Episode 949 - Billy Eichner

Episode 949 • Released September 9, 2018 • Speakers detected

00:00:00Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast wtf welcome to it lashana tova jews happy new year jews

00:00:25Marc:non-jews welcome to year five seven seven nine that's right year five thousand seven hundred and seventy nine on the hebrew calendar uh good morning good morning to you get ready to atone that comes up in a week or so this is the good times this is the apples and honey times this is the the time where you you blow the show for a bit shofar i should say not the guy driving anyways

00:00:51Marc:Yeah, in sort of a Jewish-themed show, I guess.

00:00:56Marc:Not really.

00:00:57Marc:Two Jews on the show, but that happens a lot.

00:00:59Marc:But Billy Eichner's on the show today.

00:01:02Marc:I just got back from Minnesota.

00:01:05Marc:And, you know, there's stuff going on.

00:01:07Marc:I had some good shows.

00:01:09Marc:But before I get into the bulk of what I'm going to...

00:01:13Marc:blather on about I wanted to give a little shout out to my buddy Matt Bronger you remember Matt Bronger even though Matt Bronger he's been on the show a couple times a funny guys he was also on my IFC show Marin he played the vet the veterinarian he's got a podcast that you should check out called advice from a dipshit with Matt Bronger people call in they leave a message asking for advice and then Matt answers them without having listened to them beforehand so it's in the moment

00:01:41Marc:It's kind of a dipshit Dear Abby, if you will.

00:01:44Marc:Helping people based on the many mistakes Matt has made along the way in his bungling life to this point.

00:01:51Marc:So go check that out, Advice from a Dipshit with Matt Bronger.

00:01:55Marc:You can get it on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get podcasts.

00:02:00Marc:I was happy for Matt doing the thing.

00:02:02Marc:So I thought I'd tell you about it.

00:02:05Marc:I am honestly...

00:02:07Marc:Exhausted.

00:02:08Marc:Because what I do is I go do these shows.

00:02:11Marc:I was in Minneapolis at Acme Comedy Club.

00:02:14Marc:One of the best comedy clubs in the country.

00:02:17Marc:And we had some great shows out there.

00:02:19Marc:Me.

00:02:19Marc:The guy who middled was Greg Coleman.

00:02:23Marc:Very funny.

00:02:23Marc:And the guy who hosted Ali Sultan.

00:02:27Marc:Funny people.

00:02:28Marc:And it was great.

00:02:29Marc:And I'm exhausted.

00:02:30Marc:Because what I do is I have to come back and do this on Sunday.

00:02:34Marc:So I fly back.

00:02:36Marc:at very early in the morning and I don't generally sleep on the plane and I fester and I eat peanuts and whatever.

00:02:45Marc:Every time I come home and I do this after a weekend away, I feel like I have the fucking flu.

00:02:50Marc:I don't, just a little tired.

00:02:52Marc:And I got to tell you that I hadn't done Acme and I guess it's been a couple of years and I've been doing these club dates to sort of build out some stuff.

00:03:00Marc:And it's just it is so relieving and great to be doing stand up in an amazing comedy room, just an intimate, tight, well-worn room like Acme in Minneapolis.

00:03:14Marc:And I love Minneapolis.

00:03:15Marc:I love the audiences there.

00:03:17Marc:And I'm not just pandering for no reason.

00:03:20Marc:I taped a special there.

00:03:21Marc:They're good people.

00:03:23Marc:They're polite people.

00:03:25Marc:They're cultured people.

00:03:27Marc:They love comedy.

00:03:30Marc:They're good audiences.

00:03:31Marc:And I mean, maybe it's a Midwestern thing, the politeness thing, but it is kind of, because I think even the assholes are kind of polite in Minnesota, if I'm not mistaken.

00:03:40Marc:Maybe someone needs to correct me on that.

00:03:41Marc:A Minnesotan.

00:03:43Marc:But...

00:03:44Marc:I think in these chaotic times, we strive to maintain some sort of calm or at least ritual in our life.

00:03:53Marc:And I'm not talking religious ritual.

00:03:54Marc:It's just every day is an onslaught of this garbage fire of a culture right now.

00:04:00Marc:And you've still got to manage.

00:04:02Marc:And the word manage implies things like, you know, everything seems very unmanageable.

00:04:07Marc:Many things are unmanageable.

00:04:09Marc:Many things seem completely out of our control.

00:04:11Marc:So sometimes you hold on kind of tightly to the things you think you can control.

00:04:16Marc:It's almost like a life preserver on some level because you're just drowning in the chaos that is the daily news or having a hard time breathing in the garbage air.

00:04:29Marc:Whatever it is, my point is the idea of managing can be pretty tight.

00:04:36Marc:And, you know, when you get that tight, aggravated need to manage or, you know, need to fight the fights, even if they're small, you know, birds will shit on you.

00:04:46Marc:If you're walking around tied like a knot, life will kick you in the groin.

00:04:50Marc:And I made that non-gender specific, the groin.

00:04:53Marc:Could have went with balls there.

00:04:55Marc:Or I could have went with, you know, the vag.

00:04:58Marc:But I did not.

00:05:00Marc:Did not.

00:05:01Marc:Keeping it general.

00:05:01Marc:So here's the point that I'm trying to make.

00:05:05Marc:I'm not a prima donna.

00:05:06Marc:I don't live excessively.

00:05:08Marc:I save my money.

00:05:10Marc:But recently I realized, hey, you're 54 years old.

00:05:13Marc:You got no wife and no kids.

00:05:15Marc:What are you saving it for exactly?

00:05:17Marc:So I got a house and now like I'll try to stay at a nice hotel occasionally.

00:05:22Marc:Fly first class when I can, which is always if possible.

00:05:26Marc:That's what I do with my money.

00:05:28Marc:I don't buy expensive things.

00:05:29Marc:I buy reasonable things, and if I like them, I'll buy three or four of them.

00:05:34Marc:Example, some Nike shoes, the Wild Horses, which you never know when Nike's going to not make the shoe you like anymore.

00:05:40Marc:Bought three pairs of those.

00:05:41Marc:Planet Waves, the Bob Dylan record.

00:05:43Marc:I got five of those.

00:05:44Marc:Why?

00:05:45Marc:I don't know.

00:05:46Marc:I don't know because I like the record.

00:05:47Marc:It doesn't make sense.

00:05:48Marc:You only need one.

00:05:49Marc:I got backups.

00:05:51Okay.

00:05:51Marc:But point is managing tightly wrapped, aggravated, trying to keep it together.

00:05:58Marc:You know, I guess you can meditate, can breathe, you can pray, you can exercise.

00:06:04Marc:I do one of those things, exercise right now, but I'm a little tightly wrapped.

00:06:09Marc:So I coming in hot, I'm coming in hot.

00:06:11Marc:I get, I get out of the car.

00:06:13Marc:I get to Minneapolis.

00:06:14Marc:I go to the fancy hotel, which I'm excited about.

00:06:17Marc:I'm checking in.

00:06:18Marc:I go, Hey, you know, cause I'm, as many of you know, I'm doing tea now.

00:06:21Marc:I stopped the coffee and I figured out a way to ritualize.

00:06:25Marc:It didn't take much.

00:06:26Marc:Tea is a demands ritual as does most brewed drinks.

00:06:31Marc:Uh, but, uh, I'm still got a kind of a compulsive, addictive personality and, uh,

00:06:35Marc:The idea of bringing loose tea and plastic bags that I can roll up, you know, plays into my the old days, the back in the day drug bags.

00:06:45Marc:But I got my teas with me and I like to get set up in the room if I'm going to be there for a few days with the tea.

00:06:50Marc:So I say to the guy, I'm going to need a water kettle up in the room to boil water.

00:06:55Marc:He's like, we don't have one of those.

00:06:56Marc:And I like.

00:06:57Marc:Like, just right then, I'm like, what the fuck?

00:06:59Marc:How the fuck?

00:07:01Marc:You know, it's not that big an ask.

00:07:03Marc:You know, and this is a high-end hotel.

00:07:04Marc:I mean, what the fuck?

00:07:05Marc:How can you not have a goddamn water kettle to boil water with?

00:07:08Marc:I mean, it's fucking ridiculous.

00:07:10Marc:I didn't say that.

00:07:11Marc:I mean, what I said was, oh, really?

00:07:14Marc:Okay, that's strange.

00:07:16Marc:Okay, okay.

00:07:17Marc:So there was a subtext there of like, are you fucking kidding me?

00:07:21Marc:But my brain wouldn't let it go.

00:07:23Marc:So I said, you really don't have a tea kettle?

00:07:25Marc:You don't have a water kettle?

00:07:26Marc:That seems ridiculous to me.

00:07:27Marc:He's like, no, we don't.

00:07:28Marc:I'm like, you know, they're not that expensive.

00:07:29Marc:You could just buy them.

00:07:30Marc:You know, you could buy them for the hotel.

00:07:32Marc:You could have a couple.

00:07:34Marc:He's like, that's not really my job.

00:07:35Marc:And I'm like, all right, fine, fine.

00:07:38Marc:But I couldn't let it go because I didn't want to go downstairs every day.

00:07:41Marc:I didn't want to call room service every day to have fucking hot water so I could make my own silly tea in the room.

00:07:45Marc:I usually go.

00:07:46Marc:I get in.

00:07:47Marc:I go to Whole Foods.

00:07:47Marc:I get some almond milk.

00:07:48Marc:I get some nuts and stuff.

00:07:50Marc:And I'm set up.

00:07:50Marc:I got to set up so I can have tea and at least some snacks in the room that aren't horrible and don't have to have delivered to me.

00:07:58Marc:So I couldn't let go.

00:08:01Marc:Of the tea kettle, the water kettle, the boiler.

00:08:04Marc:I couldn't let go of it.

00:08:06Marc:So I fucking dropped my bags in my room and I went to Target.

00:08:09Marc:I went to Target because I'm like, I'm going to spend, how much could it cost for a fucking water kettle?

00:08:18Marc:you know, for me to have for the weekend.

00:08:20Marc:Is it worth it just to get for the weekend and throw it away or, you know, let the fucking hotel keep it for the next people?

00:08:26Marc:That's the magnanimous thing.

00:08:28Marc:That was in my head, kind of.

00:08:29Marc:It was kind of in my head.

00:08:30Marc:I'll just go buy the hotel a water kettle.

00:08:34Marc:So I stop out of there and I'm on my way to Target.

00:08:37Marc:I stop at Walgreens just to visit the travel sizes section.

00:08:41Marc:I don't know why I like to go to the travel size section, but it's calming to me.

00:08:44Marc:I do not know what it is.

00:08:45Marc:I'll even go to the Walgreens down the street from me here and check the travel sizes.

00:08:49Marc:It's not even if I need anything.

00:08:51Marc:I think there's just some excitement I get when I'm like, oh, look, they make that in a little one.

00:08:56Marc:That's a little one of those.

00:08:58Marc:Oh, so I got grounded in the front of the travel sizes and I go to Target and I find a water kettle, a water boiler, $14.99.

00:09:12Marc:And I bought it.

00:09:13Marc:And they're like, do you want a bag?

00:09:14Marc:I'm like, no, because I want to walk in with it in plain sight because there's theatrics involved to my spite right now.

00:09:22Marc:I'm fighting the good fight.

00:09:23Marc:I'm doing the righteous thing.

00:09:25Marc:I am doing what this hotel should have done.

00:09:28Marc:I'm going to make a point with the box.

00:09:32Marc:I didn't say that.

00:09:33Marc:I said, no bag, thank you.

00:09:35Marc:And I walk out of there.

00:09:37Marc:I got my box and I'm ready to walk in with a big fuck you to the guy who works at the hotel, to the hotel itself with my box, with my water boiler in it.

00:09:49Marc:I'm just stomping down the street from Target.

00:09:53Marc:So it was like a mile walk.

00:09:55Marc:And I've got the tweet in my head.

00:09:57Marc:I mean, I got a plan, man.

00:09:59Marc:I locked into this.

00:10:00Marc:You know why?

00:10:01Marc:Because the fucking world is on fire.

00:10:03Marc:Everything is chaotic and out of control.

00:10:05Marc:Things seem hopeless.

00:10:07Marc:But I got a fight to fight here.

00:10:08Marc:And it's about a water kettle.

00:10:10Marc:And it's about some poor dude who just works at this fucking hotel.

00:10:13Marc:I had the tweet in my head.

00:10:14Marc:Hey, heads up at Hewing.

00:10:17Marc:Maybe you should get a couple of these if you're an upscale hotel.

00:10:19Marc:Here's a pic of the water kettle that I bought at Target.

00:10:23Marc:So I stomp away.

00:10:26Marc:I stomp away.

00:10:27Marc:And I'm like, I'm excited.

00:10:29Marc:I'm focused.

00:10:30Marc:I am focused on the task at hand.

00:10:34Marc:So I'm about to walk into the hotel with my box and my water boiler in it.

00:10:40Marc:And just to sort of like kind of, you know, as I walk by the desk, you know, tilt the box.

00:10:47Marc:So the dude who told me they didn't have one could see it.

00:10:51Marc:And I'm lit up.

00:10:53Marc:I'm excited about this dumb, petty victory.

00:10:57Marc:And I walk in and that guy's gone.

00:11:01Marc:He's off work.

00:11:03Marc:And standing where he was is a nice pregnant woman.

00:11:08Marc:Seemed nice at the moment that I saw her feeling stupid.

00:11:12Marc:But apparently something had been communicated because I walked in and she saw me with my box and

00:11:18Marc:And she said, oh, you went and bought your own, huh?

00:11:21Marc:Well, we found you one.

00:11:23Marc:We found one.

00:11:25Marc:So I'm just standing there.

00:11:27Marc:And I'm like, oh, okay.

00:11:31Marc:And then she says, do you want me to return that for you?

00:11:33Marc:I live by Target.

00:11:34Marc:Do you want me to return that for you?

00:11:35Marc:I'm like, and like so perfect.

00:11:38Marc:It was such a beautiful.

00:11:40Marc:I was the asshole that stormed out to stormed out to Target to buy a fucking water kettle to make a point.

00:11:47Marc:And because I needed one, but but more to make a point.

00:11:50Marc:And I'm going to let the nice pregnant woman take it back for me.

00:11:54Marc:Not that she couldn't, but why would I?

00:11:56Marc:You know, I'm not an asshole.

00:11:58Marc:I am kind of an asshole.

00:11:59Marc:But I said, no, no, I'll take it back.

00:12:02Marc:I'll take it back tomorrow.

00:12:03Marc:Thank you.

00:12:03Marc:Thank you for getting me that the water kettle.

00:12:06Marc:So the whole plan is just spoiled and I'm just humbled.

00:12:11Marc:I was humbled right out of my pissy bullshit.

00:12:15Marc:Yeah, yeah, and that was how I entered Minnesota.

00:12:19Marc:But it was good to be humbled.

00:12:20Marc:I got hit a couple times with the humbling, though, small things, not big things, you know.

00:12:26Marc:Whole Foods, I went to Whole Foods to load up on the salad bar, and then, like, you know...

00:12:33Marc:everything was just pissing me off i go i go to the whole foods and i'm about to pay for my salad and i see a water dispenser machine i said can i get just get water there their cups over there he's like oh no that's broken you got to go to the other side of the store there's a water fountain you can get a cup over there and and for some reason that again i was just like ah fuck i'm like what i mean really i mean why am i what is that part of me why is it doing that like what kind of whole foods is this

00:12:58Marc:I didn't say any of that.

00:13:00Marc:I said, OK, just over there.

00:13:01Marc:You just get the cup and go over the other side.

00:13:05Marc:Yeah.

00:13:06Marc:So I go over there.

00:13:07Marc:I walk all the way across the store like that's a big fucking deal.

00:13:10Marc:And I get the water and then I see there's a door there.

00:13:12Marc:I go with the door.

00:13:13Marc:It's an emergency exit.

00:13:14Marc:So the fucking alarm.

00:13:17Marc:The whole store is looking at me.

00:13:20Marc:humbled but again these aren't big deals but at another point in my life it probably would have just skulked off but I guess I've built up a little confidence over the years I can take a hit like that I just stood there and I went someone better turn that off I think don't you stomped out stormed out of the Whole Foods like it was the store's fault for having a door there and one with an alarm no less there was another moment too like this was all in prep for the great shows that I did

00:13:49Marc:I needed to be taken down a few notches in not too horrible ways.

00:13:54Marc:I was online at the whole foods and there was a guy in front of me turns around once and he turns around again.

00:13:59Marc:He looks me right in the face and he says, wow, it's my first celebrity sighting.

00:14:04Marc:I looked at him and then he just turned around, said nothing else.

00:14:08Marc:Now, again, that might just be the Midwestern kind of didn't know what to say next thing, or it might be like, ah, and geez, I wish it wasn't you.

00:14:17Marc:But see, that's me.

00:14:19Marc:That's my inner dialogue.

00:14:21Marc:So I took a few hits, but then we went and did some shows.

00:14:24Marc:And they were productive.

00:14:26Marc:They were great.

00:14:26Marc:They were weird.

00:14:27Marc:Some of them got a little dark, but they were all very funny, and the audiences were tremendous.

00:14:33Marc:And I want to thank the state of Minnesota and the city of Minneapolis for having me.

00:14:40Marc:Like they gave me the fucking key to the city or something.

00:14:43Marc:So Billy Eichner got caught up on a bit of Billy Eichner.

00:14:48Marc:Very funny man.

00:14:49Marc:Curious to talk to him about how he got to where he is.

00:14:53Marc:How did he get that tone?

00:14:56Marc:I was afraid he was going to yell at me.

00:14:58Marc:Billy's in the new season of American Horror Story Apocalypse, which premieres this Wednesday, September 12th on FX.

00:15:06Marc:Also, Billy on the Street is returning later this year on Funny or Die and on YouTube.

00:15:11Marc:So look out for that.

00:15:13Marc:This is me and Billy Eichner here in the new garage.

00:15:19.

00:15:20Guest:.

00:15:32Marc:So you travel with your assistant?

00:15:36Marc:Sometimes, yes.

00:15:37Guest:She's also a producer on Billy on the Street when we're shooting that.

00:15:42Marc:I know people come with their people, but it seemed like she came over in the car with you, and I figured, do you need that much assistance?

00:15:51Marc:No.

00:15:51Marc:She's with you all day?

00:15:52Marc:I don't drive.

00:15:54Marc:You don't drive at all?

00:15:55Marc:That's right.

00:15:56Marc:Really?

00:15:56Marc:Yep.

00:15:57Marc:You don't know how to drive?

00:15:57Marc:Do not know how to drive.

00:15:59Marc:Now, why wouldn't you get that out of the way?

00:16:02Guest:I grew up in New York City.

00:16:04Guest:I get it.

00:16:05Guest:Okay.

00:16:06Guest:But I mean, I know a lot of people who grew up in New York City and then eventually learned how to drive.

00:16:10Guest:I was not one of those people.

00:16:13Guest:Are you afraid of it?

00:16:14Guest:I think so, yeah.

00:16:15Guest:I just waited too long and now it's like a mental thing in my head.

00:16:20Guest:Really?

00:16:21Guest:I don't want to drive.

00:16:22Guest:I don't like that there are other people driving.

00:16:24Guest:Yeah.

00:16:25Guest:I don't like wheels or blades.

00:16:27Guest:Like, I don't want to go, like, skating.

00:16:30Guest:Oh, oh.

00:16:31Marc:I thought you meant, like, knives or, like, there was some larger.

00:16:33Guest:No, I'm okay with that.

00:16:34Guest:I meant, like, roller blades.

00:16:36Marc:Are you okay with tools?

00:16:38Guest:I guess.

00:16:40Guest:I don't have a ton of experience with that either, but I'm not afraid of that.

00:16:44Guest:Like rower boy.

00:16:45Marc:So you don't want to be careening out of control.

00:16:48Marc:Right.

00:16:48Guest:Right.

00:16:49Guest:I'm worried about myself and I'm worried about, you know, at this point, my mind wanders a lot.

00:16:56Guest:You're talking like you're 90.

00:16:57Guest:No, I do.

00:16:59Guest:Like my mind wanders.

00:17:01Guest:I mean, you know, like, and I don't want to get lost in thought.

00:17:05Marc:You want to hurt somebody.

00:17:05Guest:Kill someone on the highway.

00:17:07Marc:I get it.

00:17:08Marc:But I mean, it's kind of interesting, though, about driving is that once you learn how to do it, you'll be hyper focused while you're learning.

00:17:14Marc:And it's crazy.

00:17:16Marc:And then you sort of ease into it.

00:17:17Marc:And then you just become like it's just becomes an appendage almost.

00:17:21Guest:I did take driver's ed.

00:17:22Guest:Oh, you did?

00:17:23Guest:I had a permit.

00:17:24Guest:Yeah.

00:17:24Guest:And then never took the actual driver's test.

00:17:26Guest:I was really bad at driving, and I hated it.

00:17:30Marc:This is when you were 15?

00:17:31Marc:Something like that.

00:17:32Marc:Really?

00:17:33Marc:You just couldn't take the stress of it?

00:17:34Marc:I hated it.

00:17:35Guest:I really hated it.

00:17:36Guest:It was one of the few, and I like- Because you were terrified.

00:17:39Guest:I was scared and I didn't think I had good hand-eye coordination.

00:17:44Marc:You just couldn't manage it.

00:17:45Guest:I hated it.

00:17:46Marc:How were you on a bike?

00:17:47Marc:Terrible.

00:17:48Marc:Oh, my God.

00:17:48Marc:Well, I don't even go on one.

00:17:50Marc:You don't know how to ride a bike either?

00:17:52Guest:I had a bike when I was a kid, but I never go on one now.

00:17:55Marc:Yeah, but you knew how to ride that bike.

00:17:57Guest:For like a minute, yeah.

00:17:58Marc:Really?

00:17:59Guest:Yeah, I didn't enjoy it.

00:18:01Marc:Do you know how to swim?

00:18:01Marc:I do swim.

00:18:02Marc:Okay.

00:18:04Marc:I do swim.

00:18:04Marc:Just want to make sure that there was some point in your childhood that was at least having fun with other children.

00:18:10Guest:No, I love other children.

00:18:11Guest:I like playing and stuff.

00:18:14Guest:I played some sports, surprisingly.

00:18:16Marc:Oh, yeah?

00:18:17Guest:I'm not surprised.

00:18:18Guest:Um...

00:18:18Guest:I didn't like that, but I did it.

00:18:20Guest:You grew up in the city the whole time?

00:18:23Guest:I grew up in Queens.

00:18:24Guest:Queens, yeah.

00:18:25Guest:And I went to high school in Manhattan.

00:18:27Guest:But you were like, what part of Queens?

00:18:28Guest:Forest Hills.

00:18:30Guest:Oh, out there.

00:18:30Guest:Yeah.

00:18:31Guest:So Forest Hill Jew.

00:18:33Guest:Yep.

00:18:34Guest:Exactly.

00:18:35Marc:It's Forest Hills, there are Jews and Koreans.

00:18:37Guest:Jews and Koreans.

00:18:38Guest:And now there's a lot of like Russian Orthodox.

00:18:41Guest:Oh really?

00:18:42Guest:Who seem Jewish, but they're just Russian.

00:18:45Marc:Yeah, well, I mean, my Jews come from Russia, half of them.

00:18:49Guest:Yeah, mine too.

00:18:49Marc:You kind of always want to identify with them.

00:18:52Marc:But I find that with, like, there's Armenians around here.

00:18:54Marc:I'm like, they're kind of Jewish.

00:18:56Marc:I don't know nothing about them.

00:18:57Guest:That's what I mean.

00:18:57Guest:They feel Jewish, but they don't think they technically are.

00:19:00Marc:No.

00:19:01Marc:I think that the Russian Jews are probably still out in Coney Island somewhere.

00:19:05Marc:Where are they?

00:19:05Marc:I don't know where they are.

00:19:06Marc:I don't know.

00:19:06Guest:Brooklyn?

00:19:07Guest:Yeah.

00:19:08Guest:I think so.

00:19:08Marc:It's got to be a big community.

00:19:09Marc:I think there's one here.

00:19:10Marc:I think the Russians here are Jewish down on Fairfax and stuff.

00:19:13Marc:Yeah, for sure.

00:19:14Marc:I don't know.

00:19:15Marc:I get hung up on the Jewish thing.

00:19:17Marc:How Jewish were you?

00:19:18Guest:Not very Jewish.

00:19:20Guest:I was forced to go to Hebrew school.

00:19:24Guest:I hated it.

00:19:25Guest:I was bar mitzvahed.

00:19:27Guest:And then the second my bar mitzvah was over, I don't think I've been to a synagogue since.

00:19:32Marc:But you did the whole thing.

00:19:33Marc:Unless someone died or something.

00:19:34Marc:Right.

00:19:35Marc:Well, they have to force you when you're a kid.

00:19:36Guest:Yeah, I hated it.

00:19:37Marc:But you did the thing.

00:19:40Marc:Were you conservative?

00:19:42Marc:No.

00:19:43Marc:Reform?

00:19:44Guest:I think I went to a conservative synagogue but ended up having more of a reform type of bar mitzvah service because I just refused to do all that work.

00:19:52Marc:Really?

00:19:52Marc:You didn't learn the songs?

00:19:54Guest:I learned an abridged version of a Haftorah, but I could sing really well.

00:20:00Guest:So the synagogue was like all over me thinking, you know, I was going to be a cantor or something.

00:20:07Marc:Really?

00:20:07Guest:And I was like, I don't even believe in God and I hate being here.

00:20:10Marc:But you could sing in Hebrew.

00:20:12Marc:That's no small task.

00:20:13Guest:Well, you know, phonetically, I learned what I had to learn.

00:20:16Marc:They thought you were going to be a cantor?

00:20:18Guest:Well, they wanted me.

00:20:19Guest:I mean, it's rare for like a boy to be able to sing in Hebrew school.

00:20:22Marc:Yeah.

00:20:23Marc:How's that singing voice holding up now?

00:20:25Marc:It's good.

00:20:26Marc:I'm in the frigging Lion King remake.

00:20:30Guest:Really?

00:20:30Guest:Yeah.

00:20:31Marc:In the, what, the cartoon?

00:20:32Guest:Well, Disney's remaking the Lion King.

00:20:35Guest:For the movie?

00:20:37Guest:Yeah, with Jon Favreau's directing it.

00:20:39Guest:Like the way he did Jungle Book.

00:20:41Marc:But it's a cartoon, right?

00:20:42Guest:It's animated, but this is a very state-of-the-art, digital, hyper-realistic animation.

00:20:49Guest:It's not drawn like the original.

00:20:51Marc:Right.

00:20:52Marc:Oh, okay.

00:20:53Marc:So it's got a little 3D element almost?

00:20:55Guest:Not 3D, but hyper-realistic.

00:20:57Guest:If you've ever seen those Planet Earth specials, this animation looks that real, but it's not.

00:21:04Guest:It's animated.

00:21:04Marc:And you do singing and dancing?

00:21:06Guest:No dancing, because it's animated.

00:21:09Marc:Well, I know, but I thought maybe they'd green screen something.

00:21:13Guest:There might be a little moving around.

00:21:15Guest:What character are you?

00:21:16Guest:I'm Timon.

00:21:17Guest:Me and Seth Rogen are Timon and Pumbaa, so we sing Hakuna Matata.

00:21:21Guest:And we sing Can You Feel the Love Tonight a little bit.

00:21:24Guest:Did you already do it?

00:21:25Guest:I've recorded most of it.

00:21:27Marc:Did you record live with Seth?

00:21:29Guest:Yes, we did.

00:21:30Guest:And Donald Glover, he's Simba.

00:21:32Guest:And then Beyonce's Nala, but she hasn't been there when I'm there.

00:21:36Marc:That would be fun.

00:21:37Marc:Was Donald there?

00:21:38Marc:He was.

00:21:38Marc:How's he doing?

00:21:39Guest:He's great.

00:21:41Marc:So was musical stuff, did you do that when you were younger too?

00:21:45Guest:Yeah.

00:21:46Marc:Let's go through it.

00:21:46Marc:So you grew up in Forest Hills apartment house?

00:21:49Guest:Yep, small apartment.

00:21:51Marc:Oh yeah.

00:21:51Marc:Yeah.

00:21:51Marc:Like one of those big ones?

00:21:52Marc:Like not the big apartment, but the big complex, like the big buildings?

00:21:56Marc:Not really?

00:21:57Guest:Mid-size apartment building, very middle class upbringing, nine to five parents.

00:22:02Guest:Oh yeah, what'd they do?

00:22:03Guest:My dad worked as an accountant for the city of New York doing commercial real estate tax.

00:22:11Marc:Huh.

00:22:11Guest:So he was like a tax guy.

00:22:13Guest:If a business didn't pay their taxes, he would go and- Do you ever have any dealings with Trump?

00:22:18Guest:Not as far as I remember.

00:22:20Guest:He wasn't that high up.

00:22:22Marc:Is he still around?

00:22:23Marc:No, he's not.

00:22:24Guest:He passed away.

00:22:24Guest:He was older.

00:22:25Guest:He died about six, seven years ago.

00:22:30Guest:He was 80.

00:22:31Guest:I had an older dad for someone my age.

00:22:34Guest:How old are you?

00:22:35Guest:I'm about to be 40.

00:22:37Guest:So he had you when he was?

00:22:39Guest:Like 46 or something, which for back then was old.

00:22:42Marc:Yeah, for sure.

00:22:43Guest:Do you have siblings?

00:22:44Guest:I have one older half brother from my father's first marriage.

00:22:49Guest:Wow.

00:22:50Guest:Are you friends with that guy?

00:22:52Guest:We are friends, yeah.

00:22:52Guest:We didn't grow up together.

00:22:53Guest:I was pretty much raised as an only child.

00:22:55Guest:He grew up with his mom and I grew up with my dad.

00:22:58Guest:How much older?

00:22:59Guest:He is, what is he now, like 52?

00:23:03Marc:Oh, so older.

00:23:05Marc:Yeah.

00:23:05Marc:Like 20 or 15, 12.

00:23:07Guest:12, and we didn't grow up together.

00:23:10Guest:We'd see him once every couple of months.

00:23:12Guest:Yeah, what'd your mom do?

00:23:13Guest:My mom worked for basically the phone company, New York Telephone, which eventually became Verizon.

00:23:21Marc:Yeah.

00:23:22Marc:So there you were, basically an only child in a small apartment, Forest Hills, Queens.

00:23:27Marc:Yep.

00:23:27Marc:Mom and dad coming home around five.

00:23:29Marc:Six, seven.

00:23:30Marc:Six, six, seven.

00:23:31Marc:Yeah.

00:23:31Marc:Someone would make you food.

00:23:33Marc:They would, yeah.

00:23:34Marc:And were you isolated?

00:23:35Marc:Like, it's weird.

00:23:36Guest:No.

00:23:36Guest:I had a lot of friends.

00:23:38Guest:I went to public school in Queens until I went to high school in Manhattan.

00:23:43Guest:Also public school, but it was like this specialized sort of, I guess they now call it like a magnet school.

00:23:51Guest:Yeah.

00:23:51Guest:Which school was that?

00:23:52Guest:Stuyvesant.

00:23:53Guest:I've heard of that.

00:23:54Guest:Yeah.

00:23:54Marc:Didn't some other famous people go there?

00:23:56Guest:Yeah.

00:23:57Guest:Mostly non-actors who are famous, like a lot of people who win Nobel Prizes and things like that.

00:24:05Guest:Really?

00:24:05Guest:But a lot of scientists and mathematicians and people who invented robots.

00:24:09Guest:I don't know their names.

00:24:10Guest:The only actors I know who went there are me, Paul Reiser, and Tim Robbins.

00:24:15Yeah.

00:24:16Marc:Tim Robbins and Paul Reiser.

00:24:18Guest:Yes.

00:24:18Marc:Wow, that's interesting.

00:24:20Marc:That's odd.

00:24:20Guest:Yes.

00:24:21Marc:Those are the only ones?

00:24:22Marc:As far as I know that went to Stuyvesant.

00:24:25Guest:Stuyvesant High School.

00:24:26Guest:Stuyvesant High School.

00:24:27Guest:It's really a math science school.

00:24:28Guest:I mean, it's a regular high school.

00:24:30Guest:You take all kinds of classes and I did musicals and I did debate and all of that stuff.

00:24:35Marc:You were a math science guy though?

00:24:37Guest:I don't consider myself one, but I did manage to pass the test that you need to take to get into Stuyvesant.

00:24:44Marc:And you wanted to go there or your old man wanted you to go there?

00:24:46Marc:No, I wanted to go there.

00:24:47Marc:Because you thought it was a good school and get you in the city.

00:24:49Guest:It's a great school and it got me in the city and it's the kind of school if you get in, you go.

00:24:54Marc:Yeah.

00:24:55Guest:It was free.

00:24:56Guest:I mean, it's pretty amazing.

00:24:57Marc:So and that's where you started to engage in the showmanship element of your personality.

00:25:04Guest:I did that actually from the time from an even younger age.

00:25:08Marc:You were running around yelling at people on the street.

00:25:12Marc:I wasn't doing that, but I was singing.

00:25:15Guest:That's what really got me into all of it.

00:25:17Marc:You were singing in junior high and high school?

00:25:20Guest:Elementary school.

00:25:20Guest:I just opened my mouth and I had a good singing voice somehow.

00:25:25Guest:And I was obsessed with entertainment and pop music.

00:25:27Guest:And, you know, I was in New York.

00:25:29Guest:My parents loved Broadway.

00:25:30Guest:I did too.

00:25:32Guest:So we would go see a ton of Broadway shows and I would buy all the albums.

00:25:36Marc:Oh, really?

00:25:36Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:25:37Marc:Do you remember going to your first Broadway show?

00:25:39Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:25:40Guest:Starlight Express.

00:25:41Marc:Yeah.

00:25:42Marc:Was it mind blown?

00:25:44Guest:My mind was blown.

00:25:46Guest:Yeah.

00:25:46Guest:And I remember like one of the Starlight Express was an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, which is very 80s, where they were all on roller skates.

00:25:54Guest:Right.

00:25:54Guest:Which you're afraid of.

00:25:56Guest:Which I know.

00:25:56Guest:Ironically, I'm afraid of, but I'm not afraid of like singing on stage, but I am afraid of roller skates.

00:26:01Guest:Yeah.

00:26:01Guest:And so the whole ensemble was on roller skates.

00:26:04Guest:And so like during the curtain call at the end, we were sitting like up in the mezzanine or something.

00:26:08Guest:And they would sort of roller skate up to you and wave at all the kids in the audience.

00:26:15Guest:And one of the dancers on roller skates like came right up to me and waved.

00:26:18Guest:And that blew my entire mind.

00:26:23Marc:Life changing moment.

00:26:25Marc:Yeah.

00:26:25Marc:I wonder if that person knows that they did that to you.

00:26:28Marc:Probably not.

00:26:29Marc:Changed your life.

00:26:30Guest:Who knows if they're still alive, you know?

00:26:31Marc:Yeah, so that, and you went to musicals frequently?

00:26:35Guest:All the time.

00:26:36Marc:Really, your parents just would take you?

00:26:38Guest:That's nice.

00:26:38Guest:They loved Broadway.

00:26:39Guest:I was very, very lucky, because I was this little

00:26:43Guest:pretty probably clearly gay kid who loved Broadway and like Madonna and all these things.

00:26:49Guest:But my parents were very liberal New York Jews who'd both grown up in New York themselves.

00:26:55Guest:Yeah.

00:26:55Guest:And loved entertainment, had nothing to do with it professionally, but loved entertainment.

00:27:00Guest:My dad in particular, like loved old, you know, I had an older dad.

00:27:05Guest:Yeah.

00:27:05Guest:So to him, someone like Streisand wasn't a gay thing.

00:27:09Guest:It's what they, they played Streisand on pop radio when he was a kid.

00:27:12Guest:Sure.

00:27:12Guest:And so for him, we, you know, we had all of these interests in common.

00:27:16Guest:And so we would go see a ton of Broadway shows.

00:27:19Guest:And I mean, I was very lucky.

00:27:22Marc:You were lucky that you were leaning that way.

00:27:25Marc:Yeah.

00:27:25Marc:And had this father that was, I mean, at 80, if he died at 87, he was a contemporary of Barbra Streisand.

00:27:31Marc:Exactly.

00:27:32Marc:So it wasn't like he was a kid when Barbra Streisand, that was their music.

00:27:36Guest:That was his music.

00:27:37Guest:And, you know, we were Jews from New York too.

00:27:39Marc:Yeah, of course, you got to love Barbra Streisand.

00:27:41Marc:Love Barbra.

00:27:41Guest:Barbara, Woody Allen, and all the things.

00:27:43Guest:We would go see Jackie Mason on Broadway.

00:27:45Guest:My parents flipped out over Jackie Mason.

00:27:48Guest:I don't know what I would think about Jackie Mason now if I went and re-watched those shows.

00:27:52Guest:But at the time, I loved it.

00:27:55Guest:Yeah, they took you.

00:27:55Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:27:56Marc:I have a problem with him.

00:27:58Guest:I know.

00:27:58Guest:People don't like him.

00:27:59Marc:But I think it's personal.

00:28:00Guest:Well, I realized later on.

00:28:02Guest:I was a kid.

00:28:03Guest:So now I'm like, oh, yeah, Jackie Mason was a Republican and this, that, and the other thing.

00:28:07Guest:But as a kid, I didn't know.

00:28:08Marc:No, for me it wasn't that.

00:28:10Marc:There was always something about that notion that when you so kind of aggressively define Jews as a thing.

00:28:20Guest:Yes, I hear you.

00:28:22Marc:Jews do this.

00:28:23Marc:Goyes do this.

00:28:25Marc:Jews do that.

00:28:26Marc:And then Jews, they go to a place.

00:28:27Marc:They sit down.

00:28:28Marc:Not all Jews.

00:28:29Guest:It's very old school.

00:28:30Marc:But I usually like that.

00:28:31Marc:But there's something about him that I just, there's an elitism to it with him.

00:28:35Guest:I see what you're saying.

00:28:37Guest:Well, when I was 10, my parents and I couldn't get enough of it.

00:28:43Guest:They loved anyone talking about Jews.

00:28:45Guest:They just wanted to see themselves talked about and reflected.

00:28:48Marc:Yeah, sure.

00:28:49Marc:I mean, it's funny because I have a similar problem with Alan King and it's sort of the same thing, you know, this sort of defining the middle class Jew thing.

00:28:57Marc:Right, exactly.

00:28:58Marc:Weird.

00:28:59Marc:I never thought about that.

00:29:00Marc:But, all right, so then what other shows did you see?

00:29:03Marc:Because, I mean, so you're like almost 40.

00:29:06Marc:I don't see that many musicals, but I've seen a few.

00:29:08Guest:I saw, there was, you know, a time because my parents were paying for everything.

00:29:13Marc:Did you see The Black Guys and Dolls?

00:29:15Guest:the black all black all black cast i don't i saw that might have been before your time yeah oh i might have been i what i did see was uh they did a huge revival of guys and dolls white unfortunately um in like 1992 with nathan lane which is the first time i saw nathan lane i became obsessed with nathan lane sure um and faith prince was in it why because you thought he was hilarious

00:29:41Guest:hilarious and he just sort of represented like a Broadway to me yeah yeah sure and ironically Nathan was the original voice of Timon who I'm doing in the Lion King which is the torch has been passed well I wouldn't say that but it's just a nice full circle did you see that Tony Kushner musical

00:30:01Marc:He did Angels in America, but he did that one musical.

00:30:05Marc:Carolina Change?

00:30:06Marc:Yeah.

00:30:07Marc:I did see that.

00:30:08Marc:That was great, right?

00:30:08Marc:It was very good.

00:30:09Marc:Isn't it?

00:30:10Marc:Yeah.

00:30:10Marc:Now I'm just trying to share with you the nine musicals.

00:30:15Guest:Yeah, Carolina Change is very good.

00:30:16Marc:That I've seen.

00:30:17Marc:Yeah.

00:30:18Marc:I saw Beatlemania when I was a kid.

00:30:20Guest:Oh, I did not see that.

00:30:21Marc:Well, that was probably too young.

00:30:23Guest:Yeah, by a couple years, yeah.

00:30:25Marc:I saw The Magic Show.

00:30:27Marc:With Doug Henning.

00:30:28Marc:Doug Henning.

00:30:29Marc:I saw that when I was a little boy.

00:30:31Guest:Yeah, I missed that one.

00:30:34Guest:I mean, I saw all the musical things.

00:30:35Guest:Those aren't real musicals.

00:30:36Guest:They're not, like Phantom and Les Mis and all those things.

00:30:38Marc:I didn't see any of those.

00:30:40Guest:Well, you still can.

00:30:41Marc:That's the great thing.

00:30:43Guest:Cats, I didn't see cats.

00:30:44Guest:They're not all still running, but a lot of them are.

00:30:46Marc:So that re-informed who you were, kind of, you know, like in terms of being gay, when did you know that was happening?

00:30:54Guest:As far back as I can recall.

00:30:56Guest:Oh, yeah?

00:30:58Guest:Yeah, I remember kind of being attracted to certain people, even when I was a really young kid.

00:31:05Guest:I had a poster of Jon Bon Jovi in my room.

00:31:08Guest:Bon Jovi was huge at the time.

00:31:10Marc:It doesn't necessarily imply that...

00:31:12Guest:but you i'm telling you my feelings imply that i was attracted to him uh the first other than john bon jovi uh i remember you know i grew up in queens uh pretty close to what was then shea stadium which is now city field and the 86 mets won the world series and so we would watch baseball all the time and i remember one of the first guys i was attracted to was keith hernandez oh yeah

00:31:36Guest:First baseman for the 86 Mets.

00:31:38Guest:And so I must have been, I grew up in, I was born in 78.

00:31:42Guest:I was eight years old.

00:31:43Guest:And that is a vivid memory.

00:31:45Marc:You thought he was the guy.

00:31:47Marc:Yeah.

00:31:47Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:31:48Marc:You felt that.

00:31:48Marc:He was hot.

00:31:49Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:31:50Guest:Daddy issues, everyone.

00:31:52Marc:Yeah.

00:31:55Marc:But, well, so by the time you got in high school, you're just sort of in.

00:31:59Yeah.

00:31:59Guest:You know, I wasn't out, you know, this was like pre-Glee, you know, we didn't all come out in high school in those days.

00:32:06Guest:Sure.

00:32:07Guest:So I came.

00:32:07Guest:You kind of rode it out?

00:32:08Guest:Yeah, I rode it out.

00:32:10Guest:I mean, one of the nice things about Stuyvesant is that it was such, it's, you know, with all due respect to everyone that goes to Stuy, it's a great school.

00:32:17Guest:As far as high schools go, it's not a typical experience.

00:32:21Guest:Everyone there, gay, straight, or otherwise, is concerned about grades and SATs.

00:32:25Guest:I don't even know people having sex, even the straight people.

00:32:29Guest:We were all just a bunch of nerds worried about our future and what college we were going to get into.

00:32:34Guest:In a way, that was a great cloak because I didn't have to think about coming out or not coming out.

00:32:41Guest:I didn't have a girlfriend in high school, but that was kind of normal.

00:32:44Marc:But you were doing musicals in high school?

00:32:46Marc:A couple, yeah.

00:32:47Marc:Was that great?

00:32:48Marc:It was fun.

00:32:49Guest:I did Guys and Dolls.

00:32:51Guest:And I mostly, my big outlet for performance in high school was Speech Team, which is kind of this weird cultish thing.

00:32:59Guest:What does that involve?

00:33:00Guest:Speech team is hard to describe.

00:33:03Guest:You kind of travel around with the debate team, but you're not doing debate.

00:33:06Guest:So speech team, it's a series of different categories that you can compete in.

00:33:12Guest:There's one called dramatic interpretation.

00:33:14Guest:There's one called humorous interpretation.

00:33:17Guest:You can do one with a partner called duo and you're basically reenacting scenes from plays.

00:33:21Guest:Really?

00:33:22Guest:Essentially.

00:33:22Guest:Yeah.

00:33:22Marc:You're not writing original speeches.

00:33:24Guest:You can do that, too.

00:33:25Guest:There are categories like original oratory or prose and poetry.

00:33:29Guest:So you can choose what category you want.

00:33:32Guest:And then you go to other schools, usually kind of ritzy private schools, even though mine wasn't.

00:33:38Guest:And you compete against kids basically performing like a 10 minute section from a play.

00:33:44Marc:And what did you do generally?

00:33:47Guest:I did.

00:33:48Guest:I like competing with a friend.

00:33:50Guest:So I did duo.

00:33:51Marc:Yeah.

00:33:51Guest:So I did me and my friend Gene, one of my best friends from high school, Gene Perilson.

00:33:56Guest:We did a scene from a play called Love by Murray Schuskel.

00:34:00Guest:And then when I was a senior in high school, my friend Catherine and I did a scene from The Good Doctor, R.I.P.

00:34:07Guest:Neil Simon.

00:34:08Guest:It was a Neil Simon play.

00:34:09Marc:It just happened.

00:34:09Guest:And we would go compete, and we would travel around, and it was really fun.

00:34:16Marc:But you didn't do any comedy ones?

00:34:18Marc:Well, the Neil Simon one.

00:34:19Marc:The Neil Simon one was comedy, yeah.

00:34:20Marc:Got some good laughs.

00:34:21Marc:Yeah.

00:34:22Marc:So you were starting to get, getting laughs is exciting.

00:34:25Guest:Starting to get laughs, yeah.

00:34:26Guest:And then my friend Gene and I would write our own extra scene, which parodied all the other scenes the other kids were doing.

00:34:37Guest:Yeah.

00:34:37Guest:Like a spoof where we would make fun of the kids that we would compete against from other schools.

00:34:41Marc:Yeah.

00:34:41Marc:And you'd do that like at the end?

00:34:43Marc:You were the closer?

00:34:44Guest:No, we would do that like in the hotel room at night for like the other kids on our team and entertain them by making fun of everyone.

00:34:51Marc:Right.

00:34:52Marc:Oh, so that's where it started, the original material.

00:34:55Guest:Yeah, exactly.

00:34:56Marc:So after, did you go to college?

00:34:58Guest:I did.

00:34:59Guest:I went to Northwestern.

00:35:00Guest:In Chicago?

00:35:01Guest:Right outside of Chicago, yeah.

00:35:03Marc:Yeah, and what's the name of that part of Chicago?

00:35:05Marc:Evanston.

00:35:06Marc:Yeah, there's a little theater there.

00:35:08Marc:The main stage theater I used to play in Rogers Park.

00:35:12Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:35:13Marc:Yeah, so that's right there, right?

00:35:14Guest:Big theater town.

00:35:15Guest:Yeah, it's close by.

00:35:16Marc:Yeah, yeah, because I remember I stayed at the Hilton in Evanston, right by the school.

00:35:21Guest:Yeah.

00:35:21Marc:Yeah.

00:35:22Marc:So what'd you study there?

00:35:24Guest:Theater.

00:35:25Marc:Oh, so that was it.

00:35:25Guest:No more math.

00:35:26Guest:No more math.

00:35:27Guest:No.

00:35:27Guest:Once I was surprised that when I got into Northwestern, I just assumed I would go to NYU.

00:35:33Guest:Right.

00:35:34Guest:But I got into Northwestern and then my dad and I took a trip to visit and I sat in on an acting class at Northwestern and that was it.

00:35:41Guest:Really?

00:35:41Guest:I was like, let me stop pretending.

00:35:43Guest:I'm going to be pre-law or something.

00:35:45Marc:You just told him on the spot?

00:35:47Marc:A little while after that.

00:35:48Marc:So what was going on in the acting class that made you?

00:35:53Guest:It was two students on stage doing a scene from some checkoff play or something, and the acting teacher was giving them notes and really diving into it.

00:36:04Guest:It's just what I always loved, what I wanted to do.

00:36:07Marc:So that was it.

00:36:08Marc:That was it.

00:36:09Marc:And so as an undergrad, you studied acting?

00:36:12Guest:Theater and musical theater, yeah.

00:36:14Marc:And then so you got to just do your electives, and the rest are, you know,

00:36:18Guest:Northwestern, it's not like a conservatory, so they still make you take a bunch of non-theater-related classes.

00:36:27Marc:Right, that's what I mean.

00:36:27Guest:And you also have to take costume design.

00:36:30Guest:Exactly, just in case.

00:36:32Guest:The pre-law comes back.

00:36:33Marc:Yeah, exactly.

00:36:34Guest:So I had to take modern Chinese poetry and things I didn't really care about.

00:36:39Guest:But you had to choose that one.

00:36:41Marc:I did.

00:36:41Marc:Modern Chinese poetry is not forced upon somebody.

00:36:44Marc:No, it's not.

00:36:44Marc:You could have done something less esoteric.

00:36:46Guest:I think I took it because- You really did take it?

00:36:49Guest:I did, but I think it was because everyone said it was easy and you can get away with not doing anything.

00:36:53Marc:Oh, it wasn't some weird- Some weird, some actual interest I had?

00:36:58Guest:No, unfortunately.

00:37:00Guest:There were some interesting things.

00:37:01Guest:You know, intro to sociology.

00:37:03Guest:I mean, it's Northwestern.

00:37:04Guest:There were good professors and-

00:37:06Marc:So in terms of the experience you got theatrically, I mean, what was the focus?

00:37:11Marc:How did it work?

00:37:12Marc:What was the training?

00:37:14Guest:I had an acting class every day for, well, I'm forgetting.

00:37:19Guest:It was a while ago.

00:37:19Guest:For an hour or two hours with the same acting teacher every day for three years while I was there.

00:37:27Guest:In addition to plays you would do extracurricularly, whether those were directed by teachers or student plays.

00:37:34Guest:There's a lot of student theater there.

00:37:36Guest:You know, I had friends who would write a musical.

00:37:38Guest:We'd put on the musical or we would just do Little Shop of Horrors, you know, or more typical show.

00:37:44Guest:And I had I was really, really lucky.

00:37:46Guest:I had a great, great acting teacher, Mary Poole, who's still there.

00:37:51Guest:And fun fact is that Kristen Schaal and I were in acting class together every day for four years.

00:37:58Guest:Oh, really?

00:37:59Guest:Yeah.

00:37:59Guest:Kristen and I would do very earnest scenes from Greek tragedy and Chekhov.

00:38:06Guest:And I really wish we had iPhones back then and we had a video of that.

00:38:11Guest:How can she not be funny?

00:38:13Marc:She was great.

00:38:14Marc:Yeah.

00:38:14Marc:She was great.

00:38:15Marc:She's a great actress.

00:38:15Marc:But she was doing serious stuff.

00:38:17Marc:Yeah, she really was.

00:38:18Guest:I know it's hard to think of it now because we're both so known for being kind of wacky comedy people.

00:38:25Guest:But we really took it seriously.

00:38:27Marc:And did you do big plays eventually?

00:38:31Marc:Or was it all just sort of acting class?

00:38:33Marc:Oh yeah, we did plays.

00:38:36Guest:It was a while ago.

00:38:38Guest:Yeah, I did like a Lanford Wilson play.

00:38:41Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:38:42Guest:We would do Chekhov, and then we would do big musicals.

00:38:45Guest:There was so much going on there.

00:38:48Guest:There was also a huge improv scene, which strangely- In Chicago.

00:38:52Marc:At Northwestern.

00:38:53Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:38:54Guest:And in Chicago, but at Northwestern, which Seth Meyers had been a part of, and Josh Meyers, and Julie Dreyfuss, and Kristen Schaal is a big part of it when we were there, and I had no part of it.

00:39:06Guest:I didn't have much of an interest in that at that point.

00:39:08Marc:So you didn't do it at all?

00:39:10Marc:No.

00:39:10Marc:Huh.

00:39:11Marc:No comedy, really?

00:39:13Guest:I was funny in a play or musical, but no improv, no stand-up, no sketch.

00:39:19Marc:Did you go to Steppenwolf or go see plays in the city at all?

00:39:22Guest:Occasionally, yeah.

00:39:23Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:39:23Guest:Yeah.

00:39:24Marc:So where does things change?

00:39:25Marc:You graduate, and then what do you do?

00:39:27Marc:I go back to New York.

00:39:28Marc:Yeah.

00:39:29Marc:Back to Queens?

00:39:31Guest:No, I shared a small apartment with friends in Manhattan.

00:39:34Guest:Yeah.

00:39:35Guest:and go back to new york and a couple of years of doing the struggling actor thing and not getting work auditioning and doing like weird off off broadway shit with my friends and yeah how weird and uh not that weird but just you know weird children's theater things and you know whatever yeah you know which children's theater

00:39:59Guest:Uh, my friends would write original children's theater shows, like family oriented shows, and they would ask me to be in it.

00:40:07Guest:And what else was I doing?

00:40:08Guest:So I did that.

00:40:09Guest:And then after a few years of that, I thought that I was not going to get anywhere just waiting in line with a bunch of, you know, equity actors at some open call where no one's really getting cast anyway.

00:40:21Guest:yeah uh and so i thought all right well what separates me from other people i guess i'm people say i'm funny i'll go to where the funny people go and so i went to ucb and i took all the classes and now you're doing improv doing it yeah i i liked the classes i still didn't really have much of a desire to join an improv team

00:40:45Guest:You know, I really, I mean, it's an incredible skill, obviously.

00:40:50Guest:I just, it wasn't my scene, really.

00:40:53Guest:I was decent at it, but it just wasn't how I got off creatively, I guess.

00:40:58Marc:Really?

00:40:59Marc:It wasn't fun for you to be in the moment?

00:41:01Marc:What did you prefer at that point, if you're taking classes at UCB?

00:41:04Guest:i was just kind of trying to find my way i also talked took this very strange like evening stand-up comedy class with who scott blakeman no it was this guy named steven rosenfeld oh yeah um and he was a very nice man and i just saw an ad in backstage stand-up comedy classes i took

00:41:25Guest:I can't imagine what that was.

00:41:27Guest:It was like a premise for a bad sitcom.

00:41:30Guest:Oh, Stephen, I'm really sorry because you were so nice.

00:41:32Guest:It wasn't you.

00:41:33Guest:It was just a very bizarre group of people.

00:41:37Guest:It was like elderly, retired ladies looking to do something fun, really awful, wannabe young stand-ups, and then some really talented people.

00:41:48Guest:But the reason I took it is because I wanted someone to force me to write.

00:41:52Guest:You know, I didn't have the discipline.

00:41:54Guest:And I thought if I signed up for a class, even if it was weird, I would have to write.

00:41:59Guest:But you were compelled somehow to do stand up a bit.

00:42:01Guest:I was just testing the waters.

00:42:03Guest:I knew I was funny or people said I was funny, but I didn't know where I belonged in the world of comedy, like proper comedy outside of being funny in theater, which is really what felt comfortable to me.

00:42:17Guest:Sure.

00:42:18Guest:Someone else's words.

00:42:19Guest:Right.

00:42:20Guest:But I wasn't getting work.

00:42:21Guest:Right.

00:42:22Guest:And so I thought, well, I got to figure out how to make my own work.

00:42:25Guest:And that was a stepping stone towards all that.

00:42:27Guest:And Steven was really great.

00:42:29Guest:I didn't really even know him for that long.

00:42:31Guest:But because I took, I don't know, eight weeks of classes or something like that and then never went back.

00:42:35Guest:But he encouraged me to stick with it.

00:42:38Guest:And I remember teachers at UCB.

00:42:40Guest:Paul Scheer was a teacher of mine at UCB, and Michael Delaney.

00:42:43Guest:And all those guys were really nice.

00:42:45Guest:They didn't know who I was.

00:42:46Guest:I was just a kid in their class.

00:42:47Guest:But they were really encouraging.

00:42:49Marc:But what did you learn in the comedy class?

00:42:51Marc:I'm curious.

00:42:51Marc:Which one?

00:42:52Marc:Stephen Rosenfeld's comedy class.

00:42:54Guest:Oh, boy.

00:42:55Guest:You know, he would... Well, maybe this did end up applying to me based on my work.

00:42:59Guest:But, you know, I remember one thing he said was, if you don't know what to write about, find something you're angry about and write about that.

00:43:08Guest:And anger did end up factoring heavily into my act, though.

00:43:12Guest:Into which act?

00:43:12Guest:Into Billy on the Street.

00:43:15Guest:It did, yeah.

00:43:16Guest:In a pseudo way.

00:43:19Marc:Sure, but did you ever... Usually with those classes...

00:43:23Marc:You know, the payoff is you get to perform.

00:43:25Guest:Yeah, you did.

00:43:26Guest:You know, you had to do like some weird show at like 530 p.m.

00:43:30Guest:at Caroline's or something and bring your friends and make them pay for it or something like that.

00:43:34Marc:You know, it was one of those.

00:43:35Marc:You did those.

00:43:36Marc:And so you tried stand up a handful of times.

00:43:39Marc:Yeah.

00:43:40Marc:But never in a real club or never, I mean, never for a real audience.

00:43:44Marc:I don't know what you mean by real audience.

00:43:46Marc:Maybe like on a night.

00:43:49Guest:No, I wouldn't go and like hang out at New York, stand up New York and wait to get a slot.

00:43:56Guest:That environment did not feel comfortable to me.

00:44:00Guest:Sure.

00:44:00Guest:Yeah.

00:44:01Marc:All right.

00:44:01Marc:So you take the class and you're taking the, but you never, did you eventually get into an improv group or no?

00:44:07Guest:No, I didn't want to be performing improv all the time.

00:44:10Marc:So you went through what?

00:44:11Marc:Two years of UCB?

00:44:13Guest:There's like four classes at the time.

00:44:15Guest:Maybe now there's more.

00:44:17Guest:But I think there were four levels.

00:44:19Guest:And I did it all.

00:44:20Guest:And I was like, okay, I did that.

00:44:21Guest:I get what this is.

00:44:23Marc:You did Steven Rosenfeld's Comedy Institute.

00:44:25Guest:And then I took the Steven Rosenfeld's Comedy Institute.

00:44:27Guest:And then I thought, all right, what am I going to do with all of this?

00:44:29Guest:So I started writing my own show.

00:44:33Guest:Yeah.

00:44:33Guest:Which became a show called Creation Nation, which was like a live talk show.

00:44:41Guest:I loved talk shows, right?

00:44:43Guest:Right.

00:44:43Guest:I loved late night talk shows.

00:44:45Guest:I grew up obsessed with Regis and Kathie Lee.

00:44:48Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:44:49Guest:I liked all talk shows.

00:44:50Marc:Right.

00:44:51Marc:Kathy Lee.

00:44:52Marc:Oh, she's fantastic.

00:44:53Marc:I love her.

00:44:53Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:44:54Marc:I used to watch her years ago.

00:44:56Marc:It was sort of a guilty pleasure where you would just watch the way she talked about her kid.

00:45:00Guest:Yeah.

00:45:00Marc:Cody.

00:45:01Marc:Was that his name?

00:45:02Guest:There's a few.

00:45:02Guest:Cassidy.

00:45:03Guest:Yeah, she has a few kids.

00:45:04Marc:But no, when I was watching occasionally, she would talk about Cody.

00:45:07Marc:I'm like, this kid's in trouble.

00:45:08Guest:Oh, I think our kids actually are doing pretty well.

00:45:12Guest:But I don't really know.

00:45:13Guest:But I still love Kathy.

00:45:15Guest:Yeah.

00:45:15Guest:And I was obsessed with those shows.

00:45:17Guest:Again, they felt like show business to me.

00:45:19Guest:Yeah.

00:45:21Guest:And so, but no one was giving me a TV show, obviously.

00:45:23Guest:So I created my own version of a late night talk show to do on stage.

00:45:29Marc:Creation Nation.

00:45:30Guest:It was called Creation Nation.

00:45:31Marc:And it was a live show.

00:45:32Guest:A live show.

00:45:33Marc:And you were doing it where UCB you were going to put it up?

00:45:36Guest:I eventually ended up doing a version of it at UCB, but first I was playing small performance spaces downtown, bars, and then we moved to a theater on 54th Street called Ars Nova.

00:45:52Guest:Yeah, I know that place.

00:45:53Guest:And Ars Nova was a huge part of my development.

00:45:58Marc:Isn't that playwrights theater, Ars Nova, or is it just a theater?

00:46:01Marc:No.

00:46:01Guest:They do plays there, too.

00:46:03Marc:Oh, they do?

00:46:03Guest:Yeah, they do all kinds of performances.

00:46:05Guest:And, you know, Shaw was performing there, too.

00:46:08Guest:Bridget Everett started out there.

00:46:10Guest:Lin-Manuel Miranda and his hip-hop team.

00:46:12Marc:Yeah, Liz Flayhive and Carly Mench.

00:46:16Guest:Absolutely.

00:46:16Guest:Liz Flayhive, Carly Mench were doing plays there.

00:46:18Guest:Bo Williman, Liz Merriweather, Tommy Kail, and Lin-Manuel.

00:46:22Guest:We were all there at the same time doing different types of shows.

00:46:26Guest:And Ars Nova was huge for me.

00:46:29Marc:So there was a community around it.

00:46:32Marc:There was.

00:46:32Guest:Yeah.

00:46:33Guest:And it was for a lot of people.

00:46:34Guest:It was for a lot of us who kind of felt stuck between the traditional kind of stuffy theater world, which wasn't ready for us, and a comedy world that was a bit, for lack of a better word, heteronormative or something.

00:46:50Guest:Sure.

00:46:51Guest:I didn't feel there was a place for me in that world.

00:46:55Guest:Not...

00:46:55Guest:Not just because of the gay thing, but also just sensibility wise.

00:47:00Guest:Again, like I didn't really want to be on an improv team.

00:47:03Guest:I appreciated the skills that that took to be good at it.

00:47:06Guest:It wasn't creatively satisfying for me.

00:47:08Marc:Well, you sound like you're a theater guy.

00:47:09Marc:I'm a theater guy.

00:47:10Marc:Yeah.

00:47:11Marc:I mean, Liz and Carly, I work with them.

00:47:12Marc:I'm on GLOW.

00:47:13Marc:Of course.

00:47:14Guest:Oh, that's right.

00:47:14Marc:Right, right, right.

00:47:15Marc:So I've talked to them about this and I've had Lin-Manuel Miranda on here too.

00:47:20Marc:Yep.

00:47:21Marc:I don't know if we talked a lot about Ars Nova.

00:47:22Marc:We must have though.

00:47:24Marc:So that was an exciting bunch of people.

00:47:26Guest:Yeah.

00:47:26Marc:And they were, so it wasn't, were you a founding member or shortly thereafter or?

00:47:31Guest:I'm not a founding member.

00:47:32Guest:Ars Nova had been there a few years.

00:47:34Guest:Not that long, though, right?

00:47:35Guest:I don't know.

00:47:36Guest:Maybe they started, I don't know, 2003 or something.

00:47:40Guest:There's an artistic director of Ars Nova who's still there.

00:47:42Guest:His name is Jason Egan.

00:47:44Guest:Everyone I've mentioned, Jason is pretty much responsible for finding somewhere, somehow, or reading their work and bringing them into Ars Nova.

00:47:51Marc:That's exciting.

00:47:51Marc:So did you guys all see each other kind of deal?

00:47:54Marc:Did you guys see each other's shows?

00:47:56Guest:Absolutely, yeah.

00:47:57Guest:We were all in and out.

00:47:59Guest:Ars Nova would do these late night kind of vaudeville inspired variety shows where I would come out and do 15 minutes or I was doing what would become Billy on the Street videos as part of my live show.

00:48:13Guest:That's where Billy on the Street started.

00:48:15Marc:So the live show was you would host a talk show.

00:48:18Guest:Yes.

00:48:18Guest:A friend of mine.

00:48:19Guest:I brought in my friend Robin Taylor, who's now on Gotham as my sidekick.

00:48:24Guest:I brought in musician friends from Northwestern to be my house band.

00:48:28Guest:I would sing songs.

00:48:29Guest:I would do like a topical monologue.

00:48:31Guest:I would write about the news.

00:48:33Guest:I would get friends to whoever I could to be my quote unquote celebrity guest.

00:48:37Guest:Sometimes it was just a friend who was in the ensemble of a Broadway show or whoever I could fake as a celebrity guest.

00:48:44Guest:And eventually I would rant and rave about pop culture.

00:48:47Guest:I would do crazy movie reviews, crazy musical numbers, whatever I wanted, I could do.

00:48:51Guest:And as part of that, I started to evolve into this persona who was getting, as the evening went on, just more and more irrationally angry about celebrity.

00:49:06Yeah.

00:49:07Guest:And that turned into, hey, what if we go on the street and I kind of do what I'm doing on stage, but in someone's face and see how they react.

00:49:16Guest:And so my friend Jamie Salka, who was directing the show, we got a camera from Radio Shack or wherever and a cheap microphone.

00:49:25Guest:And we went out and just started filming these interviews with people on the street and having no idea if any of it was going to be worth something.

00:49:32Guest:Right.

00:49:32Guest:And we would cobble it together into a five to seven minute video.

00:49:36Guest:Not that unlike the things I still do.

00:49:39Guest:And we would show it on a screen at Ars Nova.

00:49:41Guest:There was a screen you could use.

00:49:43Guest:And from the first time we ever showed it, it got a huge response.

00:49:49Guest:People just like this weird thing.

00:49:53Marc:What's interesting to me is the evolution of...

00:49:56Marc:The character.

00:49:57Marc:Yeah.

00:49:58Marc:Because you can drop right into it now.

00:50:00Marc:Sure.

00:50:01Marc:You know where that guy lives.

00:50:02Marc:Totally.

00:50:04Marc:But it's something that evolved on stage.

00:50:06Marc:On stage and then on the street.

00:50:08Marc:You know, when I first- But the theatricality of doing a variety show or doing a talk show.

00:50:15Marc:Yeah.

00:50:15Marc:And then eventually just sort of coming unhinged, like that build.

00:50:19Guest:There was a build.

00:50:20Guest:Yeah.

00:50:20Guest:There was an absolute build.

00:50:22Guest:When the show started off, I would come out.

00:50:25Guest:There'd be some sort of opening theme song.

00:50:27Guest:I would do a topical monologue, but I wasn't screaming and yelling.

00:50:31Guest:It was all, I mean, it was performative, but it was not over the top.

00:50:36Guest:And over the course of this 80, 90 minute show, I would kind of unravel.

00:50:42Guest:Yeah.

00:50:42Guest:Every time.

00:50:43Guest:Every time.

00:50:44Guest:About different topics, but it would have the same arc.

00:50:48Marc:Yeah.

00:50:48Guest:So the show really was, it was always hard to define because it was a comedy show.

00:50:55Guest:It didn't have the depth of a play, but it had theatrical elements to it.

00:51:01Guest:And it kind of took you on a, sorry to use this word, journey from like point A to B to C in terms of what my character or persona was going through.

00:51:10Marc:Right.

00:51:11Marc:But this was something that you crafted the trajectory beforehand.

00:51:16Marc:You wrote it in.

00:51:17Marc:You said, we're going to end up- Exactly.

00:51:19Marc:You knew the arc after a certain point.

00:51:21Marc:It was all scripted.

00:51:22Marc:Right.

00:51:22Marc:So the comedy was like, I'm going to lose my shit over this ridiculous thing.

00:51:25Marc:Correct.

00:51:26Guest:This month.

00:51:27Guest:Oh, this month it's going to be about Johnny Depp.

00:51:30Guest:Or I would do these very long-

00:51:33Guest:long rants about about celebrities who at the time you know now johnny has issues but at the time he was very revered like no one would talk he was so cool he was so talented and he was all of those things but i would find reason to get incredibly angry at him yeah and i would lash out at him on stage and and he was just one of the people you know every month it was someone else

00:51:59Marc:Right.

00:52:00Marc:I like the organic process of it.

00:52:02Marc:So like at the beginning of creating the shows, that wasn't the, were they always like that or did that sort of- No, that found itself as we went.

00:52:12Marc:Yeah?

00:52:12Guest:Yeah.

00:52:13Guest:I didn't know what it was at the beginning.

00:52:14Marc:So at the beginning you were kind of doing a straight up talk show.

00:52:17Marc:Like you just-

00:52:18Guest:Yeah, I mean, there was a lot of satire in it always.

00:52:21Guest:You know, American Idol was a big thing at the time.

00:52:23Guest:We're talking 2004 or 2003.

00:52:26Guest:So we did a segment called American Actor, where we were going to find the next American actor.

00:52:32Guest:So we, you know, which sounds kind of hack now, but American Idol had just come out.

00:52:36Guest:So, you know, we were always satirizing celebrity and TV, but the persona really took shape between, like, 03

00:52:47Guest:And in 05, when I got to Ars Nova, it really started to hit its stride.

00:52:52Marc:Wow.

00:52:54Marc:Because when I watch the street segment, it's like any sort of interaction, you're entering at such a pitch.

00:53:03Marc:So what you sort of did over time was just get rid of the buildup.

00:53:08Marc:And you just exist.

00:53:10Marc:Totally.

00:53:11Marc:I exist as that person.

00:53:12Marc:Irrationally angry from the get go.

00:53:15Guest:Sometimes there is a build up.

00:53:17Guest:It's not, you know, when people think about Billy on the street, they lean very heavily into, oh, he's screaming.

00:53:22Guest:He's the guy who shouts all the time.

00:53:24Guest:If you really watch.

00:53:26Marc:Yeah.

00:53:27Guest:I'm not shouting all the time.

00:53:29Guest:But it does get to a point where I am most of the time.

00:53:33Marc:It reminds me, because I like that.

00:53:35Marc:There's a few people that have done that over as comedic personas, like Gene Wilder did that.

00:53:41Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:53:42Marc:Like, you know, there's that build.

00:53:43Guest:There's a build, and the build is really important, and that's why I've never taken my hands off of the editing of the show, because so much of it is in the editing and in the build.

00:53:54Marc:So you're doing, like, how many have been on?

00:53:57Marc:Like, where are we at with that?

00:53:59Guest:Billy on the Street had five seasons of half-hour episodes on TV.

00:54:06Guest:Well, going farther back, I was doing the videos for my live show.

00:54:10Guest:YouTube came along.

00:54:12Guest:I was putting the videos on YouTube.

00:54:13Guest:They went viral.

00:54:14Guest:Did they?

00:54:15Guest:Yeah, a couple of them went viral.

00:54:17Marc:So the segments or the whole shows?

00:54:19Guest:Just the Billy on the Street video.

00:54:22Marc:So you were sort of YouTube at that time helped break you a bit.

00:54:28Guest:Oh, not a bit.

00:54:30Guest:A lot.

00:54:30Marc:Yeah.

00:54:31Guest:I don't think I would have had a career without YouTube.

00:54:33Guest:And not only YouTube, but then I needed Facebook and Twitter to come along to give me a platform to share the YouTube link.

00:54:41Guest:YouTube wasn't enough.

00:54:42Yeah.

00:54:42Marc:So, like, there were two that, like, got millions of views?

00:54:44Guest:There was, like, two that I did that got, they probably have millions now, but certainly, like, hundreds of thousands.

00:54:51Guest:And they played particularly well to people in the industry because they're about the industry.

00:54:57Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:54:58Marc:Right, sure.

00:54:59Guest:So because I had lots of agents come to Creation Nation, my live show before I had before YouTube, really before I had viral videos.

00:55:07Guest:And, you know, there were huge articles about my show in The New York Times and everyone was very complimentary.

00:55:14Guest:But no one knew quite what to do with all of this.

00:55:18Guest:And so.

00:55:20Guest:What the YouTube videos allowed me to do is to go in and say, hey, well, you don't know what to do or you think like, oh, this person's not going to get me or that person's not going to get me.

00:55:29Guest:Well, 500,000 people watched my video yesterday, so I have to be worth something.

00:55:34Marc:What year was that?

00:55:36Guest:This was like 09.

00:55:39Guest:And then Funny or Die got in touch with me.

00:55:43Guest:Mike Farah at Funny or Die.

00:55:45Guest:He's the CEO.

00:55:46Guest:And he reached out and said he loved my videos.

00:55:50Marc:And they were looking for videos.

00:55:52Guest:And they were looking for videos.

00:55:54Guest:And I was pretty desperate at this point.

00:55:56Guest:Really?

00:55:57Guest:Money wise?

00:55:58Guest:Money wise, yeah.

00:56:00Guest:Life wise?

00:56:00Guest:Life wise, money wise, all of it wise.

00:56:03Guest:And Mike said, if you're ever in LA, come and talk to me.

00:56:08Guest:So I just lied and said, oh, I'm in LA in two weeks.

00:56:12Guest:Coincidentally, which was not true at all.

00:56:15Guest:And I put a plane ticket on a credit card and crashed with some friends out here and went to see Mike.

00:56:20Guest:And I said to him...

00:56:22Guest:I think he was interested in maybe me doing the videos exclusively for Funny or Die or something like that, which would have been fine, except I said, I have another idea.

00:56:29Guest:I want to turn it into a TV show.

00:56:31Guest:I think I have a vague idea of how this could work as a half hour series.

00:56:36Guest:Yeah.

00:56:36Guest:And Mike liked it.

00:56:37Guest:And we made a sizzle reel for it to prove how that would work.

00:56:41Guest:We added some very loose game show elements to it, like me giving away small prizes and dollar bills and weird prizes if people cooperated and all of that.

00:56:52Guest:And we sort of pitched the idea that there could be a celebrity element with celebrities running around with me, which wasn't in there at the time.

00:56:59Marc:Like that Will Ferrell one?

00:57:00Guest:Yeah, I mean, now it's what it's known for, but there weren't any celebrities in it.

00:57:05Guest:I didn't know any of those people at the time.

00:57:07Marc:The early one was the Will Ferrell one?

00:57:09Marc:Will was in it pretty early, and... That one, the look on the woman's face at the end of that thing.

00:57:14Marc:Oh, she's so great.

00:57:16Guest:Yeah, she's so great.

00:57:17Marc:I could never forget that.

00:57:19Guest:And actually, in the first... So anyway, so Mike and I pitched as a TV show, and we sold it.

00:57:24Guest:And then we made...

00:57:27Guest:three seasons of half hour episodes for this very small cable network called fuse.

00:57:32Guest:And then we moved and did seasons four and five on true TV.

00:57:36Guest:Yeah.

00:57:37Guest:Um, and which were pretty successful.

00:57:40Guest:And, uh,

00:57:42Guest:You know, the show kept growing and growing.

00:57:43Guest:It had a very odd trajectory at like right out of the gate.

00:57:47Guest:No one really knew what it was.

00:57:48Guest:We were very under the radar.

00:57:50Guest:But I started doing segments for Conan and I don't know, it just kind of snowballed and we just kept at it and the video started going viral.

00:57:57Guest:These celebrity videos.

00:57:59Guest:Yeah.

00:57:59Guest:And then after season five, I said that I think it was enough of half-hour episodes.

00:58:06Guest:Yeah.

00:58:07Guest:So what we're doing now, I wanted to end the half-hour episode so that I could do other things.

00:58:11Marc:Where was the last network they were on?

00:58:13Marc:True TV.

00:58:13Marc:Oh, it was true.

00:58:14Marc:Okay.

00:58:14Guest:And also they were on Hulu as well.

00:58:17Guest:Right, right.

00:58:19Guest:And so, and of course, there are a million clips on YouTube, which is how people were really watching it for the most part.

00:58:27Guest:And so I thought...

00:58:28Guest:I don't know if I want to keep doing half-hour episodes, but I also don't want it to go away completely.

00:58:33Guest:And so what we're doing now is we're going to put out a series of eight Billy on the Street short-form videos, each with a different celebrity guest between now and a year from now.

00:58:46Guest:Funny or Die is producing them.

00:58:48Guest:They're going to be on the internet, on the Billy on the Street YouTube channel, on all of my social media platforms for free.

00:58:54Guest:And we're, strangely enough, doing it in partnership with Lyft.

00:58:58Marc:How does that work?

00:58:58Marc:So they ponied up and you're going to have Lyft cars featured?

00:59:03Guest:No, there are no Lyft cars.

00:59:05Guest:It's not a typical brand integration like that.

00:59:07Guest:That would be lame and I can't do that at this point.

00:59:09Marc:But they threw in some money?

00:59:10Guest:They did.

00:59:11Guest:They threw in some money and they're presenting it.

00:59:14Guest:Oh.

00:59:14Guest:Which is great, it really worked out perfectly.

00:59:16Marc:So this is eight episodes over a year of short form videos.

00:59:20Marc:Correct.

00:59:20Marc:So what else are you doing?

00:59:22Marc:I'm in The Lion King.

00:59:23Marc:I know that, but that seems like- I'm on American Horror Story.

00:59:26Marc:Oh, that's right.

00:59:27Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:59:27Marc:But that Difficult People's done.

00:59:29Guest:Difficult People is done.

00:59:30Guest:We love doing that show.

00:59:31Guest:Julie wrote on Billy on the Street, and that's how we really got to know each other.

00:59:35Marc:I've talked to her, and we kind of know each other, but I always think she doesn't like me.

00:59:39Marc:Does she do that to a lot of people, or am I the only one?

00:59:41Guest:Julie's picky, but she has good taste.

00:59:46Guest:Julie's a genius, honestly.

00:59:48Guest:I knew her work from the internet, honestly.

00:59:53Guest:Really?

00:59:54Guest:I think at some point, Julie had a...

00:59:57Guest:a Tumblr or a blog or something.

00:59:59Guest:This is going way back.

01:00:00Guest:And of course she was on Twitter and I thought, who is this person?

01:00:04Guest:We had such a similar sensibility, but I didn't really know her.

01:00:07Guest:And then when Billy on the Street became a TV show, I thought, oh, I need people to help me with this.

01:00:13Guest:I can't do all of this myself in terms of writing and coming up with bits and questions and things.

01:00:18Guest:And Julie was the first person

01:00:19Guest:person i yeah i emailed and i said please come work on this with me and she was a fan and she said yes and we got really close working on that and then a couple a couple years later after doing that she wrote a pilot that she told me was for her and i to do uh which amy poehler came on board and that became difficult people and we did three seasons of that for hulu yeah and people love it yeah they did and why did that stop

01:00:47Marc:You have to ask Hulu that question.

01:00:49Marc:Wow.

01:00:50Marc:Hulu's making big decisions.

01:00:51Guest:Yeah.

01:00:51Guest:Hulu's making lots of decisions.

01:00:53Guest:No, I mean, we loved it.

01:00:55Guest:It was a very specific show.

01:00:59Guest:And the people who got it really, really got it.

01:01:03Guest:And it's sad that it's over.

01:01:04Guest:I think it spoke to a certain audience that doesn't really get catered to very much.

01:01:07Marc:Sure.

01:01:08Marc:No, I think that's true.

01:01:11Marc:Yeah.

01:01:11Marc:Difficult people.

01:01:12Marc:Yeah, exactly.

01:01:13Marc:Difficult.

01:01:13Guest:Selfish, difficult people.

01:01:15Guest:Selfish, narcissistic, horny gay men and the women who love them.

01:01:19Marc:Yeah.

01:01:21Marc:Yeah, it's very specific.

01:01:24Marc:So when you act now, I mean, what other projects are coming your way?

01:01:28Marc:I mean, The Lion King's a big deal.

01:01:30Marc:I mean, that's a voice project, but how did that happen?

01:01:32Marc:I mean-

01:01:32Guest:the lion king uh john favreau's directing it and he's a fan of yours he's a fan of mine yeah no i didn't have to audition for it he favreau got in touch with me way back he was a pretty early adopter to billy on the street and he was a big fan and i met him at south by south the west a number of years ago briefly and then i i've been on his radar i guess but the call came completely out of the blue

01:01:57Marc:That was fun.

01:01:58Guest:Yeah, it's pretty great.

01:01:59Marc:It's exciting.

01:02:00Guest:Very exciting.

01:02:01Guest:And I'm doing American Horror Story.

01:02:02Guest:I did it last season, and I'm on again this season.

01:02:05Guest:And it's a great cast of people.

01:02:07Guest:Sarah Paulson, obviously.

01:02:08Guest:Kathy Bates.

01:02:10Guest:I love Ryan Murphy.

01:02:11Guest:So that's a very different type of thing for me to do, and that's really fun.

01:02:16Marc:That's like a...

01:02:18Marc:I don't even know how that season works.

01:02:20Marc:I mean, I don't know how that show works.

01:02:23Marc:Is it different every season?

01:02:25Guest:Yes, it's an anthology series.

01:02:27Guest:So every year, the plot and the characters change, but there's always some holdover in terms of cast and writers, and the behind-the-scenes people stay the same, but the characters change, and the story changes, the theme, the location, and all of that.

01:02:44Marc:It's one of those ones where I've heard great things about it, but I can't...

01:02:48Marc:I can't follow everything.

01:02:49Marc:There's a lot of shows out there.

01:02:51Marc:God damn it.

01:02:51Guest:Too many shows.

01:02:52Marc:So what's the big dream now?

01:02:53Marc:I mean, outside of yelling at people on the streets in that show, but I mean, would you want to do a big movie where you sort of have a second lead kind of thing?

01:03:03Guest:A second lead?

01:03:04Guest:Why second lead?

01:03:06Guest:Yeah, no, I'm actually working on a movie project right now.

01:03:10Guest:You can be the lead if you want.

01:03:11Guest:I don't want to take that away from you.

01:03:12Guest:Why would I write a movie where I wasn't the

01:03:14Guest:No, I mean, I didn't say write.

01:03:15Guest:I meant cast.

01:03:16Guest:Oh, I'm going to cast myself as the lead too.

01:03:18Guest:Okay.

01:03:20Guest:So I'm working on a movie project now that I guess will be announced soon.

01:03:23Guest:I don't think I can talk about it yet, but it involves people you've heard of.

01:03:27Guest:Hopefully that'll get made.

01:03:28Marc:That sounds great.

01:03:30Marc:People I've heard of?

01:03:30Guest:People you've heard of.

01:03:31Guest:Man.

01:03:32Guest:I know.

01:03:32Guest:Who wants people you haven't heard of?

01:03:34Guest:Well, sometimes they're surprising.

01:03:36Guest:Once in a while.

01:03:37Guest:Yeah.

01:03:38Guest:So I'm working on that.

01:03:39Guest:I'm doing my first Netflix special, which will come out next year at some point.

01:03:43Marc:Really?

01:03:44Marc:Yeah.

01:03:44Marc:So how's that?

01:03:45Marc:What's that going to be?

01:03:47Guest:That will, in a way, kind of harken back.

01:03:51Guest:Harken?

01:03:51Marc:Yeah, sure.

01:03:53Marc:To my live show.

01:03:54Guest:To Creation Nation.

01:03:55Guest:It won't be exactly that.

01:03:56Guest:It's not going to be in the form of a talk show, but it will have variety elements and be very unique to me.

01:04:06Guest:You don't have a plan?

01:04:06Guest:You don't have a structure?

01:04:07Guest:There is a structure.

01:04:09Guest:Yeah, I am working on it, but I want to keep it as a surprise.

01:04:13Guest:Um, not like a sit, Barbara Streisand has a small but pivotal role.

01:04:18Guest:No, uh, but there, uh, there's no traditional like sit down celebrity interview.

01:04:25Marc:Yeah.

01:04:25Guest:Might there be cameos?

01:04:27Guest:Perhaps.

01:04:28Marc:Yeah.

01:04:29Guest:Yeah.

01:04:29Marc:Okay.

01:04:30Marc:All right.

01:04:30Marc:I see.

01:04:31Marc:But it's, is it going to be a live stage show?

01:04:33Guest:It will be a stage show.

01:04:34Marc:With video elements?

01:04:36Marc:With video elements.

01:04:37Marc:You know it.

01:04:38Marc:I get it.

01:04:39Marc:Yeah.

01:04:40Guest:So you live out here, right?

01:04:42Guest:I do, strangely, yeah.

01:04:43Guest:And how long have you lived out here?

01:04:44Guest:Once I got Parks and Rec, I started to come out here a lot.

01:04:49Guest:Also, we've always edited Billy on the Street out here because Funny or Die is based out here.

01:04:54Guest:Yeah.

01:04:54Guest:So that saved us some money.

01:04:56Guest:So that brought me out here, and I ended up liking it, and then...

01:04:59Guest:american horror story happened that shoots out here so i've been going back and forth a lot for five years and then for the past year i've been out here most of the time obviously going back to shoot occasional billy on the street yes and also i'm on friends from college on netflix that shoots in new york too is that still going yeah we just shot the second season i'm just recurring on that

01:05:23Marc:You like doing that one?

01:05:24Guest:It's very fun.

01:05:25Guest:Yeah, I play Fred Savage's boyfriend.

01:05:28Marc:Yeah.

01:05:28Guest:We're a gay couple.

01:05:29Guest:Yeah.

01:05:29Guest:Fred's great.

01:05:30Marc:He is good.

01:05:31Marc:Do you like living here?

01:05:33Marc:I do.

01:05:34Guest:I mean, I grew up in New York City, so this is a nice change of pace.

01:05:38Guest:Yeah.

01:05:38Guest:It's relaxing and all the cliched reasons people like it.

01:05:41Guest:You can't fucking learn how to drive, dude.

01:05:43Guest:No, but no, that's the greatest thing is that I get to live in LA and I don't have to do the one thing everyone complains about, which is drive.

01:05:50Guest:You still got to get in a car.

01:05:51Guest:Yeah, but I sit there on my phone like a millennial, a wonderful millennial.

01:05:56Guest:Do you have a relationship?

01:05:58Guest:I am currently single.

01:06:00Guest:Uh-huh.

01:06:00Guest:Yeah.

01:06:00Guest:Okay.

01:06:01Guest:Do you have a relationship?

01:06:02Marc:I do.

01:06:02Marc:Okay, good.

01:06:04Marc:We don't live together.

01:06:05Marc:That's probably good.

01:06:06Marc:Yeah.

01:06:07Marc:I think it's the best way.

01:06:08Guest:yeah like I think I don't I agree with you like if they have their own place and they're cool and they're you know they got their own thing going on and you know they it's much better the best I read an article you know the fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi yeah this was a few years ago in the New York Times and he talked about him and his partner I guess I don't know if they're married and they live together technically in Manhattan obviously these are wealthy people who are privileged but they live together but two bedrooms

01:06:37Guest:And they don't necessarily sleep together every night.

01:06:39Guest:And Isaac said, oh, I like to work late at night.

01:06:42Guest:And he gets up early.

01:06:43Guest:And I was like, that is ideal.

01:06:45Guest:Right.

01:06:46Guest:You know?

01:06:46Guest:Let's stop pretending that we're all on the same clock.

01:06:49Marc:Yeah.

01:06:49Marc:And also, I don't know, man.

01:06:52Marc:You get older.

01:06:53Marc:Your habits get more defined.

01:06:55Marc:It's sort of like, what do we need to be up each other's ass all the time?

01:06:58Marc:Exactly.

01:06:59Marc:It's just annoying.

01:07:00Guest:You're just going to end up hating each other.

01:07:01Marc:Yeah.

01:07:02Marc:There's resentment that builds.

01:07:03Guest:I guess if you have a kid, it's different.

01:07:05Marc:Well, even then, I mean, everyone can have their own room.

01:07:08Marc:That's true.

01:07:10Marc:The kid.

01:07:10Marc:Yeah, the kid, the mom, the dad.

01:07:12Marc:Whoever's actually raising the kid.

01:07:14Marc:Whoever's parenting, however it's situated.

01:07:17Marc:All right, buddy.

01:07:17Marc:Well, it was great talking to you.

01:07:18Marc:Thanks for having me.

01:07:19Marc:Good luck with the thing.

01:07:20Marc:Thank you.

01:07:21Marc:Do you have any questions for me?

01:07:23Marc:How's Glow going?

01:07:24Marc:Oh, pretty good.

01:07:26Marc:We got picked up for a third season.

01:07:27Guest:I saw, congrats.

01:07:28Guest:And you're nominated for an Emmy.

01:07:30Marc:The show is.

01:07:31Marc:The show is.

01:07:31Marc:Yes.

01:07:32Marc:I didn't get a nomination.

01:07:33Marc:I'm okay with it.

01:07:33Marc:I'm sorry about that.

01:07:34Marc:It's all right.

01:07:35Marc:I kind of like one, but I think I was- Did you not get one last year?

01:07:39Marc:I got no.

01:07:40Marc:I think these Emmys are still for the- You were nominated for something.

01:07:44Marc:A SAG?

01:07:45Marc:A SAG.

01:07:45Marc:Well, that's good.

01:07:47Marc:And a Critics' Choice I got nominated.

01:07:51Marc:Well, that's great.

01:07:52Marc:But these Emmys are still for the first season, right?

01:07:54Marc:I mean, this is 2000, because this season just came out in May.

01:08:00Marc:So it's still for last year, right?

01:08:01Marc:For 2017.

01:08:02Guest:That's a good question.

01:08:04Guest:I don't know when the cutoff date is.

01:08:06Guest:I think you're right about that.

01:08:07Marc:Yeah.

01:08:08Marc:I think I was better this season.

01:08:09Marc:Well, then- The second season.

01:08:11Marc:We'll find out.

01:08:11Marc:We'll see.

01:08:12Guest:When the Emmy noms are announced for next year.

01:08:14Marc:Yeah.

01:08:14Marc:But Liz and Carly, I'll tell them I talked to you.

01:08:16Guest:They're fantastic.

01:08:17Guest:I know them for a long time.

01:08:19Guest:Not well, but I know them.

01:08:21Marc:They were around.

01:08:22Marc:They were around.

01:08:22Guest:Did you go see their plays?

01:08:23Guest:I did sometimes, yeah.

01:08:24Guest:They're good?

01:08:25Guest:They were excellent.

01:08:26Guest:Okay.

01:08:26Guest:You don't get to write glow for nothing, Mark.

01:08:28Guest:Exactly, man.

01:08:30Guest:All right.

01:08:30Guest:See you later.

01:08:31Guest:Thanks so much.

01:08:37Marc:That's it.

01:08:38Marc:As I said, look out for more Billy on the Street and also American Horror Story Apocalypse premieres Wednesday, September 12th on FX.

01:08:48Marc:That was interesting to see someone who becomes a very defined comic personality and he just started out as an actor and just found it somehow.

01:08:59Marc:Yeah.

01:09:00Marc:Yep, yep, yep.

01:09:03Marc:Are we going to play?

01:09:04Marc:Are we going to play?

01:09:05Marc:Yeah, all right.

01:09:07Marc:I know, you're just begging me.

01:09:09Marc:You're just begging me.

01:09:32Thank you.

01:09:41.

01:09:44.

01:09:45.

01:10:10Marc:Boomer lives!