Episode 660 - Brian Kiley / Brian Posehn
Marc:Lock the gates!
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck, buddies?
Marc:What the fucksters?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I am Mark Maron.
Marc:This is WTF, my podcast.
Marc:Welcome to all who are listening.
Marc:Thank you for coming.
Marc:On the show today, Brian Kiley.
Marc:This is a comedian that I've known literally since I started doing comedy the first time I did open mics, I think in college.
Marc:Brian Kiley was there in Boston.
Marc:He's been a writer on the Conan O'Brien show since about the beginning of the Conan O'Brien show.
Marc:He's got a book out now.
Marc:It's a novel, The Astounding Misadventures of Rory Collins.
Marc:And you can get that where you get books.
Marc:We're talking to him in a couple minutes.
Marc:Brian Posehn is going to stop by because he's got a new movie out.
Marc:We're going to talk to him a bit.
Marc:I'll tell you about the play in a minute because it was I've been going to a lot of theater.
Marc:Well, at least three plays in the last six months.
Marc:And I love it.
Marc:i i just uh there's an experience available in a theater in a in a play at a play if it's good that is unlike anything else like i'm immediately just ripped open just just by virtue of being in a in a goddamn theater where people are about to take the stage there's a there's an expectation there there's an excitement to it there's there's risk
Marc:There's danger to some degree that actual humans are going to be occupying that space up there and moving through something emotionally.
Marc:I'm just always blown away.
Marc:Now, obviously, bad theater experiences are bad.
Marc:And the experience of that risk and that vulnerability can work against the actual experience that you're supposed to be having if it ain't working.
Marc:But I went to see a show, The Humans, by a guy named Stephen Karam.
Marc:And it was devastating.
Marc:And this is the interesting thing about theater.
Marc:I mean, I can tell you it was a great play, and I can tell you it was bleak in a lot of ways, but incredibly human.
Marc:Like, bleak in the most human way possible.
Marc:And it all takes place in one long act, hour and a half or so, at a Thanksgiving dinner.
Marc:And the stuff that was covered, it was so, like, raw.
Marc:Just the human...
Marc:The relationships that were on that stage were so familiar, the way they were set up and the way that it sort of moved through these conversations, there was a bleakness to it.
Marc:And this is everyday stuff, really.
Marc:I don't know if I would call it a tragedy because it was all sort of lifted by the fact that that there was a family and there was humanity and there was humility and there was some humor.
Marc:I don't even know if it's uplifting, but I get uplifted by weird things.
Marc:I thought that Shortcuts by Robert Altman was one of the most uplifting films ever made about people.
Marc:So I thought it was uplifting in the persistence of these characters and how well-defined they were in all their flaws and what barely held them together was the humanity of it.
Marc:It's hard for me to even explain it.
Marc:But but it was pretty it was pretty amazing.
Marc:And I and I didn't really know it was directed by Joe Montello.
Marc:I think that's how you say his name.
Marc:He's done a lot of stuff.
Marc:The cast was Reed, Bernie, Jane, Howdy, Shell, Casey Beck, Sarah Steele, Lauren Klein and Arian Moed.
Marc:And it was just it was like a daughter who was moving in with her boyfriend in New York and Chinatown.
Marc:It was the sister who was a gay woman who had recently broken up with her lover, her significant other.
Marc:It was their parents and then the grandmother who is who has Alzheimer's and is just sort of.
Marc:mentally incapacitated throughout the show.
Marc:And it's just sort of the evolution of the dialogue around that family, around who they are and their own personal weaknesses and illnesses and what they endure.
Marc:And there are funny parts, but it's definitely not a comedy, but it's powerful, man.
Marc:It's bleak and beautiful, and the ending is completely theatrical and bizarre.
Marc:I recommend it highly.
Marc:I don't see enough young people when I go to the theater, and I think you should engage.
Marc:I know we've all gotten very acclimated to seeing sketch or improv.
Marc:That's the theatrical experience of the new generation.
Marc:It's like you're going to go see an improv show, but to see a well-constructed play move through the emotions and the arc of a story
Marc:certainly in one setting is pretty profound.
Marc:But I guess the message I got is that I hang a lot of my analysis and thoughts around the idea that we're all terrified, existentially terrified of dying.
Marc:And that's why a lot of our behavior is what it is.
Marc:And that may be true, but I don't know if it is as powerful as the existential fear of living is.
Marc:And I I look, I don't want to get all heavy because we've got a fun show here.
Marc:You know, I know there's some bad things in the world.
Marc:There's some bad things in all of us.
Marc:But this this this play really sort of handles it well and floats.
Marc:You know, there is a a sort of a buoyancy to the to the pain of this play.
Marc:It's called The Humans.
Marc:And it's at the roundabout.
Marc:So if you're in the New York area, I recommend it.
Marc:I'm becoming a champion of the theater.
Marc:So Brian Posehn, friend of the show, friend of mine.
Marc:Love him.
Marc:Remember him when he started back in San Francisco.
Marc:He's got a new movie coming out.
Marc:It's exciting for him.
Marc:He's the lead in the movie.
Marc:It's called Uncle Nick.
Marc:It's produced by documentary film legend Earl Morris.
Marc:And you can see it in theaters starting tomorrow, Friday, December 4th.
Marc:But right now, let's talk to the very funny Brian Posehn about his new movie, Uncle Nick, and also about Mr. Show and about comedy and about maybe a little bit about his kid.
Marc:Let's see how it goes.
Marc:Let's make sure I do it right.
Marc:Brian Posehn.
Guest:That's amazing.
Guest:It's right, right?
Guest:Yeah, I let you do something else for 20 years or so.
Guest:Posehn.
Guest:Yeah, you always did poo and I never corrected you.
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:Outside of this movie we're about to talk about, what are you doing?
Guest:I just got off the road.
Guest:You did for how many dates?
Guest:Yesterday I was in D.C.
Guest:How was it?
Guest:Or Saturday I was in D.C.
Guest:Arlington Draft House.
Guest:Always fun.
Marc:What'd you do, four shows?
Marc:Five.
Marc:Five shows?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's nice.
Marc:It's like a movie theater.
Marc:It's tiered seating.
Marc:It's great.
Guest:Great crowds.
Guest:They can have a drink?
Guest:Yes.
Marc:but it's not a bar per se, and the people there are thrilled to have comedy there, and they're not all jaded.
Guest:It's one of my favorite places to still play.
Guest:Oh, that's great.
Guest:Where else does he go?
Guest:There's a handful of places I still like going to.
Guest:I was in another one before that.
Guest:It was in Denver the week before.
Guest:An Arlington Draft House?
Guest:Oh.
Guest:Yeah, the week before that, I was in Denver in Comedy Works.
Marc:No, those are two great rooms.
Marc:You must feel like a fucking rock star right now.
Guest:Yeah, those are great.
Guest:Yeah, you're only as funny as your last shows, and my last shows are pretty good.
Marc:Yeah, but in Denver, you almost feel like, there's something wrong.
Marc:I'm doing so good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was sick.
Guest:Not phoning it in, because I don't phone it in when I'm sick, but when I wasn't on stage, I was sweating and coughing.
Guest:And then I get on stage, and I powered through those sets.
Guest:Killed, right?
Guest:Crushed.
Marc:Yeah, it's like electric in there.
Marc:I'm not this funny.
Marc:Let's just tone it down a little bit.
Guest:I don't want to have to fuck this up just so I feel like I'm at the proper level.
Guest:Yeah, when I'm in Grand Rapids or wherever else.
Guest:And how's the kid?
Guest:He's awesome, man.
Guest:He's a six-year-old little person.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Funny little dude.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:I went to his first show this year where I took him to see Weird Al.
Guest:You did?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How'd he like it?
Guest:Loved it.
Marc:Yeah?
Marc:Is he wearing black concert tees?
Guest:Sometimes, but you know what?
Guest:He knows the bands.
Guest:If you went up to him and went, yeah, what ACDC song do you like?
Guest:He'd tell you.
Guest:Which one does he like?
Guest:He likes a bunch of them.
Yeah.
Guest:Old ones?
Guest:Yeah, he's kind of all over the place.
Guest:We've done more work on, and now Rush is the latest thing.
Guest:Why is Rush seeing this amazing resurgence?
Guest:Well, I've loved Rush my whole life.
Guest:Fine.
Guest:And he, I kind of kept it away from him.
Marc:Why?
Marc:Too much.
Guest:It's a lot of stuff going on.
Guest:i i i would always play the basics in the car i started them off i mean with the idea of i don't want this kid to like pop music and so far he doesn't right right so a lot of acdc okay a lot of black sabbath yeah zeppelin yeah beatles yeah born of the beatles okay and those are good choices kind of it for the beginning on the ramones okay and then uh it's
Guest:gotta like the ramones my wife played the cars for him a couple years ago he got into the cars he really liked that yeah it's good stuff yeah and so we're keeping a you know a solid bass uh-huh and then now he knows that daddy likes these other bands almost more he knows metallica rush metallica pantera uh-huh so he asked me about those bands and it's awesome like he's a little dude but he knows that this is something that daddy you sat him down a lot of passion for
Guest:Sat him down with 2112?
Guest:No, you know what I did is he's into the Peanuts movie, and somebody on the internet took that old Rush song Xanadu and did it with the Peanuts from old specials.
Guest:Oh, you're sneaking it in.
Guest:And he loved it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then I'm playing a Moving Pictures one day, and it ends, and he goes...
Guest:Daddy, I kind of want to hear Xanadu.
Guest:Can you play Xanadu?
Guest:That's my favorite Rush song.
Guest:And I'm like, all right, man.
Guest:Without the peanuts.
Guest:Yeah, I can definitely play Xanadu for you.
Guest:And he still dug it.
Guest:He dug it just listening.
Guest:I have a nice turntable set up in our little library, and he and I will do Legos in there, and then it's always me playing spinning records while we're building Legos.
Guest:That's sweet.
Guest:Dude, I couldn't love it more, man.
Guest:It's my favorite part.
Guest:And wait, Metallica?
Guest:Not that much yet, but he knows they're around.
Guest:I mean, if you're in my office, if you walk out of my door, there's a picture of James Hetfield flipping everybody off.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He knows about him.
Marc:It's a lot for me to wrap my head around.
Marc:Metallica?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I like him.
Marc:I had Trujillo in here last week to plug the Jocko movie.
Marc:He's a great guy.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And he's played with Ozzy.
Guest:He's a great guy.
Guest:He's a really nice dude.
Marc:You met him?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Sweet guy, right?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:I love that guy.
Marc:But I don't listen to a lot of Metallica.
Marc:I almost bought a Metallica record today, except they didn't have any.
Marc:They had a lot of Megadeth, which I can listen to Megadeth.
Guest:A little more technical.
Guest:Metallica's straight ahead and just more kick-ass.
Marc:I can feel the weight of it for you.
Marc:Metallica's the thing, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, man.
Guest:Well, really, it's Rush, Iron Maiden, and Metallica, because they all made huge impacts on me when I was a kid.
Marc:How about Iron Maiden?
Marc:He must have liked those covers.
Guest:Iron Maiden.
Guest:Oh, the kid?
Guest:I haven't played much of that.
Guest:He hears it like we have Sirius on when he's in the van, and so it'll come on, and Daddy will turn it up a little, and he can read.
Guest:He's reading now, so he'll read the whole thing and go, Daddy, there's Iron Maiden.
Guest:Eddie, right?
Guest:And I'm like, yeah, man, Eddie.
Marc:Yeah, man.
Marc:Is he playing an instrument?
Guest:He is.
Guest:He's playing the piano.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And then we got him a little Squire, and I'm going to get him an amp for Christmas because he's been plugging into my amp just recently and loves it.
Guest:He's got a band.
Guest:He calls himself Organic Submarine.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Interesting.
Guest:He made that up.
Guest:Not a metal name.
Guest:No, not at all.
Guest:but i just i just want my kid to be musical i mean that was really kind of important to me does he have a sense of it you feel like he absolutely yeah the piano teacher said he had a perfect pitch and uh my wife can sing and i can't wow it's all working out it's going good yeah who
Guest:When I'm home, those parts are awesome.
Marc:I hope to God at 14 he doesn't decide, like, I'm playing football.
Guest:Dude, yeah, there's so many things.
Guest:Or, yeah, it's not even football.
Guest:I don't hate sports.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But there's other things.
Guest:Like, I think if he said, Daddy, I like Sublime, I'd be like, fuck you.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Gotta move out early.
Marc:Yeah, stuff like that.
Guest:Give me back the guitar.
Guest:Yeah, or political things, too.
Guest:If you went a certain way, that might piss me off a little more than being a jock.
Guest:You know what I did to rebel?
Marc:You can negotiate that stuff away.
Guest:I rebelled against my mom in high school.
Guest:As soon as I was able to vote, I voted for Reagan that year.
Guest:why just because my mom was such a liberal and uh you know you feel about Sonoma I feel guilty I mean I'm telling you because I think it's funny yeah because it was kind of the high school dick of like and I was just total metal kid yeah trying to grow my hair yeah and I knew my mom would hate that I voted for Reagan so I fucking did did you tell her absolutely in her face like came home with the I voted sticker like yeah you voted for the dude you hate suck it
Marc:Now, have you told this story before?
Marc:Is this confession?
Guest:No, that's new.
Marc:All right, so this is a confession?
Guest:No one's ever heard that.
Guest:Yeah, pretty much.
Guest:And it's out.
Guest:You have that way of getting that out of people.
Guest:That's your big one.
Guest:That's a big one for me.
Guest:It is big.
Guest:But it was like rebelling against her because against a liberal mom.
Guest:I get it.
Guest:She worked for the state.
Guest:She hated Jerry Brown.
Guest:She hated, you know.
Guest:Real lefty.
Guest:Yeah, still is.
Guest:And you were mad at her.
Guest:I was.
Guest:All right.
Marc:Well, you okay with her now?
Guest:I love her.
Guest:Yeah, she's awesome.
Guest:She supports me.
Marc:So how do you want to make up for this mistake?
Marc:I think you're doing it already.
Marc:The kid sounds good.
Marc:You do good deeds in the world.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:I'll send in her, what do they call the ballots where you're not there?
Guest:Her absentee?
Guest:Yeah, I'll send that in for Trump.
Guest:Well, no, no, that would work.
Guest:That would make it worse.
Guest:It would make it worse.
Guest:How do I undo it?
Guest:Yeah, how do you undo it?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Maybe come clean to her this weekend when she's at my house.
Guest:Well, she knew that.
Guest:She does, but I mean, come tell her that I feel bad now.
Guest:She knows I didn't give a shit about Reagan.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But now I think a lot of people are like, well, it's kind of your fault, right?
Guest:Oh, yeah, that he got that second term.
Marc:That was that one vote.
Guest:It was a joke vote.
Marc:It was a fuck you vote.
Marc:Right.
Marc:All right, so you're a movie star now.
Marc:Is that what's happening?
Marc:No.
Marc:Oh, come on.
Marc:I'm trying to build it up.
Marc:Thanks, man.
Marc:You're the lead.
Guest:I am.
Guest:The lead guy in a Christmas movie.
Guest:In almost every single scene.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Holy shit.
Guest:So if you like that, if you like me, and you have an hour and a half of watching me.
Guest:It's called Uncle Nick.
Guest:Uncle Nick.
Guest:How was the experience for you?
Guest:How long did it take to shoot?
Guest:We banged it out in a couple weeks, shot it in Pasadena.
Guest:Two weeks?
Guest:Yeah, it was.
Guest:What was it?
Guest:Total indie.
Guest:Not much money.
Guest:That's like total, total indie.
Guest:Yeah, but we shot it in one house and kind of made it look like a couple different houses.
Guest:But the whole movie takes place in one night.
Guest:The whole story is, I'm Uncle Nick to this girl.
Guest:My brother is a total douche.
Guest:I hate him.
Guest:What type of douche?
Guest:Just pretty boy dick, just smug.
Guest:I took on the family business and worked my ass off landscaping.
Guest:And after my dad passed and my mom passed, I took over everything.
Guest:He didn't do anything.
Guest:He was a bartender.
Guest:I really looked down on him and hate him and have all this animosity.
Guest:And it was a lot of fun to play.
Yeah.
Guest:Because I don't have any siblings, but it was fun to have that.
Marc:But you have the animosity.
Guest:Oh, yeah, I can be a total dick.
Guest:So it was nice to channel that into somebody.
Guest:And so he marries Padgett Brewster, our friend, and hot lady, and she already has two kids.
Guest:She has a 16-year-old son and a 20-year-old daughter, a 19-year-old daughter.
Guest:And I get a crush on the daughter at the wedding.
Guest:And the whole time I'm thinking.
Guest:Your step niece.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So at Christmas, I'm going to make this shit happen.
Guest:I've been talking to her on Facebook.
Guest:It's super creepy.
Guest:It starts off where I don't know if I like this guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I love that.
Guest:Like reading that, that appealed to me more than anything.
Guest:That seems honest.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So without spoiling much, does it end happily?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It does.
Guest:It has a good ending, and it's earned, I feel.
Guest:And there's funny moments, and there's some shit where you find out what my character's gone through.
Guest:I have this kind of drunk rant at the table and kind of- Holy shit.
Guest:Some sadness about what my character went through, and it was one of the hardest things I've ever done.
Guest:To perform it?
Guest:Yeah, because I had to cry, and I had to-
Guest:bring up some dark stuff.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:It was a lot of fun, though.
Guest:Really acting.
Guest:I was, yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's fucking great, dude.
Guest:I did the whole thing.
Guest:I got a... How'd you get involved?
Guest:I got an acting coach.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So how'd you get involved with this movie?
Guest:Well, these guys...
Guest:Wrote it together.
Guest:This guy, Mike Dembski and Chris Kasich was going to direct it.
Guest:And they were producing it together.
Guest:It was Dembski's idea.
Guest:And Chris wanted to direct a movie.
Guest:And then really early on, they thought of me.
Guest:And then, you know, Jerry Duggan, my buddy, who I wrote Deadpool with for years.
Guest:You've seen him in the scene.
Guest:He's not a comedian, but he's been around.
Guest:Did he write?
Guest:Yeah, I know Jerry.
Guest:Yeah, he's a writer, right?
Guest:Yeah, he's more a writer.
Guest:Now he's writing Deadpool on his own.
Guest:He's a good friend of mine.
Guest:And he talked to them and said that he would produce it with them and try to get me to do it.
Guest:And just a total Poe saying, like, they sent me the script.
Guest:I didn't read it for a couple of weeks because I was just like, I don't know, you know.
Guest:And he's like, dude, and finally it took him just going, you asshole.
Guest:They wrote this with you and mine, man.
Guest:They really want you.
Marc:It doesn't happen that often.
Guest:Yeah, never.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And dude, do you think I didn't whine like every time one of my friends gets another movie, you know?
Marc:Here we go.
Guest:And I'm like, you know what I mean?
Marc:Patton's been handed another- I didn't say Patton.
Guest:You motherfucker.
Guest:But yeah, when Patton did Big Fan, you know, there was a little bit of like, I want a big fan.
Marc:Oh, sure.
Guest:Like, Oscar thoughts about Patton?
Guest:No!
Guest:And then this comes up.
Guest:It's on my computer for me to very easily read.
Guest:It took me weeks.
Guest:And it finally was Jerry going...
Marc:you know jerry knows how to talk to me he's like don't be a fucking asshole just read it if you don't like it read a couple pages it's weird back to me do this now it's weird that fundamental insecurity thing like you know because you want to do something like that but there's that your initial 10 years i've been waiting for it and then there's that initial instinct it's like that's probably not gonna i'm not gonna do it it's probably gonna suck and
Guest:Oh, yeah, and the whole time we were shooting it, I'm like, this is going to blow.
Guest:No joy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Posein, no joy.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Yeah, but it was a great experience.
Marc:It was, and I'm super proud of it.
Marc:It's nice.
Marc:The guy was in his first movie?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So everyone's learning.
Marc:It's a very collaborative film.
Guest:Yeah, for sure.
Marc:Improvising a bit.
Guest:And then we got to bring some funny people.
Guest:I was involved in the casting.
Guest:So I was the first person cast, and then he was like, who do you see as your sister?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we talked about that, and we talked about another friend of ours as my sister.
Guest:Didn't happen.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then Missy Pyle came up.
Guest:It was actually my wife going, what about Missy Pyle?
Guest:And I'm like,
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:That's perfect.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Tall.
Guest:She would be the attractive one in the family, obviously.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But the guy playing my brother already is more attractive.
Guest:Who's that guy?
Guest:I'm the black sheep.
Guest:This guy, Bo Ballinger, he's actually Chris's cousin.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:But don't let that deter you.
Guest:He did a good job.
Guest:He killed it.
Guest:Yeah, he did really good, and he played...
Guest:He's supposed to be.
Guest:I'm unlikable, but he winds up being the biggest douche in the movie.
Marc:Oh, man.
Guest:So, yeah, he did really well.
Marc:So you're like an unlikable underdog guy that wouldn't be likable in most contexts.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:But somehow compared to the situation.
Guest:This other guy.
Guest:And what happens.
Guest:You'll see.
Guest:I won't give away some stuff that he does.
Marc:Your moral struggle.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah, for the first time ever.
Guest:Not even in real life or movies have I had a moral struggle ever.
Guest:Finally.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Finally.
Guest:And then Scott Adsit, we had come in and play my sister's husband.
Guest:He's funny.
Guest:He's all right.
Guest:And he's terrible to be around.
Guest:I don't know if you know him.
Guest:He's such a dick.
Guest:No, he's the nicest guy in the world.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:But you told me that Earl Morris produced it, the documentarian.
Marc:He's an odd guy.
Guest:How did he get involved?
Guest:Because he knew Chris.
Guest:Chris had done some documentary work for him before.
Guest:And so they hooked up and Chris, he wanted to see it.
Guest:And it does have a through line of...
Guest:Are you a baseball guy at all?
Guest:No.
Guest:I didn't know it, but I guess, so it takes place in Cleveland.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I guess there's a famous Cleveland Indians game in the 70s or 60s, maybe, where it was 10-cent beer night.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And it turned into a crazy riot.
Guest:I think I know about this.
Guest:And so I tell, I narrate that story throughout, and it kind of intertwines with the story that I'm going through.
Marc:Sounds like an interesting movie.
Marc:It's cool, man.
Marc:Well, I'm proud of you, man.
Marc:I'm happy for you.
Guest:Thanks, buddy.
Marc:Yeah, let's talk about when does it open?
Marc:December what?
Guest:December 4th and 5th that weekend.
Guest:It's doing some midnight shows in some cities.
Marc:When does it drop on iTunes and everything else?
Marc:Netflix?
Guest:I think almost right after.
Guest:If not that same day, right after.
Guest:It's wild how it all happens at the same time.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Just see the fucking movie.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I would say seeing it in a theater.
Guest:I think it would be fun.
Guest:It's doing some midnight showings in some cities.
Marc:Does it have the potential to be like a Christmas cult movie?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:All right.
Guest:You know, I don't like anything I do.
Marc:All right.
Guest:It was a bad question for you to pretend like something was going on.
Guest:But I'm always the last guy to know.
Guest:Unless it's stuff like other people, stuff where I've been involved, I'm like, oh, this is awesome.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know, Mr. Show, Sarah Silverman, those things.
Marc:I'm over here.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:They're the main people.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Well, how'd that go?
Guest:I hope I don't make this suck.
Marc:How was Bob and David?
Marc:Have you seen them?
Marc:I just saw them the other day.
Marc:I posted a little thing with them the other day.
Marc:But it seemed like everyone had a good time.
Guest:We did, man.
Guest:We had a blast.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, fingers crossed.
Guest:I think it's, you know, I don't know how numbers work at Netflix and that kind of thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No one does.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Netflix doesn't know.
Marc:They know.
Guest:But hopefully they pick us up and then we go back after Bob finishes Better Call Saul again.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's out there doing that right now.
Guest:And then I want to do more because those are, you know, you know how I've talked to you about how I feel about both those guys.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They helped me out a lot.
Guest:I mean, I owe everything really to them because stand up and all that other stuff.
Guest:I was doing it before, but that put me in the stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they're good.
Guest:It's still my favorite job looking for those two dudes.
Marc:And was it good to see everybody?
Guest:It absolutely was.
Marc:And everyone's okay.
Guest:Yeah, man.
Guest:Well, there's none of them.
Guest:We're all grownups now.
Guest:I know.
Guest:There was a little bit of weirdness, but not like the old days.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:No pencils were thrown and no feet were stomped.
Guest:Was Dino there too?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:No shit.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:He has to be.
Marc:Oh, that's crazy.
Guest:Those guys love him and so do I. I got to watch those fucking things.
Marc:I got to watch your movie.
Marc:I got to watch it.
Marc:I got a lot of things to do.
Guest:I'm trying to remember if Dino got on camera.
Guest:I think he snuck on in one thing or two, but he's behind the scenes through the whole thing.
Guest:Like that guy, yeah.
Guest:He wrote a thing with Scott Atz at that, the cunt sketch.
Guest:Oh, it's good?
Guest:We'll just call it that?
Guest:You'll know what I mean.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Well, great, man.
Marc:Good luck with it, Brian.
Marc:Thanks, buddy.
Marc:Brian Posehn, I wish him the best this Christmas season.
Marc:I'm very excited that he got that part.
Marc:It sounds like it was fun.
Marc:He sounds great.
Marc:I love talking to him.
Marc:Now we've got another Brian.
Marc:This is the tale of two Bryans today.
Marc:Brian Kiley, as I said, we started together.
Marc:We genuinely, I mean, we were really doing open mics together.
Marc:And...
Marc:I look like I've aged.
Marc:He looks like he has not.
Marc:This is actually a great conversation.
Marc:I've always loved Brian a lot.
Marc:He's always been a stand-up dude and a great stand-up comic, and it was great to have him in here.
Marc:I'm full of the greats today.
Marc:I'm full of the greats today.
Marc:His new novel, The Astounding Misadventures of Rory Collins, you can get anywhere, wherever you get books.
Marc:But right now, we'll talk to novelist and Conan O'Brien writer and stand-up comedian Brian Kiley.
What the fuck?
Marc:Who's, like, what president biographies do you read?
Guest:Well, I love, like, LBJ and I love Nixon.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Partly because they're from my childhood, you know.
Guest:But also they're such characters like Truman and Ike and even JFK or whatever.
Guest:They're still kind of normal guys.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Those guys, you're like, well, no one would do that.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:They both do shit in totally different ways, but they both do things where you're like, no one acts like that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I just love the way they're such characters.
Marc:Who, LBJ and Nixon?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And they were on the opposite sides.
Marc:Opposite sides.
Marc:I guess that's right.
Marc:They were part of our team.
Marc:How old are you?
Marc:I'm 53.
Marc:I'm going to be 52.
Marc:Well, I'll be 54 in a month.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:So you're two years older than me.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But when we were kids, Nixon was everywhere.
Marc:Everywhere.
Marc:Cartoons.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:And I never found him... I think I was fascinated with him when I was a kid, but I think it was kind of a morbid fascination.
Marc:I don't remember finding him impressive.
Marc:Oh, no, no.
Marc:I'm not...
Guest:I'm not a fan, but I am fascinated by him.
Marc:I remember caricatures more than I remember the actual guy.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Marc:Like Mad Magazine and just seeing the pictures of him with the big nose.
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Tricky dick.
Marc:So I always, in my mind, even when I was a little kid, he's like, you know, this guy's kind of slimy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, there was a cartoon.
Guest:It was like a cartoon show called Wait Till Father Gets Home or something like that.
Guest:And the next door neighbor was Nixon.
Yeah.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And I remember seeing it as a kid and thinking, this is a really intellectual, smart show.
Guest:And then I saw it when I was in my 30s at the Museum of Television, and it was incredibly bad.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:The Museum of Television.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So when you lived in New York, you made that- I would go there.
Marc:Yeah, I went there frequently.
Marc:You did?
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:Because, well, that's the interesting thing.
Marc:You've been writing for Conan since almost the beginning, right?
Marc:Yeah, I started six months in.
Marc:So, 94?
Mm-hmm.
Marc:That's amazing.
Marc:Well, yeah.
Marc:It's 94, so that's 20.
Guest:March, the Ides of March in 1994.
Guest:So in 22 years almost?
Guest:Yeah, it'll be 22 years next March.
Guest:That you've been a Conan writer?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Mosley Monologue?
Mm-hmm.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I'll help out with the other stuff, but that's my main focus, yeah.
Guest:And the thing is, we started together, kind of.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:We really did.
Guest:I mean, we've known each other, whatever, almost 30 years or whatever.
Marc:That's crazy.
Guest:I know, I know.
Marc:It's not like we went out to dinner or anything, but we've known each other.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:And we were always friendly.
Marc:We did plenty of gigs together, yeah.
Marc:Of course we were friendly.
Guest:And softball and whatever, yeah.
Marc:Softball in Boston with the fellas.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:With, you know, waiting for Matt Graham to lose his shit.
Yeah.
Marc:When's Matt Graham gonna ruin the game?
Marc:Well, it's interesting, because you had a career.
Marc:I mean, we were both doing, I think I met you at open mics.
Marc:I must have been in college.
Marc:I think the first time I saw you was probably the first time I tried to do comedy, which was probably the summer of 1984, maybe.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Is that about when you started?
Guest:Yeah, I started a little bit before that.
Guest:And I remember one of your, I remember seeing you at Sam's.
Guest:That was it, the basement.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And you had this joke.
Guest:I don't know if you're going to remember it.
Guest:I probably will.
Guest:But it was a joke about, you were talking about the Flemish artists.
Guest:And you said, where is Flem?
Guest:Do you remember that?
Guest:No.
Guest:I remember, I always love jokes.
Guest:I love great jokes.
Marc:I don't know if I'm proud of this one.
Guest:I remember laughing at that.
Guest:And I remember thinking, oh, that's a great joke.
Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, you were always so... Aggravated?
Guest:You were so comfortable on stage, though.
Guest:I was so envious of that.
Guest:I was a nervous wreck, and you were always very relaxed on stage, from the very beginning.
Guest:I was faking it.
Guest:Well, you did a good job of faking it, though.
Marc:I think I was terrified, and when I get terrified, I actually relax in a weird way.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:When I get terrified, I get this paralysis and I'm like, ugh.
Guest:And I sort of surrender to it.
Guest:I was always so envious of that.
Guest:And I didn't know you were like that until you and I were driving to a gig one time in Rhode Island.
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:We were, right?
Guest:It was like a military thing or something.
Marc:Do you remember?
Marc:There was like...
Marc:Was it that one with the car in the middle of the room?
Marc:No, I did that one in Connecticut, I think.
Marc:There was one a couple hours out.
Guest:Yes, yes.
Guest:And there was another one where it was near a naval base or something, and they would come.
Guest:And I remember you were nervous.
Guest:And I was driving with you, and I remember being like, you're nervous?
Guest:I was always nervous, you know what I mean?
Guest:But I was always like, what are you worried about?
Guest:But I was probably opening for you.
Guest:Well, it was you, me, and Cybele.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Did he pass?
Guest:He did.
Guest:Recently, right?
Guest:I did like a month or two ago.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was great.
Guest:He was great.
Guest:What a character.
Guest:Unbelievable.
Guest:No one would believe that guy.
Marc:No, he's just always worked up and excited and happy.
Guest:He would run the marathon and then do a 45-minute set that night, like age 60.
Guest:He was unbelievable.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, he was such a madman.
Guest:He was.
Marc:Didn't he call himself that?
Marc:Like the madman of Revere?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Where the fuck was he from?
Marc:Yeah, he was from Lynn.
Marc:Lynn?
Marc:Lynn, maybe?
Marc:Where'd you grow up?
Marc:I grew up in Newton.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, so that's not as provincial or weirdly regional.
Marc:No, no.
Marc:You're not from like, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Because the further out you get, the accent gets a little difficult.
Guest:Well, mine's gotten a little better since I've left.
Marc:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When I hear it like old tapes, it's like, oh my God.
Marc:But like, which part?
Marc:The rich part?
Guest:No, I mean, it was, we were like a, we were a little bit over our heads in a sense.
Guest:You know, I think my dad got the house in like, when I was like three or four.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I think there were rich people near us.
Guest:Right, right.
Marc:You guys were just hanging on.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Hanging on to the illusion.
Marc:Yeah, absolutely.
Marc:How many kids were in the family?
Marc:Five.
Marc:So it was a big Irish Catholic kind of deal?
Marc:I'm in the middle of five.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But you got older brothers and sisters?
Marc:Like brothers or sisters?
Guest:I've got an older sister and a younger sister and an older brother and a younger brother.
Guest:So I've got the complete set.
Guest:And everybody gets along still?
Guest:Pretty much.
Guest:I mean, there's some weird baggage, but we can actually get together at a family event and everyone goes, oh, everyone's fine.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Everyone's okay?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Both folks still alive?
Guest:No.
Guest:My mom died when I was 22 and my dad died a couple of years ago.
Guest:Oh, sorry, man.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So it's got to be the siblings now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's all you got.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And do all of them live in the Boston area still?
Guest:Just my younger sister.
Guest:My older sister lives in San Diego.
Guest:My older brother lives in Fort Lauderdale and my younger brother lives in Phoenix.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Marc:Everyone's spread out.
Marc:But a couple of them are kind of close.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I always thought like when I when I used to see you, I my first thought was like, well, there's Kylie.
Marc:How the fuck is he in such good shape?
Marc:Like I like I just pictured that you you did comedy and then it was pretty much the gym.
Marc:That was probably that was how I pictured it.
Guest:Yeah, I did do a lot of the gym, especially in those days.
Marc:You're, like, fucking ripped all the time.
Guest:Oh, well, thanks.
Guest:It was like you and Brian Frazier.
Guest:What are those guys doing?
Guest:Well, I don't know what Frazier's deal with, but, you know, I went bald when I was 22, you know?
Guest:I was, like, this freak, you know?
Guest:So it's like I needed to do something, you know?
Guest:Had to compensate?
Guest:Oh, my God, absolutely.
Guest:It was like, you know, I'd gone and do my act and be like, this guy is 22, you know what I mean?
Guest:Like, you hear murmuring in the crowd, you know?
Guest:That's sad.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's a sad, bald guy.
Marc:I know.
Marc:He's big, though.
Marc:Be cool.
Marc:Don't fuck with him.
Marc:I wouldn't make any jokes.
Marc:But what did you do in high school?
Marc:Were you a jock in high school?
Guest:No, you know what?
Guest:Well, I mean, I was on the baseball team, but I barely played.
Guest:Baseball, right.
Guest:I barely played.
Marc:On purpose?
Marc:They didn't put you in?
Guest:No, they just didn't put me in.
Guest:It was like that kind of thing.
Guest:But you were a sports guy?
Guest:That was my obsession.
Guest:Yeah, I love sports.
Guest:Still?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And my heroes are sports guys and stuff like that.
Guest:Like who?
Guest:Like Bobby Orr and Yaz and like Boston guys like that.
Marc:Bobby Orr, the hockey player.
Marc:Yaz Strimski, the baseball player.
Marc:And those are the big ones when you were growing up?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Did you get to meet them?
Marc:I did get Yaz's autograph, but just like in a pile of kids kind of thing.
Guest:A pile of kids holding balls?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, that kind of thing.
Marc:Balls hanging out.
Marc:There's a ball, sign it, sign my ball.
Marc:It was one of those?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, what was it about that?
Marc:What was it about Yaz?
Marc:I don't know anything about that because I don't have that part of my soul.
Guest:Yeah, but I have to say, though, you were always a good softball player.
Guest:I remember being surprised.
Marc:Oh, right, yeah.
Marc:Let's see what the fucking druggie does.
Guest:Well, that's just it.
Guest:You were never the guy that you'd talk about the game when you'd go to the gig.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:But you could play, and I was like, oh.
Guest:And everyone saw it.
Guest:Like Anthony Clark was good, and I was like, oh.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Like there are players that you didn't think...
Marc:you know right you weren't expecting because they never talked about sports or whatever i think that i'm physically uh you know i have ability right i can do shit right and also we're talking comedian level do you know what i mean but there were a couple of you guys that was but you were the guy that would get up and just be like i'm not gonna get in front of that ball whatever that guy fucking hammers out here like you had a you were able to to like hit it properly like you get up there and hit a ball like no that's how a guy had really hits that guy
Guest:Well, those are fun days, though.
Marc:Didn't you have cleats?
Guest:I think you had cleats.
Guest:No, no, I didn't do that.
Guest:I didn't do that.
Guest:No, I didn't want to do that.
Guest:I projected that?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There were guys with cleats, but I was not one of the cleat guys.
Marc:Well, that's the funny thing about what people think about comedians in a lot of the comics I talk to.
Marc:I think the only time we really talk about sports on this show in terms of us doing it was...
Marc:Gary Shanling had a fairly famous basketball game that people would play, you know, the guys around here.
Marc:But always had this sort of air of kind of like, you got to play in the Shanling game.
Marc:Like, it was still a networking thing.
Marc:But back then, when we were in Boston, we'd all meet at that fucking field.
Marc:There'd be different levels of hangovers going on.
Marc:Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Marc:There'd be different levels.
Marc:You know, some people were smoking weed, but it was like, that was like 1989, maybe, 88.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:probably 88 89 and we'd all just go all this like all these gypsies and weirdos it was fun it was fun and it was interesting and there was even some sort of culture clash in the sense of like there were certain comics that they worked the nicks and they didn't work at catch but they could yeah you know what i mean so it was kind of like i know who they are yeah
Marc:Yeah, because I was one of these, for whatever reason, and you were as well, we could work both places.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And it was sort of surprising that I could.
Marc:When I really think back on the type of comedy I was doing at that time for the type of audience I was doing it for, I was like, I must have had some balls I never knew existed.
Right.
Marc:Because we'd go to those fucking one-nighters.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:And I'd be like, angry Jewish man.
Marc:And then they take it somehow.
Marc:I did all right.
Marc:But I could work at Knicks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I found if you had a joke that worked at Knicks, which was downtown, and then you had a joke that worked in Cambridge, which was very PC before there was PC.
Guest:Right.
Guest:To me, then you had something.
Marc:you know but you were always like uh like jokes yeah it wasn't like you're gonna be like you know let's talk for a second i know i wish i'm i i that's true i just said i would go have my little jokes and then i would go that's all i got but you were so diligent that you're such a joke writer which is completely different than the way i work right oh yeah absolutely and i don't think there's many guys that do it as specifically as you like you know you write jokes yeah yeah like and you do it for a living now
Marc:but uh in terms of like having doing monologue jokes but but back then like let's get back to softball let's see sure sure and try and remember the game i remember i hit dave crossing the eye with a ball once and that was a bad day and we weren't even playing yet oh yeah we were just warming up and you just threw it yeah we're just throwing it and he wasn't paying attention oh jeez but it was like it used to be like it was john innis oh yeah yeah
Marc:you uh anthony clark sometimes matt graham um dave cross sometimes bob wilson fred wilson yeah the wilson brothers simply fred yeah yeah bob's past yeah r.i.p um tony v sometimes maybe yeah but you went in let's see so so we're doing open mics in 84 85
Guest:Yeah, I graduated in college in 83.
Marc:With what kind of degree?
Guest:English.
Guest:And I started doing open mics in college.
Guest:What compelled you?
Guest:You know, I wanted to be a comedy writer as a kid, even.
Guest:Really?
Marc:That's interesting.
Marc:Not a stand-up, necessarily?
Guest:Well, I wanted to be a stand-up, but I thought there was no way to do it.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:People don't really become... It's funny, in those days...
Guest:You never heard about anybody who was a comedian.
Guest:There weren't any comedy clubs.
Guest:It wasn't that kind of thing when I was growing up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So as much as I thought about it, I thought, well, that's not practical.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I thought, but I did know, I knew shows had comedy writers, you know, I knew sitcoms had writers and stuff and I would watch the Dick Van Dyke show and I was like, oh, I'd like to do that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I started writing jokes when I was like 13 or 14.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I had like these little note cards and I would write my jokes and keep them in like a little like like a little recipe.
Marc:But like based on not watching stand up, but by watching by watching sitcoms primarily.
Marc:How did you know that people wrote jokes per se?
Marc:That's a good question.
Guest:I think... I guess I just knew comics did jokes, you know, and I would watch Rodney Dangerfield.
Guest:Oh, yeah, Rodney Dangerfield, right.
Guest:Yeah, you know.
Marc:That's sort of the school that you come from.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I would say that too.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, and I would listen... There was a show on... When I was a kid, there was a...
Guest:a show on from brookline mass this guy did it out of his house this guy kenny mayor did it out of his house and he would radio show a radio show and he would play comedy albums he'd play like the whole side of an album right and then he'd do his little commercials like he'd talk and head of his sponsors yeah and it would play half a bob newhart album or half a bill cosby album or whatever so that's where he
Guest:and i would like list you know i'd be and i was supposed to be in bed asleep and i'd have my radio and i would be listening to these comedy and it was once a week it was like sunday night or something and that was when you were like 11 or 12 or something i was probably like 15 or something then so that's where it went in yeah yeah i was i i love that stuff you know yeah yeah of course i mean it was so uh what it's such an amazing thing uh when we were able to laugh properly
Marc:Yeah, that's true.
Marc:Before we became all cynical and weird.
Marc:That's true.
Marc:And if it doesn't make us laugh, we have to go like, ah, good joke.
Marc:That's good.
Marc:Good tag.
Guest:That's true.
Marc:Good tag.
Guest:Oh, boy.
Guest:You know, my daughter gets so mad at me because I'll watch something with her and I never laugh.
Guest:I just think, oh, that's fine.
Guest:And she's laughing.
Guest:It's like, no, no, it's good.
Guest:It's good.
Marc:It's good.
Marc:You have to understand it's my job.
Marc:It's true.
Guest:It's like I just...
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So do you still have those note cards?
Marc:I don't.
Marc:I'm sure the jokes were terrible.
Marc:Really?
Marc:I imagine that they would be... I wonder how... You don't remember any of them?
Guest:Well, I do remember there was... I remember seeing... Actually, that guy, Kenny Mayer, had a column on the Boston Herald.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there was a joke about... This is in 1976, so I guess that was 15...
Guest:And I was turning 15.
Guest:I remember there was a joke that Rich Little did about Ronald Reagan being an actor and then Gerald Ford being a stuntman.
Guest:And I had written that same joke.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:And I remember him quoting this in the paper like, what a great joke.
Guest:And I remember thinking, hey, I wrote that as a 14-year-old kid.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:It made me feel like...
Guest:Hey, I can... I don't know.
Guest:It just made me feel like maybe I could do this or something.
Guest:So you really put stuff together like that.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It's a very specific... I remember when I did a pilot for Comedy Central and we were going to do a monologue and we had come up with this...
Marc:this wheel of topics that I was going to spontaneously write monologue jokes for because the structure of a monologue joke or a one-liner is you introduce one thing and then another thing and then you twist it.
Marc:You do a twist somehow, right?
Marc:Sure, sure.
Marc:Yeah, there's a lot of that, absolutely.
Guest:I mean, there's sort of different formulas, but that's definitely one.
Marc:Yeah, but we had all these different things on there and we'd spin it twice to get the two topics and we pre-wrote a bunch of them.
Marc:Sure, sure, of course.
Marc:But there is definitely a method of writing jokes that eludes me completely.
Marc:If my jokes have to happen, the beats have to come as I'm talking.
Marc:I can't write them down.
Guest:Yeah, but you know what?
Guest:You have that thing.
Guest:I mean, you did Conan, the old show, more than anyone, right?
Guest:It was like 35 times or something.
Marc:Yeah, I think I've done a total all in about 50-something, 52, 53.
Guest:That's amazing.
Guest:And you would go and you would have that...
Guest:And some of it was a conversation, but some of it was just the illusion of a conversation.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Because other people would do bits, and there'd be some great stand-ups that they would do panel, and all of a sudden they're talking about this TV commercial or something.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it was so contrived that it just didn't.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:It worked over there doing stand-up.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it didn't work on the couch.
Guest:Can't load it into conversation.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But you had that ability.
Guest:And my thing is...
Guest:They're just jokes.
Guest:I did 45 minutes.
Guest:I headlined this casino gig in Nevada just a couple weeks ago.
Guest:How was it?
Guest:It was pretty good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I did 135 jokes.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:That's a lot of jokes.
Guest:That's crazy.
Guest:crazy it is would you have a guy counting them uh no i just had to you know i had i had to go over all my stuff it's like in la you do so many short sets i'm like i don't even know what my 45 minutes is you know what i mean i had to write everything out and and it was that many jokes that's kind of fascinating because if you think about people that work in that style that must be what an hour set looks like yeah i mean in the and how to string those together sounds like a chore to me
Guest:Well, it is.
Guest:And it's hard to remember.
Guest:You know, if you're not doing it a lot, when I did my Comedy Central special half hour, you know, in 2006 or whatever, they have bullet points.
Guest:They've got the teleprompter.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I had 97 bullet points.
Guest:And they're like, that's a record.
Guest:I was like, well, I don't know what to tell you.
Guest:I wish I could have like three things, you know, just tell three stories and that's a half hour.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But you know, like all those jokes you've done on stage before.
Marc:I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:It's not like you still have to pace them out.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But you have a very set sort of tone in the way you do jokes.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:It's slightly detached.
Marc:I think if you didn't know you well at different points in your life, you'd think like, this guy seems a little crazy.
Marc:But not in a sort of like outward way.
Marc:Like there's something going on in there.
Marc:This large, well-built bald man with a kind of detached tone is sort of frightening.
Marc:There were times where I remember, I was like, I wonder what his personal life's like, that guy.
Guest:Well, yeah, my stuff can get darker than people realize or expect.
Marc:No, definitely.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:But to do 135, you said?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:At least I fall back.
Marc:When I look at a chunk of mine, it's like 12 minutes.
Marc:It's sort of a conversation that makes sense and leads into the next thing.
Marc:Sure, of course.
Marc:I can't imagine trying to fucking line up 135 clean jokes at that.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You're pretty clean.
Guest:I try to be TV clean.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Who were the guys when we were starting out up there that you liked working with and looked up to?
Guest:Well, what happened was I went to Boston College, and I'm a sophomore at college, and they had a comedy show at my school.
Guest:And the first two guys I didn't really care for, but Crimmins went on.
Guest:And I thought, this guy's hilarious.
Guest:Great jokes.
Guest:And I went, and he just had great jokes.
Guest:And he was just doing stand-up then.
Guest:I mean, he wasn't political at all, and he was just doing regular stand-up, but really, really funny.
Guest:Early on, yeah.
Guest:And I went up to him and I was like, oh, you know, I want to be a comedy writer.
Guest:I wrote the show.
Guest:You know, I still had my jokes.
Guest:I mean, I didn't have them with me, but I still had them at home, you know.
Guest:You've been writing since 15?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I had all these jokes and he was running the ding-ho.
Guest:So he invited me to his club and I met with him.
Guest:I brought like 50 jokes that I typed up.
Marc:That's for the end of the ding-ho, no?
Marc:About...
Guest:Yeah, this was probably like 81 or 82.
Marc:Oh, so it was going strong.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So he kind of critiqued my jokes or whatever, and he's like, well, you can't really make money in Boston writing.
Guest:You have to perform.
Guest:And I was like, oh, I could never do it.
Guest:It was too scary for me.
Guest:So he's like, well, whenever you want to come to the Ding Ho.
Guest:So I would go to the Ding Ho like once a month.
Guest:He would let me in for free, and I would just sit at the bar.
Guest:And you were underage.
Guest:I was underage, yeah.
Guest:And I would sit at the bar and watch the comic, and I had to take like two-
Guest:Two subways and a bus.
Guest:Like Inman Square was like- From Newton?
Guest:From Newton.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was just, you know, I had to take the green line to the red line and then I had to take a bus to get to Inman Square.
Guest:To Somerville, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, but I would go to the shows a lot.
Guest:And then I took a summer school class taught by Dennis Leary.
Guest:Really?
Marc:And it was- Long-haired Dennis Leary when he had the braid-
Guest:He didn't have the brain, but he, yeah, he was, and it was, it was, you know, coming from Boston College, we, you know, some of your teachers are Jesuits, you know, and then you come here and like the, like someone would smoke pot in class or whatever, you know, I was like, what the, you know what I mean?
Guest:Like it was just such a, like.
Marc:Where was he teaching that?
Marc:At the adult education?
Marc:At Emerson at the summer school thing.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So.
Marc:So you took a summer class in comedy writing?
Guest:It was comedy writing and they had us do standup.
Guest:In the class.
Guest:In the class.
Guest:And so I do the show.
Guest:And then they were kind of like, oh, well, you should keep doing this or whatever.
Marc:Because you did it in class.
Guest:Because I did it in class.
Marc:What was that like for you?
Marc:Was it a small class?
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Wasn't that scary?
Guest:There's like six people.
Guest:But the last class, we could bring people in or whatever.
Guest:So there was like, that probably were 20 people or something.
Guest:Was it nerve wracking?
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But it was exciting.
Guest:And then they were like, oh, you should continue with this or whatever.
Guest:So I went to the Ding Ho the next week.
Guest:And I signed up for the open mic.
Guest:And Crimmins was the host.
Guest:so i so i did that and it went great and crims gave me a great intro and all give me a good spot and all that stuff and then the next week i went back it was lenny and i'm on at one it was just horrible just like totally tanked it and it was you know when he's like good try you know and i had some friends that came to the first one they're like holy shit that was amazing yeah and they came the next week like oh fuck this is the real reality yeah absolutely you know
Guest:So that was the beginning.
Guest:That was the beginning.
Guest:The up and down.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You got both.
Guest:But you were hooked, I guess.
Guest:I was, yeah.
Guest:I mean, I really, yeah.
Marc:It was so exciting.
Marc:Back then, I was so filled with dread.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:About going on, because you wouldn't be able to go on every week.
Marc:And sometimes you'd wait weeks to do your five minutes or whatever.
Marc:And by the time, you just spend all that time going, oh, God.
Marc:I got to do it.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And then there was that one night where I just sat there all night, and he forgot to put me on because he got shit-faced.
Marc:And I was sort of like, I had to say something, but I was secretly relieved in a way.
Guest:Oh, Lenny one time, the same thing happened to me.
Guest:He forgot to put me on.
Guest:The show went.
Guest:And I was so like, oh, thank God.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Even though I'm here, I totally felt that.
Guest:But I remember he came up to me at the end.
Marc:That's a weird thing, though.
Marc:Go ahead.
Marc:Oh, it's totally weird.
Guest:Well, he came up to me at the end.
Guest:He said, listen.
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:You know what it was?
Guest:I went back the next week.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the list was full.
Guest:For some reason, they had capped it at certain people.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So he goes, why aren't you on the list?
Guest:And I said, well, they said it was full.
Guest:Fuck it.
Guest:You got fucked last week.
Guest:I'll put you on.
Guest:You do your five fucking minutes.
Guest:You get the fuck out of here.
Guest:And whatever.
Guest:He just said this.
Guest:Whatever.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So the next morning.
Guest:It's nice to hear you cuss, Brian.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, it's just funny.
Guest:He just said this like that.
Guest:So the next morning- And you get out of here like he had to add that part.
Guest:And get the fuck out of here.
Guest:Get the fuck out of here.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So the next morning, my friend calls me, and I didn't realize that my mother had picked up the other end.
Guest:And he's like, well, what happened?
Guest:He goes, why?
Guest:And I just told him exactly what Lenny said.
Guest:He said, fuck it.
Guest:You got fucked last week.
Guest:Get the fuck out.
Guest:That's how Lenny talked.
Guest:So my mother's overhearing all this or whatever.
Guest:So my friend, she's like, what?
Guest:She comes to me.
Guest:What is this shit and funk out of you?
Guest:Like she couldn't say fuck.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:But she was like appalled.
Guest:I was like, I was quoting this other guy.
Marc:Wow, so you grew up in a house that was really kind of like.
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:No cussing.
Marc:Oh, you didn't hear.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Neither one of them, huh?
Guest:No, I mean, my dad would.
Marc:driving once in a while but right but you never heard fox like right oh yeah fox are rare yeah in that in your household yeah yeah mine too i guess but that's it's a funny thing though that that we choose to do this thing that in and at the beginning like there's there's there's no excitement about it it's just a compulsion that needs to be that needs to be honored because like the idea that like the bigger relief would be like
Marc:I didn't get on.
Marc:I know.
Marc:And you're pissed about it.
Marc:You have to act pissed about it because you are.
Marc:And party's pissed, but also you're so relieved.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But it's kind of weird, right?
Guest:Sure.
Marc:We think like, God damn it, I was so ready.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:I'm going to do it.
Marc:But no, that's not it.
Marc:You're like, oh God, I hope the guy before me doesn't kill too hard.
Guest:Oh, all that stuff.
Guest:And I remember Lenny had this show on Wednesday nights.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And on Tuesday at noon, I would get a knot in my stomach for like a day and a half.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I remember one time, I'm in school, and it had been a Monday holiday.
Guest:So I'm in school, I'm having lunch, and I get the knot in my stomach.
Guest:And I thought, today's Monday.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then it's like, oh, no, no, it is too... Like my body knew to have the knot.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Even though I was like off a day, you know?
Marc:That's crazy.
Marc:And then did we do...
Marc:What was your big break that finally got you working?
Marc:Did you do the riot?
Marc:Were you in the riots with me?
Marc:No, you know what?
Marc:I didn't do the riot.
Guest:I think I just missed it or I wasn't around when the first one happened or something.
Marc:Who gave you the first gig?
Marc:Was it Barry, Mike, or The Connection?
Guest:There was this guy... Or Nick's.
Guest:There was this guy in... Somebody saw me at the Ding Ho.
Guest:We had a show and it was called Sydney's on Green Street in Jamaica Plain.
Guest:And it was this little dive and this guy did it.
Guest:And it was almost like old-fashioned show business.
Guest:Like he had a couple of guys in the band behind him.
Guest:And there's this club in JP with this probably 10 people there.
Guest:And he would go up and the only joke I remember, he would say to one guy, make sure you're up here with him because otherwise he's playing by himself.
Guest:That was his joke.
Guest:And he must have said it three times, three or four times.
Guest:And it didn't really work any of the times.
Guest:But it's like, I remember thinking, you know, you really shouldn't do the same joke in the same set like four times.
Guest:But he was supposed to give me 10 bucks and he gave me 15.
Guest:Like he was just trying to be this like nice older guy or whatever.
Guest:So that was my first real paid gig.
Guest:But then the ding-ho, they'd have me come in on a Saturday and just do five.
Guest:And they'd give me $10 or $20.
Marc:What was the structure of the show on Saturday?
Marc:Was it four guys or three guys?
Guest:Yeah, it would be like four guys.
Guest:And those guys would all be doing 25 minutes.
Guest:And they'd have like a five-minute guest break for me.
Guest:And I remember, maybe it was three guys, but I remember...
Guest:My first one, I come in, I'm in the... They were doing shows in both rooms on Saturdays.
Marc:And the acts were probably Barry and Lenny and who was around?
Marc:And Kevin Meaney was around and Rodgers.
Marc:And... Was Stephen Wright around?
Marc:DJ Hazard.
Guest:Yeah, Stephen, I think he had kind of popped already.
Marc:By then.
Marc:But that was back when DJ Hazard was just DJ Hennard.
Marc:Yes, that's true.
Marc:And he had not become the pirate character.
Guest:That's true.
Marc:He would occasionally wear dark sunglasses on stage.
Marc:He had no facial hair.
Guest:No, you saw people develop their personas.
Marc:Yeah, and he played guitar through most of it.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:He would do stand-up, but then he would crush.
Marc:Big influence on Louis.
Marc:Actually.
Guest:Seriously.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I think Ron Lynch and DJ, you know, I think Louie had copped to that.
Guest:Oh, that's interesting.
Marc:You can definitely see Ron Lynch and Louie.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Early Louie.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like if you really think about early Louie when it was just, you know, sound effects and weirdness.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:I mean, yeah, I could see that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I wouldn't, that's,
Marc:Well, no, I think what he got from DJ was that largeness for no reason.
Guest:Yes, that's true.
Guest:I wouldn't have put that together.
Guest:That's so interesting.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I remember my first ding-ho, do my five minutes.
Guest:I do my five minutes, it goes fine, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:I'm in the back and I'm standing next to Bob Batchel door.
Marc:Bob Batch.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:He was a great guy.
Guest:So I'm standing next to him.
Guest:He had.
Guest:He used to close with the signs.
Guest:He closed with the signs, which would kill.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So he comes from, he drove up from Kentucky.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He had been up all night or wherever.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's going to go on next.
Guest:He has an epileptic seizure.
Marc:No.
Guest:Right next to me.
Guest:collapsing and and you know he's been up all night because up on and he had that so i called you know they come and they get the ambulance and they put him on the so they're like well you've got to go on in the next room and you've got to do 20 because he's not on the show clearly not happening and i don't have 20 and i'm also just totally freaked out that this guy just had this you know i mean like i almost caught him when he felt like it was like that kind of thing like he's staying next to me and collapsed
Guest:they're like all right go next there yeah so i went on and did i did 15 years i have no recollection of what i i must have just been like in shock that's the baptism yes that was it what was your what's your batch story i've told it before okay he would just uh what he did he snap yeah yeah yeah he was such a great guy too but he would snap but he had this killer bit with the signs
Marc:Well, that was the funny thing.
Marc:It was just the whole thrust of the story was that... Yeah, we drove to that gig, that one that was way down in like New Britain or somewhere, that one that was near another naval base in Connecticut.
Marc:It was like a Barry one-nighter, I think.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Like half a car in it.
Marc:I did that with Cross, yeah.
Marc:Oh, right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, you know, in the whole way down, he's like, I don't know how to fucking get on Letterman.
Marc:You know, like, why does everyone get... You know, how do I... You know, like, just a pure bitter...
Marc:So I go do my 25 is right when I was starting out.
Marc:And it was about all I had.
Marc:25, 30.
Marc:I did everything I had.
Marc:And I go to the bathroom and I come out and batches on stage, basically yelling at the audience, the same thing he was saying in the car.
Marc:You don't think I want to be on Letterman?
Marc:You know, like, and it was bad.
Marc:You know, it was just like, and he's 10 minutes in, it's a nightmare.
Marc:And there's nine people in the place.
Marc:And, you know, in my recollection, there was someone in a wheelchair and he's yelling and
Marc:And I never done this again, but I literally, because the audience was so small, I said, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, let's just take a breather.
Marc:It was like I was a referee.
Marc:Sure, sure.
Marc:And I'm like, let's just chill out.
Marc:And then Bob does, and everything calms down.
Marc:He's like, what am I going to do now?
Marc:And I'm like, do the signs.
Marc:Do the signs.
Marc:And the signs would kill.
Marc:They would kill.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:There was a few guys that snapped.
Marc:You don't see it anymore.
Marc:It doesn't really happen anymore.
Marc:But it was something we all knew about.
Marc:Because it's not in the vernacular anymore.
Marc:Because people, they don't really... I don't know if it's because there were so many comics and there was more professionalism.
Marc:But seeing people snap when we were coming up... Oh, sure.
Marc:It happened.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And it was a beautiful, amazing thing.
Guest:It was suddenly...
Guest:the show is ruined.
Guest:Like the show is just ruined, you know?
Guest:And there's always that thing of people that- Jay Charbonneau.
Marc:Oh, for sure.
Marc:First top-rate snapper.
Guest:And it is that thing.
Guest:I always picture people who would, they've been hearing a lot about stand-up comedy, and there's comedy clubs opening, and they haven't been, and they go to their first show, and they just see someone who can just lose their shit, and yeah.
Guest:It was so amazing.
Marc:I'm trying to think of something.
Marc:Like Barry would do it a lot.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But he always, it seemed like he had a reason.
Guest:He could snap, though, and get them back.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Which was miraculous.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:He was one of the few people.
Guest:Most people, once they snap, that's it.
Guest:Yeah, it's over.
Guest:But he could somehow, not always, but he could often win them back, which was incredible.
Marc:And how does, because Smigel's the original head writer.
Marc:And how do you get that job on the first year of Conan?
Guest:I always wanted to do Johnny Carson, so that was my whole thing.
Guest:Did you get on Carson?
Guest:No.
Guest:I got on Leno like a year after Carson left.
Guest:So I did Leno twice, and I guess Conan saw me on one of those.
Guest:Actually, well, I'll tell you that.
Guest:So then Louie's working at Conan, and Tom Agnes is working at Conan, and Chuck Sklar is working at Conan.
Guest:Boston guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So somebody gets canned, so they need somebody else to write his monologue.
Guest:So I just send in stuff.
Guest:And at the time, I used to do a lot of topical stuff, actually, because especially if you're going to do 45 minutes, I would write jokes about the Olympics or the presidential election or whatever was going on.
Guest:Right.
Guest:you had the joke i had the joke so i just typed up like 50 jokes for my act and sent them in and they were like yeah okay you start tomorrow or whatever right yeah and the weird thing is when i was a kid you know i grew up in newton and i went to this sunday school that was at this convent yeah in brookline yeah i was in conan's brother's class
Guest:you knew him yeah you remember him and conan was in my brother's class uh-huh so and then my brother ended up going to harvard with conan so they're both in the same year so i'm going to ding-ho on wednesdays yeah in cambridge and my brother's at harvard and i would go and have dinner with him and then i would go do the show at the ding-ho and that was like my every wednesday and was he friends with conan
Guest:No, they knew each other.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And Conan was writing for the Harvard Lampoon.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he would sometimes go, oh, remember that guy, Conan?
Guest:And he would give me the Harvard Lampoons, and I'd read humor things that Conan had in this thing.
Guest:So I kind of was aware of him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But was he that aware of you?
Guest:Oh, no, no.
Guest:I mean, he knew who I was.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he knew your brother.
Guest:Yeah, and he knew my brothers.
Guest:But he barely knew.
Guest:And I would have walked past him on the street.
Guest:I wouldn't have known what he looked like or anything like that.
Guest:But I kind of...
Guest:When you know somebody growing up, but then you see their name on SNL or you see their name on Simpsons, it's kind of like they're in the major leagues.
Guest:You kind of know who they are.
Marc:And also, does it seem more possible for you?
Marc:Or at that time, had you given up on your TV writing dream and you just saw yourself as stuck in stand-up?
Guest:Well, I did see... I would still write like a spec script, like a Cheers episode or something like that.
Guest:Oh, you did that?
Guest:I would try to do that kind of thing.
Marc:And did you send them out or did you have representation?
Guest:No, I had nothing.
Guest:And they went nowhere.
Guest:And I'm sure they were bad.
Marc:It's a hard, weird feeling that... Because I didn't really have those aspirations when I was doing stand-up.
Marc:I just wanted to be a stand-up.
Marc:But I have to assume that after...
Marc:what, like six, seven years in the business, and you're doing all those stand-up gigs, to have that moment where you're like, I guess this is it.
Marc:Right, sure.
Guest:You know, it's funny, I sort of naively thought things would work out.
Guest:When I look back now, you know, when I was, you know, I got married at 30,
Guest:And my in-laws were totally cool with it or whatever.
Guest:You're just a stand-up.
Guest:I'm just a stand-up.
Guest:What'd she do, your wife?
Guest:She does computer consulting.
Guest:And so she's got a good job and she was working for Pricewaterhouse at the time and she was making a good living.
Guest:And I had my little meager income.
Guest:Going out and working in nightclubs.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:And just to think that it's like, really, I got married and I had this, I was, I don't know where I had the- She must have had a vote of confidence.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yeah, absolutely.
Marc:And you guys stay together.
Guest:And I think now it's like, what were you thinking?
Marc:You know?
Marc:And what were your parents thinking?
Marc:Have you ever asked them?
Marc:Why were your parents okay with that?
Marc:Well, they just want their kid to be happy on some level.
Marc:I guess so, yeah.
Marc:But did you ever ask her that?
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:She's like, oh, they are.
Guest:Like, she's like, yeah, my parents always thought you were great.
Guest:And where I thought...
Guest:If it had been the other way around, like if my sister brought a comic home and whatever was getting married, my parents would be like, what?
Guest:I don't think they'd be on board.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But you're a good guy.
Guest:Solid.
Guest:I guess that, you know, I don't know.
Guest:I don't know what to tell you.
Marc:So you get the gig.
Marc:Now, this is the thing that always fascinated me is that.
Marc:I remember because I was doing the show by then a couple times a year, and I saw you.
Marc:I was happy to see you.
Marc:I'm always happy to see you over there.
Marc:And then, like, you lived with Todd Berry.
Guest:I did, yeah.
Marc:For what, in my mind, was a decade.
Marc:It seemed like a decade.
Marc:Well, you know, this is what happened.
Marc:But you were never there.
Marc:You go to Todd's house, Brian's in that room, down this hallway.
Marc:It's like, is he ever here?
Marc:But it was always sort of impressive to me, and I always wanted to ask you, did you not think it was going to work out?
Marc:Because by then you had a kid, right?
Marc:Well, yeah, what happened, here's the thing.
Guest:They start the show, and the show was very shaky.
Guest:And people don't remember how it just seemed like it was going to be this temporary thing.
Guest:And I get this job, and I said to my wife, well, I'll go do this for 13 weeks.
Guest:You own a house up there?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we had a house in Newton, in Auburndale.
Guest:We had a little starter home.
Guest:And it was like, well, I'll go do this for 13 weeks, put a little money aside, and then maybe save a little bit of money or whatever.
Guest:Did you have kids at that time?
Guest:No.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:So, and every day you'd be reading the paper about who's going to replace Conan.
Guest:You know, I mean, literally you'd be reading the New York Post, the Daily News, like, well, Conan's gone off, of course, because it's like, who's going to replace him?
Guest:And it was like, oh, shit.
Guest:And one time where I'm in the office with Agnes,
Guest:Our accountant comes in.
Guest:She's like, okay, you guys have two computers, a TV.
Guest:He's like, oh, they take an inventory.
Guest:We must be going off the air.
Guest:They had to call a meeting of the show and go, no, they take inventory once a year.
Guest:We're not going off the air.
Guest:That's how shaky it was.
Guest:And I only had 13-week contracts at a time.
Guest:Every 13 weeks...
Guest:You'd have to wait and get the thing in the mail like, okay, you've been picked up.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So you didn't know if you're going to be canned or whatever.
Guest:And my wife had this great job, but she was making twice as much as me.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So people are like, well, you should move to New York.
Guest:It's like, well, not really.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So it's more like I should stay home.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it went on too long, going back and forth.
Guest:But they also... What would you do?
Guest:You'd come down on a Monday morning?
Guest:I would come... Well, in the beginning, I'd come down on a Monday morning.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'd take the Delta shuttle, and then I'd come back on a Friday night.
Guest:And in those days, you could just get on the plane at 625 and get there at 625 and get on the 630 plane.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But then when I had a kid...
Guest:They let me work from home like two days a week.
Guest:Oh, really?
Marc:One or two days a week, yeah.
Marc:So like you could stay like Friday through Tuesday?
Guest:Yeah, I would show up Tuesday morning and then I would go home Thursday night.
Guest:And so it was, you know, depending.
Guest:And also we got like 10 weeks off.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then I was just home with my kid, you know.
Guest:You have two now?
Guest:I have two, yeah.
Guest:So it kind of went up.
Guest:But for a while I was living with Todd, which was kind of hilarious.
Marc:Yeah, I can't imagine that.
Guest:Well-
Guest:How did that happen?
Guest:I think maybe through Kozlowski.
Guest:I don't remember.
Marc:Somebody said, you know, Todd needs a roommate or something.
Marc:I remember his first roommate actually vaguely.
Marc:They knew each other from Florida, I think.
Marc:And then he had that room down that weird.
Marc:It was not a great apartment.
Marc:No, no.
Marc:But he had this little hallway and there's this room there.
Marc:It's like a bunk bed in there or something.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Platform bed.
Guest:It was.
Guest:And it was like up on this raised thing.
Guest:You had to kind of crouch under it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And like you couldn't, you know, you had to lie flat.
Guest:Like you'd bump your head.
Guest:You couldn't sit up.
Guest:You couldn't sit up.
Guest:You couldn't sit up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, but I was there like three nights a week or four nights a week.
Guest:And he was out till like 2 a.m.
Guest:over.
Guest:Yeah, oh yeah, yeah.
Guest:So I'd come in, I'd do a set, but I'd only do an early show.
Guest:And then I'd be in, because I had to, one thing I learned was, if I got in at 1 a.m., got a shitty night's sleep, and I didn't get jokes on the next day, it's like, what am I doing?
Guest:Because I'm doing a set in front of eight people and whatever.
Guest:Right, that Boston comedy club?
Guest:Yeah, that kind of thing, exactly.
Guest:So I was like, all right, let me be in by, go to bed at 11, do whatever.
Guest:So I didn't see him that much.
Guest:But I didn't have anything.
Guest:I just had like this mattress on the raised thing.
Guest:And how many years did you do that?
Guest:Well, I did that.
Guest:I guess I did that for a year or two.
Guest:That was it?
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:Then I roomed somebody else for a while.
Guest:Another comic?
Guest:It was a woman who did improv.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:And I didn't see her either.
Guest:I mean, she was out doing it.
Guest:But I remember with Todd's plays, I had nothing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And at night I would go in the bathroom and I would, that was the only place I had the light.
Guest:So I put the toilet seat down and I would just sit on top and I had the light from, you know what I mean?
Guest:And I would just sit there.
Guest:And it's the kind of thing I still do that.
Guest:Like when my kids would go to a hotel and my kids and my wife, they'd go to bed at nine o'clock.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I can't watch TV or whatever.
Guest:I just go in the bathroom, put the toilet, sit down and read.
Guest:You know, I've done that like a hundred times.
Guest:So I would do that in Todd's room.
Guest:So once in a while, he'd come home and he'd knock on the door and I'd have to, I'm like, oh, sorry, because he needed to use the bathroom and I'm in there reading.
Guest:So finally my wife came and she's like, why don't you just get a lamp and she just got me a lamp and a chair.
Guest:It's like,
Marc:here you can sit in your room that's so funny is comics just like these basic things are like oh yeah yeah i i'm so just go buy a lamp get something for myself like i'm kind of like oh fuck it i'm fine right because you came over here and you're like it's a nice house because some comics i don't know man they just live in these hovels it's true though yeah like i don't if it weren't for women in my life i'd be living out of milk crates on a futon oh
Guest:You know, all my clothes, everything, it's like.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now with the clothes, I wouldn't have clothes if I didn't have a TV show.
Marc:Like I just, the wardrobe's sort of like, you want these shirts?
Marc:I'm like, yeah.
Marc:I have four shirts.
Marc:I'm glad you got my style so nailed.
Marc:I know.
Marc:It's kind of crazy.
Marc:It's true.
Marc:These books, I've been carting around forever.
Guest:Well, that's, and that's the thing.
Guest:That's what she gets mad at.
Guest:It's like, you know, I have all these books and it's like, you know, the Kindle, it's like, it's like $15 for a Kurt Vonnegut book that I can get for a buck at a used bookstore.
Guest:Why would I, you know what I mean?
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:So it's like, I love having that kind of stuff.
Marc:I've got books on, yeah.
Marc:I don't do the Kindle either, but I've done it on planes now.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Because I travel a lot.
Marc:And I used to travel with two or three books.
Marc:I wouldn't even read.
Marc:But I'm like, I'm going to get to this on the plane.
Guest:I would do that all the time.
Guest:And every once in a while, there's like a long layover.
Guest:Good thing I brought these three books.
Guest:But most of the time, it's like, I don't have time to get to all this.
Marc:No, you're just traveling with books.
Marc:And they're heavy.
Guest:They're heavy.
Guest:I know.
Marc:So you had no experience in doing what you got this job to do.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:And what was the learning curve, really?
Marc:I mean, is it just sort of like, here are the sit and write jokes.
Marc:Do you know the guy?
Guest:Well, you know what?
Guest:I was fortunate in a couple of things in the sense that...
Guest:It didn't take me long.
Guest:I got his voice almost right away, only because we had similar sensibilities.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He's from this big Irish Catholic family.
Guest:I'm from this big Irish Catholic family.
Guest:And we did the MapQuest one time, and it was exactly four miles from his house to my house.
Guest:But there was just in terms of sometimes somebody would write a joke that's just too dirty.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I'd be like, oh, I...
Guest:And I'd feel uncomfortable delivering it, you know?
Guest:And he'd be like, yeah, I can't do that.
Guest:It's too graphic or whatever.
Marc:Because you would have to tell him all the jokes?
Marc:You were the head monologue guy, basically?
Guest:Well, no, not at that time.
Guest:We would just give him the jokes.
Guest:And sometimes somebody would push for one that's like... That...
Guest:I could tell he felt uncomfortable.
Guest:I didn't write jokes like that.
Guest:I kind of wrote jokes that were in his wheelhouse for the most part.
Guest:The only thing I had to do was there would be like a wordplay joke that I would think is a clever joke and he hated that.
Guest:I had to learn like, oh,
Marc:He doesn't like wordplay.
Guest:He doesn't like that wordplay.
Guest:And I stopped doing it for my act just because I got so used to not doing that.
Guest:But that was something that I liked at the time and thought, okay, well, this is clever or whatever.
Guest:It's like, no, it's corny.
Guest:It's like, oh, okay.
Guest:Noted.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I was able to kind of write for him pretty quickly, I think.
Marc:I used to love when I'd co-do the show because I'd be usually like the second guest.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:But it'd be funny, like all you monologue guys would hover around the monitor to see if your jokes worked.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Well, that's just it.
Guest:There were times where it tanked.
Guest:And I remember one time, you know, the monologue just tanked at one night.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So the next day he comes to my office and he's like, how do you feel when you send me out there with that shit?
Guest:Ha, ha, ha.
Guest:And I said to him, I said, you know, in the movie Rear Window, you know, Jimmy Stewart's got the two broken legs and he's looking out the window and he thinks that Raymond Burr has killed his wife.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he sends his girlfriend, Grace Kelly, into his apartment to look around and Raymond Burr comes home.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he's watching, helpless.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Raymond Burr starts manhandling her.
Guest:And I was like, that's how I feel.
Guest:When the monologue is going, you know, you're just helplessly watching him.
Guest:Did he laugh?
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:but you're just like, oh no, he's going down.
Guest:And now, I mean, he's gotten, he's gotten where he's able to learn to deal with it.
Marc:He can save himself.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But at the, you know, but most days he, it was, you were so terrified at the beginning.
Marc:Oh yeah.
Guest:It was, can you imagine doing your, you, you have never done standup before and it's on national television.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like my, you know, if my open mics were on TV or whatever, it's like, Oh yeah, no, I definitely felt for him.
Marc:Oh God.
Marc:You know, and were you a big Carson fan?
Marc:You weren't?
Marc:i was yeah yeah he was great he was great he was great yeah i it's so funny to see who learned from him and who didn't necessarily you know like when you would go to the museum of broadcasting because back when you had to do that you get like these four-hour blocks sure where you'd have to you know and you have to sign up for something they had to go find it somewhere yeah yeah and they'd assign you a little cubicle and you'd have to wait i loved it what'd you go watch
Guest:I would watch the Jack Parr show.
Guest:I would watch Woody Allen doing stand-up on TV.
Guest:That's exactly what I watched.
Guest:Richard Pryor.
Marc:There was some part about the Jack... Jack Parr had this reputation as the guy.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Marc:Who would just sort of shoot the shit.
Marc:Was it the Tonight Show that he hosted or was it another show?
Marc:The Jack Parr show, I think.
Guest:Right, but I think it was the- It was the Tonight Show.
Guest:I think so, yeah.
Marc:I don't know what the- But I remember going to watch Jack Parry.
Marc:I remember going to- I watched Woody Allen's NBC variety show.
Marc:Oh, I didn't see that.
Marc:I would have liked to see that.
Marc:With Billy Graham on there.
Marc:Oh, I didn't know about that.
Guest:I would have seen that.
Marc:Yeah, he had Billy Graham out.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Marc:Oh, you watched the Richard Pryor show?
Guest:Well, I watched Richard Pryor do stand-up on Jack Parr or something.
Guest:And I would watch Woody Allen do stand-up on Jack Parr.
Guest:Just to see them come out and do their sets as sort of unknown comics was fascinating.
Guest:And I'd see Bob Newhart, guys like that doing... Mostly stand-up then.
Marc:Did you watch... I'm sorry, go ahead.
Marc:No, no, no.
Marc:I used to watch Jonathan Winters on Jack Parr.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Unbelievable.
Guest:Unbelievable.
Marc:It's too much, man.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Unbelievable.
Guest:And even watching Jack Parris' monologues, there'd be some jokes where you're like, we'd do that joke.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Like, we'd do that joke today.
Guest:And it's like, you know, it wouldn't be Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, but we'd do it about...
Guest:Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie or whoever, you know what I mean?
Guest:It's like with same structure, we'd still do that joke.
Marc:I think the structure remains for better or for worse.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, okay, so you're there and you finally, do you ever move the family?
Marc:I did, yeah, yeah.
Guest:We moved to Westchester.
Guest:We moved to Westchester.
Guest:Oh, you did?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And she kept it, she got her job?
Guest:Well, she, well, this is kind of what happened.
Guest:I was going back and forth and then, well...
Guest:You know, we started getting nominated for Emmys.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So one year we get nominated for an Emmy and my wife's family lives out.
Guest:Like her sister and her brothers were living in Southern California.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And her parents are going to be visiting.
Guest:She said, well, why don't I go out a few days early with the kids, see my family, and then you come out on the weekends and we'll go to the Emmys.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So we're going to go.
Guest:So she makes all the arrangements.
Guest:And a week before, my daughter gets a hernia.
Guest:So she has to have a hernia surgery.
Guest:And then the doctor's like, you know, he can only take them out on that Tuesday for whatever reason.
Guest:I can't remember if he was.
Guest:I didn't take her.
Guest:My wife did.
Guest:So I don't remember.
Guest:It was at the hospital.
Guest:He was either only at the hospital on Tuesdays or only at his office on Tuesdays.
Guest:But anyway, he had to take it on Tuesday.
Guest:So my wife had to change the flight.
Guest:So, you know, it turns out it was 9-11.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, they were booked on that Flight 11, 9-11, but because of her hernia, they pushed it back a day.
Guest:So, we had to, you know, change our flight and whatever.
Guest:So, it was kind of like, you know.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, both my kids and my wife were booked on that 9-11 flight.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Flight 11.
Guest:And I went to the airport that morning.
Guest:I was flying out to New York.
Guest:I was going to go to take the Delta shuttle to fly to Conan.
Guest:And I get there, and they're like, oh, there's a plane crash, so there's a delay.
Guest:So I'm just got the USA Today, and I'm at the Dunkin' Donuts, and I'm writing my jokes.
Guest:And then the other one crashes.
Guest:And it was like, oh, shit.
Guest:And then they close the airport and send us home.
Guest:But I didn't realize what was going on.
Guest:And I'm in the cab, and the guy is saying that the tower has come down.
Guest:And I think, well, they don't mean the building.
Guest:There must be a tower on top of the building.
Guest:Like it's like a radio tower on top of the building.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:And it's like, talk about denial.
Guest:It's like, you know, and I get home and my wife, she's like, that was our flight.
Guest:That was, you know, like when I left that morning, she's like, oh, it's too bad.
Guest:We all couldn't go to the airport together as planned.
Guest:You know, I know, I know.
Guest:So it was really crazy.
Marc:And that's what drove you to move?
Guest:Well, what happened was... You were one of the few people that moved to New York.
Guest:That's true.
Guest:But it became hard to... I couldn't just get to the airport and get on the flight.
Guest:It became like a giant hassle.
Guest:And then she was unhappy with her job.
Guest:So it was like, once she quit her job, it's like, well, what are we doing?
Guest:So she moved to New York.
Guest:And then we lived in Westchester for several years.
Guest:And my kids loved it there, actually.
Guest:And then we moved out when Conan moved out.
Marc:So you're like Conan's, basically, you've probably been there the longest.
Guest:This one guy was from the very beginning.
Guest:Who?
Guest:This guy named Michael Gordon.
Guest:He's not a monologue guy, though.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he and I share an office.
Guest:Veterans.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But you've been through Dino and all the guys that came through this.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And it's unbelievable.
Marc:Who are some of the people?
Marc:Like, Odenkirk was there?
Guest:Bob Odenkirk was there.
Guest:Although he was working... He was mostly living in L.A.
Marc:with Sen and stuff.
Marc:But Dino was in town, right?
Marc:Dino was in town.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:It must have been crazy times.
Marc:Dino was crazy.
Marc:And he was so...
Guest:He's so funny.
Marc:But he was there at the beginning with you, right?
Guest:He was there at the beginning.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:Louie.
Guest:Louie.
Guest:And, you know, Smigel.
Guest:And those, you know, it was... But the sketch guys would be there till two in the morning or whatever, you know?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's hard to make that ridiculous shit perfect.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, and especially we didn't know what we were doing.
Guest:We were kind of finding our way.
Marc:So is there always sort of like, not a wall, but like the monologue guys or the monologue guys and the sketch guys?
Guest:Yeah, there always has kind of been that.
Marc:And you guys just sit there hammering out jokes and occasionally poke around and go like, can you tag this?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Here's the setup.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Do you do that?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:And it's also, there's, and it's like, does this work?
Guest:Or it's like, oh, I'd say it like this or that kind of thing, you know?
Guest:But, like, we would do, they started having us go do shows four days a week and give us one day to...
Guest:Which was a break.
Guest:And then we would work on year 2000s or other stuff.
Marc:Stuff that you could feed jokes into.
Marc:That were established desk pieces.
Guest:Yes, absolutely.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:I wrote a real joke recently about getting... I got a sonogram of my heart to see... Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And I'm proud to say it's a girl.
Guest:Great.
Guest:I love it.
Guest:Love it.
Guest:So is your health okay?
Guest:You look great.
Marc:I'm okay.
Marc:Cholesterol is a little high, but it's genetic, I think.
Guest:Well, I've been following with the show.
Guest:Well, thank you.
Marc:I appreciate your concern.
Marc:So let's talk about the transition and the panic of, so you get the Tonight Show, and you're going to be writing for what Carson is to host.
Marc:That must have been amazing.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, it was.
Guest:It was weird in that there was this, you know, it's 2004, and they call a meeting in the show, and Conan said, I just got off the phone with NBC or whatever.
Guest:I'm going to be hosting this Tonight Show.
Guest:I'm going to take over the Tonight Show in 2009.
Guest:So here it is, this five-year, and it's a little bit like someone saying,
Guest:Five years from now, on May 31st, I'm going to come to your house and punch you in the face.
Guest:And you're like, okay.
Guest:I'll put it in the couch.
Guest:We got this thing that's going to... You know what I mean?
Guest:And you're kind of working towards that.
Guest:So it was just... It was crazy how long we were waiting for this thing.
Marc:You must have put it in the back of your brain, though.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And my son really wanted to stay in New York.
Guest:How old is he now?
Guest:He just turned 20.
Guest:He's a sophomore in college.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he...
Guest:In our little town, we had a town of 5,000 people.
Guest:He knew all the kids.
Marc:How old was he then?
Marc:He was 13.
Marc:Oh, so that's a tough time.
Guest:It was a tough time to move.
Guest:And where my daughter went to school with a lot of mean girls, she was kind of like, okay, let's get on.
Guest:I'm ready.
Guest:Let's go.
Guest:And it was just tough.
Guest:It was a tough transition for him, and then she embraced L.A.
Guest:right away.
Guest:What part of town do you live in?
Guest:Studio City.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:That's good.
Marc:And that's where you started right away.
Marc:You got a house right out of the gate?
Guest:Yeah, we did.
Guest:And we thought we were going to be working on The Tonight Show for 20 years or whatever.
Guest:And it's like people are like, the traffic is bad.
Guest:Make sure you get someplace close to work.
Guest:And it's all that kind of stuff.
Guest:So little did we know in seven months it would be out of there.
Marc:What was it like when he started writing on The Tonight Show and everybody was excited, how many weeks was it before you were like, oh, we're fucked?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I have to say that it was tremendous pressure.
Guest:And even though we... You know, when I first started at Conan, he did like four jokes in the monologue.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he'd get two jokes on, and he'd be like, hmm, doing all right, you know?
Guest:And then he slowly got a little... Started ramping it up a little bit, but he never did more than, say, seven or eight.
Guest:At the old show.
Guest:At the old show.
Guest:So with the new show, the Tonight Show has this long tradition of having a long monologue.
Guest:So he'd want to do like 13 to 15 jokes.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So...
Guest:you went in all day and you never looked up and you just wrote, you know, you're writing 50 or 60 jokes a day.
Guest:And I had to knot my stomach every day.
Marc:Like back in the old days.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I really went home and I, you know, in New York, if we had a good day, he's picked a bunch of jokes.
Guest:I'd give my dad a call, see how he's doing or whatever.
Guest:He was in Florida or whatever.
Guest:Where this, plus it's the East Coast.
Guest:I'd get home.
Guest:I'd write all day.
Guest:There's no time to call him any day.
Guest:We never had a good day.
Guest:We never had an easy day.
Guest:We could relax.
Guest:And I'd get home at 738.
Guest:It's like, well, I can't call him.
Guest:He's been in bed for two hours.
Guest:But it was just, I was like a dishrag at the end of every day.
Guest:It was so much pressure and so much stress.
Guest:So even though we took a hit financially and we're not as relevant to a show now or whatever because we're not on the network.
Guest:personally, it's a lot less stress.
Guest:It's actually a lot more enjoyable night.
Guest:And I think the show is much more fun than its night show.
Guest:Oh, definitely.
Marc:But like, how, like, all the way through the stress was happening, and then when you actually got taken off the air, it must have been devastating for everybody.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:I mean, we were all crushed.
Guest:And, you know...
Guest:I remember about two weeks after we got kicked out, he basically said he didn't want to do the 1205 show.
Guest:He didn't get fired.
Guest:He told you first?
Guest:Did he let you guys know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:yeah the decisions he did and he decided he's like you know what i don't want to be treated like this so i'm i'm out of here which i i understand so but it was suddenly it's like you know i moved my family across the country my wife wasn't working uh we bought a house we put our kids in these two private schools and now we're you know and i remember there was about two weeks later there was an earthquake and it was like three in the morning oh no
Guest:And I'm wide awake.
Guest:I probably started at four in the morning, but at three in the morning, I'm wide awake.
Guest:So I'm sitting there just lying in bed like, what am I going to do?
Guest:And then this earthquake happens.
Guest:And the next day, people are like, oh, that earthquake woke me up or whatever.
Guest:And I felt like, oh, no.
Guest:I'm wide awake waiting for it.
Guest:I'm living in an earthquake.
Guest:And I do remember when it first got the news that we were getting pushed off the air or whatever,
Guest:I think I was just in shock for like a week.
Guest:People were crying and people... And I had no reaction whatsoever.
Guest:And then my wife's birthday is a week later.
Guest:We go out to dinner with this other couple and they're talking and they start talking about it.
Guest:And all of a sudden it just hit me.
Guest:And I don't think I said a word for an hour and a half.
Guest:Like we're just having dinner and all of a sudden I'm like, oh fuck.
Guest:And they're all talking, whatever.
Guest:And I'm just like in my own world like...
Guest:It's over.
Guest:It's over.
Marc:But it was reported that Conan covered everybody for a little while.
Guest:Well, he did, although the writers weren't part of that because we kind of had our own deals.
Guest:So I was still getting paid for NBC for a few weeks after that.
Guest:And I had taken this writing class.
Guest:in the fall and i would write i wrote what i thought was a short story right and then teachers like well that's not a short story that's the first chapter of a novel yeah like oh it is so the next week i bring in the next chapter but i didn't know where it was going right so when this happened i was like you know what i'm gonna work on my bar i needed to do something and we have the book we have the book yeah the book has happened yeah the book the astounding misadventures of rory collins started at the bottom you were at the bottom i was at the bottom
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So that actually helped me through that period.
Guest:This book.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It really... Because I didn't want to sit and be unshaven and sit in sweatpants all day.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:So I got up... Regressed to comic status.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I got up, I showered every day, I shaved, and then I would go write for like three or four hours.
Guest:And just having... I think I need structure and having that something to do carried me through that, you know?
Marc:And I imagine that writing something like this book is...
Guest:it was new to you totally yeah absolutely and i love to read and i love but it was so liberating to actually have characters and have a story and say fuck yeah and you know do stuff you know that that exciting sense of discovery yes of writing a book absolutely sort of like see like i do have an imagination yeah yeah narrative one yeah so that was really what's it about exactly
Guest:And it's about this young guy who has this crazy mother.
Guest:He's got this sort of insane childhood.
Guest:And he's very passive.
Guest:And he's in college.
Guest:He loses his virginity with this woman, this pretty woman.
Guest:And then her roommate is in the bathroom crying because it's like, oh, everyone always wants to sleep with her and not me because she's not a child.
Guest:So he ends up having sex with the other one too, whatever.
Guest:Which actually, this happened to a friend of mine.
Guest:No, it didn't.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that story always stuck in my head.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then suddenly that woman started bringing her lowly friends to him to lose their virginity.
Guest:And he was like this passive guy who just sort of, and all of a sudden he's having sex with like the dregs of the, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then it just leads, like his passiveness sort of gets him in trouble.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that's sort of the story, I guess.
Guest:And does it end well?
Yeah.
Guest:Uh, I don't want to give away the ending, but it's actually much, it's pretty dark.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Um, finally, you know, you go in a room by yourself and it's all like, it's super dark and it's sort of, and you come out like, wow, what did I think?
Guest:I had no idea that was exciting.
Marc:Did you finish the book in the interim between the shows?
Marc:I did, yeah.
Marc:I mean, I had to rewrite it when I was finished.
Marc:But that's sort of interesting that this was your way of managing.
Guest:Yeah, oh, absolutely.
Marc:You didn't go out and look for other TV jobs.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:And I did I did do some stand up, but I didn't.
Guest:Yeah, I didn't because, you know, I did.
Marc:How quickly after the the NBC show going away was Conan starting to talk about the negotiations for a show with the writers?
Guest:That's a good question.
Guest:We were off in January, and then I think we came back in September.
Marc:It was probably pretty quickly after that you were informed that maybe there was going to be something.
Guest:He would hire me on his new thing, but we didn't know if he was getting a new thing.
Guest:So there was about a six-month period of like, hmm.
Marc:And he wrote the book.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's amazing how things that you might not have ever gotten to happen in the darkest times.
Marc:That's why this podcast happened.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Yeah, I had nothing going on.
Marc:I'd just been divorced twice.
Marc:I was broke, and this was born out of that, like, I don't know what I'm going to do.
Marc:Was the podcast your idea?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, we'd lost a job at Air America again.
Marc:We were doing a streaming video show, and me and my producer were like, let's try this thing.
Marc:Let's do it.
Marc:Let's just commit to a couple days.
Marc:That's great.
Marc:Yeah, but it was definitely the darkest point of my life.
Marc:Horrible.
Marc:I had no idea what my future was, because I didn't prepare.
Marc:I'm not a writer, TV writer.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:Well, it's true.
Guest:But it's funny, though, when you read...
Guest:Biographies of famous people.
Guest:You see people and you think, oh, wait, that famous artist was really starving and he was fucking whatever.
Marc:The starving artist thing's real.
Marc:It may not be literally not being able to eat, but certainly not with many prospects and no real choices in your mind.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Marc:So the new show starts, and it must have been very exciting to have the freedom and have the support of the network.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And plus, you know, it's weird.
Guest:We can actually swear sometimes.
Guest:It's just looser.
Guest:We're kind of just doing the show for our fans as opposed to trying to win over middle America or older people or whatever all these things we're trying to do on The Tonight Show, you know?
Marc:And the audience is holding pretty well?
Guest:He has a real loyal following.
Guest:And also, we have a lot of people watching on their phones or on the computer the next day, that kind of stuff.
Marc:And are you going to work today?
Marc:I am, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What time you got to be there?
Guest:Well, I told him I'd be a little late because I'm doing Marin.
Guest:We don't have a show today, so that's- Right.
Guest:And you edit wide?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, Sweeney's taking his kid to college, so it's kind of worked out perfectly.
Marc:Oh, Sweeney's been there a long time, too, now.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Because I've known, like, I knew... Well, I didn't know Smigel, but, you know, John Groff had his first writing job for me.
Guest:Oh, oh, that's... On Comedy Central?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And you and Santorelli were doing it, right?
Guest:That was his first writing job.
Guest:And Santorelli was on the show with you, right?
Marc:Yeah, he was my sidekick, kind of.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, it's sort of funny, but Groff went on to be the head writer of Conan.
Marc:Yeah, now he's... But now he's busy, right?
Marc:Now he's running that Black-ish.
Marc:Black-ish, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I had breakfast with him, like brunch with him like a couple months ago, but he is super busy, yeah.
Marc:And the book is out, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The Astounding Misadventures of Rory Collins.
Marc:Brian Kiley, great talking to you.
Guest:Thanks, buddy.
Marc:That was great.
Marc:It was great seeing Brian.
Marc:Great talking to him.
Marc:A lot of stuff in there.
Marc:You go to wtfpod.com for all your merch.
Marc:You want to buy some posters or things WTF related for Christmas presents.
Marc:Go there and do it.
Marc:Get on the mailing list.
Marc:I'll write you an email every week.
Marc:I'm so tired.
Marc:I hope it didn't read.
Marc:I hope you didn't hear the tiredness.
Marc:I have to go back to work now and work on my show.
Marc:I'm not going to play guitar today because I have to run.
Marc:But I will do this.
Marc:Boomer lives!
Boomer lives!
you