Episode 824 - Jason Mantzoukas
Guest:Lock the gates!
Guest:All right, let's do this.
Guest:How are you?
Guest:What the fuckers?
Guest:What the fuck buddies?
Guest:What the fucking ears?
Guest:What the fuck of crats?
Guest:What the fuck publicans?
Marc:And the what the fuck nicks?
Marc:Of course, the protest folks.
Marc:How's it going?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:Did I ever say what the fuckies?
Marc:Why haven't I not said what the fuckies?
Marc:I must have said it somewhere.
Marc:Anyways, how are you?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my podcast, WTF.
Marc:Welcome to it.
Marc:I hope you're doing okay.
Marc:Today on the show, Jason Mantzoukas.
Marc:He's a comic actor and I didn't know anything about him.
Marc:You can also, well, I did know things about him.
Marc:I'd seen him in everything, but then I also know he did the podcast.
Marc:How did this get made with Paul Scheer and June Diane Raphael?
Marc:I knew that, but I didn't know what he would be like, but he's a fucking great guy.
Marc:Fucking great guy.
Marc:Nice guy.
Marc:Solid.
Marc:Present.
Marc:And he brought me a gift.
Marc:So right out of the gate, I was like, wow, this is all good surprises.
Marc:So he's on the show, Jason Mantzoukas.
Marc:You'll hear me talking to him in a few.
Marc:One thing I did want to say right here at the beginning is I know because of...
Marc:The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, a show which I am on, and I'm still getting beautiful and very, I'm very grateful for the feedback I'm getting.
Marc:I had no idea that it would turn out to be so amazing.
Marc:But there are a lot of new people here.
Marc:listening to this show so i'd like to invite you i'd like to invite you to check out the more than 800 episodes in our archives uh you can start a stitcher premium membership today you can go to stitcherpremium.com slash wtf and then use the code wtf for 20 off and then you'll have access to as you i don't know if you figured it out yet the most recent 50 are always free so that means that every episode is up for public consumption
Marc:for you know six months and then they slowly go behind the the archive wall which as i said is available at stitcher premium except for the president obama podcast which is always available always a evergreen and always a bit soothing if you're of a certain ilk so that's there but i just wanted to give you a heads up because i know a lot of you are new to the show
Marc:Some interesting questions coming at me because of my performance in the Netflix series Glow.
Marc:One that I seem to get a lot is like, hey, man, did you start smoking again?
Marc:Did you start smoking again?
Marc:Sam, Sylvia, your character is smoking all the time and doing blow.
Marc:Did you start smoking?
Marc:Did you want to do some blow?
Marc:How did it feel to do fake blow?
Marc:And people ask me, what is the blow made out of?
Marc:What is that blow?
Marc:How did they make fake blow?
Marc:I'm not sure what it is, but I think it was something they added to real blow to make it less real.
Marc:I think it was one of, I don't know if it's Manitol or Sorbitol or one of them.
Marc:I don't think it's the one that makes you shit, which I think is Manitol, but it definitely is one of the talls and it's definitely something that they put into good blow to make it less good blow.
Marc:So did I want to do blow that, uh, you know, after, you know, chopping those lines and rolling up that bill and you're taking it out of my pocket and doing a bump out of the bindle with the top of a big pen.
Marc:That's like, that should be a lyric.
Marc:I'm doing a bump out of the bindle with the top of my big pen.
Marc:That was a very mild pow followed by a slight sizzling noise.
Marc:It would have been much more exciting.
Marc:But the weird thing is I did not.
Marc:I did not.
Marc:I was not nostalgic for doing blow.
Marc:I did not want to do blow.
Marc:And I did get a little bit of a drip, but it was a very unsatisfying drip.
Marc:You know, there was nothing.
Marc:There was no payoff to going, pfft, pfft.
Marc:There just no payoff, no nummies, no throat nummies, no little kind of like secondary auxiliary bump from the collection of coke goo in the back of your sinuses, nothing like that.
Marc:It was just the action.
Marc:It was just the ritual of doing it with no real satisfaction.
Marc:I believe that the first time I did a little of the fake blow, I got a little placebo jolt.
Marc:from the fake blow.
Marc:But no, did not have any desire, which is a testament to sobriety and to the understanding of what it is to be powerless over drugs, powerless over alcohol.
Marc:The knowledge to know that if I do this shit again, it's probably not going to stop for a while.
Marc:It's not going to be pretty and it's not going to take me any place new or good.
Marc:As for the cigarettes, did not want to smoke cigarettes again.
Marc:It's amazing how easily that shit comes back to you.
Marc:It is like riding a bike, riding a very dangerous bike that doesn't take any physical activity and eventually just becomes a shitty drain on your life.
Marc:But yeah, I did not want to smoke.
Marc:That's partially because I still do nicotine lozenges and I'm kind of buffered from that.
Marc:So there's the answer to those two questions.
Marc:If you have more questions about glow and the character of Sam Sylvia, feel you can email me anytime.
Marc:So I haven't done this in a while.
Marc:I'm going to read a couple of emails.
Marc:This one is for Pride Week.
Marc:This just says the subject line is Patrice and gay stuff.
Marc:Hi, Mark.
Marc:First, thank you for being a true voice out there in this sea of bullshit and lies.
Marc:Second, Pride Month is coming to a close and I've been reflecting on my own gay shit lately and the people who encouraged me to come out knowingly and unknowingly.
Marc:Patrice O'Neill was one of those people.
Marc:My interactions with him were brief but significant.
Marc:I've heard you mention him often, and so I wanted to place this story out there in the world just to say thank you to him wherever it is we go when we die.
Marc:When I was in my early 20s and not out, I was an assistant to a comedy manager in New York City.
Marc:We managed Patrice O'Neill and Bill Burr and a few other folks for a brief period of time.
Marc:Patrice was brand new and my boss knew he'd be big.
Marc:Patrice saw me and within 10 minutes, matter of fact, he declared me to be gay.
Marc:It was innocuous.
Marc:I can't even remember the context.
Marc:It may have even been, quote, so are you going to gay pride?
Marc:He took one look at my dewy eyes and well-coiffed hair and knew.
Marc:I think most people did, but he said it out loud.
Marc:It wasn't mean.
Marc:It wasn't hateful.
Marc:It was just a true, curious observation.
Marc:I feel no ill will, but it left me stunned, not because I felt attacked, but because I felt accepted, even though I hadn't accepted myself yet.
Marc:I don't know his politics or how he felt about gays behind closed doors.
Marc:There may even be tapes of him hating on the faggots.
Marc:I have no idea.
Marc:What I do know is that it helped me along in my self-acceptance process that he could be so nonchalant about something that provided me with so much angst for so many years gave me a moment to breathe and the courage to take the steps to fully embrace myself.
Marc:After that, he fully farted in the passenger seat of my 1993 Ford Taurus.
Marc:It was so bad I had to do a spot check for possible remnants.
Marc:This was both the blessing and the curse of driving him to a gig.
Marc:So I wanted to thank him in some way and figured you could deliver the message.
Marc:It's been many years that I've been out and proudish.
Marc:Gays do just as much stupid shit as the rest of us, right?
Marc:Gays for Trump can suck it hard.
Marc:That was in parentheses.
Marc:I have him and other people like him to thank for making the transition much easier.
Marc:Thanks, man.
Marc:Keep doing the good work you do.
Marc:Sincerely, Tom.
Marc:So Patrice, if you hear this man, he thanks you.
Marc:I miss him, man.
Marc:Patrice was a powerful guy.
Marc:And man, yeah, he's one of those guys.
Marc:Him and Geraldo.
Marc:You know, I just some days I'm just like, fuck.
Marc:I miss him.
Marc:I miss running into those guys when I go to New York.
Marc:We'll get to Jason Manzoukas in a minute, but I wanted to read one more email.
Marc:I like this one, too.
Marc:This one's got a nice narrative arc to it.
Marc:Subject line, the other man was you, Mark.
Marc:And when you see that subject line, there's a moment where I'm like, oh, fuck.
Marc:What did I do?
Marc:When did I do it?
Marc:And am I going to get killed?
Marc:That's what that subject line did to me.
Marc:The other man was you, Mark.
Marc:I was completely ready to be like, oh, fuck.
Marc:I remember that.
Marc:But I was pleasantly surprised.
Marc:Here we go.
Marc:Mark, I have to say my first contact with WTF was shrouded in a curious mystery of who the fuck is this guy and what the fuck does my missus want with him?
Marc:You see, way back in 2010, my wife and I split and I was staring down the bottle of marriage number two over and done, except different from the first one ending.
Marc:This time we had a kid to consider.
Marc:I was dark as all fuck on her for her slight indiscretion, but you know I had one too that I paid no heed to.
Marc:I was all about fuck her for this and that.
Marc:In other words, I was behaving like a typical cuckold ass.
Marc:But anyway, you came up because after some months of living in separate homes and lives, etc., I asked her what she was up to and if there was anyone she was interested in.
Marc:She replied casually, I've been getting into Maren.
Marc:I asked who the fuck Maren was, and she said Mark, and that was that.
Marc:I was livid.
Marc:Leaving nothing further explained, I spent a few days fuming on who the fuck this Marc Maron was, and I was all over the who's, what's, where's that we go through when building a mental concept of some fucking guy bawling my ex-wife.
Marc:It wasn't until a week or so later I tentatively approached the subject with her of the new guy when dropping off the little boy when she said you were on a podcast called WTF and I should check it out.
Marc:Now you became the guy with a podcast that my ex was writing, and I thought,
Marc:who's this pretentious twat with a radio show anyway it worked out well as i finally got into checking out the other guy listening into the podcast bro realizing how i'd concocted the whole thing in my big stupid head and seven years later i'm still tuning in weekly and as it turned out though my time separated was doused and drink i was listening to the other guy with similar shit to deal with and you mark turned out to be the guy who helped me get through it
Marc:Thank you for that, Mark.
Marc:My gorgeous ex and I spent four years apart before figuring out we were idiots and got back together.
Marc:And yes, in some ways, you still are the other guys when we are listening in together or watch your stand up or now watch you on glow.
Marc:She turns to me and says, Mark is still my silver fox.
Marc:Huh?
Marc:Happy ending.
Marc:Cheers for the years, man.
Marc:Sincerely, Fabian.
Marc:That's from Australia.
Marc:That's a good story.
Marc:Right?
Marc:That worked out well.
Marc:I'm glad.
Marc:Thanks, pal.
Marc:Glad to help out.
Marc:So Jason Manzoukas.
Marc:Oh, I mentioned that he brought me a gift.
Marc:But here's the thing.
Marc:I always have people come over and they do these things.
Marc:They talk to me.
Marc:And some of them know the show.
Marc:Some of them have listened to the show because they're going to be on the show.
Marc:And occasionally people bring me stuff that they're promoting or whatever.
Marc:But Jason Manzoukas, who I've met a couple times, who I do not know, brought me this record.
Marc:It was a reissue of Mingus Ah Um, Charles Mingus record.
Marc:It was a nice piece of wax, nice vinyl record.
Marc:And I had just gotten the original one that was a little beat up.
Marc:So this one was sort of like, it was some sort of sign that I had to really get into this.
Marc:And he just, you know, he knew I was getting into jazz.
Marc:You know, he knew I was a vinyl guy.
Marc:He brought me this record that had meaning to him.
Marc:And I listened to it and it's really one of the greatest jazz records, you know, ever.
Marc:I texted him after I listened to it twice.
Marc:I said, it's all here, man.
Marc:The whole history of the whole thing is on this record.
Marc:And it was just thoughtful and it was very nice.
Marc:And I had no idea what we were going to get into.
Marc:You know, I know like, you know, he's in this new movie, The House with Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler.
Marc:It's in theaters tomorrow, June 30th.
Marc:I knew he was on the podcast, how this get made, but I didn't know him as a person.
Marc:And we had, I just, I love talking to him.
Marc:So this is me and Jason Mantzoukas.
Marc:Enjoy.
Marc:You're such a music freak.
Marc:Do you have a lot of records?
Guest:I do have a lot of records.
Guest:Yeah, I do.
Guest:I haven't counted them.
Guest:I don't know how many, but I... Not that it's a... But I have a ton of... I also did a thing where through the end of college and through the years after college, I went around and just bought people's entire record collections.
Guest:So I also have like... But just people at school?
Guest:You're just a guy going like, hey, you're going home?
Guest:You're taking those records?
Guest:People at school, but also just like at yard sales and flea markets, at any place that people were selling stuff.
Guest:I have...
Guest:I don't know, probably 478s.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Just because I bought them all from one person.
Guest:Now, wait, do you house them somewhere?
Guest:They were up until... Yes, Mark, I do right now, unfortunately.
Guest:Up until a year ago, I still had my apartment in Brooklyn that I kept all this time, and so it all lived there.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:It all lived in a Brooklyn apartment?
Guest:So when people say, can I stay at your apartment?
Guest:You're like, no, it's not.
Guest:My records are staying there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All of my records and books are there.
Guest:That was my big thing when I moved to LA.
Guest:I was like, no records, no books, clean.
Guest:I want to live minimally.
Guest:Feels good, doesn't it?
Guest:It does.
Guest:My house is now full of records and books.
Guest:It is.
Guest:Not the ones from Brooklyn.
Guest:Nope.
Guest:Although those have now made their way, but they're in a storage locker.
Marc:I had to pull back because-
Marc:Well, the fascinating thing to me is that there was all this stuff.
Marc:I grew up in a mainstream way, really.
Marc:So I had a couple of people in my life that turned me on to things that were outside of the box.
Marc:But you don't really realize for me until like five years ago how small my periphery was.
Marc:And there's all this other stuff.
Guest:I may not like it, but there's stuff that... Exposure for me is huge.
Guest:I would say one of the most transformative people in my life, truly, was...
Guest:was a guy named steve barrett who i started taking drum lessons from in suburban boston when i was 10 years old yeah and i took drum lessons with him for until i went to college really so whatever eight nine years yeah one of steve barrett's rules for taking drum lessons with him is every week you had to show up with a blank cassette and over the course of the lesson he would record two albums for you of hit from his record so you're at his house always at his house yeah
Guest:And so every week I walked away with music.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was from age 10 from age 10.
Guest:So but his taste was so I'm like a 10 year old being given like all the King Crimson records, like all of 70s progressive.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:from that to like uh uh all reggae he got super into reggae at one point so i was like a 12 year old who got obsessed with reggae right right you know like yeah yeah everything like my record collection what i was my what i was digesting was so diverse it was crazy now when you were doing that it was so you wanted to be a drummer for sure
Guest:yeah oh yeah and you can do it i imagine you're still i'm okay now now i'm just fine you know like i was very good at it yeah for those years like through college but at uh right like in my 20s i stopped really playing so when did you like where you grew up where outside boston which which town nahant massachusetts nahant nahant's like uh north shore um it's like marblehead yeah yeah just before marble it's like an island off of the coast of lynn
Guest:actually.
Guest:Off of Lynn.
Guest:Off of Lynn, connected by like a causeway.
Marc:Oh, right.
Marc:So it's closer to Boston.
Marc:Yeah, it's like seven miles from Boston.
Marc:Than Marblehead.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:And that's where you were born and raised?
Guest:Born in Lynn.
Guest:Technically, we lived in Lynn when I was born, but very quickly moved to Nahon.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, I know that area from doing stand-up there.
Marc:So, like, what kind of family?
Marc:What are you?
Marc:I'm Greek.
Marc:I'm Greek in origin.
Guest:Like, my parents are Greek.
Guest:They're all Greek.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, they speak Greek?
Guest:They do.
Guest:Oh, they do.
Guest:They first generation?
Guest:My dad, born in Greece, comes over as a kid.
Guest:My mom, born here to Greek parents.
Guest:What was the family business?
Guest:Family business was my dad...
Guest:My dad worked in health care.
Guest:He worked in hospitals for many years.
Guest:And then he started his own is like a very kind of, you know, immigrant kind of entrepreneurial.
Guest:He owned and operated like assisted living facilities and nursing homes in New England in like the Boston area.
Guest:so it's good-hearted guy great oh yeah yeah totally and that's that like my first jobs were i worked as the assistant to the handyman in like a nursing home you know like those get like age 11 12 doing like painting the railings or whatever like that was my but you're around a lot of very old people very much and a lot of old people for a long time and it wasn't scary no no it wasn't
Guest:That is like, that says everything.
Guest:That's it?
Guest:Yeah, that's it right there.
Guest:Yeah, no, it was good.
Guest:It was like an interesting thing.
Marc:Well, you seem like a well-adjusted person.
Guest:I think so.
Marc:And do you have brothers and sisters?
Marc:I have a younger sister.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah, she lives in Maine, has two kids.
Guest:Where in Maine?
Marc:She lives outside Portland.
Marc:Oh.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, all right, so you're growing up there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Lynn is like, Lynn, isn't that by Cambridge really?
Marc:A little east or like- No, it's further north.
Guest:You're basically going north up through like Quincy, Revere, Winthrop, like all those towns.
Guest:Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Revere basically goes right into Lynn.
Marc:How'd you get out without sounding like that?
Guest:It pops up.
Guest:At some point over the rest of the day, you'll be like, there it is.
Guest:There it is.
Guest:There's weird words that I'll say.
Guest:A lot of them are like, I'll say popcorn or hot dog, which is a very Boston-y thing.
Guest:Or it'll come out with the words like worry or sorry.
Guest:People will sometimes be like, are you Canadian?
Guest:And it's really just like adjusting around the accent.
Guest:I never also my parents.
Guest:No, I'm fighting Boston.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My parents never had solid accents.
Guest:Like I didn't grow up in that accent very heavily because both my sets of grandparents spoke Greek or didn't have that accent.
Guest:And so my parents didn't get it.
Guest:And so I didn't get it as much.
Guest:I got it socially.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But like I would think in school, like, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was certainly there.
Guest:I could do it.
Guest:I'm sure you could do it.
Guest:I can do it, but no, I never had it as heavy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It really was just certain sounds or certain words.
Guest:It would be like there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know?
Marc:So when you're going to school there, early on, you're like, I'm going to be a drummer at 10.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That was your decision.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, my parents said, you have to take lessons in an instrument.
Guest:You can choose the instrument.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I chose drums.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And loved it and was immediately obsessed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:um with just like every element of it so you go through high school doing that no theater no nothing no comedy uh no comedy in as much yes comedy um no theater uh but in junior and senior year i went i also like leslie stall recent guest of the on your show i went to swamp scott high school um because uh my town was too small to have a school system beyond like elementary school
Guest:Really?
Guest:It was too few kids to support it.
Guest:Nahant's the smallest town, I think, in Massachusetts.
Guest:It's like a one square mile island.
Guest:So you knew everybody?
Guest:Oh, beyond.
Marc:You knew everybody.
Marc:Island people.
Marc:But it's not like Nantucket.
Marc:It's not like Nantucket because it's not a vacation spot.
Guest:it's not a but are you really on an island are there is there island mentality sort of like a little too insulated yeah oh yeah oh no very much so it's also much smaller than all those other islands right you know so it's not just small it's wildly isolated yeah so yeah it felt like to me like as a child i go back now and it could not be a more idyllic norman rockwellian kind of beautiful coastal new england town right as a child it was like a prison
Guest:right it might have well might as well have been like alcatraz but like out in the middle of the ocean fuck you you can't go anywhere there is no other towns there's no stores there's nothing but you knew the town drunk yeah oh yeah everybody yeah you knew everybody and everybody's business and everybody it was it was that's the time that's what it was you know it was very much like that very mayberry in that way because it was also had a little bit of a frozen in time nature to it like it was not there were no stores were there other greeks
Guest:No, no, there were no other Greeks.
Guest:It was all waspy New England.
Guest:You know, like I was like, we were like a minority family, right?
Guest:As, as, as Greeks, who are European ancestry last name?
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:Where are you from?
Guest:Where are you?
Guest:That's my favorite.
Guest:Where are you from?
Guest:Where are you from?
Guest:Jason, where are you from?
Guest:Suspect.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What about the comedy?
Guest:Oh, so junior and senior year, the classes would put on a variety show.
Guest:And so me and my friend wrote all the comedy sketches for those years of variety shows.
Guest:And so that was, for me, and I was obsessed with comedy.
Guest:You were?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:No, I was a kid who was obsessed with sketch comedy.
Guest:yeah like i listened to like you know the i would mow the lawn to like the first steven wright tape when it came out all those guys i was aware of but i i watched snl every week i was like that when monty python started airing on pbs it was like huge to me yeah you know stuff like that was so it was planted yeah oh that's what i was really so that when i got to college i immediately i heard it i heard it
Guest:What?
Guest:Got.
Guest:When I got to college.
Guest:When I got to college.
Guest:When I got to college.
Guest:Mark, let me tell you something, Mark.
Guest:When I got to college, these fucking guys.
Guest:When I got to college in Vermont.
Guest:What are you?
Guest:Are you still going to that school in Vermont?
Guest:i saw i was walking down the street in new york city as like in my 30s yeah and a new york city cop goes hey manzoukas and i was like oh fuck what have i done and i was like oh maybe this cop is like a fan or something i don't know but i wasn't really doing much at the time and it happened to be a kid i grew up with who was a boston cop and was on some sort of exchange first thing he says is hey are you still fucking allergic to eggs and i was like wow
Guest:A, amazing pull, and B, it sounds so good in that accent.
Guest:Did you grow up with that guy?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was from my hometown.
Guest:He was in my Boy Scout troop.
Guest:That's why he remembered the eggs.
Guest:He was like, I remember we always used to give you our cold cereal because that's all you could eat.
Marc:That's a nice story.
Marc:We used to kick your ass because you couldn't eat eggs.
Marc:No, no.
Guest:It was the other way.
Guest:It really was like people would look out for me in a weird way because it was like baked invulnerability to me as a child and everybody knew it.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:When I grew up, nobody else had fatal food allergies.
Guest:It wasn't as predominant as it is now.
Guest:So everybody in my school was aware of it.
Guest:Everybody in town was aware.
Guest:All the Boy Scouts were aware of it.
Guest:So it was as if...
Guest:It was as if everybody who were all these kind of tough Boston townie archetypes were with a boy made of glass.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Who they'd be like, we got to carry the boy made of glass around.
Guest:No eggs for this.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:And then as a result, I become very funny, I think.
Guest:And they're like, hey, you're funny.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Well, no, it is a hardened character there.
Marc:But, you know, it's weird because when I go back up there and I spent for like seven years there.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:It's very intimidating, but they are a pretty caring bunch.
Marc:They're very, you know, engaged.
Guest:There's tremendous heart in there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But there is it is such a gruff demeanor.
Guest:Tough.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That is trying to hide that heart.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, they are, you know, it is.
Guest:i think it's the irish it's 100 the irish yeah that temper that flair that boom you know like but also that's sort of like yeah we're all fucked yeah yeah and i fucking love you yeah yeah you know all of it yeah yeah it is i do love it i love that i've grown to appreciate it it's pretty great it's weird when you go back when you're in something there's a menace to it at least for a period of time but then when you go back as you get older you're like this
Marc:This is great.
Marc:The nostalgia takes over and you forget.
Guest:I get really, and it makes me really, like somebody was telling me a story recently about like, oh man, I was just, I did a show in Boston.
Guest:We were out to dinner and like these guys at the next table were like, made a big deal about like what big fans they were.
Guest:And then they wanted a picture and we were like, oh yeah, can we just do it?
Guest:We're in the middle of eating.
Guest:Can we do it when we're done eating?
Guest:And it was like, it was maybe within 10 seconds I thought I was about to be in like my first fight since high school.
Guest:Like, the guy was like, oh, you're fucking too good to take a picture with me?
Guest:I just fucking told you I'm a fucking fan.
Guest:We were at your fucking show.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it's like, boom.
Guest:And you start to pay.
Guest:It's like the distance between a friendly compliment and about to get your ass kicked is seconds.
Guest:Oh, that's who you are.
Guest:That's who you are.
Guest:You're fucking too good for me.
Guest:Yeah, you're right.
Guest:Mr. Fancy Guy.
Guest:No, no, I don't need a picture.
Guest:No, no, you know what?
Guest:Fuck it.
Guest:Fuck you.
Guest:Fuck you.
Marc:I'll be waiting fucking outside for you.
Marc:You little shit.
Marc:So were you in a band, though, in high school?
Guest:I was.
Guest:I was in a bunch of bands.
Guest:I was also in marching band.
Guest:I was in the school and jazz band, all the school bands.
Guest:Because you could read music, right?
Guest:I could, yep.
Guest:Still can, I imagine.
Guest:Still can, yep.
Guest:And then I was in rock bands.
Guest:I was in bands that would be like... We would do cover... I was in cover bands that would do James Addiction.
Guest:Did you go into Boston and play places?
Guest:We didn't ever.
Guest:We went and played all the kind of...
Guest:stuff on the island all the no all the all the suburbs of right marblehead beverly salem all the kind of battle of the bands and kids bands in high school all the punk and hard it was also like punk hardcore era where there would be were you in one of those six bands i was in i was in a band that would play like faith no more style like yeah uh primus kind of proggy we were better musicians right right um but like super like aggressive stuff yeah yeah yeah uh i was in a bunch of bands yeah and
Marc:So you go to college, you've written some comedy, some sketch comedy, high school variety show.
Marc:Sure, sure.
Marc:You've played Primus.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You're ready to go to college.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You've got two great skills.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, what do you do when you get there?
Marc:Do you get in a band?
Guest:I do.
Guest:I, I get into a band and I, and I get into, and I start like a jazz group that I also play with, like a, just a straight ahead, like kind of, you know, bebop group essentially.
Guest:Um, and then, um, and then I also join what is like at the time, like the college has just started or the people at the college, a group of young, like a group of kids.
Guest:have started an improv group yeah and so i joined that because right away i try out right away i don't get in until like the next semester right um and then become completely obsessed with that you've never done it before never done it but you got a jazz brain and you got a funny guy it's all improv right so for me it's the same skill set just applied but in different directions right but this is a college improv group so what are you doing you're doing games we're doing short
Guest:form games yeah but to and it's all the corny it's all whose line is it anyway you know corny games uh but where it's the first time that i'm ever like you know we would do like the variety show in high school or band you know concerts or whatever like to a couple hundred people but like for some reason because it was like i i went to uh school in vermont like small liberal arts college which one middlebury yeah
Guest:but like we would this improv group would do shows to like six seven hundred people for some reason oh really they'd all come out everybody would come and was there nowhere to go in town truly there was not it was a desolate place and so that was the first time i had like oh wow yeah this is fucking huge this room is enormous all these people are laughing they're going nuts it was it was super fun and then uh and then a guy named uh rod do you know rodney rothman at all
Guest:no he's a writer here uh in town um very successful um has worked on a ton of stuff he was in the same improv group that i was in and he went and interned in new york at like um at uh chicago city limits do you remember what that is sure sure yeah i do and he came back with truth and comedy the long form improv textbook basically and he was like this exists i've seen this was that the del close book yeah yeah
Guest:He said, this, this is the thing.
Guest:This is it.
Guest:We got to be doing this.
Guest:He brought that back to college.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so we all read the book.
Guest:None of us had seen what like a Harold was or what long form improv was.
Guest:And you're what, a sophomore?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:At this point, I'm a sophomore or I'm maybe a first semester of junior year, but I think I'm a sophomore.
Marc:So this is one of those moments.
Marc:It's like the drum teacher.
Guest:A true epiphany.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Although misguided because we read the book and attempt to do it on a small scale.
Guest:We want to do it in like the coffee shop on campus.
Guest:But it's we are terrible at it.
Guest:And it's it.
Marc:Well, what was like what was the challenge at that time?
Marc:Because I don't I don't fully understand it.
Guest:OK, so I mean, it's like the difference between like big band and like bebop.
Guest:Big band, you're playing the chart.
Guest:You really are adhering to structure.
Guest:That's the games.
Guest:Short form games are limited in scope.
Guest:They are short in format and they are a prescribed game.
Guest:So the idea of short form games is, conceptually speaking, improv, if everything is possible...
Guest:yeah you are more inclined to panic right and so everything you put on it is to restrict the possibilities right so short form games are incredibly restrictive so so much so that you really are only improvising a very small element of the whole scene it's like shtick it's yeah you're just plugging in joke basically so short form is like from would that be an audience suggestion correct right okay we need a we need a non-geographic location and a profession
Guest:And then now, you know, you're doing jokes about those two things and blah, blah, blah.
Guest:It doesn't matter.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Long form is like, you're going to get one suggestion.
Guest:The word is burrito.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you're going to do like a 30 to 40 minute or longer, depending show of different scenes, connected scenes, group scenes, all of it that is born of that one suggestion.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I've seen some of it.
Guest:Like ASCAD or stuff like that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so as a result, you're seeing something that is a lot more built from the ground up than it is within the confines of a game or something.
Guest:But when we read the book, we were just like, okay.
Guest:So the first part of it traditionally of the Herald is like a pattern game.
Guest:So if you say burrito is a suggestion, great.
Guest:So for the first...
Guest:minute and a half yeah we do some the group as a whole does some sort of like idea where they kind of take the word burrito or take whatever that inspires and they examine it for a minute or so just to kind of generate a bunch of information yeah people might tell a story people might whatever it doesn't matter a minute minute and a half yeah right just to yeah put some stuff on the table we used to do that for 15 minutes yeah and it would just be like burrito
Guest:beans yeah rice tortilla yeah lunch sandwich yeah you're like and that this is what happened for 15 minutes no laughs so serious no laughs of course no last market we were doing nonsense it was terrible and we did this for a long time and then i and then eventually i went to new york and ucb was just starting and i watched it and i was like ah
Guest:this is what we're supposed to be doing it's supposed to be like joyful and fun and not austere and like breakfast breakfast cereals cocoa puffs captain crunch game show answers with no rules really that's what it was it was terrible but uh but that so that started like that process of like
Guest:improv comedy and like that's at that point and then i also ran the radio station in college and those are the two things i cared the most about you ran the radio station yeah like what you were the the manager i was i eventually was the programming yeah eventually i started out as like the jazz manager then became you know because nobody wanted to do it literally i went to the first meeting yeah and nobody wanted to be they they assigned every other position and they were like okay the only thing we don't have is no it's jazz and i was like
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And I was like, just got to college.
Guest:And they're like, okay, you.
Guest:And I was like, that's it?
Guest:That's all it takes?
Guest:And I knew some stuff about jazz.
Guest:Did you have your records?
Guest:I had some of my records.
Guest:This was the best.
Guest:The best thing that happens at the end of my freshman year,
Guest:And the GM came to me and said, hey, we have not used our budget for the year.
Guest:And if we get to the end of the year without spending it, we have to give it back.
Guest:So here's $3,000 to buy records with over the summer.
Guest:And so, and I was like, what?
Guest:He was like, just bring them back with you when you come back to school.
Guest:He's like, I just need to give this money out so that we don't.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I took that $3,000 and like the first week I was home, I went to Tower Records or yeah, one of the biggest record, Boston record stores.
Guest:And I bought $3,000 worth of jazz and spent the whole summer just crushing it, just consuming and then brought it all up.
Guest:And it was, it was the best summer because I bought everything.
Guest:You built their library.
Guest:I built their library.
Guest:It really was.
Guest:I built their CD library.
Guest:Did you mix it up?
Guest:Did you do a big band?
Guest:Yep, totally.
Guest:You were a curator.
Guest:I went from Dixieland and Ragtime, like Fats Waller and all that stuff, all the way through Fusion, Mahavishnu Orchestra, all the- So you knew you had a job.
Guest:You were a curator.
Guest:Oh, absolutely.
Guest:I was very responsible.
Guest:I was very nerdy about it and would try and like turn people on to stuff and they'd be like, I don't like this.
Guest:I don't like, that was the other thing is I would always like play stuff for people.
Guest:Like we were looking at your records beforehand and there was a Husker Du record in there.
Guest:And I remember I got turned on to Husker Du like,
Guest:maybe eighth grade yeah yeah and i remember like bringing it to like a buddy's like house and being like dude this is amazing you got to listen to this and like literally like that guy then not really being my friend anymore it's being like yeah you're into weird stuff yeah yeah you're into like weird music and then with jazz you're sort of like just hang out it's only a 15 minute tune it gets real good yeah the solo is amazing and that's the part that people have the most trouble with right i don't understand what's happening now
Marc:But they must have been very grateful that you built out their jazz library.
Marc:So were you on the air late at night?
Guest:Sundays.
Guest:Our station was all day Sunday.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And then as I got further into it, I would just be on air all the time.
Guest:Because anytime we had holes in the schedule, I would just pick a thing that I wanted to become obsessed with or that I was...
Guest:slightly obsessed with and i would just do a deep dive into that thing like one artist or hard bop or something like at one point africa i became obsessed with like uh sub-saharan african music like senegalese music molly yeah all of it you know phala all that stuff like afropop all of it yeah um and would just be like great this is what i'm gonna do and i'm gonna do i'm just gonna get into this and there's at the time no internet
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's no research.
Guest:I just have the library that's available to us and what I can kind of read.
Guest:Now, did you have any fans of the show?
Guest:When I had my jazz show, this was the best.
Guest:When I had my jazz show, people, it was, and when I tell you I was like on the radio, like it was a 100 watt radio station that then became a 1000 watt radio station.
Guest:So it reached basically the town of.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the dorms.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It was not, it was not like I was out on the air.
Marc:But you were, you were in it though.
Guest:But I used to get collect calls from the prison.
Guest:for the jazz show every week a guy would call collect from prison and ask for miles davis yeah and you play it that's your one guy yeah the one guy and i was like dude this is i love this absolutely and i was like even if it's a prank right i still love it because you're playing mile you want me to play miles if it's a prank sure you knew it wasn't a prank i don't think it was it seemed pretty real
Marc:So you're running the radio station, you're doing improv, you figured it out.
Marc:When you went to New York, though, was that the thing that made you realize, like, oh, shit, there's a world out here for this?
Guest:Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Guest:I mean, I'm at that point pretty aware of...
Guest:second city i'm aware of groundlings like i know things exist i know that there are hubs for this right um but i also very much want to move to new york city right you you didn't think about chicago you didn't get obsessed with del close and the whole legacy i did like i met del close and like i did at the um
Guest:there used to be a, like a Skidmore used to do an improv festival every year for all the college groups.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they brought Dell one year, like maybe like four years before he died, four years before he died, probably longer actually, but not too much longer anyway.
Guest:And he came and, and was like a predictably Dell close, like a relentless prick to everybody for the whole of it.
Guest:And it was, it was awesome.
Guest:You know, it was really cool.
Guest:So he ran a seminar type of thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He kind of gave notes to people as they did stuff.
Guest:But, um,
Guest:So I was very into it, but I came to New York.
Guest:Did you graduate?
Guest:Graduated, yep.
Guest:What was your degree in?
Guest:Religion.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In as much as I needed something to major in.
Guest:So you put it together at the end?
Guest:And I liked that department.
Guest:I tried being a philosophy major, but I am not a good enough student.
Guest:And even a religion major.
Guest:I wrote an honors thesis, went to my thesis defense, and my professor goes, Jason...
Guest:His first line, Jason, you're not a great scholar, but thank God your gifts and graces lie elsewhere.
Guest:So let's take this and put it aside.
Guest:I can't give you honors for this.
Guest:This was not very good.
Guest:Did you even proofread this?
Guest:And I was like, Larry, I did not.
Guest:What was it on?
Guest:It was on religious iconography.
Guest:it was i when i tell you i wrote it in like maybe eight days yeah and it was a hundred some odd pages it was terrible he had every right to be like i'm not giving you honors but it was interesting that you picked like a fairly non-challenging non-philosophical area totally like let's look at this this uh yeah and and pictures if you asked me now about it i could tell you zero yeah
Marc:I could tell you not one single thing, but it must have been just a dearth of information of totems and talisman and relics and whatever.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Bleeding icons, crying icons, all of it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it was enough that it was enough that it interested me and was within.
Guest:But here's the thing.
Guest:I didn't need to do it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was like the arrogance of on my part to be like, yeah, I'll fucking write a thesis.
Guest:Why not?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, I've, I've been that guy.
Marc:I, I auditioned at Yale drama, you know, and I submitted a photo strip as, as my headshot.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:I love that.
Marc:I love that.
Marc:I get this ace.
Marc:That's great.
Marc:These guys, they get it.
Marc:Um, they don't, you can't, you know, charm only take you so far.
Guest:Oh, absolutely.
Guest:But, but in a great way, like that same thesis, like that, that, that professor who loved me and who I loved and who was like, you're just not, this isn't what you should be doing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He also was like, he would be, he would do, he did this.
Guest:He goes,
Guest:At one point, he was teaching a three-hour New Testament class.
Guest:And in the middle of the whole thing, he goes, will you walk back to my office with me?
Guest:I was like, yeah, sure.
Guest:And he goes, so I feel like about midway through the class, I'm losing them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How do you think I could kind of engage them and get them back on track?
Guest:He's asking me like performance questions.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I was like, let's get into it.
Guest:And I was like, this is what I can do.
Guest:This I can give you.
Guest:Like the rest of it, I'm a mess.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But like on an actual intellectual level, no.
Guest:But this I can definitely help.
Guest:What did you do?
Guest:And I was like, I was like, at a certain point, you can't just talk at us, you know, like at a certain point, I think you got to open it up and you have to engage in a way that isn't, do we know the material that is more just a conversational break?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, because we can't, it's not just a matter of like, let's take a break and come back.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like you need to have us engage in the break with you.
Guest:Like, so that like the whole thing becomes broken down into something that is participatory.
Marc:So in the middle, he just out of nowhere goes, is there a God?
Yeah.
Marc:What is this God?
Marc:You see people be like, what's going on?
Guest:What do we do?
Marc:What do we do now?
Marc:They put their pencils down.
Marc:One kid wakes up.
Guest:What happened?
Guest:Oh, three hours.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, all right.
Marc:So that you get your religion degree and then what do you do?
Guest:I get, um, I have a very weird, uh, post-college, uh, for, I get a grant.
Guest:I get a, I get a grant out of college and I, I live abroad for two years doing a, doing an ethnomusicology project.
Marc:How'd that come together?
Guest:middlebury is one of the color like there's um it's called a it's called a watson fellowship this thing i got and it's like a non-academic fulbright but you sought it out they didn't just i did you didn't i did um so you weren't real clear on what the hell you wanted to do you know still like i was still and this was this this was the thing that attracted to me there was like uh you there's a grant that's out there that our college is one of the nominating colleges for
Guest:And you have to propose an idea that you think would be cool to do that is not part of your that you would not pursue academically otherwise.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The point of it is they want to finance and fund your kind of experimental year.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so I did that.
Guest:I pitched them a project that was, and it was typically like, I'm a terrible student, so my proposal was shitty, but I was charming in the room.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so I got it.
Marc:But this is for the last two years of college or two years after?
Marc:No, two years after.
Marc:So you really weren't chomping at the bit to get down to New York to do long form improv?
Guest:I wasn't yet because this I was like very like very curious about this.
Guest:I was like, somebody will give me money to go abroad.
Guest:What was the pitch?
Guest:The pitch was it was music that was meant to induce a state of prayer, like holy prayer and union with something holy.
Guest:So you're drawing on your religion degree.
Guest:And my music.
Guest:Right.
Guest:My music interest.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it was like a lot of it was like there's a there's a jazz pianist named Randy Weston.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Great jazz pianist.
Guest:And he becomes obsessed with this music from Morocco called Ganawa music.
Guest:That is this like incredibly hypnotic, beautiful, rhythmic, trance inducing music that is meant to exercise demons.
Guest:It's very difficult.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:To wrap your brain around.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I find this Randy Weston album in my kind of, uh, at the radio station, uh, that you would watch.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was like, this is fucking crazy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's amazing.
Guest:But what these Moroccan musicians doing is like wild.
Guest:yeah and so i was basically like i want to go to morocco and talk to these people yeah and i kind of built a project around that as the centerpiece yeah and then wound up going to other places as well but it was all about like music that was supposed to kind of bring you into union with god yeah the trance whatever your god is the the transcendental transcendental music yeah whirling dervishes yeah all of it yeah sufi islam all of it yeah you went to all those places yeah
Guest:Where'd you go?
Guest:Morocco, Egypt, Israel and Turkey.
Guest:And then I traveled in like Jordan and Syria.
Guest:Huh?
Guest:Yeah, that's so that must have been mind blowing.
Guest:It was like beyond like it truly is like the that's like it is the the I genuinely believe.
Guest:The only reason I do everything I do is because of those two years, like those two years of I got on a play there.
Guest:Their whole thing is we'll give you the money.
Guest:The only rule is you can't come back to the United States for at least a year.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And and I landed in Morocco.
Marc:And with what would just like a five doors, a five doors book or.
Guest:Yes, a lonely planet book and a rough guide.
Marc:Yeah, and the names of the music you wanted to go find.
Marc:So you had to go to these places.
Guest:And when I tell you that I'd prepared, not at all.
Guest:Didn't know where I was going to go.
Guest:Barely knew who to be even looking for.
Guest:Didn't know even if they were there.
Guest:I got there and a lot of people were like, oh, those guys are in Paris.
Guest:And I was like, what?
Guest:The only guys who have to do it?
Guest:Not the only guys, but I then found other guys, which was awesome.
Guest:But I really went thinking like, yeah.
Guest:And I bet people are going to speak English.
Guest:And I got there.
Guest:And when I tell you I had like a straight up nervous breakdown.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I had a nervous breakdown within the first three weeks in Morocco.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I lost my mind.
Guest:And what'd you do?
Guest:I panicked.
Guest:I was genuinely like, I don't know what to do.
Guest:I don't know who to talk.
Guest:I didn't.
Guest:I was spending days.
Marc:It wasn't an existential nervous breakdown.
Marc:No, it was like a. Where did I get myself?
Guest:into nervous break correct yeah and i was like and the prison of i can't go home for a year yeah and i don't know anybody and days were going by and i wasn't speaking to any living person but you're eating good food terrified no because i'm terrified of food food is like i have such a complicated relationship is there eggs in this Moroccan of course it was terrifying
Guest:And so finally I meet some people and everything mellows out.
Guest:And I basically learn to be like a self-sustaining adult.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, in those two years.
Guest:And that's transformative in who I am and my willingness to take chances and put myself into situations that I'm would otherwise be scared by or uncomfortable by.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Nothing.
Guest:It's nothing.
Guest:Nothing's going to happen on stage that's going to match Morocco.
Guest:I was arrested in Morocco.
Guest:I was put in jail in Turkey.
Guest:I've been in really sketchy, scary places.
Guest:So I'm like, you want me to get up and do an hour of improv and not know what's going on?
Guest:Yeah, I'll fucking do that.
Guest:What are you talking about?
Guest:People are like, I'm so scared and not know what to say.
Guest:And I'm like, that's like the easiest thing.
Guest:Well, what, what'd you get arrested for in Morocco?
Guest:Stupid stuff.
Guest:Stupid stuff.
Guest:Like literally I got arrested in Morocco.
Guest:It's like, it's not sexy stuff, but it's like, it was terrifying in it's because you don't know what happened.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, you don't know what the, all of a sudden it's like you're in jail.
Guest:And yes, I got arrested in Morocco for having an expired tourist visa, which they told me was fine.
Guest:I called the embassy and I said, I'm going to leave the country.
Guest:I, my thing expired.
Guest:They were like, don't worry, you're leaving the country.
Guest:They're not going to care.
Guest:I get to the I get to I'm in Tangiers.
Guest:I go to the port.
Guest:I'm going to get on a boat and go to Spain arrested.
Guest:They put me in a holding cell and I'm like, OK, I guess at the port.
Guest:And I'm going to say I'm going to sign something.
Guest:Aren't you thinking like Midnight Express is about to happen?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:When they load me in a paddy wagon with a bunch of other guys that are straight up criminals.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm like, oh, this is not good.
Guest:And I am in prison for like 18 hours in a general holding cell.
Guest:And I've got like $2,000 worth of audio equipment on me.
Guest:I'm the only foreigner in there.
Guest:And everybody's like, hey, hey, hey, my friend.
Guest:Hey, my friend.
Guest:Hey, hey, my friend.
Guest:And I'm just like head down, like not talking to anybody.
Guest:And then...
Guest:I had to wait until they could.
Guest:You sure couldn't tell them why you were in there.
Guest:No.
Guest:And I had to wait until they convened like three judges to see everybody's case who was in that room.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it just took forever.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it was, and I didn't know.
Guest:I kept thinking like, well, of course, once they look at my passport and see them, like I would get into, I would be so cool and like, I'm cool.
Guest:Don't worry about it.
Guest:The minute I would get into trouble, I would become like the most relentless, ugly American.
Guest:I'd be like waving my passport, being like, I'm American.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:it was awful same thing in turkey like i got like we got stopped we were trying to turkey that's actually where midnight express took place 100 yeah and but we were dumb like i was i was dumb and i was young and so like we rented a car who's we i was with a guy a guy that i'd met in marrakesh um like a like a buddy of mine who was in the peace corps in morocco when he finished peace corps morocco he went with you he came and found me in turkey for two weeks he was like i'll just come there before i go home and we can travel around great
Guest:We go to southeastern Turkey.
Guest:We start driving straight towards like the PKK, the part of Turkey that's in a civil war, basically.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we're like, because we used to do that thing where we'd be like, where's the sketchiest place in this country?
Guest:Let's try and go there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like we tried to get into Iran.
Guest:I tried to get into Lebanon, like closed countries.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Just because, because we were stupid.
Marc:And you were curious, I guess, and you wanted to have the story.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Always wanted the story.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But the military pulled us out of our car and like put us in jail for a night.
Guest:And we were like, we're Americans.
Guest:You can't do this.
Guest:We were like fucking assholes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Assholes.
Guest:And then there's artillery fire all night long.
Guest:Huge cannon artillery fire.
Guest:And we are like horrified.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Terrified.
Guest:And then in the morning they come, pick us up and they bring us back to our car.
Guest:And only then were we like...
Guest:they were protecting us right we're protecting us from driving into an active war zone at night you so they held us for the night and let us drive home right but like and we treated them like fucking assholes they're probably another one another two americans yeah here we go two more shitheads
Guest:But yeah, no, we were we were stupid.
Guest:Well, what'd you learn from the music, though?
Guest:The music was a lot of it was really Morocco.
Guest:I spent the most time in Morocco, seven and a half months in Morocco.
Guest:And it was really interesting because the music was still once I kind of drilled down into and found the guys that were still doing it.
Guest:and earned their trust and was able to go because basically this music is played at like ceremonies that are meant to be like if somebody's sick um like whether it's like a cancer or whatever there is part of um part of what happens is they will bring in these musicians to and all the songs are associated with different colors and all the colors are associated with different demons and so the presumption is that this person who's sick is possessed by some sort of demon
Guest:And we're going to just play music from sundown till sun up until we figure it out.
Guest:And we're going to play the we're going to play and dance the demon out of them.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:So that is the stuff that eventually I would go.
Guest:I would, again, very dumb and trusting.
Guest:They'd be like, be here at like five o'clock.
Guest:We're going to pick you up on your drive out to a place and you're going to see it.
Guest:And I would get into a car with a bunch of random dudes, drive like an hour outside Marrakesh and go to someone's house.
Guest:And and this would happen.
Guest:And people would be like stabbing themselves with knives and people would be dancing.
Guest:And it was like dancing in a trance, not dancing like I'm enjoying the music.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But like it was it was incredibly powerful to watch.
Guest:It was shamanistic.
Guest:Correct.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:And you're recording it or you're writing or I would not record those because it was not cool to record those things.
Guest:But some of those musicians, I would then record just like in their house.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just without the what kind of what are they playing?
Guest:What are the instruments?
Guest:The instruments are just, one guy is playing what's called a gimbrie, which is like a three-stringed gut stringed instrument.
Guest:And then like metal castanets, big giant metal castanets is essentially what they are, that are providing just a driving constant rhythm that is unrelenting and exhausting.
Marc:And they do it all night?
Marc:All night.
Marc:And did it work?
Yeah.
Guest:you would see people like have like truly kind of what seems to me to be like out of body experiences.
Guest:Like you would, you would, because the other thing is they would be playing music for the person who is sick, but they'd be playing all these songs.
Guest:So then sometimes you'd see people who were just sitting around on the edges.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Um, just like having a coffee or a tea or something.
Guest:And then all of a sudden they'd be like, Oh,
Guest:They would, somebody would, they would start playing a song and somebody would just fall to the floor and then just start kind of having like almost a seizure, almost a spasm.
Marc:And you thought it was genuine.
Guest:It seemed genuine.
Guest:Why would, why would they, why, why would you just fall to the ground if you're just observing?
Guest:There's no preacher putting on a shtick.
Guest:Nope.
Guest:Nobody's asking for you to do anything.
Guest:People would just like, was this part of a religious practice?
Guest:It is it is something that has existed prior to Islam in North Africa, but has been Islamicized since Islam came to North Africa.
Marc:So it is.
Marc:Well, you musicians, they know when they need to keep a gig.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:anyway yeah yeah so I did that for a couple years and then came back and moved to New York and right as UCB was starting basically but but like all these different varieties of this spiritual music what did like did you were you on any personal spiritual quest I was not but did did it affect anything about your understanding of people in the world in the sense of anything that you carried with you or I
Guest:That's a great question.
Guest:It did in as much as it bolstered and solidified my belief that everybody is searching for some union with something.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's not unlike all the religion... The religion department at Middlebury was just a comparative religion department.
Guest:We studied everything.
Guest:And you just are like, oh, all these tenants are the same.
Guest:They're just practice.
Guest:It's just practice is the only difference.
Guest:And so it was really interesting to be like, oh, it's interesting to watch people process music in that same way.
Guest:And like, oh, one of the...
Guest:You know, one of the methodologies to get to enlightenment is music.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, just like there's also like Zen monks whose practice is archery.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, that I'm like, when I found that out, I was like, what do you mean archery?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's like, that is their meditation.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And meditation is archery.
Marc:And they've incorporated into the religious spiritual system.
Guest:And it's really interesting.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That idea of constantly being, I also lived in Greek monasteries for a while, and it was like that idea of constantly being in prayer was very interesting to me.
Marc:I'm impressed with it, but you've got to, the things you have to shut off.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:In order to live that life, which is virtuous or very specific anyway.
Marc:It's an aesthetic life, yeah.
Marc:But it's a tall order.
Marc:Oh, very hard.
Marc:Yeah, and I don't- But pieces of it, very compelling.
Marc:No, definitely.
Marc:But it's like the discipline of it better be enough to make you feel good about yourself.
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:yeah or better make you not feel anything about yourself lose the ego lose that yeah and connecting you're in direct relationship with god i think so yeah i mean like as two people who are only seeking individual glory constantly well that's an american thing in a way i you know there is something about self-centeredness and and and uh
Marc:careerism sure entitlement yeah what about me oh yeah you know uh like but i'm like i'm doing unique things yeah you know that whole thing it does why why pursue the end of the universal when i can pursue the individual well that shit get wears out dude and then all of a sudden you're like you're at the end of it or in middle age and you're like i got no universal oh yeah
Marc:yeah so now what do i do oh yeah how do i yeah i agree how do i not be a dick yeah how do i justify my existence as part of society as part of humanity yeah because you can fool yourself for a long time yeah like i'm contributing are you really though yeah that was funny and for how long into who yeah you know yeah exactly but it really is like you know and then there's the other point it's like if you can if you can play miles davis for that one guy who's locked up isn't that something great yeah yeah absolutely
Marc:So now when you come back to New York, that's when UCB is just starting.
Marc:So it's like 94.
Guest:No, it's a little later.
Guest:It's 97, 98.
Guest:The new UCB.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, it's still they don't have a theater yet because it's still solo arts.
Guest:And they get the first one with 22nd Street.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right as in like 98.
Marc:yeah so like within the first year i'm there right you know and it's up and running for a couple years before it's shut down so you come back you're like uh you know you're a world traveler sure you've had mystical experiences totally you've been in jail in turkey in morocco yes and you're like you now you've decided you got what music and spirituality out of your system you think a little bit you got you figured it out some of it yeah and you're ready to go to the next thing
Guest:Yeah, I really am.
Guest:Because at this point, I'm also like, hmm, I don't know if I'm going to be a musician.
Guest:I don't know if this is if I'm if a if I can do it.
Guest:And I don't know.
Guest:But I'm super compelled by comedy.
Guest:You know, like I'm like, really?
Guest:And at this point, I visit New York.
Guest:When I come back before I move, I come because my friend Rodney, who I mentioned earlier, is in New York.
Guest:And he brings me to see a UCB show at the Red Room.
Guest:At KGB.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Upstairs.
Guest:Upstairs at KGB.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I was like, this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This is the thing.
Marc:Well, yeah, because that makes sense to me because the one thing you have to accept in terms of being a musician, especially with the stuff you were interested in, is like, it's not for everybody.
Marc:No.
Marc:And there's something about comedy or about sketch comedy that not only with a band, you have community, but you have this, you know, this active creative spirit, but it's for everybody.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It, it, it scratched the same itch, but was social and an ensemble based in a way that, cause I was like, I don't think I'm going to be a standup comedian.
Guest:I don't think that's for me.
Guest:I don't think I'm, I would be good at it, but improv and sketch I think is my thing.
Guest:And then I started doing UCB and was immediately all in on that.
Guest:The concept of being a musician evaporated almost instantly.
Marc:So the original four were still around and involved.
Guest:Oh yeah, they were all my teachers.
Guest:They were my teachers.
Marc:Matt, Amy, and Ian, and Matt.
Guest:Matt, Amy, and Ian.
Guest:And then Armando Diaz.
Marc:Did you know him at all?
Marc:No, I'm sure I met him.
Marc:See, the thing is this weird is that I was around then and I just ignored the whole goddamn thing.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:Why?
Marc:What do you mean, of course?
Guest:Well, I mean, like, at the time, it was not a venue that would have been someplace you would go.
Guest:But I was an asshole about it.
Marc:I was like, I'm a stand-up.
Marc:You know, this is what we do here.
Guest:I know.
Guest:And then, like... New York at that time was a stand-up town.
Marc:Yeah, but then, like, the alt scene started to happen.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:And then when I was at Luna Lounge, the four started... Rebar, right?
Marc:Well, Rebar, the original one.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But that wasn't for that long before it moved to Luna Lounge.
Marc:But then the four started doing their bits.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And then other people, the state guys, started coming around.
Marc:Yep.
Yep.
Marc:And then you guys were all doing this amazing stuff, and we were like, no, we're playing bars.
Marc:Totally.
Guest:Oh, and that's the thing, though, that existed in New York.
Marc:I never felt that you guys were like, those stand-ups got it going on.
Marc:I don't know what the spirit of it was.
Marc:I don't know how we cohabitated.
Guest:What was really interesting is that we existed...
Guest:Truly, I felt like in those first years, unto ourselves.
Guest:I was not plugged into the world at all.
Guest:Even the scene, the comedy scene.
Guest:I knew, obviously, what the Stella guys were doing or stuff like that.
Guest:But I otherwise... I didn't go around and see other people's stuff.
Guest:You were all in... I was just UCB.
Guest:It was like a cult.
Guest:It really was.
Guest:And people would call it a cult all the time.
Guest:They would?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:People would be like, oh, that place is a cult.
Guest:And I know what they meant.
Guest:A cult of comedy.
Guest:But there was a definite...
Guest:It was it was our place and we were building it from the like it was really exciting to be part of a scene from the ground up.
Marc:So who isn't like when you after you learn from that generation who are my age?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What how did what was your crew?
Guest:My crew was like the generation that I come up in is that kind of first generation that is like.
Guest:paul sheer rob hubel owen burke um danielle schneider and donna feinglass um kroll kroll's younger than all of us yeah so um cordry seth morris brian husky i love seth morris john powie i love seth morris so funny um and then like john daly and gelman gelman are they're a little younger than us but started basically at the same time but they were like kids yeah
Guest:I'm trying like all that early, you know, like Helms, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:And then Kroll is like a little bit younger than us in age.
Guest:And he kind of arrives a couple of years later.
Guest:He arrives a fully formed comedic wizard.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, him.
Guest:And then a couple of years later, Mulaney follows him because they were both Georgetown guys together.
Guest:Oh, OK.
Guest:And then they hook up with Aziz for the Human Giant.
Guest:Human Giant is is actually many years later because Aziz is quite a bit younger.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so that whole scene is like for the first bunch of years is just really us doing shows for each other in in an old handjob centric strip club.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Twenty seconds where the seeds used to come.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And Fleet Week.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I'll show up.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:They heard about it.
Marc:We took a couple of years before people realized it wasn't there anymore.
Guest:And they would always be wasted.
Guest:And they were like, we want to see the show.
Guest:And we'd be like at the front because, you know, like in order to take classes, I would work at the ticket booth or whatever.
Guest:I would intern there or whatever.
Guest:And they would be like, we want to see the show.
Guest:And we'd be like, this is not, this is a comedy theater.
Guest:And they would just go straight in and then come straight out and be like, what the fuck's going on, man?
Guest:Same with the Hasidic Jews.
Guest:They would all shamefully kind of go in and we'd be like, this is not the Harmony Theater anymore.
Guest:Just so you know.
Guest:But they were so uncomfortable with it, they would just kind of go in.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then sometimes watch the show because they were now uncomfortable to leave.
Guest:And then sometimes just immediately leave.
Guest:So occasionally you'd have a chasset or two?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Oh, that happened for the first two or three years.
Guest:Like, semi-regularly.
Guest:Just because it was such a well-known, apparently, $5 handjob.
Guest:$5?
Guest:$5 handjobs in the bathrooms was the harmony.
Marc:I hate when Jews live up to their stereotype.
Right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it was a great like it was a very exciting time.
Guest:It was also like nobody was looking at us.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Nobody had agents.
Guest:Nobody had managers.
Guest:Nobody had deals.
Guest:Nobody had anything.
Guest:It was nobody was on SNL.
Guest:Nobody had a TV show.
Guest:Nobody had nothing.
Guest:We were doing bad shows for each other.
Guest:Just getting better.
Marc:So you weren't pulling tickets yet?
Marc:There's not people coming?
Marc:Were you there when it turned?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:When people started getting agents and when people started getting deals and when people started getting stuff, there was certain people who like Aspen at the time was a real launching pad for people.
Guest:So people would get a sketch show together, go to Aspen and get something out of it.
Guest:You're right.
Guest:And then eventually people started moving to LA and getting work.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like Andy Daly got mad TV.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Donna Feinglass got mad TV.
Guest:That was huge.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Cause they were contemporaries.
Guest:It wasn't like the UCB for having a comedy central show.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Which was like, yeah, of course they're like our, they're like the elders.
Guest:They're like the elders.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But like when people that we came up with,
Guest:yeah started doing stuff it was wild and exciting you know it was crazy yeah yeah um and then the internet happened and then everybody every it was almost like i felt like what happened when nirvana broke and every pacific northwest band got signed right like when the internet happened and suddenly everybody could put sketches online and suddenly everybody was rep yeah yeah yeah everybody had deals right everything was happening right and this like it was like a a bright light was all of a
Guest:Which was cool.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then the L.A.
Guest:theater opening was really, I think, the transformative element.
Marc:On Franklin.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That first theater on Franklin in 2005.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was a huge moment.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Because I was out here in 2002.
Marc:I lived around the corner from it.
Marc:And yeah, it wasn't.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:It wasn't the UCB theater yet.
Marc:It was just a place.
Guest:It was the Tamron Theater.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But they did stuff, though, still.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Like you could do comedy there.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:I think so.
Guest:It was like a rentable space.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So when did when do you start getting work in the big show business?
Guest:It takes a long time for me to work.
Guest:But now you're like in everything.
Guest:Yeah, a little bit.
Guest:For a minute.
Guest:Yeah, I'm in everything for a minute.
Guest:You're like, there's that guy.
Guest:Hey, look at him.
Guest:There's that guy.
Guest:I liked him on that other thing.
Guest:He was funny on this one, too.
Guest:He always looks the same.
Guest:He's very consistent.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:I'm lucky that way, I guess.
Guest:It takes me a long, long time, mostly because I have a very funny...
Guest:I get a lot of success early on as part of like me and Jessica St.
Guest:Clair, who's on a show called Playing House right now.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:She and I are like a Nichols and May style comedy duo for many years.
Guest:And we would do a show.
Guest:We went to Aspen, got agents and managers.
Guest:What was it called?
Guest:the duo uh uh it was just uh manzoukas and st clair we didn't have a uh okay we didn't have a name or anything like that but so you did scripted shit yes we did um well that was a weird thing that really came out of that whole thing is that people learned how to direct they learned how to write they learned how to do sketch yep because it was a full-on community everybody played different roles and you had to do it for everybody else yeah so like i would write and do my shows but then i like i directed seth morris's one-man show or i like would do you know everybody would do a
Guest:part in everything he's so fucking funny dude the funny right yeah I think he's so uh unsung yeah oh somehow he has like genuinely some of my all-time favorite characters yeah I've ever seen yeah we used to do stuff with him on the radio and then I've had him in my show yeah two you know two different seasons yeah he's just too he's the best he's really and he's like also like genuinely one of the sweetest most generous men like in the world yeah you know like it's also like I
Guest:As opposed to stand-ups, which has its own social kind of understanding.
Guest:Like, what was very nice about coming up at UCB was, like, it's entirely based on support.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like, the entire ethos of the community is supporting each other.
Marc:That is the big difference.
Marc:With stand-up, we're both, like, we're all, like, socially awkward, emotionally broken fucking gypsies.
Guest:And while we're full of broken people, there is definitely an element of it, which is we're trying to, we're helping each other.
Guest:yeah well you know like it's very support based um and it must be somewhat competitive of course yeah of course but still anytime competition was introduced some uh a guy came from chicago and started teaching at ucb kevin uh mulaney was his name and he started a show called cage match which still exists where different house teams would go head to head yeah the audience would vote on the winner right seems easy enough i hate that shit
Guest:It fostered such aggressive competition amongst the improv nerds that it almost caused schisms between groups.
Marc:It almost crumbled the whole thing.
Guest:It introduced such chaos and such vendettas.
Guest:People are still now participating in grudges that exist simply because of one cage match where they felt gypped.
Guest:Oh, boy.
Guest:It's really great.
Guest:Really funny.
Marc:So it takes you a while.
Marc:So you go to Aspen with St.
Guest:Clair.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Go to Aspen.
Guest:We get a deal at Comedy Central.
Guest:You model it after Nichols and May.
Marc:I mean, was it you did very much.
Marc:You listen to that stuff.
Guest:Very much.
Guest:So I was very into that stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Those records.
Guest:I love compass players.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Really great.
Guest:And that was very because they functioned much the same way we did, which was they they generated their written material out of improv.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so that's what St.
Guest:Clair and I would do.
Guest:We would we would we would have a regular like an improv show at the theater, just the two of us to just improvise.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then we would record it and or we would improvise just in a room like in a rehearsal space, record it and out of that pull stuff that we liked and then use that as the raw material to write sketches out of.
Guest:And so that's kind of how we worked.
Guest:And that's similar to Nichols and May.
Marc:And you never took any acting lesson.
Guest:I did take classes.
Guest:At a certain point, I took classes at the Atlantic Theater Company in New York.
Guest:Yeah, that's so- Like extension classes.
Marc:It's like antithetical to improv, the Atlantic Theater in a way, no?
Guest:It is and it isn't.
Guest:What I liked, the reason I did it there is because it worked with improv in as much as they weren't focused on any kind of sense memory or any- Sure, it's in the script.
Guest:It really is.
Guest:These are the words, say them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It is just present tense, living presently.
Guest:yeah which is improv yeah you know it's just improv with scripted words yeah live presently present tense presently but make it up listen yeah yeah which was which is the central like ethos of improv which is listen yeah and that's something that is very hard to do when you are panicking because you don't know what you're gonna say yeah but like listening was such a is such a paramount like when you're like uh like you watch did you ever watch wolf hall the mark rylance show on pbs anyway
Guest:This show, it's a fine show, but Mark Rylance is like maybe the best actor working currently, just like Stone Cold Genius.
Guest:And in the show, he doesn't say a lot, but he's listening constantly.
Guest:And watching him listen is one of the most compelling performances I've ever seen.
Guest:Really?
Guest:So listening was so paramount.
Guest:And we'd been like taught to listen for so long that that was very easy to get into at Atlantic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was helpful.
Guest:Like, you know, because at a certain point I was like, oh, I'm big.
Guest:I'm too big.
Guest:Like when I go on auditions, when I get little jobs here and there, I'm just enormous.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I'm used to like sketch and improv broad characters.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I need to temper this with reality.
Marc:Well, you did that like, yeah, I thought that your role in Enlightened, that was a little, like, you know.
Marc:I love that role.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I like that show.
Guest:Love.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Love that show.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Really amazing.
Marc:But you were like a guy, like a real guy.
Marc:Regular guy.
Marc:Regular foreign guy.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, right, right, yeah.
Marc:So you had to learn that.
Marc:You had to learn how to bring it down.
Guest:Very much.
Guest:And not be always injecting bits or lightness or, you know, like really just sitting in things.
Guest:Sitting with the feelings.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Really just existing in moments.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No matter what they are.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And not worrying about filling silences or spaces or stuff like that was very kind of important for me to learn because I was otherwise predisposed to just fill all the space with clever dialogues.
Marc:It seems that the one thing that happens with the improv community is that you all do each other's stuff.
Marc:So you've been on a million things.
Marc:Correct.
Marc:For a second or two.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then you did.
Marc:But I know that Enlightened was a regular role, right?
Marc:The League was a regular role.
Marc:You did a lot and you were able to write on that.
Marc:Yep.
Guest:and those were that was a good group of guys great group um completely improvised show so it was like could not be a better show for me and my group of like like my peer group who were all on it because it was just our skill set on tv yeah so it was i'm so fun right that job was beyond fun and did they what they gave you you got a writing credit just because you were improvising did everyone get a writing
Guest:credit no no i got writing credit only on a couple of episodes that i actually wrote the outline for right so there were so i play a side character on that show and then in success i introduced we introduced my friend played by seth rogan who's an even more side character yeah and then eventually i was like we would like to do episodes that are just about us
Guest:And so every season they would give us a one off.
Guest:Right.
Guest:For the adventures of these two monsters.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So those shows would be full of like drugs and murder.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:On a show that is ostensibly about fantasy football.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It was chaos.
Guest:And Rogan and I would write those.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Outlines.
Guest:That's how the show is structured as like a seven page script outline.
Guest:And you met him out here.
Guest:I met him out here.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Through like writers round tables and stuff like that.
Guest:With McKay and those guys?
Guest:More with Judd and those guys.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you kind of got integrated into this whole world of comedy out here pretty quickly, though.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I stayed in New York much later than a lot of my peer group.
Guest:They all moved out here.
Guest:So when I came out here, they were already kind of set up.
Guest:They were already kind of in the world.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so it wasn't, it didn't, it was very easy, not very easy for me, but I was very lucky in the sense that people were like, oh, they're doing a round table or joke punch up thing.
Guest:You should come to it.
Guest:You know, because they knew about it, I would get invited and then I would get on that list.
Guest:And so the next time one would come around, I would get invited, you know?
Guest:And so.
Guest:And you're a good guy.
Guest:And I'm a good guy.
Marc:Yeah, you're a good presence, you're excited.
Marc:Like, I don't know you, but like, you know, you're all filled up.
Marc:Anytime we run into each other,
Marc:other it's a delightful conversation yeah absolutely yeah i'm always like yeah there you are yeah what are we gonna talk still doing it but no but i think some people are difficult but i think like you not only have talent but you probably you know in a room you're you're a fun guy very fun yeah yes
Guest:Very fun.
Guest:And, and, and, but also like I'll, I'll pitch jokes and I'll also, I'm not afraid to be like, this doesn't work.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like, I'm not afraid to be like in those rooms, like, oh, this, this is a problem.
Guest:You gotta, we gotta fix this.
Marc:But do you find that, you know, even, you know, outside of the comedy nerd world that you're still like that, there's that guy.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Because I get a lot of I hang around a lot with with Kroll and we will get a lot of this, which I enjoy because I like where I am at.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which is people will be like, oh, shit.
Guest:Nick Kroll.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Rafi from the league.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm like, great.
Guest:Don't know my name.
Guest:It's better.
Guest:Better.
Guest:Way better.
Guest:Way better.
Guest:I can have a life.
Guest:The thing for me, though, is I am unquestionably me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Nobody looks at me on the street and is like, is that who I think it is?
Guest:They're like, you're the guy.
Guest:You're the guy.
Marc:But I also think you're that to give or take, you know, on screen as well.
Marc:It seems.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Like Nick will do some pretty over the top shit.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:But, you know, you stay within your wheelhouse.
Marc:I do.
Guest:For the most part.
Guest:You know, there are a couple of things here and there that are that I'm diverging from.
Guest:But more often than not, I'm playing some version of a maniac scumbag drug dealing sociopath monster.
Guest:Like some sort of charming monster is what I'm doing almost all the time.
Marc:Well, do you want to do something other than that?
Guest:I do, and I have.
Guest:Just not to the same degree of success.
Guest:The things that I've done that are more normal parts haven't been in as big of things.
Guest:Like what?
Guest:I'm in a movie called Sleeping With Other People that I think is terrific.
Guest:um and i'm it's like a romantic comedy it's like the the pitch for it was it's when harry met sally for assholes yeah um and i play sudeikis i play like the bruno kirby part right i'm like sudeikis's married friend right and i've got a wife who's andrea savage and but we are super funny bickering but clearly in love and we're parents and we're normal people i'm not a crazy person i'm like is that rewarding it's great yeah really fun and
Marc:Now, is this one, the house, the one that I watched most of?
Guest:Nice.
Marc:Yes, this morning.
Marc:Terrific.
Marc:I did, you know.
Marc:Yeah, great.
Marc:It is in the world of those kind of comedies, you know.
Marc:But it feels like the biggest part you've had in a movie.
Guest:Oh, by far.
Marc:I mean, it's like most of the movie.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, the movie really is.
Guest:Will Amy and I start a casino in my house?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's the movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, it really is like it's casino.
Guest:It's Joe Pesci, De Niro and Sharon Stone.
Guest:Eventually, you know, it becomes that's what it becomes.
Marc:The last third of the movie.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:When it gets violent, it gets pretty crazy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But it does.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like, I don't you know, it's a weird thing.
Marc:It seems to be happening.
Guest:recently that the over-the-top violence and out of nowhere yeah it gets very normal people juxtaposed with hyper violence right yeah absolutely it's just it's recent though right i think so i think it's like it's it's trying to find it's trying to insert extreme circumstances into what would otherwise be ordinary comedy scenarios
Guest:And violence is one of the places you can go.
Marc:Well, yeah.
Marc:And I think that people have done it before.
Marc:Like, you know, Monty Python has done it before.
Marc:It's been around before.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:But there's something about, you know, a big screen movie.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:We're just out of nowhere.
Marc:You know that.
Guest:There's also a thing, though, which is.
Marc:Like Sasha's last movie about the soccer guy.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:What was that called?
Marc:Brothers Grimsby.
Marc:Were you in that?
Guest:No.
Guest:I was in The Dictator.
Guest:I was in the one prior.
Guest:That was like your big break in a way.
Guest:It very much was.
Guest:Yep.
Marc:But the Grimsby movie, which I saw at a screening at some small facility, I was like, whoa, this is over the top.
Marc:Some of the violence and some of the sexuality stuff.
Guest:What used to be a very well balanced, within the first seven minutes of Beverly Hills Cop, there's a brutal murder.
Marc:There's a crazy murder.
Marc:In the cop movies that used to happen.
Guest:In those kind of action comedies of the 80s, violence and comedy are interchangeable.
Guest:Both are being pursued all the time to both help the procedural element of the thing and then also the comedy.
Marc:But in the 70s and into the 80s a bit, even things that were comedies, people would die.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And now I think the reason that violence feels so crazy or gone for a while is because it's gone for a while.
Guest:And also because it's not being it's a true juxtaposition.
Guest:The ratio is so off now when the movies now are 90 percent just comedic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then every once in a while they sprinkle in 10 percent of hyper violence just to be like, isn't this crazy?
Marc:Well, there's other genres like slasher movies and horror movies that are just like gratuitous violence that often elevate to comedy.
Marc:And I think a lot of people, maybe not great people, think they're hilarious.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's coming off and whatnot.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's not my cup of tea.
Marc:But like I watched Analyze This for like the 10th time on the plane the other day.
Marc:And that's a gangster comedy.
Marc:No one goes down.
Marc:No.
Marc:There's no blood.
Marc:No one dies.
Marc:Everybody's fine.
Marc:And it's an intentional thing.
Marc:There's gunplay, but no one gets hurt.
Marc:And that's a decision.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:So now that decision is different.
Marc:Oh, totally.
Marc:But the weird thing is that I still, maybe it's because I'm old or something, there's some part of me that after everything goes down, goes down, that I'm like, well, these people are morally flawed and they're going to pay for it.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:But that doesn't happen.
Guest:No, no, no, it doesn't.
Guest:Were you expecting an unhappy 70s ending?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:This is not a Hal Ashby movie.
Marc:There's a point where it's not quite enough that you're running a casino in a suburban neighborhood.
Marc:I've suspended my disbelief to allow the premise to occur.
Guest:That we're basically opening a casino to take all of our friends and neighbors' money and make it ours?
Marc:I'm going to let that happen.
Marc:But once real people get hurt, and I'm like, well, this guy's not a good guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:You really if you look too close at it, you're like, wait a minute.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's the same thing I remember with the dictator talking about it and like doing press for it and stuff and having to be like, oh, well, keep in mind, we're playing terrorists.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We're playing like we're funny and all this stuff.
Guest:But like we're playing people that are like bad guys.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're rooting for bad guys.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But, you know, you all in this movie, you all have these sort of problems.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:you know, yours is a gambling addiction and a divorce and theirs is they got to put their kid through college.
Marc:But, uh, but yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's not meant to be an exploration of the human spirit.
Guest:No, it is not.
Guest:No, it is not.
Guest:And that's the thing.
Guest:Like if you get on board for that, if you buy into like, great, they're going to start a casino and they're going to be like kind of morons and violent people.
Guest:Great.
Guest:If you're into it, it's fun.
Marc:Well, the other question I had for you was the, uh, what, uh, you wrote, co-wrote ride along.
Uh,
Guest:I did.
Guest:Well, I rewrote Ride Along.
Marc:Oh, so you were brought in.
Guest:I was brought in.
Guest:Ride Along was written as a PG family movie.
Guest:Who wrote it?
Guest:Greg Coolidge wrote it first.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then somebody else wrote a draft of it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then I wrote a draft of it, and then it died.
Guest:And then years later, when after, I think what happened was Ice Cube was funny in 21 Jump Street.
Guest:And people were like, hey, he could do a comedy.
Guest:And they were like, we already have it.
Guest:It's this.
Guest:And so they took my script.
Guest:When I wrote it, they asked that it be for, it was him and they wanted Andy Samberg to be the guy.
Guest:The Kevin Hart part.
Guest:And so I wrote it for them, for those two.
Guest:And then when it came back to life, I had nothing to do with it, but they used my draft and just rewrote all the stuff for Kevin.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Newb guys rewrote it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But because it was my draft that it was based off of, I got credit.
Marc:Well, that must have been good.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:And a lot of my stuff was structurally the movie, you know, and a lot of the jokes are my stuff.
Guest:But those guys did a great, Manfredi and Hay did an amazing job, you know, rewriting it for Cube and Kevin, which was great.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Why is that the only thing you've written?
Guest:I've written other stuff.
Guest:I'm one of those people that for many years would sell a show, would write a pilot, pilot would get made, not picked up.
Guest:There's a lot of those.
Guest:The last 12 years of my life are riddled with those.
Guest:What about movies?
Guest:Movies, I'm writing a movie right now for Paramount.
Guest:I've written a bunch of other movies similarly, some of which have just sat and not been made.
Guest:Nothing else has been made.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Sat and not been made are still in process.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like I've got a movie that I wrote for Imagine that I'm supposed to direct and blah, blah, blah.
Guest:But it's again, it's like...
Guest:getting comedy features made is very weird right now unless it's like and you don't mind the limbo or doing the work and having it sit there or do it is i used to mind it a lot more earlier when i had nothing else going on right and now i don't and it's not that i don't mind it but now i recognize that there is a constant state of flux in everything yeah and so i now i'm like i have i have my eggs in many baskets and
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So if it takes two years for this movie to get made at all.
Guest:Right.
Guest:At the very least, I'll have done these three things in that two years.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:And you're working all the time.
Guest:Do you still actually teach improv?
Guest:I don't.
Guest:No, I don't anymore.
Guest:I haven't for since I moved here.
Marc:Not even a special seminar here and there.
Marc:No, that'd be fun, though.
Marc:Do you do it?
Guest:I do, yeah, every week.
Guest:I do a show every week at UCB here on Franklin.
Marc:Someone told me they saw you do the best improv they ever saw in their life.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah, apparently it was entirely silent.
Guest:Oh, I know that show.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You did a 45-minute completely silent improv.
Guest:Alone.
Marc:Alone.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was supposed to do a show with three other people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All three of them didn't show up.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I was like, well, what am I going to do?
Guest:I kind of was like, I don't know.
Guest:I've done shows in the past where I've just pulled random people out of the audience and done a show with them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And this show in particular, the idea of it is there's no edits.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So it's just one long scene usually.
Guest:It just happens to be with more people.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I was like, you know what?
Guest:It would be cool.
Guest:I'll do it alone.
Yeah.
Guest:Why not?
Guest:I've never done that.
Guest:Because at this point, improvising, that's arguably the place I feel most comfortable in life is on stage not knowing what's going to happen.
Guest:It's the only time I'm not crippled with anxiety about the future or riddled with regrets about the past.
Guest:You have that?
Guest:I'm just present tense.
Guest:but do you really live in that zone off the stage off stage I am I live in a less regrets about the past although they're there like hyper anxious future catastrophic future thinker like I am dread dread fear and dread about all things like coming over here
Guest:no not coming over here no more of the world more like more like i'm very susceptible to like health concerns i'm very obsessed with i'm like a hypochondriacal in many ways oh yeah totally um like when you went to the bathroom yeah i secretly took uh clorox wipes out of my uh bag and washed my hands oh yeah like just cuz yeah it had been a while my bathroom is a little dirty
Guest:No, just because I'm like... Really?
Guest:I'm just like constantly cycling.
Guest:My mind is constantly cycling.
Guest:Yeah, but what do you do to stop it?
Guest:Improvise?
Guest:Improvise.
Guest:Yeah, but I mean... I've been trying to meditate.
Guest:I've been trying to do all of those kind of mindfulness exercises to kind of... Is it working?
Guest:It fits and starts, honestly.
Guest:Because I have that too.
Marc:I have the paralyzing anxiety and dread.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:For me, catastrophic thinking.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But do you, are you, but you seem capable of experiencing happiness.
Yeah.
Guest:To some degree or another.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm good at representing that I'm capable of experiencing happiness.
Guest:for me you're a professional for me like like even here as we talk yeah I am still performing a persona that seems vulnerable yeah you know what I mean like and I'm aware of that and I'm aware of like you know like I was having a conversation with with my therapist recently and was like
Guest:Because she was like, I was trying to explain the idea of a comedic persona and a comedic persona that looks a lot like I look.
Guest:And I was like, oh, and she was like, I guess I don't know what you mean.
Guest:I was like, oh, I'm going to have to send you something because I have like the most naked conversational relationship with her.
Guest:And I was like, I'm going to have to send you something that is representative of who I otherwise am.
Guest:Because you don't actually know that version of me that I would otherwise talk about.
Marc:So when you're with her, you're like wringing your hands?
Guest:I'm much more like I'm much more forthcoming.
Guest:I'm much more just I'm much more vulnerable.
Guest:I'm much more laid bare.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like there is no I have no I have no walls, you know, with her.
Guest:Because to me, I'm like vigilantly pursuing like growth and and understanding with her in my mind.
Guest:I'm like the faster you and I connect on this, the better, the quicker I'm going to get out of my head.
Marc:But it doesn't work that way necessarily.
Guest:Only in that moment.
Marc:I'm not finding it.
Marc:Only in that moment.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then you walk out feeling like, oh, we really did it.
Guest:Yeah, and then I open my phone and I'm like, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
Marc:So you're that guy.
Marc:You're the guy that, you know, there's probably a couple women who are like, oof.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:They're out there.
Guest:I love them, but I had to get out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:No, it's no good.
Guest:It's no good.
Guest:You know, women who are like, I'm rooting for you, but like, it's no good.
Guest:You got to figure it out, bro.
Guest:I'm exhausted.
Guest:Truly, exhausted is what they would all say.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's exhausting.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It's exhausting to fight with you.
Marc:so you just spin around yeah like in variations of uh of dread uh uh anger and sadness fear sad melancholy i'm prone to fits of melancholy oh yeah yeah well it seems like all that stuff so you're sort of like i mean i can relate to that in the sense that you just keep throwing yourself into shit oh yeah to uh to you know to challenge it
Marc:Well, you had to challenge it and to defy it, you know, like that's the thing about dread.
Marc:But even as you said earlier that, you know, that you did all these things, you took all these chances and, you know, certain things aren't frightening, but but there's still this core thing.
Marc:what the fuck is that so like if you say to me like why i was put in prison and i did this thing i mean obviously it was limited to what it was but yeah but so a lot of things you know post that post the experience of having a meltdown which now that you tell me what you're really like in an hour and a half in that in in morocco that must have been like i really was like i gotta figure out how to be truthful and honest without just being like totally right but but so you must have really been freaking out in morocco truly
Guest:And I was like, like a like weeping on the street.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Catastrophic mess.
Guest:All alone out there.
Marc:Alone.
Marc:So but so you got through that.
Marc:But yeah.
Marc:But in the same way with me is like, OK, so, you know, you catalog that experience and it should represent something that will propel you to be less fearless in life.
Marc:But the fear is not about getting up on stage or or doing the things that is so frightening to other people.
Marc:It's just this the quiet of being alone with your own brain.
Marc:Being alone, period.
Guest:I feel like the thing that is... My nightmares, the nightmares that I wake up that I can't shake, are nightmares of loneliness.
Guest:Are truly just...
Guest:I am alone.
Guest:I am alone in a place that I don't know.
Guest:I'm alone in the world.
Guest:I'm like, I've been, I've been, I'm a pariah.
Guest:I'm like, those are the things in escape or invisible.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's what I get.
Marc:Oh, is this, is sort of like, if I'm alone too long, it's sort of like, like I regressed to this point where, where I'm just sort of like, no, no, do I exist?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It's not quite like that, but just sort of like,
Marc:you know you start to forget that you you you experience yourself in relation to right other people yeah an audience or whatever well it's a it's a very narcissistic thing of like for me i'll be like if i don't hear from a friend yeah for a little while i'll text them and be like are you mad at me oh yeah and i just don't know it oh yeah well that's better i go right to fuck you sometimes
Guest:it's been a week you go fuck yourself yeah but then you then you've constructed an entire thing that doesn't exist at all they're like i'm sorry my dog was sick exactly okay or i'm going through some stuff you could like just reach out and ask me how i'm doing right it is a selfish thing yeah i don't because i'm filtering it through yeah i'm filtering it through me so oh i haven't heard from my friend in a while i must have done something it must be me rather than like maybe maybe they've got something right and then you reach out and immediately make it about you yeah
Guest:I don't know what I did, but I hope we're okay.
Guest:Hey, I hope we're cool.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Maybe last time did I say something?
Guest:And they're always like, no, my dad is sick.
Guest:I'm going through something.
Guest:And I'm like, oh, fuck.
Guest:I'm the asshole.
Guest:I'm an idiot.
Guest:It's like, oh, right.
Guest:You're supposed to talk to me more.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:How are we going to get better?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We're doing it, right?
Guest:We're just middle-aged men figuring it out.
Guest:I guess.
Guest:Do you have a wife or children?
Guest:I do not.
Guest:I have neither.
Guest:Yeah, so I don't either.
Guest:So are we figuring it out?
Yeah.
Guest:It sounds like, just as a fan of the show, it sounds like a very successful relationship right now.
Marc:Yeah, we're doing good.
Marc:Great.
Marc:But I don't think I'm going to have kids.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:I think that's done.
Guest:You think that's done because you've decided you don't want kids?
Guest:You certainly could still have kids.
Guest:Steve Martin had a kid when he was like 72 years old.
Guest:Who did?
Guest:Steve Martin.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:I mean, a million people had kids when they were older.
Marc:What do I want to be that guy?
Marc:I mean, it's like I'm going to be old.
Marc:I'm almost tired already.
Marc:Does she?
Marc:Well, not really.
Marc:She doesn't, you know, but but like, you know, I don't I don't have the answers to those things that, you know, sustain relationships in a healthy way that, you know, that where the compromises are OK.
Marc:And that, you know, because I get to that anxiety place or I get to that.
Marc:It's not even like it could be better or it could be worse.
Marc:It's just sort of like.
Guest:is this it yeah is this it yeah or is this it or i get am i doing it right yeah yeah am i doing well i know i'm doing it wrong yeah and then that knowledge is like insidious when you start understanding that you're doing it wrong and that the system you've created is itself flawed yeah in a way that can only destroy the thing that you are trying to make and then when you have this conversation with them yeah yeah
Guest:that's right yeah and it and then they're like why are you so intellectual about it yeah and i'm like well i'm trying to figure this out like it's a problem that we're gonna figure out yeah rather than just being with you and finding a way to do it together can't improvise in life huh truly i mean i talk about this constantly is oh really i am the best at a thing
Guest:that I am incapable of living in my life.
Guest:I am an amazing improviser.
Guest:I mean, that's a very arrogant thing to say, but I am a very good improviser.
Guest:You've been doing it long enough to say that.
Guest:I've been doing it very long.
Guest:I'm very good at it.
Guest:And it is listening, living in the moment, and accepting only enough responsibility for that which you can provide in that scene on stage or whatever.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Which is, by the way, a great model for living your life.
Guest:I'm only responsible for that which I can provide to this person or this event or this in my life.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Incapable of doing that.
Guest:In life, I'm like, I must be responsible for you and your happiness.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm in my mind during this being like, is this a good episode?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Is Mark going to be happy about this?
Guest:Or is he going to, what's the intro going to be like?
Guest:Is he going to be like, I sat with Jason Manzikis.
Guest:Good guy.
Guest:Good guy.
Guest:You know, good guy.
Guest:But you know what?
Guest:We didn't really get into it at the very end.
Guest:Tricky.
Guest:He's a tricky guy.
Guest:Didn't get interesting until the end.
Guest:We talked about music.
Guest:We talked about this, that, and the other.
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:He was okay.
Marc:That's what I would say to my producer right after the show.
Marc:I wouldn't intro you like that.
Marc:yeah but now no i i i have the same issue like you know having these conversations in here yeah i don't have a social life yeah yeah i mean my chicks are you know she's painting over there we go out to eat and it's okay well i never see you around except at music shows which i like well yeah i go to some music shows when i get tickets or i'm invited but i don't make way to do it but like you know like
Marc:I get to the point where people don't ask me to go to things really.
Marc:And I guess there are premieres and things I should go to, but I don't, I don't know, but I used to go out more to the clubs and stuff.
Marc:And then like lately I've just been like, I think I'm through the woods with that shit.
Marc:None of it's, I mean, you should go to what you want to go to.
Marc:I just don't always know what that is.
Marc:And the, and the, and the dread will paralyze me.
Guest:Cause like for me, I'm like,
Guest:If I want to see a movie early, I'll go to the premiere if I can.
Guest:Just to be like, because I want to see that movie.
Guest:I just saw yours on a screener.
Guest:Yeah, great.
Guest:By the way, great.
Guest:Thank you for watching it.
Guest:In and of itself, a feat to get people to watch stuff.
Guest:But there's also just too much.
Guest:There's too much.
Guest:But also, like, that's the big problem.
Marc:Like, don't you ever ask?
Guest:And L.A.
Marc:is a home-based life.
Marc:No, I know.
Marc:I know that.
Marc:Yeah, I was just in New York.
Marc:But I get exhausted there, too.
Marc:And I travel around the same four blocks in New York.
Guest:Same restaurants.
Marc:All of it.
Marc:And I'm beating myself up now.
Guest:Do you go up when you're out there?
Marc:I do sometimes.
Marc:But I didn't this last time.
Marc:Because I've been on the road for months.
Marc:And I just shot a special.
Marc:And there's some part of me that I want to try to feel like I don't have to do it.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And I don't know.
Marc:Like, I don't know.
Guest:It can be all of it.
Guest:Like, you don't have to participate in all of it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, in terms of what you're saying about going to premieres or going to the parties.
Guest:I don't go.
Marc:No one asked me to go.
Marc:No one invites me to fucking dinner.
Guest:Nobody has anybody to go.
Marc:Everybody's just like, I got to go to things.
Marc:I want to go to there.
Guest:I always feel like there's a list.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:This is so funny.
Guest:I love it that we are still.
Guest:What?
Guest:Not believing that people want us around.
Guest:You're just, you're doing exactly what I just said, which is like, are you mad at me?
Guest:You do it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I do it too.
Guest:I'm like, should I feel insulted that I wasn't invited to X, Y, or Z?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And then you don't want to go to begin with.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't.
Guest:And then, cause I will say that sometimes to like my manager, who's a good friend of mine or something.
Guest:I'll be like, is it weird that I wasn't invited to this, that, or the other?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she'll be like, do you want to go to it?
Guest:I'm sure we can call.
Guest:And I'll be like, no, I don't want to go to it.
Guest:I just feel like, should I have been invited or not?
Marc:Then you start to realize all those people are just sort of like, I need to go to that.
Marc:We're middle-aged men.
Guest:We should not care about that.
Marc:I'm very close to not caring.
Guest:Also, not only are we middle-aged men and we shouldn't care, we're doing plenty.
Marc:We're busy as shit.
Marc:We're doing plenty.
Marc:I'm on the precipice of not giving a fuck.
Marc:Great.
Marc:You?
Marc:No.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It's certainly about the like social kind of nonsense like that.
Guest:Do you know what you like to do like outside of work?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm like a real creature of habit in that sense.
Guest:Like I really I want to do.
Guest:But it's very like if especially if it's like I'm going to New York.
Guest:I want to go to the record stores that I want to go to.
Guest:I have errands to run almost.
Guest:I do that too.
Guest:And I just want to walk around.
Guest:Restaurants.
Guest:I've got all those things.
Guest:Stores that I want to buy.
Guest:Clothes in.
Guest:But it's comforting, right?
Guest:Super.
Guest:It's all soothing.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But then out of the box, I'm sort of like, I want to go Lincoln Center.
Marc:I did one experience there years ago where I just stepped in and just saw a symphony.
Marc:I didn't know nothing about it.
Guest:Same happened to me with, and you had her on your show.
Guest:I heard something about Annie Baker's play of the flick.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so I happened to be in New York and was like, I'm going to go see that.
Guest:And so I went and like my mind was blown.
Marc:I became obsessed with her.
Guest:right that's the thing we got to keep doing is blowing our minds i guess well that's and that is what's hard about i think about los angeles versus new york is new york makes it very easy for you to like just do a thing right like truly like improvise your day and night like that's why i love new york because it's right you don't go to like three or four places and you get there and you're like why is that person still hanging around is there
Marc:So when I tell that person to go home, get that guy out of here.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Okay.
Guest:Is this what we're doing?
Guest:That doesn't happen in New York.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:But like in LA, you really are like limited.
Guest:You're in a night or a weekend.
Guest:You're maybe doing two things.
Guest:How's the meditation working?
Guest:It's okay.
Guest:It's okay.
Guest:It's on me.
Guest:It's on me to do it more.
Marc:When was the last time you went to the doctor?
Marc:Oh, recently.
Guest:I go to the doctor constantly.
Guest:Oftentimes, so that he can be like, you're fine.
Guest:It's nothing.
Marc:Isn't that weird?
Marc:Now, I know where that comes from with me.
Marc:Did your parents not make you feel better?
Guest:here's what it is for me and i i think this is what in this respect this is what it is for me is and forgive me you know for talking about this food allergy again but i think because i was raised so acutely aware of my own mortality yeah because it was so present i never felt in invincible i
Guest:I never was a child like you.
Guest:If you ate an egg, you die.
Guest:If I ate anything that has egg in it, if I eat pasta, if I eat bread, if I eat anything for breakfast, if I eat anything that has egg as an ingredient, I'll die.
Guest:I have the same allergy to eggs that people have to like almonds, bee stings or nuts or whatever.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Like your throat will close?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like EpiPen in my bag, like anaphylaxis, the whole thing.
Guest:And as a result, like very, like parents, very afraid of, for me and very afraid to like, let go of me.
Guest:Made me very not trusting of people, not like very like fear-based kind of like, if you leave this house, don't eat anything anybody gives you.
Guest:Don't, don't believe anybody that tells you it doesn't have any, like very like rigid.
Guest:Right.
Guest:pediatrician was like it was all fear-based yeah you will die i i remember him very vividly being like i had a boy who had your same allergy and he wanted to have a piece of pizza and he ate it and he died and i remember so vividly being the piece of pizza because i was like i like pizza yeah i want to eat pizza how'd you know you liked it um because there was a place in my town that didn't have egg in the pizza
Guest:anyway um but i think for me like that idea of the incredible how vulnerable i was made me feel like doctors know all the answers and i'm i'm i'm just fundamentally weak and fragile right and as a result if this is possible maybe everything's possible right so i will like read an article or hear an npr story about like a meningitis outbreak yeah and i'll text my doctor and be like do i need to be worried about this do you manifest symptoms
Guest:Constantly.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And I'll tie things together.
Guest:Once I notice one thing, I'll systematically go top to bottom and be like, what else is up?
Marc:What else is up?
Marc:It's all connected.
Marc:And then you can go connect the dots on the Google.
Marc:Yep.
Guest:Or the biggest mistake was my doctor let me have his cell phone number so I could text him.
Guest:My doctor who, upon first meeting him, as I was going through all the medical issues that I've had through my life, looked up in the middle of it and goes, wow, you really got a bum unit.
Guest:he goes and then he was the same doctor as a friend of mine who was like and my friend at one point goes i don't think he should have said this to me but he i was like hey you're uh you're also seeing jason manzoukas and the doctor goes oh yeah that guy's got so many problems he should be dead by now i'm shocked he's still alive and rob was like i don't think he should be saying that to other people but it's mental issues right no physical like real physical stuff you do yeah i mean like various but like right you know just stuff
Guest:yeah all right well that's so you're in a constant state of panic yeah yeah i'm on the verge of a constant state of panic yeah you know i'm in like a medium state of panic it's always right there it's like a full glass and like everything is just hovering to like pour more into it but all it takes is uh you know is a pimple or something on your skin oh my god the frequency with which you're ringing in the ear frequency with which i go to my dermatologist to be like what is this yeah
Guest:What is this?
Guest:Is this skin cancer?
Guest:What's going on?
Guest:And she's like, it's a pimple or it's a hair follicle.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, I don't know.
Marc:I was able to sort of get that shit in check somehow because the core of it for me was not the same as yours.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:How do you think you get that in check?
Marc:Don't know.
Guest:improvise yeah and that and truly like that's like trying to be more allow for more of a present improv improvised narrative in how i live my life is what i'm trying to do yeah but it's it goes against everything that i've built yeah because it's really long form yeah it's like the show's hopefully not going to end for a long time exactly and the connections are going to be amazing yeah yeah you just don't know where they're going to come from who the players are
Marc:Well, it was great talking to you.
Guest:This was a delight.
Guest:Thanks, man.
Guest:Thanks for having me.
Marc:So that was lovely.
Marc:I really like that guy.
Marc:I don't feel like playing guitar today because I'm hot.
Marc:I'm sweaty.
Marc:I've done two interviews and I've done this today.
Marc:I'm a little shattered.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Boomer lives.
you