Episode 600 - Sam Seder
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:What the fucksters?
Marc:What the fuckadelics?
Marc:What the fuck'll Barry Fins?
Marc:And what the fuck in Heimers?
Marc:Why not?
Marc:Why not in Heimers?
Marc:Do you have any idea how many of those have been submitted to me?
Marc:Do you have any idea how many of those names and things that I've gone through?
Marc:By the way, hi, I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:Welcome to the show.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:This is the 600th episode of WTF.
Marc:Isn't that amazing?
Marc:Is that amazing?
Marc:The first episode was September 1st, 2009.
Marc:Recorded just blocks away from where I am.
Marc:I'll give you a little taste of the history.
Marc:of how far I've come.
Marc:Right now I'm in a hotel room in New York and I'm only about five big blocks and maybe 18 little blocks away from where WTF was born.
Marc:The studio it was born in is nearby.
Marc:There was an argument to be made that I just maybe broadcast from that studio, but I don't think it's there anymore.
Marc:I don't know what's in that building where the last phase, the last incarnation, the last structural representation of Air America Radio once was.
Marc:I don't know what's in there now, but I'm sure that that studio, which was state-of-the-art and built specifically as a studio for that network, I'm sure now there's nothing.
Marc:It's just memory, just a flash in the pan of the history of a building on 6th Avenue.
Marc:But the point is, on the show today for my 600th episode, my guest is Sam Seder.
Marc:Sam Seder is now the current host and proprietor and man in charge of the Majority Report.
Marc:That's a live show.
Marc:It's weekdays at noon, noon Eastern.
Marc:It's also available as a podcast.
Marc:You can go to majority.fm to check that out.
Marc:But Sam and I, he was there at the beginning.
Marc:He was there at the beginning of WTF.
Marc:He appeared on one of the first WTFs as the guy stealing cable, I think, from the Air America studio that we were both recently fired from.
Marc:I will give you the backstory on that momentarily.
Marc:What I'd like to do now is there's sort of a surprise guest.
Marc:We have a surprise guest.
Marc:I'll explain to you the deal.
Marc:Okay, I'm staying at a hotel where a lot of people stay.
Marc:I've seen a lot of people here at the hotel.
Marc:It's just one of those hotels.
Marc:It's kind of fancy, but it's kind of homey.
Marc:So I was at the hotel hanging out yesterday, and who do I see?
Marc:My old pal Jack Black, who you know.
Marc:Jack and Kyle have been on the show.
Marc:Tenacious D has been on the show.
Marc:I've known Jack for years.
Marc:It was nice to see him.
Marc:He's here for the premiere of his movie, The D Train.
Marc:Which I know starts in theaters tomorrow because I was going to do a plug for it.
Marc:We had a plug on the docket for the D train.
Marc:And in my brain, I think, all right, great.
Marc:Well, Jack's here.
Marc:Why not go accost him instead of just being social and go, hey, man, I got my shit.
Marc:I got my gear.
Marc:It's up in the room.
Marc:Do you think maybe we could do a little thing about the movie that you're here to promote?
Marc:Do you think maybe I could get in on that because we're all buddies?
Marc:And he said, I don't know, Mark.
Marc:And then, well, I texted him and it turns out he's like literally next door.
Marc:And now he's in my room.
Marc:Have you been, you've stayed at this hotel before?
Guest:No, but yeah, it is crazy down there.
Guest:There's a, it's a scene.
Guest:It is.
Guest:I mean, I can't believe, who'd you see?
Guest:I saw a lot of people.
Marc:Really?
Guest:I saw the girl that was in The Woman.
Marc:The Woman.
Marc:The Girl.
Marc:Who's on The Cosby Show?
Guest:No.
Guest:Lisa Bonet?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:I was on the elevator with her today.
Marc:I was too.
Marc:You were?
Guest:She was taking the elevator a lot today.
Marc:I think she's on that floor.
Marc:It's a coincidence that you're right next door to me.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I was in a movie with her, so we have like a previous relationship and a friendship and a bond.
Guest:That you don't share.
Marc:No, she didn't know me at all.
Marc:At all.
Marc:Nothing.
Marc:Nothing.
Marc:I said, hi.
Marc:And she goes, I said, how you doing?
Marc:She goes, just getting started.
Marc:You?
Marc:And I said, I'm good.
Guest:That's pretty familiar out of the gate, though.
Guest:Yeah, I guess.
Guest:I mean, it's not your average.
Guest:Not much.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But this hotel feels kind of cozy.
Marc:Everybody feels like we're special here.
Marc:Who'd you see?
Guest:I saw the woman from House of Cards who was killed by the president.
Marc:Oh, did you say, like, I'm sorry that that happened to you?
Guest:No, because I know what acting is.
Guest:Did you see Zac Efron?
Guest:I didn't.
Guest:Is he in the building?
Marc:I saw him walk out yesterday.
Marc:You know what I really wanted to happen yesterday?
Marc:A super shuttle pulled out in front, and I really wanted a major celebrity to get into the super shuttle.
Marc:Oh, man.
Marc:That would have been the best moment.
Guest:super shuttle you really want to live close to the airport then you get the best deal right then everyone's sort of like oh where are we stopping this guy first he's right here house right here but the weird thing is if you're on a super shuttle yeah you get to meet cool people sure nice people you know where they live exactly that's kind of creepy you're a dentist i'm coming over got your address i don't need the office visit look at my teeth at your house i'm writing it down
Guest:what um what have you been doing um promo just just uh just pimping my wares yeah i got a new flick and i'm telling the world about it but not everybody right we're keeping it cool just trying to keep it you know very hush hush i think the premiere is in a back room at a bar somewhere isn't it exactly are you gonna dress up for it some movies you want just you know exclusive clientele only yeah it's not for everybody yeah what is a movie
Guest:It's a little dark comedy about insecurity and about popularity and unpopularity.
Marc:It's called The D Train.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What's the pitch?
Guest:It's about a high school reunion.
Guest:Okay, I see that.
Guest:Least popular guy at high school wants things to be different this time, wants to be...
Guest:accepted, wants to be popular.
Guest:He organizes the 20-year reunion.
Guest:No one is RSVPing.
Guest:It's his nightmare come true.
Guest:He hatches a plan.
Guest:If he can get the most popular guy, Oliver Lawless, to come to the reunion, everyone will come.
Guest:played by James Marsden Oliver Lawless incredible is in Hollywood now struggling actor but to me he seems like he's the king right he's made it because I saw him in a national television commercial banana boat right this guy is the shit yeah yeah so I go to Hollywood to get him to come and I'm already telling you too much of the plot that's not a good pitch yeah well it's a good pitch but I'm not pitching you the movie no in my mind I'm selling you a ticket
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, I like the pitch idea because in my mind, if that was the pitch, you've already done some writing.
Marc:Let me tell you something.
Guest:What, buddy?
Guest:This thing writes itself.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've told you enough.
Guest:There are twists.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:There are turns.
Guest:We push some boundaries for real.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's a fun movie?
Guest:That's why I like to pick us.
Guest:Is there action?
Guest:No, not really.
Guest:Well, emotional roller coaster.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Emotional explosion?
Guest:It's not good when you ask the question, is there action?
Guest:And the answer is no.
Guest:That's immediately not selling tickets.
Guest:Does that sell tickets?
Guest:Some people go, oh, good, finally, no action.
Guest:That's a movie I can enjoy.
Guest:But Jack, you are action.
Guest:You are action personified.
Marc:Then you shouldn't even have to ask that question.
Marc:I apologize.
Marc:But I'm already compelled because in my mind, what has to happen is you realize the guy is not what you think he is.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Love that.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And it turns into maybe a sad and challenging story that's hilarious.
Guest:It's not easy.
Guest:Sometimes it's very awkward.
Guest:And those are the moments I love.
Guest:That's what I'm drawn to.
Guest:Did you have fun making the movie?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, we made it very fast.
Guest:21 days.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And...
Guest:and those are the kinds of movies i like too like i did a movie bernie yeah we did that in like three weeks people love that movie it was great it was a great uh uh richard linklater joints i know i talked to him about it and i felt shitty because i didn't see it now i'm feeling shitty again look don't feel shitty just see it it's not your job to see things we're not selling that movie today uh yeah we are okay everything's always available forever into eternity you look well man
Guest:I feel good.
Guest:Thank you for noticing my wellness.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How long have you been in town?
Guest:Just a few days.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I whipped in just the day before yesterday, and then I'll whip out tomorrow.
Marc:Have people seen the film?
Marc:What's been the response to the screeners?
Guest:We went to Sundance Film Festival.
Guest:And they loved it.
Guest:Who cares if they loved it?
Guest:We got in.
Guest:You understand how exclusive?
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:How competitive it is to get in.
Guest:I don't.
Marc:I'm not in that business.
Guest:It's almost impossible.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Go make an independent film.
Guest:See how many times you get into Sundance.
Marc:Well, do you have time to do my independent film?
Marc:I've got no pitch.
Marc:I haven't even got an idea, but I would like to attach you to it.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Can I attach you to an untitled, unscripted, no idea movie right now?
Marc:Will you commit to it in my hotel room?
Guest:Subject to availability, absolutely.
Guest:I am so all the way in.
Guest:Subject to availability.
Marc:Good, man.
Marc:That's a vote of confidence.
Marc:That's always good.
Marc:I'm going to go right to producers.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Subject to availability, Jack Black's in on an idea that I might have soon.
Guest:Sold.
Guest:How's everything?
Guest:How's the family?
Guest:The boys are great.
Guest:The wife is great.
Guest:How old are the boys?
Guest:Six and eight years old.
Marc:Oh, shit.
Marc:So that's a blast.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Tommy and Sammy.
Guest:And yeah, they're...
Guest:they're doing a lot of screen time which is really good what do you mean like on facetime and stuff or it's great it's a lot of like ipad oh yeah like just uh in television so they don't talk to you at all you're just sort of like boys no i mean yeah study new studies are coming in now that show that that's the good parenting oh really the ones that give them as much screen time as possible so is that true i'm doing really no that's not true
Guest:They don't have that much screen time.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But I have to come clean with you.
Guest:They do have some.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Lisa Benet was in the elevator and she judged me pretty harshly when she found out that my boys had some screen time.
Guest:Oh, you talked to her about it?
Guest:That quickly?
Guest:She's on a zero screen time policy apparently.
Guest:I bet.
Guest:She doesn't look like a screen time person.
Guest:No.
Guest:No, that's hands on.
Guest:Mommy's here.
Marc:Full on.
Marc:Organic.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Holding.
Marc:Love.
Marc:A lot.
Marc:Maybe breastfeeding well into the kids' teens.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Studies have shown that it tastes good.
Marc:It tastes good, but means something different as time goes on.
Marc:So today's Thursday.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:May 7th.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:The film opens tomorrow, Friday.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:May 8th in theaters across the country.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:900 theaters, I believe.
Guest:Does that matter how many theaters?
Guest:I think you should just opt the number.
Guest:You shouldn't say that.
Guest:You should say it's 9,000 theaters.
Guest:9,000 theaters.
Guest:The most theaters that have ever been shown.
Guest:Yeah, the movie comes out tomorrow.
Guest:It is an uncomfortable little masterpiece.
Guest:It's not for everyone.
Guest:It's just for people who like really sophisticated, interesting, dark tales of intrigue.
Marc:Right on.
Marc:The D train.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:And thank you for being a special guest on my 600th episode.
Guest:Buddy, is this it?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Does this count as an episode?
Guest:This was just a little nugget.
Marc:No, there's more.
Marc:There's more.
Marc:This is just a little part.
Guest:This is just the beginning.
Guest:You're part of a bigger episode.
Guest:Oh, great.
Marc:The fun starts.
Guest:Who am I opening for?
Guest:Sam Seder.
Guest:Oh, Sam Seder.
Guest:You know Sam?
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Great guy.
Guest:Well, now he's a political man.
Marc:Right, he's a political man, but a very funny guy.
Marc:And a funny guy.
Marc:And him and I go back and we thought it was inappropriate.
Guest:Has he always been a political funny guy?
Guest:Or did the politics come later as he blossomed?
Marc:I think, you know, he got more political.
Marc:But when I met him, he was a comedic actor.
Marc:That's when I knew him.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Back in the day when he was doing TV and stuff and he was dating Sarah Silverman.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He was around.
Marc:And then something grabbed him.
Marc:He said, fuck TV.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I don't need it anymore unless I need money.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm going to fight the good fight.
Guest:I see him occasionally on MSNBC.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's a great guy.
Guest:He's a great.
Marc:He's annoying, but great guy.
Guest:You don't have to say that.
Marc:But I'll say that.
Marc:I can say that with confidence, having worked with him a lot.
Marc:You're saying that he's a good guy.
Guest:He's a good guy, but difficult.
Guest:Because you have to say it.
Guest:No.
Guest:I don't have to say it.
Guest:But you believe it.
Guest:But I do say it.
Marc:You believe it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Well, good luck with the thing.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Thanks, man.
Marc:Thanks, buddy.
Guest:Good luck to you.
Marc:You know, that was Surprise Guest, 600th episode, Jack Black.
Marc:Everything worked out today somehow.
Marc:But let's talk about Sam Seder.
Marc:Let's talk about me and Sam Seder.
Marc:Let's talk about WTF.
Marc:Let's talk about the evolution of where it came and to where we are.
Marc:Now, me and Sam go way back, and we're going to talk about that.
Marc:When I met Sam, he was a comedic actor.
Marc:He did some sketch comedy.
Marc:He had a thing that he was doing.
Marc:He always was very ambitious.
Marc:He was making movies.
Marc:There's a lot of stuff that Sam did, and he was hilarious.
Marc:And I saw him as a kindred spirit.
Marc:And we were both aggravated, self-involved, funny Jews.
Marc:And I related to him immediately.
Marc:We have sort of a long start and stop history.
Marc:He was in San Francisco, and I helped him out there.
Marc:And then he was there at the beginning of Air America.
Marc:with Jeanne Garofalo on the air, and I was in the morning on the air, so we worked together there.
Marc:But really, what happened before WTF started, the year before WTF started, is sort of a painful story for me in a lot of ways, because I don't know how many of you watched Break Room Live, but it was a live streaming video show done out of the Break Room at the Air America headquarters over there on 6th Avenue.
Marc:It was our big idea, but how did it happen?
Marc:Many of you who have watched that, well, actually it wasn't many of you, maybe a few hundred of you may have seen Break Room Live, but maybe you enjoyed the tension and true aggravation of the Marin and Cedar dynamic at that time.
Marc:Let me try to explain what was going on there.
Marc:Here's how WTF began, and this is sort of the, a little bit of an extended version.
Marc:I had been fired from Air America several times.
Marc:I was their original morning guy.
Marc:I was part of a crew.
Marc:We did a great show.
Marc:Sam was always doing the show with Janine later at night.
Marc:I was the opposite of Sam.
Marc:I was early in the morning.
Marc:But we did a great show in the morning.
Marc:About a year and a half in, a moron named Danny Goldberg took charge and fired us because he thought that Air America should be more like...
Marc:NPR.
Marc:We tried to tell him that there already was an NPR, and we were doing some irreverent funny shit.
Marc:We worked hard.
Marc:We made good funny, quality funny, top shelf funny, and Stern had just left Terrestrial.
Marc:We were poised.
Marc:We were doing good shit, and that dummy Goldberg shut us down, fired me, but there was still a couple of people within the organization that were like, we like Marin.
Marc:Let's keep him in the batter's box.
Marc:Let's create a placeholder for me, so I went back to L.A., defeated
Marc:pissed off and they got me a show on ktlk so they stuck me at 10 at night uh in a time slot where they still had an outstanding contract with a with a sports affiliate so me and jim earl who's my co-host used to sit there waiting for games to end clippers games and some other team i don't know
Marc:So we do an hour, hour and a half show, depending on how much time was left after the fucking game ended.
Marc:It was Siberia, folks.
Marc:It was nasty.
Marc:And then Air America came back around and said, new guy in charge.
Marc:We want you to come back and do mornings.
Marc:I'm like, you guys still owe me a lot of money on my contract.
Marc:They're like, that ain't happening.
Marc:I'm like, I ain't coming back.
Marc:So that was that.
Marc:No more Air America for me.
Marc:I go on with my life.
Marc:And shortly after that, my wife says, I'm done with you.
Marc:And she leaves me.
Marc:Heartbroken.
Marc:Messed up.
Marc:I was going through a bad divorce.
Marc:No kids.
Marc:Just spite.
Marc:Money draining out of me.
Marc:Bankruptcy on the horizon.
Marc:Almost losing my house.
Marc:Out of nowhere, one of the old dudes from Air America, Carl.
Marc:He calls me up and says, look, there's another new guy with new money here at Air America.
Marc:I think we should take some of that money.
Marc:But in return, give him a video streaming video show.
Marc:We'll do the daily show on the Internet and you're going to host it.
Marc:And I'm like, dude, I'm shattered.
Marc:I'm heartbroken.
Marc:I'm despondent.
Marc:I'm incapable of being funny.
Marc:But if they'll pay to get me out of my divorce, I'll be there in a second.
Marc:So I negotiated a deal where the new money guy.
Marc:would give me money to pay off my ex-wife and stop the hemorrhaging.
Marc:And I would do this streaming video show.
Marc:So we put the deal in place.
Marc:I got to Air America.
Marc:New people, new money.
Marc:I could not even think about being funny.
Marc:I was emaciated and just...
Marc:fucking mess and I said well I need my producer Brendan McDonald he's got to be part of this and you got to pay him good and I need Sam Seder in here because I'm not going to talk about politics I can barely talk about food right now and if we want to make this work someone's got to carry that fucking weight
Marc:So Cedar said, all right, give me some money.
Marc:I got him some money.
Marc:But the problem is, is that Sam is a pretty righteous dude.
Marc:He's a smart dude.
Marc:His heart's in the right place and he's fighting a good fight.
Marc:But I was not into fighting that fight.
Marc:So I fought with Sam.
Marc:So we would fight constantly on the air, off the air.
Marc:But the thing about Sam is incredibly funny.
Marc:Enjoyed having him around.
Marc:So that went on for about a year.
Marc:We're just alternating between being at each other's throats and having some tremendously great laughs.
Marc:That's the Sam and Mark dynamic.
Marc:So obviously the show doesn't succeed.
Marc:I actually thought it would.
Marc:Sam always was defiantly said that it would never succeed and we should just be happy to take the money.
Marc:Whatever.
Marc:Hilarious guy.
Marc:Truly one of the funniest people I know, to be honest with you.
Marc:I do love Sam Cedar a lot.
Marc:So we get fired, but they don't kick us out of the office.
Marc:Sam is busy creating whatever his next thing is going to be.
Marc:He wants to stay in the game.
Marc:He wants to put together his show.
Marc:And I'm like, well, we got to do something else.
Marc:And Brendan and I decide to start WTF while we're sitting there in the office with Sam, who's working a bunch of angles of his own.
Marc:But quite honestly, there was no way I could include Sam in WTF because he was driving me fucking crazy and I was at the end of my rope.
Marc:But he was there.
Marc:He was right there in the office with us talking about stuff.
Marc:I think he credits himself with giving me the idea to do a podcast.
Marc:But you can hear Sam early on in these... I think on one of the early episodes, but it's been this long.
Marc:It's taken me 600 episodes to have Sam on the show legitimately.
Marc:So that's...
Marc:That says something about our relationship.
Marc:So does that sort of give you an idea?
Marc:Are you with me?
Marc:Do you understand the Marin and Cedar dynamic?
Marc:Now, Sam Cedar has put me in his movies.
Marc:I opened his now famous Who's the Caboose film.
Marc:I think my credit is Bitter Guy at Bar, maybe.
Marc:And then he had me play a manager on the series of Who's the Caboose.
Marc:which I played Sarah Silverman's manager.
Marc:He also had me play a slightly nutty Hasidic postal worker in The Bad Situationist, another classic Sam Seder film.
Marc:See, like a lot of you don't know that Sam Seder, it's confusing sometimes because he's known in the political world for his punditry and his majority report FM as a political opinionator.
Marc:I think that's a Republican word.
Marc:But also a very funny guy, funny actor, creative guy, a filmmaker, a dear friend of mine.
Marc:And his time has come.
Marc:I put him in an episode of Marin on IFC, which is very funny.
Marc:And he's here.
Marc:He's here on the 600th episode because he was there at the beginning.
Marc:And this is a way of marking that.
Marc:I don't think he knew he was going to be on the 600th episode when we recorded the interview.
Marc:So there'll be no reference of that.
Marc:He was the butterfly that sent the ripples that changed the weather around the other side of the planet.
Marc:Before I introduce Sam, I do have to say this, that, you know, whether Sam and I, whatever our relationship is, I do want to thank you, the people that listen to this show and have supported this show and have been there for me in a way that I could never even imagine.
Marc:I'm humbled and grateful to the people that listen to this show.
Marc:And it would not be I would not have done this 600 episodes if it was not for you people.
Marc:And that's that's the truth.
Marc:If this had not caught on, I don't know if I would have had the fortitude.
Marc:If I was not doing something that so many people enjoyed, I don't know whether or not I would have had the perseverance.
Marc:So thank you for listening to this show.
Marc:And now I'm going to put you through something that you may find either entertaining or challenging.
Marc:My conversation with Sam Seder at the Cat Ranch.
Marc:Have you ever been to D.C.
Marc:and done the whole thing?
Guest:You know, I've been to D.C.
Guest:multiple times, and when I was a kid, you know, in college, I interned in Capitol Hill.
Guest:You did?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you went into the Capitol?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's pretty cool, right?
Guest:Yeah, and I've been into the Senate chambers since then.
Guest:What'd you do in there?
Guest:Just, you know, basically ran around with my pants around my ankles just to see if I could.
Guest:You didn't get caught?
Guest:No.
Guest:It's great, right?
Guest:No.
Guest:Actually, you're allowed to do that.
Guest:That's one of the few things that they let you do.
Guest:Is that part of the filibuster?
Guest:You can do that during your filibuster?
Marc:That's right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Not a lot of those guys use it, though.
Marc:It's in the Constitution.
Guest:No, it's in the Constitution.
Guest:If you're doing it with your pants around your ankles, you're okay.
Guest:Sorry, guys.
Guest:But I took that little subway they have underneath the Capitol.
Marc:I've been there a few times.
Marc:It's pretty amazing.
Marc:I'm always overwhelmed with awe and excitement when I'm there.
Guest:You know, when I was there as an intern, I was like, I never want to come back to this city ever again.
Marc:Because of what it's involved in or just because of the way it looks?
Guest:I just found it like to be a crappy city.
Marc:It is sort of a crappy city, but the actual mall itself with the museums.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And when you're sort of like, wow, it feels powerful.
Marc:And the monuments, you know, you stand there at the Lincoln Monument like, damn, this is...
Marc:This is big.
Guest:We did something.
Guest:This was 30 years ago, too.
Guest:Yeah, those are all still standing.
Marc:Yeah, apparently the Washington Monument has been there for thousands of years.
Marc:Thousands.
Marc:The Egyptians built it.
Marc:It was one of the first elevated pyramids.
Marc:They were working on that, though, for a long time.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:As ignorant or as out of the loop or apathetic as I am, when I go there, I'm always very moved.
Marc:You know, and I go and I go to, I stand out in front of the Capitol.
Marc:I look at the White House.
Marc:I do all that stuff.
Marc:And I'm like, have that moment where I'm like, I'm proud to be an American.
Guest:Yeah, I don't have emotional reactions to things.
Guest:So it really cuts off.
Marc:Come on.
Guest:What are you talking about?
Guest:I just don't.
Guest:I don't know why.
Guest:To anything?
Marc:Come on, you're getting along with your daughter now.
Marc:I can see it.
Guest:My kids, yes.
Marc:You're like this real person now, and you're very excited about it.
Guest:No, I've always been excited and ambivalent.
Guest:I mean, kids are not...
Guest:No, I love my children.
Guest:That's good.
Guest:Yeah, no, so I can say that proudly.
Marc:Let's talk about how you sort of change tracks.
Marc:Because it's a long, interesting process, and people know.
Marc:Like, you're out there.
Marc:What?
Marc:Seriously.
Marc:That's an interesting way of saying it.
Marc:Well, you know, because you're still funny, and, you know, you still have, you know, kind of.
Marc:Moderately.
Marc:Moderately.
Marc:No, I think you're very funny.
Marc:Oh, well, thank you.
Marc:There was always a hope in my heart that you would come back to the funny side, and then it just never wins out.
Marc:I know.
Marc:I try.
Guest:I try.
Guest:You get really close, and then something just- I get really close, and then I'm like, oh, wait a second.
Guest:What?
Guest:I think part of it is there's always something that is nagging at me.
Guest:I mean, when you're being funny,
Guest:there is necessarily a certain part of, you gotta take certain liberties on some level, right?
Guest:I mean, you have to, a lot of times you gotta get very specific, but there's also some sort of corners that you have to cut.
Guest:And I think it's like an OCD problem.
Guest:It just nags at me.
Marc:So you're saying a lot of times comedy trivializes the real issue.
Guest:It's not a question of trivializing.
Guest:It's just not accurate.
Guest:And so it's, you know, for it to be funny.
Guest:Broad.
Guest:It's broad.
Guest:It's broad.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And, you know, and then, you know, and then I'm like, wait, wait a second, though.
Guest:Technically speaking, you know, at a time of recession, you don't want the deficit to be shrinking.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then, you know, that type of, I mean, that's.
Marc:It's very hard to make those specific things funny, except to maybe one or two, like you and, you know.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That's my business model.
Marc:you and malikas what's his first name marcos yeah you marcos could chuckle about that there is i i mean it is i i think like that is you and david sirota could have it right exactly laugh it up yuck it up about the possibilities of that working yeah i mean it's a pretty narrow uh like i do think that you know you remember that steve martin joke i think i can't remember what album it was but i mean this was you know from like the 70s or whatever it was
Guest:Where he's got that joke, I think, about going to the plumbers.
Guest:I think it's the plumbers convention.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's not a ratchet wrench.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's sort of, I feel like, what my career is.
Marc:It's good that you know everybody.
Marc:What do you mean know everybody?
Marc:I mean that like your audience.
Marc:I know my entire audience.
Guest:Yes, that's right.
Marc:And the other people.
Marc:By first name.
Marc:Will understand.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:But it didn't start out that way.
Marc:You grew up, what, in Worcester, which I find hard to fathom.
Marc:Because my experience with Worcester is that when I was in Boston doing comedy and in college, you'd drive to Worcester to go to the Centrum or something and just look like a, to me and my brain, I didn't spend much time there.
Guest:I was working at a parking lot probably.
Guest:Really?
Marc:At the centrum?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You think maybe- You know the thing about Worcester is it took three referendums to get the centrum in because people were afraid of the outside element.
Guest:So- Which gives you a sense of like how shelter- Provincial?
Marc:Is that what you call it?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Parochial, I would say.
Guest:Parochial, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Really?
Marc:So Worcester was like, get him out.
Marc:We don't want the other element here.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you remember that?
Marc:But was Worcester, when you were a kid, was it- Like to me, it died.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, but it was dead when I was born.
Marc:It was?
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:It was a very big industrial city.
Guest:Why were your parents there?
Guest:Well, that's just because, I don't know.
Guest:They held on?
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:That's where their parents were.
Guest:Oh, sure.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:My parents didn't move to Worcester to like- To start a life?
Guest:Yeah, no, people don't do that.
Guest:What about now?
Guest:Is it nicer now?
Guest:Is it coming back around?
Guest:No.
Guest:I actually think it's, I mean, it's fascinating.
Guest:Worcester has just been, I mean, again, like now, like the first thing that occurs to me when I talk about this is like there were industrialists.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I've had arguments with people who have argued, like have gone back into the records to debate as to whether or not there's the validity of this story.
Guest:So I should just say that right up front.
Marc:That there are people that argue this, that are not on board with what you're about to say?
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:But my understanding is that if you look at the Massachusetts Turnpike, as it comes from Boston to Worcester, it should cut right through Worcester and then head to springfield.
Guest:Oh, no, it goes around, right?
Guest:But it goes around.
Marc:Yeah, I remember doing that, yeah.
Guest:And Worcester, at the time that this was built, had some of the biggest industrialists in the country, like Wyman Gordon and Norton, the biggest abrasive company in the world, the company that developed the M1 Garland rifle, the spacesuit.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:And they wanted to maintain the sort of inexpensiveness of their labor force.
Guest:And by adding 20 minutes to the ride to Boston, you do that.
Guest:And they also, I would argue, kept just about every idea out of there.
Guest:Like, you know, like the sting is just opening in Worcester.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But how does it add 20 minutes?
Marc:So like they wanted their labor force closer by?
Guest:Well, no, in other words, like the commute to Boston.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:As the crow flies, should be- Like 45 minutes.
Guest:Less, yeah, 40 minutes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it really takes like an hour now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because you got to go down south and then get the mass pike and then come back up.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so by adding an extra 20 minutes onto that commute, 25 minutes, it means that the labor force is not able to move as quickly as possible.
Guest:And Worcester's not a suburb of Boston, in which case the labor force would have been more expensive.
Marc:They wanted to keep it cheap.
Marc:By keeping it Worcester?
Guest:By keeping it, yeah, somewhat isolated.
Guest:Second biggest city in New England.
Marc:Is this something you realized when you were like five or six?
Guest:No, I think probably closer to 12.
Guest:I mean, I did.
Guest:I was heavily involved in Worcester local politics.
Guest:As a child?
Guest:Yeah, I was.
Guest:I was always sort of dual tracking it.
Guest:I was doing the Doherty variety show and also student government.
Guest:And there was a charter commission at the time.
Marc:I don't want to get into that.
Guest:Were you a student government guy?
Guest:Yeah, of course.
Marc:So your dad, your parents, your dad is a lawyer.
Marc:That's correct.
Marc:And he had a law practice in Worcester.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:And your mom?
Guest:was a teacher, teacher, model school teacher.
Marc:And you had just one sister.
Marc:Two sisters.
Marc:Oh, yeah, two sisters.
Guest:Yeah, you've hit on both of them, I'm pretty sure.
Guest:Or just maybe that's the problem.
Guest:You've probably just hit on one.
Guest:You grew up with John Benjamin, too.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:Everyone knows John Benjamin.
Guest:Yeah, everyone knows John Benjamin.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:And you guys are best friends.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And what's the story?
Marc:His mom, who did I talk to?
Marc:She was a ballet teacher, and she taught my sister.
Marc:Right.
Marc:She probably taught all the kids.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And you guys, was there a large Jewish community, or was it just you and the Benjamins?
Marc:It was just us and the Benjamins.
Guest:We would get together for a minion.
Guest:No, I mean, not a huge Jewish community, but a decent-sized one.
Guest:And your grandparents- It shrunk considerably, apparently.
Marc:But back in the day, there was probably a nice area
Guest:Yeah, I mean, there's the west side of Worcester, and then there's the sort of the south and north and east.
Guest:To me, it was always like, hey, how are you?
Guest:Like that, it was just... Well, I mean, there's a lot of that accent in my family, and a couple of beers, it comes out with me, but it's not... I don't think it's a bad thing.
Guest:I'm just saying, I don't get... It's a blue... It's sort of like a... Blue collar New England.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It's sort of like a not as bad lol.
Marc:Did your grandfather own like a business?
Marc:He was an attorney.
Marc:Oh, he was an attorney too.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:No, that's the thing.
Guest:I went to law school for a year and when I dropped out, the name of the firm was Cedar and Cedar.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there were...
Guest:My grandfather's name was Samuel Cedar, and he had four brothers who were attorneys, all in Cedar and Cedar.
Guest:And then in my father's generation, there was like four other guys.
Guest:But by the time I had dropped out of law school, my dad was the last Cedar in the firm.
Guest:And I specifically remember when I left law school to do comedy, walking into my dad's law firm, and the junior partners were just like,
Guest:Follow your dream.
Guest:Follow your dream.
Guest:It all just moved up a notch.
Marc:And was your dad disappointed?
Marc:Was your grandfather disappointed?
Marc:Well, my grandfather passed away before I was born.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Where'd you go to college undergrad?
Marc:Connecticut College with John Benjamin.
Marc:Did you guys do comedy in college?
Guest:I can't imagine.
Guest:We did a radio show.
Marc:You and John.
Marc:Yes, that was.
Marc:And you guys were best friends like when you were 10?
Marc:No, no, we were arch enemies.
Marc:When you were 10?
Guest:Probably closer to junior high.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Did you get bar mitzvahed?
Guest:I would beat up his friends at the bar mitzvah circuit.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You did the beating up on the bar mitzvah circuit.
Marc:I think he told me you were kind of a bully.
Guest:Well, that's the thing is the, you know, I, I did hear part of that exchange and John's sort of like a pathological liar.
Guest:Is he?
Guest:I mean, he's a little bit reformed, but he's a lot of what he talks about this stuff is sort of, it's imaginary.
Marc:But, but, but it seems like you're, you're saying that it's true that you were, you were beating people up.
Guest:Well, no, I wasn't beating people up.
Guest:I was getting it.
Guest:His friends were, uh, you know, we're also bullies.
Guest:And so it was just like a, it was more like a, like a rival bar mitzvah gang.
Marc:So you guys were enemies.
Guest:We were enemies, but then I think through high school, I didn't really deal with them at all.
Marc:Really?
Marc:What were you doing?
Marc:Were you smoking cigarettes with the cooler kids?
Guest:No, I was at a different high school.
Guest:And I found out that he was going to Connecticut College, I think the day before I went.
Guest:And then I literally...
Guest:our doors or our dorm rooms are almost the distance apart from where you and i are now just by coincidence by coincidence and um he didn't mesh with his roommate i didn't mesh with mine then we went out and got drunk and the next thing i think i know that i think john had like a 1.82 in that first semester but you guys regroup were you like oh thank god you're here finally you know i mean i think we eased into it yeah i think alcohol helped that
Guest:The drinking age was 18 at that time in Connecticut.
Marc:But was there a moment where you're like, oh, fuck, this guy is here?
Guest:Yeah, I think I was.
Guest:I think that was the night before.
Guest:But, you know, I had gotten something from my roommate.
Guest:What?
Guest:That I thought was...
Guest:He had sent me a letter.
Guest:Your roommate.
Guest:Before we got there that said something to the effect of like, we should get a refrigerator because I hear it's really good for Coca-Colas.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And for, I mean, it was a very awkward letter.
Guest:And at one point I'm like, oh my God, this guy's brilliant.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This is hilarious.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's trying to scare the shit out of me.
Guest:And there's nothing I'm going to do.
Guest:And I got there, I realized, no, that's not the case.
Marc:He was just a weird, controlly guy?
Guest:Yeah, he was a weird, very controlly guy.
Marc:And what happened to that guy?
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:I don't know what happened to my first roommate either.
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:It was not a good thing.
Guest:No, it wasn't great.
Marc:All right, so you and John, you hang out, you get drunk, he's failing out of school, you're doing all right.
Marc:I'm doing all right, yeah.
Marc:And you're doing a radio show?
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, we did a radio show briefly, Sam minus John.
Guest:We would go on as a duo and he wouldn't say anything.
Guest:And that didn't go.
Guest:We just did a couple of those.
Marc:So you'd say something and there'd be just dead air?
Guest:More or less.
Marc:It's interesting as a device.
Guest:But I think we used to just goof around with stuff.
Guest:But we didn't really do comedy.
Guest:I went in as a theater major and left very quickly and got more into student government.
Guest:I was heavily involved in student government.
Marc:You stopped being a theater major to do student government.
Guest:And yeah, I was a government, I ended up being government and religious studies, I think.
Marc:What scared you about the theater so quickly?
Guest:It wasn't so much that I got scared as I was, you know, I was in the program and it was pretty good because it was associated with Eugene O'Neill Theater in New London.
Guest:And I had to, there was campaign night to run for, you know, whatever it was I was running for.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I had a job on Midsummer Night's Dream on the production to literally pull the rope to bring whatever it was, the princess up on the elevator.
Guest:And I went to the director and I said, look, I got to come late tomorrow night because I got to give a speech.
Guest:And they're like, well, if you're not committed to the theater, then you're fired.
Guest:And I was like, are you fucking serious?
Guest:All right.
Guest:Guess what?
Guest:I'm going to do you one better.
Guest:I quit everything.
Marc:So I showed that guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I bet you when your name comes up, he probably goes, oh, damn it.
Marc:how did i let him slip through my fingers so that was that that was that was the moment see it seems like that was a cathartic moment that was the decision i'm turning my back on the arts yes and then and then of course i i you know i i have vacillated that decision has continued throughout my entire life but wait but in high school you were a student government guy too student government how high did you get in the uh i was i think at one point uh vice president
Marc:So you couldn't really seal it?
Marc:Couldn't seal the deal?
Marc:With the president?
Guest:You know, I never, I don't know that I attempted, but I still actually am in contact with the president.
Guest:Oh, you are?
Guest:Yes, and we're waiting to return.
Guest:Lester McCorn.
Guest:He's actually a pastor.
Guest:Is he really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And at a Baptist church down, I think, I don't know if he's in Atlanta.
Guest:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's interesting.
Guest:And we're waiting.
Guest:We're waiting for the right time to go back and- To move back in.
Guest:Take control again of- Of the high school.
Guest:Of the high school student government.
Marc:So, all right, so what'd you run for in college there when you turned your back on Shakespeare to-
Guest:Student government president, president of the class, yeah.
Marc:You were president of the class?
Guest:And president of the student government.
Marc:Both?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They just, what?
Guest:Not simultaneously, at different times.
Marc:Oh, I thought no one ran.
Marc:You're like, will you do the other thing too?
Guest:I was very involved in, there was like a student government at Connecticut College that's pretty, you know, vigorous.
Guest:And we had divestment was a big issue at that point.
Guest:And I remember giving a big speech to the board of trustees.
Guest:And it was actually a little bit,
Guest:Tricky because there was Pfizer who was in New London, and Pfizer had a lot of work in South Africa.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The board of trustees was meeting on Floralia, like with the spring fling, and I was a little bit tipsy, went in, gave a speech, and we divested, and then the chairman of Pfizer resigned from the board of directors because of it.
Marc:Because of you?
Marc:No, I don't know if it was me.
Marc:But the college divested.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:That's something.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So that must have given you a taste of the power.
Guest:There was a couple of, actually, there was like a search for the dean of student life.
Guest:I mean, there was a lot, you know, I always contended that the dynamics more or less stay the same.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The stakes change, but the dynamics stay the same, which is actually sort of disturbing when you think about it.
Marc:Which dynamics?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:The dynamics of politics.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Because when you start to realize, and, you know, I think over the years that I've been doing it, which is now, I guess, 10 years, I've been talking about politics and, you know, sort of like getting involved in that world, you start to realize, like, hey, you know what?
Guest:A lot of major policy decisions are made just because some guy's a jackass, like just a fucking, like a douchebag.
Guest:And he doesn't like...
Guest:Bill Stevens is a real asshole, so I'm going to fuck 20 million people out of a fair wage or something like that.
Guest:I mean, literally, that's what happens.
Guest:And that's a really, I think, hard thing to wrap your head around because you really have to, I think...
Marc:That they've detached themselves from the physical reality of what effect it has on people.
Marc:Empathetically, they've detached themselves, and it just becomes this in-house dick fight.
Guest:Yeah, I don't know that they were ever attached to be detached.
Guest:I mean, I think there's a certain amount of sociopath.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, that's sort of a sad thing that somebody who gets involved in being a career politician...
Marc:without really the incentive of looking out for the disenfranchised or the underdog, you've got to question their intentions.
Guest:Yeah, I guess.
Guest:But, I mean, I think there's a certain inevitability.
Guest:Like, these are the type of people who gravitate to these type of things.
Marc:On both sides.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I guess I'm thinking of, like, Joe Lieberman.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, we could have, like, a Medicare buy-in at age 55.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, which would be great.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, particularly for someone like... Yourself?
Guest:Yourself.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Myself.
Marc:Yeah, but he fucked that up.
Guest:I know.
Marc:Oh, but well, so why didn't you, why didn't you get into politics in terms of running?
Guest:I was, I was contemplating that, but you know, I think I had, uh, my experience in college, I just felt like I don't want to have to live that type of life.
Marc:What life was that that you saw at that time?
Guest:Just like where you have to always constantly be putting up a projection.
Marc:Oh, to be diplomatic.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And to be charming.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I don't know.
Guest:Some measure of that.
Marc:You've got too much fight in you.
Guest:I think at one point I thought that I was going to go do that.
Guest:Well, like Congress?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I think probably Senate.
Guest:That's where you'd start.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I just remember saying to myself, like, when I was working in Washington, like, I'm not coming back here unless I'm like a senator.
Fuck that.
Guest:And, um, I, you know, I think I, at one point had the idea that maybe I would do that.
Guest:And, and, uh, but I don't know, something, something snapped inside me.
Guest:And I think, you know, I went to law school for a year and then I decided, I mean, I had traveled for a year and then went to law school and then traveled.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I went to Australia for about a year.
Guest:I hitched around Australia and work there before I went to law school.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Oh, when you, after you graduated college.
Guest:Yeah, I had gotten some fellowship to do some leadership thing that would have put me, I think, in like St.
Guest:Louis.
Guest:For a year?
Guest:Yeah, doing like a bunch of different like local stuff.
Guest:And I just, I don't know.
Guest:I just, I didn't want to do it because I thought maybe I want to go into comedy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What struck that nerve?
Marc:What's that?
Marc:The comedy nerve.
Guest:Well, I had been performing.
Guest:I always sort of had this dual track throughout my- Through college?
Guest:Through college, through high school.
Guest:You were performing comedy?
Guest:Well, I was doing the variety show, which was a comedy show.
Guest:Sketches?
Guest:Characters?
Guest:Yeah, and I was doing magician.
Guest:I was a magician when I was a little kid.
Guest:That's the way I would make money, shoveling snow and doing magic shows for parties and stuff.
Marc:Big stuff like escaping from tanks?
Guest:No, it was like six-year-olds.
Guest:It was basically like babysitting, but I had a top hat, so that was basically it.
Marc:The cedar kid does magic.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He's got these three tricks.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:so so that was so you did the variety shows and then okay so do you think though that part of the reason you didn't want to get into politics is that because like even when you talk about policy you understand the nuances of policy but you also understand the the the fucking heartbreak and never-ending struggle to to chisel away and deliberate policy takes years and it's very un i would think it's like it's almost like ungratifying and and it's uh it's you know you have to just quietly chip away there's not a lot of ego in it sometimes i didn't
Guest:like the the the the sort of the public persona part of it i felt like i didn't want to have to maintain some fake persona well they yeah and they have to sometimes to the point where you're like what's in there right it's a very weird thing man no i i that i mean i think that's why i i i sort of never went in that direction and and and so um i once got like my buddy jim
Marc:who worked for Clinton, he got me into a photo-op thing.
Marc:Clinton was doing a thing where he was at a rich people, probably a fundraiser, and then everybody, they take pictures with him.
Marc:And Jim was gonna sneak me in to take a picture with the president.
Marc:And it was almost like someone had turned him off.
Marc:Like there was a switch.
Marc:Like I stood beside the president of the United States and there was nothing there.
Marc:He had figured out this way to just exist in this moment and let people... And then move past him.
Marc:But I never had that feeling where it's like so detached.
Guest:It was bizarre.
Guest:Literally the hundreds of thousands of people that you've got to shake their hands and...
Guest:that's all they do so that's their biggest challenge is to figure out a frequency at which to engage with the public yeah and then the rest is just a bunch of guys telling them different things they go like okay that's a good idea right oh yeah let's do that i mean i i think there's some substance uh you know the you know depending on the politician there's a there's a lot of substance there and some more than others you know put on that uh persona and have to but you know to me it just felt like
Guest:I don't want to I don't want to do that.
Guest:I mean, I think, you know, for me, it was like, God, I what did I deny myself by not being able to be drunk in the student union when I was, you know, I mean, you know, to reduce it down to its sort of lowest.
Marc:But then but comedy is like completely different.
Marc:What was compelling you towards that?
Marc:Just like you liked making people laugh.
Marc:You like being an entertainer.
Guest:I was a fat kid.
Guest:And so, you know.
Guest:You were?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We've talked about this.
Guest:All right.
Marc:Not here.
Guest:Not today.
Guest:All right.
Marc:How fat were you?
Guest:I know.
Guest:I was fat.
Guest:I was the full-on husky thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, that's why I think, like, I still am very, like, viriently anti-label because as a kid, I realized, like, I'm not walking around with a pair of pants that says fat kid on it.
Guest:That's ridiculous.
Guest:Like, why do I got to do that?
Guest:So I got in the habit of taking, you know, labels off and then, like, you know, I sort of maintained that.
Guest:The husky labels?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Um, and I also, you know, I, I, I was not, you know, I'm not like a, I didn't necessarily fit in socially for the most part.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, I don't know if that comes across.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A little difficult.
Guest:I was much more difficult as a child, I think.
Guest:And so how is that possible?
Guest:I think you'd be amazed.
Guest:Wasn't there some big prank that you and Benjamin did?
Guest:Oh, well, there was all sorts of stuff.
Guest:Like, you know, John, like I say, it was sort of, he got himself in trouble because he had done something with that.
Guest:I mean, I don't want to talk about it, but it was with Charlie's parents.
Marc:Right, that was it.
Guest:Yeah, he told this whole story.
Guest:Oh, he did tell that story?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well...
Marc:You don't want to talk about it.
Guest:Even now, 40 years later.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, I don't know.
Guest:30 years later.
Guest:30 years later.
Guest:I mean, there's always been a series of pranks.
Guest:I mean, like, you know, when we were in Boston- I couldn't take it.
Marc:That's why I had a hard time with you.
Marc:I just can't take that.
Guest:John and I would go to parties and be like, you're a defense contractor.
Guest:You're a dentist.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then-
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:No, we would give each other... Oh, jobs?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Improv.
Guest:Yeah, because... I don't know.
Guest:We were sort of dicks at that time.
Guest:I think it was a little dickish.
Marc:He always struck me as a dick.
Marc:No, he is a dick.
Marc:I understand you.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And I understood you kind of innately immediately, but he was like that wild card.
Guest:I was like, what is... Yeah, he's got a real attitude, bro.
Guest:And it's cost me.
Guest:It's really cost me.
Guest:I mean, like... You throw John under the bus?
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:I mean, like...
Guest:Like, you know, just like everything from like working at a restaurant in Cambridge when we were there doing like, you know, like, I don't know, it was Cross Comedy.
Guest:Oh, that's right.
Marc:You worked at that Italian restaurant.
Marc:No, Chinese restaurant.
Guest:Well, I worked at a Chinese restaurant.
Guest:I remember that.
Guest:Before that.
Guest:That was crazy.
Guest:Cafe China.
Guest:Before that, I was working at Casablanca.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And Benjamin's the type of guy who, you know, here's the thing is like Benjamin will just mercilessly make fun of people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they'll just they'll love it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I, you know, that's the one thing I've always admired about him is like he can sort of like express sort of frustration with people and they just sort of like.
Guest:But I.
Guest:i can't like let that sit right like like if i'm like making a joke with someone you know and it's really sort of like there's some anger behind it yeah it's not enough for me to have just like said it in the joking context right like like you know you're a jerk yeah and then i gotta go like no no i'm serious
Guest:I really don't like you.
Guest:Like, that's my problem, is that I can't, you know, and Benjamin could sit there and go, like, hey, douchebag.
Guest:And the guy's like, ah, I love this guy.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But with me, it's like, hey, douchebag.
Guest:Yeah, no, I'm not joking.
Guest:I actually really do think you're a douchebag.
Guest:I just want to make that clear.
Guest:It's very important to me that we understand that I don't like you.
Guest:And so there was one time, like, you know, I got fired at Castle Blanca.
Guest:I got him the job.
Marc:You were both working there.
Guest:Yeah, but I got him the job there.
Guest:I got fired and he didn't tell me.
Guest:He actually sent me back in.
Guest:And the manager was like, what are you doing here?
Guest:I'm like, what do you mean?
Guest:It's my shift.
Guest:John didn't tell you?
Guest:I was living with John.
Guest:We were roommates.
Guest:Why was it his job to tell you you were fired?
Guest:Well, the manager said, tell your roommate.
Guest:Why were you fired?
Guest:Because I would go up to the manager and go, hey, I have a different idea about how it is.
Guest:I always thought that- This is not efficient, what you're doing.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:And the thing is, is that-
Guest:I will concede that that's really annoying if you're a manager.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I will also say in my defense, I was right.
Guest:The guy was a loush.
Guest:He wasn't doing his job.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And so, you know, I don't like to do things.
Marc:Well, he clearly wasn't doing his job.
Marc:He couldn't even fire you.
Marc:He told your roommate to fire you.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:So John didn't tell you.
Marc:No.
Marc:And he went to work.
Guest:And I'm not convinced he didn't stoke the fires, too.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Got you fired.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So, but this is also, again, this is really the difference between you and show business and you and politics.
Marc:In both arenas, that particular issue.
Guest:I don't know that, I don't think in, actually in comedy, I don't think I ever got myself fired in that way.
Marc:No.
Marc:No, no, no.
Marc:But I mean, but just the personality.
Guest:issue i don't think that in show business that ever hurt me i don't think so i i mean maybe it did but i wasn't well let's go through the show business because i met you what was it like i know exactly the moment we met it was in harvard square yes and it was i had done an open mic right i was with a couple of friends who i had invited not enough benjamin was there you guys were both out in the i was walking
Guest:I was walking.
Guest:Yes, you were walking with soon-to-be your first ex-wife.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I think I said, I don't know if Benjamin was there.
Guest:I don't think he was.
Guest:And I said, oh, that's Marc Maron, that guy who did it before or whatever.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you turned around.
Guest:You were like 15 yards ahead of us.
Guest:I don't know how you heard or you sort of like sensed that there were people.
Guest:And you turned around and you, is there a problem?
Guest:And that moment, I remember...
Guest:really well because it really to me expresses because it at the at the time I was like wow he's really cantankerous but what I came to realize was that that was you saying like can you ask me for my autograph I
Guest:What?
Guest:That was basically what you were saying.
Guest:You were saying, is there a problem?
Guest:Like, why would there?
Guest:No, we're in Harvard Square.
Guest:We're walking around.
Guest:Like, I'm a bunch of, like, you know, I'm wearing, I don't know.
Guest:Like, I'm wearing a butt.
Guest:You know, what possible problem is there?
Guest:It was really you saying, like, hey, could you come over here and ask me for my autograph, please?
Guest:that's what that's what that was like okay and that dynamic is really i think what i've i've come to understand about you like when i'm doing that i just need attention yeah that was like yeah it was like hey give me a hug just like hey like yeah shouldn't you guys be coming to ask for my autograph now that was the next sentence no that was the that was the subtext that was the subtext the subtext of fuck you is come on let's hang out right yeah that's true
Guest:Well, it's not even just hang out.
Marc:It's like take care of me.
Guest:It's not even take care of me.
Marc:It's like... Celebrate me.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:So it's slightly different than your particular problem.
Guest:Right.
Guest:No, my problem's slightly different than that.
Marc:So wait, so... All right, so you were doing the sketches.
Guest:I was doing sketches and I was doing stand-up.
Marc:I remember.
Guest:And Benjamin... Working at that fucking Chinese restaurant.
Guest:I left law school and Benjamin, you know, was in like a Holocaust master's program at Northwest.
Guest:And I was like...
Guest:so i said come back let's do comedy you told him to drop out too yeah and um i didn't have to convince him i don't think a holocaust master i think he was like in history and i think he was like uh you know holocaust studies was i don't i think he's like wrote something on eichmann or something and uh we
Guest:At one point, I guess, you know, like, I can't remember exactly how it happened, but we ended up in cross-comedy.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Which went on to become Mr. Show.
Marc:Like, I was involved in the very first cross-comedy, and then there were... Right, and then that's how I met you around that.
Guest:I mean, that's how I met, like, everybody I know now.
Marc:John Ennis, Warren Dombrowski, Chuck Squire.
Marc:Carrie Prusa.
Guest:Carrie Prusa.
Guest:Jonathan Groff.
Guest:Right, cross.
Guest:And...
Guest:Ed Driscoll was around.
Marc:Yeah, because people would do, sometimes they'd do stand-up on the show, and then sometimes you would write a sketch.
Guest:But that's how I met Louis and Janine and Laura Keitlinger.
Marc:Right, it was that Catch a Rising Star scene.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, it was that was a great time.
Guest:I mean, Benjamin wasn't really doing stand up at that time.
Guest:He was just doing the sketch, but I was doing stand up.
Guest:So I would do like a little bit, you know, like I would go.
Guest:I remember some road stuff, but not that I went with you.
Marc:Didn't you go with me once somewhere?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What was that?
Marc:That was bad, wasn't it?
Marc:Down like on the south shore, I feel like.
Marc:And you did like three or five minutes and you had to get off?
Marc:Wasn't it horrible?
Marc:There was just a chair on a stage?
Guest:That's usually what happens.
Guest:I mean, the stuff I did at that time was really not appropriate.
Guest:I remember because I'm like, come on, you got the time, right?
Guest:And I would do stuff that was really sort of, you know, my whole thing was to annoy the audience at that time.
Guest:Well, you and Cross were kind of similar like that.
Guest:Yeah, there was parts of that sort of Andy Kaufman.
Guest:I was a big Andy Kaufman fan.
Guest:And I was always trying to deconstruct stuff.
Guest:It's so funny because in my mind, you don't have to try to do that.
Guest:Well, I know.
Guest:I mean, it came very naturally to me.
Marc:And so...
Marc:So what happened?
Marc:So we're all doing Catch a Rising Star.
Marc:And I know that those guys, this is like the late 80s.
Marc:And those guys- Early 90s.
Marc:Early 90s at this point.
Marc:But like cross comedy, they all moved to LA.
Marc:Must have been after that.
Guest:92.
Marc:I guess that's right.
Guest:Right around the time that I came out to San Francisco, cross comedy was starting to sort of like disintegrate.
Guest:And I was just like, I want to go check out another scene.
Guest:And-
Guest:I don't know what I was doing out there, frankly.
Guest:I mean, I was DJing bar mitzvahs.
Guest:In San Francisco?
Guest:Assistant DJing bar mitzvahs, actually.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I do remember one really uncomfortable.
Guest:Should I tell this story?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Do you really want me to?
Guest:I don't remember what it is.
Guest:You can cut it out if it's not appropriate.
Guest:But I do remember one time where you were saying to me, like,
Guest:Is it cheating to have phone sex?
Guest:I'm like, I don't know.
Marc:Have you told... This is before... You're married.
Marc:No, but it was also before, like, the internet and everything.
Guest:This is all you had.
Marc:Oh, right, right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is it cheating to have phone sex?
Guest:Well, I don't know.
Guest:I mean, sort of seems like it unless you're talking about it.
Guest:And you're like, okay.
Guest:See that guy I haven't found sex with.
Guest:Don't say any names.
Guest:I won't say any names.
Guest:I haven't found sex with his girlfriend.
Guest:And...
Guest:and i was like well that seems like something i didn't want to know and um and then uh you know and i would obviously you know we would i would have dinner at your place and you're like oh kim wants to come over for dinner tomorrow night and so i show up at dinner yeah and it's you yeah kim yeah me yeah the guy and the girl you're having phone sex with
Guest:I want to know.
Guest:And I'm sitting at the table going like, why the fuck do I know?
Guest:Like I really was that, I found that very upsetting.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Frankly.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's a little bit of drama.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it was like, I didn't appreciate- Everything turned out for that guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, no, yeah.
Guest:I mean, I'm sure everybody's happy now.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You didn't appreciate- I'm the only one who was scarred from the whole thing.
Marc:Let's put it that way.
Marc:And you didn't appreciate I dragged you into this- Yeah.
Guest:I just don't like, I don't feel comfortable knowing stuff like that.
Guest:Really?
Guest:No.
Guest:I don't like to know-
Guest:I don't like gossip.
Guest:I don't like to know that.
Marc:Do you really not like gossip?
Guest:I really don't.
Guest:I mean, if it has anything to do with personal relationships, I don't like to know anything like that.
Marc:Sorry, buddy.
Marc:I didn't mean to bring you in to that.
Marc:And I feel bad about it.
Guest:It's 25 years.
Guest:I still feel creeped out.
Marc:Well, it's a skeevy feeling to be put in the position to be somebody's confidant.
Marc:Well, it's not a confidant.
Marc:Confidant's different.
Marc:Well, I feel bad about the whole thing.
Marc:Maybe I should apologize.
Marc:I wonder what happened to her.
Marc:I wouldn't.
Marc:I would leave it live.
Marc:Just leave it be?
Guest:There's definitely no value.
Marc:There's no reason to it at all?
Marc:No.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Yeah, it was a different time for me.
Marc:It was a different time.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:I don't know if it was really a different time.
Guest:I'm alone.
Guest:I'm alone again.
Marc:Things have gone.
Marc:You went the other way.
Marc:You got a wife, two children.
Marc:Right.
Marc:What have I got?
Marc:Oh, come on.
Marc:Panic.
Marc:Two cats.
Marc:Two cats.
Marc:But wait, so what happened in San Francisco that made you go?
Marc:Well- Because you went and had kind of a half a career in show business at some point.
Marc:No idea how you were a bar mitzvah DJ.
Guest:I went to- I don't remember that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I remember- Saturdays I wasn't around.
Marc:That was the one time- But you were like, I'm doing it on my own today.
Marc:I remember there was a time where the guy gave me his stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And I got to go do it myself.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I had no idea.
Marc:I was only out there for like six to eight months.
Marc:I don't know how I got that job.
Marc:I just don't know who that guy is.
Marc:It's so funny that you can't- I had no idea who that guy is.
Marc:Do you remember him?
Marc:Can you picture him?
Marc:Vaguely.
Marc:Like vaguely.
Marc:I don't, that time just seemed so distant.
Marc:But I remember you were lost because I was like, do you want to do comedy?
Marc:Do you want me to help you out?
Marc:Because I remember we went and we took a ride to a gig.
Guest:I had a problem with the idea of like, I got to get a headshot, like no fucking way.
Guest:I'm not going to market myself.
Guest:I wouldn't do anything like businessy.
Guest:And so I was going through a very difficult time and I went back to Boston.
Guest:My girlfriend was back in Cambridge.
Guest:And I actually, it's funny, I hadn't thought about this in a while, but I didn't know what to do.
Guest:And I went to go, my mother's boyfriend lived like two blocks away from my girlfriend at the time in Cambridge.
Guest:I went over to my mother's boyfriend's house and I was like, I don't know what to do.
Guest:I don't know if I should go back out to San Francisco because if I'm just out there, I'm just going to be out there for like three or four months and come back in the spring.
Guest:Or I should just stay here now and just decide I'm going to try and do something productive and get a headshot and actually engage in the business of this.
Guest:And I don't know what to do.
Guest:My mother's boyfriend, he is this guy who was...
Guest:He was at NYU film school and what was it?
Guest:Scorsese said, like, come up with me up to upstate.
Guest:There's going to be a big festival.
Guest:We're going to shoot it.
Guest:And he's like, why would I do that?
Guest:What's that going to be?
Guest:And he was like incredibly well read and is like a maven.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he just like listens to me talking.
Guest:He goes and grabs a book and he gives it to me.
Yeah.
Guest:And it's John Barthes, End of the Road.
Guest:I don't know if you know that book.
Guest:And I got in my pocket and I'm walking back to my girlfriend's thing and I'm like, I don't know what to do.
Guest:I'm like, I just like, this is ambivalence was like with me for years.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm walking down Mass Ave in Cambridge and I'm like, God,
Guest:I don't know what to do.
Guest:I don't know if I should go back.
Guest:I don't know if I should stay.
Guest:I should go try and do something.
Guest:And I walked by the video arcade that was there.
Guest:And I'm like, I'll call Benjamin.
Guest:We'll go play video games.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that was my only solution.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because he lived around the corner.
Guest:And I walked towards the phone booth.
Guest:And I suddenly remembered Benjamin was out of town.
Guest:And I froze in mid-stride.
Right.
Guest:And was stuck, frozen on Mass Ave, like just sort of like this, with like one arm up, like almost reaching to the phone booth.
Guest:And I couldn't move.
Guest:And I wasn't like, I don't know if I was saying some type of panic attack or what it was, but I was there for at least 25 to like 45 minutes.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And the only thing I can remember thinking is like, this is really fucked up.
Guest:But it won't be a problem as long as none of these people walking by me going to lunch, come back.
Guest:If I can get out of this position before anybody returns from lunch, I'll be okay.
Guest:Otherwise, it's going to start to seem awkward.
Guest:Because it wasn't like a place where you would do street art.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And although it's conceivable, people thought that.
Guest:So I slowly come out of it.
Guest:I walk to my girlfriend's apartment, which is like a block away.
Guest:And I immediately started reading this book.
Guest:And in the second chapter, it's about this guy having a frozen episode, like being frozen just like that.
Guest:And this concept of, I think they called it mythotherapy, where you're sitting in two chairs and it's all about being paralyzed by the potential amount of options that are available to you.
Marc:I know that.
Marc:I get that at Home Depot.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Yeah.
Guest:Well, the idea is that any given choice that you make is necessarily not as palatable as the aggregate of all the other choices.
Guest:But it was after that and a lot of therapy that I just decided, I'll get a headshot and I'll start taking it.
Guest:But that's like anxiety.
Yeah.
Guest:It was anxiety, but it was like an intense ambivalence.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because I didn't, you know, I didn't want to go into politics because I didn't want to put a projection out there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, I was starting to realize, like, you've got to market yourself in some fashion.
Guest:You've got to do a headshot.
Guest:You've got to actually do the business of... Right.
Guest:And, you know, for me, I mean, I think at one point that's why I think I left comedy on some levels.
Guest:Like, I had lost the...
Guest:sort of sense of like, there's too much of the business part of it.
Guest:And, you know, I had done, by the time I had left, I had done like a lot of stuff.
Marc:Yeah, well, wait, okay, so you had the Frozen moment, you read the Barthes book, and then you got the headshot, and then how do you get into television?
Guest:Then I just like stumbled into shit.
Guest:I stumbled into shit.
Guest:Like, you know, I moved down to New York in October of 94.
Guest:I had been doing voiceovers in Boston.
Guest:An agent in Boston, you know, like a booking agent.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Remember Maura Tai?
Marc:Yeah, kind of.
Guest:She had been a voiceover agent in New York, or a casting agent in New York.
Guest:She set me up with a couple of meetings with like ICM and William Morris in Paradigm.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I made them all in the first two days that I was there.
Marc:In New York?
Guest:In New York.
Guest:ICM just coincidentally was setting up their scale department.
Guest:They sent me out on an audition, a voiceover audition, the first audition I had in New York.
Guest:I booked it.
Guest:By the time I got to the meeting at ICM,
Guest:they had heard that i had booked it right which was like well yeah so the guy was like and i remember him he was standing in front of his desk and it was the full full like la it was in new york but he was standing in front of his deck talking into an earpiece and at that time you know people didn't have cell phones right earpieces it was a big deal it was a big deal and he's talking into his looking out to the view yeah and he waves me in and he's doing the whole show yeah
Guest:And at that point, I was just like, you know, like when you were in Boston doing this stuff, it's like it's very like I just got to do a bunch of different jobs.
Guest:And so he's like, Sam, we want to ICM is blah, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:And I didn't know ICM.
Guest:I didn't just assume, you know, whatever.
Guest:And I was like, well, you know, he's like, you already booked the thing and I want to keep doing this.
Guest:I said, well, I'd love to, but I've got to meet with William Morris in Paradigm tomorrow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then when I went to William Morris, I said, I met with ICM yesterday and they already sent me on an audition, which I booked.
Guest:And so then for the next couple of months, I had three agencies, big agencies sending me to the casting agents.
Guest:And so the casting agents were like, who the fuck is Sam Seder?
Guest:He's got three agencies sending him in.
Guest:And so when they pay attention to you, all of a sudden, you sound better to them.
Guest:You're in the top 10 and you start booking.
Guest:And so the whole thing steamrolled.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so it was like creating some type of buzz.
Guest:And at that point, my girlfriend at the time moved out to LA to do pilot season.
Guest:And so I went out there to just like- Which girlfriend was that?
Guest:It was Sarah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Sarah Silverman.
Guest:Sarah Silverman.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I went out there and we lived together in that apartment that's in- Ah, the Montessori school.
Guest:The Montessori school.
Guest:Mary Lynn Rice covers living in the living room.
Guest:Tracy Katsky.
Guest:Tracy Katsky.
Guest:And we had been up in Boston doing the comedy lab, which was me and Waterman and Benjamin.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we were doing all this sort of what ultimately became at that time alternative comedy.
Guest:And some people from Comedy Central were opening up a room, Rebar, in New York.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And I came down and everything that we had been doing up in Boston was perfect for that room.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Was perfect for it.
Guest:And you were shooting stuff.
Right.
Guest:I was shooting a lot of video, and I shot- And this is before you went to New York?
Guest:Before I went to New York, yeah.
Guest:I shot a- I remember that.
Guest:Like a 30-minute- Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Comedy lab that was a fake, sort of industrial- That's right, yeah.
Marc:It was a pitch reel for the comedy lab that kept falling apart because- So you were self-starting before you got this agent thing, and you had that, because you guys sort of branched off.
Marc:See, this is important because there was this, you were kind of like-
Marc:a leader in in this idea where like once cross comedy went away and you knew you didn't want to be a stand-up really but you knew you wanted to keep working so you're sort of doing this you know this satire of a lot of different stuff you were shooting your own shit i remember that because a lot of video involved so i went out to la and i i with sarah for pilot for pilot season i was just out there you know i figured i'll do voiceovers right my manager was like you shouldn't go out there you're doing well in new york and i'm right dude whatever
Guest:you know it's like you're also dating somebody's yeah i was like having a good it's not like i'm going to you know nebraska yeah i'm going to la right there's some industry right and um and so uh i i got on all american girl which was a revamped pilot with margaret shows right and they were revamping the pilot on air right so all of a sudden her entire family died and she was living with like uh three hipsters right and
Guest:And in that one week, I had made more money than I had the year before, like the entire year.
Guest:And I went back to New... I think Sarah and I were starting to break up around that time or whenever.
Guest:That was the first time we broke up, so I went back to New York for a short period of time.
Guest:But then we got back together, so I tried to audition for another show, and that's when I did...
Guest:Uh, that Fox show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That, um, that Larry Wilmore was the producer of and John Ridley.
Guest:What's it called?
Guest:The show?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Bowman and Matt Wickline.
Marc:Where you were the white writer for a black variety show.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And, uh, Paul Giamatti was in the pilot.
Marc:But didn't you do like 10 of those?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I did.
Guest:That was like it got a lot of big press.
Guest:They thought that shit.
Guest:I mean, this is where I really started to understand.
Guest:Like, you know, I mean, I had totally stepped in shit.
Guest:Like, I mean, like I auditioned for five things and book two of them.
Guest:I mean, it was completely it was total luck.
Guest:And I think part of it was just like the swimmer hole.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, the key was for me at that time was Wednesday night or Thursday night was the biggest was must see TV.
Guest:It was the biggest night of television.
Guest:It was most successful.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was Seinfeld, Silverman, Schwimmer and, you know, maybe some other Jew.
Marc:The single guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, Silverman was, I think, and so I was, you know.
Guest:That guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was totally like, it was just total flavor of the day.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'll tell you, like.
Guest:I really thought, I mean, it was a real lesson.
Guest:They thought this show was going to be so big.
Guest:Like I would walk, I remember just like feeling like I would walk down like in Warner Brothers in the studio and just like, oh my God, like executives were like, like,
Guest:literally like in golf carts coming towards me like, hey, Sam, how's it going?
Guest:Like I thought like, oh my God, there's like three or four executives.
Guest:I'm convinced they're married, but I'm convinced I'm gonna sleep with all of them.
Guest:Like I've never had this type of like interest in me at all about anything.
Guest:You know, like my family, from friends, nothing.
Guest:And it was a weird time.
Guest:It was like the first year after like the friends had just become a hit.
Guest:And we'd be in line behind like Jennifer Aniston and Schwimmer.
Guest:And the show was...
Guest:all was a was the you know bowman was the director was the creator of martin and so it was trying to meld these two things and that was what i think was supposed to be like the next on the family type of right and for an episode or two it it probably was there and they they lost their nerve but it was it was fascinating personal i learned so much from that both in terms of hollywood but also in terms of like how uh... segregated like the black and white experience hollywood was right uh... and
Marc:What do you mean?
Marc:Because like, well, because it was exploring that.
Marc:So you're saying for two episodes, it had some balls because Ridley's a brilliant guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And Wilmore's a brilliant guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And obviously the conceit was based on reality.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, what was interesting?
Guest:I mean, there was a couple of things that were interesting.
Guest:I mean, both within the context of TV, but also outside of TV.
Guest:um and one i had one experience that i tell retell the story like i don't know a lot on my on my show um which was um going back to uh chris spencer's house one time chris spencer was one of the guys on the end and he went on i think to host like a vibe show and some other stuff and he does he does a podcast with magical okay yeah he's good so spencer uh we went back to his house spencer was always upset about the way i dress and
Guest:He actually, at one point, bought me clothes.
Guest:He was like, you're embarrassing all of us by the way you dress.
Guest:But we went back to his house, and we pull into his garage.
Guest:This is during lunch, and he lived in Hollywood at the time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And a buddy of his pulls in right after us, driving a Range Rover.
Guest:And at that time, that was the big car that everybody drove if they were successful.
Right.
Right.
Guest:The guy comes in, he goes, oh, thank God you were here because I was being followed by another cop.
Guest:And he comes out, he's like, I've been pulled over four times this month in my car.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I called, he said, I called the LAPD last week and I was like,
Guest:I keep getting pulled over.
Guest:Is there any way I can get like a stick?
Guest:He's a black guy.
Guest:He's getting pulled over because he's black driving this Range Rover.
Guest:Is there a sticker I can get or something that just says like, I'm supposed to be in this car.
Guest:And the cop on the other line says, are you black?
Guest:And he says, yeah.
Guest:And he says, there's really nothing I can do.
Guest:And I just really like, Jesus fucking Christ.
Guest:I mean, if I was getting pulled over once a week, I mean, can you imagine someone like our personality gets pulled over once a week?
Guest:That would be it.
Guest:There's no, there's no, I'm not going to do, I'm not going to write.
Guest:I'm not going to write jokes.
Guest:I'm not going to go stand up.
Guest:I'm not going to do a pie.
Guest:I'm going to focus on this.
Guest:One injustice 24 seven with everyone I meet, everybody I talk to.
Guest:And it's just like, you realize like, that's an experience that you've got to go.
Guest:That's a huge set of luggage you're going to carry through your life to deal with.
Guest:It's like, but I mean, so that was sort of an experience outside of that.
Guest:But the other experience was like,
Guest:The night before the table read, I read the script, and there's this character, Big Fruity, who's part of the posse of the lead of the show.
Guest:I played a head writer of a black talk show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they have a posse.
Guest:And it's like, they've got to drop their guns off before they come in.
Guest:And it's Big Fruity is the guy.
Guest:And I'm just thinking to myself, like, God, man, this seems a little bit like...
Guest:Caricature-y.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I don't know how comfortable I feel with this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so we go in for the reading, the table read.
Guest:And at the beginning of the table read, I think Bowman says, you'll notice, everybody, that we had to change the name of some of the characters.
Guest:Big Fruity is no longer Big Fruity.
Guest:And all the black eyes around the table are nodding their heads.
Guest:Yep.
Yep.
Guest:And I'm like, oh, well, I guess they figured this out.
Guest:And he goes, and I'm like, and at one point it became clear, why?
Guest:Because the real Big Fruity.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:got wind of it and was basically being a little menacing about it because apparently there was a real big fruity and everybody was like you don't want to fuck a big fruity right because he might shoot us or something and i realized like my experience is so divorced that i'm imposing my sort of like white i guess you know sort of um i don't know liberal sort of projection of what is appropriate in fact guilty conscience yeah yeah and and
Guest:But there was all sorts of things.
Guest:Like we would do actually like a prayer circle before the show, which was awkward because you don't do that on white shows.
Guest:And I don't, you know, pray to Christ.
Guest:You did it though, right?
Guest:Well, I would hold hands just, you know, I was like looking around like, you know, and like, you know, please, Jesus, let us be funny today.
Guest:And I'm like, you know.
Guest:I just feel like in the event that Jesus is really up there, I'd put a couple of things above that, you know, in terms of import.
Guest:But it was fascinating.
Guest:And then, you know, that ended.
Guest:What happened with that show?
Guest:It went eight episodes.
Guest:Did people like it?
Guest:You know, it got very well reviewed and then it just didn't go anywhere because it was, I think there was just so much hype around it and they got afraid.
Guest:They got really afraid, I think.
Marc:To keep pushing?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I think they just, I don't really know.
Guest:I mean, you don't really, you know, as an actor in those situations, you just sort of get a sense of what's going on.
Guest:But that, you know, that was basically it.
Guest:After that, I did about eight other pilots.
Guest:um and i had you know i had very big deals and i was like you know because i was reluctant and that's like if you're so did you give a fuck i mean because that sometimes has it like where you just sort of like all right oh no no i was like actively like i don't want to go out to la like i there was a situation like guy island right was i mean i you know i started doing pilots that i thought wouldn't go and i made a lot of money that
Guest:but you really did it was really because they wouldn't go they you get offered these things and you're like this is it's easy money easy money there's no way it's not gonna go and you know i was caught up at that time of like you know the school of that we came from a little bit was like it's immoral to do something that's not funny yeah you know what i mean and i don't want to be garbage i was very ambivalent about that too yeah and i think after after the show i
Guest:I put that money into, I spent a lot of that money on making Who's the Caboose.
Marc:You came back to New York and it was all based on... It was based on basically what had just happened to me over the past year.
Marc:Very funny too.
Marc:But you're also like, you know, at that time, I don't know when that started, but you were getting involved in the work of that, what's his name?
Marc:Well, not Cassavetes, but Carnies.
Marc:It was Cassavetes.
Marc:Well, Cassavetes.
Marc:And Carnies is a scholar, Cassavetes scholar.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you really were sort of after you did the comedy lab, your interest in independent film became, you know, deeper.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And I think like, you know, Cassavetes,
Guest:became sort of a model for me in that he would like make his money in Hollywood.
Guest:Like he did a TV show.
Guest:I don't know if you ever saw that.
Guest:Like there was, he did a TV show that was like a jazz PI.
Guest:And I mean, it was clearly something that, you know, he may have enjoyed it and not, but he was making his money and then spending his money on his movies.
Guest:And I'm like, Oh, this is a model for me.
Marc:And how many movies did you make?
Marc:You made Who's the Caboose, which is great.
Guest:I made Who's the Caboose, and then the next thing I did was Beat Cops, but that, based upon Who's the Caboose, I made... You shot a pilot for Conan's company?
Marc:Was that Beat Cops?
Guest:We did Beat Cops twice, and the first time it was for Studios USA, and then Conan's company basically bought it, and we did it again for Fox.
Marc:Which movie did I play the Hasidic?
Marc:Oh, that was A Bad Situationist.
Marc:Oh, The Bad Situationist, yeah.
Marc:So that was the second feature.
Guest:That was the second feature, and that one didn't work out so well.
Marc:It didn't?
Guest:No.
Marc:Are you being facetious?
Marc:Well, no, I just remember that scene was funny.
Marc:Oh, yeah, that scene was really funny.
Marc:Have you not seen the movie?
Marc:I have seen it.
Guest:Oh, well, it was based on I was pissed about the election.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And I had had a character...
Marc:That I had been doing Lieberman's son, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Leading up to the election.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Joe Lieberman's son.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Who was a tennis pro in West Palm Beach.
Marc:But that's that you made that up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, I think I found out later he had a son who did crew or something.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It wasn't.
Guest:And I didn't like Joe Lieberman at all at the time.
Marc:I know.
Marc:You're obsessed with it.
Guest:I was obsessed with him.
Guest:I was pissed about the Supreme Court decision.
Guest:Janine and I that night stayed up all night to watch that.
Guest:I think Eric Slovin was there.
Guest:And I started taking photos of my television obsessively for the next month and a half.
Marc:Of Joe Eberman?
Guest:No, of the recount.
Marc:Oh, yeah, right.
Guest:And I was pissed about the Supreme Court.
Guest:And I think that's when I think things sort of turned for me.
Guest:And I wrote that film.
Guest:We shot it.
Guest:It ended with Joe Lieberman's fake son on the roof of his building after being inculcated by some religious zealots to commit a terrorist attack, which is what your scene was.
Guest:And he was on his roof with a bazooka aiming at a building in New York City.
Guest:and uh i was eight weeks into editing when the planes hit the towers and suddenly the idea of religious zealots promoting terrorist attacks in new york city against buildings against buildings and blowing up the post office and taking over a theater with shivs which had happened in russia like days after that uh didn't it turned out to be not that funny so it took me about six to eight years to finish that movie but
Marc:um and it i don't know that movie is sort of a mess and it's i've got a lot of dvds sitting in my basement right now a lot of dvds that movie sitting in my basement but but like but so like all right so after we don't need to tell the story of guy island but you did all these different you know pilots you made a lot of money and then you made the first movie but then like we both get sort of
Marc:corralled into Air America.
Marc:And then... Well, I was doing... I directed Busey.
Marc:Well, that's right.
Marc:The Busey on Comedy Central.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I directed that.
Guest:How many episodes of that did you do?
Guest:13.
Guest:And that was difficult.
Guest:I mean, that was difficult.
Guest:He was a difficult guy to work with.
Guest:Yeah, I would say so.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:What was the name of the show?
Marc:I'm with Busey.
Marc:Yeah, so you were pretty entrenched in doing something funny that was original and unique and independent.
Marc:Oh, and then I did pilot season after that.
Marc:The TV show.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Which I played a manager.
Guest:Yes, and that was the sequel to Who's the Caboose?
Guest:Trio had bought it, which was awesome about that was it was a sequel to a movie that no one...
Marc:Literally no one had ever seen it was funny because you know they I remember they put all those episodes up it was good and you shot it like well you're really hung up on you were doing like that guerrilla shooting technique you know before you like you can do that with any camera now but not then the who's the caboose was the first fictional
Guest:non-multimedia digital video to film.
Guest:And everybody was like, why are you doing it on video?
Guest:That's stupid.
Guest:And then two years later, that's the only thing that exploded.
Guest:But we had the first camera from Sony.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And then pilot season was shot like The Office before The Office.
Guest:Right, I remember.
Guest:I mean, because...
Guest:For me, it was like Albert Brooks, Real Life, and Sherman's March by Ross McKelvey.
Guest:Do you know that movie?
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:It's great.
Guest:I mean, the opening of Who's the Caboose is almost identical to Sherman's March.
Guest:He goes down to New York.
Guest:They're going to do a documentary on one thing, and then all of a sudden it goes a different direction.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And so that was the shooting style, and part of it was because I knew all these comedians,
Guest:who uh were very funny and i was shooting with video at the time and you know this was around the time of dogman 95 do you remember that was vinterberg and those guys and i was just thinking like you know i know i'm not creating a scene you know and then some would argue this is not cinema but um i'm capturing
Guest:a reality and so the scene would happen and the cameras would work around the scene rather than the so there was no marks right you know i mean we would do it the rehearsal and the and the camera was really important for this and i had a really good uh uh dp who also shoot who who i liked because he understood the rhythms of what was going on in front of him right
Guest:And and I wanted it to be, you know, I was calling it faux verite at the time to nobody because nobody gave a shit about what I was talking about.
Guest:And it was really just about creating.
Guest:a reality and then having the cameras captured.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Um, and you know, using jump cuts and stuff like that.
Guest:And I did that with beat cops a little bit too, because it was sort of like, you know, that's when like homicide was happening.
Guest:I'm like, we can do sort of a comedy homicide thing.
Marc:And you were also doing acting independent films, right?
Marc:A few, a couple.
Marc:I was doing a little bit.
Marc:What was that last stop?
Marc:What was it?
Marc:Next stop wonderland.
Marc:Next stop wonderland.
Marc:And you did, uh, some, uh, animated stuff.
Marc:You're, you're on Bob's burgers still, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And you did home movies with, uh, with what's his name?
Guest:Yeah, Lauren.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:He's great.
Guest:Yes, that's a lot of fun.
Guest:But it's so interesting because, you know, you did a lot of shit.
Guest:Well, you know, Janine called me and said, you know, in 2003, Sharpling, this is before Air America, let me do two hours on the best show at FMU, do the majority report because I was really pissed about the fucking war.
Guest:And Janine was going on TV and she was the only person, you know,
Guest:she was the only person who was allowed to go on TV to talk about this shit.
Guest:I was like, this is, you know, I was mad.
Guest:I was really mad.
Guest:She called me and said, like, they're starting a liberal network.
Guest:I mean, I remember calling you after the first meeting I had with the people.
Guest:And at the time, I thought, like,
Guest:I'm already spending a couple hours a day reading blogs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And this, I'll do this to the election.
Guest:And when I was doing it, you know, and I was writing pilots too during this time.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, for network.
Guest:And, you know, so I was making some money off of that too.
Guest:And I just finished the pilot season.
Guest:And I remember...
Guest:We started, I guess, in 2004, and pilot season, I think, came on in September of 2004 on Trio.
Guest:And then, of course, as soon as we made the deal with them, they basically announced, like, we're not going to exist in nine months.
Guest:I mean, that was sort of...
Guest:there was at one point somebody in the globe wrote a piece about me uh right around when my book was going to come out and entitled it uh failure is an option and to a certain extent like that theme has been there uh you know where it's like i am incredibly lucky yeah i am this is my luck is not quite you know it's like
Guest:I mean, there's, you know, because I am incredibly lucky.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then there are other times where I don't have luck, and there's other times, like, you know, I walked away from a lot of shit that I probably, in retrospect, some of those decisions may not have been the best.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:um yeah but i i mean it's just sort of interesting i guess timing is one thing but like so so really the the impulse to to get thoroughly involved with politics was just pure outrage at at the administration and the war just administration the war i was mad about the 2000 election i mean i was mad that the media was not talking about what a fuck because you know i had been raised by a pack of lawyers yeah and like the supreme court like the legal institutions
Guest:As far as I was concerned when I was a kid, there's only two ways to make money.
Guest:It's either you're a lawyer or you do something that's not right.
Guest:Because the law was like a priesthood.
Guest:It's part of the fabric of society.
Guest:What happened to that Supreme Court was just...
Guest:Like, I think like the entire legal establishment was in a state of shock for the year.
Guest:And with the 2000 election.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And in fact, there was Newsweek the first the second week of September of 2001.
Guest:the cover was going to be about this huge fracture on the Supreme court.
Guest:And of course they never ran that, that cover story because nine 11 happened.
Guest:But, uh, and I was still like, it was, I just couldn't believe what was going on in the fucking country.
Guest:And I used to call into talk radio out here when I was doing like pilot season or Busey show and just, you know, fuck with those guys.
Guest:The righties.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because they're idiots.
Guest:I mean, you know, nobody would ever question them and I would just come on and I had been reading quite a bit at that time online.
Guest:And, uh,
Guest:I thought that maybe I would leave it and I would start, you know, I still had both feet.
Guest:It was like a couple, like I think one or two movies that I said, no, I can't do because I can't walk away from this in the middle of the election.
Guest:And then, you know, I was still writing shows and whatnot at, you know, while I was at Air America.
Guest:And the last one I wrote was for AMC like two years ago.
Guest:It was about Air America.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:I think what happened was like,
Guest:Once I got used to the idea of... I used to spend months on 30 minutes of programming.
Guest:Like, you know, shooting it, writing it, editing it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And now I'm spending hours prepping for three hours of programming.
Marc:And it's immediate.
Guest:And it's immediate.
Guest:And it was a hard thing to adjust to, but...
Guest:And it's relentless and it's exhausting in some ways.
Guest:But I feel like, you know, it gets my mind engaged.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I you know, it's not the same thing as it was, you know, 10 years ago.
Guest:There's different things that interest me about it, but I can't.
Marc:But you do a podcast every day, three hours a day.
Guest:No, it's about, it's about, it's, you know, the, the free one is about 45 minutes and then I do a little more for another, another, another hour for, for the premium.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And do you find that like, do you feel satisfied with,
Guest:I mean, you know, it's hard to go from like, you know, we're doing radio.
Guest:You've got like literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions.
Marc:And you and Janine were great.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And there was a freedom to it.
Marc:And there was a excitement to being part of Air America, even though it was such a train wreck.
Marc:I mean, me on the morning show, I was sort of detached from what was going on during the day because we were out.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I mean, you know, by we were six to nine and by 10 o'clock, we could barely talk.
Marc:So, you know, we're just exhausted.
Marc:But like, you know, initially it was pretty exciting.
Guest:It was incredibly exciting.
Guest:I mean, I remember...
Marc:In some time in the fall... You did the funniest thing that fucking night that... With the laryngitis?
Marc:That was the funniest thing you ever did to me.
Marc:It was the big... What was it?
Marc:The launch party.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you basically... They were introducing each of the shows and we all got to say something.
Marc:And you get up there and you got your bow tie.
Guest:And there was like a packed house and they got a lot of press.
Guest:I mean, Al was one of the biggest political...
Guest:voices on the left out there.
Marc:He didn't Michael Moore at that time.
Marc:Sure, sure.
Marc:And you got up there.
Marc:What did you say, though?
Marc:You get up there, they introduce you to your show.
Marc:I just said, like, I'm very excited to do this.
Marc:I'm sure my voice will be fucked by tomorrow.
Marc:But it was something about, like, we're going to show them the liberals have a voice.
Marc:Yes, I think they have a voice.
Guest:That's funny, man.
Guest:But yeah, it was very exciting.
Guest:And I remember being in a hotel out here when Trio, when pilot season launched.
Guest:And they had like a press event and there were big like, you know, pictures of the show and they were running it on the hotel table.
Marc:Oh yeah.
Guest:And I remember being up in the hotel room
Guest:And it was very exciting to have a show that you've written, you've directed and acted in, be on TV.
Guest:It was a small outlet, but it was very exciting for me.
Guest:And then Atrios, this blog, Eschaton, this guy, Duncan Black.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I remember that guy.
Guest:And I had read him so much.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He mentioned me in a post.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was like, oh, my God.
Guest:This is like...
Guest:Like I'm watching my show on TV and looking at my, I think I have a computer, like a picture I took of my computer.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I was just like, this is it.
Guest:This is the pinnacle for me.
Marc:Patriots.
Guest:I wonder if I can keep this balancing act.
Guest:And the answer was no.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:No, it all fell apart.
Marc:But it seems to me that we just did an episode of my show and we had a good time and it was funny.
Marc:It was really fun.
Marc:Yeah, it was fun.
Marc:And you have all this, you got a head full of ideas about how to shoot things and do things.
Marc:How much of your lack of engagement in it recently in earnest is just sort of a fear?
Yeah.
Marc:A fear?
Marc:Of like, you know, like, I mean, do you really not have time?
Marc:I mean, or do you really just sort of don't feel like you can express yourself in that way or it's not necessary?
Marc:There's something more urgent.
Guest:It's hard.
Guest:It's really hard to go from something that is so literal.
Guest:That is so literal and so, you know, the idea, like, I'm like when... I know.
Guest:I mean, like, there's something very immediate about it.
Guest:But to have your brain go in those two different directions, like on one hand, like...
Guest:We're talking about the King v. Burwell SCOTUS case, which is not amusing to anybody.
Guest:But I want to know specifically, I need to know how are the subsidies paid?
Guest:When the IRS calculates it, how are they paid?
Guest:What percentage is it?
Guest:What point do you get it?
Guest:What are the implications?
Guest:How many people are going to be disenfranchised and not going to be able to buy insurance?
Guest:And if they do, how is that going to create a death spiral with the insurance industry because you have a risk pool that's going to change and all this stuff?
Guest:and then to sort of like okay I'm done with that now I'm gonna write a story about like what happens if these two guys get up to crazy hijinks it's not like I have a problem with that it's just like my mind you know when you're a comedian it's like you need to immerse yourself in it and when you're doing like a
Guest:like a show or whatever, you're creating a whole new set of physics that exist only in that world and not in this other world.
Guest:They have to be logical within the physics of that universe you've created.
Guest:And to cross those two universes, it's hard.
Guest:I got a two-year-old.
Marc:right but do you like look i'm not here to talk you out of the you know fighting the good fight because i'm a coward if this is an offer to do a regular part we can talk we can negotiate no but like do you like the frustration of of the message falling on deaf ears the the sort of like lack of of any really cohesive left in this country and the lack of that dialogue i mean not only are you hammering up against you know your own
Marc:frustration and and and taking it upon yourself and maybe not making the kind of a livelihood you want but you know the the the frustration of of the the dialogue not being there in this country has got to like just make it even worse yes is it worth it the only thing that um mitigates that level of frustration is that uh you know that like we're not getting anywhere the left has sort of fallen apart in many respects
Guest:The only thing that mitigates it is that I feel like we're all fucked because of climate change anyways.
Marc:You don't believe in God, but you believe that.
Marc:And that there's a faith in that.
Guest:I mean, that is frustrating.
Guest:It's very hard.
Guest:And to a certain extent, it takes a certain amount of rationalization.
Guest:Before it was like,
Guest:When you're on like a big platform, you can say like, we can actually move the dial.
Guest:Like, you know, at one point we shut down the phone banks at the New York Times in Washington because, you know, I was pissed about something and you can mobilize people.
Guest:What I do now is like I have a different part in the cog, you know, in the machine.
Guest:And it's like the audience I talk to are, you know,
Guest:Some of them run important organizations and some work on other shows.
Guest:A lot of the Daily Show people I know listen to the show because I get a call occasionally like, hey, this thing you were talking on about today, do you want to... And I'm like, what?
Guest:What?
Guest:if i'm explaining something to somebody who's going to write it for you know the daily show and it's going to get or give an idea as to like you know what they should focus on or something then i'm doing something yeah you're part of the the conversation and you're making you have influence well i thought the thing we did the break room thing despite the fact that i was uh you know kind of in bad shape we did a lot of funny shit on there that was pretty important we did great shit and if you had listened to me it would have been very successful
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, that's probably another story for another time.
Guest:Oh, definitely.
Marc:Listen to what?
Guest:Well, I was saying that we should have tried to do a successful internet show rather than 300 pilots for a TV show that was never going to happen.
Guest:That was my argument at the time.
Guest:We don't have to get into how you refused to listen.
Guest:I don't know if I refused.
Guest:Oh, my God, you refused.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Are we good?
Guest:Yeah, I think so.
Guest:Thanks for coming.
Guest:Thanks for having me.
Marc:Did you feel it?
Marc:Did you feel the love and tension that Sam Seder and I are known for?
Marc:We're going to do things together again.
Marc:I feel it.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Maybe not.
Marc:I don't.
Marc:We'll see.
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com.
Marc:Check the new tour dates at WTFPod.com slash calendar.
Marc:I've added dates in Minneapolis, Chicago, Portland, New York area, Cleveland.
Marc:Go WTFPod.com slash calendar.
Marc:Do whatever you got to do on that site.
Marc:Thank you for listening.
Marc:And I mean that.
Marc:I do.
Marc:You changed my life.
Guest:It's like you wake up in the middle of the night and although it's like one of the scariest things ever.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:To wake up in the middle of the night and see two little white kids standing at the edge of your bed.
Guest:It's some creepy shit.
Guest:It's just creepy.
Guest:It was creepy.
Guest:Because there's a moment where you're like, what the hell?
Guest:What are these crazy little white kids doing at the foot of my bed?
Guest:What did I do?
Guest:Yeah, right, right.
Guest:What kind of horror movie is this?
Guest:What is this?
Guest:And then you go like, oh, they're mine.
Guest:Oh, shit.
Guest:They're my kids.
Guest:Mark and Bert are in this big fight scene out at the pool.
Guest:He says, you don't look good.
Guest:You've been up for two days.
Guest:You've been doing blow and everything else.
Guest:He says, I haven't been up for two days.
Guest:And Bert said, nevertheless,
Guest:You don't look good and I'm not going to shoot you this way.
Guest:And so every time Bert would say nevertheless, I kept noticing something happened over Ricky's face.
Guest:I said, what's going on?
Guest:And he said, I can't.
Guest:I'm almost going to laugh.
Guest:I'm suppressing laughter when he says nevertheless.
Guest:And I said, why?
Guest:And he told me this great story of being at a football game where this woman is being introduced to sing the national anthem, and her name is Helen Forrest, or whatever it is.
Guest:And they said, now to sing the national anthem, Helen Forrest.
Guest:And somebody in the stand screams, Helen Forrest sucks cock.
Guest:And the announcer says, nevertheless.
Guest:I went outside, and I went into the courtyard of Rockefeller Center, and... Whoops, I'm getting emotional.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I called my parents, and I said, I'm going to be on Saturday Night Live, and it was really exciting.
Guest:I never cry when I just... You know what?
Guest:It is a beautiful story, and sometimes I forget that.
Marc:Yeah, now I'm crying.
Guest:Because it is, like, cool to achieve something that you've always wanted and to do it kind of on your terms.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:To call my parents, like, they were just so stunned.
Guest:Like, we were all so stunned.
Guest:Just...
Guest:I came from like this fucking haunted house with these two artists with the woods on fire and just like had this one dream and went to college and didn't become an asshole and to just call them and make that phone call.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Honestly, I forget about that.
Guest:Yeah, I wrote a song with Mick Jagger.
Guest:There was a sketch with a song in it.
Guest:I was helping him write lyrics.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was just me and him sitting in his dressing room.
Guest:And he said, all right.
Guest:What rhymes with drink?
Guest:And there was a long pause.
Guest:And I said, Brink?
Guest:And he went, Now!
Guest:And then there was another long pause.
Guest:And I went, Sink?
Guest:And he went, Yeah.
Guest:And I was like, motherfucker, is this how you write songs?
Guest:It was great.
Guest:Hello.
Guest:Hello.
Marc:Mick.
Marc:Hi, Mark.
Marc:How are you, sir?
Marc:I'm good.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:The last time I saw you live was in 1981 at Madison Square Garden.
Guest:Whoa, that's a long time.
Guest:You must come more than once every 30 years.
Marc:I know, Mick.
Marc:I'm going to.
Marc:Well, you know, Keith, I don't even know what to say.
Marc:This conversation might have changed my life.
Guest:Not again, baby.
Guest:Boomer lives!