Episode 983 - Steve Coogan
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what's happening how are you mark marin here you back at work how's it going i know right right you get relaxed you get sort of into a different time sense
Marc:You get into a different groove.
Marc:You kind of get grounded in who you are and your identity in the world.
Marc:And now you're back.
Marc:You're back at work making the adjustment, checking the mountain of emails.
Marc:Everything all right?
Marc:You're going to be okay today?
Marc:Just hang in there, you know.
Marc:I guess this is life.
Marc:We're all pretty excited, right?
Marc:Y'all got pretty excited and now we're, what, seven days into it?
Marc:And...
Marc:I don't know why we fool ourselves every year.
Marc:Maybe maybe it's just the ritual.
Marc:Maybe we actually know in our hearts that, yeah, it might be a little better.
Marc:It might be a signpost of some kind, but really just another day.
Marc:And now we're a week into it and we're back.
Marc:We're back at it.
Marc:Maybe you took that time to think about what would it be like if I didn't have to work?
Marc:I think about that all the time.
Marc:I am constantly working and I don't know how to really not work because I don't know about you, but I get about 10 days away and then it's just a existential whirlpool of possibilities.
Marc:None of them good, but welcome back.
Marc:Welcome back to work, folks.
Marc:Let's have at it.
Marc:Today, Steve Coogan is on the show.
Marc:Great guest.
Marc:Great guy.
Marc:And a great movie he's in, actually.
Marc:Stan and Ollie with Steve playing Stan Laurel and John C. Reilly playing Oliver Hardy.
Marc:I loved it.
Marc:I fucking love that movie.
Marc:I will recommend that.
Marc:I recommend that movie.
Marc:I will.
Marc:And I am recommending the movie Stan and Ollie.
Marc:I'll talk about it before I bring him on.
Marc:I certainly will talk about it with with Steve.
Marc:But I just thought it was a beautiful little film, really well acted and just beautifully shot.
Marc:And I don't know, man, maybe I'm getting soft.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I just found it very touching.
Marc:Maybe as a performer, as somebody in the business marginally, I found Stan and Ollie to be a tremendous movie.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So I had to watch a bunch of movies.
Marc:Because of an interview I'm working on and some of these movies were difficult movies.
Marc:And I am not I'm not a closed minded person.
Marc:And it's interesting to to not be a closed minded person, you know, because when you're not closed minded, when you're open minded, you may have resistance to things.
Marc:But, you know, the thing is, is if you let things in because you're open minded and you're curious and you're interested and you you reserve judgment.
Marc:until you process it, you know, you live a fuller emotional, intellectual and spiritual life, I believe, because you take a lot of things in and you can sort of, you know, compare things and feel things, different things and decide, you know, who you are in relation to them and what's, you know, what's good for you and what's not good for you.
Marc:And how do you accept other people?
Marc:And, you know, like, what are things that are difficult?
Marc:And I just think that being open minded is a stronger position.
Marc:But it is interesting that that with that comes a certain amount of insecurity in the sense that I guess the example is like I was watching some early films by Yorgos Lathimos.
Marc:And I probably should talk about this when I give you the interview, but it's on my mind.
Marc:And it does lead to somewhere else where I'm watching.
Marc:Some of his films, I'm watching an early one and I do not understand it.
Marc:I don't know what the fuck is happening.
Marc:I do not.
Marc:I know that there is intent in it, that that there was designed to it, but it's not making sense to me and it's provocative, but it's disturbing and it's not it's not forming a story.
Marc:And I mean, I'm getting frustrated and it's taking me days to get through a movie.
Marc:And, you know, I'm just but I'm open and I want to understand and I want to I want to know what what is trying to be communicated to me or what the effect is supposed to be.
Marc:And I'm overthinking it, obviously.
Marc:But the thing I noticed about myself is that if I don't understand a movie or if something is too challenging creatively, like if it's an art film and I'm not getting it, I rarely, if ever, blame the movie.
Marc:I always think like, why don't I fucking get this?
Marc:What is wrong with me?
Marc:And sometimes it's just supposed to go in.
Marc:Sometimes art is just supposed to go in and roll around in your brain a little bit.
Marc:May not make any sense whatsoever, but you never know what it's going to start in your brain.
Marc:You never know what it's going to tumble or trigger or morph into or how it's going to pop back at you or how it's going to resonate or how it changes the way you see things.
Marc:And you got to let that happen.
Marc:It's not going to hurt you.
Marc:especially if you don't get it and it's not expecting anything from you.
Marc:But my point is, I always think that I'm the idiot.
Marc:You know, you watch a movie, you're like, ah, fuck.
Marc:What was that?
Marc:I'm a fucking idiot.
Marc:And then I realized, well, maybe that's what art's supposed to do.
Marc:Maybe you're supposed to walk away going like, I'm a fucking moron.
Marc:And then think about it for the next few years and on and off for the next decade after that.
Marc:And one day you'll be like, oh, fuck.
Marc:That's just like that thing in that movie.
Marc:I didn't get the movie, but now like, ah, see, now I'm looking at life a little differently, but it took 10 years.
Marc:So keep an open mind.
Marc:What fascinates me about close-minded people, especially in reaction to what's going on politically,
Marc:is most open-minded people can weigh things and process things based on their own experience and their own willingness to be empathetic and engage in a bigger world.
Marc:So they have more foundation to understand who they are and who other people are and what the world looks like and what is compassionate and what isn't.
Marc:I believe that to be true.
Marc:So ironically,
Marc:You know, open minded people are in a stronger position because it amazes me how easy it is with closed minded people, how easily manipulated they are and how easily mind fucked they are and how easily misled they are.
Marc:And they think they're right.
Marc:But they are the most vulnerable, mush brain people that I can even conceive of.
Marc:And they lock into it.
Marc:because you know belief offers them a portal into being connected to something bigger than themselves that they don't you know if it speaks to their anger they're on board no matter how wrong it is and that's what happens because the open-minded thing if you're open-minded person you can weigh things and process things and somewhat to see the difference between you know right and wrong and moral and immoral on a human level
Marc:Whereas if you're closed-minded, if somebody just pops that brain open and they dump a bunch of angry shit in there, you're fully on board with a whole fucking ideology.
Marc:So closed-minded people are much more vulnerable to being mind-fucked than open-minded people.
Marc:And I think in that balance, you know, lies the future of fucking humanity.
Marc:The wall, the wall.
Marc:what a ridiculous fucking it's literally this is it this is like some sort of strange last stand of a particular type of ideology may win may not the wall build the wall between you and your neighbors between you and your higher mind but whatever the case
Marc:This is the fight of the day.
Marc:And I kind of hope I didn't, you know, like I certainly don't want the Democrats to cave because God knows there's a lot of different things you can do with five billion dollars that are more proactive.
Marc:Obviously, immigration has to be reckoned with.
Marc:But that's not the point.
Marc:The point is, I hope that this guy, I hope that King Baby gets his way and finds his money.
Marc:I hope he just figures out a way that whether we agree with it or not, he gets it.
Marc:And my hope for the wall is that it just gets half built.
Marc:Maybe not even half, maybe a third belt, because I think that all Trump wants as a legacy is something built, because there's a real good chance that his legacy is just going to be infamy and contempt and shame.
Marc:So I think that being the builder that he is and wanting to take care of his contracting buddies, you know, he wants to get something up that he can put his name on.
Marc:That's the wall.
Marc:That's the Trump wall.
Marc:That motherfucker.
Marc:He did it.
Marc:He did it.
Marc:I just hope that he gets started and then it just it just craps out.
Marc:It doesn't get done.
Marc:And then like years later, when everybody has turned on him except for the 35 percent of the closed minded mind fucked minions, they'll never go away.
Marc:But history does not view tyrants in a in a positive way.
Marc:I think generally speaking, except for a small contingent of people.
Marc:But I just hope that wall just becomes this weird monument to failure and shame and humor.
Marc:I just hope that it's in the future, the half wall, the famous half Trump wall.
Marc:People travel miles to see just this wall that just stops somewhere down at the bottom of Texas.
Marc:They're explaining to their kids, yeah, we had this madman was president and he had this big idea, but he didn't follow through with it.
Marc:Well, what happened to him, mommy?
Marc:Oh, he died in prison.
Marc:Yeah, it's a hell of a story.
Marc:You'll probably learn about it in school.
Marc:You wouldn't have if he was president and it was successful, but you will now.
Marc:So this was going to be a bigger wall?
Marc:Yeah, it was supposed to go all the way across the whole bottom of the United States.
Marc:It's just this little piece?
Marc:Yep.
Marc:Here, hold my hand.
Marc:take a few steps we're in mexico now all right now take a few steps back we're back in united states it's a big silly wall that's funny he's a funny man i don't know if i'd say that hey this just didn't get done now it's just a monument to a horrible dark time in our country come back from mexico just step back over here so steve coogan
Marc:He's a very funny man, a very bright man.
Marc:And I've been I've always liked his work.
Marc:I was glad I had a chance to talk to him.
Marc:But I do want to talk up this movie a little bit because I haven't been hearing much about it.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I imagine some people have seen it, but it's a lovely, touching movie.
Marc:about the sort of towards the end of the careers of Laurel and Hardy.
Marc:And my generation, we've watched, probably got to see them on TV when we were younger.
Marc:I remember in New Jersey, there was a station that ran Laurel and Hardy.
Marc:My grandfather loved Laurel and Hardy, but we all certainly have a picture of Laurel and Hardy.
Marc:Most of us have seen their bits before, but they're just sort of like these old timey guys.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:who did a thing.
Marc:But this movie, like, it's very hard to do a biopic in general because you have a point of reference.
Marc:But we don't really have a point of reference other than those old black and white movies for Laurel and Hardy.
Marc:And they did seem somewhat one-dimensional.
Marc:And what Steve Coogan did and John C. Reilly did was really create...
Marc:Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy from the inside.
Marc:And these are, I guess I'm sympathetic to it and it's touching to me because this is a desperate time in their careers where they wound up broke because of bad production deals and they were sort of forced to tour as a live act in Europe and they were already...
Marc:And, you know, just the conversations and the reality of being on the road and having a partnership.
Marc:And it's a real it's a it's a beautiful movie about a friendship.
Marc:And it's also a love story in a way, not a platonic love story.
Marc:But but the way that they just inhabited these men.
Marc:was really stunning, and it was shot stunning, and it was just shot beautifully, and I found it to be very touching and very moving, and they both did Oscar-worthy performances, so I just highly recommend the film, and I'll talk to Steve about it and about other things because the film does open, well, it's playing now in New York and California, but it opens across the world and the country on Friday, January 18th.
Marc:It's called Stan and Ollie, and this is me talking to Steve Coogan.
Marc:So wait, so that's, uh, the cottage is your main house?
Guest:No, it's just a house I had next to my main house, just outside Brighton.
Guest:I know nothing about Brighton.
Guest:Is that nice?
Guest:It's where all the mods and the rockers had fights on the beach in the 1960s.
Guest:Have you ever seen footage of that?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:So it's a beach house.
Guest:It was, no, it's kind of back from the beach.
Guest:It's like, it's like a little cottage, you know, it's like we have lots of old, it's just an old building.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Loads of old buildings.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Is it like renovated?
Marc:I mean, has the area been gentrified?
Guest:No, Brighton used to be the place where people would go for dirty weekends in the 19th century.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:I have no sense of England, and every time I have somebody in here from England, I seem to need a history of England.
Guest:The thing about American history is it's like 250 years old.
Guest:So everybody knows it like back to front and it just goes over and over and over again.
Guest:But ours is a little longer and it gets muddier and muddier the further back you go.
Guest:So nobody knows all of it.
Guest:They just know little bits here and there.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:And you can always be surprised when somebody tells you something about a king or a piece of property or a house.
Marc:Oh, I didn't know that.
Guest:But here, everyone's like so steeped in American history, if they don't know a part of it, they get like a rap on the knuckles.
Marc:I wish.
Marc:I wish people were as educated as you're giving them credit for.
Marc:It seems that here the history gets erased daily.
Guest:Or rewritten.
Marc:Yeah, completely.
Marc:So you grew up where?
Marc:What part?
Marc:I grew up in Manchester in the north.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Industrial.
Marc:It was industrial.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's like a kind of... I compare Manchester to Chicago.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Lots of Irish diaspora people.
Guest:I'm half Irish.
Guest:So one of your folks is full Irish?
Guest:My mom grew up in Ireland during the war.
Guest:She was sent back there.
Guest:She was actually born in England, but my mom and dad were like what I call Bog Irish.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:super poor Irish yeah and everybody left Ireland then there was no work turn that towards facing there you go the country was dying yeah yeah it was only actually the population since the famine in Ireland was going down until the 1980s there's only like 8 million people there now
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it's crazy.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:The whole country.
Guest:It was shrinking, and then it went back up.
Guest:Anyway, my mom's parents came over to England in the 1930s, and she was born, and then they sent her back during the war.
Guest:So, yeah, on my dad's side further back is Irish.
Guest:So even though I grew up in the north, there's a bunch of Irish Catholic diaspora, the kind of ghettoized area of Irish Catholics right next to the Jewish area.
Guest:In Manchester?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In North Manchester.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It's been a little like Chicago.
Guest:I compare it to Chicago.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Industrial town.
Guest:It was kind of gritty, a little sort of dirty, but it's kind of gone beyond that now.
Guest:It's like a post-industrial town, I guess.
Guest:So there was a Jewish ghetto there too?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's like a Jewish area.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Right next to the Irish Catholic area.
Guest:How'd they get on?
Guest:All right.
Guest:They lived side by side.
Guest:We didn't hang out, but we didn't fight.
Yeah.
Marc:Were they Orthodox Jews or just regular Jews?
Guest:Pretty Orthodox.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, regular Jews, I mean, they would assimilate more.
Guest:But no, the Orthodox... It's an enclave.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And there's lots of... Britain has a pretty diverse history of accommodating people of different... Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Having said that, you know, the Irish did have their own, you know, there used to be signs on doors that said, no blacks, no dogs, no Irish.
Guest:Oh, boy.
Guest:I mean, they don't do that anymore, but they did once upon a time.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, I talked to Cleese, John Cleese, you know, and it sort of seemed like that the Irish were sort of, they took the brunt of the humor and they were always ostracized.
Guest:Sure, they were, yeah.
Guest:And it was okay.
Guest:I mean, yeah, growing up, when I was growing up, it was all right to tell Irish jokes.
Guest:But this, I mean, funny enough, because of the terrorism and the nationalist movement and- Right now?
Guest:No, I mean, I'm talking back in the day when the IRA was at the height.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I mean, that was really quite... Then it was like you were a social pariah.
Guest:There were people in England pressing for the Irish.
Guest:You had to carry an ID card just if you were Irish because you might be a terrorist.
Guest:That seems so crazy.
Guest:Well, that was way back in the day.
Guest:But it's happening now with Muslims.
Guest:I mean, the exact same thing is happening.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I mean, but now, of course, it's cool to be Irish.
Guest:Every pub claims to be Irish.
Guest:There are not enough Irish people in the world, I think, to justify the number of Irish pubs.
Guest:But it's so weird.
Guest:It's not even 100 years ago, that history, where they didn't want the Irish there.
Guest:It's crazy.
Guest:I know.
Guest:It's funny.
Guest:I had, I mean, in Ireland...
Guest:I have two sides of my family.
Guest:On my dad's side of the family, his brother was wealthy, and they were targeted at one point by the IRA.
Guest:The IRA used to kidnap rich people.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Raise money from the kidnap, from the ransom, and buy arms.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And on the other side of Ireland, my mom's side of the family... He's actually the IRA.
Guest:...was people who supported the IRA who were kidnapping the same people that were targeting my dad's brother.
Guest:And that was two sides of my family who had connections to different sides of... It almost felt like a setup for you saying, and that's how my parents met.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Do you go back there?
Guest:All the time, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I mean, pretty regularly, sure.
Marc:I mean, I go to Ireland, and I feel like some weird connection to it, and I'm full-on Ashkenazi Jew, and I can't understand what my connection is, but I go there, and I'm like, I want to live here.
Marc:It's so fucking beautiful.
Guest:So what it is is when you grow up in England, if you're from Ireland, it gives you a kind of anti-establishment fervor
Guest:uh that means that you don't i mean for example growing up we i felt british and i yeah i you know i supported the england football team and sure but we were always like you know the don't forget the british screwed the irish big time forever forever and and and so we never quite bought the whole flag waving we the royal family yeah we were kind of slightly bolshevik we're kind of like they should take them all into the cellar yeah
Guest:But the only thing was, I think my mom and dad said, the queen's okay.
Guest:She earns, but the rest of them, they can get rid of them.
Marc:Yeah, the queen's like 900 years old.
Marc:She's always been there.
Marc:It's weird.
Marc:I don't know if it's reverence or just sort of amazement that this queen has lasted so long.
Marc:Well, longer than Victoria or any of those.
Guest:I mean, yeah, you kind of, it's kind of.
Guest:Like your entire life, that's been the queen.
Guest:Yeah, of course.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's her, yeah, no one says his.
Guest:No, I don't think anyone's old enough to remember someone saying his majesty.
Guest:It's not her majesty.
Guest:Yeah, and it's going to happen eventually.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Marc:But I would think by that time, no one would give a shit.
Guest:Well, you know, it's like they keep, I mean, forever they were saying it's the end of the royal family.
Guest:And when Diana died, but you know, people love, they're just, I don't know.
Guest:I think the British are suckers.
Guest:What I find depressing about the British is a lot swathes of the working class want to be told what to do and just want to doff their caps and say, and say, I don't want to be in, I don't want to empower myself.
Guest:I want that guy to be in charge and tell me what to do.
Guest:That's dug into the culture.
Guest:Some aspects of that.
Guest:I mean, there's a lot of... The whole union movement started in the north of England.
Guest:I'm very proud of that.
Guest:It's kind of a diffidence and a kind of an opposition to established institutions.
Guest:But, you know, if that was the case, then we'd have a radical government.
Guest:And the fact is that we never do.
Guest:We have kind of very...
Guest:conservative with a small c government because really, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how many people are banging the table, there's too many people who just kind of roll over and say, yeah, okay, just, you know.
Marc:It's a weird thing, though, because we don't, like in this country, there's not a lot of conversation about class because they just hide it.
Marc:They subvert the whole idea.
Marc:that there's a lower, middle, or upper class, but it's sort of established in Britain, because here it seems like people that don't have a lot, they're either angry or they think it's only a matter of time before they get it all.
Guest:I know, I know.
Guest:This is the big difference, I think, between the British and the Americans, and it's the fact that they're not class-obsessed, and it's a double-edged sword.
Guest:There's good and bad in both, and I'll tell you what it is.
Guest:In the UK, we don't measure success by the size of your bank balance.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But that means we also have snobbery.
Guest:It's like we think even if you have a lot of money in Britain, people can look down the nose at you.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:If you didn't, if you're not bred, if you're not from the right.
Guest:Right.
Marc:If you didn't get it through the family or you didn't get it.
Guest:If you got bad taste, then you ought to go to hell kind of thing.
Guest:Whereas in the US, it doesn't matter.
Guest:If you made money, that's it.
Guest:You've arrived.
Guest:You won.
Guest:And that also means like if you made money and you're a horrible person,
Guest:It doesn't matter.
Guest:You can be president.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:So it's fine.
Guest:So there's a lack of snobbery in that, but it also means that you can have assholes that do very well.
Marc:Well, the lack of snobbery is essentially what's killing us culturally right now because of this fucking monster at office.
Marc:I mean, he's one of those guys that never felt like he was accepted by the people that had the money, and he had money.
Marc:So he is the exact example of why snobs...
Marc:That's his whole platform.
Guest:It's like the elites.
Guest:I know, I know, I know.
Guest:But we don't have to talk.
Guest:We can't solve that problem.
Marc:So you grew up, I imagine, Catholic?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I grew up, and I did a movie about that called Philomena about five years ago.
Marc:Oh, I saw that.
Marc:It's great.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I mean, yeah, so I grew up Catholic, and that was my kind of way of talking about
Guest:That was a touching movie.
Marc:Yeah, I forgot.
Guest:Yeah, it's a good movie.
Guest:I mean, I don't just... Although there's a lot of stuff screwed sexually, certainly about repressed sexuality.
Guest:Hello.
Marc:Of course there is.
Guest:We all know that now.
Marc:I have a theory about that.
Marc:I really think that in neighborhoods...
Marc:I think that some mothers who saw that their sons were heading that way pushed them into the priesthood to save them from that life.
Guest:I think you're right, and I think some of them thought, hey, you know, and I think some guys themselves were like, I have these dark thoughts.
Guest:If I become a priest, they'll all go away.
Guest:I think that's true, yeah.
Guest:And I have to say, for all the kind of...
Guest:Horror stories.
Guest:Centuries.
Guest:There are, and this is what Philomena was about, there are some decent people, not normally the people in charge, the people right at the base who are just trying to live a decent life and trying to do good stuff quietly.
Guest:Service.
Guest:Just service.
Guest:Just people of simple faith.
Guest:I'm not religious.
Guest:I'm an atheist.
Guest:But I respect those people of simple faith who just try to do the right thing without fanfare.
Marc:And especially the Catholic Church and a lot of those religious institutions in general, it gets to the point where they're the only ones doing it.
Marc:Like where the government won't, you know, that they're going to show up.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I mean, the thing is someone, I remember an article saying, I read some article about, hey, you know those guys that help out at soup kitchens and stuff like that?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They're not like liberal intellectuals.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They're people who actually are kind of helping people by giving them soup.
Guest:And those some people are in some ways socially conservative.
Guest:Some of them might be, believe it or not, anti-gay marriage.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And that's kind of, you go, well, hang on a second.
Guest:Do you like those people?
Guest:I'm saying that
Guest:A lot of the people who might be not socially progressive quietly do decent stuff for people on a kind of classless basis.
Marc:But that's part of the benefit of having a sort of faith is that the idea of selflessness is rewarding.
Marc:I mean, it's part of being human.
Marc:You have to train yourself to do it, but there is a benefit to it for everything.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:But it's kind of learned behavior.
Marc:I think that's true.
Guest:Certainly not for me.
Guest:I mean, I would like to, it's kind of weird.
Guest:I would like to just go off and have a good time.
Guest:Part of me would just like to, you know, I think John Lennon said, living is easy with eyes closed.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I just want to go off and just have a good time and have a hedonistic time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But then it's like, you know, anything, but I think when you, there is a kind of thing, certainly if you raise a Catholic, you've got some of the Catholic guilt
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That you feel, I feel like I have to, at the end of the day, you know, the crappy stuff is like a line of cocaine and the good stuff is like a nourishing meal.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The line of cocaine might seem like a good idea at the time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But you don't get nourishment from it ultimately.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Unless you do the line of cocaine, then go to feed the guys at the soup kitchen.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or if you're like Pablo Escobar and you sell the cocaine and use the money to buy a nourishing meal for your family.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But when but did you like where you put was the fear of God in you?
Marc:Was there a point in your life where you're like, I'm done with this or like.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I think I was super religious early on.
Guest:I mean, I go to... You know, I mean, I was forced to go to church.
Marc:You got a lot of siblings?
Marc:Do you have the full Catholic?
Guest:Yeah, I've got four brothers, two sisters.
Guest:They've all got kids.
Guest:I've got 25 nephews and nieces.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:We are kind of... But we're a mixed bag.
Guest:You know, some people don't think it's all BS.
Guest:Other people are, I would say...
Guest:I wouldn't say devout because that sounds like a weird thing.
Guest:They're all liberal.
Guest:Even the ones that are Catholic are liberal.
Guest:And in actual fact, we have different opinions.
Guest:We're a broad church, even the family.
Guest:We get together and we love each other, but sometimes we drive each other nuts.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:And that's like a normal marginally dysfunctional family setup like the whole world.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There is a thing, I mean, I was raised a kind of socialist-ish.
Guest:My parents would say Jesus was a socialist.
Guest:He hung out with the poor and he hung out with the criminals and the prostitutes.
Guest:That's the progressive line on Jesus.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:But then you get some people, what I found amazing, and it's particularly in America, is the people who managed to conflate Christianity with cash.
Guest:It staggers me.
Guest:They go, Jesus wanted us to make lots of money.
Guest:I'm like, I don't remember reading that.
Guest:I really don't.
Guest:It's an interpretation.
Guest:It's just an interpretation.
Marc:Joel Osteen, the super church guy.
Marc:Yeah, there's a lot of that guy.
Marc:Yeah, it's he had this empowerment.
Marc:It's not Christianity as being you're doing Christian deeds.
Marc:It's Christianity for means of personal empowerment.
Marc:No, it's crazy.
Marc:It's a racket, dude.
Marc:It's a hustle.
Guest:It's amazing how you can, well, it just shows you can, I just honestly think with this whole fake news thing, we're living in an era where, you know, you could, I could show, I'm holding a white mug here with some lovely tea you made for me.
Guest:There are people on this that would say, I know you think that mug's white, but it's kind of black.
Marc:It's not white.
Marc:I've been doing a bit on stage about that, about false equivalences, where you have a concrete, like I say, I'm sitting on a stool, and the response to that would be like, yeah, but there's a lot of things out there that aren't stools, so can we really be sure?
Guest:exactly i know it's i mean it's it's wait we have to have some parameters otherwise we're going to talk ourselves into a soup oh no like the like the the way that the truth is being dislodged and then people's ability to actually want to pursue the truth it's crazy and unfortunately it's it's i think it's like the trouble is and you know i hate to say this because like it's a very unegalitarian thing to say okay
Guest:What was that thing that Bukowski said about all the smart people are full of self-doubt and all the stupid people are very confident?
Guest:Well, that's the era we're living in right now.
Marc:What's the Yates one from Second Coming?
Marc:The best lack all conviction and the worst are filled with passionate intensity.
Guest:I know.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:I was trying to make it more accessible in my version.
Marc:No, you broke it down to smart and stupid.
Marc:He left it a little more vague.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:I mean, hell.
Marc:But when did it drop out for you?
Guest:When did you realize, like, hey, maybe this Jesus isn't a flying man?
Guest:Oh, that stuff went pretty early on, I think.
Guest:I mean, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's kind of crazy.
Guest:So you never believed in hell?
Guest:Well, I did for a while.
Guest:And then I was like, and then I met all the liberal.
Guest:And then I was educated with these brothers that were very liberal.
Guest:And they were saying, oh, it's okay.
Guest:Don't worry.
Guest:Everything's a metaphor.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:That's good.
Guest:That makes it a little more tangible.
Guest:Hang on a second.
Guest:I don't even buy the metaphor thing.
Guest:I just think it's just, it's just a load of stuff.
Guest:And, and, you know, Hey, there's some really good people and they don't believe in any of that stuff and they're really decent.
Guest:So why do I need that stuff?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's, you know,
Guest:There are people who are great, really good people.
Guest:Some of my family are people I love and have huge respect for who adhere to that religion.
Guest:And lots of good people who do.
Guest:And then there are some people who don't adhere to any of it and are amazing, wonderful contributors to humanity.
Marc:Yeah, it seems like a lot of times people do it out of just the community element.
Marc:And I think it takes a bit off their plate as parents and stuff.
Guest:Of course, and I tell you what, and also, the trouble is, there's all these people, what's that Alexander Pope thing?
Guest:A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Guest:Drink deeply or not at all.
Guest:We've got a lot of people who have had a little bit of a sip and think that Einstein.
Guest:Oh, no, that is a big problem.
Guest:I know it is.
Guest:It's weird, man.
Guest:It's like a lot of these confident people who are saying, I know all this stuff because someone's, I don't know, it makes me think, you know what?
Guest:In the old days, like 500 years ago, they didn't let ordinary people read the Bible.
Guest:That's a terrible thing that my liberal instincts say that.
Guest:But when I look around now, I feel like maybe they had a point.
Guest:If they read it, they'll get it all wrong.
Marc:Well, yeah.
Marc:And that's the thing is that that kind of stuff, like I believe that once you buy the Bible, right?
Marc:So once you sort of believe it.
Marc:then your brain is open to any other kind of bullshit that makes sense.
Guest:Well, the problem is, the thing is, this is what I think about, let me as well just touch on Trump without getting completely consumed by him, is that I think the people who his base don't, there's no point arguing with them with intellectual discourse because it's like talking to someone whose religion is saying, I'm sorry, God doesn't exist because, or talking to creationists or talking to people who have this,
Guest:right it's saying these are the facts and here's the evidence and it's like that that doesn't mean anything i i'm i'm i believe they believe that's right believe and they're and the thing doesn't matter what you say they're not even talking about evolution or or or jesus they're talking about you know hillary clinton running a pedophile ring out of a pizza parlor you know yeah and then and then when you do present them with truth they'll say that's a good theory i know i know under the problem is it's like well you know i one of my measure one of my barometers for
Guest:Or whether I, when the alarm bells go off my head, if I've just met someone new, is if someone mentions a conspiracy theory to me.
Marc:That's it.
Guest:I'm like, I'm done.
Guest:I'm out.
Guest:I'm done.
Marc:It's just like religion because you can't prove it.
Guest:And do you know, the thing about conspiracy theories is you say, you know, the truth, if the truth is, okay, there's all these possible theories.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What if the most likely one was the most boring one?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it is.
Guest:Generally, it is.
Guest:The most likely explanation for someone is the most boring one.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That means you can't stay up late over a drink, pouring over the infinites of your infinite, endless conspiracy.
Guest:It's crazy.
Guest:And the truth is normally boring.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I think conspiracy theories, to support the point that we've sort of dragged through the conversation, is that it makes stupid people feel smart.
Guest:Oh, it does.
Guest:I told you this.
Guest:It's like, and they think that because you don't believe in the conspiracy theories, you drunk the Kool-Aid and they're like one step ahead.
Guest:That drives me nuts.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:You can't engage with that shit.
Marc:So when did you start, like, when did the comedy start happening?
Guest:Well, I just used to watch TV.
Guest:I just didn't work hard in school, and I did impersonations of teachers at school, and that kind of got me off the hook because...
Guest:I would have been given a lot of crap for the fact that I could do it.
Guest:So teachers would say, hey, Coogan, come to the front of the class and do impersonations of all the other teachers.
Guest:And I go, I don't want to do that.
Guest:And then they say, OK, well, everyone can open the books and we do some work.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then everyone say, do it, Coogan.
Guest:And I go, OK.
Guest:And I go to the front and I do impersonations of the teachers.
Guest:I'd take assemblies as teachers.
Guest:They'd say, you can do the assembly this morning.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'd be like 14.
Guest:And I'd be going up to like 16, 17-year-old kids, straightening their ties and telling them to smarten up.
Guest:And I was like 13 or something like that because I was impersonating the teacher.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they would laugh.
Guest:And they'd laugh, and they'd take it.
Guest:And it got me out of a lot of trouble.
Guest:And it also gets you access with other kids, right?
Marc:You know, it's a way of socializing.
Guest:I'm not tough.
Guest:I wasn't tough.
Guest:I wasn't a hard nut.
Guest:And I wasn't super smart, but I had my comedy.
Guest:But I wasn't the class clown.
Guest:I was a little bit of a snob.
Guest:I had my group of friends, and we liked our comedy, and we didn't like.
Guest:And I had an older brother who was in a rock band.
Guest:They had some success.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah, they were called the Mock Turtles.
Guest:How old are you?
Guest:I'm 53.
Guest:I'm 55, yeah.
Guest:I had the older brother.
Guest:My older brother was cool.
Guest:Oh, thank God.
Guest:Music.
Guest:Music and culture.
Guest:I mean, you know there's a headline in the Onion Mons.
Guest:It said, Parents Record Collection Deemed Hilarious.
Guest:Now, that is what my parents had.
Guest:As my brother pointed out, my parents had snide, fake versions of authentic acts.
Guest:So we had an actor in our country called Mary Hopkins, who was kind of like a lightweight Joni Mitchell.
Guest:And then we had the Seekers that were like a lightweight Peter, Paul, and Mary.
Guest:And everything was like the kind of fake low-brow, low-grade.
Marc:Well, they just were riding the coat.
Marc:and this is the angle.
Guest:And that was the stuff my parents bought.
Marc:No, they liked that stuff.
Guest:The easy listening version.
Guest:Yeah, all that version.
Guest:But how much older is your brother?
Guest:Five years older.
Guest:So he would tell me, this is cool.
Guest:These are the cool bands.
Guest:I mean, and this is the cool stuff on TV, not the main channel, this stuff.
Guest:And I remember he'd actually, he'd say, go out and buy this record.
Guest:There's a single coming out next week.
Guest:It's called Hong Kong Garden by Susie and the Banshees.
Guest:Go and buy it because people are going to be talking about it.
Guest:And I go, okay.
Guest:And that's how I learned about stuff that was off the grid, slightly left field.
Marc:And it's weird, because I'm the same age as you, but in Britain, there was still a big singles market.
Marc:You could go buy 45s, and there were tons of them.
Marc:I remember being there at that time, briefly, after high school.
Guest:You'd go to record stores, there were just hundreds of singles.
Guest:And that music, that was a way of escaping from...
Guest:Uh, I'm making smart choice.
Guest:I mean, I mean, I was a little, I didn't quite, I was figuring it out, but I was a little up my own ass.
Guest:I remember like refusing to go and see Greece age 13 because I told my friends it was too commercial.
Guest:That's the older brother.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:My older brother told me this word.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm not, I, you know, it's, it's so funny.
Marc:Was his band a punk band?
Guest:they were kind of punk new wave it was all i i remember my dad screaming at my my brother because he had orange hair and an earring saying what's wrong with you you look like a girl you know like like society was breaking down as far as in the home because his 18 year old son was looking androgynous so that was like so that that period was it was in in the in the movie the 24-hour party people oh yeah yeah that would that have been the time but yeah yeah well it
Guest:It was that early on the time.
Marc:Earlier, right?
Guest:That first wave.
Guest:It kind of spanned two periods, 24-hour party people, like the end of the 1980s, the end of the 1970s, the arrival of Joy Division and the post-punk new wave.
Guest:And Susie and the Banshees.
Guest:Susie and the Banshees were part of that period.
Guest:They were like new wave post-punk, like after 77, 78, 79.
Guest:A lot of these bands, they were kind of a refined punk, wasn't it?
Guest:New wave.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And then in the 80s, it became electronic and sort of art.
Guest:It was like art.
Guest:art house kind of cool androgynous bands.
Guest:And then there was a fallow period.
Guest:And then there was this period of the Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses where guitar bands suddenly came back.
Guest:And the movie covers all that period.
Guest:But I grew up in Manchester.
Guest:So the guy I play in the movie, Tony Wilson, who discovered those bands and was also a TV presenter, I knew him.
Guest:And I presented a TV show with him before I played him in a movie.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like it's out of a...
Guest:yeah like so he was input like he was a local celebrity local tv presenter yeah and his other job was he he was on the so people knew him in fact he was kind of like tony tony was a little unwanted because the people who were really cool yeah he was a bit of a sure it's like murray the k or whatever from the whoever that guy was from the in the old days like these djs they're like djs they're not
Guest:cool but they're opening the door exactly yeah yeah so they wanted to be it's like the oldest guy at the party yeah yeah um but also he was uh but if you were watching the t if you saw him as a tv presenter he seemed like a youthful edgy tv presenter because his hair was a little long he sometimes didn't wear a tie right but like that when in the 70s where so because of the older brother you were you were because like in the states we didn't get that shit till years later
Marc:No.
Marc:But you were there.
Marc:And you had a brother that was on top of it.
Marc:So you got to experience the Sex Pistols in real time and all those bands in real time.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I remember I bought... I went halves with my buddy on Nevermind the Bollocks, here's the Sex Pistols.
Guest:And we hid it in a Perry Como sleeve because it had the word bollocks on, which in England was... My father would have considered that a rude word.
Guest:And he was pretty traditional.
Guest:And so I couldn't have that album cover around.
Marc:So you put it in one of their albums?
Guest:In a Perry Como.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And my buddy would come borrow it, and he would take it to his house in a Perry Como sleeve.
Guest:It was a good record.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Right?
Marc:Yeah, it was great.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, now, what were some of the... See, because I don't know, I'm not well-versed in British comedy other than talking to people about it.
Guest:Well, a lot of sitcoms I used to watch, and I used to... Monty Python.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Monty Python was a cool, edgy thing, but a lot of comedy in those days, before VCRs, it was on vinyl.
Guest:Right.
Guest:so you'd listen to comedy yeah even older comedy like some american comedy a lot of american comedy was ahead of british comedy like in the fit like bob newhart and and mel brooks and stuff like that and that stuff was on your parents have that yeah they had that so that was a kind of cool bit of the when my dad had that and he had like some peter sellers stuff he was in a thing called the goons but peter oh yeah yeah yeah that was in england that was yeah that was that the goons were like a pre-monty python
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:But so you were growing up with that.
Marc:But there wasn't a huge stand-up scene in Britain yet.
Guest:No, there was not a huge stand-up scene.
Guest:It was kind of very old, regressive.
Guest:Billy Connolly was this folk.
Guest:Yeah, I know Billy.
Guest:I've interviewed him.
Guest:Okay, so he was part of a strain of folk...
Guest:almost like comics storytellers storytellers they used to come on with the guitar yeah sing a song and in between the songs they talk and and the talk got bigger and bigger and the songs got less and less until eventually they put the guitar down and just talked yeah and that's that's what billy connolly came out of and he was billy connolly was kind of someone you thought hey you don't have to tell cheesy gags you can you can reel people in yeah yeah yeah storytelling yeah
Guest:And that kind of comedy.
Guest:And so figures like him were like, they weren't these Oxbridge intellectuals and neither was he like some blue collar Joe.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He was right in the sweet spot between them.
Guest:That's what Billy Connolly was because he managed to be smart and yet from a kind of working background.
Marc:And I think that his style kind of defined a lot of what was going on in the UK and in Ireland because like I went to Edinburgh
Marc:you know, like 2006, and it seems like still that the format for even young comics is like they're gonna put together an hour, they're gonna title it, and it's gonna be long form, it's not gonna be like necessarily punchline efficient.
Marc:But Tommy Tiernan's directly,
Guest:Tommy Ternan, yeah, he inherited that kind of style.
Guest:I saw Tommy Ternan, Irish comedian, 20 years ago, and I was already getting some traction on TV in the UK, doing my thing, and I saw Tommy Ternan was blown away by the purest simplicity of what he did.
Marc:And then I saw you did something with that guy, what's his name, Johnny Vegas, is that?
Guest:Yeah, I produced, my company produced a TV series he did
Guest:Because I remember him when he was a stand-up.
Marc:But he's a new generation.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:He came way after me.
Guest:I was like, I mean, I was... There was kind of a... Before the Pythons, there was like...
Guest:Well, there was the Goons, then there would be on the Fringe.
Guest:It was like Peter Sellers, you know.
Guest:Then there was Dudley Moore and Peter Cook would be on the Fringe.
Guest:And after that, there was the Rowan Atkinson and those guys.
Guest:He's an interesting talent, isn't he?
Guest:Yeah, very quiet, quite sort of enigmatic.
Marc:Yeah, almost old school, like clowning in a way, almost.
Marc:But did you study theater and shit?
Guest:I just went to theater and did acting, the whole thing, the Stanislavski thing.
Guest:You did?
Guest:It brought the pants off me.
Guest:I was thinking, why am I doing yoga?
Marc:What am I doing?
Guest:None of it sunk in because you have become a better actor, I think.
Guest:Well, what I did was I was doing stuff outside.
Guest:I was moonlighting doing yoga.
Guest:doing voiceover ads.
Guest:I got more traction from doing ads for local radio stations than I ever did doing any kind of Shakespeare or Chekhov in drama school.
Guest:But you did do that stuff.
Guest:I did that stuff, yeah.
Guest:And then I started getting... Were you good at it?
Guest:not really no I mean no I was I was because the way you wanted to get the lab I was I just wanted to I wanted the thing is I knew you were supposed to be trying to I mean I I was quite lowbrow I just wanted everything right now and I didn't want to have to tread the boards for no money yeah so and I got some traction I got onto a TV show I was doing comedy I was 22 years old and I was on this TV talent show in London but it was pretty cheesy and I knew it was cheesy but I thought hell it's a gig
Guest:And I got my foot in the door.
Guest:Maybe I can get my foot in the door.
Guest:Then I can get smart.
Guest:What did you do?
Guest:I did impersonations.
Guest:I did impersonations of all the people you'd know.
Guest:So I do Michael Caine.
Guest:I can do Michael Caine.
Guest:I know how to do those voices.
Guest:I know how to speak.
Guest:It's got that sort of crusty voice.
Guest:I knew how to do people like him.
Guest:Sean Connery too, right?
Guest:I like to do Sean.
Guest:A lot of people claim to be.
Guest:A lot of people claim to do Sean Connery because you show up at a party and everyone goes, I'm Sean Connery, and they do that, but they don't get the depth.
Guest:And that's part of the secret is getting the depth.
Guest:And if you can't get the depth, there's no point doing it at all.
Guest:So you do that.
Guest:And then I learned to do Roger Mort, this sort of accent like this, and I'm like...
Guest:Combine people like that.
Guest:And I do that with people like, I do Sylvester Stallone doing Shakespeare in Silicon Valley.
Guest:Oh, yeah, okay.
Guest:To be or not to be, that is a question.
Guest:Whether there's nobler in the mind of the slings and arrows, the right righteous...
Guest:fortune or to take a side wind a helicopter with I do stuff like that and I just I was I was 22 23 I just throw all this this stuff you had a framework like that classic sort of impressionist framework where you take the guy and you put him in a situation yeah you'd switch it up so I'd have like Arnold Schwarzenegger as a social worker you know and yeah I do Martin Sheen I do weird Martin Sheen that's tricky
Guest:He has a... I normally do.
Guest:I used to shove some food to the top of my mouth.
Guest:I got broken biscuits.
Guest:But he speaks like that about the president of the United States.
Guest:And when he gets angry, he gets real hoarse.
Guest:His voice gets kind of squeaky like that.
Guest:It's show like that.
Guest:Martin Sheen.
Guest:That's great.
Marc:You could just drop into that shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The thing is, I could just do that stuff.
Guest:And tell you what, what was good about it was... Because that's like esoteric.
Marc:A Martin Sheen impression is... Damn.
Marc:It's like... It's unique.
Guest:I know.
Guest:You just kind of go, hey, I wonder if I can do that guy.
Guest:I wonder if I can do him...
Guest:But what's good about it is that if you're trying to get on in this business, you're starting out in the business.
Guest:You're trying to grab hold of someone's coat saying, look at me.
Guest:Give me a break.
Guest:When you do a funny voice like that, you might not show that you've got some sort of profound intellect.
Guest:But very quickly, people can go, that's pretty impressive.
Guest:In about 30 seconds, you can impress someone.
Guest:And they might not think, but they go, OK, well, he can do that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:That's something.
Guest:We can work with it.
Guest:We can work with it.
Guest:So then you've got their attention.
Guest:Then you can say, hey, do you want to see my other stuff?
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:That's not quite so funny.
Guest:The rest of the show?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:That was the first 10 minutes, and then I'm going to talk about this.
Marc:So how did you... You started doing stage work primarily?
Guest:I started doing stuff like that, doing clubs and nightclubs.
Guest:In Manchester, before this, what they call the alternative comedy circuit, when comedy that had already been established, good stagecraft comedy, stand-up comedy, had been well-established in the US, and it was kind of reborn in the UK in the 1980s.
Guest:But in Manchester, when I was, there was no room for... It was just kind of...
Guest:Working class?
Guest:Working class stuff.
Guest:It was kind of gag-based and just lazy and crummy.
Guest:I had to support indie bands to do my comedy.
Guest:I had to show up at a club with some band on stage.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they'd say, okay, before the band, this guy wants to do some funny voices.
Marc:That's tough, man.
Marc:Boo!
Guest:Get off.
Guest:And I'd go on.
Guest:I'd just ram a few down their throat.
Guest:And normally, within 30 seconds, some people go, wait a second.
Guest:He's good.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, right.
Guest:And then I'd have him, and I'd do like 15 minutes of weird stuff.
Guest:That's how you started.
Guest:Yeah, and that's how I started.
Guest:So it's a baptism of fire.
Guest:So there was no kind of PC kind of.
Guest:And I'd go down to London, and then suddenly there were these kind of vegan venues where people would go on and be given a very easy time by the audience because they weren't aggressive.
Guest:Surprise, surprise.
Marc:Well, that's what you get.
Marc:I started in New England doing pubs and shit like that, and you get this edge to you where you're like... There was one venue in London called the Tunnel Club, and that was a baptism.
Guest:If you could survive that, you had respect, and you'd go on stage, and they would throw glasses at you.
Guest:I think they'd give them plastic ones eventually.
Guest:And I got a chair thrown at me.
Guest:I mean, within 30 seconds...
Guest:I got a chair thrown at me.
Guest:And I started doing like really stupid like kids TV show voices.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But then screaming, but doing of them.
Guest:I just did kids cartoon characters saying obscene things.
Guest:Oh, and that got them?
Guest:Sexual things.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:That was pretty...
Guest:how can I put it, accessible to even dumb people.
Guest:And they would go, wait, this is funny.
Guest:And then I managed to segue into stuff that was a little smarter.
Guest:And I did like 20 minutes and I came on stage and they were chanting more and more.
Guest:They said, do you want to go back and do an encore?
Marc:I said, no, fuck them.
Guest:I beat them.
Marc:I'm done.
Marc:I'm never coming back.
Marc:Why risk it?
Marc:I'm out of here.
Marc:Goodbye.
Marc:Don't ever take that second chance.
Marc:No, no, no.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Well, that's how you got the edge.
Guest:And I ended up writing comedy.
Guest:Who was around when you were... Did you do the club circuit there?
Guest:You did the comedy store and stuff?
Guest:I did the comedy store and all that for a while.
Guest:There was a lot of people like Eddie Izzard.
Guest:Oh, yeah, sure.
Guest:Eddie was... Before the dress.
Guest:Yeah, before the dress.
Guest:And I remember Eddie starting out.
Guest:I mean, I remember thinking, God, he's terrible.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I remember thinking, I honestly, I was thinking, I was thinking at one point going up to saying, you're a really nice guy, but you really should quit comedy because it's really not your thing.
Guest:And he is a testament to...
Guest:tenacious, hard work.
Marc:Oh, people can get funny.
Marc:As a stand-up, you start with guys, you're like, this is never going to turn for this guy.
Marc:But some dudes, I think you're, because of the impressions, some guys are going to go after the comedy.
Marc:They're going to go after the funny no matter what.
Marc:But then there are those dudes that are just, they can't change their speed.
Marc:No, no.
Marc:And you just look at them when they're starting out going like, oh, this is going to be a slog.
Marc:You're not going to make it.
Marc:But then all of a sudden, it clicks.
Marc:This innate faith of this inability to do it differently, eventually, if they're persistent, it sticks.
Guest:Yeah, well, it's like marching to a different drum.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:You look at the crowd, you're thinking, how long can I not do what everyone else is doing?
Guest:And then eventually you throw a towel and think, I'm going to have to join the crowd and do what they do because it kind of works.
Right.
Guest:Some people don't have that.
Guest:They can't switch.
Guest:When I was doing comedy, I was thinking, well, I was doing this impersonations and stuff, and I was like, oh, this is so boring.
Guest:Other people like what I did, but I didn't like what I did.
Guest:So I figured out, oh, I'll just do some.
Guest:I know a bit of acting, so I'll do stand-up comedy characters rather than just doing stand-up.
Guest:I'll do a character in front of the microphone, and I started doing that, and I got some traction with that.
Marc:A character of your own creation.
Guest:I did a bunch of different characters.
Guest:I did a woman and her brother.
Guest:So it's like a one-man show thing?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You do it at Edinburgh?
Guest:I did it at Edinburgh.
Guest:I won the Fringe Award at Edinburgh when I did it 26 years ago.
Guest:I'd already done these cheesy TV shows, but when I won that, that gave me some credibility.
Guest:It was like, oh, he's not just some cheesy flash-in-the-pan guy.
Guest:He can do stuff that's smart and funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And also not an impression.
Guest:I didn't do any impressions in that show deliberately to see if I could go, hey.
Guest:And the weird thing was because I've done TV, people were like, oh, he's the other funny voice guy.
Guest:I was like, no, I can do other stuff.
Guest:Like, yeah, yeah, everyone can do other stuff, whatever.
Guest:So I did this show in Edinburgh where I did all these characters.
Marc:And it was good.
Marc:Is that where Alan Partridge came from, that show?
Guest:Just before that, I started doing him on radio with a guy called Patrick Marber, who became a screenplay writer.
Guest:And he wrote a movie called Closer and Notes on a Scandal.
Guest:And he's now a successful screenwriter, but he was, at the time, trying comedy, which he wasn't great at.
Guest:So you did a sort of team thing?
Guest:Team thing, and I joined him and a guy called Armando Iannucci who'd done some movies like The Death of Stalin.
Marc:Oh, I just saw The Death of Stalin.
Marc:He did that other one, In the Loop?
Marc:In the Loop, yeah.
Guest:Didn't he have something to do with Veep too?
Guest:Yeah, he wrote, created Veep.
Guest:So Armando was the guy I met.
Guest:and started doing radio comedy with, and that's where Alan Partridge came from working with him.
Guest:From radio.
Guest:Radio's great, isn't it?
Guest:Well, Radio 4, what you have like public, the BBC radio.
Guest:The good thing about BBC was, and one of the great things about the BBC is because it was publicly funded through a levy,
Guest:No one has it.
Guest:This is so weird about it.
Guest:It sounds almost like communist.
Guest:If you own a TV, you have to pay the license fee.
Guest:And you have no choice.
Guest:Back in the day, someone who worked at the BBC would go, I like that guy.
Guest:I'm going to give him a TV series.
Guest:And you're on.
Guest:There's no market research.
Guest:There's no audience testing or seeing how this is measured.
Guest:It would just be one guy in the seat of his pants go, I like that guy.
Guest:That's what happened with Python.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And sometimes people make mistakes, but really odd, misshapen, genius stuff.
Guest:Finds its way through.
Guest:Finds its way through because in a way that wouldn't if you just relied on market research.
Marc:Or the development process or sort of like a room full of executives going, I don't know.
Guest:Well, yeah, there's the old thing that a camel is a horse designed by a committee.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You're right, right, right.
Marc:But just because it was state run, you didn't have to deal with that process.
Guest:No, no, they just go, okay, give this guy, you know, this guy seems to know what he's doing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they kind of didn't really interfere much.
Marc:This guy seems to know what he's doing.
Marc:Give it a try.
Guest:If it doesn't work, it doesn't work.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And it's not my money.
Guest:It's like the government's money.
Guest:Yeah, fuck it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that meant you could do stuff that was just different.
Marc:Is that why some things only like, because I've noticed it and I respected a great deal, but I don't think it's necessarily intentional that some of the greatest British sitcoms are only like three seasons or two seasons or four seasons.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, 40 Towers is like, there was two seasons of that.
Guest:I mean.
Guest:The Office too was only, what was that?
Guest:Three.
Guest:It was three seasons and a couple of specials.
Guest:that's right that's right so the radio plays so that was the the first time you started writing scripted bits yeah and we didn't have team writers like you do in the states so people get burnt out more quickly and there's like things are written by like two people maybe mostly written by two people and they they go i'm done i'm done i just did like whereas 90 things yeah so i
Guest:They've done everything.
Guest:Whereas here, it's more of a... Americans have always been good at getting an idea and going, how can we make this generate as much capital as possible for us?
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Whereas the Brits have never been great at that.
Guest:They have a good idea.
Guest:In fact, a lot of good ideas we have, and then the Americans go, okay, now we can mass produce this.
Guest:No, we'll take it.
Guest:We'll buy it from them.
Guest:And we'll make it so everyone can have it.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Who do they pay for those things?
Marc:I mean, how does that work?
Marc:Have you sold a TV show?
Guest:Well, we try to.
Guest:I have a production company.
Guest:We make some shows over that.
Guest:We have a show that was called Camping that Lena Dunham was doing an American version of.
Guest:That was yours?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So that was sold the regular way.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And when you're saying that when you do the BBC thing, you're going to get experience writing, acting, producing.
Guest:We would go along and record the show for the BBC.
Guest:We'd go have lunch.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we'd be having lunch and we'd go, we have an idea at lunch.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then that afternoon we'd go and record it and it would be broadcast at the end of the week.
Guest:I mean, there was a fast turnaround of stuff.
Guest:But I was sort of saying, I want to write, and I want to do more serious things as well.
Guest:And so how many versions of the Alan Partridge show did you do?
Guest:We did like one, two, three TV series in the UK.
Guest:We did one talk show, and then we did two sitcoms.
Guest:Then we went and did some stuff on radio and stuff for Sky.
Guest:That's Murdoch's thing?
Guest:It is, yeah.
Guest:And we did two series for that.
Guest:Now we're back on the BBC.
Guest:Really?
Guest:We just finished a TV series.
Guest:It starts next February.
Marc:Another Alan Partridge series.
Guest:Another Alan Partridge series, but this one is like a magazine type show.
Guest:So it's like a sort of a morning thing with a female and male co-presenter.
Guest:And you've aged him?
Guest:He's a little... Well, he's as old as he would be.
Guest:He's always been about 10 years older than me, which has worked out pretty well.
Guest:But as I'm getting older, I'm catching up with him and slowing his age down.
Guest:So I think he's about seven years older than me now.
Guest:But...
Guest:but yeah we've got like a new it's a great i'm really excited about the show it's uh it's uh you know it's thing where alan tackles uh serious topics like the whole me too thing there's a whole episode about that because we were saying it's that that's such a difficult thing to talk about for anyone to say anything about but if you're doing a character right it's weirdly gives you this license to yeah you can get things wrong in a big way
Guest:And it's fine because it's him doing it.
Guest:And also, you're not sanctioning or agreeing with what he's saying.
Guest:You're saying, this guy gets things wrong.
Guest:So you have license to do it.
Guest:And this is the crucial thing.
Guest:Because you've got a comic character, he can say stuff that you go, that is...
Guest:So off message.
Guest:But sometimes he can say stuff that's true that I can't say.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:So the fool can point something out.
Guest:The fool can point something out that everyone secretly knows to be true.
Marc:It's a good point because when you're telling me this, my first reaction is that there's no dialogue around that stuff.
Marc:Because men in general, I'm not going to...
Marc:Of course.
Marc:So when you can just do a character that is already an asshole and insensitive.
Guest:You can talk about it and you can kind of have your cake and eat it because you can say, and what we do is we have him trying to jump on the bandwagon and say, you know, hey, you know, I mean, he says, I'm, you know, I want to apologize.
Guest:I've made mistakes.
Guest:I've stood on the side of the sidewalk and tried to, and slow hand clapped while I watch a woman try to parallel park, you know, and I feel bad about that.
Guest:And now, if I saw a woman doing it now, I would shout instructions.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Marc:I'm afraid to laugh on the mic.
Marc:That's how terrified we are.
Guest:But the point is, it's him, and we have feminists on the show,
Guest:putting that point of view, and we have actors playing both sides.
Marc:So in an exaggerated way, you're actually servicing the side of the dialogue that is not enabled.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:And doing it in a kind of a... It's weird because it's a safe environment.
Guest:You're not saying that he's right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You're not saying he's wrong.
Guest:Or you endorse it.
Guest:And sometimes it enables you to sometimes...
Guest:sprinkle a little humanity on arguments to become very attritious.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's what it does.
Guest:And even now, you see, I'm choosing my words very goddamn carefully.
Guest:But I am.
Guest:Because you kind of have to.
Marc:There's nothing unreasonable about the intent of what's happening, right?
Marc:No.
Guest:And do you know what?
Guest:I'll say this about the – when you do – when you're writing comedy, I feel like I'm very ethical when I write comedy.
Guest:What I mean is I don't mean that I'm sanctimonious about it.
Guest:But what you do when you write comedy is you feel, okay –
Guest:I don't like, I don't like to use comedy to attack people who don't have any power.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Some people, some people do that and I don't like it.
Guest:It's like, punch up, don't punch down.
Guest:Yeah, punch up, of course.
Guest:And a lot of people don't get that but to me it's like, you have to do that.
Guest:There's kind of ethical responsibility and,
Guest:Are you laughing at a prejudice, or is the prejudice why you're laughing?
Guest:Now, I don't sit there mocking myself, but intuitively, that's what I want to do.
Marc:And also, you also have the parameters of the character.
Marc:Because when you start doing character work, and you're making these characters up,
Marc:You're infusing them with the humanity.
Marc:So once you understand, certainly Alan Partridge, you know, bottom, you understand the depth of that guy.
Marc:So you can also sort of temper it with that.
Marc:Like, is this gratuitous?
Marc:Is this something he wouldn't say?
Marc:Is it within the realms of the humanity of the character?
Marc:Because that's what's going to ground it in the humanity.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You can't be amongst, you can't,
Guest:If you create someone who's just obnoxious, and he's sometimes ignorant and prejudiced, but the one thing is he tries to do the right thing.
Guest:Early on, we made him a little too unreconstructed and a little too predictably conservative that looked like shooting fish in a battle.
Guest:A caricature.
Guest:A caricature, whereas now we do him as someone who's like...
Guest:who realizes that he's got to get on message, as it were, and someone is struggling to do the thing he's supposed to.
Guest:Not unlike a lot of men his age.
Guest:Yeah, and sometimes, I mean, I remember my father, my late father, trying to be... It's like my mom saying, the older generation getting to grips with being enlightened about...
Guest:Gay relationships.
Guest:Yeah, gay people.
Guest:And just getting to the stage where my mom can say, and does she have a friend?
Marc:But that's what, like, before Trump came in, you know, when I would talk about the nature of, because tolerance is what it is.
Marc:In order for democracy to work or you to have a social fabric that's at all progressive, people have to engage tolerance.
Marc:And that means, like, it starts off with guys going like,
Marc:oh, fuck the gays, fuck this shit.
Marc:But as it becomes culturally infused and fought for, they're like, well, it's not for me, but it's fine.
Guest:It's moving, moving, moving.
Guest:And for some people, people are open to that.
Guest:And I kind of like, it's all to do with the intention.
Guest:I remember my, it's that, what's your intention?
Guest:Is your intention to be mean-spirited or is your intention to try and do the right thing?
Guest:And that's really the measure of what,
Guest:You know, is it sincere or is it, what's the motivation behind something?
Marc:And also just that conversation or weighing that stuff out, it gives the characters depth, which is what, like, when I watched Stan and Ollie, that, you know, having seen you do not a lot of stuff.
Marc:I didn't grow up watching you do impressions or without Alan Partridge, but just seeing that movie and having experienced, you know, Philomena, The Trip, you know, Tropic Thunder, 24-hour party, people like seeing a lot of films that you're in.
Marc:was that I grew up, my grandfather, I'm your age, so in New Jersey, the Laurel and Hardy stuff was on.
Marc:So it's part of my childhood, knowing those guys.
Marc:But these are two guys that not a lot of people know anymore.
Marc:But if you do know them, they're just these broad clown characters.
Marc:And the fact that you were able, both of you,
Marc:to give them such humanity and depth at that stage in their career and behind the scenes was kind of mind-blowing to me.
Marc:Because knowing now how adept you are at impressions, you still had to fill this guy out on the level of having heart and also exploring that relationship.
Guest:Yeah, well, I mean, taking this job on, first of all, you're right about anyone under 40, like, who the hell are those guys?
Guest:And then you show them a photograph, and they go, oh, the fat guy and the thin guy that wear those bowler hats.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:They kind of love the image, but... It doesn't matter, by the way, to see the film.
Guest:No, it doesn't.
Guest:You don't need to know who they are.
Guest:It's really, I mean...
Guest:I wanted to do this because, A, growing up, they were very important to me.
Guest:But really, beyond that, what they did... To me, it's a bunch of things.
Guest:But I was trying to sort of sum it up.
Guest:I think it's a love letter to comedy.
Guest:I think that's true.
Guest:I could see that.
Guest:That a way of celebrating...
Guest:those because you know you i've i've had spent a few years in comedy and and uh as well as writing moving into sort of dramatic stuff and it's kind of there's a sweet spot where comedy to me as an end in itself is is a great thing that you can do but it's it's what it's it's it's uh when i did filomena i thought comedy is more useful as a a way to sugar the pill yeah of difficult subject matter yeah you know if you make people laugh
Guest:They're not scared.
Guest:You don't feel like they're going into a lecture.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Hey, you can laugh at this stuff.
Guest:You can laugh at bad stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you can learn about it.
Guest:And hey, learning can be fun.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:But with Stan and Ollie, it was a way of saying, you know, we see, I was thinking about going back and doing the research on the movie that Jeff wrote.
Guest:Jeff wrote Philomena with me.
Guest:He wrote Stan and Ollie by himself.
Guest:What compelled him?
Guest:He would just... I don't know, actually.
Guest:I do know that he thought... He knew that they'd done tours of Europe in their 50s and wondered why the hell were they touring 20 years after their heyday doing live gigs in Europe and then started to do some digging.
Guest:They were broke.
Guest:Why were they broke?
Guest:Because Hal Roach stiffed them on the deals.
Guest:So he started to learn more about them and then from that came this idea of looking at the relationship between two men who...
Guest:known each other their whole lives.
Guest:People have come and gone in their professional life.
Guest:Wives have come and gone.
Guest:But at the end of the day, all they have is each other.
Guest:And it's about learning.
Guest:It becomes a metaphor for living with each other, of understanding the person who's in the same space as you.
Marc:And also, like, in terms of the love letter to comedy, what was sort of amazing about it, no matter how begrudgingly
Marc:they were doing these tours or how they were getting screwed, and even with their popularity dissipating, if at all, being a nostalgia act, is that once they took the stage and did those bits, and they worked every fucking time, no matter how many people were there,
Marc:You know, as a comic, you see that those questions are answered.
Marc:It's like you see guys who are older than you and I who have been doing the same act for 20 years, but they get out there and they do it and they're in it.
Marc:And then, you know, whatever happens off stage is what happens off stage.
Marc:But that professionalism.
Guest:exactly the thing is we we all know about the other tears of the clown and the kind of you know that uh you know what what the darkness behind the humor but nobody looks at it and looks at the humanity of something which i think is the old cliche about laughter being the best medicine you know it's it's it's never been more apparent to me how important this is now i remember i did a lot of live stuff on stage a couple of tours where i do big big audiences before i got into doing the movie stuff yeah
Guest:and it used to, I used to look into the audience, and this is something I think helped me identify with Stan Laurel, who wrote the comedy, was that when you, there's something incredibly powerful that we underestimate, because we look at comedy, you think it makes you laugh, it must be lowbrow, it makes this visceral reaction.
Guest:It's one of the few things, apart from some stuff that touches you emotionally can make you cry, but that can be a silent thing, unless you're bawling your eyes out, but
Guest:But when you find something funny, we all make this noise.
Guest:It's unambiguous.
Guest:There's no gray area.
Guest:If you didn't make that noise, you didn't find it funny.
Guest:If you didn't laugh, it's not funny.
Guest:There's no... It's unambiguous.
Guest:Now, if you have a big crowd of people and they all laugh at the same time,
Guest:There's a lack of bullshit in that.
Guest:They're laughing.
Guest:That means they found it funny.
Guest:That's indisputable.
Guest:Now, you've got a group of people in that crowd, and by 2,000 people in a venue, it might be millions of people watching something on the screen.
Guest:They can be...
Guest:have the most diverse political views, the most diverse ethnicity, religion, but if they all laugh in that one moment, they're all unified in that moment, however fleeting it is, when they all laugh at the same time, when you think about it that way, in that regard, it's mind-blowing that you can make all these people who might otherwise be at each other's throats
Guest:be in complete union in a moment and that's what that's what the greatest comedy does and yeah it was kind of like um that the respect for that yeah uh and and the fact that stan that laurel and hardy when you look at some of the movies some of the best stuff
Guest:It is timeless and quite nuanced because it works in a childlike way, you know, when a brick falls on Oliver Hardy's head and he takes his bowler hat off and scratches, rubs his sore head and then another one lands on his head and then another one.
Guest:I mean, it's kind of like, it never goes in or out of fashion, that stuff.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And, um, but, but you see the, the, the expressions, there's a humanity to it and a kind of love of humanity.
Guest:That comedy they do is never vicious, mean or, or, or, or, or cynical.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Um, and I, when I was looking back at the movies, it occurs, I thought, shit, this, they were making this stuff while fascism was on the rise in Europe.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the great depression was sweeping this country.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And yet they were doing this stuff that just made people laugh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I thought, well, that's pretty powerful, understanding the context.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so in making this movie, we just wanted to...
Guest:I think in some ways tell a story about something that's important.
Guest:And people who have the ability to make people laugh and unify people like that, that's important and it's worth saluting.
Marc:And also, be it a love story to comedy, it's also a love story about a relationship between two guys who despite whatever their emotional liabilities were or whatever they were unable to communicate,
Marc:had this depth of feeling for each other.
Marc:And that was sort of a fascinating thing.
Guest:Well, you do see it when you see some of those political... I saw a documentary on John McCain the other day and about... Him and Lindsey Graham.
Guest:Yeah, and it showed his friendship with Joe Biden.
Guest:And when you see people who don't agree with each other but have love and respect for each other, that's where the hope of humanity is in people who see beyond their...
Guest:Ideology.
Guest:Ideology and the differences and find a way through.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:However imperfect that way through is, there's never going to be a gold at the end of the rainbow.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But there's a kind of a way through by people accommodating those.
Guest:I mean, you can do that to an extent.
Guest:I mean, if someone says, I want to kill or wipe out a whole race of people,
Guest:There's no compromise on that.
Guest:That's when the chips are down.
Guest:You have to just stand up against that stuff.
Guest:But beyond that, there are people who disagree fundamentally but are equally noble.
Marc:And also maybe there's that sort of thing with people where you may not know why, you may not understand it, but emotionally they're connected.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Whether it's noble or not, they get along on a level that's not necessarily explainable.
Guest:No.
Guest:And do you know what?
Guest:However much they... Because the normal narrative of Laurel and Hardy is that they're trying to get some scam.
Guest:They're trying to struggle.
Guest:They're kind of blue-collar workers.
Guest:They're kind of a little poor in their ways.
Guest:But they're trying to get on it.
Guest:And Stan Laurel screws it up for Oliver Hardy.
Guest:And however mad Oliver Hardy gets, at the end of it, he still goes, come on!
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, it's like he can't bear his buddy, but he never abandons his buddy.
Marc:Yeah, there's a surrender to it.
Marc:Another thing the movie shows, if you don't remember it, is that they, despite the fact that they were Hal Roach players, they may not have known each other before, and that the outfit, you know, the bowler hats were something that was established by Chaplin or whatever, was that they are totally unique in their presentation and in their act.
Marc:There's nobody like them.
Guest:No, and they were put together.
Guest:They were like the monkeys of the pop world.
Marc:It's like we were talking about before, your parents' records, that there was a lot going on culturally that was popular in comedy, and Hal Roach wanted to capitalize on that.
Guest:The monkeys had some great songs.
Guest:A couple.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So they discovered these characters.
Guest:They created these characters.
Guest:Interestingly, Chaplin and Stan Laurel came over from England on the boat together.
Guest:Stan Lauer was Charlie Chaplin's understudy.
Guest:In fact, you can see photographs of Stan Lauer wearing the Charlie Chaplin clothes.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:With the mustache and the stick, the walking stick.
Marc:United Artists or before?
Guest:Before that, when they were doing the stuff live.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:But Stan Lauer and Oliver Hardy did that stuff together.
Guest:Stan Lauer did all the work behind the scenes.
Guest:I talked to Dick Van Dyke.
Guest:Dick Van Dyke, okay.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Go ahead.
Marc:This is okay.
Marc:You tell me.
Marc:No, no.
Marc:He just like he tells a story about when he got to Hollywood and how much he loves Stan Laurel.
Marc:And then he just looked him up in the phone.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:And he called him.
Marc:I know.
Guest:He had a relationship with him.
Guest:I know.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Well, I was going to go on and say is that the research that I did on Stan Laurel.
Guest:was because he was in the phone book, Dick Van Dyke famously called him up, but a bunch of other people just phoned up Stan Laurel and recorded the conversations down the phone.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, on tape recorders.
Guest:And so there was a bunch of recordings of Stan Laurel down the phone that I listened to of Stan Laurel just talking about Laurel.
Guest:He would talk to anyone who rang up.
Guest:He would give them the time.
Guest:I think he said to Dick Van Dyke, I think he said, does your mother know you're calling?
Guest:yeah it's a trunk call and you know it's gonna be cost a lot of money right um yeah and so that was how so so this was in the late 50s early 60s stan died in 65 yeah and um but those those those phone calls a real uh eye-opener uh to not only the rhythms of his speech but how he used to think yeah he was like uh cantankerous about certain things like ah he was a you know jackass and you hear him being kind of quite rude about some people
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which is nice to hear somehow.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because he's the hapless kind of idiot.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But he's the powerhouse of generating stuff.
Guest:And he said when, what was interesting, he said when talkies came in.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Before that, Laurel and Hardy made the transition very well.
Guest:He said when talkies came in, he said people were talking nine to the dozen.
Guest:They just wouldn't shut up on movies because they could talk suddenly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He said, but we, me and Ollie, we just kept it to a minimum and we stuck to what we knew worked.
Guest:So they kept the physical stuff.
Guest:They put a few words in here and there.
Guest:They didn't go crazy just because they could speak, which a lot of movies at that time did.
Guest:People went yadda, yadda, yadda, yadda, all the way through.
Guest:They didn't do that.
Guest:So that was interesting.
Guest:That's a smart way to adapt.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Don't throw the baby out with the bath water.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So for you, since you have this natural ability to sort of become, to take on an impression, so these phone calls and the research you did were able to inform this impression into a full character.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Look, when people say, what's it like when you play a real character?
Guest:A blank page is more difficult.
Guest:At least you've got someone who lived a life and they've done a bunch of... They've done the research for you.
Guest:Stan Laurel has left behind a footprint in the movies he did, in some of these conversations, in a few books, his letters.
Guest:There's stuff there.
Marc:Yeah, and also...
Marc:thing was is that like you know biopics can go either way depending on how familiar people are with with who it's about like if that person's still alive or it's relatively contemporary you're up against this sort of like well he doesn't quite look like him but he kind of got him but these guys are far enough in the past and the makeup and and the attention to detail was so what it was but i feel as a biopic the depth of it is much different than anything i've ever seen before
Guest:Because it doesn't really... It's got to work.
Guest:It has to work if you don't know who they are.
Guest:You just need to look at it and say, this is about a relationship between two guys who are funny and show them being funny.
Guest:And if you show them being funny on stage and then you see, okay, this is what goes behind people who do that funny stuff.
Guest:And you just see the...
Guest:like any kind of relationship, you see the tensions, you see the arguments, the kind of the baggage that people carry around in relationships and they let it fester and then somebody bursts up and then you either resolve it or you don't.
Marc:But the sort of onstage personas and the backstage, offstage realities was done so well.
Marc:So how did you and John work it out?
Guest:Well, first of all,
Guest:You talked about me doing impersonations.
Guest:The way I did it, John was a little different from me, but the way I did it was I thought, well, I know how he talks.
Guest:He sort of speaks like this.
Guest:He has a kind of strange way of talking.
Guest:It's like mid-Atlantic.
Guest:It's kind of a little bit British, but it's also slightly American.
Guest:You can't quite place it.
Guest:And he sort of throws his arms up and has these strange expressions where he can't quite show what.
Guest:You see him do about four or five expressions in the space of 30 seconds.
Guest:Each one with a completely different thought process.
Guest:And you see it in his face.
Guest:So you have... It's almost like because you have this stuff on screen and then there's some conversations, it's like, well, I know the outside sort of superficialities of his character and the physicality.
Guest:And you can use that as a way of going back into the character a little.
Guest:You go, okay, well, I've got a handle on him and now I can develop it by doing some research.
Guest:It's like...
Guest:working backwards.
Guest:Like you go, well, I've got the answer.
Guest:I just got to figure out what the question is.
Guest:Okay, yeah.
Guest:And that was kind of how I went about bringing Stan to life.
Guest:Now we had, obviously, we spent four weeks in rehearsal.
Guest:John C. Reilly playing Oliver Hardy and I sat in a rehearsal room for four weeks and we learned these dance routines.
Guest:We learned some of the physical stuff.
Guest:We had a clown.
Guest:We had this clown advisor.
Guest:And he loves clowns.
Guest:uh john he was a clown he was a clown for a while early on and we had this guy called toby sedgwick who taught us how to walk taught us how to move we had to learn dance routines we had to learn dance routines that they did yeah and then learn their mistakes and put the mistakes in as well oh right it's like a band uh we had to learn each move meticulously and then make it messy yeah like a like a good band that can play tight you had to make it like they would do it
Guest:yeah and then play it be loose yeah make it give it that jazz element yeah that where things are not quite you know detune your guitar slightly that kind of thing was it fun it was it was great fun it was hard work but it was fun and that was the but in doing it together john and i got to know each other
Guest:We became friends the same way that we were saying, hey, this is just like Stan and Ollie were put together.
Guest:We've been put together.
Guest:Let's find out who we are.
Guest:Let's learn to trust each other.
Guest:And we got on great.
Guest:It was all designed to make the movie work.
Guest:But the byproduct of that was that we became, of course, inevitably, we became very good friends because we were living in each other's pockets and having to take care of each other on screen and guide each other a little too.
Guest:Like, look out for me and like, hey, when you did that thing, it was better the first time you did it.
Marc:oh right okay what about me you know you're constantly trusting each other saying hey give me some feedback what do you think of that that was pretty good right what do you think we can do you know it's it's great it must have been a very like because i was a a really and i'm not i'm not cynical but i'm judgmental uh you know i i was like completely blown away by both of the performances and and the movie itself i thought it was great and i didn't know what to expect
Marc:When I saw the trailer, I was like, holy shit, this is going to be insane.
Marc:And it doesn't matter if you know who they are.
Marc:It's really an interesting portal into not only a past time, but the sort of...
Guest:kind of eternal dynamic of of you know relationship and guys who i just feel it's i i feel like it's there's so much there's especially right now where any conversation because of the world we're living in most conversations where differences of opinions are at tend to spiral and escalate into this kind of you know biblical meltdown yeah i
Guest:Time and again.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's just about two people figuring out a way through the fucking mess.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It's great.
Guest:And was it rewarding for you?
Guest:I mean, in terms of what you've done in your career as an actor?
Marc:It was.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I did this when I wrote this film, Philomena, a few years ago that you mentioned.
Guest:And that was to me, that was a kind of a...
Guest:a little epiphany for me because i was like hey you know uh comedy is isn't just an interesting thing in itself it's it's it's more interesting as a component and and as a as a as a tool yeah a weapon sure use yeah to try and tell stories to keep people's heart open people
Guest:yeah and it's it's and storytelling you know that's why I sort of fell in love with and I was thinking like especially with I keep thinking about the political and the global landscape and everything of people who are at each other's throats and the attritious nature of any kind of discussion yeah and when you put comedy into something
Guest:It just softens things.
Guest:People just are more open to something.
Guest:It's like any kind of storytelling.
Guest:If you have an intellectual discourse, you and I could have an argument, some political argument, where I present all the merits of my evidence and blah, blah, blah, and you could do the same.
Guest:You might accommodate a little bit of it, but really, if you really want to make people think
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That it's the idea of consider it was Oliver Cromwell said, you know, I beg you in the depth of Christ, consider it possible you may be wrong.
Guest:You know, just the notion of self-doubt.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's a healthy thing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I think you might not be right about something.
Guest:I'm very healthy then.
Guest:It's just a good thing.
Guest:But the only thing that really makes people think about that stuff is if you tell a story.
Guest:The Bible is full of stories.
Guest:It's not about you tell a story.
Guest:If the story touches someone, it'll make them think about something.
Guest:Oh, absolutely.
Guest:Way more powerfully than a whole spreadsheet of statistics.
Marc:And you've done also like some of the other movies.
Marc:You've been part of like...
Marc:Because really good satire, there's not a lot of it.
Marc:And I think the British are a little better at it generally.
Marc:But also, I think Tropic Thunder is one of the greatest satirical movies.
Marc:I mean, it's a really deep movie.
Guest:Yeah, well, it is.
Guest:The funny thing is,
Guest:You're right.
Guest:I think you're right.
Guest:It's about something.
Guest:The point is, it's not just funny, it's about something.
Guest:About something that's about human nature.
Marc:It says something about human nature.
Marc:And also show business.
Guest:And vanity and show business and shallowness and narcissism.
Guest:But it's a commentary on something.
Guest:Unfortunately, I think because it's comedy, it's sort of things like that get, because they don't wear their importance on their sleeve.
Guest:Comedy by its very nature doesn't wear its importance on its sleeve.
Guest:Because it makes you laugh.
Guest:So you think, well, it can't be that important.
Guest:And of course it can be.
Marc:Yeah, I think it's underrated in terms of the intelligence of the whole thing.
Marc:How'd you get involved with that?
Guest:Well, I knew Stiller from, I can't remember what.
Guest:I knew him just because he knew my stuff and I knew his stuff.
Guest:I think he came to London and met me and said, hey, I really dig your stuff.
Guest:And I said, well, I dig your stuff.
Guest:And he said, well, what do you do?
Guest:And then I did those Night at the Museum movies with him.
Guest:I think that might have been after.
Guest:I can't remember.
Marc:I think it's after.
Guest:It was after.
Guest:Anyway, but he said, come and play.
Guest:Will you play the director?
Marc:Play the British director.
Guest:Interestingly, he said, the funny thing is, I wore, for some reason, I don't know why, but I was playing the British director.
Guest:I think he wanted me to seem dislikable.
Guest:But I wore a Confederate flag.
Guest:I wore a Confederate flag on, on my, it wasn't my choice.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They put a Confederate flag on my shirt.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, uh, cause I was playing the British director.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The associate that, that, why that choice.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But anyway, when they tested the movie, Ben said, um, the only thing people didn't like about the movie was the Confederate flag.
Guest:And they, they, they, they digitally removed it from every frame.
Guest:That's crazy.
Guest:Of me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that, uh, I just had a plain blue t-shirt on.
Guest:Oh, I didn't even, I wouldn't have noticed that.
Guest:Yeah, but I think in the trailer, there may be someone online, there's a trailer where I'm still wearing it, like a... And, yeah, and do you, so do you, you do like doing that kind of stuff where you're really, like even the political comedy with... Yeah, anything which is, you know, I like, I've done a lot of comedy which is edgy, and I like doing stuff which is...
Guest:I mean, Laurel and Hardy, Stan and Ollie, as it's called, is quite a sort of a gentle thing.
Marc:So was the trip, too.
Marc:I mean, that was kind of a relationship with two older guys.
Marc:It is, actually, yeah.
Guest:It's similar.
Guest:It is similar in a lot of ways, actually, the trip about two middle-aged guys trying to figure out life.
Guest:yeah um i like that but i think i don't know what it is i think when you're younger it's like got more to prove i you want to be the comedy i did was sort of more acerbic and fun and cynical but it's like and it's like wearing it's like kind of giving the finger to the establishment and then when you if you're over 40 and you're giving people the finger it's kind of it's not a good look
Marc:Well, I love the movie.
Marc:It was great talking to you.
Marc:I'm glad you took the time to do it.
Guest:Thanks for hanging out.
Guest:Hey, Mark, I like it a lot.
Guest:I like your garage.
Guest:I don't know why you've got a hammer on the table.
Marc:A half a hammer?
Guest:A half a hammer.
Guest:Is that for me to attack you or you to attack me?
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:Yeah, whatever you feel like doing with it.
Marc:It goes badly.
Marc:Generally, neither has happened.
Marc:People just ask what the fuck has happened.
Marc:I found it somewhere, and it was on the table in the old garage, so now it's over here.
Guest:So how long are you in town for it?
Guest:uh three days and i'm gonna i'm flying in monaco to do well actually the michael winterbond i'm doing another movie with him i'm doing a movie about a rich billionaire bastard are you him i'm him yeah how's the script good it's funny uh it's uh yeah he's like a a super rich guy who has super yachts and uh big parties and uh
Guest:and employs people in sweatshops in Sri Lanka to make his clothes super cheap so you can sell him on the high street.
Marc:And does he have an existential moral crisis at the end of Act 2?
Guest:No, he's a bastard all the way through, and then he dies.
Guest:So that's refreshing.
Guest:Unpredictable.
Guest:Thanks, man.
Guest:Well, have a good trip.
Guest:Okay, dude.
Guest:Thanks.
Marc:Go see that movie, folks.
Marc:That was Steve Coogan.
Marc:He did an amazing job.
Marc:The movie's just great.
Marc:Stan and Ollie playing now in New York and California.
Marc:It opens everywhere on Friday, January 18th.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:We don't need no stinking wall.
Marc:Dig it.
Marc:I'm going to play some guitar.
Marc:Some slightly border-tinged guitar, I think.
Marc:It's got a little echo to it.
Marc:It's got a twang, a little Tex-Mexy.
Marc:Maybe not.
Marc:Maybe it's just me doing what I do at the end of the show.
guitar solo
Marc:Boomer lives!