:17:22Guest:It's this three-minute story about the worst day you could possibly have.

00:17:26Guest:And at the end of it, I'm in my boss's office about to get fired.

00:17:30Guest:My boss starts a conversation with, you're not fired, but.

00:17:32Guest:And he proceeds to rip apart your work performance and personal appearance.

00:17:35Guest:while the whole time blaming your parents.

00:17:37Guest:And it's just this rant.

00:17:38Guest:And I go, and you notice a letter opener glittering.

00:17:41Guest:All the while he's on the phone ordering a new Mercedes SEL for himself.

00:17:44Guest:And you notice a letter opener glittering on the desk.

00:17:46Guest:And you get some insight on what it would be to be a serial killer.

00:17:48Guest:Hey, I get to make my own hours.

00:17:49Guest:I'm my own man.

00:17:50Guest:And as the light glints off the blade as you raise it above your head, and just before you plunge it into his black, cold, corporate heart,

00:17:56Guest:He goes, what are you doing?

00:17:58Guest:And you go, I just need a good laugh.

00:18:00Guest:And I'm just screaming.

00:18:01Guest:It's three minutes.

00:18:02Guest:So I do it at Igby's and Jan Smith lets me go up.

00:18:04Guest:And I told Jan, I said, look, I'm doing something I've never done before.

00:18:07Guest:I go, the happy guy's dead.

00:18:08Guest:Yeah.

00:18:09Guest:You killed the happy guy.

00:18:10Guest:Yeah, I killed him.

00:18:10Guest:So here's the problem.

00:18:11Guest:I go up and do this one bit I wrote, three minutes.

00:18:13Guest:destroys, like literally I get people going nuts.

00:18:16Guest:They're like, yes, and they're screaming at Igby's.

00:18:18Guest:And you remember Igby's, you know, he's just like get that little tight little room and I don't have anything else.

00:18:22Guest:Is it still there?

00:18:23Guest:No, it's gone a long time ago.

00:18:24Guest:I don't have anything else.

00:18:25Guest:I got nothing else.

00:18:27Marc:You're yourself, but it's very limited at this point.

00:18:29Guest:Yeah, I've got three minutes of me and I've got an hour of this other ass.

00:18:34Guest:Did you go back to it?

00:18:35Guest:I did.

00:18:35Guest:I dropped right into it like a whore.

00:18:37Guest:I go, so, anybody go to the store and buy stuff?

00:18:39Guest:And here's the lesson I learned.

00:18:42Guest:In that second, the audience went from, we love this guy, he told us the truth, he let us see who he is, and now he's bullshitting us, and they were quiet for the next seven minutes.

00:18:51Guest:I'm like, applause break in three, seven minutes of dead silence.

00:18:54Marc:right it's sort of like that moment where like if you are able to do crowd work and you do crowd work yeah and it's good and then you go back to your act that it's like that weird thing where they see the difference between something authentic yeah and something you know that is a show yep and if you're gonna go authentic you gotta stay in it yeah that's a lesson i learned

00:19:12Marc:So now this childhood that you come from is much more disturbing than most.

00:19:18Marc:And it's just interesting to me that, like, because I know you've battled with your own demons, as I have, but you didn't go the recovery route.

00:19:24Marc:You ended up in landmark form.

00:19:26Guest:I did go.

00:19:26Guest:I actually, well, I went to, I didn't go to AA, but I did go through, I got a therapist, and he was Dr. Jerry Ozeal, who was actually the Menendez Boys therapist.

00:19:35Guest:Oh, so you had real problems.

00:19:36Guest:Yeah, I actually talked about this on Morocco, and the dude, I would sit there with this dude, and I would tell him this horrible story.

00:19:40Guest:My mom was in a mental hospital, shot and killed her husband, and I go, you know what, I thought she hated me my whole life, but I guess she was just crazy, but I don't know.

00:19:47Guest:And, you know, she did all this crazy stuff, and she abandoned me once in an airport.

00:19:50Guest:I spent the night in Burbank Airport one night when I was five, like all this crazy shit.

00:19:54Guest:And the guy would go, interesting.

00:19:56Guest:Well, tell me what you think about that.

00:19:58Guest:And about the third time, as a comic, you have this level of cynicism and a level of bullshit, this bullshit meter that is so high as a comic that

00:20:05Guest:I just was like, at one point, the third visit, I went, wow, dude, you're not helping me.

00:20:08Guest:All I'm gonna do is sit here for the next 10 years, give you a lot of money, and you're gonna ask me how I think about it.

00:20:13Guest:I want it cured, I want it fixed, I want it handled.

00:20:15Marc:Well, don't you think what he was asking you, though, and it seems to me that this is the biggest problem that we have, is that when he says that, I mean, what we're supposed to do, and what we probably didn't do or haven't done since that event, that trauma-causing event, is feel the fucking feelings.

00:20:30Marc:Right.

00:20:31Marc:That's true.

00:20:31Marc:So, I mean, I think that the goal is usually, like, if we can get you to re-feel that thing that has caused you to be such a prick, then maybe we can process the feelings.

00:20:41Marc:Such a prick.

00:20:42Marc:Yeah, okay, wow.

00:20:43Guest:Does that make sense?

00:20:44Guest:Yeah, but I also think that because you build up those layers over those years, like, you're a grown man, you're an adult, I'm in a business, I'm successful at it, you know, part of your success is because you're kind of that prick.

00:20:56Guest:Like, you've gotten through some, like, to be a comic, to be a comic and make money at this,

00:21:00Guest:You gotta be kind of like a hard-ass to get through stuff be able to handle shit that goes wrong You gotta know I better write this down No, he's got it.

00:21:10Guest:No has got to be a word that you love sometime You know knows gotta be where that you that doesn't you don't even hear you very sensitive though

00:21:16Guest:oh i am oh yeah i go i go home and curl like a in a fetal position and cry but in public where i'm at i'm like i'm like i got this what what yeah but i go i sure yeah i go home calling the corner turn to my girlfriend and go it's over it's over it's i'm gonna be a roofer good that's your that's your plan b yeah that's what all my all the guys in school did so so what happens is that so i i and he was and he had the menendez brothers i talked about this in the morocco

00:21:41Marc:Norman Rockwell is the show you did.

00:21:42Guest:What's the full name of it?

00:21:43Guest:Norman Rockwell's Bleeding.

00:21:44Guest:That was the first comedy, the first night even special.

00:21:46Guest:And so I found out that the dude got actually arrested and got a license book because he had told, the Menendez brothers had told him what they had done to their parents.

00:21:54Guest:Yeah.

00:21:54Guest:And instead of going to the cops, he had told his mistresses because he can't, because of the law.

00:21:57Guest:And he had told us, he had three mistresses.

00:21:59Guest:My therapist had three mistresses and had told all three of them what they had done.

00:22:03Guest:And he said, by the way, if you tell anybody, I'm going to have the Menendez boys track you and kill you.

00:22:07Guest:That's a good therapist.

00:22:09Guest:Yeah, he's gonna shit together, that guy.

00:22:10Guest:The joke I go, yeah, he was my touchstone.

00:22:14Guest:Yeah.

00:22:15Guest:And so then I got a buddy of mine who was in Chicago, great, just a really brilliant doctor, and this kid, this, anyway, he gave me, I took the landmark for him, and again, totally cynical about it, it's three days, you can't change your life in three days, and I took it.

00:22:28Guest:Is that where you can't pee?

00:22:30Guest:No, no, no, that was asked, man.

00:22:31Guest:That was, no, no, it's like you get breaks.

00:22:32Guest:You can pee in the landmark form.

00:22:33Guest:You get breaks every three years.

00:22:34Guest:Yeah, you can go, and you just sit around.

00:22:36Guest:You sit in a room.

00:22:36Guest:Here's the weird thing about it.

00:22:37Guest:You sit in a room with 100 people who don't know you.

00:22:39Guest:See, the problem is we all hang out with the people that know us.

00:22:41Guest:They know our bullshit.

00:22:43Guest:They know how we act.

00:22:44Guest:They have this, they know what we're going to do.

00:22:46Guest:Like, you know what your friends are going to do.

00:22:48Guest:Very few friends, so yeah, I'm pretty aware.

00:22:51Guest:I have three people that I just like, you guys are golden.

00:22:53Guest:Everybody fuck everybody.

00:22:54Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:22:55Guest:Don't any of you fuck me.

00:22:56Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:22:56Marc:You're irreplaceable.

00:22:58Marc:I don't want to have to replace one of you three.

00:23:00Guest:Exactly.

00:23:01Guest:And you're sitting in this room with 100 people that don't know you.

00:23:04Guest:And I literally, I have to tell you, I saw people physically, like their faces change by three days.

00:23:10Guest:And it's nothing.

00:23:10Guest:I'm telling you, there's nothing about it that's magical.

00:23:13Guest:It's just you sit in a room...

00:23:15Guest:And they kind of break down these distinctions.

00:23:17Guest:And they've studied human beings.

00:23:18Guest:They went back 5,000 years and studied human beings.

00:23:20Guest:And it's not religious and it's not political.

00:23:22Guest:They don't bring that up.

00:23:23Guest:They're like, listen, here's what made Gandhi Gandhi.

00:23:25Guest:We talk about Gandhi.

00:23:26Guest:You talk about... Well, what are the tools?

00:23:30Guest:There's a bunch of distinctions.

00:23:31Guest:There's one called... They're called distinctions?

00:23:32Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:23:33Guest:There's one called empty and meaningless.

00:23:35Guest:Life is empty and meaningless, which is empty and meaningless.

00:23:37Marc:That's a bad thing, right?

00:23:38Guest:No, no, it's a really good thing because here's the thing, we always choose the bad meaning.

00:23:42Guest:As human beings, we always choose, and you probably have said it, you choose if something wrong happens, like you get a no from a studio or something, you're like, I suck, I'm untalented, everybody's better than me.

00:23:51Guest:Human beings have this weird default.

00:23:53Marc:That's all humans or just the people that end up at the landmark forum?

00:23:56Guest:Yeah, maybe, maybe, possibly.

00:23:58Guest:Our default is kind of a Microsoft default.

00:24:02Guest:We crash.

00:24:03Guest:We crash a lot.

00:24:04Marc:But there are well-adjusted people around.

00:24:06Guest:Yeah, and the forum, by the way, the whole thing about the forum, and they say this, they go, we don't want people that aren't already making it in life.

00:24:13Guest:We don't want a bunch of people that are going to come here and not get this.

00:24:16Guest:So like I was already making.

00:24:17Guest:We want broken, sad people.

00:24:19Guest:Who are successful in their businesses.

00:24:20Guest:Because I do actually the new show I'm doing, Neverlution.

00:24:23Guest:My new name is called Neverlution.

00:24:25Guest:It's about how we as a planet kind of just letting it go.

00:24:28Guest:Especially America.

00:24:29Guest:We used to be these amazing people.

00:24:32Guest:And now we're like, eh.

00:24:33Marc:Yeah, it's just porn, ultimate fighting.

00:24:35Guest:Yeah, exactly.

00:24:36Guest:And we don't care.

00:24:37Guest:You know, France, they actually raised that retirement age from 62 to 65.

00:24:40Guest:And there's riots in the street.

00:24:42Guest:Yeah, they freaked out.

00:24:42Guest:Yeah, we are getting naked in the airport, and it's like, okay, you want to go to this machine that's going to give me a tumor?

00:24:47Marc:The biggest example to me is just watching Man vs. Food.

00:24:50Marc:I'm like, would somebody please stop that guy from killing himself?

00:24:54Marc:I mean, that is a show where you literally have a restaurant full of people going, go, go, go, and this poor fat dude is shoving a fucking...

00:25:02Guest:That is such America right there.

00:25:04Guest:Exactly.

00:25:05Guest:And that's what we send out to the world, and you can get it on satellite or Netflix.

00:25:08Guest:So anyway, so the form is you sit in this room with 100 people that don't know you, and by the end of the three days, they talk you through these distinctions.

00:25:17Guest:You get to be who you were when you were five before you realized things were fucked up.

00:25:21Guest:Because when you're five and there's some shit- When you're sitting at the airport and your mom left you there.

00:25:24Guest:That's right.

00:25:24Guest:Or when I was water skiing with my dad and I was trying all weekend.

00:25:27Guest:I kept falling.

00:25:28Guest:My dad was drinking in the boat, pulling me, pulling me, pulling me.

00:25:30Guest:And then he goes, I finally get up at the end, like Sunday at three, I get up.

00:25:34Guest:And I remember watching everybody as a kid watching, and they would drop in the water, let go of the rope and sink in the water.

00:25:39Guest:I thought that would be so cool to do.

00:25:40Guest:So the second I get up after my dad had spent three days trying to get me to water ski,

00:25:44Guest:I go about 300 feet and I let go of the rope and I sink.

00:25:46Guest:And he comes back and I think, and I'm gonna go, that was really cool.

00:25:48Guest:And he goes, what the fuck is wrong with you?

00:25:50Guest:I spent all day out in this hot sun getting you, blah, blah, blah, blah, and you're never gonna do it again.

00:25:54Guest:Get your ass in the boat.

00:25:55Guest:And that was the moment I realized, wow, something's wrong.

00:25:59Guest:And I decided at that moment to kind of, I knew I was never gonna be cool.

00:26:02Guest:I'm never gonna fit in.

00:26:03Guest:So I decided to be funny.

00:26:04Guest:And I became this little five, six, seven year old kid who would pop shit off to adults all the time.

00:26:09Guest:Did your father beat you up?

00:26:10Guest:He beat me up.

00:26:12Guest:When I fought him, I punched him once and we beat him.

00:26:14Guest:I get spanked a lot as a kid.

00:26:15Guest:I didn't get beat up.

00:26:16Marc:He was just a boozer?

00:26:18Guest:Yeah, big drinker, big drinker.

00:26:20Guest:But then again, never missed a day of work, never missed a child support payment, nothing, man.

00:26:25Guest:He was one of those old school guys.

00:26:28Guest:Like the old writers from Carson back in the 60s.

00:26:30Guest:They were just hammered on them back at work the next day.

00:26:32Guest:Like Mad Men.

00:26:33Guest:Yeah, exactly.

00:26:34Guest:Anyway, so I do the dynamic forum.

00:26:36Guest:I get this insight into what's possible, and I write Norman Rockwell.

00:26:42Guest:Basically, at night after, I threw all my material away.

00:26:45Guest:I had one three-minute bit, wrote an entire new act.

00:26:47Guest:It's about changing your perception of yourself, correct?

00:26:50Guest:Yeah.

00:26:50Marc:Really, so you can get a little distance from the swamp of fucking self-hate and insanity?

00:26:55Guest:Yeah.

00:26:55Guest:When you get the truth of it, though, because you get the truth.

00:26:57Guest:What is the truth of it?

00:26:58Guest:Jesus.

00:26:58Guest:There is none.

00:26:59Guest:There is none.

00:27:00Guest:That's it.

00:27:00Guest:That's what you pay for?

00:27:01Guest:Yes.

00:27:02Yes.

00:27:02Guest:Empty and meaningless means this.

00:27:03Guest:Life is empty and meaningless.

00:27:06Guest:And I'm watching it.

00:27:07Guest:And just if you're a comic, man, you should just go for the show.

00:27:09Guest:Because people, the first time, we're there 10 minutes, and they ask you to share this.

00:27:12Guest:One guy gets up, and he goes, this is how he starts.

00:27:15Guest:I have AIDS.

00:27:16Guest:I have AIDS.

00:27:17Guest:He goes, I'm going to die.

00:27:19Guest:And he goes, and my boyfriend said, if I don't come in here, he's not going to see me anymore.

00:27:22Guest:That's how he started.

00:27:24Guest:And I just kind of was like, okay.

00:27:25Guest:Good opener.

00:27:25Guest:Yeah, good, really good.

00:27:26Guest:I'm in.

00:27:27Guest:I'm so in.

00:27:28Guest:I'm like, yes!

00:27:30Guest:And by the end, that guy was angry and furrowed.

00:27:33Guest:There was another guy.

00:27:33Guest:And so people kind of start sharing their lives.

00:27:35Guest:And when you think, however bad you think you're fucked up, man, someone's gonna get up and say something that happened to them that you're just gonna go, oh my God.

00:27:43Guest:One guy gets up, so the form leader does this thing called empty meanings and starts asking, what do you guys think life means?

00:27:48Guest:Everybody gets up and starts, life is Jesus and life is my kids.

00:27:51Guest:And the form leader keeps going, no, no, no, no.

00:27:55Guest:What ends up happening is that at the end of it, people are fired up.

00:27:58Guest:And I'm not saying anything because I know a punchline is coming.

00:28:01Guest:I know that they're setting up.

00:28:03Guest:And she goes, life is empty meanings, which is empty meanings.

00:28:05Guest:It doesn't mean anything because life is empty meanings.

00:28:06Guest:You get to pick the meaning.

00:28:07Guest:The problem with human beings is we always pick the negative meaning.

00:28:10Guest:Our default is to pick the negative meaning.

00:28:13Guest:Why?

00:28:13Guest:I don't know, man.

00:28:14Guest:They didn't tell you that?

00:28:15Guest:No.

00:28:15Guest:I guess they could figure that out.

00:28:17Guest:They could just give you a shot.

00:28:18Guest:Just fix that hormone or gene.

00:28:21Marc:It feels like to me that it's because you're wired to do that.

00:28:25Marc:I mean, some people who are brought up with one good parent or some fragment of self-esteem and have a sense of healthy competition and that maybe if a chick splits or you don't get a fucking job, it's not the end of the goddamn world.

00:28:38Marc:Right.

00:28:38Guest:Well, they're not in the form.

00:28:39Guest:They actually, you know what they're doing?

00:28:42Guest:They're managing a Taco Bell.

00:28:43Guest:They're doing well.

00:28:44Guest:They're doing all right.

00:28:45Guest:They're making 65, 70 grand a year.

00:28:46Marc:They accept their life, and they're all right.

00:28:48Marc:They know their limitations.

00:28:49Guest:Well, you know, that's the whole thing I do in this new act.

00:28:52Guest:No one is who's really successful.

00:28:54Guest:Like, you're fucked up.

00:28:55Guest:I'm kind of fucked up.

00:28:55Guest:Like, no one's really successful unless...

00:28:58Guest:Anybody who's successful, you didn't do it because you were loved too much, got a trophy for losing, or you got hugged.

00:29:04Guest:You got successful because someone at one point in life said, you're a loser and you're never going to mount anything.

00:29:08Guest:And you decided to bust your ass to make them choke on it.

00:29:11Guest:And there are so many things that I believe.

00:29:14Guest:And when I do this on stage, people start clapping.

00:29:16Guest:Steve Jobs has daddy issues.

00:29:19Guest:This guy invented something new that had never been invented.

00:29:21Guest:He was in the garage as a teenager, and his dad's like, what the hell are you doing?

00:29:24Guest:How come you're not playing football?

00:29:26Guest:Who's this Wozniak kid?

00:29:27Guest:Are you gay?

00:29:28Guest:What's going on?

00:29:29Guest:And he was like, oh, man.

00:29:30Marc:Well, I think that's true.

00:29:31Marc:I think that I've observed it just by talking to people in here is that a lot of guys who have either abandonment issues with their dad or tension with their dad

00:29:40Marc:Cats whose dad split, I mean, they definitely have a lot to prove.

00:29:44Marc:Yes.

00:29:44Marc:There's no doubt about that.

00:29:45Marc:And I think you can go either way with that.

00:29:47Marc:Either you become that guy where you're going to show him, or you become the guy that's just looking for dads.

00:29:51Marc:You know, would somebody please parent me?

00:29:54Marc:But like with women, now this is a question, and we'll get around to the other stuff.

00:29:57Marc:I mean, your mom was a schizophrenic.

00:29:59Guest:Yes.

00:29:59Guest:Yeah, manic depressive schizophrenic.

00:30:00Guest:Who murdered somebody?

00:30:01Guest:Shot and killed her last husband.

00:30:02Guest:How many times was she married?

00:30:04Guest:Three times.

00:30:05Guest:I used to joke, you're out of the husband wish book at that point.

00:30:09Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:30:10Guest:They're not going to be new husbands coming around.

00:30:12Marc:You're done at that point.

00:30:13Marc:But in terms of how you're wired, what has been your experience with women in your life?

00:30:19Guest:My dad got divorced six times, so I made a real decision young.

00:30:22Guest:I was like, I'm never getting divorced.

00:30:23Guest:I will stay married.

00:30:25Guest:No matter, because my dad would get divorced.

00:30:26Guest:You gain 13 pounds.

00:30:27Guest:Here, move out.

00:30:28Guest:I mean, my dad was that guy.

00:30:29Guest:You live with this guy?

00:30:31Guest:Yeah, oh yeah.

00:30:31Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:30:32Guest:He actually, well, my mom was insane.

00:30:33Guest:The weird thing about the child laws have changed a little bit now because I just went through my horrible divorce with my kids.

00:30:38Guest:You went through a divorce?

00:30:40Guest:Yeah, a bad one.

00:30:40Guest:Oh yeah.

00:30:41Guest:My last special was called Love is Evil.

00:30:42Guest:It's 90 minutes ago.

00:30:45Marc:How many wives have you had?

00:30:46Marc:One.

00:30:47Marc:So you went through one divorce?

00:30:48Guest:Yeah, but it's still going on.

00:30:50Marc:I'm five years into it.

00:30:52Marc:Really?

00:30:53Marc:Now, what happened?

00:30:54Marc:Is she crazy?

00:30:54Marc:Are you crazy?

00:30:55Marc:Or did it just go bad?

00:30:56Guest:Well, allegedly, in my opinion, she's crazy.

00:30:59Guest:I guess that's always the opinion we have.

00:31:01Guest:She forged checks.

00:31:03Guest:She forged hundreds of thousands of dollars of checks while we were married.

00:31:05Guest:Then I caught her and she was seeing two other guys.

00:31:08Guest:Oh, no.

00:31:09Guest:Then I filed for divorce.

00:31:10Guest:When I filed for divorce, she went to court and said that I was beating her and the kids.

00:31:13Guest:And and it's just like it's a fucking horrendous dude.

00:31:16Marc:It's it's insane But do you feel like in looking back on it?

00:31:21Guest:That because of the way you were brought up that you were attracted to some you know Yeah, yeah, and I saw you a little bit attracted to a little bit crazy and also because my dad got divorced and I had made a decision We make decisions as kids man that you just you stick to your whole life that just screw up your life I never made anything

00:31:35Marc:The one I made, one I made, which was like, if I ever do so much drugs that I start to lose my mind, I will stop.

00:31:41Marc:Or at least try to stop.

00:31:42Marc:And that stuck with me.

00:31:44Guest:Okay, good.

00:31:45Guest:But I made a decision, like, my dad used to get all these women.

00:31:48Guest:I had so many women going through this house growing up with my dad.

00:31:52Guest:And my dad was literally like Burt Reynolds of our neighborhood.

00:31:54Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:31:56Guest:Swinger?

00:31:56Guest:Yeah, just woman after woman and all these...

00:31:59Guest:And then he kind of, it didn't work for him.

00:32:02Guest:So I made a decision, and I was like 10 years old.

00:32:04Guest:I am never getting divorced.

00:32:05Guest:I'm never getting divorced.

00:32:06Guest:And I sucked up.

00:32:07Guest:I got punched in the face by one of my ex's brothers on Easter Sunday.

00:32:12Guest:For what?

00:32:14Guest:His dad is like 70, and I'm like, I think I have some integrity.

00:32:18Guest:They all lived, they were like 30 and 40, and they all lived in the house with their parents still.

00:32:22Guest:And on Easter Sunday, I go over, and one of her brothers started yelling at her dad, calling him a name, and he pushed him.

00:32:28Guest:and her dad's like 75 years old, and the door to the outside backyard was open, and I just pushed him through the door, and I go, hey, do not ever touch an old man like that, ever.

00:32:40Guest:So my ex gets in front of my face, and she goes, what are you doing?

00:32:43Guest:And her brother comes in behind her and just reaches over and just cracks me in the face, and I just kind of turn my head, and she looks at me, and she goes, you're ruining Easter.

00:32:52Guest:Right.

00:32:52Guest:Well, that old act.

00:32:53Guest:I just get punched in the face.

00:32:54Marc:Okay, well, it seemed like, yeah, a lot of red flags there at the house.

00:32:59Guest:Yeah, looking back.

00:33:01Guest:But then again, I made the decision.

00:33:03Guest:I'm going to stay married no matter what.

00:33:04Guest:Whatever she needs, I'm going to be doing it.

00:33:05Marc:But let me ask you, man, because I'm just dealing with some of this myself.

00:33:08Marc:And I come from whatever emotional issues I come from, and you come from whatever you come from.

00:33:13Marc:Yours are more extreme, but mine are equally unhealthy in certain respects.

00:33:17Marc:So I'm dealing with a woman.

00:33:19Marc:But I knew...

00:33:21Marc:going in that there were some issues.

00:33:23Marc:I mean, you knew that.

00:33:25Marc:Yeah.

00:33:26Guest:But she's the good one.

00:33:28Guest:I mean, I did a joke about it in The Love is Evil.

00:33:29Guest:Yo, she's the good one.

00:33:30Guest:No, she's not the good one.

00:33:31Guest:She's just on time release.

00:33:32Guest:That's all it is.

00:33:33Marc:Well, that's interesting.

00:33:34Marc:But there's also our desire and our perception.

00:33:37Marc:Like, I can handle this.

00:33:38Guest:I can fix it.

00:33:39Guest:Yeah.

00:33:40Guest:That's a guy thing right there.

00:33:41Guest:I can fix it.

00:33:41Marc:I will handle this.

00:33:42Marc:It's also a chick thing.

00:33:43Marc:They want to fix us too.

00:33:44Marc:But that fixing thing, I didn't think I had that.

00:33:46Marc:But that is as big a disease as being addicted to shit.

00:33:50Marc:Yes.

00:33:50Guest:Thinking you can fix people or keep their shit together.

00:33:55Guest:Yeah.

00:33:55Guest:Don't worry.

00:33:56Guest:I got it.

00:33:57Guest:And the thing is that people will let you handle it.

00:33:59Guest:And eventually you find yourself in this nightmare where you're like, wow, I'm handling everything.

00:34:04Guest:But you can't handle it.

00:34:05Guest:And then they'll begin to resent you.

00:34:06Marc:And then they'll do things like go out and fuck other guys.

00:34:08Marc:There you go.

00:34:09Marc:And then they're going to be like, still like me?

00:34:10Marc:Did you still like, you know?

00:34:12Guest:Right.

00:34:12Guest:And part of you is, why did you do that?

00:34:14Guest:I'll stay with you.

00:34:14Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:34:15Guest:I guess I can handle it.

00:34:16Guest:Just tell me why.

00:34:17Guest:I can still fix you.

00:34:19Guest:It was my fault.

00:34:20Guest:I wasn't trying hard enough.

00:34:21Guest:God damn.

00:34:22Guest:So I go through this thing.

00:34:23Guest:I get the show.

00:34:23Guest:I get Norman Rockwell.

00:34:24Guest:I really go to this really insightful period in my life where I write all this stuff about my mom, my dad, and the comedy, like all the therapy I tried to do and therapy, the one thing that helped me get all this out.

00:34:33Guest:Is this after the divorce started?

00:34:34Guest:No, no.

00:34:34Guest:The divorce, no.

00:34:35Guest:This is way earlier.

00:34:36Guest:This is what I do.

00:34:37Guest:I'm trying to get back to your original question.

00:34:38Guest:The original question is- How did you fuck up your show?

00:34:39Marc:Well, okay, the original question is, all right, so you've evolved into, you started to do honest work, and now you get this opportunity.

00:34:45Guest:Right, big difference.

00:34:47Guest:We get this crazy review in L.A., and it compared me to Sam Shepard, and I was just hilarious.

00:34:53Guest:I laughed so hard.

00:34:53Guest:Some kind of compliments.

00:34:54Guest:You've got some great reviews where you're just like, really?

00:34:57Marc:Yeah, I'll take it.

00:34:57Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:34:58Guest:And then I'll say, like, I guess I'm the only one that knows that this isn't true.

00:35:01Guest:Yeah.

00:35:01Guest:Yeah, exactly.

00:35:03Guest:This guy layered it on pretty thick.

00:35:04Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:35:05Guest:So I get to the show, we get to deal with Fox, Titus, and I sat in a room with them, and the one thing you learn in the forum is that, you know, take a stand for yourself and integrity.

00:35:12Guest:So many people want the prize of a TV show or this or that, that they're willing to do almost anything, and I guarantee that if you just are willing to take everything they say,

00:35:20Guest:Eventually, you got to remember, these people, executives, they're great.

00:35:24Guest:Some of them are great, but most of them are lawyers who got out of school, and they've never been on stage, and they've never written a script.

00:35:31Marc:And you sit there, and you try to... And they don't want to be blamed for a failure.

00:35:33Guest:Right, and you start to explain to them what's funny, and they go, no, no, I don't think that's... Okay, I've done 14,000 shows.

00:35:39Guest:14,000.

00:35:41Guest:Guess what?

00:35:41Guest:I have a little... So that always bugged me.

00:35:44Marc:You say, I know this works, and they're like, well, I don't know if it'll work for our audience.

00:35:47Guest:Or it doesn't seem like... You mean the exact same people that go to the comedy club on Friday that are watching TV on Tuesday?

00:35:53Guest:Those people aren't going to laugh at it because it's Tuesday?

00:35:55Guest:Is that why?

00:35:56Guest:Yeah.

00:35:56Guest:Okay, so that's my attitude about it.

00:35:58Guest:This is where I get in trouble.

00:35:59Guest:See what I just did?

00:36:00Guest:That's where I get in trouble with the network.

00:36:01Guest:Who the fuck are you today?

00:36:01Guest:Yeah, exactly.

00:36:03Guest:So anyway, so we go, we get Titus.

00:36:05Guest:I'm really standing in integrity and making a difference.

00:36:08Guest:Literally, you start to change what you want to do with life.

00:36:12Marc:But it got some good press.

00:36:13Marc:I mean, it was like you were taking risks.

00:36:14Marc:I mean, it was a fairly extreme family situation.

00:36:17Guest:Yeah, oh yeah.

00:36:18Guest:I designed it not to be a funny sitcom, but to cause a paradigm shift in the way people see their screwed up life.

00:36:22Guest:Because dysfunctional used to be a bad word.

00:36:24Guest:You got to remember, we did the show in 90...

00:36:25Guest:We got the deal in 98, the show, we filmed the show in 99, and we went in mid-season in 2000, you know, because it takes a long time to get a show on the air.

00:36:34Guest:And at that time, dysfunctional was kind of a bad word.

00:36:36Guest:It wasn't a cool thing.

00:36:37Marc:It was like a— Well, it's still kind of not cool, and now, like, it seems like there are two camps of dysfunctional.

00:36:42Marc:Now they have entire, you know, shows and networks dedicated to, you know, intervention, hoarders, celebrity rehab—

00:36:50Marc:Like, there's a way, like, they keep it separate now.

00:36:53Marc:They're not integrating it into, like, we all have this.

00:36:56Marc:They're like, look at those freaks.

00:36:57Marc:And then you've got to sit at home going, maybe I'm one of them.

00:36:59Marc:But, you know, it's not like what you were doing where you sort of take it on as something that's as common as, you know, people owning cars.

00:37:07Marc:I mean, everyone's got it in their family.

00:37:08Guest:Right, everybody's got some hard-ass relatives.

00:37:10Guest:Their mom's got problems.

00:37:12Guest:So we did this show.

00:37:13Guest:The original pilot was called Dad is Dead, which is basically my father's dead.

00:37:17Guest:My father's dead for the whole episode.

00:37:19Guest:Based on a true story, I called my brother one time.

00:37:21Guest:My brother, who's not really my brother, he was my dad's fourth wife, kid, who moved in with us when he was eight.

00:37:27Guest:But then when she moved out, he dug my dad so much he stayed with my dad.

00:37:31Guest:Oh, my God.

00:37:32Guest:That's great.

00:37:34Guest:Did you get along with him?

00:37:35Guest:Yo, I love him.

00:37:36Guest:He's my brother Dave.

00:37:37Guest:And so I get a call from L.A.

00:37:39Guest:He goes, Dad's dead.

00:37:40Guest:And I go, what?

00:37:41Guest:And my dad had a bunch of heart attacks.

00:37:42Guest:He's got a heart attack gold card.

00:37:46Guest:He just had so many heart attacks.

00:37:47Guest:He gets miles.

00:37:48Guest:And so he basically calls me some dads.

00:37:52Guest:And I'm like, oh, my God, Dad's dead?

00:37:53Guest:He goes, yeah, I think he's dead.

00:37:54Guest:And I go, you think he's dead?

00:37:56Guest:What does that mean?

00:37:56Guest:He goes, he's been in his room for three days and he hasn't come out.

00:37:59Guest:And I go in his room.

00:38:00Guest:He goes, I'm not going in his room.

00:38:01Guest:What if he's not dead?

00:38:02Guest:And this conversation happens, and I'm like, go in his fucking room and see if he's dead or not.

00:38:06Guest:You just gotta stay dead.

00:38:07Guest:He's not making a noise.

00:38:08Guest:I'm not going in his room.

00:38:09Guest:So we start arguing.

00:38:10Guest:So I call my aunt, who's a nurse, and she goes over to the house.

00:38:12Guest:And he had actually literally thought he had the flu and had a mild heart attack.

00:38:15Guest:My dad had so many heart attacks at one point, he just felt flu-ish.

00:38:18Guest:So we get in the hospital, that's his fourth heart attack.

00:38:26Guest:And so when we did the show, I kind of pitched it to the network and I pitched it to the studio and they just looked at me like I was insane.

00:38:31Guest:And we had Stacy Keach playing my dad and I said, listen, and I told him the story.

00:38:35Guest:He said, it's these people sitting, everyone's afraid of this guy so much that they won't go.

00:38:38Guest:And I go, let's build a character that you're so, that you, that, because Stacy Keach is big enough to be the guy we're going to build.

00:38:44Guest:Yeah.

00:38:44Guest:If we build this character so well that when he comes out, it's the scariest thing anybody's seen.

00:38:48Guest:Yeah.

00:38:49Guest:It'll be great.

00:38:49Guest:So we built this character where, you know, we're all kind of sad.

00:38:52Guest:Everyone's just going to go to the door and we keep trying to go to the door to open it and no one will do it.

00:38:55Guest:And then we have this, at the end, we're all talking.

00:38:57Guest:We're actually, we've accepted he's dead.

00:38:59Guest:and we're sitting around the kitchen table talking about how great he was.

00:39:03Guest:And as we get louder, he just kind of stays, he keeps walking, looking like crap with a robe on, and he's like, what the hell are you guys doing?

00:39:09Guest:And it scares the hell out of us.

00:39:11Guest:It ended up being this crazy pilot.

00:39:12Guest:It just worked.

00:39:13Guest:And we had this amazing cast.

00:39:15Guest:So we get into year three.

00:39:17Marc:Okay, so you've done three years when the shit hits the fan?

00:39:22Guest:Yeah, it was the beginning of the third year.

00:39:24Guest:What happened was Fox went through 14 presidents in nine years.

00:39:28Guest:Not a real steady hand on the tiller.

00:39:29Marc:Well, that's familiar to you with your family.

00:39:31Guest:Yeah, exactly, exactly.

00:39:35Guest:And the one thing is when something's successful, kind of the worst thing for a comic is if you're under the radar and something's kind of successful, nobody really wants to take credit for it.

00:39:44Guest:But we were doing like a 15 share, man.

00:39:46Guest:We were killing it.

00:39:47Guest:And we were getting great reviews.

00:39:49Guest:Well, when that happens and everybody wants a piece of it.

00:39:52Marc:So this is where the shit starts at the fan.

00:39:54Guest:Yeah, we're at 38 or 40 shows now.

00:39:55Guest:Okay.

00:39:56Guest:So Gail Berman came in and Gail Berman.

00:39:58Guest:I know Gail Berman.

00:39:59Guest:She comes in there sitting across the room from me and the problem with me is, and like a prick, I will accept that, but I'll also accept that I was there at nine in the morning because we had to shoot differently because we shot it in front of a, we shot it like a play every week.

00:40:13Guest:We never stopped.

00:40:14Guest:We shot the show.

00:40:15Guest:We actually did all, we,

00:40:17Guest:We did writing Monday, Tuesday.

00:40:18Guest:We rehearsed Monday, Tuesday with the cast.

00:40:20Guest:Wednesday, we filmed all the black and white stuff.

00:40:25Guest:You've never seen the show, have you?

00:40:26Guest:No.

00:40:27Guest:You should check it out because we did three different film styles.

00:40:29Guest:We did black and white where I'm talking to camera.

00:40:32Guest:Then we did these flashbacks where they had to be funny.

00:40:34Guest:The rule was they have to be funny in 15 seconds.

00:40:36Guest:They have to be laugh-out-loud funny in 15 seconds.

00:40:38Marc:You're playing with a lot of different forms and you're doing something new on all levels.

00:40:41Guest:So it was really hard.

00:40:41Guest:And I was writing on the show.

00:40:42Guest:I was in the room all the time.

00:40:44Guest:I was the guy who came up with 26 episodes because it was my family.

00:40:46Guest:I'd come in with 26 episode ideas every year.

00:40:48Guest:So I'm writing on the show.

00:40:49Marc:Which is a fairly unique situation.

00:40:50Marc:I mean, it's one thing to be created by or co-created by, but you were actually actively writing episodes.

00:40:56Guest:Right, and we'd have new directors come in, and because the form was so kind of different, I'd have to stop everything, and I'd just start going, okay, here's what we're going to do.

00:41:02Guest:Just watch us.

00:41:03Guest:So I was there at 9, working to 2.

00:41:05Guest:We'd do a run-through for the studio network on Monday and Tuesday, because we had to do it that fast.

00:41:09Guest:And then on Wednesday, we'd start shooting the background stuff and all the flashbacks and the black and white stuff that night.

00:41:14Guest:And then we'd do camera blocking on Thursday.

00:41:16Guest:We'd rewrite for Friday.

00:41:18Guest:And you're sober.

00:41:19Guest:Totally sober, oh yeah.

00:41:20Guest:And so we go all the way to, like we'd go, I'd be there from nine in the morning to midnight or one o'clock every day.

00:41:26Guest:And this is for three years.

00:41:26Guest:So by year three, you gotta know, I had walked into a buddy of mine, he does t-shirts, and he goes, dude, what happened to you?

00:41:32Guest:And he goes, you look like a vampire, bro.

00:41:34Guest:And I didn't realize it, but I was doing nothing but the show, and I was getting crazy.

00:41:38Guest:I have to admit, I was getting crazy.

00:41:40Guest:I was so tired of, look, we've done this for three years, and just let me do it.

00:41:44Guest:Don't argue with me about this.

00:41:44Guest:Let's just go.

00:41:45Guest:I'm tired.

00:41:46Guest:And so we go to this meeting with the network.

00:41:48Guest:And I shouldn't have gone to the meeting.

00:41:49Guest:I will admit, I should not.

00:41:50Guest:I should have said, no, I'm going to sleep.

00:41:52Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:41:53Guest:Go to the meeting with the network.

00:41:54Guest:It's everybody.

00:41:54Guest:It's Gail Berman.

00:41:55Guest:It's all the studio people there.

00:41:57Guest:And Gail Berman goes, she's new president.

00:41:59Guest:And she goes, oh, here's what I want you to do to the show.

00:42:01Guest:Now, what had happened was, Dharma and Greg the year before had broken up Dharma and Greg.

00:42:04Guest:You can't do that to a TV show.

00:42:06Guest:You can't say, here's the premise.

00:42:07Guest:Now we're going to fuck the premise.

00:42:08Marc:Well, didn't it tank and they did that?

00:42:10Guest:It tanked the second, then next year, gone, gone.

00:42:12Guest:It was over.

00:42:12Guest:It went from a 19 share to a five share.

00:42:14Guest:So she sits across from me and she says, I want you to break, but the season they did it, it went up to a 19 share because people wanted to see what was going to happen.

00:42:22Guest:Right.

00:42:23Guest:So she sits there and she goes, I want you to fix that.

00:42:25Guest:I want you to change the share.

00:42:26Guest:I want you to break Titus and Aaron up and do a love triangle, which is very imitative, not innovative.

00:42:31Marc:This was your wife?

00:42:32Guest:Yeah.

00:42:33Guest:I mean, the relationship.

00:42:34Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:42:35Guest:Okay.

00:42:35Guest:And I said...

00:42:37Guest:Do you even watch the show?

00:42:39Guest:That's how I started.

00:42:40Guest:I go, let me explain how it works to you.

00:42:42Guest:I said, you can't do that.

00:42:43Guest:I said, number one, the whole show is based on two screwed up people make a good relationship.

00:42:47Guest:I go, that's what I tried to tell everybody so they can actually have some hope.

00:42:50Guest:If I break them up, guess what?

00:42:51Guest:They're just like everybody else.

00:42:53Guest:And you know what?

00:42:53Guest:It's boring to watch.

00:42:54Guest:I don't want to see.

00:42:55Guest:People don't watch television to see them.

00:42:56Guest:And you're manic and skinny and weird.

00:42:58Guest:Yeah, I'm a little crystal meth-y but just really tired.

00:43:02Guest:And my two executive producers sit next to me, my co-execs, and they're like, and no one says anything.

00:43:07Guest:They let me go.

00:43:08Guest:And I guess because they know me.

00:43:09Guest:I'm pretty forceful.

00:43:11Guest:And I basically for three minutes talked to her like she's a three-year-old.

00:43:15Guest:It was totally uncool.

00:43:17Guest:Never swore.

00:43:18Marc:Completely condescending?

00:43:19Guest:Yeah, let me explain how it works to you.

00:43:21Guest:Yeah, oh yeah, dude, bad, bad, bad move.

00:43:24Guest:Bad move, I'm totally, if you tell your boss he's stupid long enough, he'll fire you.

00:43:28Guest:And so the weirdest thing is I get done with the speech, and I know in the concept of what I'm saying, I'm right.

00:43:35Guest:We've been doing this, we're getting great ratings, just let us keep going.

00:43:38Guest:I should have said, we'll look at that idea, see if we can make it work.

00:43:41Guest:If we can, great, if we can't, sorry.

00:43:44Guest:And I didn't.

00:43:45Guest:And I get done, and it was almost like, ta-da, and I'm waiting for the people to go.

00:43:48Guest:Exactly.

00:43:49Guest:Someone finally stood up.

00:43:50Guest:Chris is king.

00:43:51Guest:Dead silence, man.

00:43:52Guest:The thermostat lowered itself.

00:43:53Guest:It was like a tumbleweed blew across the table.

00:43:55Guest:It was bad.

00:43:56Guest:And so the next, she just goes, okay, do what you want then.

00:44:00Guest:It was that cold.

00:44:01Guest:And I realized that I had lost an ally.

00:44:04Guest:But I thought the show was doing so well.

00:44:06Guest:How can you lose?

00:44:08Guest:We got up to, we get to the end of the season, and we did some really great episodes, but we had, I kept pushing the envelope.

00:44:15Guest:We did an episode, my niece had got molested, and we did an episode about, it was a friend of her dad's in reality, and so we did an episode about that where basically I find out that the kid, because she moved in with me, and I find out that the kid was molested by this dude who still is a father of one of the kids at her school.

00:44:30Guest:So basically we meet him in the bathroom, me and my brother, and we take a bat to him.

00:44:35Marc:That was the episode.

00:44:36Guest:Yeah, they actually wouldn't.

00:44:37Guest:They heard that one last after the show got canceled because they wouldn't.

00:44:39Guest:But it's really funny, which is weird.

00:44:41Guest:My dad said that.

00:44:41Marc:So you're doing some pretty risky shit.

00:44:43Guest:We were trying, yeah.

00:44:44Guest:And so I just thought, you know, we're doing what we're supposed to be doing.

00:44:47Guest:And what happened?

00:44:48Guest:They were really cold.

00:44:49Guest:They couldn't.

00:44:50Guest:The one thing is that you couldn't.

00:44:51Guest:The show was doing so well, and TV Guide actually wrote an article about it after it got canceled.

00:44:55Guest:they couldn't just kill it.

00:44:56Marc:So when the renewals came up the next year... But you thought that after that meeting with Gale, that not only did you not have an ally, but they were going to start to disassemble your... Three months later, they moved us to... They moved us.

00:45:07Guest:We were killing it.

00:45:08Guest:We were right behind 70... Oh, and then Bernie Mac.

00:45:10Guest:Bernie Mac was our format.

00:45:11Guest:We got a script.

00:45:12Guest:Bernie Mac came out the year after us, and it was our script format.

00:45:16Guest:Like three different film styles and stuff.

00:45:17Guest:Right.

00:45:18Guest:And I looked at it, and I go, at a meeting, I go, guys, I just got the script for this new show.

00:45:23Guest:I go, what is this?

00:45:23Guest:And they all start laughing, and they go, oh, it's an homage to Titus.

00:45:26Guest:Well, doesn't it have to be dead to have an homage?

00:45:29Guest:You can't just have an homage right next to us.

00:45:30Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:45:32Guest:So I guess they had been told to do a Black Titus, and it was.

00:45:34Guest:And Bernie Mac's very funny.

00:45:35Guest:Did his own thing.

00:45:36Guest:It was great.

00:45:36Guest:But at the end of the day, it was...

00:45:38Guest:so much like ours, and that was her show, that was done with Regency, which is her company at the time.

00:45:43Guest:Gale's?

00:45:43Guest:Gale's, so she actually, that got all the press.

00:45:45Guest:At one point, I pissed her off so much that at one point, at the bottom, it would say like, Bernie Mac, that 70s show, Grounded for Life, and then literally, at the bottom, it's words, it just goes, Titus, 930.

00:45:58Guest:It was that bad.

00:45:59Marc:So this was a war.

00:46:00Marc:Not only did you not have an ally, you made an enemy.

00:46:03Guest:I made someone that was, yeah.

00:46:04Guest:And looking back now as an older guy who gets it like 10 years later, you know what?

00:46:11Guest:What a dick.

00:46:12Guest:What a dick.

00:46:12Guest:Really?

00:46:13Guest:You told the network president?

00:46:15Guest:And some people go, dude, I'm glad you did it, man.

00:46:17Guest:no no guess guess what i lost probably well forget the money but we i get letters all the time from people that say that show changed my life that show got my family together you know this one dude this one dude shows up at ontario improv one day he's wearing a blackjack and he goes hey titus i want to talk to you and i'm like i'm getting my ass kicked and he goes he goes look i haven't talked to my dad in 13 years but when your show came on we started watching it and i started and i said dad watch his show and then he called me back next week said i watched you watch this week and we started talking he goes i'm going home for thanksgiving i haven't been home in 13 years

00:46:44Guest:And so I screwed that up.

00:46:45Guest:I really screwed that up.

00:46:46Guest:I mean, we did 54 episodes and I just kind of just sucked it up.

00:46:50Marc:Did she just starve your show though?

00:46:52Marc:Is that what happened?

00:46:53Guest:Yeah, she moved us.

00:46:54Guest:They moved us.

00:46:55Guest:They moved us against West Wing after 9-11.

00:46:57Guest:So we were done.

00:46:58Guest:And then they moved us.

00:46:59Guest:And then the ratings dropped and then they came back up with no problem.

00:47:01Guest:They started to come back up again.

00:47:03Marc:So they moved us to like- But you saw this as an intentional, like you knew you had a good show.

00:47:08Marc:And this network, you know, she-

00:47:11Marc:It was personal.

00:47:13Guest:Robert Towne said something great.

00:47:15Guest:You know Robert Towne?

00:47:16Guest:No, but I read his book.

00:47:17Guest:Show business is just high school with money.

00:47:19Marc:Right.

00:47:20Marc:So it was definitely personal.

00:47:22Guest:Felt it, yeah.

00:47:22Marc:So as this is going on.

00:47:23Guest:And that being said, and not personal, like it should have been.

00:47:26Guest:I mean, I think if someone had treated me like that, maybe looking back, I mean, look, I'm pissed.

00:47:30Marc:But you didn't apologize or nothing?

00:47:32Marc:I mean, how long did it take you to realize that you fucking made a mistake that day?

00:47:35Guest:I mean, honestly, to accept it, to own it, to be honest with you, probably not to get canceled.

00:47:42Guest:Yeah, right.

00:47:42Guest:Now?

00:47:43Guest:I'm like, right now?

00:47:44Guest:Right now I'm really on it today.

00:47:47Guest:Yeah, it took me a while.

00:47:51Guest:Because I kind of walked around with this.

00:47:52Guest:And it's weird, man.

00:47:53Guest:When you...

00:47:54Guest:Look, your comedy is really like, you take a stand.

00:47:57Guest:When you talk a shit on stage, you're like saying what you want to say.

00:47:59Guest:And there's a difference between, let me do some schmucky comedy and let me say what I believe.

00:48:05Guest:The truth isn't, you have to have this weird thing as a comic where I don't give a fuck what the audience really thinks.

00:48:10Guest:I really don't.

00:48:10Guest:I'm going to say this.

00:48:12Guest:I hope it's funny.

00:48:13Guest:I really worked hard to make it funny.

00:48:14Guest:But at the end of the day, this is what I believe.

00:48:16Guest:That's why you're successful at what you do.

00:48:18Guest:So when I said that in the room, I'm like, well, you know, show's doing well.

00:48:21Guest:I was right.

00:48:22Guest:And I kind of rode that for a while.

00:48:24Guest:And then the signs started showing up.

00:48:26Guest:We had no promo.

00:48:27Marc:Well, I think what you're saying is something that I think I had a hard time realizing, especially because you and I share a type of righteous anger.

00:48:36Marc:Righteous anger is a killer.

00:48:38Marc:Because compromise is really not part of the language of righteous anger.

00:48:44Guest:Yeah, that's going to be my new t-shirt.

00:48:44Guest:Righteous anger is a killer, so let me apologize in advance.

00:48:47Guest:That's right.

00:48:48Guest:That's my next t-shirt.

00:48:49Guest:Well, that's good.

00:48:49Marc:I mean, because I do that too.

00:48:51Marc:I mean, closing the gap between doing something and apologizing is tricky because there's something, in the same way that we gravitate towards negative thoughts, the feeling of justification when you fucking blow your stack.

00:49:04Marc:But the thing I was going to say is as comics, the great thing about being a comic is we can do whatever the fuck we want as long as it's funny or as long as we have some control of the game or sell tickets or whatever.

00:49:14Marc:But then all of a sudden, when you're in show business,

00:49:16Marc:then business is business and business is politics and business is money.

00:49:21Marc:And the fucked up thing about this story that upsets me more than anything else is that, look, it's supposed to be, look, if you're selling tickets and you're selling advertising, people dig your show, everything's great.

00:49:33Marc:We'll go to bat for you.

00:49:34Marc:It doesn't fucking matter.

00:49:36Marc:Right.

00:49:36Marc:But you had that going on and you pissed off someone in power and they decided to politically destroy you.

00:49:42Marc:That to me is fucking heinous.

00:49:43Marc:I don't care what you did.

00:49:45Marc:It's just like the reality that that happened.

00:49:47Marc:Well, they forgot about the business.

00:49:48Marc:It became it was personal.

00:49:49Marc:And they do about the business.

00:49:51Marc:She did it so she could absorb it.

00:49:53Marc:I mean, she didn't cancel you overnight because she couldn't.

00:49:55Guest:Right, right.

00:49:56Guest:And they moved this, moved it.

00:49:57Guest:And then TV Guide wrote an article at the end of it after it got canceled.

00:49:59Guest:It was an article on TV.

00:50:00Guest:I said, like, what the hell happened to Titus?

00:50:02Guest:And they actually started listing numbers.

00:50:03Guest:Like, we were doing 900,000 viewers better than everything, like other comedies on Fox.

00:50:09Marc:It's all politics.

00:50:09Marc:Isn't that fucking something?

00:50:11Guest:Yeah, it was weird.

00:50:11Guest:I think that with everybody.

00:50:12Guest:There's some really great executives.

00:50:13Guest:And Gail, I mean, Gail put Malcolm in the middle on the air.

00:50:16Guest:She's smart.

00:50:17Marc:No, I've worked with her husband.

00:50:18Marc:I've met her.

00:50:18Marc:I mean, I'm not saying that.

00:50:19Guest:Her husband's a good guy, yeah.

00:50:20Guest:Bill, yeah, he's a good guy.

00:50:20Guest:He used to be a comic.

00:50:21Marc:And he's a writer.

00:50:23Marc:But it's just...

00:50:24Marc:It's just fucking business.

00:50:26Marc:And the weird thing when you're a comic is like, okay, it may be business, but I'm only going to have one life.

00:50:31Marc:Right.

00:50:31Marc:And I just did it.

00:50:33Marc:Right.

00:50:34Guest:Exactly.

00:50:36Guest:My life is only 54 episodes long.

00:50:38Marc:You know what I mean?

00:50:38Marc:Yeah.

00:50:39Marc:I mean, I probably had a couple more seasons, so that life could have bought me the rest of my life to hang out and have a little more freedom.

00:50:44Guest:Right.

00:50:44Guest:It's a big lesson, man.

00:50:46Guest:Big lesson.

00:50:46Guest:But, you know, people say, well, you know, there's more expensive lessons.

00:50:49Guest:No, syndication money.

00:50:50Guest:There's actually no more expensive lesson.

00:50:52Guest:Actually not.

00:50:53Guest:No.

00:50:54Marc:It's a difference between owning an island and maybe traveling to one.

00:50:58Guest:Yeah.

00:50:58Guest:Possibly working a gig.

00:50:59Guest:A crappy bar at an island.

00:51:03Guest:Opening for Slayton.

00:51:04Guest:Oh, really?

00:51:05Guest:Yeah.

00:51:06Guest:Mark Maron, what do you do?

00:51:07Guest:What do you do?

00:51:08Guest:What do you do in your garage?

00:51:10Guest:Come here, come here.

00:51:13Guest:He's a great guy.

00:51:14Guest:He's a great guy.

00:51:14Guest:I saw Carvey last night.

00:51:15Guest:I went and saw Carvey last night.

00:51:16Guest:Really?

00:51:17Guest:At the Ice House.

00:51:17Guest:Carvey's working on new stuff, man.

00:51:18Guest:How's that?

00:51:19Guest:I got to tell you, man, you know, there's so many, I don't know, it's weird because I didn't realize that I'm an older comic now.

00:51:25Guest:I didn't realize, like, I've been around a long time.

00:51:27Guest:Like, all of a sudden you go, oh, because I'm writing new stuff all the time.

00:51:29Guest:I'm like, oh, wow, I'm like a guy who's been around.

00:51:32Guest:We've been around now.

00:51:33Guest:I know.

00:51:33Marc:It's really kind of fucked up.

00:51:35Marc:Like, there's literally, like, you know, when the people talk to you about, like, this guy's huge.

00:51:38Marc:I'm like, who the fuck is that guy?

00:51:39Marc:And then you realize, oh no, I'm 47 years old.

00:51:43Guest:How old are you?

00:51:44Guest:46.

00:51:44Guest:So the thing is that I go see Carvey, and Carvey's 50-something, but man, he got up and he did this.

00:51:53Guest:As a comic, you have to go watch guys that make you

00:51:56Guest:know that you suck.

00:51:58Guest:You have to go watch him.

00:52:00Guest:We don't want to.

00:52:00Guest:It's painful because you have to kind of face it at the end that I better get off on my game again.

00:52:04Guest:But he did some stuff.

00:52:06Guest:He did a thing about Jesus raising an 18-year-old.

00:52:10Guest:He was talking about how Jesus was so loving and great and didn't have any bad side and turned the other cheek.

00:52:14Guest:And then Jesus had an 18-year-old and it was just brilliant.

00:52:18Marc:Is his daughter that old or something?

00:52:19Guest:His son, yeah.

00:52:20Guest:Oh, really?

00:52:21Guest:Brilliant, man.

00:52:22Guest:That's a funny construct.

00:52:23Guest:Yeah, really funny.

00:52:24Guest:Just did some great stuff.

00:52:25Marc:I try not to see other comics as making me feel like I... I'm really trying not to feel like I suck in any way.

00:52:30Guest:Well, you know what I... Let me change it.

00:52:32Marc:That you need to write more.

00:52:33Marc:To inspire you.

00:52:34Guest:Right.

00:52:34Guest:You know, because sometimes you get good when you're good.

00:52:37Guest:Like, we've been doing this a long time.

00:52:38Guest:We're capable.

00:52:39Guest:We're competent at what we do.

00:52:40Guest:And we know what we do.

00:52:41Guest:And we... And you go in a room and you... Yeah, thanks.

00:52:44Guest:I'm the headliner, right?

00:52:45Guest:But then you have to go see some... You have to go... I saw Cosby in Montreal a couple years ago.

00:52:49Guest:Yeah.

00:52:50Guest:And again...

00:52:50Guest:I'm sitting there, and the person I was with turns to me, how come you're not laughing?

00:52:53Guest:I go, because I'm getting schooled.

00:52:54Guest:He did 90 minutes of new stuff.

00:52:57Marc:It's weird, because I'm learning more from him now than I have anybody.

00:53:00Marc:Lately, and it's old stuff.

00:53:03Marc:That's weird.

00:53:04Guest:Are you finding it now?

00:53:06Guest:Because I found it when I was five years old.

00:53:07Guest:That's what made me want to be a Thomas.

00:53:08Marc:No, I mean, I always knew he was there.

00:53:09Marc:But just now, there's something about...

00:53:12Marc:his uh his delivery and his and how deliberate he is and the pacing that he maintains no matter what it was really the lesson i learned from him recently was really just about pacing yep that you know you don't have to chase yourself that i mean that's a really interesting lesson to learn because there's that panic in between laughs

00:53:30Ha!

00:53:31Guest:Yes.

00:53:32Guest:That's my next album title.

00:53:34Guest:What?

00:53:35Guest:Panic in between laughs.

00:53:36Marc:Well, but you know, like... That's exactly what it is.

00:53:39Marc:Yeah.

00:53:39Marc:And like, you know, when you watch him, you're like, it's not there at all.

00:53:42Marc:No.

00:53:43Marc:And the thing about it is that there's no reason it has to be there.

00:53:47Marc:You know what you're doing.

00:53:48Marc:Right, right.

00:53:49Marc:So like that thing, you know, it's aggravating and it actually makes doing stand-up unenjoyable.

00:53:56Marc:Whereas like, you know, fuck it, wait a second.

00:53:58Marc:Yeah.

00:53:58Marc:You know, what's going to happen?

00:53:59Marc:You think they're just going to leave and decide all at once?

00:54:01Marc:Like, why is he taking so long?

00:54:04Guest:Hey, that's 3.2 seconds with no talking.

00:54:06Guest:We went and saw him at the casino down in Pechanga, whatever it is, and my girl got me tickets, and we go watch him.

00:54:12Guest:I can see him.

00:54:13Guest:He's like, it's the spring scene of comedy.

00:54:14Guest:I can go watch him anywhere, anytime.

00:54:16Guest:The dude, the sound was messed up.

00:54:18Guest:So he walks on stage.

00:54:19Guest:Kazoo walks on stage.

00:54:19Guest:He goes, hold on, people.

00:54:20Guest:We got to do sound.

00:54:21Guest:And he starts doing a sound check.

00:54:22Guest:That's how he started the show.

00:54:24Guest:Did a sound check.

00:54:24Guest:Then he brought out this little tiny cup of Starbucks coffee.

00:54:27Guest:Slid a table.

00:54:27Guest:Like an old man slid a table across the stage.

00:54:30Guest:It was like he's setting up his living room to watch TV.

00:54:33Guest:And he did it for five minutes.

00:54:34Guest:Five minutes.

00:54:35Guest:And he was just going, people.

00:54:36Guest:And then he started making fun of the sound guy.

00:54:37Guest:Can I get the lighting guy to handle the sound?

00:54:39Guest:He was making fun of the sound guy.

00:54:41Guest:And it was...

00:54:42Guest:It was weird, and he handled it in a way that you realize that he didn't really care what we thought.

00:54:47Guest:And because of that, it was really funny.

00:54:49Marc:And you know why?

00:54:50Marc:Because he's fucking Bill Cosby.

00:54:52Marc:That's right.

00:54:53Marc:That's true.

00:54:53Marc:No, but I mean, I appreciate that.

00:54:57Marc:I've learned a lot from that recently because it's your stage, dude.

00:55:02Marc:I mean, you earned it.

00:55:05Marc:You can do whatever the fuck you want.

00:55:07Marc:And if it's weird for even 10 minutes, who cares?

00:55:10Marc:Right.

00:55:10Marc:I mean, what's going to happen?

00:55:12Marc:But there's that panic.

00:55:14Marc:They're going to abandon me.

00:55:17Marc:They're not going to see me.

00:55:18Marc:I'm going to be invisible.

00:55:19Marc:They're all going to reject me.

00:55:22Marc:Wow.

00:55:23Guest:You are kind of messed up.

00:55:24Guest:I like it.

00:55:26Guest:Well, I look at it this way.

00:55:28Guest:Cosby has...

00:55:31Guest:a cadence, and because he has that cadence, because I'm fast too, I talk really fast, it looks like we're planned out.

00:55:38Guest:Cosby, planned out, doesn't look like, it looks like he's thinking of every word, which sucks the audience.

00:55:44Guest:It's crazy how the audience just starts leaning in like, come on, tell me,

00:55:47Marc:Because, well, the experience doesn't have to be about laughter, man.

00:55:50Marc:I mean, it's like what you're talking about with the type of shit you're talking about and, like, with the show is that if the experience is a human experience, I mean, they're willing to sort of hang out if, you know, if you're going to give them that and there's a little bit of closure.

00:56:02Marc:They don't want to see you spinning.

00:56:03Marc:Right.

00:56:04Marc:Like, I mean, when you relax, though, what do you in those moments?

00:56:07Marc:Because I know why I go at the pace I go at and I've slowed my pace down a lot.

00:56:12Marc:Like, I'm just not panicking up there anymore.

00:56:14Marc:And it's taken 20 whatever years.

00:56:17Marc:Like, I literally think I just got like, I literally think I arrived in myself about two years ago.

00:56:22Guest:Wow.

00:56:22Guest:Nice.

00:56:23Guest:I mean, do you feel that ever?

00:56:24Guest:Yeah, but that means you're, that means that so many guys, how many comics have you met that were like seven months in?

00:56:28Guest:Yeah, this is what I do.

00:56:29Guest:And they're like, there's comics, young comics that just, I get it.

00:56:32Guest:And I just want to hug them and go, you don't.

00:56:34Guest:I want to pat them on the back and go, you don't.

00:56:36Guest:Yeah, 20 years.

00:56:37Guest:You know, Rosie O'Donnell said 10 years.

00:56:38Guest:Everybody says 10 years, you start to know who you are.

00:56:40Guest:And that's what happened.

00:56:40Guest:About 12 years, I knew who I was.

00:56:41Marc:Now, okay, so let's talk about Titus now.

00:56:43Marc:So you've gotten humbled.

00:56:45Marc:You were humbled.

00:56:45Marc:You were fucking publicly humbled.

00:56:47Marc:Yeah.

00:56:48Marc:Oh yeah.

00:56:48Marc:I mean, it's like, I'm really aware of that.

00:56:49Marc:And now you're going through, you have this horrible divorce.

00:56:52Marc:I mean, what's, where, where's the tone?

00:56:54Marc:How's it change your tone?

00:56:55Marc:I mean, like, I mean, I trust absolutely no one.

00:56:58Marc:That's never that.

00:56:58Guest:That's a lot of growth.

00:56:59Guest:That's the weird.

00:57:01Guest:Is that part of the forum too?

00:57:02Guest:The landmark form?

00:57:04Guest:That's what I deal with.

00:57:04Guest:Trust no one?

00:57:05Guest:My girlfriend says that to me.

00:57:07Guest:Well, you know, it's weird.

00:57:08Guest:For me, it was like someone... I stood in front of God and everything like that, and someone said that I will back you up, and I got your back, and then it just didn't happen, and that bothers me.

00:57:18Guest:It bothers me.

00:57:19Guest:I think I'm kind of focusing on how screwed up human beings really are.

00:57:23Guest:I'm watching the House and the Senate, and I'm watching the Republicans, and I'm just like, wow.

00:57:27Guest:I mean, how narcissistic children are we that's become this?

00:57:34Guest:And I'm starting to focus on that.

00:57:35Guest:That's what the news show is about.

00:57:36Marc:But do you understand the nature of the business after what you went through at Fox?

00:57:39Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.

00:57:41Guest:And it's still brutal.

00:57:42Guest:It's the most brutal business.

00:57:44Guest:How long did the stink stay on you?

00:57:47Guest:You know, the weird thing is, is that the person, you know, Gail has a bit of a reputation for being a hard ass.

00:57:53Guest:Yeah.

00:57:53Guest:And even when she went to Paramount, she has, so it didn't, I called her, by the way, after it happened, I called her and I talked to her and I said, listen.

00:57:58Marc:Right after or like recently?

00:58:00Guest:No, I called her right after.

00:58:01Guest:I actually did call her and I said, listen, I want you, because I got clear that I had fucking blown it.

00:58:08Guest:You know, I should have shut up.

00:58:09Guest:And I called and I said, you know, I was trying to protect the show.

00:58:12Guest:I said, that being said, what I said to you and how I said it was out of line.

00:58:18Guest:I want no apologies.

00:58:19Guest:The show was already over.

00:58:19Guest:I wasn't going to fix anything.

00:58:21Guest:I wasn't going to fix it.

00:58:21Guest:But I just wanted to let her know that I was sorry.

00:58:23Guest:And she was cool.

00:58:25Guest:And she said, she basically said the best, you know, the show business, you say fuck you is, well, I hope you have many successes in the future.

00:58:33Guest:That's how you say it.

00:58:34Guest:She didn't say that.

00:58:35Guest:Yeah, she did.

00:58:35Marc:So this was, wait, this was like after you yelled at her or after the show was done?

00:58:39Guest:That show was done.

00:58:40Guest:She said, I said, I know this all time.

00:58:41Marc:She waited that long to call her.

00:58:42Guest:Yeah, well, we also had a Faye Dunaway incident, too, man.

00:58:45Guest:Oh, that sounds good.

00:58:46Guest:A Faye Dunaway incident.

00:58:48Guest:We had a Faye Dunaway incident.

00:58:49Guest:There's a lot of these.

00:58:50Guest:So my mother's crazy, so we needed someone to play my mother.

00:58:54Guest:So for whatever reason the show's hot, we get Faye Dunaway's interested in playing my mother.

00:58:59Guest:And I'm like, woo!

00:59:00Guest:I'm like dancing, because I don't know.

00:59:01Guest:I'm not inside Hollywood.

00:59:02Guest:I never have, and I'm just a dude from Northern California, a blue-collar guy who just, you know...

00:59:06Guest:And so I'm like, Faye Dunaway.

00:59:08Guest:And so Faye Dunaway shows up on the set and we're doing a food fight episode.

00:59:12Guest:We had this horrible Thanksgiving episode where basically the families, we get our two families together and it's a nightmare.

00:59:18Guest:It's a fist fight, food fight thing.

00:59:19Guest:And so I'm covered in mashed potatoes and they go, Faye's here, wants to speak to you.

00:59:22Guest:And I'm literally popping mashed potatoes off my forehead.

00:59:26Guest:And I go, okay.

00:59:27Guest:And it was a script I had written.

00:59:28Guest:It was a script I had written.

00:59:30Guest:So Faye Dunaway walks over.

00:59:31Guest:She goes, hi, I'm Faye.

00:59:32Guest:And I'm like, wow, pleasure to meet you.

00:59:33Guest:I said, all the movies you've done.

00:59:35Guest:Oh my God.

00:59:36Guest:I said, this is great.

00:59:37Guest:And she goes, oh, thank you.

00:59:38Guest:And she literally has my script that I wrote tabbed.

00:59:42Guest:It's tabbed.

00:59:42Guest:Like there's tabs all down it.

00:59:43Guest:She goes, here's what I'm not going to do.

00:59:45Guest:And she starts flipping through the script and telling me that all this stuff that my mom, everything that we need to show my mom's crazy, she won't do.

00:59:53Guest:I'm not going to let you put a half wig on my head that's why I shaved half my head.

00:59:56Guest:I'm not going to let that happen.

00:59:57Guest:And then she just literally goes to every behavior we need to make the funny happen and kills it.

01:00:02Guest:So I go, okay, well, that's great, thanks.

01:00:04Guest:Let me talk to my guys and we'll work it out.

01:00:06Guest:So I go back and we film the scene and I still want her.

01:00:08Guest:I still want her.

01:00:09Guest:I'm like, you know, she's fading away.

01:00:10Guest:Yeah, sure.

01:00:11Guest:So we go upstairs and I said, you know, she just killed everything.

01:00:15Guest:We have to rewrite because she just killed everything we need.

01:00:17Guest:So we have to figure out what her parameters are.

01:00:18Guest:And they go...

01:00:19Guest:okay and at that point the wardrobe department comes up finds me i'm in wardrobe and they go oh my god um please we cannot work with fade on away we're not doing it we're not doing it there's no way i want that with those weeks off i can't do it i won't do it and i'm like really then i have like as i'm walking out of there i go to like craft service and there's like it's like three cameramen approach me like they had they like and they're like uh titus we're putting in for those weeks off when she's on the set we don't want to work with her

01:00:43Guest:And I start hearing stories from all of them.

01:00:46Guest:I thought you were going to say, the people in the food truck were like, no, we're not serving.

01:00:51Guest:She can't have M&M's.

01:00:52Guest:I'm not putting M&M's out for a cafe Dunaway.

01:00:54Guest:And then so it goes down the line to where then the other camera guys come up.

01:00:59Guest:Holy fuck.

01:01:00Guest:And I'm like, okay.

01:01:01Guest:I literally had like seven to nine people come up to me and say, I don't want to work with her.

01:01:05Guest:I won't work with her that week.

01:01:06Guest:Can we get someone else?

01:01:06Guest:I have a buddy that can do it.

01:01:08Guest:So I go up to my guys, and I go, listen, I have this weird thing.

01:01:12Marc:Why, because she's such a prima donna?

01:01:14Guest:I guess her rep is really bad.

01:01:16Guest:And so I go up, and I go, look, guys, where am I?

01:01:19Guest:I'm going to have a mutiny.

01:01:20Guest:And again, the one thing, we had to change a set every week.

01:01:22Guest:We didn't have the same set.

01:01:23Guest:We changed.

01:01:24Guest:Our stories happened in real time in 30 minutes, and we had a set of it.

01:01:28Guest:So our guys had to build new sets.

01:01:29Guest:We had to dress everything.

01:01:30Guest:It wasn't like it was Cheers where just the bar sat there.

01:01:33Guest:So I had a badass crew, a badass crew of amazing people.

01:01:37Guest:And I'm losing them.

01:01:38Guest:And I go, guys, we're losing everybody.

01:01:40Guest:I go, I guess we can't hire Faye Dunaway.

01:01:42Guest:And they go, we have to hire Faye Dunaway.

01:01:43Guest:So I said, we can't.

01:01:45Guest:Gotta tell Gail we can't hire her.

01:01:46Guest:Get a call from Gail Berman.

01:01:47Guest:What do you mean you're not hiring Faye Dunaway?

01:01:49Guest:I go, look, here's what happened.

01:01:50Guest:And I go down the whole thing.

01:01:52Guest:She goes, you have to hire Faye Dunaway.

01:01:53Guest:And again, me being stupid, standing up for my crew, I should have told my crew something.

01:01:58Guest:I said, look, guys, we're hiring Faye Dunaway.

01:02:00Guest:Guess what we're going to do?

01:02:00Guest:At the end of it, I'm going to throw a party, and if you need to hang her in effigy and burn her, burn the effigy, fine, we'll do that.

01:02:06Guest:And we'll all get little Faye Dunaway bats and whatever.

01:02:08Guest:But we're going to hire Faye Dunaway.

01:02:09Guest:It's Faye Dunaway, guys.

01:02:10Guest:I should have said that.

01:02:12Guest:This is the older guys talking about shoulda, woulda, coulda.

01:02:15Guest:Yeah.

01:02:16Marc:But you chose to say to Gail what?

01:02:18Guest:I just said, Gail.

01:02:19Guest:I said, we can't hire her.

01:02:20Guest:I have a mutiny on my hands.

01:02:21Guest:I go, everyone that wants to be on the show with her, I said, we can't do it.

01:02:24Guest:So she goes, talk to everybody.

01:02:25Guest:So I go, Stacey Keech goes, and this is at the end of the day what was hard for me running the show is because, and I had two guys, Jack and Brian, but at this point no one would back me up.

01:02:37Guest:I go guys look I've got everybody mutiny if someone in this room will take the heat I've got two producers from the studio two of my executive producers and Stacey Keach I go if someone in this room will just take the heat if this goes crazy you guys just go you guys go talk and apologize to the crew and just say guys we hired her I said but I'm not going to take it I said I need them on my side and dead silence man no one said okay I got it

01:02:58Marc:So you're a man without a country.

01:03:00Guest:I'm like, all of a sudden I got the network.

01:03:02Guest:And so I called Gail and I said, we can't do it.

01:03:04Guest:And Gail, again, dead silence.

01:03:06Guest:Okay, click.

01:03:09Guest:Yeah.

01:03:10Guest:So I know, man, why are you making me relive this?

01:03:13Guest:You know, I feel like this to Carlos Mencia.

01:03:15Guest:No, I think...

01:03:16Guest:I feel like you brought it up.

01:03:18Guest:I did.

01:03:18Guest:You asked me.

01:03:19Guest:No, you said you're the guy that fucked up.

01:03:22Guest:I guess you're right.

01:03:23Marc:Yeah, you did.

01:03:24Marc:But I wasn't digging for anything.

01:03:25Marc:I was really just curious because, you know, actually it's very impressive that, you know, despite the fact that, you know, you know,

01:03:31Marc:whatever your political issues were and whatever your ego issues were that, you know, you obviously work your ass off.

01:03:36Marc:You know, no one has ever said anything different.

01:03:38Marc:I was just curious about the arc of that, that because what it was, was really, you know, you wanted to your show to be perfect and you wanted it to be on your terms.

01:03:48Marc:And then, you know, when it comes to negotiations, uh, that at that time you were like, you were so in it that you're like, fuck that.

01:03:55Guest:Right.

01:03:55Marc:You know, this is my baby that you were incapable of being political or, or, or, or make complications.

01:04:01Marc:compromises for whatever reason.

01:04:02Guest:It was my real life.

01:04:03Guest:My brother, there was a guy playing my brother.

01:04:05Guest:There was a guy playing my dad.

01:04:06Guest:There was a guy playing my crazy mom.

01:04:08Guest:There was a guy playing my- And you couldn't separate.

01:04:10Guest:My wife at the time.

01:04:10Guest:Right.

01:04:11Guest:It was, yeah, I guess, and also being incredibly tired, man.

01:04:16Guest:Incredibly tired.

01:04:16Guest:Yeah, sure, you were strung out, but I think- But there was weird stories, though.

01:04:19Guest:They said that, I heard you punch Gail Berman.

01:04:21Guest:What?

01:04:22Marc:I go, what?

01:04:23Marc:No.

01:04:23Marc:But the thing about you is you're compulsive, you're driven, and you've done four fucking hour and a half shows.

01:04:30Marc:Right.

01:04:30Marc:You've got another one coming out, right?

01:04:32Guest:Yeah.

01:04:33Guest:And it's called what?

01:04:33Guest:We're doing the fourth one now.

01:04:34Guest:It's Nevolution.

01:04:35Guest:And who's shooting it?

01:04:35Guest:And I've got 25.

01:04:36Guest:Are you going to independent production?

01:04:37Guest:I'm going to do it myself.

01:04:38Guest:You know what?

01:04:38Guest:I was going to do it.

01:04:39Guest:And actually, my management, I don't have my management now because of this.

01:04:42Guest:I came in and they said, we want to shoot it.

01:04:44Guest:We're going to own it and we're going to do this.

01:04:46Guest:And they said, I said, what's the deal?

01:04:47Guest:And they said, it's 25% distribution and then we got to take our money back for producing it and then this and that.

01:04:52Guest:And then I go, okay, but if I, with the internet now and the way things are, because I keep hearing how everything's changing.

01:05:00Guest:Everything's changing.

01:05:00Guest:It's all changed.

01:05:00Guest:It's not the same as it was.

01:05:02Guest:But everybody wants their percentage to stay the same.

01:05:04Guest:Everybody wants the business side to run exactly the same.

01:05:07Guest:But the actor, creative side, oh, it's changing.

01:05:10Guest:We can't pay you that.

01:05:11Guest:yeah but you guys all want to get 10 of stuff you didn't earn so that's a good point we had a big free content right yeah so it's really it's really bizarre so i said i wanted to do it and then it was just everyone got really kind of quiet i also broke down the numbers for him i'm not an idiot i sat down okay here it goes i go if i do this myself and pay it back and then and i sell them on the internet i go i go i can make this much money can you guys pay me that of this because i've i've my special my my love is evil special i've made nothing on it it's sold it's sold a ton i had

01:05:38Guest:It's crazy how little I've made on it.

01:05:39Marc:But what was their problem with you saying, I'll do it myself, and you can just take your 10% like you usually do and shut up?

01:05:44Guest:No.

01:05:45Guest:Well, I said they could have 10% of, I said, I want five.

01:05:50Guest:Okay, you give me $5,000 just for myself.

01:05:52Guest:I'll handle those.

01:05:53Guest:Yeah.

01:05:54Guest:And then you will take your 10%.

01:05:57Guest:You do the deal like that.

01:05:57Guest:And they said, okay.

01:05:59Guest:And then they go, I'm not even off the couch yet.

01:06:01Guest:I literally haven't, the negotiation is cut.

01:06:03Guest:I haven't left the room yet.

01:06:04Guest:Yeah.

01:06:05Guest:And the guy goes, you know what?

01:06:07Guest:We should probably share that $5,000.

01:06:08Guest:going to give you two.

01:06:09Guest:And I remember thinking, wow, I haven't even shifted on the couch.

01:06:13Guest:I haven't crossed my leg.

01:06:14Guest:I haven't even just kind of leaned.

01:06:15Guest:I haven't adjusted myself and you changed the deal.

01:06:18Guest:So anyway, they're great.

01:06:20Guest:They were great management and there was some stuff we didn't agree on.

01:06:23Guest:It sounds like a recurring theme, Chris.

01:06:26Guest:Yeah, the one thing with all my management is me.

01:06:28Guest:I do have to admit, this came up three days ago.

01:06:32Guest:I was talking to my agent who I've been with for 20 years.

01:06:34Guest:Here's the one thing.

01:06:35Guest:I've been with my agent TJ, TJ Markholder, for 20 years.

01:06:37Guest:I know TJ.

01:06:38Guest:TJ's a great guy.

01:06:39Guest:And so I go, after going through all the biggest management companies, and at the end of the day, no one can change your career.

01:06:47Guest:No one has the juice to really go, all right, here's your movie.

01:06:50Guest:Not anymore.

01:06:51Guest:No, they don't have it.

01:06:52Guest:So these management companies want it, and I think a lot of them, there's some great managers out there who really get involved, but most of them, what I've found is, I had a show, we did a show called Special Unit, which was for Comedy Center.

01:07:06Guest:We shot the pilot.

01:07:07Guest:It was basically the shield with handicapped people.

01:07:09Guest:And it was great.

01:07:11Guest:It's a really good pilot.

01:07:12Guest:And we're turning into a movie now.

01:07:14Guest:And my manager showed up for 40 minutes on one day.

01:07:19Guest:I was executive producer, wrote it, was there.

01:07:21Guest:We had Brian Kastner, and he didn't, shouldn't you be there helping?

01:07:24Marc:No, no.

01:07:26Marc:That's not what they do anymore.

01:07:28Guest:What's your opinion of it?

01:07:29Guest:Am I the only one who's going to notice it?

01:07:31Guest:It doesn't seem like anyone has the juice to really make something happen.

01:07:33Marc:No, I really don't.

01:07:35Guest:You have the juice.

01:07:36Marc:Well, I do this, but I changed management recently because I need that kind of attention.

01:07:42Marc:And after a certain point, depending on what the company is, they just sort of wait for you to get attention.

01:07:46Marc:Then when you get something, they're like, oh, good, there's fire there.

01:07:49Marc:We can go throw gas on it.

01:07:50Guest:Right.

01:07:50Marc:You know what I mean?

01:07:51Marc:But as far as making fire, that seems to be our job.

01:07:55Guest:Yeah, that's exactly.

01:07:56Guest:Wow.

01:07:56Guest:Again, so clear.

01:07:57Guest:I'm just going to listen to you now.

01:07:58Guest:I'm just going to.

01:07:59Guest:You just keep spewing these pearls.

01:08:01Guest:I'm just going to listen.

01:08:01Marc:I've got three T-shirt ideas right now.

01:08:05Marc:Okay.

01:08:05Marc:It's taken me a long time to figure out.

01:08:07Marc:Well, fuck, I'm glad you're doing well.

01:08:08Marc:And I think that we share something in that.

01:08:10Marc:It's very hard for us.

01:08:11Marc:Like, because of our personalities, no one's ever going to believe that we're actually humble.

01:08:17Guest:Well, true.

01:08:18Marc:I would agree with that.

01:08:19Marc:Like, even when we're genuinely trying to be understanding, they look at us like, no, he's just fucking looking at us.

01:08:25Marc:And I don't know how to make that go away.

01:08:28Marc:But I'm glad you're still working.

01:08:29Marc:I'm glad you came over and talked to me.

01:08:31Marc:And I hope you had a good time.

01:08:32Guest:Dude, it's great, man.

01:08:33Guest:You know what?

01:08:34Guest:You're smart and funny.

01:08:35Guest:Appreciate it.

01:08:35Marc:Thanks, Chris.

01:08:41Marc:That is our show.

01:08:42Marc:That is the conversation.

01:08:45Marc:Chris Titus, folks.

01:08:46Marc:And as I said earlier in the show, we are sponsored today by Comedy Central, where you can watch the premiere of the Chris Titus stand-up special, Neverlution.

01:08:53Marc:This Sunday, July 3rd at 9 p.m., 8 central.

01:08:56Marc:Go to cc.com slash standup for previews, highlights, and digital exclusives.

01:09:00Marc:I will be at Rooster Teeth Feathers in Sunnyvale July 7th through 10th.

01:09:04Marc:Looking forward to that.

01:09:05Marc:I like that club.

01:09:07Marc:They've got a great sound system.

01:09:08Marc:It's a sweet little club.

01:09:10Marc:Good space.

01:09:11Marc:Go to wtfpod.com for everything.

01:09:13Marc:Just coffee.coop.

01:09:15Marc:Pow.

01:09:16Marc:Yeah.

01:09:17Marc:I don't have a cup with me.

01:09:18Marc:I'm drinking coconut water, whatever the fuck it is.

01:09:20Marc:You can also get the merch.

01:09:21Marc:We've got new merch.

01:09:22Marc:I've got some signed posters up there.

01:09:24Marc:We've got the new cat negotiation shirt.

01:09:26Marc:Go there to get the premium app for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Droid.

01:09:31Marc:Go there to buy the old episodes if you like.

01:09:33Marc:We keep uploading new classic episodes.

01:09:37Marc:To iTunes, if you go to WTF Premium, search that on iTunes.

01:09:42Marc:Go to WTFPodShop.com that you can get to through WTFPod.com.

01:09:46Marc:Get on the mailing list because you know I'm into that.

01:09:50Marc:And enjoy the new site.

01:09:51Marc:I'm trying to keep on top of it.

01:09:53Marc:I appreciate all you guys listening.

01:09:56Marc:I am constantly grateful and humbled by it all, in all honesty.

01:10:00Marc:I'm not getting a big head.

01:10:01Marc:I don't feel great, but I have nothing to complain about.

01:10:05Marc:So, how's that?

01:10:06Marc:Is that good?

01:10:08Marc:Okay.