Episode 485 - Lewis Black
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what the fuck nicks what the fuck minster fullers what the fucking delics
Marc:What the fuck will Barry Thins?
Marc:I am Mark Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:Thank you for listening.
Marc:I am at the Ice House this Sunday, the 6th of April, 7 o'clock show.
Marc:Ice House, Pasadena, me, Ian Carmel.
Marc:Come, hang out.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Who knows what will happen?
Marc:If you like to see me work out, come watch.
Marc:It's a great room.
Marc:I have a good time there.
Marc:It's a reasonable ticket.
Marc:Just come.
Marc:Ice House, Pasadena, April 6th, 7 o'clock, Ian Carmel opening up the festivities.
Marc:Today on this show, Louis Black.
Marc:I'm having the amazing Louis Black here.
Marc:We talked for a while.
Marc:We had a nice chat, you know, primarily about, I don't know.
Marc:I don't want to tip it, but, you know, he talked about a part of his life that you don't hear Louis talk about that often.
Marc:Did I mention it's fucking raining in Los Angeles?
Marc:It's raining right now.
Marc:Can you hear it?
Marc:You know what that means to me?
Marc:Terror.
Marc:It means terror.
Marc:As you know, some of you who listen to this show, I've got a bunch of sandbags that I packed up for the last thunderstorm because the hole that used to drain my driveway no longer functions as a drain consistently.
Marc:I have no faith in the hole.
Marc:So now I got to go after I talk to you guys right now.
Marc:I got to go sandbag the fucking door.
Marc:Listen to that rain.
Marc:God damn it.
Marc:I get so nervous that it's going to flood the garage out.
Marc:I've got to have someone come over and jackhammer the fucking driveway and put some drainage system in.
Marc:That's what I have to do as a responsible homeowner.
Marc:Where is that on my list?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I'm just thinking about it now.
Marc:Haven't put it on the list.
Marc:I feel like this whole garage is going to wash down this goddamn hill.
Marc:I have no idea what the foundation of this home is.
Marc:It was built in 1924.
Marc:There's no indication that the foundation that this garage is setting on, on the edge of this hill, goes any deeper than the few cinder blocks that I see at the bottom of it, in the stone walls.
Marc:I have no idea how this thing is anchored.
Marc:We had a couple earthquakes out here.
Marc:We're still standing.
Marc:House is still on the hill.
Marc:But it's not anchored.
Marc:That could be interesting.
Marc:The best it could happen is that the garage falls down the hill during an intro.
Marc:So if it's going to happen, let's do it.
Marc:Now.
Marc:All right.
Marc:This isn't going to be the intro.
Marc:Listen to that rain.
Marc:Very anxious, folks.
Marc:I'm very anxious.
Marc:Did I mention I'm going to a bar mitzvah this weekend?
Marc:That's right.
Marc:I'm going to a bar mitzvah this weekend.
Marc:Hey, not that Jewy.
Marc:Not that Jewy.
Marc:But it's my nephew's bar mitzvah.
Marc:Got into a huge fight with my father yesterday leading up to the bar mitzvah, which is good.
Marc:That's good family stuff.
Marc:Huge fight with the old man over bullshit.
Marc:I'm a 50-year-old grown-ass man, and I'm yelling at my father.
Marc:Not saying he didn't deserve it, but I am saying I didn't feel good about myself yelling.
Marc:So we'll see how that plays out this weekend.
Marc:I should have some exciting stuff to report.
Marc:I'm going with Moon.
Marc:She's going with me.
Marc:She's going to meet.
Marc:She's going to the Marin Well to see from where I sprung.
Marc:And try to integrate that into her abacus of understanding of who I am.
Marc:The complicated, but not that I think that, mess that makes me up.
Marc:And you do know that it's all loaded up.
Marc:When I go to the bar mitzvah thing, the family thing, you know, my brother's got an ex-wife who's married to a guy who used to be married to my brother's current wife.
Marc:My ex-wife, who was my brother's first wife's best friend, will be there.
Marc:My ex-in-laws will be there.
Marc:My father will be there.
Marc:My mother will be there.
Marc:They're not married.
Marc:You know, I've been through this once before with you guys.
Marc:The possibility...
Marc:of complete emotional chaos and meltdown is high.
Marc:Definitely high.
Marc:So the reason that this interview with Lewis Black is unique to me is that we ended up talking for about an hour about Lewis's career as a playwright.
Marc:Now, this is something Lewis and I share this, I think, an amazing capacity early on in our lives to pursue something that was completely not just a long shot, but almost an impossibility.
Marc:I, too, wanted to be a playwright.
Marc:I, too, wrote a play in college.
Marc:with my friend Steve Brill, it was a comedy.
Marc:But I had loftier ideas.
Marc:I'd begun work.
Marc:It was weird.
Marc:I was trying to think, because I know that I was very affected by Sam Shepard's plays, and I'm not great at reading plays, but I thought playwright, you could really, you know, you had a lot of wiggle room.
Marc:You could write some weird-ass shit.
Marc:You know, the audience would forgive you if there was enough resonance to it, emotional or dramatic.
Marc:You could just be as fucking, you know, weird as you want.
Marc:And not explain yourself.
Marc:I thought that was the joy of playwriting.
Marc:I remember at some point I began to outline a play called Black Box.
Marc:Yeah, it was a story of the complete moral breakdown of a commercial airline pilot.
Marc:See, I thought it was a clever play.
Marc:Black Box.
Marc:What's in the box?
Marc:So I had this weird character that I built to this airline pilot.
Marc:He was going to ruin his marriage and his family.
Marc:And I think I got about as far as what I just told you in the creation of that play.
Marc:Maybe I should write it.
Marc:Maybe Black Box will be a huge hit.
Marc:Because I still like a good play, man.
Marc:I still like a good play.
Marc:So let's go now to me.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:The water is rising.
Marc:Holy shit.
Marc:Hold on.
Marc:Let me go look and see if the hole is working.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Alright.
Marc:The hole is being blocked by a bunch of pine seeds from my neighbor's pine tree that's up top.
Marc:So...
Marc:the one neighbor on the one side his garbage from his tree which also provides shade for my house which i've established is now clogging even the possibility of the hole working fuck man i see the fucking water building up hold on okay well the hole seems to be working right now but i don't know if it's if that if it's just filling up or what you know you guys don't need to be part i gotta go put sandbags out all right so let's listen to me and lewis
Marc:So now I've been trying to be a little better.
Marc:I've been running a little bit.
Marc:I haven't really gone back into this sort of yoga and things.
Marc:But I was running like two, three days a week and I got a cold and I stopped running.
Marc:And I bought a bike, which maybe I'll ride.
Marc:I've ridden that bike once.
Marc:I got another bike at my friend's house.
Marc:Maybe I'll ride that one.
Marc:I've had that bike for about 10 years.
Marc:I've got a bike.
Marc:Yeah, every couple of years I bring it in to get fixed up.
Marc:And then I put it outside and get shitty again.
Marc:So that's how I do it.
Marc:Lewis, that's my process.
Marc:I don't know what your regimen is like.
Marc:My regimen is 15 minutes in the morning.
Guest:And that's it.
Guest:And then walk around.
Guest:15 minutes of what?
Guest:I do all the stretches and push-ups.
Guest:All the stretches.
Guest:It's a fucking stretch and push-up.
Guest:I don't give a shit about it.
Guest:But I mean, what are all the stretches?
Guest:I mean, I stretch my fucking, I stretch my body out.
Guest:I did the fucking lean to the left, lean to the right, stand out, sit down, fight, fight, fight.
Guest:You know that crap, all that fucking great school crap.
Marc:So if you were to write a stretching book and an exercise book?
Marc:I wouldn't write a book.
Guest:It would be half a page.
Guest:I just want to know, like, are you doing the classic old Jewish man stretches?
Guest:No, I'm not doing an old Jewish man, so I can't even fucking imagine doing that.
Guest:I can't even.
What?
Guest:I put on a little... Yeah, I exercise with a yarmulke on.
Marc:No, but I mean, is it like, oh, I can push a little here, a little of this?
Marc:No, I just do fucking... All right, you don't get the... Fucking my... Why are you yelling at me?
Guest:I roll my shoulders.
Guest:I fucking turn my fucking head.
Guest:I do these squat fuck things.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I do push-ups.
Marc:Squat fucks.
Marc:I've heard of those.
Guest:You know, the thing you go down and up and down and up and down and up and down and up.
Guest:And I do about 50 of those and 50 push-ups.
Guest:And then I do 50...
Guest:leg lifts, and then I stretch.
Guest:You lean to the left, and then you lean to the right.
Marc:All right.
Guest:That's a full... It's 15 minutes.
Guest:It's not like a killer.
Guest:And then you walk?
Guest:No.
Guest:Then during the day, because I'm in New York, I walk around.
Guest:I try to make sure that I fucking walk at least a mile if I can.
Marc:You look better than I've seen you look in a long time for some reason.
Guest:I don't get that either.
Guest:I have no idea what that's about.
Marc:No.
Marc:I mean, I think it's your hair is combed.
Marc:You got new glasses frames.
Marc:You have a nice color to your skin.
Marc:Your outfit is put together.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:When I come to LA, I have my designer come over.
Guest:What are you doing here?
Guest:I came out here to see you.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:It's very nice.
Marc:I can tell by the attitude getting out of the limo.
Marc:Where the fuck am I?
Marc:What am I doing?
Guest:Well, I said, there's got to be more.
Guest:I said, well, the thing I told him, I said, I can't believe Mark lives this far away.
Guest:From what?
Guest:From whatever it is that, you know, I mean, if you're going to go into town and work or do some sets and stuff.
Marc:Let me explain to you.
Marc:I'm five minutes from the lovely town of Pasadena.
Marc:I can get to Warner Brothers in about 10 minutes.
Marc:You get on the one third, very close to the valley.
Marc:All right.
Marc:I'm very close to all that stuff.
Marc:There's no center.
Marc:The center does not hold.
Guest:Well, the center, of course, doesn't hold anywhere.
Guest:But the fact is that, you know, I'm coming from, we were coming from West Hollywood Sunset.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that apparently is a schlep.
Marc:Well, it's about 25, 25, 30, right?
Guest:It was a little longer.
Marc:Yeah, I don't know how he went.
Marc:Did you get on a highway?
Guest:Well, he had one of these.
Guest:I said to him, because these guys I've worked with for years, because I don't drive out here.
Guest:I can't.
Guest:Five years ago, I said, no, fuck you.
Guest:I'm done.
Guest:It's too many cars.
Guest:This is madness.
Guest:And I'm driving 20 minutes to do something.
Guest:I'm driving 20 minutes, then I'm driving 40 minutes, then I'm driving 80 minutes.
Guest:Whatever the third thing is, it's like I want to take a nap.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Sure, of course.
Marc:Yeah, it's exhausting.
Guest:But he had an old-timey, like, Garmin thing.
Marc:Oh, he did?
Guest:Yeah, and I'm like, you know, guys, if you want, I'll run a benefit for you fucking guys.
Guest:Use my phone.
Marc:Let him use your phone.
Marc:He probably got on the highway.
Marc:There's a way to take the streets, get you out here about 25, 30.
Marc:Anywhere you go is about 25, 30.
Marc:45 if you want to go to the west side.
Marc:But at night, I can get to the comedy store in 20, 25 minutes.
Marc:It's not that bad.
Marc:You integrate this shit into your life here, Lewis.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I know.
Guest:When I spent time here, I knew.
Marc:You know, it's like for somebody like you, it would destroy your act because you would be so aggravated in the car all the time.
Marc:You'd be exhausted.
Marc:You would be yelling out of context.
Guest:Well, you know what stopped me?
Guest:I mean, this is the thing that stopped me from driving here was about five years ago when I got off the plane and kind of they picked me up to take me to wherever I was going.
Guest:I'm in the back of the car experiencing road rage.
Marc:so i'm not driving and i went and i was going to go get a car contact road rage and i just said no i'm done i can't do this i really can't because i'm looking what is all this fucking oh yeah it never ends it never ends how do you deal with it it might you know sometimes like you know i've actually been doing a bit about it recently about how i really think that if you take advantage of those feelings you could probably process some deep anger something like deeper things
Marc:I mean, obviously, the way to do it as a person who wants to grow a set of patients gonads is to say, I have no control over this.
Marc:This is the way it is.
Marc:And that's that.
Marc:I'm not really generally one of those people.
Marc:So I just either quietly give myself cancer or make phone calls.
Yeah.
Marc:i call people that's what i a lot of my phone longer phone conversations are because i'm stuck in traffic it's taking it yeah i just like how you doing they're like what's up i'm like i'm just driving oh you're in traffic and i talk to my brother for 25 minutes it's nice books on tape yeah it keeps up i don't do i don't i don't i generally try to get proactive and mend family problems relationship problems talk to my manager i just i do i do all that work not to not to bother but what are you doing here is it a secret is that what's going on
Guest:It's very secret.
Guest:No, I came out to do... You're here for the government, aren't you?
Guest:I am here for the... I'm here as a part of the Malaysian airline.
Marc:Oh, the search.
Marc:The search.
Marc:This is phase one.
Marc:They hired you.
Guest:This is where I'm looking.
Guest:They want to have you yell internationally.
Guest:Get Louis Black on it.
Guest:He'll find him.
Guest:And so I...
Guest:I came out here to initially... Well, I was at Ferguson.
Guest:I'm doing Craig's show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there was a couple of things that I was going to do.
Guest:And I did a benefit on Saturday night at the Saban Theater.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Which was formerly the Wilshire, which is now renovated.
Guest:And the good news is... Oh, it's nice.
Marc:I was there with Judd Apatow for a thing.
Marc:It was great.
Marc:It's great.
Guest:It's a great... So who was on that show?
Guest:What'd you do?
Guest:It was just me.
Guest:It was me doing a benefit for the...
Guest:I don't understand any of this, but the synagogue basically is putting money into the renovation of this thing.
Guest:Basically, I helped.
Guest:It was a benefit.
Guest:The money went to...
Guest:Renovating like the back of it now.
Guest:Of the temple.
Guest:Of the theater.
Guest:Of the Sabin.
Guest:Of the Sabin.
Guest:Yeah, they're basically saving it.
Guest:So as a result, they were going to destroy the Sabin.
Guest:How is this a Jewish situation?
Guest:Because somehow the temple ended up buying this theater because the theater was in shit shape, apparently.
Guest:Oh, maybe they need it for high holidays.
Guest:They did need it, and they were using it for high holidays.
Guest:Oh, so that's getting the idea.
Guest:Why not own this thing?
Guest:Why not?
Guest:But it was also because it was a historic building they were going to basically get rid of, and they got it.
Guest:They're the ones who worked to get it on the National Historic Registry, at least from what I can understand.
Guest:And so basically I helped pay part of the bill.
Guest:Well, that's nice.
Guest:And they flew you out?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:First class?
Guest:No, they didn't fly me out.
Guest:I was already out here.
Guest:I was performing out here.
Guest:It's all about giving back.
Guest:I was already out west.
Guest:Part of the reason, you know, it's like, okay, you know that deal.
Guest:You just threw it in.
Guest:Let's kill this bird.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now that we're out here, if I'm going to be here, why fly home and then fly back?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Where were you performing?
Guest:You did shows out here?
Guest:Chico and Anaheim and Medford, Oregon.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Yeah.
Marc:selling out everywhere the ticket sales are good yeah I'm still kind of they pay attention they still show up now let me ask you a question yeah I just ask you a question right so now you know you've been touring like a lot what do you what are you out like how many weeks a year really probably I don't know a hundred dates why
Marc:Why?
Marc:Are you serious?
Marc:Well, I'm just wondering.
Marc:I love it.
Marc:But let me ask you this.
Marc:I know you have other creative aspirations.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So what about those, Lewis?
Guest:Well, those kind of, you know, I wrote three books and I've been sitting around working on another book and I've been working on another play and I took time.
Guest:to have this play produced about two years ago.
Guest:I mean, I took time off to work on this play.
Guest:We did four workshops of it, and then we finally got it up and running at theaters, and it was done.
Guest:And what's that called?
Guest:That's called One Slight Hitch.
Guest:And what is it about?
Guest:It's a... You won't believe me.
Guest:I'll believe it.
Guest:I don't believe it.
Guest:It's a farce, a romantic comedy and a farce.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And essentially, if you read it,
Guest:You wouldn't know I wrote it.
Guest:I started writing it when I finished writing it initially in about 1982 or 83.
Guest:And it got produced at a really nice summer theater.
Guest:And it was essentially the play that I wrote when I was a playwright.
Guest:In hopes of, you know, becoming what you can hope to get out of getting a play done a bunch of places is then I could at least get a teaching job so I could support my junkie habit, which was playwriting, because they don't pay you much for that.
Guest:I mean, they don't.
Guest:It is beyond belief what they don't pay you for writing a play.
Guest:And then about 10 years ago, a friend of mine picked a play up and said, you know, I know how to fix this.
Guest:And so we did four workshops of it.
Guest:And now I've got this really old-fashioned romantic comedy farce.
Guest:And it's like it was, you know, they kind of compared to go, you know, he's got a bit of Neil Simon in him.
Marc:You probably did then before everything went bad inside of your head.
Guest:Before things, before after 20 years of solitude.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, that's interesting to me.
Marc:So this thing is from 1981-82.
Marc:Now, this friend of yours, who's that?
Marc:Is he your dramaturg?
Marc:Is he an old buddy?
Guest:He's a guy I met when I was at drama school.
Guest:His name's Joe Grafazi.
Guest:If you look him up, if you IMDB... Grafazi?
Marc:I heard that guy.
Guest:Joe Grafazi.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he's done about 100 films.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's a director?
Guest:Well, he'd become because of the nature of the business of acting, you know.
Guest:Oh, he was an actor.
Guest:I know that guy's face.
Guest:He's an interesting looking guy.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:He's done movies.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Splash.
Guest:He was in Splash.
Guest:He was the taxi driver.
Guest:In Deer Hunter, he's the singer.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:No, I know who exactly he is.
Marc:Little guy.
Guest:Little guy.
Marc:He played the guy who won the supermarket that Meryl Streep worked at.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's a great... And he became a director.
Guest:I love that guy.
Guest:Yeah, but I'll let him know.
Guest:It'll make his day because he feels like he's still not remembered.
Marc:Great character actor.
Guest:He really is.
Marc:He really is.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And he's very identifiable.
Marc:He's like, there's that guy again.
Guest:Yep, and Joe and I got to know each other because Joe, I'm at drama school and I'm interested in comedy.
Guest:Where was this at drama school?
Guest:Yale Drama School.
Guest:You did go to Yale?
Guest:Yeah, the Yale School of Drama, which I went to.
Marc:With Robert Klein?
Guest:Robert was before me, but not by much.
Guest:I used to hang.
Marc:I only know the comics that went there.
Guest:It was Cavett, Klein, I forget who else.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:And me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it was the drama school, not the, in the end, it's not Yale.
Guest:I didn't go to Yale undergrad.
Marc:No, but the drama school is very prestigious.
Marc:It's a big deal.
Marc:It was a big deal.
Marc:It was always a big deal.
Marc:I mean, that was the place.
Marc:That's where Meryl Streep came out of and Julliard in in in Yale and Carnegie Mellon, right?
Marc:Yep.
Marc:So yeah, no I applied to Yale and I went audition embarrassed the fuck out of myself.
Guest:Did you really as an actor?
Marc:Did you really yeah?
Marc:Because I I like I was cocky.
Marc:I had no idea the importance of it Yeah, I think I've told this story before but I you know for my they wanted a picture I went to a photo booth and I got a strip of pictures
Marc:They wanted me to write something, so I wrote a page of something.
Marc:They needed a reference, so I went and woke Derek Walcott up, who I took a playwriting class with, and he wrote this thing on this typewriter on top of a filing cabinet in his bathrobe.
Marc:He said, here, take it.
Marc:And I thought I was in.
Marc:And I did these horrible auditions.
Marc:I did a Sam Shepard thing, which I jerked off my belt in front of these three people.
Marc:And I did some, they wanted a classic, but I knew nothing of Shakespeare, so I did like an old Greek thing.
Marc:that I just picked it.
Marc:It was horrible.
Marc:And like, here's what I remember.
Marc:As I'm waiting to go in.
Marc:Yeah, it was something like that.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:Here's what I remember.
Marc:I was going in to do it, waiting in the area where they're waiting.
Marc:And there's a woman who's about to go into her audition.
Marc:And she's doing like, almost like these weird acting exercises.
Marc:Like, whoa.
Marc:And she's jumping around.
Marc:She's making faces.
Marc:A lot of movement.
Marc:You know, like she's just like, you know, focused and fucking doing something that looks calisthenic.
Marc:And I'm like, I am.
Marc:fuck like i'm hung over i'm stepping out for a cigarette and she's doing some you know private kabuki experience oh yeah boy it's there's nothing oh i got nothing how'd you get in what'd you do well playwriting so okay so it's a different it's a different thing yeah so you basically send them a play and you the same thing how old were you was this back when you were supposed to do it like after college where'd you go to college i went to college at the university of north carolina chapel hill i got a uh
Marc:You have a relationship with down there?
Marc:You still got a house down there or something?
Guest:I have an apartment down there.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And I just did a... I do a comedy festival with the kids down there every year.
Guest:With the kids?
Guest:With the... What does that mean?
Guest:It means with the students down there.
Guest:They've had a 12-year comedy festival and they invite... In Raleigh?
Guest:Chapel Hill.
Guest:I'm going to Raleigh next month.
Guest:Which, where are you going?
Guest:Good Nights.
Guest:Are you really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I haven't been there in a long time.
Marc:Well, it's a new thing now.
Marc:It's the same space.
Guest:It's the same space, but not that Schmuck's not running.
Marc:No, not the original Schmuck.
Guest:Remember what a Schmuck he was?
Guest:I can't even remember the Schmuck's name.
Marc:I can't either, but no, there's a new guy, but then I think the new guy's gone.
Marc:I think now it's Grossman from Helium is running it.
Guest:Because it's still a great room.
Guest:It was always a great room.
Marc:It actually is a great room.
Marc:It is.
Marc:It's like an old classic room.
Marc:And Raleigh has really turned around a lot.
Marc:Well, Raleigh-Durham Chapel Hill is like a boom town.
Marc:It's a boom town, but now the foodie thing is happening and the hipster thing is happening.
Guest:Everything is going on there.
Marc:And so much of the American hipster renaissance right now is that rural kind of country-ish thing.
Marc:Beards, jeans, worn out clothes.
Guest:It's this weird.
Guest:And it's this weird embellishment of what occurred in the 60s.
Guest:It's a complete kind of a flip on the 60s.
Guest:I mean, because really that's where it was all back to the land.
Guest:Let's eat our own millet.
Marc:Yes, right, right.
Marc:Grow our own millet.
Marc:Dry it.
Marc:And at the end of the winter, we'll have two cups of millet we grew.
Guest:We'll bring back squabs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Whatever the fuck they are.
Marc:Yeah, no, but now it's, like, framed in not a... It's not a proletariat thing.
Marc:It's an artisanal thing.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:That, you know, it's like, yeah, we could kill our own pig, but, you know, if we cure it this way that is passed down for generations from people we don't know... Well, I was sitting in a... This is a restaurant in Durham and...
Guest:They said, and we have, it's an artisanal pumpkin soup.
Guest:And I went, you got to be fucking shitting me.
Guest:There's not an artisanal pumpkin.
Guest:Well, a farmer down the road discovered the pumpkins that were grown in the 1770s.
Guest:Okay, whatever.
Guest:The heirloom pumpkin.
Guest:A fucking heirloom pumpkin.
Guest:How was that for you?
Guest:It was very tasty.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was like going back, you know?
Guest:And I could sense, I could hear the sound of the troops, and I could hear the freedom bells.
Marc:He's called this slavery soup.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Maybe that's what this should be called.
Guest:So I went to school there, and I had a drama degree from there.
Guest:I went there in theater.
Marc:As a child, you went there at the right time.
Marc:I'm just trying to picture a young Louis Black, because I think the first time I ever really saw you, the first time I set eyes on the thing that is you,
Marc:was probably in 1987 or 88 at the Catch a Rising Star in Harvard Square.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You were headlining.
Marc:I don't even know if I was working with you.
Marc:I might have been even middling for you.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:No, you weren't.
Marc:We never were that lucky.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:But the one thing I know is that you were doing you then, which is a great amount of consistency.
Marc:It hadn't ripened.
Marc:No.
Marc:But you were worked up, and I remember a couple jokes.
Marc:What were some of the jokes you did?
Marc:What was the joke about a hamster?
Marc:This is something you buy to teach a child about death.
Marc:About death, yeah.
Guest:I buy a hamster.
Guest:I used to talk parakeets and hamsters.
Guest:You make a purchase so that the child will learn something about what dying is about.
Marc:It's so true.
Guest:um all right so all right so you go so where'd you grow up silver spring maryland in maryland yeah outside of dc equidistant from washington and balding was your father in the political racket my father was a mechanical engineer yeah yeah what did he work on he worked on um this is sea mines sea mines for this so he worked a government contractor
Guest:No, worked in the government.
Guest:Oh, he was within the government.
Guest:What happened was my father came out of school, left New York City.
Guest:This is great.
Guest:Leaves New York City to go to the University of Oklahoma maybe 16 years after it became a state or something.
Marc:Is he first generation?
Guest:First generation.
Marc:So his parents are from the old country.
Guest:His parents are from the old country.
Guest:His father died in the flu epidemic, so it's only the mother raises him from one.
Guest:Where'd they come from, Poland?
Guest:They came from Russia.
Guest:Russia.
Guest:Yeah, Medvedica.
Guest:Medvedica, Russia, and what, Lower East Side?
Guest:Lower East Side, yeah, East Village.
Guest:He, I always ask him, how'd you end up at the University of Oklahoma?
Guest:He said, I wanted to get as far away from my mother as I could and still be in the continental United States.
Guest:So he goes to Oklahoma, comes back, ends up in, we're at war, you know, he ends up working for the government.
Guest:For the second one.
Guest:Yeah, the Second World War.
Guest:Ends up working for the government and works as a mechanical engineer, works on, but basically ends up in the sea mine end of things.
Guest:The war ends.
Guest:He tries to get a job in like the early 50s.
Guest:to get out of mechanical engineering making weapons to do, like, refrigerators and stuff like that.
Guest:So the corporations at the time, Bendix and yada yada, whoever else was around, he goes to all of them.
Guest:His last name is Black.
Guest:It turns out, A, either there are no jobs because Bendix goes totally into weapons, so they just want him to do weapons, or certain companies went, oh, boy, you're a Jew, right?
Guest:We're not working with you.
Guest:So he dealt with the... And then so he stayed in the government and worked literally... This is... Worked until...
Guest:And he always felt good about it.
Guest:It never disturbed him, the making of sea mines, because it's a defensive weapon.
Marc:They're very frightening things.
Marc:Like a sea mine, like, you know, when you see them in movies and stuff, those weird floating barbed things.
Guest:Yeah, you know, it's like a basketball with spikes.
Marc:Oh, it's only that big?
Marc:I thought they were huge.
Guest:Yeah, some of them, I guess.
Guest:But he didn't mind it because you basically, it was to defend your harbors.
Guest:So it's a defensive weapon.
Guest:The Vietnam War kind of starts and it's fomenting, and then there's the Gulf of Tonkin resolution.
Guest:My mother's, this is bullshit.
Guest:My father goes, you don't know if it's bullshit because you haven't read the Geneva Accords.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My father is the only man I know who sat down and read the Geneva Accords.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He read it.
Guest:And I'll never forget.
Guest:It was like this little reference book again in the library with a blue cover back.
Guest:And he read the whole thing.
Guest:And I'd watch him every night.
Guest:It should be like five pages a night.
Guest:And in the end, I said, what do you think?
Guest:He said, there's absolutely no legal basis for us being in Vietnam.
Guest:So he got pissed.
Marc:After reading the Geneva Accords, he went straight to the source.
Marc:He went straight to the source.
Marc:Nobody I know.
Marc:But I think also when you're dealing with a guy like that, this is a guy that believes in the U.S.
Marc:government, that obviously had a job that he was able to live with because of very specific intention of that type of weaponry and believed in defense.
Marc:And now I guess that war really threw a wrench into the fundamental belief in the U.S.
Marc:government at all for a lot of people.
Guest:And then to boot...
Guest:What drove him over the edge was we mined Haiphong Harbor.
Guest:So we now have using his weapon as an offensive weapon.
Guest:And at that point, he announces at the age of 54 that he's going to retire the next year.
Guest:Is that right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he did.
Guest:And he did.
Guest:Because of that?
Guest:Because of it.
Guest:It's the most... It's nobody I know.
Guest:There's no one else I know who's ever really... I mean, personally, I've ever met that took the principle to that.
Guest:And I was...
Guest:I was just finishing up college.
Guest:My brother was just starting.
Marc:It was like- Did either one of you get drafted?
Guest:No, I got lucky.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Your brother, no?
Guest:No.
Guest:I had 336 was my number or something.
Guest:It's the only time I've ever won a lottery.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, that's amazing because he's like, I'm going to make the decision on my own.
Marc:He gets the Constitution, but he's going to read the Geneva Court.
Marc:He said, this is bullshit, and they're using my product.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:incorrectly against the value system that this country is based on.
Marc:And he retires.
Marc:And he retires.
Marc:Did he remain angry at the U.S.
Marc:government?
Guest:No, he then became a, he went and apprenticed to a guy who does stained glass.
Guest:He always wanted to be, you know, what he wanted to do was art.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And did he?
Guest:And he did.
Guest:For the next, and he's still alive, but for 30 years.
Guest:He's still alive?
Guest:And he's still, he's 96.
Guest:Your mother?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Is still alive too?
Marc:Still alive.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Yes, unbelievable.
Guest:My mother calls it overtime.
Marc:What did your mother do as a... She was a substitute teacher.
Marc:So your father was in the Defense Department when you were a child?
Marc:Yeah, he worked at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory.
Marc:Now, when you were a kid, did you go see where Dad worked?
Marc:Because Washington's a pretty amazing place.
Guest:when you remove the people from it yeah i know it's spectacular exactly no it's really beautiful yeah you know it's a really uh but he worked literally across the street so we were in the suburbs and they had this place but i went over there and it's you know then you get inside and all the walls are green and then they have like you know
Guest:the uh here's here's the uh you know here's the sea mine here's this here right right there was a missile you know some sort of a you know one of those things when you were a kid that when i was a kid especially you know these this mini missile that's in front of the place like you know yeah some people have art we had a mini missile out there and it was nifty looking you kind of go boy you know i want to make that i want that model uh-huh
Marc:So you were proud of your dad?
Marc:Was it the Vietnam War that started to turn everything around for everybody?
Marc:I mean, what did you want to do as a kid?
Guest:I got sucked into theater when I was... And it was crazy because it was just going to theater.
Guest:I didn't...
Guest:Shittiest actor on earth.
Guest:I didn't want to direct.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I didn't think about writing.
Guest:I was fascinated by it for reasons that still exist.
Guest:But I liked reading.
Guest:It was really great criticism being written at that time.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:So these guys like Robert Brustein who ran the Yale School of Drama.
Guest:I remember that guy.
Guest:Stanley Kaufman.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You can go, even Walter Kerr was writing well, but these guys were writing.
Guest:And I just, and I'd go, and I was fascinated.
Guest:I liked plays.
Guest:I liked the idea of an event that was essentially, we're all going to believe this.
Guest:Right.
Guest:We're going to hallucinate together.
Marc:And it's also, it's visceral.
Guest:And it's totally visceral.
Marc:Because you're right there.
Marc:Like, you can't, you know, you cannot escape the emotions of it.
Marc:Right.
Marc:There's no distance.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you were reading highbrow criticism of theater, which provoked you to have a deeper understanding of witnessing it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it would go back and forth.
Guest:My father said they started taking me.
Guest:I started with Fruity.
Guest:It was musicals.
Guest:I'm like, oh, hello, Dolly.
Guest:This is great.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:It is great.
Guest:And all of these things were great.
Guest:We had a subscription.
Guest:I'd go with my father.
Guest:We'd sit in the second balcony and watch these shows.
Marc:I find musicals very moving.
Marc:When I see more than three people singing or dancing, I tear up.
Guest:I don't know what it is.
Guest:Well, because it's so fruity.
Guest:It's so seriously fruity.
Marc:But to me, there's an amazing vulnerability to dance and singing.
Guest:And when it's done well, it's kind of staggering.
Marc:Yeah, it is.
Guest:And especially when you were a kid, I got hooked.
Guest:And then we went and we had these subscriptions because theater, at that point, they would roll through town and go on their way to New York, the shows.
Guest:So I would follow the reviews.
Guest:And it was like, to me, it was like, I knew I'm not going to play shortstop.
Guest:But this to me was like kind of as close as I could get to a sporting event.
Guest:And writing about it, because it was like, did they, you know, did they, you know, it's like when the gymnast does the, you know, and oh, she missed her dismount.
Guest:You know, that was the way I saw these critiques, that it was like you're basically critiquing, here's where you had to go, this is how far they got, or they made it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I kind of found it interesting.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And these guys wrote great stuff, and then every so often you could kind of like expound on the shit that you got out of it.
Marc:Because when you deal with theater criticism, it's like a lot of those guys were cultural critics.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So they could speak to the play itself and to how the play resonates with the culture right now and how that production connects to the cultural imagination of the time.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So which play did you go to and just go like, what the fuck?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The ones that really did it, my father transitioned us from, he got tired of going to the musicals, and they had gone to Arena originally, which was kind of a repertory company there, and there you'd go to see Ibsen and Chekhov or those kind of things, and occasionally a new writer.
Guest:But then a place opened in town called the Washington Theater Club, of which four of the actors went on to become, they all ended up in like a TV series.
Guest:One of them was the guy in the series with, oh, fuck, here goes your brain.
Guest:Selleck.
Guest:When Selleck was in Hawaii and there was a guy, Hillerman, John Hillerman, came out of this, that actor.
Guest:So four really great actors.
Guest:Well, they're doing Beckett, Samuel Beckett and Pinter and...
Guest:they're doing Brecht, and I'm like, and that kind of, that was the mind blower.
Guest:Brecht, Pinter, and Beckett.
Guest:Beckett, and everybody along those lines.
Guest:It was all kind of like, and not done in that kind of, you know, that kind of precious, oh, this is real, well, this is really important.
Guest:What we were telling you was so fucking important.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:That you're going to have to listen to every word.
Guest:They were really, they did great little productions.
Guest:Those are not easy to wrap your brain around.
Guest:No, but it was mind-blowing to me.
Marc:It is mind-blowing.
Guest:You go to see Pinner and you go, it was like a drug.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, no, like reading those plays, you're like, what the fuck is going on?
Marc:At the time that I was really interested in theater and reading stuff like that, I couldn't even begin to understand where one gets the confidence to write something that is seemingly so abstract yet so emotionally poignant.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:uh you know and then there's other people like i saw some odets's stuff and that stuff's like to me it's like this is written so everyone can understand it that's the underdog and we want him to win but he's gonna get fucked yeah yeah no it is it's a totally it's a but like brecht i mean i i don't have a lot of experience with it i i have to be taught it but beckett's you know difficult and pinter is difficult so when you start i'm not a major brecht fan by the way i'm just never he never hooked me
Guest:all the germanic i mean you know i think it you know it was just a little too much i mean i get the i get the idea and the idea is great but i think you had to be there yeah that's your review of brecht i guess you had to be there seemed abrasive to me
Guest:I mean, you know, if you're in a basement in Germany and Hitler's on the rise, this shit is phenomenal.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:It might mean something to the 12 people there.
Marc:Hope it survives the great destruction.
Marc:Hope these papers get out.
Marc:Thank God someone got those papers.
Marc:Yeah, I think Louis was friends with his great-grandson, who was a pastry chef.
Marc:Yeah, I believe so, if I'm not mistaken.
Marc:But that's one of those weird things where the estates of those guys, who are taught constantly, just continue to generate a healthy income.
Marc:Massive income.
Marc:come probably yeah it's pretty fascinating so so at what point did you say like you know i'm gonna try to do this because you're not i guess a different time uh you know you weren't like we i'm trying to write a sketch for funny or die or i'm gonna i'm gonna do a six a three minute thing for a youtube station i imagine when you're like i'm gonna do this you're like i gotta sit down and fucking wrench out a fucking play
Marc:What was that first experiment like?
Marc:That was horrible.
Guest:Come on, was it?
Guest:Well, it was and it wasn't.
Guest:I mean, what I did was I went off to the University of North Carolina and I hadn't gotten into any of the colleges I really had applied to.
Guest:And so I spent a year at the University of Maryland.
Guest:I didn't do theater.
Guest:I just kind of did everything I could to get my grades to a point where I was going to transfer out.
Guest:Basic liberal arts business?
Guest:Yeah, because I was really misdirected in terms of where I should be applying to schools.
Guest:In high school, though?
Guest:What was high school like?
Guest:Did you fuck it up?
Guest:No, high school I killed.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I mean, the problem was is that they directed me to schools that... They gave me no backup schools.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was, like, fucking applying, like, psychotically.
Guest:Yeah, like Harvard, all the big ones, Brown.
Guest:Yeah, Yale, Brown.
Guest:You know, and...
Guest:and i and i didn't quite under and i didn't get it yeah i had friends who got it but i didn't really understand what this it was like to me there was a giant moat between me high school and yeah and understanding what it meant that you know you're on a trajectory yeah that you have to sort of decide about now you have to decide the rest of your life and how you want to structure that now because also we've been in school together
Guest:my the class that I was with for six straight years yeah some because of the way the it was a public school but the way we were transferred from being a junior high into a high school so yeah but so it was like this weird community and all of a sudden I'm like we've been doing we're gonna stop now and I got to go pick a whole group of strangers
Guest:So I got into none of these places.
Guest:I went to Maryland.
Guest:I'd fucking take an easy course to jack it up, go to Chapel Hill, and make the decision at that point that I'm going to take, as I did at Maryland.
Guest:I'm going to take all sorts of other courses to see if there's something the fuck else that I'm interested in, because I know that going into theater is crazy.
Guest:Because, A, I've got no...
Guest:Who wants to be a critic?
Guest:I mean, you just don't prep to be a critic.
Guest:And I have to pick something to do.
Guest:And I really started to feel after watching plays, my whole concept was that I think I can write more interesting dialogue than I have to listen to when I'm sitting down somewhere.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Now, was your father supportive of the creative avenue?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My mother was psychotic, but my... Not psychotic.
Guest:My mother was like... What are you doing?
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:Get a job with a pension.
Guest:But my father was like, you know, do what you want to do.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Now, at this time, long hair, where were you at?
Guest:Long hair, but my hair grew out like she had.
Guest:Yeah, it was horrible.
Marc:All right, so then you... And a beard.
Marc:Oh, yeah, of course.
Marc:You had to.
Guest:Like, who were your heroes, man?
Guest:My heroes at that time?
Guest:I mean, you know, Hoffman, Abby Hoffman, Paul Krasner, who's still a hero.
Marc:You can go see him.
Marc:Why don't you stop?
Marc:Have the car take you out to Palm Desert.
Marc:I know.
Marc:They'd love to have you.
Guest:I've seen him.
Guest:I saw him about two years ago.
Marc:Yeah, he loves one.
Marc:You go visit him.
Marc:You sit down in Palm Desert, and he'll talk to you a little while.
Marc:He was everywhere.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was an important thing, the realist, wasn't it?
Guest:It was huge.
Guest:In my life, it was... I don't think people really realize that.
Guest:It was a life changer.
Marc:How so?
Guest:Because it really taught me... When I read... I've talked about this before, but when I read this...
Guest:He did a thing, Manchester wrote the death of, what is it, the death of Kennedy.
Guest:The LBJ thing?
Guest:The LBJ thing.
Guest:Go ahead, tell it.
Guest:Well, he's basically, I think it's almost the same issue.
Guest:There's that and it's...
Guest:It supposedly outtakes from things that couldn't be put in the book.
Guest:And Jackie Kennedy goes back to the back of the plane where the coffin is, and she sees LBJ hunched over the coffin.
Guest:She thinks at first he's doing some sort of an Indian ritual that he might have learned as a child.
Guest:But as she goes closer, she realized that he's fucking the hole in President Kennedy's neck.
Yeah.
Guest:Now, the death of Kennedy was a pivotal moment in everyone.
Guest:I mean, I think in anyone my age's life.
Guest:Who remembers, yeah.
Guest:It totally ripped.
Guest:We had lived in this comfortable suburban environment, and then the whole fabric got torn apart.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And now, you know, and it's not funny, and it's serious, and it's really, and all of a sudden, this, I went, I was howling at this.
Guest:In part, it was part out of pain, and part out of like, get over it, and it's time to move on.
Guest:And it was one of those things that just opened my eyes to the fact that- The audacity.
Guest:of of the image yeah that you know it's like what what you know like you know even now that idea is mind-blowing it's mind-blowing and it's it is what when satire is at its best it is it edges toward the psychotic
Marc:psychotic and completely immoral yes yeah that you know if it's well focused and you're gonna go all the way with it you it's just crass and wrong and wrong-minded yes only to make example of you know the bullshit you've been served
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it kind of, you know, it was the first time that the whole mythology that had grown around Kennedy for me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, because I'm living in Washington, the boots, so it's like it is Camelot.
Guest:All of it, the bubbles burst.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's like you could actually, I began to look at things differently because of it.
Guest:And then in the same issue, he's got...
Guest:I have it on my wall.
Guest:He had a guy do, or there's an artist that he worked with, who I believe worked with Disney.
Guest:Oh, yeah, I have that.
Guest:Of all those Disney characters.
Guest:Finding an orgy.
Guest:Having an orgy.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I was 15 at the time, or 16.
Marc:Oh, thank God for Paul Krasner.
Guest:And I went, wow, this is good.
Guest:You first look at it and you go, oh, what's that doing?
Guest:Holy fuck.
Guest:You know, Mickey's got a fucking spike in his arm, I think.
Marc:Yeah, but then your brain goes to like, we can do this?
Marc:This is allowed.
Marc:There really is no limitations to this freedom of speech idea or to the power of that type of imagery to sort of dismantle mythologies that have got hold of our brain, right?
Marc:I mean, the thing about that, and also the thing about LBJ fucking the neck wound is that that is a reasonable metaphor for politics.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:No, it is.
Guest:I mean, that's exactly what I was thinking when you, yeah, it is.
Marc:And for his relationship to JFK.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Just sitting there biting his lip and gritting his teeth the whole fucking time.
Marc:So at that time, so you're 15, because I think Mad Magazine National Lampoon did that a bit for me.
Marc:But how was The Realist available?
Marc:I mean, it was literally a newsletter.
Marc:Because when I talked to Paul for a couple hours, I loved that episode, because I think that...
Marc:You know, really, like I had no idea of the context of it because it was sort of a specialized thing.
Marc:It was not a national magazine.
Marc:It seemed like it was not easy to find.
Marc:Where did you find the real issue?
Guest:I don't know where I found it.
Guest:All I know is is that I'd heard about it or something and I got a subscription to it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it arrived at my house.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like a newsletter.
Guest:And my parents, you know, much like a kid who might be playing, you know, who's on the internet and stumbling onto these sites,
Guest:My parents didn't... It was like, oh, no one looked at me.
Guest:I was getting a magazine and there was that goofy bird on the front or whatever the fuck it was.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I'd get it.
Guest:And I'd race home and I would sit down and it was like... It changed...
Guest:You know, too, at the time, the sense of humor was like, leave it to Beaver, and the family shouldn't let it out.
Guest:All in the family, I think, has not even started yet.
Guest:No.
Guest:And you kind of go, this is just my sense of humor has been changed.
Marc:Well, I think because, like, Krasner, I talked to him about this because I have a hard time with history, but it seems to me that he took...
Marc:The spirit of Lenny Bruce, like he was definitely there, you know, for a lot of Lenny towards the end.
Marc:And, you know, and he was sort of like absorbing it.
Marc:But he took the spirit of the power of Lenny's balls around satire and was able to sort of harness it and contextualize it for the print, you know, in a fairly responsible way.
Marc:I think he was very aware that Lenny had sort of opened this door in America to the most poignant and courageous type of satire that really hadn't been seen at all.
Marc:No.
Marc:It was a new fucking thing.
Marc:And out of that, you get your mads, you get your lampoons and all that shit.
Marc:But I mean, the realists at that time was just fucking mind-blowing.
Marc:It was.
Marc:It was really extraordinary.
Marc:So where'd you go from there?
Marc:Was that your next thought, like, I'm going to bring this to theater?
Guest:No, it was really, that just kind of, it was almost separate compartments because there was a part of me that was tracking comedy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Ed Sullivan, I loved watching.
Guest:You bring him on.
Guest:I don't care who it was.
Guest:Myron Handelman.
Guest:I don't give a shit.
Guest:Bring him on.
Guest:I just got a big kick out of somebody there for five minutes.
Guest:Who'd you love?
Guest:Holding that, Newhart, Berman, who's Jackie Vernon.
Guest:Love Jackie Vernon.
Guest:Jesus Christ, he was funny.
Guest:so funny i've got a thing of his still that lounge recording did you like a a recording from yeah later yeah just this one you know bob shillman gave me one bob shillman used to open for him i think in vegas occasionally towards the end vernon was tremendous those guys come to mind immediately there were others uh but those are the ones that really had you know jonathan winters yeah would show up and he was another one it was like
Guest:Holy fuck.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, that just took all the context.
Guest:All the context has been this.
Guest:Now you got a guy doing that?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:The only guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Who does it with that kind of like menace.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, and he really was the first of those kind of totally alternative.
Guest:It was alternative comedy.
Guest:He had no, he would create his own world and then fill it.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:Fill it.
Marc:And sometimes it got real dark, even in the 60s.
Marc:You were like, what?
Marc:He would leave things hanging where you're like, oh.
Guest:But those guys were the initially, Carlin kind of comes later, but those guys were the ones when I'm like, you know, 11, 12, I'm sitting there going, holy God.
Guest:And I kind of tracked them.
Guest:So it was a totally separate space.
Guest:There was the theater space in my head and the stand-up space.
Guest:And stand-up fascinated me as a, wow, this is something, you know, it's really interesting, but I'm not, it's not something that I thought I would do.
Marc:Well, because I don't guess at that time you could see how it could contain your ideas.
Marc:Yeah, I don't even know.
Guest:I don't know if it was that or just the fact of like that, holy fuck, get up there and feed all those people.
Guest:I like talking, but I also was hooked on the fact that I liked...
Guest:really like talking in front of people so the context was always that uh so so i would get in positions in student government where i would have to talk to big assemblies you did when in high school in high school so that i would be but the thing that what's the great setup of that is is it was going to be you know something that we have to talk about and it's serious and then i'd take questions and then it was boom boom boom and then and then the jokes would come so you did that
Guest:Yeah, because when you've got that serious thing to start with, it's not like, okay, I'm coming out here to make you laugh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And here's a surprise.
Marc:Yeah, well, yeah, and also, like, it's a great, when the tone is set seriously, you know, you got an audience waiting for relief.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you got a great, they're primed, and if you can nail it, boom.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What were you in student government?
Guest:I just was, like, I was, like, always in charge.
Guest:I was in charge of my junior prom.
Guest:That kind of stuff.
Guest:Very serious.
Guest:That's some serious stuff, Lewis.
Marc:You're right.
Guest:And then I was in charge of my class trip.
Guest:Oh, boy.
Guest:I couldn't win an election, but I could sneak in.
Guest:But the junior prom was all done for, you know, the whole concept there was have a shitty...
Guest:junior prom, and we pony up money now, and next year we have a really great prom and a great room for fucking free, you idiots.
Guest:So I pulled that.
Guest:Yeah, I was.
Guest:And so I covered the walls in contact paper, and then we went out and picked, this was really great, picked honeysuckle, threw it up on the walls.
Guest:They're kind of partially covered.
Guest:It turns out that it was the walls, we not only had honeysuckle, but poison ivy.
Marc:No, you did not.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I'm serious because I'm not allergic to poison ivy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But three or four, there were three or four instances.
Marc:At the junior prom?
Marc:At the junior prom.
Marc:People that got horrendous poison ivy?
Guest:Yeah, including my friend who helped me drag it out.
Guest:That's how we discovered we had poison ivy on the walls.
Marc:But you didn't say anything.
Guest:No, fuck it.
Guest:No, I didn't know.
Guest:So just until during the prom, he's going, holy fuck, there was boys and I. Well, that sounds like a good bit.
Marc:Sorry.
Marc:So then you do all this stuff and then you get into Chapel Hill.
Marc:How does that work?
Guest:So I get in there.
Guest:I get the drama school.
Guest:I go to the I go to that drama school specifically because you can I make the decision that I'll write.
Guest:I want to write.
Guest:And it's the only drama school that I know of in the country outside of maybe Northwestern.
Guest:But even Chapel Hill, your emphasis could be playwriting.
Guest:So I didn't have to do a lot of acting.
Guest:I didn't have to direct much.
Guest:But I could get real credits to write plays, which was the first initial concept of what writing is, is buying time.
Guest:So by my senior year, it was six credits to write a full-length play.
Guest:And so I wrote a one act.
Guest:I sat down and wrote a one act.
Guest:I went into a class.
Guest:To apply or to?
Guest:No, no, not to apply.
Guest:Just when I was there, I took a playwriting class with a guy who was about.
Guest:First year.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And not great.
Guest:The guy's teaching playwriting.
Guest:One guy would fall asleep while you were reading your play.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then wake up.
Guest:Do you remember the one act?
Guest:I remember.
Guest:It was a play about.
Guest:I wrote this thing and it was about.
Guest:It was at that time frame when we were just before or just after Roe versus Wade.
Guest:So I wrote a play.
Guest:What, 72 or something?
Guest:What was it, 73?
Guest:No, this is 67.
Guest:I wrote this.
Guest:That's how far back Roe versus Wade go, huh?
Guest:I think so.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And I got no sense of that dates.
Guest:And so I wrote this thing about a young girl and a guy who's gotten her pregnant and they've got no choice and what are they going to do?
Guest:And she goads him into punching her in the stomach.
Guest:It's really the kind of thing that people would pour into.
Guest:It's going to have an impact.
Guest:Yeah, it did have an impact.
Guest:And from the very beginning when it came to theater, I always just said, okay, well, we're going to do it.
Guest:I don't need a set.
Guest:I need to hear it.
Guest:Let's get it up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They had really a bunch of actors there who I got to know.
Guest:And I said, will you read this?
Guest:And about 8, 10 people showed up.
Guest:And they really didn't have to tell me much after I watched it.
Guest:I was like, what the fuck is the matter with you?
Guest:And my back, literally, I'd say 30 swings into it.
Guest:My face was to the wall.
Guest:I couldn't watch it.
Guest:It was more than I could bear.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Why?
Guest:It was... I was in shock over... I just... I couldn't take it.
Guest:Because it was so... I didn't think... I thought it was... Disturbing.
Guest:I just didn't feel... It was disturbing and I didn't feel it was good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That I went...
Marc:oh boy you took like some a very very like probably the heaviest of premises yeah like you know heavier than than you know a standard tragedy heavier than a death and you you're like i'm this one i'm gonna wrap my head around this i'm gonna take this on yes and i've still got the play i've not looked at it well maybe you can get together with grafazi i turned it into a musical
Guest:Maybe it's time has come.
Guest:What was it called?
Guest:I can't even remember.
Guest:You can't.
Guest:No, I can't.
Guest:I swear to God.
Guest:Sucker Punch?
Guest:I think it may have been called The Playground.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Oh, it's called Child's Play.
Guest:Child's Play.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Really talk about it.
Guest:You wanted to fucking, you were like, I'm here, man.
Guest:Yeah, I'm taking on the big shit.
Guest:I'm taking on the, or I'm taking on the big shit, or as I learned as they were speaking my words, I'm disturbed.
Guest:I'm a disturbed individual.
Marc:Well, I mean, did you find during the process of writing that you were trying to resolve something?
Marc:Do you still smoke?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You can smoke in here if you want.
Guest:No, I'm good.
Guest:I really kind of am.
Guest:I'm at my tail end of smoking.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I think you said that a few years ago.
Guest:I did.
Guest:Well, I mean, I did.
Guest:Actually, I did because I take this drug called Chantix.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I take it regularly.
Guest:And I smoke three puffs of a cigarette and I put it out.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:So it's really kind of changed.
Guest:But now I'm really like...
Guest:This is it, and I've got an electric cigarette.
Guest:Yeah, all good.
Guest:I'm still on these fucking lozenges, but whatever.
Guest:It's the same thing.
Marc:Tough not to crack.
Marc:All right, so you do that.
Guest:So you've been off for a long time.
Marc:Yeah, I haven't smoked them.
Marc:These can't be good for you after a certain point.
Marc:I know.
Marc:That's what I'm afraid of.
Guest:I eat them like candy.
Guest:That's what I'm afraid of with the electric thing.
Marc:I'm going to electrocute myself.
Marc:You're a guy that is wary of things.
Marc:Like, where the fuck is all that shit coming from?
Marc:Who makes that juice?
Marc:What the fuck is an electric cigarette?
Marc:Everyone says there's vapor stores everywhere and you get all these different flavors, but what are we sucking into our lungs?
Marc:It's water.
Guest:That's what they say.
Guest:It's water with nicotine juice.
Guest:It's oxygen.
Guest:You're just smoking oxygen with nicotine.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:All right.
Marc:I guess that's better.
Guest:Well, you know, I wish they'd come up with that delivery system initially.
Marc:Well, I mean, who would want that?
Marc:I mean, the fact that they're making it cool to non-smoking kids is crazy to me.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, I want to know what the involvement of the cigarette companies are in the vapor business.
Marc:Yeah, I know.
Marc:I don't know where that stuff is coming from.
Guest:And I don't know why they don't, you know, all they do, you read those articles in the paper and they just, it's like nobody's done like the next step of research.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:You know, no one's looked and they go, these could be hooking children out of the making.
Marc:Of course they're hooking children.
Marc:It's nicotine.
Marc:Plus the flavors.
Marc:Yeah, but it's just fucking nicotine.
Marc:I mean, it's the most addictive substance in the fucking world, that shit next to heroin.
Marc:All right, so you do child's play to a resounding shame.
Guest:To my own shame.
Guest:And then I write another one that I don't remember at all.
Guest:But I give that one...
Guest:I actually give child's play to Robert Anderson.
Guest:Robert Anderson wrote a play called Tea and Sympathy.
Guest:I never sang for my father.
Marc:Oh, yeah, those are big, yeah.
Guest:Robert Anderson was kind of after... He follows... This is the only place on earth I can even begin to talk about.
Guest:He follows Williams.
Guest:He kind of comes out of the Tennessee Williams School.
Guest:Two very kind of important plays.
Guest:Tea and Sympathy, especially because it had some...
Guest:It never was totally open about it, but there's the first sense of a gay theme within it that this kid is different.
Guest:He comes to Chapel Hill.
Guest:He reads my play, and then he says the words that really send me down a very lonely road.
Guest:I think you should pursue this.
Guest:And I was like, fuck, okay, well.
Guest:And I did.
Guest:For how long?
Marc:20 years.
Marc:22 years.
Guest:Well, I was 40.
Marc:Right, because I remember... So you graduate with your playwriting degree.
Marc:You go back to New York?
Guest:I go to... I do a play that becomes hugely successful.
Guest:They give me a fellowship to continue writing.
Marc:Where?
Guest:At Chapel Hill.
Guest:The Schubert's used to give out five fellowships around the country.
Guest:I work on the...
Marc:What was your play that became hugely successful?
Guest:It was called Feast.
Guest:I wrote it with a whole bunch of kids.
Guest:I wrote for a cast of actors, some non-actors.
Guest:I put together friends of mine who did film.
Guest:I had them write.
Guest:We did commercials within the play.
Guest:It was a play about growing up.
Guest:It was 5 to 21.
Guest:It was right place, right time.
Guest:It couldn't have been that nexus of really all of the elements.
Guest:We put it on and people go nuts over it.
Guest:Because basically I took all of these kids' lives that I was working with and basically said, ah, that's the common denominator, that's the common denominator, and just went through and tracked it and wrote scenes around it.
Guest:And it toured?
Guest:It ended up, I did it with these kids, and then it got such great reviews that the Arts Council in North Carolina gave us just enough money to tour for three months.
Guest:We did eight tours.
Guest:eight theaters around.
Marc:So it was proactive in youth development and helping people out.
Guest:Yeah, but plus we were doing it at college.
Guest:We'd go from college to college and we'd have a discussion afterwards and it was right at the... And the kid quit school at the end.
Guest:can't deal with it and he leaves school and it so that became the group that I worked with we then went on to write another play which was not nearly as good but we decided we found a theater in Colorado and we decided to buy that theater and that was I spent a year working in DC to make money to go out there and live and work in Colorado in Colorado Springs what were you doing in DC to work
Guest:I worked for the Appalachian Regional Commission.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the Appalachian Regional Commission is a, hear words you don't hear anymore, an anti-poverty agency.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, because at the time, the people knew that the people in Appalachia were broke.
Guest:So it had been established under either Kennedy or LBJ during the War on Poverty.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:And now Nixon was in charge.
Guest:And I had gotten this as a civil service job.
Guest:So I'm working for two women in the child development, child care end of things.
Guest:And I worked there for a year.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Did you go to Appalachia?
Guest:No, I didn't.
Guest:I've just worked for these.
Guest:I was their assistant.
Guest:What'd you learn?
Guest:I learned that I never wanted to work in an office.
Marc:That was the takeaway?
Marc:Not that poverty is bad and it's never going to go away?
Marc:That was the first thing I learned.
Guest:The first thing I learned is I'm going to have to jump ship.
Guest:Second thing I learned was that... Well, the weird thing was that they wanted me to go to Appalachia.
Guest:I was saying, you know, I'm going to have to leave.
Guest:They said, well, we want to offer you a job.
Guest:We want to send you to Appalachia to talk to these women about their...
Guest:about raising children and giving them all the information.
Guest:I'd be the guy.
Guest:Going door to door to say, like, maybe you should put a plug in that.
Guest:Meetings, stuff like that.
Guest:And I'm 22.
Guest:I'm going, I don't have a job.
Guest:You can't send me.
Guest:I'm a playwright.
Guest:I mean, or unless you're going to dress me up as a woman.
Marc:This is insane.
Marc:You can't do this.
Marc:Send the Jewish kid to Appalachia, the 22-year-old, to try to get them to change their ways.
Guest:Yeah, really.
Guest:I mean, so it was...
Guest:And I also learned that the cure for poverty under the Nixon administration was that this was their idea, was they were going to build nine golf courses in Appalachia.
Guest:And I'm serious.
Marc:It's a job creator.
Guest:Anyone can drive a cart.
Guest:And I literally discovered that, and I went ballistic.
Guest:And I'd wander around, and I didn't care if they fired me.
Guest:So I was able to say whatever I wanted to these people.
Guest:It was a terrific...
Guest:uh time in a lot of ways for me but it was also like i gotta get out of here this is this is an insane aside so you bought a theater in colorado springs so we bought a theater on the cheap too it was like the guy had built it and uh it was a handmade theater and uh it was uh it was we we had about 15 folks in the
Guest:in the group, and everybody sent in $100 a month or $50 a month, and we could own it.
Guest:How long were you there for?
Guest:When we got to Colorado, we lasted a year.
Guest:Well, some people went out early.
Guest:I lasted about a year.
Marc:And you did your plays and other people's plays?
Guest:But we never could work in the theater because once you got out there, you discovered that, well, the people who live around you in the little mountain area that we were up, there's NORAD, which is the North American Defense Demand.
Guest:It's on Cheyenne Mountain.
Guest:And if you go up the hill...
Guest:There's a community just off there, and they were not really thrilled with us.
Guest:Is that where your theater was?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Your proximity to the defense industry is very curious.
Marc:You could look right at it.
Marc:Missiles when you were growing up, and you're in the shadow of Norad as a theater owner.
Guest:And across the street is Fort Carson, which is moving toward... They're doing the test for a volunteer army.
Guest:But what we did was we couldn't work there.
Guest:We did a show in the park.
Guest:uh you couldn't work in the theater you bought no we lived in the theater okay there were 12 of us living in the theater so we but we would do shows we did we've discovered the park we worked we did stuff at the schools we worked as kind of an adjunct uh-huh at the schools where we worked with in all programs we would present stuff that we would meet with teachers what you need and we would do that and then we worked at the uh putting shows on with the kids and stuff
Guest:We did one show with the kids, but it was like we had a guy who was a wizard coming up with little math stuff that really was amazing.
Guest:I would write things for, you know, if they had a book or if they were doing...
Guest:They were doing the Crucible.
Guest:We would come in and do three or four scenes.
Guest:So it was a way to train these actors and get it kind of paid for.
Guest:And then we worked at the prison.
Guest:We did some stuff with prisoners at the maximum security prison.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And we did stuff at four cars.
Marc:So this is like really kind of progressive...
Marc:idea about how drama can be used and how theater can be used.
Guest:And how to survive.
Guest:And also, and the whole idea of it was, because back then there was still this granting possibility from the government, that if I could get all of those groups within the community communicating
Guest:in one fashion or another with each other, we could get a grant for that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But we never made it that far.
Guest:We were too young.
Guest:We were just too young.
Guest:To keep organized.
Guest:We just didn't.
Guest:I mean, there were young marriages.
Guest:People were flipping out.
Guest:They were doing, you know, quaaludes just started, the whole thing.
Marc:So it was just a mess, a hippie mess.
Guest:It was a hippie mess.
Guest:It was fun, and we were really good at what we did, but we could not stay the course.
Guest:And also, it just dawned on me.
Guest:It was like...
Guest:There was a place called The Changing Scene in Denver.
Guest:I don't even think the Denver Rep had started.
Guest:I'm going, we're the only theater that I know of in Colorado.
Guest:I got to go somewhere where I can learn this stuff.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Right, yeah, to be an apprentice of some kind to somebody who does that kind of theater.
Guest:So that's when I went back east.
Guest:I worked for...
Guest:a theater there for... Where?
Guest:A theater outside of D.C.
Guest:called Street 70.
Guest:They're now called The Roundhouse.
Guest:What was the manifesto there?
Guest:That was... We'd come in, we'd do children's theater.
Guest:They would do three or four plays.
Guest:Some people from the community, they had a small acting core.
Guest:I wrote a play for them at that point.
Guest:What was that play?
Guest:It was called What I Meant to Say, which was about a group of people after college and how they were trying to manage.
Guest:And then we did a... And then at that point, I applied to... People said you should apply to Yale Drama School.
Guest:And then you got in.
Guest:And then I got in, which I still... And you did four years there.
Guest:I did three.
Guest:You do three.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I stayed on two more years to figure out why I was there for the first three years.
Guest:How'd you fund that?
Guest:Were you on a scholarship?
Guest:You mean the next two years?
Guest:It was cheaper to live.
Guest:It was cheap to live in New Haven.
Guest:Oh, so you didn't go to Yale at that time?
Guest:No.
Guest:Then the two extra years, I'd go down and do... I would survive by doing work-study for other kids.
Guest:The acting program, none of these kids could do work-study, so I would get their chairs.
Guest:I'd go do their work study.
Guest:And then it was like the apartment I had was 50 bucks a month.
Marc:It was like crazy.
Marc:How many plays did you write at Yale?
Marc:I wrote four or five one acts.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:And are you happy with them?
Guest:I'm happy with them.
Guest:I'm kind of sad that I think that I'm trying to get them... They published my other play, finally.
Guest:Which one?
Guest:The One Slight Hitch.
Guest:I would like to get these published because... And I may just finally do it on my own.
Marc:What's that publishing house that does the plays?
Guest:Samuel French, Andromeda's Play Service.
Guest:And so I'm trying to get them to...
Guest:if I can, to get them to... Why wouldn't they?
Marc:What is the premise of saying no?
Marc:I don't know.
Guest:Because it's theater.
Guest:Theater is based on someone saying no somewhere all the time.
Marc:But the benefit of publishing with Samuel French is that if anyone purchases a script or puts on the play, you have some percentage protection...
Marc:That you will get something if they charge permission to that play.
Marc:It's like the play version of ASCAP or something else.
Marc:That if you buy these scripts from Samuel French and it's a legitimate production, you're going to get the kickback for being the playwright.
Guest:A minimal kickback.
Guest:It's like...
Guest:They pay you X amount of royalty.
Guest:It's like with a book.
Guest:They pay you an X amount of royalty.
Guest:Then you have to have about 30 productions before that royalty is paid off.
Marc:So now you're kicking around as a playwright.
Marc:You're living $50 a month.
Marc:You're doing work-study for other kids.
Marc:You've got five one-acts under your belt.
Marc:You've done amazing work and learned a lot through...
Marc:through your appalachian experience so your your hippie meltdown in colorado through your apprenticeship at this dc theater where you you learn that you know you're working with kids you're doing the community uh element of of what makes theater uh for the people and then when did you hit a wall and stand in front of a brick one
Guest:I moved to New York.
Guest:To write plays?
Guest:To write plays.
Guest:What year?
Guest:1980, 81.
Guest:and uh so you really fucking you stuck with this thing i was insane and in retrospect i really think i was completely crazy only because i thought i was going to make a living at it i really was convinced well that's the amazing thing about the creative person in general is that despite any evidence of the contrary we plow on right well i had been given i wrote one full length play and it was uh
Guest:called nightfall and uh it was done and it the the next hook because i would just get just enough yeah right you know just enough so that the pigeon can smash you know i'm gonna i'm gonna smash my nose another 50 times uh i moved to new york and uh we um uh i i might have this play nightfall in the magic theater in san francisco yeah which is sam shepherd's theater yeah
Guest:And the theater that I aspired to work at says, we'll do the play.
Guest:So I'm like, I'm in.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I go there and have what was essentially the first real experience I have with a theater.
Guest:And the director is someone who's never directed.
Guest:This is her first play.
Guest:She'd been the tech director.
Guest:It's her reward she gets to direct my play.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, if you're going to have somebody direct your play, it better be somebody, if you're a new writer, who's fucking done 50 plays.
Guest:Right.
Guest:She's as clueless as I am.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then they hire... Now, the play's about a survivalist, and it takes place after a catastrophe.
Guest:What's it called again?
Guest:It's called Nightfall.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It takes place after a major catastrophe that's undescribed, and this group of people have kind of squatted together, this kind of two semifamilies.
Guest:And the survivalist shows up, and it's really like a part for somebody.
Guest:You need a rough, tumble guy.
Guest:You need like a prick to be it.
Guest:And the guy that I had was like Allen Ginsberg.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:He was the lead, a Jewish guy, kind of seriously chubby red hair and wanted to be liked as an actor.
Guest:So I'm there like two days into it.
Guest:I'm going, you know, about three or four nights a week.
Guest:I'm talking.
Guest:I'm begging.
Guest:I'm saying...
Guest:Take the money.
Guest:Whatever you're paying me, pay.
Guest:I mean, just get somebody.
Guest:We got to get somebody else.
Guest:This is going to kill it.
Guest:And we couldn't.
Guest:He's wearing, by the third week, he's wearing a back brace.
Guest:I'm serious.
Guest:He fucked his back up.
Guest:So it didn't work.
Guest:And the review from New West, a magazine, which is my favorite review ever, is that after watching this play this evening, it is our sincere belief that none of the plays of Mr. Lewis Black should ever be produced in the state of California.
Fuck.
Marc:How good is that?
Marc:It's great.
Marc:It's very incisive.
Marc:And so he's got a point of view.
Guest:Well, I just thought, God, if you hated it that much, there must be something to it.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, you did something.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yeah, there was no, like, eh.
Guest:But it was really a terrible production.
Marc:Heartbreaking.
Guest:It was really, you know, but you learn your lesson, because it's really, you go, holy God, and then I go back.
Marc:And it's a collaborative effort, and you couldn't control the... Yeah, and you can't.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And a lot of my experience in theater was collaborative efforts that were...
Guest:And then you, much like you know, we've learned from doing what we do.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, you kind of go, you try for that first TV show.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you're working with Smarty and Farty.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then the network.
Guest:And then you kind of go, I don't think I can do that.
Marc:That won't work.
Marc:And then all of a sudden you don't have any choices.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:We know you won't do it, but we're going to do it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So if you don't want to be part of it, that's fine.
Marc:We paid you.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:We'll see you later.
Marc:You know what?
Marc:Don't be part of it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:We'll go ahead and take it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And gut it and throw it out there.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It's horrible.
Marc:So part of that then, I guess, the sense of like, fuck this.
Marc:I want some autonomy.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:It's one thing to be autonomous as a writer.
Marc:You can do that.
Marc:But once it enters the universe, especially with plays, you don't know what the fuck's going to happen.
Marc:But when you make a choice to, like, I'm going to stand up in front of people and entertain or do whatever the fuck I do on my own terms, no one's going to fuck with me, except maybe the club owner goes, that didn't work out, and you're not coming back here.
Marc:And that's it.
Marc:That's a very intimate and honest relationship.
Marc:I couldn't sell tickets.
Marc:You pissed some people off.
Marc:You're not coming back here.
Marc:Or, great, we'll see you next year.
Marc:And that's what drove you there.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, it is, in part.
Guest:I mean, and it's also what drove me to stand-up was that I was looking for more and more independence.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And I was like, okay.
Guest:I mean, the greatest thing, ultimately, that you probably know about stand-up is it's you and them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's just you and your audience.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And not even your audience.
Guest:It could be any audience.
Guest:But there's no one can come in and go, you know, Mark, in the middle of your act, you know, that would have worked better.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So you started doing it in 81, 80?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I started doing stand-up when I was in college, but I was doing it really on the side, like for fun.
Marc:Coffeehouse stuff?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I started doing it when I got to the drama school.
Guest:They had a cabaret space and they'd always need somebody like once a semester to come in and do, so I'd do six shows.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was a way in which what I immediately discovered about stand-up more than anything else is I could write
Guest:for myself.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I could get my words out there.
Guest:It wasn't so much my performance.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because my performance was horrific.
Guest:But you got to get your point of view.
Guest:But I could get my, I could write.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And get it seen.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because if you stand up, you might as well.
Guest:I mean, with playwriting, what I've said about playwriting ultimately is if you're thinking of writing a play, when you finish it, put it in a bottle, find a body of water, throw it in, and it will be read faster than it will be read by any American theater.
Right.
Marc:But what do you mean your performance as a stand-up early on was horrific?
Marc:That you weren't engaged with the words necessarily?
Guest:I wasn't comfortable on stages.
Guest:I just thought I could not get over the fact that I'm supposed to make them laugh.
Guest:I just wasn't comfortable on stage.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And then when did you start feeling the hands going up?
Guest:That started when I really started working the when I ran the West Bank.
Marc:I remember that period.
Marc:Like, you know, like I knew that you were a guy that, you know, was clearly doing his own thing that you had that you had, you know, you had residency at the West Bank.
Marc:You ran a show there.
Marc:But, you know, it always felt like like it was a workshop environment.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And for other people that you had on the show and you didn't, did you always have comics or there was some other stuff?
Guest:No, it was mostly, I mean, a lot of it was like John Bowman who was a comic but was also an actor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A lot of them, there were actors who wanted to do comedy.
Guest:There were a playwright named Warren Light who now really writes for, was the head on Law and Order for a long time.
Guest:He wrote stuff.
Marc:So you created a community theater space in a way.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And a place where I could get my writing up, and I hosted.
Guest:I did the thing that you do if you're coming through the ranks as a comedian of being the emcee of the show.
Marc:And you were doing that on your own time, on your own volition.
Guest:Yeah, and that's really where I relaxed.
Guest:Because I got on stage and really started to go, oh, I get it.
Marc:Right, and on your own terms.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And then you started to play catch and that kind of stuff.
Guest:Yeah, and that was where... That's where... That's where our love bloomed.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Well, Catch in New York, though.
Marc:I mean, was it still around, the original Catch?
Marc:Yes, yeah.
Guest:So you were there towards the end of that.
Guest:I was there, and the lineup was Dennis Leary, me, Mario Cantone, and Kevin Meany.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:So it's interesting, because you really came to be in that 80s comedy boom.
Marc:But unlike many other people, previously that, you had an extensive...
Marc:sort of, I don't know if you'd call it a career, but a journey as somebody was chasing this playwriting thing that you were very serious about.
Marc:So it was just sort of your second wind, your second invention.
Marc:And then, because I remember by the time you got to Boston, I don't know if you were bitter, but I know that you were sort of stuck in that groove of like, how do you transcend just being another headliner?
Marc:because you always had a very specific point of view and and and uh performance style but i also remember in boston that you were involved with the christopher durang play yeah because i went to see you in it yeah and i i don't remember what that was media muck okay so you were sort of you played yourself in a way right well i was morton i was
Guest:Morton Downey but it's me but myself I mean they really wanted somebody Christopher knew me and he wrote it for me and he wanted somebody to come on stage I mean I yelled he just wanted me to come on stage the first two and a half minutes of the play was me screaming at the audience right right right and then I remember seeing that and then like
Marc:And I knew that your point of view was informed by, I don't know what religion you grew up with, but obviously your point of view on politics and God and all that stuff.
Marc:This is sort of a very specific avenue of stand-up, the provocateur and somebody who's going to stick it to the guy.
Marc:And then it sort of evolved.
Marc:You know, I think, you know, once you you got the the the opportunity on The Daily Show that you had sort of like, you know, you had, you know, the diamond had come out of the coal and you somehow were able to, you know, a very specific archetype in comedy, which is, you know, the the informed crank.
Marc:And I think you're naturally that way.
Marc:And it's a rare disposition.
Marc:Only certain people can do it.
Marc:And it's always a relief to have them there.
Marc:And you've had your reign for a long time and you hold on to it.
Marc:But by the time you got to The Daily Show, you had had enough.
Marc:That was the disposition.
Marc:How is this going to keep happening?
Marc:And that speaks to almost everybody.
Marc:and uh and i think you've done amazing with that but that you know i i just as a as a way to to maybe give false hope to people who are starting out you know you're one of those guys where it's like well lewis didn't really hit till he was 52 or something yeah i mean how old were you when that turned around when the daily show turned it around for you let's see so it was 17 uh 50 48 49 50
Guest:What a great story.
Guest:Well, it was like, it was really, you know, it was really amazing.
Guest:And it really was that, you know, because of the nature, maybe the way media is going, hopefully, for others, because it's opening up, that these people, you know, I...
Guest:That I was lucky enough to be found.
Guest:And it was because it was a huge change for me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And how did John find you?
Guest:John didn't.
Guest:I was on with Liz Winston.
Guest:I was on from the very beginning.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That's right.
Guest:The first time I started doing it, there was no audience.
Guest:And it just evolved and it really kind of is...
Guest:It's gone through all sorts of permutations.
Guest:But I mean, it's like, you know, it's one of those things I need to do it and they still seem to want me.
Marc:And it still puts new people in the seats and stuff?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I have to tell people I'm out there.
Guest:I mean, it's the weird thing is, well, you know, that image needs to be, your face needs to be out there.
Marc:yeah or else you know no one knows like I still like more people obviously many more people don't know me than do and just the fact that the first season of the show is on Netflix people are like where have you been oh I've been here yeah well I'm glad everything's working out and you still love it it's a hell of a story it's a fun story it's fun yeah and it's always good to see you man it was really a pleasure Mark thanks for coming yeah
Marc:All right, that's our show.
Marc:I thought that was an amazing conversation.
Marc:It's an amazing conversation with Lewis Black because I didn't know that stuff.
Marc:Did you know that stuff?
Marc:Lewis Black's career as a playwright.
Marc:Fucking awesome.
Marc:Thank you for listening.
Marc:I'll be at the Ice House Sunday, April 6, 7 o'clock with Ian Carmel.
Marc:Go to WTF Pod for all your WTF Pod needs.
Marc:Get that WTF app.
Marc:I don't know if the comment section is gone yet, but it will be.
Marc:So leave your last comments if it's even still there.
Marc:Oh my God.
Marc:Okay, I gotta go put the sandbags back in front of the door.
Marc:God, why don't you grow the fuck up, Mark?
Marc:Grow the fuck up.
Marc:Spend some goddamn money.
Marc:Get your goddamn driveway fixed.
Marc:Fix the fucking drain.
Marc:Seriously, do it.
Marc:Boomer lives!
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