Episode 254 - Bill Maher
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:Are we doing this?
Marc:Really?
Marc:Wait for it.
Marc:Are we doing this?
Marc:Wait for it.
Marc:Pow!
Marc:What the fuck?
Marc:And it's also, eh, what the fuck?
Marc:What's wrong with me?
Marc:It's time for WTF!
Marc:What the fuck?
Marc:With Marc Maron.
Marc:Okay, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuckineers?
Marc:What the fuck nicks?
Marc:What the fuckstables?
Marc:What the fuckericans?
Marc:What the fuckites?
Marc:And of course, all you what the fuckaholics, welcome.
Marc:Welcome.
Marc:You're in the right place.
Marc:You're in a safe place.
Marc:I am Mark Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:Thanks for listening.
Marc:Thanks for tuning in.
Marc:Let me say this before I forget.
Marc:We have some big changes to the WTF apps and premium subscriptions this week.
Marc:If you have the premium subscriptions, please don't forget to listen to the special announcement with instructions on how to take advantage of all the new features on the premium services.
Marc:And if any of you are having any issue with your apps this week or recently, please email me at WTFpod at gmail.com and we'll try to resolve your problems.
Marc:OK.
Marc:All right.
Marc:That said, we have an amazing show today.
Marc:I went to Bill Maher's home, part of his home.
Marc:It seems like I was I was not in the home.
Marc:I was on a property that was nearby the home in a building that housed a screening room.
Marc:Uh, didn't look like it was used that much, but it was, it was, it was in, it was on land that he owned.
Marc:I will say that.
Marc:That's all I can tell you.
Marc:I drove through a gate.
Marc:I was welcomed by a person.
Marc:I sat and waited for Bill Maher.
Marc:Uh, Bill Maher is a very interesting guy.
Marc:Great comedian.
Marc:I know that some of you, uh,
Marc:know him from real time maybe some of you remember him from politically incorrect on comedy central of course you remember his run of that show on abc when he got fired for the thing he said uh and a grassroots movement of frightened angry people who misunderstood his joke had him pushed off of that network we'll talk about all that he also wanted me to make sure you knew about his uh
Marc:Yahoo is doing a comedy station on Yahoo, and they're going to launch it with a live streaming broadcast of Bill Maher's newest special, Crazy Stupid Politics.
Marc:That's going to be on the Yahoo Comedy Channel.
Marc:on February 23rd, 7.30 Pacific, 10.30 Eastern.
Marc:We'll get to Bill in a minute.
Marc:And it's a lovely conversation.
Marc:He's a comic.
Marc:He's been a comic for years.
Marc:I, on the other hand, have also been a comic for years.
Marc:And I've got a few things that I need to talk about.
Marc:First of all,
Marc:I did one of those things this morning where I yeah, I hit send.
Marc:I shouldn't hit send.
Marc:There was an issue.
Marc:I got tweeted a picture of an arts weekly in Oklahoma City stating that my shows there were sold out.
Marc:They are not sold out.
Marc:Actually, we added a second show in Oklahoma City at the City Arts Center this Saturday, February 18th.
Marc:But I immediately said, how the fuck is this going to kill me?
Marc:It's going to kill the second show.
Marc:I'm going to lose money because of this writer who wrote this.
Marc:Who's in charge?
Marc:And I went into a frenzy.
Marc:I'm like, I've got to get hold of this writer.
Marc:who interviewed me and put this misinformation out there.
Marc:And I found his name and I found his email and I sent him a shitty message.
Marc:And then I looked him up on Facebook and I sent him a shitty message there.
Marc:And I'm like, is this personal?
Marc:Why would you do this?
Marc:And of course it had nothing to do with him.
Marc:Yeah, the promoter of the show, the producers of the show, whoever's in charge and get him the information about the second show and they went to press and that's that the presses have got a role.
Marc:Not on that guy.
Marc:He, of course, gets back to me like, look, man, I got nothing against you.
Marc:I'm a fan.
Marc:Why would I do that?
Marc:So, of course, I have to say, fuck, sorry, dude, I I was just angry and I wanted to follow through.
Marc:Not only did I want to follow through, but I had to do it through three different portals.
Marc:I had to follow through on Twitter.
Marc:I had to follow through on Facebook.
Marc:I had to follow through on his work email.
Marc:Massive fuck up.
Marc:I couldn't wait it out.
Marc:But you get into that mode.
Marc:You're like, I'm fucked.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:It's all about me.
Marc:Why would he do that?
Marc:Was it just an oversight?
Marc:Easily explainable.
Marc:I guess what I'm getting at is, if you're in the Oklahoma City area, we're good.
Marc:Second show's been added.
Marc:Come down.
Marc:You can get tickets.
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com.
Marc:Look for those tickets.
Marc:And you can come.
Marc:There's plenty of seats.
Marc:Please come down.
Marc:I'm hoping I can hang out with Wayne Coyne when I'm there.
Marc:And I'm hoping I can get some barbecue.
Marc:And I'm hoping to, I've got about less than 24 hours in Oklahoma City.
Marc:I hope I can take it all in.
Marc:I'm not being condescending to your city.
Marc:I just hope that I can do something other than get there, freak out, go to the show, leave in the morning.
Marc:I'd like to get the feel of Oklahoma City.
Marc:Moving on, I'm getting some central air and heat in my house in the Cat Ranch.
Marc:Up here at the Cat Ranch, it's been unheated and uncooled since its beginning, since the Cat Ranch was built back in the early 20s.
Marc:I have not had any of that, and I labor through summers just sitting at home, sweating, wondering if I'm sick anymore.
Marc:And, you know, wanting to go to the movies or just sit in my car in the driveway with the engine on.
Marc:Some of you know from interviews I've done here in the summer, just watching famous people sweat across from me, not being able to do anything.
Marc:And this unit that I got for the garages AC, no good.
Marc:So I finally did it.
Marc:I pulled out a bunch of money I don't really have, and I paid a contractor to get a guy to get on my roof and put one of these things in.
Marc:They had to lower it down with a crane.
Marc:There's some beautiful work being done with crane operators.
Marc:I think they're underappreciated.
Marc:The great grace of a crane operator that had to figure out a way to get an heating unit, an AC unit on top of my house through trees and wires beautifully.
Marc:Just found his window.
Marc:gracefully delivered that thing onto the roof where a dude uh mounted it now the the reason i'm talking about this is in la you just never know who's doing what and who they are where they come from and obviously contractors have a have known have the best reputation this guy got recommended to me by another person and he comes over and in a few minutes i'm talking to him his name's dan great guy turns out he's a professional bull rider
Marc:the guy who's working on my house or having people work on my house professional bull rider came out you know he quit that racket because obviously it beats the shit out of you but he was like second in the country i mean he's a big dude this guy dan campbell big professional bull rider guy and now he's in my house having coffee we're drinking cat shit coffee and he's talking to me about riding bulls and i'm like holy fuck ends up he comes to hollywood met some people got into the acting racket then he got uh he got in with a guy who was a
Marc:A carpenter and a wall finisher and he did his apprenticeship in contract.
Marc:It's just amazing.
Marc:Just people you meet on the street got the big stories.
Marc:Fucking bull rider.
Marc:Of course, I'm sitting there going, I don't, I can't even, horses frighten me.
Marc:That all goes back to a shitty horse I had at a summer camp that I shouldn't have been at because I'm not, my people aren't horse people.
Marc:So I just ride the bulls of my brain.
Marc:I'm a mental bull rider.
Marc:My brain makes bulls for me to ride every day.
Marc:Right now I'm riding the ice cream bowl.
Marc:But let's talk about this article because a lot of you sent it to me and it seemed to be of concern or perhaps you just wanted to frighten me.
Marc:This scientist whose name I can't pronounce, Jaroslav Flegger, was trying to track down his issues.
Marc:He had some psychological problems and some anger and some weird fearlessness that he had not had before.
Marc:And did a little research and and traced it back to his cat who has a cat's got a microbe in their poop.
Marc:Oh, boy.
Marc:How far can I get into this?
Marc:There's a microbe in cat poop.
Marc:It's a parasite.
Marc:Toxoplasma gondii.
Marc:This story has been around for a while.
Marc:And it's one of the reasons that pregnant women are told not to sort of play with cat poop when they're pregnant because of this problem.
Marc:But now this guy did some research.
Marc:They did some studies.
Marc:And it seems to be somewhat credible that this parasite, if it gets into the human brain,
Marc:was once thought to be relatively harmless, but could cause some problems in infants, but now,
Marc:They're tracking this down.
Marc:They're dealing with the evolution of this parasite that apparently if there's enough of it in your brain, it'll shift your behavior.
Marc:We are the puppet of microbial parasites.
Marc:They can just make other larger life forms their puppet.
Marc:And it's very interesting.
Marc:Evolutionary science is fascinating to me.
Marc:I don't understand how things evolve.
Marc:Obviously, you can break it down to...
Marc:You know, organisms getting their survival needs met.
Marc:And over time, they have all these very elaborate systems of movement, of color, of behavior.
Marc:Look, I look, I'm no scientist, but apparently the deal is.
Marc:is that this organism needs to reproduce in cat poop inside the cat and then it's crapped out.
Marc:So then the next generation of it has to get back into another cat somehow.
Marc:So apparently what generally is thought to happen is rodents eat the cat poop or get around the cat poop because rodents do that.
Marc:And this microbe gets into the brain of the rodent
Marc:and basically rejiggers its brain and makes it more fearless than it should be.
Marc:So it takes on cats.
Marc:And of course, cats kill the rodent and eat it again.
Marc:And then the parasite gets back into a cat.
Marc:So basically it just uses, it uses the rodent as a puppet to get back into the cat through being eaten.
Marc:And then he cites this other example of a parasite that needs to be inside a lamb, a lamb gut, in order to reproduce.
Marc:And what it does is once it's crapped out by the lamb, it infects these ants.
Marc:It gets into the ant's brain and it just puppets the ant up a blade of grass and has the ant's...
Marc:mandibles lock onto that blade of grass on the top in an involuntary way.
Marc:The ant is not deciding to do that and it just hangs there like an idiot being run by parasites until it's eaten by a lamb.
Marc:That's using these other life forms as the delivery device to get its own biological needs met.
Marc:Creepy shit, but this guy is positing the idea and it seems to be supported in studies that this will do that to a human.
Marc:There's enough of this toxoplasma Gandhi in a human brain.
Marc:It will alter your behavior a bit to fearlessness.
Marc:Now, obviously, we're not going to be eaten by cats, so it's not really for us there.
Marc:They've chosen the wrong vehicle, but it does have a mental consequence.
Marc:Now, what am I going to do about that?
Marc:I don't think I have that.
Marc:I'm paralyzed with a certain amount of fear, but I'm a little more fearless and I'm a little less afraid of the future that I tend to make up in my brain.
Marc:But I just attribute that to busy.
Marc:And I'm not sure I have this in my brain.
Marc:I guess I could go get tested.
Marc:There's no cure for it.
Marc:I don't play with catship, but I clean it up.
Marc:But what became more fascinating to me
Marc:Is this evolution thing, you know, because I talked to Bill Maher.
Marc:He's a he's a very devout atheist.
Marc:You know, I am along the lines of, you know, I don't really care.
Marc:I'm not I'm not prone to spiritual searching, really.
Marc:And then there's those moments where you read stuff like this.
Marc:About the evolutionary behavior of animals and how it's evolved over thousands of years, but still the the seeming intelligence of it, of it all, the persistence of life.
Marc:Is there some sort of viral intelligence to the organic battle against universal entropy?
Marc:I don't think God has ever been called that a viral intelligence to the organic battle against entropy.
Marc:Now, look, there are other podcasts that that that get into this stuff a lot, you know, aided by a little bit of weed, you know, ongoing conversations about this, about the fascination of evolution.
Marc:And it's definitely fascinating.
Marc:But it's one of those things that that some people would certainly understand.
Marc:Religious people would say, well, there's obviously an intelligent design.
Marc:There's got to be an intelligent designer.
Marc:This stuff defies logic.
Marc:This viral intelligence to the organic battle against entropy.
Marc:There must be some prime mover.
Marc:I never go that direction with these type of investigations or this type of logic.
Marc:When I see that these microbes are using rodents as puppets by taking over their brains so they're not afraid of cats, all I think is like, oh, we're fucked.
Marc:It's only a matter of time.
Marc:We are definitely fucked.
Marc:I mean, we can't.
Marc:Look, we can put people into space.
Marc:We can land people on planets.
Marc:We have bank machines that we can use all around the world.
Marc:But we can't get a handle on the human body and what we're carrying around in it.
Marc:We can't get a handle on the human brain.
Marc:But these fucking microbes can.
Marc:So it's only a matter of time.
Marc:If there is some sort of prime mover, if there is some sort of intelligent designer, and I'm not the first to observe it, he's got to have one hell of a sense of humor to give us all these gifts of reason and resources and ability to decipher and create and understand that we're just going to be wiped out by a fucking renegade strand of DNA or a goddamn microbe that might not even be meant for us.
Marc:That's some hilarious fucking God, if you ask me.
Marc:Look at these ridiculous humans.
Marc:They think they can fight those single-celled organisms or even worse yet, just weird strands of RNA that require a body to exist.
Marc:They can't win.
Marc:I can't even see them.
Marc:They're in my brain.
Marc:It's a good chance that some part of my brain is just looking for a lion to tease so I can deliver my cargo of toxoplasma Gandhi into the guts of a cougar.
Marc:And also, I talked to Bill a little bit about atheism, but I always wonder about the aging atheists that that I will put myself in amongst them only because, as I said, you know, I am not seemingly willing to say categorically there's.
Marc:There's no God.
Marc:I don't know why I'm not willing to.
Marc:There must be some primal fear in me of some kind.
Marc:Or maybe this is a shred of hope somewhere.
Marc:But but I don't fight for the atheist point of view.
Marc:And I don't I'm certainly not religious in any way.
Marc:I don't have God in my life.
Marc:I don't I don't I'm not geared that way.
Marc:But I just I wish there was some sort of tagging mechanism.
Marc:You know how they tag animals in the wild.
Marc:to chart their behavior and their habits?
Marc:Is there some way to tag atheists to see as they get older whether or not they end up in a church or praying when they're confronting the big empty?
Marc:But then again, I don't want to give any weird Christian fascists any ideas about tracking people.
Marc:God knows we're already being tracked already.
Marc:Right now, I'm being tracked.
Marc:Right now, I'm being tracked and puppeted by microbes and perhaps watched by a prankster god.
Marc:I didn't know what to expect.
Marc:I thought this was going to be a compound of some kind.
Marc:I thought that I was going to come up here and be an undisclosed location.
Marc:Because I did your show once, and I said one thing, and I was terrified that my house would be blown up.
Marc:Why?
Marc:What are you talking about?
Marc:Well, I mean, the right-wing press just ran with this stuff I said about Bachman, and I got paranoid because I don't have any security in my house.
Marc:I was going to get a bet.
Marc:Well, there is a lot of security here.
Guest:It is kind of a compound.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Do you feel that, though?
Marc:Do you ever get the feeling that you piss someone off to the degree that your life is in danger?
Marc:Oh, I feel it.
Guest:Are you kidding?
Guest:Of course.
Guest:I mean, we've had so many death threats over the years, especially when the religion movie came out.
Guest:And, you know, I mean, the God Hates Fags people show up in force when I play in the Midwest.
Guest:And, you know, they have their vigils.
Guest:Yeah, but, you know, you can't think about that.
Guest:You can't dwell on that.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You just have to try and be as safe as possible.
Marc:I guess it just comes with the territory.
Guest:Yeah, I think you have a better chance of having a bad car accident.
Guest:I mean, when you think about the stuff that can actually make your life miserable, which I do...
Guest:What's that list?
Guest:Well, I do think in the years ahead, the environment is going to make people's lives miserable.
Guest:I mean, it already is in many places.
Guest:We've had more weather disasters this year.
Guest:The Republicans, of course, are all about money.
Guest:They don't seem to notice that this is costing us economically.
Guest:It costs us something like $50 billion to pay for catastrophic weather events this year.
Marc:Well, they just see that as more privatized industry.
Marc:If they can pay somebody to clean it up, just funnel money into our friends who won't fix that.
Marc:They're building a large roof for the entire planet.
Guest:But, I mean, that I think probably in my lifetime will cause a lot of...
Guest:pain to a lot of people and i may be one of them we all may be one of them i mean no matter how rich you are it's the same air that's right you know i think they're they're just hedging their bets that if everybody can't breathe them on the same day right no one gets blamed for anything but i but i always think like of all those kind of things and terrorism and death threats and
Guest:It's all possible.
Guest:The thing that is most likely to really fuck up, can I say fuck up?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Your life is a car accident.
Guest:Yeah, or a woman.
Guest:That's true, too.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, that's true, too.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I used to say years ago, I used to say, you know, people talk about AIDS.
Guest:I'm still worried about the frying pan in the head.
Guest:How old's that joke?
Guest:Oh, that's a good one.
Guest:Older than your kids.
Guest:But, yeah, but, you know, just when you think about the fact every day you go out there in a piece of metal and there's other hurling pieces of metal inches away from you at some point.
Guest:With people texting in them.
Guest:Yeah, with people texting in them.
Guest:You saw that accident on the Florida Bridge the other day.
Guest:It was foggy or maybe it was smoke from a fire.
Guest:But anyway, they couldn't see.
Guest:There were so many multiple deaths and just cars plowing into each other.
Guest:Yeah, that's the one I worry about the most.
Marc:Well, you know, I was, whenever I go to New York, because I spend time in New York, there's certain comics I can start with this.
Marc:I go into the comic strip, and your headshot is there, one of the more later ones, but there's actually this wall of Polaroids around the corner that used to be in the comic strip.
Marc:And there's a picture of you at a party looking like you were 20 years old.
Marc:Yeah, good reason for that.
Marc:But is that where you started?
Guest:Well, I started at all three.
Guest:When I started, my first year was 79.
Guest:There was three comedy clubs that were going.
Guest:major ones, and they were Catch a Rising Star and the comic strip on the east side and the improv on the west side.
Marc:On 44th, right?
Guest:Yeah, 44th and 9th was the improv.
Guest:That's gone.
Guest:Catch a Rising Star is gone.
Guest:That was 1st and 78th.
Guest:That was my main club.
Guest:Everybody had like a main club, and then if you were big enough in our little world, you could work the other two clubs.
Marc:And how old were you when you started?
Guest:I was right out of college, so I was 22.
Guest:Where did you go to college?
Guest:Cornell.
Marc:That's a good college.
Guest:Yeah, it is.
Guest:I got an excellent education.
Marc:And what did you do?
Guest:And that's all I got from it.
Guest:An excellent education.
Guest:No fun.
Marc:Were you driven that way, though?
Guest:You didn't start enjoying your life until later?
Guest:No, I would have loved to have enjoyed my life.
Guest:I just went to Cornell.
Yeah.
Guest:If I had to do it over again or if I had known what Cornell would have been like, I never would have gone there.
Guest:What was the problem?
Guest:It's still the problem.
Guest:I was there recently to do a concert and my friend who was one of my classmates and he's still my friend, he came up for the show and we walked around and we were like saying,
Guest:It's the same as it ever was.
Guest:Cold gangs of guys, eight, ten gangs of men in their blue parkas walking around.
Guest:It hasn't changed at all since the 70s.
Guest:It didn't look like it had at all.
Guest:I mean, when I was, I don't know if maybe it has changed, but first of all, there was not nearly enough women.
Guest:The ratio was terrible.
Guest:I think it had been only recently made co-ed.
Guest:Many of the Ivy League schools.
Marc:So it was all sports and masturbating.
Marc:It wasn't sports.
Marc:No sports.
Guest:I mean, yes, the Ivy League schools are terrible at sports.
Guest:It was definitely a lot of masturbating if you count that a sport.
Guest:And it was very competitive and, you know, beautiful physically but cold and isolated.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, so it was just socially it was awful.
Guest:When I see these kids today, you know, at the MTV Beach House and just the blowjobs on the first date and, you
Guest:Just everybody hooking up.
Guest:And it's like, well, first of all, I think half of that is bullshit.
Guest:I think a lot of kids still are not invited to this party that's going on.
Guest:Yeah, I think as ever, there's a certain percentage, the cool kids who have all the fun.
Guest:And if you're not in one of those kids, and I certainly wasn't in either high school or college.
Guest:It can be rough, but it was especially rough at Cornell.
Marc:What kind of kid were you in high school?
Guest:I was not an exceptional kid in many ways.
Guest:I was a diligent student.
Guest:I don't think I missed a day of school, of high school.
Guest:And you were a good student?
Guest:Yes, I was a good student.
Guest:I think I was seventh in my class of 400 or something.
Guest:But I never missed a day.
Guest:That was part of it.
Guest:Showing up, as Woody Allen said, 90% of it.
Guest:But certainly not like a popular kid, a cool kid.
Guest:I was shy.
Guest:I mean, my first date was sophomore year, was it?
Guest:Of high school?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:yeah yeah definitely please it wasn't that bad um uh yeah you know i mean i had a girlfriend sophomore in junior year and that was very exciting and then i got dumped and that was like horrible so there was like six months of depression and and then i sort of came out of my shell senior year i did a couple of the the shows you know i i wanted to be a comedian when i was young but i didn't tell anybody and
Guest:There was kind of a talent show or a pop show or one of those kind of things in high school, and I think I did one of the plays.
Guest:So I started to come out of my shell and indulge my yen to be in show business.
Guest:And did how'd that go?
Guest:It went okay.
Guest:Yes, the first time I ever did it, I hosted, I emceed the talent show.
Guest:I think it was.
Guest:Yeah, there was a gay English teacher.
Guest:I didn't realize he was gay at the time because I didn't realize anything like that at the time.
Guest:But he recommended me.
Guest:I owe him a big debt of gratitude because...
Guest:I probably would never have done it on my own.
Guest:But, you know, in class, I guess he saw a kid who was kind of witty and, you know, being a little class comedian as opposed to a class clown.
Guest:And he suggested I do that.
Guest:And I did.
Guest:And I was thrilled.
Guest:And I stole most of the material from The Tonight Show.
Guest:It was too risque for the audience or for the parents.
Guest:I remember I got into a degree of trouble, and I think they actually canceled having that joke in the years to come.
Marc:You took them from Carson?
Guest:Yeah, I took it from Carson.
Guest:I remember, like, I was interested in this girl.
Guest:It was, you know, some daddy's little girl.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I think I stole jokes that were not really appropriate to a high school girl.
Guest:Like, she's going to do the Dance of the Virgins, which she performs from memory.
Guest:She squeezed a lemon into a man's drink with her knees.
Guest:You know, these are not appropriate jokes, but these were like Karnak jokes or Art Fern.
Guest:But, you know, I was the ultimate devotee of Johnny Carson in that era.
Guest:As a high school kid.
Marc:Is he what compelled you to comedy?
Guest:Well, you know, I had a few heroes, as all comics do.
Guest:But he certainly was the one who was most present because he was on every night.
Guest:And I probably did not miss a single episode of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson from the age of 12 to 22 or something.
Marc:I think he influenced your style, don't you?
Marc:My monologue, for sure.
Guest:Not when I do stand-up.
Guest:On TV.
Guest:Well, just the monologue, which is a sort of a guy standing on the street corner talking about the day, or in my case, it's a weekly show, the week's events.
Guest:It's not as impassioned.
Guest:You know, like the kind of...
Guest:stand-up show i do around the country that i'm doing on yahoo february 23rd yeah first of its kind internet special free um that's different that's more robert klein you move around he was also one of my heroes well those are long form pits pieces too long form you're you've got the mic in your hand as opposed to just standing there stiff uh i don't know just from watching johnny all those years it's in my blood to do a monologue with that kind of rhythm and it fits
Guest:but stand-up is a different animal and that's more yeah robert klein and george carlin when i was a kid though those were my stand-up heroes yeah and yeah have you worked with robert do you have you talked to him oh yes i mean he's certainly he was on politically incorrect he's been on real time um and i'm certainly friendly with him you know uh who are the guys you started out with though i mean there's like a crew was larry miller mark schiff yes oh yeah riser oh yes that
Marc:That's your generation, right?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I mean, they were all a little older than me.
Guest:So they were all guys who I kind of look up to because when I arrived, they were already getting on and they were emceeing.
Guest:They were doing the things that was the immediate next step that I wanted to do.
Guest:Jerry Seinfeld.
Guest:Larry David was the one who passed me when I auditioned at Catch, yes.
Guest:So, you know, these guys...
Guest:provided for me uh the only thing i had going for me then was a little encouragement because i certainly had no money i had no skills i had no encouragement from the audience good education though yeah i was getting a good comedy education and once in a while one of these guys would say hey you're funny and then i would think okay i can live on that for a week what about your folks did they were they into it or you know they were great about it they weren't i wouldn't say they were into it but they weren't again it
Guest:I remember when I said to them, because I went all through college, never sort of mentioned what I wanted to do with my life, which is weird.
Guest:It didn't come up?
Guest:Didn't really come up.
Guest:What was your father's business?
Guest:My father was in radio.
Guest:Oh, really?
Marc:He was a broadcaster?
Guest:Yes, he was, a newsman in the era when every news station had news at the top of the hour.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he worked in New York, you know, first for the now defunct, for many years defunct, mutual broadcasting system.
Marc:Did you have a fascination with that?
Marc:I mean, did you go to the office and look at the routers thing with the news stories coming up?
Marc:Did you...
Guest:in those days it came off a wire the wire yeah and then you know he would rip it off and you know they wrote their own copy and delivered it and it had to be five minutes you know i remember he had many stop watches at home yes i did think it was a kind of a cool thing to do and he would time himself at home when he was writing no no no you couldn't do it at home you had to do it at the office because that's where you worked it was up to the minute um
Guest:But yeah, once in a while we would hear him do the news on the radio.
Guest:So yeah, it was pretty cool.
Marc:And did that sort of feed into a fascination with news?
Guest:Yes, news, absolutely.
Guest:News, I think, you know, just being in the public, not really, he wasn't really in the public eye, but public speaking.
Guest:And he was also a funny...
Guest:My father, kind of a funny living room comedian, which is something you hear from a lot of comics, that their father was funny.
Guest:And it kind of gestated through one generation, and then the next generation flowered more publicly.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah, my father was more of a, you know, it started out funny, but it became uncomfortable very quickly.
Yeah.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Was he a drunk or something?
Marc:No, he wasn't drunk.
Marc:He's a manic depressive.
Marc:He didn't have a great sense of humor, but he'd always tell the wrong joke with the wrong group of people, like something he heard at the office.
Marc:And then it would start out like, this is great.
Marc:And then it's like, that's not funny at all.
Marc:It didn't go a good place at all.
Marc:He still thinks he's funny.
Marc:He actually said to me once when, you know, because he never, I don't know if your parents are the same way, but when you do stand up and you're not, you don't have a gig necessarily, your parents don't see it as anything other than a phase that you're going through.
Marc:And a couple of years ago, my father actually said to me, he says, hey, why don't you call Bill Maher?
Marc:He seems to have it figured out.
Guest:Ah, that's so funny.
Guest:I remember when I was first doing it, maybe the first Christmas party, and my aunt said, I remember hearing her say, I can still hear the voice ringing in my head.
Guest:It must have been that traumatic.
Guest:Oh, did you hear?
Guest:Billy's trying to be a comedian.
Guest:He's trying.
Guest:He's trying to be that.
Guest:I don't know what validates it for them because they've got their people in their mind.
Guest:Well, in my era, it was doing Carson.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Then the discussion was over.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Of course.
Guest:If you did Carson, you were in... Actually, you know, it's funny.
Guest:It went from they...
Guest:didn't think you were serious about it or that it was really going to happen to when you did Carson, they thought you were a giant star.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Which was ridiculous because I did 30 Tonight Shows and nobody still knew who I was.
Guest:I mean, you know, in the era that I came aboard in the 80s,
Guest:It was no longer enough just to do The Tonight Show to become a star.
Guest:The Tonight Show was a springboard to get a sitcom, and that would make you a star or your own show of some kind.
Marc:It helped sell tickets, though, right?
Guest:But they thought, not really.
Guest:Really?
Marc:No, no.
Marc:That's a myth that when it was just Johnny and he was the king of late night, that if he gave you the nod.
Marc:Total myth.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Because in that era, there was too many comedians.
Guest:When I was a kid, there was only like one new comedian every five years.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, Stanley Myron Hendelman.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, right.
Guest:And he was on every show.
Guest:David Brenner, I always say.
Guest:Right, David Brenner, forever.
Guest:I think was the last one to become a household word simply from being a comedian on talk shows.
Guest:After that, there was just too many of them.
Guest:The floodgates were open.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you just got lost in the crowd.
Guest:And no, but that's what I'm saying.
Guest:You know, the family thought you did one Tonight Show.
Guest:You were a giant star, recognized everywhere, mobbed at the supermarket.
Guest:And the truth was, no, you weren't.
Guest:Your life was just incrementally better.
Guest:Yeah, you could now headline at the Pittsburgh Comedy Club.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:You wrote a novel based on your experience.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Because I remember when I did Short Tension Theater, you were doing Politically Incorrect.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And I was selling your book on my show.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But you did.
Marc:I mean, it was really about that experience.
Marc:Totally.
Marc:You spent time on the road.
Marc:You paid your dues doing those horrible clubs.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:I certainly did pay my dues.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And all of that is in that book.
Guest:True Stories?
Guest:Is that what it was?
Guest:True story.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, as in true story.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And yeah, I, for whatever reason, wanted to preserve that knowledge.
Guest:And I will never write another novel.
Guest:It's not really what I want to do.
Guest:And I think most people who do write novels write the same novel over and over again.
Guest:So I figure just write one good one about the one thing that you know about that hasn't really been explored and call it a day.
Guest:And that's what I did.
Marc:Okay, so when you were doing stand-up in New York, when did you move to L.A.?
Marc:After the first Tonight Show?
Marc:When did that happen?
Guest:After the third Tonight Show.
Guest:Actually, during the third Tonight Show.
Guest:You had somebody do it.
Guest:No, but in that time, whenever I was flown out from New York to do the Tonight Show, the best part of the gig was the airfare.
Guest:Because by after rules, they had to fly you first class.
Guest:And, of course, we would turn in the tickets and get the money.
Guest:First class ticket was like two grand.
Guest:And you could fly coach for 200 and make 1,800 bucks on that.
Guest:So the third time I was given a ticket, I said, oh, well, I'm no fool.
Guest:I'm going to use this to move.
Guest:And it was New Year's Eve going into 83.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Wow.
Marc:And the interesting thing about you is that I don't know that people of the generation a little younger than me realize that you paid all these dues and that you were a real sort of like hands-on, on-the-road stand-up comic guy.
Guest:Still am.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's just that my on-the-road experience now is so much more pleasant.
Guest:But, you know, I still do, you know, 60, 65 stand-up dates a year.
Guest:And I'm always, you know, every couple of years I've done a...
Guest:a special on HBO.
Guest:I've done nine.
Guest:I mean, this year I decided to do it on Yahoo, like I said, the one coming up in February, because I thought, well, you know, the audience on HBO, they get me all year long anyway.
Guest:Let's broaden this out.
Guest:And so this is really exciting to me.
Marc:But when you came out as a comic, because I was, you know...
Marc:It wasn't your goal to become necessarily this iconoclastic cultural commentator.
Marc:I mean, you were primarily a joke comedian, correct?
Guest:Yeah, but I always wanted to and always tried to do material about politics, not exclusively, and I still don't do it exclusively, either on the show, although the show was much more politically focused.
Guest:Then the stand up act, although that is still also mostly politically focused.
Guest:But yeah, when I was young, I tried political jokes, but I was too young to write good ones.
Guest:And I was too young to be taken seriously by the audience for good reason.
Guest:As a political commentator, you just don't have gravitas when you're 24.
Marc:Did you have the what was your degree in college in?
Marc:english okay so with the politics thing like because when i did air america i mean i was a reactionary i mean politically i was not familiar with the nuances of legislation that's what made it good yeah it's just he's an aggravated man who seems right exactly not not that educated on this stuff but like when you came out to la i mean you were doing whatever you could do to to get into show business right i mean i mean you did a lot of you know movies when i was
Guest:When I was in the clubs in New York from 79 to 82, it was de rigueur that we all thought we needed to get five or six clean five-minute segments so that you were ready when The Tonight Show called.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we all, Jerry Seinfeld was on Benson.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We all lived this template.
Guest:We would do our four or five.
Guest:And be on Benson.
Guest:Tonight shows.
Guest:And then we would be on Benson.
Guest:Or some, we all, Freddie Prinze also.
Guest:You know, this was the idea.
Guest:You knew him?
Guest:No, he was dead.
Guest:He's a little older.
Guest:He died in 77 when I was at Cornell.
Guest:Right.
Guest:but that was the idea i did i saw him on the tonight show first sure hey comedian stand-up comedian gets a sitcom so that's what was in our heads so yes i came out in 83 immediately i did get a movie dc cab yeah um with charlie barnett with charlie barnett and gary bucey and marcia warfield and oh gosh who uh
Guest:all mr t yeah how could i forget were you excited about that of course i was 27 i just moved out to california now i'm in a major movie of course it was extremely exciting um and then i got a sitcom sarah with gina davis and uh you know and then i got another so the 80s was mostly living that life i mostly i made my living on
Guest:uh, in the eighties as an actor, I also never stopped doing standups, never stopped doing my tonight shows and so forth.
Guest:But I was, my mind was more focused on, you know, acting and like getting ahead that way.
Guest:Uh, it wasn't until like the early nineties when I was like, Oh God, I don't want to, you know, it was like doing my fourth sitcom with Sam Kinison.
Guest:And it was just the one where he was in the drawer.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:I was not a fan.
Guest:I mean, he was on heroin at the time, so he would keep the whole cast waiting for hours and sometimes days while he either didn't show up or sobered up.
Marc:That was the one with Tim Matheson?
Marc:Yes, exactly.
Marc:And he was already sort of arcing down.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:He was on a sitcom.
Guest:It was a concession.
Guest:Mr. Wild and Crazy was on a sitcom.
Marc:And he probably just hated it.
Guest:Yeah, and I hated him for keeping us waiting.
Marc:Did you ever have one developed around you?
Guest:yeah oh yes in uh a few years earlier i had when the the fledgling fox network i was pretty hot off a couple of the sitcoms i had done so they allowed me to uh create my own it was called bill gets a life yeah um and did you write that with nobody and uh oh no gary shandling what am i saying gary shandling was the executive producer uh-huh
Guest:And it never got on the air, but yeah, that was an attempt.
Guest:The idea in my head really was very similar to the sitcom King of Queens.
Guest:The idea was a guy who couldn't believe he had married a girl
Marc:you know who was so out of his league right i think that's king of queens i don't know what the pilot was but it just turned out to be two people that talked a lot at each other well i mean so but was there a point where you you were like you felt like you were doing yourself a disservice by by by doing those like by just being a comedic actor or was there a point where you're like fuck this i gotta talk
Guest:A number of times in my career, I've been lucky, as many people have, I think, by the imposition of failure, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
Guest:I'm very glad that the sitcom I did to Sarah, which everyone said was a no miss, had to be a hit because...
Guest:It was Gary Goldberg, who was the producer at the time of Family Ties, which was a giant hit.
Guest:He was the hottest producer in town.
Guest:And it was what a cast, Bronson Pinchot and Alfre Woodard.
Guest:And I'm glad that didn't go anywhere, because I remember when the ad came out in TV Guide, and it had the four of us, Alfre, Bronson, Gina, and I, with a little description of who we were.
Guest:And under my picture, it said, The Office Creep.
LAUGHTER
Guest:So I could have got typecast as the office creep for the rest of my life.
Guest:And then I was lucky, really, looking back when Politically Incorrect got canned after 9-11 because I should have walked away from that before nine years to do the show I'm doing now.
Guest:So sometimes out there, kids, just remember, failure could be good for you.
Marc:Well, I mean, but was politically incorrect your idea?
Marc:I mean, I know you worked with Nancy Geller and Scott Carter's been with you forever.
Marc:How did that come about?
Marc:I mean, how was that transition?
Guest:I had always wanted to do that kind of a show.
Guest:In fact, I kind of did it for a week in the summer of 1990.
Guest:The CBS in the summer of 1990 gave a bunch of people one week.
Guest:to try out on the air uh you can watch them somewhere probably a late night talk show and you could like sort of create your own idea for a show and this was sort of my idea and uh so I had that idea for a long time to do that kind of a show and luckily uh you know in the fall of 1992 uh Comedy Central was just new and desperate enough to buy it
Marc:And were you – did you – because when I started doing political stuff, I mean, did you have as in-depth the knowledge of everything as you do now or were you briefed?
Marc:I mean, did you – because, like, I just wonder how the staffing on that works because, you know, you know your shit now.
Guest:I mean – I think I always had an advantage because of what we were talking about before, my father in the news industry.
Guest:Unlike most families who – at dinner, I don't know what they talk about or they watch TV –
Guest:My family was into talking about the news.
Guest:It was always in my house.
Guest:I always read the newspaper.
Guest:I read the New York Times when I was a teenager.
Guest:It came to the door and I read it.
Guest:And I was interested.
Guest:I was always interested in social studies and that side of the thing.
Guest:I wasn't a science, math kind of a guy.
Guest:So it was sort of in me when I started.
Guest:And then over the years, I think you just learn how to get better at your job like you do at any job.
Guest:Of course, I do have a great staff, and a lot of them have been with me for a long time, including some people who are coming up on the 20-year mark.
Guest:I can't believe that, but it's true, because PI started in 93.
Guest:Loyalty is pretty important in this business.
Guest:What is?
Guest:Loyalty.
Guest:loyalty i've been lucky with that yeah i mean they all came out to la they none of them wanted to um because they were all from new york we started in new york with the original pi on comedy central and nobody wanted to come out to la of course the second they were here they were seduced as everyone is
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's so nice here.
Marc:I don't know why people compare the two.
Marc:I mean, people are like, I don't know, New York and L.A.
Marc:They're totally fucking different.
Guest:Completely different.
Guest:And I don't know why New York, you know, which I have great affection for.
Guest:It's the city I grew up right next to, which my father worked every day.
Guest:I still go back, of course, a few times a year.
Guest:I love it in the fall and the spring.
Guest:for you know a weekend or so yeah i don't know why there has to be this chauvinistic attitude new york is the greatest city in the world and if you don't agree with that you are a bad person maybe it's the greatest city for you it's so it's like saying my wife is the greatest wife in the world not just the one best suited for me the best in the world it's childish yeah i don't like living in a building i don't like the cold i don't like the sticky muggy summers
Guest:So so what?
Guest:Sue me.
Guest:I like living out here.
Guest:You know, I lived in New York twice, once when I was poor, once when I was doing a lot better.
Guest:I didn't like it either time.
Guest:I was still living in a building.
Guest:I still heard the garbage truck on the street.
Guest:Yada, yada, yada.
Guest:I mean, it's just not my cup of tea.
Marc:What's the history of this place?
Marc:It seems like it feels like there's history in this in this place that you have now.
Marc:Did it belong to somebody?
Marc:Yeah, but I'm not going to tell you about it.
Guest:I mean, you know, every house out here belonged to somebody.
Guest:I mean, I actually live next door.
Guest:This is the house next door, and the main house burned down, so I was able to...
Guest:Swoop in in an unfortunate situation.
Guest:And pick up this piece of property.
Guest:And I should have never set that fire.
Marc:Whoops.
Marc:Now it's out there.
Marc:Now it's out there.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So now this show, when you did get...
Guest:taken off was there any fear in your mind that you would be out or down for the count absolutely of course i mean there was a a few weeks there when i was like public enemy number one in america i still have the uh over a misunderstood joke well it wasn't really a joke it was not a joke it was a statement right a true statement right that people even at the time
Guest:I recognize was a true statement.
Guest:But yeah, I still have the clipping on the headline from Variety on my wall in my office that says, White House keeps heat on Mar.
Guest:Which, you know, it's worth the pain that I went through just for that newspaper headline on my wall, because where else could you get?
Guest:White House keeps heat on Mar.
Guest:But there was about a week there where it came up in the briefing room
Guest:every day and Ari Fleischer was commenting on how evil I was and how Americans need to watch what they say.
Marc:Isn't that interesting that at this juncture in history that it became public?
Marc:Nixon used to do that with everybody.
Marc:Anybody mildly threatened him, but you became like this whipping boy, a public whipping boy.
Guest:Yeah, well, as my head writer pointed out, and I always laugh at this, he said,
Guest:You were like the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan where they're in the landing craft.
Guest:And the thing at the front of the landing craft goes down.
Guest:Yeah, the gate goes down so they can all rush out.
Guest:And as soon as it goes down, one guy gets a bullet right in the head.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like before the gate is even splashing into the water, bing, one guy's dead.
Guest:And he said, that's what you were like after 9-11.
Guest:People were angry and they were looking for somebody to hate.
Guest:And you just walked right into it.
Guest:But, you know, I stupidly believe Bush, who said we should go back to doing what we were doing or else the terrorists win.
Guest:So I went back to doing what I always did, which was, you know, just calling it like I see it.
Guest:And no, the terrorists weren't cowards.
Guest:They stayed with the suicide mission.
Guest:You know, it's not even a it wasn't even a statement that has a moral dimension.
Guest:Right.
Guest:No, it was just a logic thing.
Guest:Just a true thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And by the way, a statement that other people have said, too.
Marc:And when you lost that job, I mean, were you panicked?
Guest:I mean, it was a difficult period.
Guest:I mean, the whole country, if you remember that fall of 2001, the whole country was shitting in its pants about everything.
Guest:Because remember then the anthrax?
Guest:It was just a bad time in every possible way.
Guest:The only good part of it was it did free.
Guest:I mean, politically incorrect.
Guest:People think it went away right away.
Guest:No.
Guest:We were on for another nine months.
Guest:It did free us to do a much better show because the country was in this serious mood.
Guest:And so, you know, suddenly no one even wanted to see Carrot Top.
Guest:We were able to have on...
Guest:You know, guests talking about Islam and why they hate us.
Marc:Did you find that that was a big, like, learning curve for you that, like, all of a sudden that you were able to have these more serious conversations?
Guest:No, it's what I would have loved to do from the beginning.
Guest:But, you know, we had always been on commercial television.
Guest:You know, we were selling ads and we were trying to get eyeballs at 1130 at night against...
Guest:Leno and Letterman and so you know we were pressured to put on famous faces that you know very often didn't know what they were talking about and that was sort of the charm of the show I mean I can't blame the network for that I invented that show and the idea was hey let's put these
Guest:different people together of nothing in common and see what the conversation is like when you talk about issues of the day so you know it that was part of the charm of the show on some nights it was a train wreck and sometimes that was funny sometimes it was a very funny train wreck and sometimes it was just a train wreck train wreck yeah there were some times where you just couldn't manage it and it just well
Guest:Well, it was just sometimes people who are different, there's an oddball chemistry that works, and sometimes it's just odd.
Guest:But, you know, I think we made the best of it.
Guest:But after 9-11, that last nine months on PI, I really enjoyed actually doing those shows.
Guest:We had on many more serious people.
Guest:and many more intelligent discussions.
Guest:And you were hated by a lot of people.
Guest:Well, I was hated long before that.
Guest:In fact, the reason why I got kicked off was not really from what I said, because what I said didn't bother anybody the next day, didn't bother anybody the next day.
Guest:It was just that somebody in Houston, a disc jockey who had been trying to get rid of me for the longest time because I was an atheist and because I said bad things about Reagan and whatever...
Guest:He saw an opportunity to foment hatred and to stir shit up, and he did, and it worked.
Guest:On a national scale, a radio personality in Houston did that.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Well, it's so easy in this day and age to get anybody, you know, you just have to have a fax machine, you know, or an email.
Guest:You know, it's just too easy to, like, get people riled up.
Guest:I mean, all of politics these days is getting...
Guest:people riled up by the way when i talked about uh this with the dixie chicks once remember when they got into huge shit storm because they said uh we're not we're from texas and we're ashamed of bush or something right and they said it they said it on foreign soil and everybody knows in the right wing handbook that that's somehow yeah that's connected yeah it's good for the press but they said the same thing like when they first did it no one cared
Guest:days went by, and then somebody made other people angry.
Guest:But it didn't actually strike people as awful until somebody reminded them, you're supposed to be outraged.
Guest:Oh, okay, that's right.
Guest:Sorry, I forgot.
Guest:Yes, I'm outraged.
Guest:Yeah, you just turn a moron on and they'll get angry.
Guest:Yes, I'm so sorry.
Guest:I forgot to hate today.
Marc:I mean, how long did it take?
Marc:I mean, there wasn't any stink on you after that, was there, in terms of development?
Yeah.
Marc:Like when you went to create Real Time.
Marc:I mean, when you got that period between not having a job.
Guest:You know, I was lucky.
Guest:I mean, the period not having a job was all of six months.
Guest:PI went off on June 28, 2002, and Real Time was on in January, I think, of 2003.
Guest:So I was very lucky and very grateful that I had the net of HBO to fall into.
Marc:Yeah, they've always been good.
Marc:I mean, Nancy Deller, you've been with her forever.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah, we were always sort of in bed with them because HBO Downtown Productions produced politically incorrect.
Guest:Nina and Nancy.
Guest:Yes, Nina and Nancy.
Guest:And the truth is that it always, you know, what I do always belonged on a network that was not...
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Susceptible to advertisement pullouts.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Is that really what sunk you in the big picture?
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:I mean, I was never mad at ABC for canning me.
Guest:In fact, I was surprised that a show called Politically Incorrect that really was very politically incorrect.
Guest:could have lasted on a Disney-owned entity for six years, as it did.
Guest:What I was mad at is that they lied and said the ratings went down, and that's why they were canceling it.
Guest:The ratings never went down.
Guest:We never lost our audience.
Guest:Our ratings were good.
Guest:I'll bet you our ratings are still better than what replaced us.
Guest:They certainly were for the longest time.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I've checked it recently.
Guest:It wasn't the ratings that went down.
Guest:It was that the advertisers pulled out.
Guest:And if advertisers pull out, I totally understand.
Guest:You're running a commercial business.
Guest:That's intolerable.
Guest:You have to make money.
Guest:So I never met them for canceling me.
Marc:Just don't lie about why.
Marc:Well, it's amazing that it seems to me that with real time and, you know, all throughout the shows you've done, you've maintained a rare audience in intelligent grownups and slightly enlightened younger people that most TV really just dumbs down everything.
Marc:And like when I even when I appeared on your show, I mean, the feedback was amazing.
Marc:I mean, a lot of intelligent adults watch your show and there's not listen to this.
Guest:This, by the way, I've heard so many people say, when are you doing that?
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, no.
Guest:I mean, you have quite the following, too.
Marc:But if you think about it, there's not that many shows for grownups anymore.
Guest:There really isn't.
Guest:And if you just stick your flag in the sand and say, this is what I am and this is what we're going to do.
Guest:And we're not going to waver from that.
Guest:Yes, you will get a great audience.
Guest:I mean, we have a terrifically sized audience.
Guest:I don't think people realize how many people see our show.
Guest:Now, is it as many as American Idol?
Guest:Of course not.
Guest:But it's a lot more than lots of shows, which I bet people think get bigger audiences.
Guest:We probably get four or five times what Gossip Girl gets.
Marc:Well, that's good.
Yeah.
Marc:But I'm saying gossip is on the cover of magazines.
Guest:And I'm just saying that, you know, in this day and age where there are so many different choices and different channels, it's such a niche marketing situation.
Guest:You know, you can survive with.
Guest:numbers that 20, 30 years ago were laughable.
Guest:I remember when Johnny Carson and probably Jay Leno has a very similar late night viewership, let's say 5 million people.
Guest:I remember when that was sort of like, oh, well, of course it's good, but it's late night.
Guest:It's nothing like what the Wild Wild West gets on Friday night.
Guest:They get 42 million people.
Guest:Yeah, because there were three channels then.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Nowadays, there's lots of primetime shows that don't get five million.
Guest:They would love to get five million people.
Marc:Yeah, definitely.
Marc:The numbers don't don't mean what they used to.
Marc:And but like, it's amazing to me that when you watch Johnny Carson, when you were a kid and when I was a kid, that you're the only show that, you know, that has writers on, that has artists on, that has people from other areas of expression that that are sophisticated.
Marc:I mean, there was a time, unless I'm hallucinating, where, you know, Carson would have Norman Mailer on or George Plimpton.
Guest:Because, yes.
Marc:especially when it was 90 minutes yeah the tonight show used to be 90 minutes and people could sit without a laugh for five minutes i mean what the fuck why has it got to be a goddamn circus all the time right i mean i turn on some networks and you feel like i'm being attacked by children i don't know what what is going on how am i surrounded by kids right now yes it's so funny one of the first issues we did on politically incorrect in 93 was uh
Guest:is, uh, is America getting dumber?
Guest:Is that just something that seems to be happy or something I feel because I forget how we phrase it, but it was, it was that idea of is America getting dumber?
Guest:And here we are 20 years later and it only has gotten dumber.
Marc:Well, I think it's an, it's a gratification thing.
Marc:I just think between the internet and television and what's offered, you know, people need to be like, it's like they're feeding.
Marc:They're not thinking.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, it's so funny because they're getting dumber, but at the same time, a lot of them are getting smarter.
Guest:I mean, we didn't have the internet like we have 20 years ago.
Guest:Information wasn't available like it is now.
Guest:Young people weren't nearly as savvy or actually as politically involved.
Guest:I mean, they're actually interested in politics now, I think, in a way.
Guest:And I think a lot of it, that has to do with what we started at Politically Incorrect.
Guest:We handed that franchise over to The Daily Show.
Guest:that became the sort of the successor to that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Um, and, uh, that was a big thing and, and, you know, um, other shows and, uh, Obama comes along and, and, you know, he's a kind of a, a cool cat that got elected president and we got a black president and, and,
Guest:It's not like it was when I started when you really had to fight this idea that politics was the most toxic thing you could put on television or talk about on television.
Guest:It's not anymore.
Marc:Well, also, it's become framed from the news networks as sort of a sporting event.
Marc:I mean, there is a pace to it where it is.
Marc:It definitely is.
Marc:And there's something disillusioning about that to, I think, more intelligent people that, you know, really the fight for the moron's brain is paramount.
Marc:The fact that somebody can watch a political commercial that's 60 seconds long and go, well, I'm changing my mind.
Marc:What are you, a fucking idiot?
Marc:Right.
Marc:It took 60 seconds of bullshit to pummel your sad, fragile head into believing a different thing?
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's exactly what Mitt Romney has been doing all week in Florida to Newt Gingrich.
Guest:It's true.
Marc:Well, that Newt's scary because as evil a cunt he is, he has intelligence.
Marc:And he's got a big mouth, which I think is good for the other side.
Marc:But he scares the fuck out of me.
Guest:I mean, that's a strong word.
Guest:Yes, he's not without certain intellectual capabilities.
Guest:But this idea that the right wing puts forward, not just his camp, and then the media picks up on that somehow Newt Gingrich is the foremost intellectual.
Marc:Oh, did I get suckered by right-wing talking points?
Guest:I might have.
Guest:Well, it kind of.
Guest:I mean, that's what they say, you know, that he's the foremost intellectual.
Guest:And they all noddle, not just right-wing.
Guest:I mean, you heard this on CNN that, you know, he was a history professor.
Guest:He's kind of this big ideas man.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He had big, stupid ideas like build a colony on the moon and the death penalty for people who bring in two ounces of pot.
Guest:And, you know, he's not a big idea guy.
Guest:You look at his ideas.
Guest:First of all, they're they're the same.
Guest:Most of the same bullshit that the other right wing idiots up on the stage are espousing lower taxes.
Guest:You know, of course, the exact nonsense that got us into the mess in the first place.
Guest:Newt, Newt, Mitt, Mitt.
Guest:It's Newt and Mitt.
Guest:It's sort of like Osama and Obama, you know, because neither one of them is a name, by the way.
Guest:Newt, Mitt, who are these people?
Guest:But Mitt kind of jabbed Newt at the last debate because they were going after Mitt Romney for not paying his taxes.
Guest:And Mitt said, but Newt, under your plan, I would pay actually zero taxes.
Guest:And that's right.
Guest:Newt wants a capital gains tax of zero.
Guest:So Mitt wouldn't even be paying his 15 percent.
Guest:He'd be paying zero on his millions and millions of dollars.
Guest:This is not a big idea.
Guest:This is a stupid idea.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's the foremost intellectual in the Republican Party the way Gene Simmons is the foremost intellectual in Kiss.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And also the fact that I, you know, look, I went to Salt Lake City recently and I firmly believe that it's enough not to vote for Mitt because he's Mormon because that's some weird shit.
Guest:Well, you know, it certainly is.
Marc:Do you know the appeal of it, though?
Marc:Have you been out there?
Guest:I didn't realize it until I went out there.
Guest:We tried to film at the temple for religious and were kicked out, but spent a week there in Salt Lake.
Marc:But it's an American religion.
Marc:It's a very American.
Guest:Of course, Jesus comes back to Missouri.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:That's the appeal of it is that it sort of unites what— Frontier spirit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Frontier spirit and also, you know, there's a tremendous dichotomy that can never be aligned.
Guest:And, of course, they hate to hear that, but it is the truth.
Guest:And that is you can't be a patriotic person and also be a Christian.
Guest:It's very antithetical to everything Jesus said, that you would love one country above other countries.
Guest:Jesus was all about humans.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Okay?
Guest:I mean, this isn't really esoteric stuff.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I don't believe in a sky god who's going to save my ass, but I have read his book.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it is sort of big on this idea that we're all brothers, that there are no dividing lines between us, that the poor and the powerless have just as much dignity as the rich.
Guest:It's everything that isn't America.
Guest:You know, you can't be a Christian and say things like, yeah, you got to take care of your own first, you know?
Guest:I mean, it...
Guest:But Mormonism tries to square that circle a little more.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because Jesus, of course, came here to America.
Marc:He came here to America to inspire people to put together good business sense and kick back some money.
Guest:On my worst days, being high on shitty dirt weed, I never came up with stuff that was as ridiculous.
Guest:Gold plates?
Guest:A guy comes out of the woods with gold plates?
Guest:Well, he was...
Marc:Everyone knows he was a con man of his day.
Marc:But let me ask you, though, in terms of religion, do you have an issue with the community element of religion?
Marc:I don't know what you mean by that.
Marc:Well, I mean, like, well, it's one thing to believe in God, but a lot of people who may or may not believe but just sort of go through the paces in order to hang out with their neighbors.
Marc:I mean, do you— Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it's just—but you're—I mean, everybody needs community.
Guest:Right.
Guest:No, very—
Guest:few people except the unabomber want to sit alone at home in a shack and a few comics yeah a few comics that's true um but why organize it around a silly myth right can't we organize our community around something else there's so many do it around movie night or anything else but movie night is not eternal you know i mean what i know it could be um
Guest:But I always want to say to religious people, first of all, how do you know this?
Guest:That's my main question to religious people.
Guest:Whatever they say is, how do you know this?
Guest:Because they talk about the next world in this great detail.
Guest:And I just like to point out to them, like, everything you think you know either comes from either a holy book, the Bible, the Koran, something like that, or from another person telling it to you, which is just a big game of telephone that goes back 2,000 years.
Marc:Well, what about people that have a belief system in place and it makes them a better person?
Yeah.
Guest:Well, that's called an ethicist.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:That would be like me and the millions and millions and millions of atheists and agnostics here and even more in Europe and all around the world.
Guest:People who prove that, and they've actually studied this.
Guest:that people who are ethicists have a higher grade of morality than people who are religious because religion, far from reinforcing morality, although it does for millions of people too, but it obviously justifies evil deeds.
Guest:As someone once said, the world is full of
Guest:Most of them are just regular people trying to get by.
Guest:There are a certain amount of psychopaths who will always do wicked things, and there are a certain percentage of good people who always do good things.
Guest:But to make a good person do wicked things, you almost always have to introduce religion into the equation.
Guest:In other words, to make Muhammad Atta, who probably was just a regular guy,
Guest:He wasn't born an evil person, but he was brainwashed into this religion to make him fly an airplane into a building.
Guest:He had to believe that this was a way to get to paradise and that he was doing the right thing.
Marc:And he obviously had some vulnerability about his purpose in life.
Marc:I mean, I've done some reading about the idea, the nature of people's desire to believe in something bigger than themselves in order to feel that they have purpose in the world is a vulnerability.
Marc:It's a human vulnerability.
Marc:I mean, whatever it's going to be, whether it's sports or movie night or whatever, there is that compulsion to be part of something bigger.
Guest:I agree, and I just think it's time we organized it around something other than what some desert dweller wrote 2,000 years ago.
Marc:Yeah, I agree with you.
Marc:I've said recently on stage that you only get religion two ways.
Marc:Either you're brought up with it and it's pummeled into your brain by frightened parents, or your life goes off the rails to such a degree that you don't know where else to turn.
Marc:and it's either Jesus or massage therapy.
Marc:Yeah, prison.
Guest:You're in prison.
Guest:I totally get that you need Jesus.
Marc:Or else maybe things didn't work out in show business and you want to be a yoga instructor.
Marc:I mean, that's a safer path.
Marc:Do you have a problem with spirituality in general?
Guest:Well, first of all, I don't know what that means.
Guest:Yeah, it's vague.
Guest:It's vague.
Guest:It usually means I believe in ghosts in some way, and yes, I have a problem with that.
Guest:I don't believe in ghosts.
Guest:I don't know what that word spirituality means.
Guest:What about incense and sweating?
Guest:Music that has a nice feeling to it.
Guest:That I'm fine with, but I don't know what this word spirituality means.
Guest:And by the way, I don't think most people who use it know what it means.
Marc:It's a feeling they get when they combine enough weird cryptic shit together that makes it like these candles right here.
Marc:If you put this together,
Guest:with a nice, maybe an ocean sound.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, you know, I think it just means being a nice person.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I don't know what they think they're going for there or what they're getting.
Guest:There's so many around, though.
Guest:I've made people mad that some people I'm very fond of when I did an editorial on our show about Buddhism.
Guest:And, you know, people said for years, they were saying, why don't you...
Guest:Why don't you look into that or why don't you do a sequel to Religious about the Eastern religions?
Guest:And I looked into it and they wanted to know, is it really a religion?
Guest:That's a big debate.
Guest:Yes, because it's full of crazy shit.
Guest:Anything that's full of crazy, nonsensical shit that somebody just pulled out of their ass is a religion.
Guest:Well, what do you do?
Guest:Is it as bad as Christianity?
Guest:No, because it's not warlike as much.
Guest:Although the Japanese before World War II were Buddhist and they didn't seem to have a problem with the rape of Nanking.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, what do you do like for you?
Marc:I mean, I don't know when you hit like a wall or an existential crisis, you're paralyzed with fear or mortality.
Guest:How do you handle that moment?
Guest:It's tougher.
Guest:You know, that's right.
Guest:I mean, I just turned 56.
Guest:It would be great if there was an afterlife.
Guest:I would welcome that.
Guest:But what do you do?
Guest:Just get busy, smoke a little weed?
Guest:What do you do to make the demons go away?
Guest:There's nothing.
Guest:But the alternative is to run to an illusion.
Guest:As Eugene O'Neill once said, life without...
Guest:illusions is unbearable and life with illusions is unpardonable.
Guest:And I think everybody has to make that choice.
Guest:And I just, you know, it would be nice to have that comfort.
Guest:I just can't anymore.
Guest:I mean, the Toto has torn back the curtain.
Guest:I see that the...
Guest:The Wizard of Oz is just a little man saying, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, and I can no longer make myself believe.
Guest:I mean, once the match is lit, you can't re-light it.
Guest:No.
Guest:Well, it seems like you're having a good time.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I mean, you know, look, you just...
Guest:All I'm trying to do, like most people, is be the best person I can.
Guest:And then the rest of the time, we're just really finding ways to distract ourselves until we die.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And piss off the people that are stupid.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Well, thanks, Bill.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Good talking to you.
Marc:Well, that's it.
Marc:I was a lovely chat with Bill, and we were a little tight on time there.
Marc:He had to get somewhere else.
Marc:But I think we had a good talk, and it was great to talk to him.
Marc:I respect the guy.
Marc:He's a real comic, and he's cut out a real place in the world for himself.
Marc:So check out that live streaming comedy special on the 23rd at Yahoo Comedy.
Marc:And what else?
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com.
Marc:Kick in a few shekels.
Marc:Buy a T-shirt, some posters.
Marc:Look around.
Marc:Get yourself the app.
Marc:There's a new app.
Marc:If you have any issues with that stuff, just email me at wtfpod at gmail.com and we'll take care of it.
Marc:Oklahoma City this Saturday.
Marc:Go to wtfpod.com and look at my schedule.
Marc:Two shows.
Marc:Show added at City Arts Center this Saturday the 18th.
Marc:Come down if you want.
Marc:Have some Just Coffee.
Marc:I will now.
Marc:Pow!
Marc:Look out!
Marc:I just shit my pants.
Marc:For reals.
Marc:Justcoffee.coop, available at wtfpod.com.
Marc:Dig it.
Marc:Gotta go.
Marc:Boomer's not in here.
Marc:Oh my god.
Marc:I'm fucking antsy.