Am I gonna get fed?
There's like a table, I'm leaning on it,
I feel like I'm alone in an airport.
What's the second question?
God, that's a great question. Uh...
Let me see that.
I'm curious if you're just making this up at this point.
I will never be seen on camera nor my voice heard.
It's one of those things where you kind of have to reiterate
the question and the answer. Hey, then you have a shot at a hit.
Do you think emotionally questionable people
are drawn to stand-up slash performing?
It was a way for me to deal
with my chronic shyness and introversion.
I'm crazy already, so don't try and make me the responsible one.
Or are they done in by the life
that opens up to them?
I don't know if all comics go through this, where you go,
"I'm never gonna be funny again.
I don't know how I was able to go this far."
But I always assert that the funniest people aren't comedians,
just like the best-looking girls aren't models or whatever.
You'll meet people that are shoe store salesmen
that'll fucking knock you over.
And then it's just my job to sit there and yell at drunks.
And that's kind of the difference between comedy and theater.
But I can do that. I'm from a large family.
It's okay if I use all that, right? Use whatever you want.
You know, here's the thing, that you can use whatever you want
because what's gonna happen?
You're gonna get people--
They're gonna not call me?
They're already not calling me, so--
so it doesn't matter what I say.
The Mexicans, the Jews, the Blacks, the Irish.
Not a lot of funny Germans.
It'd be much better if you were mediocre, 'cause if you were mediocre,
then you would actually have to get good at something else,
and you know, comedy would be just something you do by the water cooler.
But if you're truly brilliant at being funny,
then, yeah, you can guarantee
that your marriages are not gonna work and your kids will turn out fucked up.
Well, this is a deep question.
Action!
A'ight.
What's the name of this thing? "Misery Loves Comedy."
And do you think that's true? That's the last question, so wait.
Okay.
My dad was always the funny guy of the family.
My dad made me laugh a whole lot.
My dad. My dad.
My father. My father was probably
the first guy that I said, "Oh, man, he's funny."
It wasn't that his jokes were great,
but I could see the silliness
and I saw that, uh, how much fun
he was having making other people laugh.
And he always had a ton of, like, basic, like,
down the middle street jokes
and I would see him, like, kill.
- He loved-- Can I swear? - Please, yes.
He also loved, like, shit jokes and fart jokes,
so I still don't like 'em, 'cause that's my rebellion.
He told me, he said, "If you swallow gum,
your shit comes out like a yo-yo."
And I didn't find out until years later that he was lying.
He would just make up these crazy stories about my life.
He said--
there's this Pakistani dish
called biryani that's my favorite--
and he said, "Oh, it's 'cause when you were a little baby,
we dropped you in a pot of it and we forgot."
And I didn't know until I was 13 that that was a lie,
'cause it was just part of my reality.
I was like, "Oh, yeah, that's what happened to me."
And he was like, "No, I was just trying to impress your mom."
Like, he was flirting with my mom. I'm like...
As he was five-years-old, he's flirting with your mom.
Yeah, yeah.
I was like, "I think it's in the bag, I'm five.
I think you got this one."
Um, so, yeah, my dad was always very funny.
My dad and I don't really get along that well.
He's actually stepdad,
and was not supportive at all of the career.
In fact, at one point,
I played ukulele in my act
and did very well, got on television doing it, the whole thing,
but I remember the first time I played the ukulele for him,
he just looked at me and was like,
"What the hell do you think you're gonna do with that?"
But I did have, like, so many teachers, especially--
There was a teacher named Mr. Beasley,
psychology teacher, and he was just, like,
"Wayne, you really got something.
"Like, you're funny in class, you're not disruptive, you're smart.
Like, you should try this. You should definitely try this."
I was like, "Oh."
So she was always like, "Yeah, this is never gonna happen.
You're insane. I don't know what you're doing. Nobody knows what you're doing."
My father was pretty low-key,
but my father was like, "You happy? Good."
My father was a lot fucking smarter about it.
My dad was funny, but not in the way he thought he was funny,
so he would try to tell a joke,
or tell a joke that he thought was funny
and then he would laugh very loudly at the end of the joke
and everyone around the table would kind of--
You'd hear the "clink, clink, clink" of the cutlery
as the joke didn't land.
And then you'd think,
"Please, I don't want to catch anyone's eye,
'cause if I do, I'm just gonna go."
She came to the show
two hours early and stood in the lobby
and introduced herself to every person who came in.
"Hi, I'm Blanche Lewis, I'm his mother.
Hi. You're coming to see my son."
So everyone knew her
and she sat right in the middle of the theater.
So I say, "So my father, you know, he had six penises--"
I'm just saying something dumb, and she would literally,
I don't want to get out of shot, she'd stand up and go--
"Oh, Bill never had six penises. How dare you?!"
It was absolutely the oddest show,
'cause they all went, "Boo!
You're putting your dad down."
No, it was a joke before she showed up.
HBO used to do a thing in Bryant Park,
where you'd face the library
and they would have comics on stage,
live, and no censorship
during afternoons in the summer.
My mother and father happened to be in for that
and the place is packed
and it's spectacular to be able to yell the word "fuck"
and throw it out and have it hit the library
and bounce back at you is--
It's like heaven.
And the crowd was great.
I finished up and my mother goes,
"Oh, my God, they really do like you."
There's always been a judgment.
"That was funny."
Almost like a comic, like,
"I know, but you should have laughed."
"Oh, I was thinking about it,
if there was any ways to improve it."
I just did Letterman last week. He found--
"I found no room for improvement."
That's always the first thing out of--
"However, you can tell David Letterman,
"if you have a chance, I don't know if he's talkative,
"that that set is too busy.
"I mean, why are you standing in front of New York City?
"What-- what is that?
There should be a nice curtain that goes with your outfit."
Well, you let me get right on that.
By the way, he's not wrong. He's not wrong.
That's the frustrating part. He's not wrong.
If you change your mind, you can always go back to Conan, right?
I mean, that was literally, within--
that was within the 10 seconds
of-- of his first reaction was...
"When the world beats you to shit,
you can come back with your tail between your legs, can't you?"
And I said, "Yeah, but I'm not really--
that's not really kinda what I'm focused on right now, Dad."
Now, one could make the case that he was right.
I came crawling back
after being chewed up and spit out
by this goddamn town.
But I would just like you for once to go, "That was great,"
but there's always a criticism.
"Okay, so we're not allowed--
So, should I say something nice first and then I can say--"
That'd be nice. That's a start.
Let's start there, but then it comes out as Irish sarcastic.
"Well, your jeans fit great."
Acceptance is...
has al-- been a big part of-- of
dealing with who he was
and realizing very early in life
that I was far from perfect made it a little bit easier,
but not much, and there's a whole 'nother layer to it.
It's like, when you're-- when you're a junior,
you're really just a statue built to honor
that which walked before you, right?
Like, your name is his.
You're-- you're going to do what he was going to do
and there's not a discussion.
And as my grandfather said before he passed away,
"You're gonna fix what he fucked up."
And so whether that's rightful pressure or not,
that's-- that's pressure, so...
How old are you when he says that?
I was 15 years old. 15.
He told me he was proud of me--
He was sick and he was in hospice care at that point
and he said, uh, he said,
"Freddie, did you clean your room today?"
I said, "Yeah, Papa, I cleaned my room."
He said, "I'm very, very proud of you."
And you're 15, you don't realize he's saying it for everything,
but he's too much of a man to say it, right?
I go, "Yeah, yeah, no problem."
And he goes, "You know, your father really fucked things up."
"What?"
He goes, "And it's your job to fix it."
Four hours later, he was dead.
I literally was just like...
"Um, I gotta get into acting."
Literally, I saw Neil Patrick Harris that summer
getting people excited for acting in my high school
and I was like, "I gotta do this shit."
98% of kids suffer from "Hey, look at me,"
desperate for attention.
Is there a way to explain why any of us actually chooses
"Hey, look at me" as a career?
"Oh, I'm gonna devote the rest of my life
to being the center of attention."
Those early teens where you get to sort of hang out
with your father and his friends, you know, occasionally,
and just sort of getting a sense of their--
of their kind of adult humor
and just seeing little glimpses of it.
They were still moderating it for the kids,
but you could see between the cracks,
there was something a little bit more edgy there
and a little bit naughtier
and the bad language was kept to a minimum,
but, you know, you could see it was brewing
and the off-color subjects were in the air.
I remember that being very tantalizing, you know?
Kind of wanting to hang with them.
I would sit in the pub garden, 'cause I wasn't allowed in the pub,
but sitting in the pub garden with them and, you know, eating a bag of crisps
and kind of excited,
and so that excitement of when do I get to be part of that?
And it was this dynamic of the laughter, you'd hear, like--
As a kid, I'm just hearing, like...
And you'd hear this rumbling laughter
and I was completely taken by it, fascinated,
and it was some of these relatives from the past
that really got me, like, "Okay, this is something.
Something going on here."
- And it was alcohol. - Uh-huh.
That's what I realized. It was the booze.
I was sitting around the table, and from a very, very young age,
I always dominated the conversation.
It was the one place that, like, I fucking hung out in
I could hung out forever because people were laughing.
And that was, like, every Sunday or every Friday
or every time we would have, like, a big meal
where everybody was there, for some reason,
they would always be laughing at me and I would be telling stories about--
Sometimes it was like, you know,
terrible things, you know, like, I got beat up a lot when I was a kid
and, like, my sister thought it was hilarious, you know?
I remember one time and she was like, "Oh, my God,
how many times did Dominic Dipento kick your ass this week?"
And I'd be like, "It's not funny, all right?"
And I'd start to cry and then I'd turn into a joke,
and then, like, it would turn into, like, a bit or something.
I don't remember a lot-- making the family laugh.
More that I would laugh a lot at the family, you know?
I would laugh a lot at my uncle's jokes
and comedy shows
and things like that.
And it was the feeling of that
- that made me interested in comedy, I think. - Right.
It was quite a while before you consciously made the decision to try to make--
To make a joke, yes.
How much later? How old--
My first joke was--
I was a late joker.
My first joke was at 21.
Seriously?
No, no, no, no.
That was great.
I just like telling stories.
I would have my family sit around and I would be like,
"Guys, I have this story, you have to hear it."
And they'd be like... I would just make up a story
as I went along, a horrible story,
just about, like, fake--
Animals, I'd be like...
"So this rabbit
just was in the forest."
And they were just like, "We know you're making this up
as you go along and it's not good."
And-- but-- and my dad would film it and then we'd watch it
and I'd be like, "Oh, my God, this girl is gonna make it."
So it was definitely for me, personally,
'cause I really don't know about kids on purpose,
but for me personally, I--
My narcissism
and thinking that I
deserved attention
was-- was reinforced by my parents.
Every kid makes up knock-knock jokes,
but it takes kids a long time to understand it.
- They'll still try it. - Right.
They'll make up their own rules, and they're funny
because they've got the idea wrong.
You know, I actually was a very, very shy kid.
I don't think I was funny until after-- until I left home.
And so that's why my parents are still surprised.
They're like, "What is-- what is happening?
Why-- Why are you on Letterman?"
There's something about family, that connection,
and then to have that secret kind of
sense of humor together,
where the same goofy shit makes you laugh.
Like, everyone loves my dad's political stuff
and his serious sledgehammer stuff,
I love his goofy shit.
I love the little moments where he's just got a phrase
in between even two bits
and he'll just say a little something
about Uncle Fred or something or Steve or--
just a little something, and that--
that's like the humor we shared, was that little stuff.
And I do have a memory of,
I guess it was, like, junior high,
I think we were at Gelson's, first when Gelson's first came out,
and we decided to do--
It just came up.
A whole produce section in gibberish.
We had an argument over the tomatoes in gibberish.
We ended up singing some sort of gibberish folk song together
and just improvised and played and for me,
that's, like, one of my most joyful moments with him.
It's the fun part about being a dad,
because there's nothing funnier
than a little kid really hitting it right.
And so my son, I remember is he would try to do a joke in the room,
when he was like five, he'd go--
he'd try to do a joke, he'd look at me at go, "It didn't land, did it?"
And I'm like, "No, it didn't land.
It didn't land."
Take your desk, take your chair, sit in the hallway.
And I'd sit in the hallway
of an elementary school
and people, you know, teachers would walk by
and they'd go, "Why are you out here?"
And I'd go, "'Cause I killed in there."
If you were making a movie about somebody
who became a stand-up comedian
and you put this into it,
people would go, "It's a little on the nose."
The only way I could get attention as the fifth of six
was to do my bits
and, literally, my dad would have his friends over
and I would get to get out of bed and come down--
"Do Nixon!"
And I would do it and I was eight, seven, eight years old.
I mean, there's an old picture of me, you know, wearing Groucho glasses
and, you know, holding a bottle of booze
and, you know, they used to have a little bar area in their den
and I'd go back there, I'd try to make--
What he used to tell me to do is like, the--
You know, because he sold, you know, appliances,
you know, he was always on the cutting edge of things
and you know, I think he was one of the first guys
to have his television in a wall,
so the TV in the den was in the wall
and the closet was behind it so the back of the TV was there
and I would go in the closet and I would stand behind the TV,
you know, and my grandfather would go, "You're on the television!
I see you on the television!"
He was a very funny fellow.
There was a moment when I was little in elementary school
when I realized, I'm not good at sports
and this is a daily humiliation.
They would pick sides, I'd get picked last,
after the girls, after disabled kids.
And it happened every day, twice a day,
in gym class and at lunch.
And I just remember putting rocks up my nose
and pretending I was a slot machine
and having people, like, pull my arm down
and then opening my nostrils so rocks fell out.
That was-- I don't think that made me any cooler,
but at the time, it seemed like a good strategy
to distract from the fact
that I was not a good soccer goalie.
And then I started doing impressions of people,
you know, around the same time, like, junior high.
And that's the first time I ever thought of myself
being funny that way.
Probably around when I was 15, that's when I realized,
like, this is-- I'm good at this, I can do this.
I just annoyed people endlessly from then on.
It was just way too much fun
and I couldn't understand why people would be upset.
Like, I would, you know, I was pretty relentless.
I could even just pick one person out from the crowd of kids
and I would try to crack that person and make them laugh, you know?
I knew if I could make this kid Damien laugh
that everyone would be like, "Oh, yeah, that-- he killed."
But I thought I was a nice kid.
In my heart, I looked at myself
as a nice, sweet kid.
So when a guy would frown
or, you know, even seemed sad,
I'm like, "What's wrong with you, man?
This is funny. You're a 12-year-old guy and you have breasts.
I mean, come on, why isn't-- what's not funny about that?"
And you know once you kill, you want to, like, leave the room.
You know, you have a great joke, you're like, "Oh, that was great.
I gotta get out of here now." It's, like, 'cause that was so funny.
You were aware of you need to exit after the laugh?
Get out, 'cause that's-- Yeah, 'cause if you stay too long, it's like,
"You want me to do that bit again?"
I don't remember how I found this out,
but I could make a sound that was essentially
a ventriloquism sound
that the teacher thought was coming from another place.
Like another student?
Or just another place in the room?
Another student or another-- yeah.
And I didn't-- I don't know, to this day,
I know conceptually what ventriloquism is,
but at the time, I just came upon this.
And I could make this sound--
I'll make the sound, it might be--
just warning the sound people,
um, which was, if I can still do this--
Ahem, I don't do this anymore, I should tell you, because...
- So... - What the hell?
The teacher would do that
and the teacher would throw a kid out, not me.
It wasn't really even for attention,
because I wasn't getting attention,
it was more for, I guess I was--
couldn't come to grips
with the idea that they were trying to teach something.
I would go to where they were
with an enormous tape recorder from the AV squad
and I would lie and say it was a real radio station.
And when I got there, a child, you know, had just shown up
and they would realize they got duped,
but they would talk to me anyway 'cause they were really nice.
And I would just say to Seinfeld,
"How do you write a joke?"
And I would force him to walk me through it.
Or Harold Ramis-- "How do you write a movie?"
And those interviews
changed my life because they really told me.
It was my college, I had my college in junior year of high school.
I was just so obsessed.
So I thought, "I'm gonna try to interview
every original writer from 'Saturday Night Live.'"
So I interviewed Al Franken and Tom Davis and--
You can't just call these people up.
Well, what would happen is someone would be nice,
like, Alan Zweibel.
I'd interview him and then he would take out the phone book
and say, "I'm gonna hook you up with this person."
And he would start giving me all the phone numbers
and I was obsessive.
I was always trying to get Andy Kaufman,
but I couldn't get him because at the time,
he was down South wrestling,
and I would call his management office and they would say,
"We don't even know where he is.
He's off the-- he's off the grid."
He was off the grid before there was a grid.
And then I was watching Richard Pryor with my parents on HBO,
it was "Live in Concert" from Long Beach.
And that was when I knew, like,
"Oh, that's what you do with being funny."
And I remember being amazed that my parents and I
were enjoying the same thing so much.
That's the first time I can remember us-- me saying, "That's what I want to do,"
as far as it related to my family.
I mean, as far as my own quirky weird shit,
I mean, I've-- I've been a little pervert my whole life.
I've had that whole weird addictive personality thing
since very, very early childhood.
And being funny was just kinda--
It was also a way to balance out
people picking on you.
Nobody fucked with you if you were funny
because they were scared you'd mock them.
It's the one thing I could do to a football player that he couldn't do to me.
I started doing drugs when I was 15.
I started doing drugs heavily.
So I went to rehab when I was 16.
And I got out of rehab and, like, all my friends
that I hung out with just ignored me.
They never called me anymore.
I lost my entire friend base.
So my grades were so bad
that I took theater to get an easy A.
I'm like, it's the easiest A I can take.
So I do that.
And I do a monologue
that had-- that was comedic.
We would put on plays for the entire school
and, uh, it was like, super Def Jammy,
so, like, people would, like, boo and throw stuff.
And we did this play that we had written
and I was one of the leads
and I came out and, uh,
just completely had the entire theater just destroyed, rolling.
Like, just murdered with this character,
and, like, to the point-- I mean, people, like, lost it.
And my teacher was just like--
I walked offstage and she was like,
"There's way more here than you're seeing."
She's like, "You gotta, like..."
So I joined an improv group
and just started, like, getting into comedy.
But it kind of, like, comedy took over for what the drugs did for me.
I just became-- was so obsessed with drugs
and then that was gone and so I just completely--
completely threw myself into comedy.
You're controlling this whole room.
You're giving them-- you're like a drug dealer.
You're giving them this drug that's making them feel really good all at once.
From the time I was a kid and I got addicted to people looking at me,
it's like, the reason I want to do that for work
is because you get addicted to that feeling.
You get addicted to that immediate high.
I mean, that's why people become addicted to sex or drugs or alcohol,
because it gives you what you want or what you think you want.
Um, and with this, it's a healthy way
to get love or whatever it is that we call it.
But it's a constant-- it's like an adrenaline.
You know, there's nothing like getting a laugh from people.
It's a really weird, addictive high,
whether it's on a stage or just with a--
It's a weird power thing, which--
there's no other way for me to achieve that.
There's no other way for me to feel that
and nothing else can compare to that,
so what kind of job would I do...
I would go to work all day and be miserable,
'cause no job is gonna compare to that feeling.
So I think that was why I had to keep doing it because this--
I'm always chasing that feeling.
How did that feel? Oh, it-- I'm sorry.
When you finally had-- Crack cocaine.
Yeah. Rock-- crack-- rock cocaine-- crack cocaine.
Because... Big rock cocaine.
Because, um, when you're alone and you're solo up there
and you can modulate them and you get the laughs
and you can build on it and you can go back and forth and you can--
the power of, like, calling back something and having them--
It's like you're the one-man show
and the adrenaline and blood shoots through your head
in a way that I think is identical to--
- to crystal meth. - Yeah.
I would do gigs, I would do a shot
at 12:30 and at 4:00 in the morning,
I still can't figure out why I'm not asleep,
because it had just shot,
you know, the adrenaline shoots through you.
I feel like comedy is a drug in a weird way
and I don't know what it's a gateway to,
but, doing more drugs?
Hour-long specials?
Hour-long drugs?
What does it lead to? A sitcom of--
And you want a nightly drug. A nightly thing?
I mean, it is, it really is.
And it's a buzz and you go, "I gotta get that again."
I mean, you go to another club the same night.
'- Cause you go, "I did this club already. - " Yeah.
I did all these drugs here. That's awesome.
And now let's go to another place where there's more drugs. That's old porn.
That's old porn, yeah, that's old porn.
I wanna go to a place-- I need some fresh.
It is a drug, you know?
And the closest thing--
When you have a-- when you have a moment of-- of either
hilarity or vulnerability on stage
or something that-- where you--
It's the closest thing I've ever come to,
even in acting class, of spirituality
where you kind of, like, anything--
and I hate that I'm even saying that word,
but like, of any kind of, like...
But it's that powerful. It is that powerful.
It's the closest thing I've had to, you know, like, people speaking in tongues
or whatever and getting-- having an enlightened feeling.
Uh, when you have a moment on stage or in film where you're--
But especially on stage,
where you're in front of a live audience, where you're--
It's only happening in that moment.
Yeah, yeah, and it's like, bang, and it's your--
It's a feeling of enlightenment.
A feeling of freedom, liberty, yeah.
It took a big chunk of time for me to discover it,
to discover that silence
is the root of all comedy.
That's where it lays.
Um, because, uh,
all silence did was panic me, so I--
If there was silence, it meant they weren't laughing
or they were contemplating how to kill me.
I don't think there's any bigger thrill
in comedy
than when knowing
a big laugh's coming up and they don't know.
When you've got that little secret
where you're like, "In a second, you're gonna be laughing."
And maybe they're uncomfortable, or maybe--
I have-- I have a routine where, uh,
I took a friend of mine with muscular dystrophy to a brothel
and there's this moment just before
the woman sucks the disabled guy off,
on stage, where they're all going, "This is horrible,"
and I have a punchline that's gonna zing, and that for me--
Silence is... sometimes when you watch--
Do you ever watch, like, movies being made and you can tell the editing?
When you can tell jokes where you go,
"That joke worked, but you cut it off too quick."
And someone who was editing it went, "Well, that joke's over," boom.
You can gauge what that--
you know when the laughter is gonna come.
You get that response built-in so that when you're in the vacuum of an audience,
you know-- you understand timing, you understand the fundamentals.
Comedians, you know, you have certain laugh ears, you can hear.
That's where you're listening to the audience
and that's where some, you know, new comedians,
you know, they bomb and they come off stage
and they're like, "That was pretty good." And you're like, "You're--"
You know, they have no laugh ears, right?
I-- I just have the approach of
never give them a second.
Never give them a second to...
It's like someone's off balance.
That's the best time to hit someone, right?
They're like, that's kind of-- Oh!
We all have friends where you sit there and you talk to them
and you know they're just thinking of what they're gonna say.
They're not even listening. That's what comedians do.
You know, you walk off stage and you're at the bar
and you're not magic anymore.
And then it's almost like when I would walk off, like, the spell is broken
and then I realize I'm a fucking zilch and then they realize it.
They like, "Oh, God, we allowed him to control us?"
We got involved in a dangerous situation,
you know, doing drugs and then being-- just constantly working
and not dealing with it.
And the one thing about Mitch that's weird is,
um, a lot of people view comics as, especially someone that,
you know, dies tragedy, like-- tragically, like Mitch did,
and, um, you know, drugs, it comes with all these thoughts,
and a lot of people think it's someone--
Something about Mitch is he didn't really have that kind of negative side.
In a fucked up way,
it was almost was his downfall.
Like, I would say, "Mitch, we can't do this anymore."
Like, and he-- like, Mitch wasn't stupid, it wasn't fun anymore.
Doing-- doing an opiate isn't fun
- after it isn't fun anymore. - Right.
Who's the pumpkin chick? Cinderella?
Whichever one-- whichever one that turned into a pumpkin,
like, that's what it's like.
I'm a fucking zilch again, ugh.
I would come off stage in Hartford, Connecticut,
or whatever shithole I had done, you know,
and I was just drinking my water and I'm still the same frightened idiot.
And I'm like, "I have to go back on to achieve that."
Definitely a certain point in my life where I was--
I was-- I was at ease most on stage
in front of strangers
as opposed to, uh,
being with anyone I knew, I would just--
Not that I was antisocial, I don't know, but I was just--
I looked forward to getting on stage.
I was like, "That's where-- that's where I really can be loose
and have fun and, you know, I just love doing that."
I mean, now I have a talk show where I just talk to strangers
and people I haven't met.
A healthy person probably looks around and says,
"It's a wonderful world full of wonderful things."
And a non-healthy person says,
"I want people to think I'm one of the wonderful things.
"I want people to be glad that I live on Earth.
I need to hear it."
Rather than just think,
"Oh, isn't it wonderful
to have people like that who exist to entertain me?"
You go to a place of, I gotta--
How do I become that person?
That someone else will feel that way about me, you know?
That's...
that's what I guess separates
healthy people from non-healthy people.
There's a protective element,
I think, that we all kind of share with one another,
because no one knows but us what we go through.
The insecurity and the, you know, the childishness,
the-- the gaping hole
that can only be filled with the love of strangers laughter every 15 to 30 seconds.
That is something that unless you do it, you don't know.
No manager knows it,
even if they're a real astute, empathetic manager,
and there are such people, no agent knows it.
I do this every night.
Every night, 300--
I work, you know, 250, 300 nights a year,
and so don't tell me.
- It's failure. - Yeah.
I think, it's failure is what it is.
And-- and the whole thing,
all these 27 years of me doing stand-up have been a fluke
and today's the day that they all figure it out
and you walk out there and it's the first time you've ever--
And you're never funny again.
Well, I think everyone can be funny,
but not when they want, you know?
That's sort of the trick.
Sometimes when people want to be funny
and they try, it's a little painful.
- But... - But the fact that they can try,
that's the thing that to me that dilutes it,
because when you're at a party, nobody dabbles in dentistry.
But everyone can, if they want, choose to dabble in comedy.
They can be horrible. Right.
But they can at least do it. That's true.
That annoys the hell out of me. That's true.
Well, I meant, I think everyone's capable
of-- of being funny
at some point or another, you know?
I think-- And I--
Definitely, I think every actor
is capable of being funny, I really do.
The first person from my real life that made me laugh really hard?
Dan Rather, I guess,
is the first guy
who really made me sort of have that--
that I-think- I'm-gonna-throw-up laugh,
when he switched from suits to sweaters.
When I did stand-up, I always thought,
"I'm just some fucking idiot.
Why would you sit and listen to me talk for 20 minutes?"
I didn't have that confidence
that I could do some great George Carlin monologue
that would inspire people.
And it took me another decade
to feel that in my movies
I could open up my heart
and tell people what I felt about being alive
and that it was worthy of being told.
And the moment I realized that I can open up
and that it is okay to share my way of looking at the world
with other people, then my career took off.
I got to see Richard Jeni. You know, I always loved Peter Sellers.
An early, early Peter Sellers.
You know, or even Phyllis Diller.
Like, those kind of threw me more than...
Stephen Wright. Who gets on and is so quiet and withdrawn.
Dennis Miller's second special, "Black and White."
Bill Cosby and whatnot.
And watching that master,
watching Johnny Carson and seeing...
The Woody Allen movies,
and then the Steve Martin specials.
Steve Martin. I wanted to be...
The greatest stand-up with the most weapons in history.
'Cause I thought then I could be the right kind of Lenny Bruce funny.
And that's something that Adam Sandler, like, really ingrained in me.
I saw "Spinal Tap," went, "Who are these guys?
How come they're, like, making fun of us in a way that's really accurate?"
And I went in doing Alan Partridge,
there's a bit in it where I steal from Michael McKean.
There's a scene where I say something like...
"Who... do you think you are?"
And while I'm saying this, there's a scene where Michael McKean--
when Christopher Guest comes in,
he says, "I've come to re-plug your life support machine.
"I've come to-- We can re-- do a tour of Japan."
Our single, "Sex Farm," was a big hit in Japan.
And he goes, "Oh, so you've come to re-plug our life support systems?
"The...
fucking nerve you display."
And-- and I-- I use that sometimes.
When we first started making "The Office,"
uh, I was walking down the street with Ricky Gervais,
and Steve Coogan was coming the other way
and I was very excited and kind of-- but slightly daunted.
Like, "Ahh," and I have this weird thing
when I meet people I admire
that I don't want to seem like a fawning idiot, you know?
Like, I want to seem, kind of--
I don't want to give them, like--
Be effusive and going on about how great they are.
I feel like that just will seem vulgar
or kind of ass-kissy or something, you know?
And so I had this kind of,
this thing, which is to sort of be slightly, kind of,
a little bit cheeky, like, we're comedians, you know?
You know, I'll have a little dig at you and you have a little dig at me,
but it's all done with good humor.
And Coogan comes out and he-- he introduces himself to both of us
and he's very sweet and he says, "Oh, I--
I've seen your show 'The Office' and I'm a big fan."
And then he said, "If my career is ever on the skids,
I'd love for you to write something for me."
And my mouth-- I just went, "Well, you'd better get in touch now, then."
But, like, for no reason, like...
His career was going from strength to strength,
it was-- like, it was just--
What?
And he sort of went-- He kind of-- "Eh?"
And he sort of was-- And Ricky just looked at me, like, that's a weird--
And I would-- No, I just-- no--
"Obviously, you don't-- your career is going so good that you don't--
"It's ironic, I'm saying, you don't--
"It was absurd. You don't need to get in touch, 'cause--"
And I just-- I think he went, "Right."
And they kind of tried to have a conversation for a little while
and then, he went, "Sorry, I-- sorry, what did you mean?"
And I went, "I'm sorry, I--
"What I meant was, your career is clearly great,
so you don't need to get in touch with us."
"But why would you say that?"
"No, but that-- yeah."
And it just-- and it kind of--
it just fizzled out, you know,
and we just went off into the day.
And I don't-- I've never really been able to, you know,
never had the opportunity to sort of explain myself or apologize to him.
He must have just thought, "What a dick."
I'd like to be able to try and make a point
and then still be able to tell a joke
about fucking getting shit on you dick or whatever, right?
And I love that Carlin can say something so precise
and so well and then,
"Now I'm gonna talk about farts for five minutes."
He had the same hard line when it came to farting,
if that makes sense.
But as I said,
I only became a huge fan of Carlin
when I realized how hard it was to be really good at this.
Groucho, Groucho, Groucho, Groucho.
Not so many people talked Zeppo or Chico, but I loved Harpo.
I loved-- Because Harpo, to me, was insane,
and there was an unpredictable nature.
He'd just, you know, be cross-examining the passport guy
and he'd just jump on the thing and start, you know,
doing the pens like it was a plane,
and then start chasing women.
And I thought, this guy, because I don't know,
literally, there's no way I can look away for five seconds
because I'll miss some transition.
Lenny Bruce decides
that that kind of philosophical honest speech
is gonna be called stand-up comedy.
And right from that moment, you've created Pryor and Carlin.
We don't know who they're gonna be, you know,
but they have to happen.
I remember seeing Richard Pryor
on an "Ed Sullivan Show." Yep.
In which the routine was about
the toughest kid in school.
And for no reason at all, the toughest kid in school
would like point at ya and say, "You, after school,
I'm gonna bite your foot off."
And you'd have to believe him because he'd be walking around
with a big shoe hanging out of his mouth.
I mean, that was his routine for the--
for "The Ed Sullivan Show." Ed Sullivan. Yeah.
The actual routine was, "You, after school,
I'm gonna bite your dick off."
And you had to believe it because he walked around with a dick hanging--
I mean, no, it was pretty funny when you realized that.
I mean, my favorite is Richard going to Africa
and sitting--
sitting in the coach with the African guy,
and he says, you know, "The man smell,"
and he does this thing and it was like--
And this whole-- and it was like,
"Oh, I'm watching the smell, I can see it."
But then he says, "And then I looked at him,
and he was like... You stink, too."
And I thought, "Oh!"
Okay!
And I understood.
Richie Pryor, who had a big acting career,
did his greatest acting in his stand-up,
where he would break your heart and involve you in story.
I mean, you know, and you could see it in his concert films.
Extraordinary, realistic acting.
And with movies, it was--
He just didn't give it that kind of dimension that he did to his stand-up.
Richard was in love with Pam Grier,
okay, like every guy was in the '70s.
And he got his hands on an old tape
of some of my dad's stuff that wasn't so funny,
that wasn't that good.
They sit down and Richard says, "Oh, I got some stuff, I got--
Y'all gotta hear this, this is some great shit."
And he starts playing some of my dad's old material
and my dad's getting hot, right?
He's kind of shitting all over him,
my dad finally just says, "Fuck this!"
And he gets up and he lays out Richard,
takes both girls, and splits.
Now, I'm not lying. I didn't make this story up.
This story was told to me by-- by "Growing Pains,"
by Joanna Kearns, man.
Like, I'm sitting in the trailer
and about right near the end of the story,
I think she realizes,
"Oh, shit, he was married and this is his son,"
and, like, goes into this reserved, kind of--
But he was-- he was a very sweet man.
The news came on and they said that Freddie Prinze
had just killed himself.
A comic could make so much of a big--
make a big splash in this world, you know,
and so many people are affected
by somebody who makes them laugh.
It's an important job.
And for some reason, his passing
was the thing that sent me out to L.A.
I was in Rochester, New York.
I was an absolutely nobody, part-timer,
just jack of all trades, would do whatever the radio station
asked of me and one day, Sam Kinison walked in.
The mic went on and he just spoke his mind
and he was outrageous, he was funny.
Uh, he was sensitive at times
and a lightbulb went off in my head
where I realized, "Oh, my God, I could do this different.
Just you gotta just be yourself.
And, uh, and just-- I started blowing off all--
Everything I knew about radio after that day.
I think the only vision I had of it,
and many people I believe say this,
is of "The Dick Van Dyke Show"
and the writer's room
of Buddy and Sally, and, um,
uh, Rob Petrie thinking of ideas.
I used to sit home and I used to watch it.
And I look at this guy Rob Petrie,
and, you know, he was married to Mary Tyler Moore,
he had a very nice house up in New Rochelle,
he had a kid named Ritchie,
and he spent his days at work lying on a couch,
just, you know, joking around with Buddy and Sally
and I went, "I think I want to do that."
I feel like I had a vision of, "Oh, I'll write."
Somehow I'll get in a office, but I think it was more
I just want to be around
people who do comedy or say funny things.
As a got older, when Letterman came on in high school,
then I had an idea, I would like to write
for the Letterman show and live in New York,
but it's not like I had a talent for it, you know what I mean?
Excuse me, I have tuberculosis.
Um, I don't think it's contagious, Kevin Pollak,
who is not sitting here with me.
Kevin Pollak, Kevin Pollak. I think it is.
No, it might be. Contagious.
I might have to take the waters.
It took me three years
to get on stage for the first time.
Because-- and the reason why I finally got on stage
was that there was a contest.
It's always a contest.
So the prize was, um,
a check for $200
and the opportunity to perform at the DC Improv.
Then thing that I worried about
when I first started doing stand-up
was whether or not I was crazy enough
to be a comedian, you know, because I didn't really
understand what being a stand-up--
I mean, I was doing sets in comedy clubs
for almost a year before I realized,
there's guys who you haven't even heard of who don't have a day job
who are just doing comedy clubs, you know?
I didn't know that that was a thing that could happen.
I thought, "I'm going to the club where Robin Williams started
"and someone's gonna see me like they saw him
and then I'm gonna be in a TV show."
That's what I thought was gonna happen.
And I said to the club manager,
I said, "I want to do this again, when can I do it?"
And they handed me a mop and they said,
"Well, there's no spots available,
"but, uh, but if you, you know, if you run food to tables
"and sell tickets and things like that, then we'll,
you know, we'll keep you in mind for fallouts and cancelations."
And so I kicked around the DC Improv for about three or four years
and eventually I was opening for people like Brian Regan
and Jake Johannsen and Mitch Hedberg,
these incredible comics
who taught me
everything about comedy.
It's about immersion, it's about living--
Like, when I worked at the DC Improv, I was there all the time.
I was there the nights I worked, I was there the nights I didn't work.
I would-- I went to every show,
I saw comedians who were nothing like me.
I-- I saw Larry the Cable Guy and Rodney Carrington.
People who you think you have nothing in common with,
but really, comedians have everything in common.
Cab driver, paralegal, private chauffeur,
you know, stuff like that, and I'm lost.
- I'm a lost soul, you know? - In New York.
Yes, a lost soul.
Parents beside themselves.
"What are we gonna do?" Yes.
Went to university. I would overhear conversations
that were heartbreaking, you know, terrible.
About you? Yeah, about me, yeah.
"Oh!" you know, "What are we gonna do," you know?
"What's he gonna do with himself?"
They sent me to a psychiatrist, you know? Sure.
And, um, so I take the subway
to Brooklyn to the psychiatrist
and, you know, what--
what are you-- You can't do anything for me. No.
So, um, then I-- then--
I don't know how or why I thought of this,
but I decided to take an acting class.
When I saw Bob Odenkirk and David Cross for the first time,
I was like, "Oh, they're doing what I could do.
"That's my sense of humor
and they're making a living at it, maybe I could do this."
I always assumed no one-- Because I--
Look, I grew up as a terrible nerd
who was considered to be ugly
and undateable,
- so... - Chapter one.
So to-- so I used humor,
but when you are ugly and undateable,
the thing that people say to you
when you're trying to be funny is, "Stop trying to be funny.
You're not funny."
At 25, I saw other comedians
doing the stuff that I thought I was funny at,
so I did it, and within a week
of performing comedy for the first time,
I now was a comedian.
And I told people, "I'm a comedian," and people went,
"Oh, that's why you act the way you act. Oh, you're funny."
We do come from the misfit island of toys,
so we should be kind of weird looking.
I try and communicate that to my children.
I'm like, "There's nothing wrong with being weird."
Um, you know, it's a very strange--
'Cause I wish someone would have told me that.
'Cause I feel like that's something culturally
that we kind of toss around
but really, being different is good.
Um, so I guess, uh,
yeah, when I...
And I know this has been talked about before
and it's a lot more open in society,
I know Jonathan Winters talked about it in the '60s,
um, but, uh,
being in a psych ward, like, I--
That was just--
To talk about that, like, that was, like, really, uh,
I felt very ashamed of that.
And then to now, you know, in stand-up,
you say it the first time and it's like your voice is kind of shaking,
- you know? - Yeah.
And then, like, 10 times in, it's like,
"Oh, so you're in the psych ward, as you do,"
and you get so much more relaxed about it.
And then finally, it's like, you can talk about it with anybody. Yeah.
And that has been a real gift to me, to--
that the art form allows us,
like, you can talk about anything.
"I'd like to go on."
On a Saturday night. On a Saturday night.
He said, "Who are you?"
I said, "I'm just--
I'm in the audience."
He said, "Have you ever done comedy before?"
I said-- I said, "No."
He said, "No, you can't go on."
He said, "You have to audition," you know? Yeah.
I don't think I got into it because I was essentially narcissistic
or even that I was looking for love.
Like, I feel like I got into stand-up
because, you know, I needed to be seen.
And I-- and I thought that, like, that stage,
I can do whatever I want, whatever I want.
The only context is, you should get laughs. Should.
That's even conditional depending on how much you're being paid
and if you're not being paid at all, you can do whatever you want.
You can yell, you can spit,
you can tell people to fuck themselves.
It's great, you can do that publicly, yell in front of--
But I think that, like, for me,
it was just a matter of, like, you know, I felt that I had something to say
and I thought that comedy, for me, when I watched it when I was a kid,
I was like, these guys have a handle on things.
They can take life and just turn a few phrases
and, like, they got a handle on it and you learn things,
you see things in a different way and they seem to be, you know,
in control of this horrendous
you know, hurricane of bullshit
that comes at us every day and I think that's what appealed to me,
is like, how can I get a voice that somehow can manage life
and-- and be seen,
kind of like, "I exist and I have things to say."
It's easily
the single craziest thing
that I have ever done in my life.
Was... Going up to Bud, asking him to go on.
Thank God he said no.
You have to nourish a delusion,
uh, you know, to sort of you know, make your way--
to keep pushing in show business.
You really have to nourish your delusion.
And what's frightening, I think, sometimes,
is that, you know, people don't know when to stop,
you know what I mean?
It's like...
Comedy intervention. Yeah, but does that really exist?
And what-- how can you break somebody's heart, you know?
Their heart's gonna break on their own or it's not.
Here's the evolution of it, I think.
It's first, I want you to like me.
Then I want you to tell me that I'm normal.
And then, "Listen, can I tell you guys about this thing that happened to me?"
And the relief of,
"Yeah, I totally get what you're saying."
That's happened to me, too.
And I think the older you get, the more mature you become,
the more you really feel that connection.
Even if they're just sitting there in silence during the setup,
you really feel
that we are just talking here
and we understand each other.
And it's not so much about me being understood,
it's about we understand each other.
I...
This is a horrible thing,
but my dog, um,
died from a thing that I did.
Like, I removed a ramp from the backyard to the front yard
and I forgot to put it back and she extreme sports'd it
three-and-a-half feet to her death.
And I felt terrible about that and I do a whole shtick about it.
But the great thing is, like, after shows,
people would be like, "I sat on my rabbit!"
Like, you're, like...
"I squeezed my hamster too hard.
I thought I was hugging it."
"Oh, yeah, okay, right, right, like..."
You become a safe haven. Yeah, yeah.
Like, uh, just--
Like, it doesn't become this private, horrible, horrible thing.
And it took me years to really understand that's what you're doing.
You know, the desire to control an audience.
Or is it a desire to connect?
Is it a desire to say, "Hey, we're all together,
"I'm part of you, I got in there,
we have a recognition, we know each other."
And thereby, I go, "Okay, I do know who I am."
There's two kinds of laughs.
There's the kind of laugh you get when you--
you do a good gag and do it well
and the audience laugh.
And then there's the other gag.
The other kind of joke you do,
when you say something which reveals a truth
about the way men behave or the way women behave
or something that everyone in the room acknowledges is true,
all at the same time, and they laugh,
and their laugh is a laugh of recognition.
And that kind of laugh comes from the gut,
because they're laughing 'cause they go,
you've just shone a light on what it is to be human.
You could, you know, walk into a notes session
and you could threaten to walk off a movie
if you change one frame of that gag
'cause I am sure that this works and I will not change it.
It ruins the character, if--
You don't understand what movie we're making.
This is something that's important to me and I am--
This is-- I will go to the mat on this one.
You show it to an audience, if it doesn't get a laugh,
you're back in the editing room, "Okay, let's blow this thing up."
What do we do here? Let's recut it.
Anybody have any ideas?
And that's, I guess, our greatest success,
is creating that image in their brain.
If it's a story piece
and they can see it, hear it,
taste it, smell it, and then, boom.
The fireworks go off.
Every comedian will tell you
the most entertaining show to watch
is your good friend who you know
is really funny, on stage, struggling.
Bombing so hard, but I had to keep doing the impression
and I'm talking like Cliff--
Hey, there, Normy.
You know, the actual fact--
And I was looking, Jon Stewart was in the crowd and he was going...
He was going... Like...
There's a show where I've never bombed so badly in my life.
I went on and I fucking tanked.
I was a Saturday night.
I did two shows and the audience stared at me
and it was a living hell.
It was a nightmare and I bombed.
Never forget, it's the only time I've ever bailed on my time.
You know, everyone bombs.
And again, you know,
what might be a bomb today
might be considered grand art 10 years from now.
I find stand-up really tough,
'cause if it's not great,
I find that the actor in me just wants to die.
I have to leave the theater.
If they're dying, I'm dying worse.
I so vicariously suffer with them,
but when they're good at it, it just--
it's a mystery to me.
I don't get how they do it.
I wouldn't do stand-up with a gun to my head.
What goes through your mind when you just hear
crickets in the audiences?
Uh, failing on stage as a stand-up
is a quick descent into, "They hate me,
"my life has no value, uh,
I'm alone, I'll never be funny again."
My father watched me get no laughs
on my set-- like, none.
And I got off stage, 17,
and I went to the bathroom and had a little cry
and then I got in the car with my dad,
and my dad said, he goes,
"Aw, I don't think this is for you, mate,
"this is not a bad little hobby.
And, you know, if it means anything, I think you're funny."
You know, he was very supportive, but he told me
to quit it and I did.
I did one more go, and it went average,
and I thought, "Well, this is it, it's not for me."
The one thing I think is a common denominator of all comedians
and that is a bond.
Is that, uh,
in order to become a comic, pay attention,
you have to love
watching yourself die.
You have to-- because when you're learning it,
you're bombing a lot,
there's more than crickets, there's hate.
There's, like, sharks, and you're bleeding
and they're nipping, and, you know...
One of the great lines ever yelled at me,
"Why don't you go home and gargle with razorblades?"
Which crippled me.
I laughed so fucking hard,
I said, "I'm done, you win, that's...
that's so good, I'm gonna use it."
Probably one-- maybe the first or second time I ever,
like, bombed, I don't know why,
but my fight-or-flight instinct kicked in
and evidently, it was flight.
I was supposed to do seven minutes
and I got up there
and I already told the host what my closer was,
and I got up there and I did
probably three minutes of my act
to silence,
and then I was like, "Well, I have four minutes left
and I'm not gonna spend it in four more minutes of silence,"
so I just immediately jumped to my closer,
which takes-- probably took about 35 seconds,
and I did my closing bit and went, "All right, thanks."
Total time on stage was probably four minutes, if that.
And then one of the other comics went,
"Yeah, I know, it sucks to eat shit, but you can't do that."
I was like, "Oh, really?
I can't just bail if it's not going well?" "No!"
This did happen recently,
semi-recently, Spinal Tap,
based on this movie I did
with Rob Reiner, Harry Shearer, Michael McKean,
we have played live for the last 30 years,
and we were doing a show in Canada.
That's because at that point,
you're gonna cut to a maple leaf.
Um, we did a live performance
and it was nothing.
I mean, zero. It wasn't-- There was no recognition.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Spinal Tap.
Singing, playing, big bottom.
Jesus.
And then we said...
You know, that thing.
And it truly was...
something I've never experienced before or since.
The award before me is won by Raul Julia,
a brilliant, wonderful actor, who had died that year.
- And the widow Julia comes up... - No, no.
...to take the award and accept it.
And it was an amazing speech,
but I mean, people are weeping.
And I'm backstage and I go,
"For fuck's sake, I keep having to do this shit
following dead people!"
Well, the crew backstage is going, "Oh, that's so funny!
You gotta say that! You gotta say that!"
And I went-- having no experience with this, I go, "Really?"
This is like the band has said, "Hey, that's a great joke,
you should tell it on stage."
So on live television, I decide to go off-script...
and I come out and I go, "What the hell is it?
"On the Emmy awards, I follow dead Jessica Tandy
and now I follow a dead-- another dead guy."
I mean, the boos and the hisses
and the hostility.
And I--
I had never produced sweat like that in my life.
It was like Albert Brooks in "Broadcast News."
So I-- I go to close up and same deal,
I say, "I'm gonna tell you one more thing then go."
Some guy yells out,
"Don't even tell us that, just go!"
And another sailor--
it's a naval base, another sailor stands up
and says, "Leave him alone, I think he's pretty funny."
And looks around, nobody's on his side.
And he goes, "Not that fucking funny."
Sits down.
I do my closing joke to silence and I say,
"Well, that's it for me, if you see a dick, suck it."
And I run off the stage
and the woman has my check in one hand and my jacket in the other
and she says, "Get out of here, they will kill you."
So they literally are chasing-- I'm running to my car
and they're chasing me and it's almost like a horror movie
where they never get closer than 15 feet.
Like, consistently, they're like--
And I get to my car and there's always that scene in the movie
where the guy tries to open up the door
and you think it's bullshit, it's not.
I all of a sudden don't know how to use a key and I'm panicking
and I'm trying to get in my car.
And to look at it objectively as an adult,
to be in a bar,
in a spotlight,
with a stick that makes your voice louder,
like, to just demand that attention
and to not pay it off,
and to have people hate you,
I mean, that is a really naked,
creepy, uh,
kind of torment to put yourself through.
If I'm on stage and it's not going as well as I'd hoped,
perhaps in the past, I might've sped up.
Now, I have a little trick.
I just slow... right... down. Yeah.
And I smile a bit and you just trick 'em.
You think, "My God, I thought he was doing badly,
"but look how relaxed he is.
"It must be me.
"I must be misreading this.
This guy's actually very good."
I was up for this pilot for a reality show
and I was doing it with Adam Sandler.
Me, Adam Sandler, and I think Rob Schneider or David Spade,
and it was gonna be guys travelling across America
with video cameras and, uh,
we were all unknowns and Jim Henson was the producer.
So we went out and we filmed our own audition ourselves.
And then they called me and they said,
"Jim Henson would like to buy your ideas.
"He liked a lot of your ideas,
"but he doesn't think you should be on camera
because he thinks you lack warmth."
And I thought, "This is the guy who taught me how to read.
"This is Kermit the Frog.
"This is Sesame Street.
"This is the warmest man in the world
telling me I lack warmth."
So I think all of these things made me think,
"Oh, maybe I just should not be on screen.
Jim Henson hates me."
If I couldn't do stand-up,
I am out of luck.
That power of, like, writing a joke and going up that day
and not having to worry about anybody else chiming in.
Only two things I wanted in life--
one was to be from New York City and the other was to be Jewish.
But then, you know, I learned to juggle
and all hopes of being taken seriously go away.
Or Jewish. Yes.
All hopes of being Jewish go away.
It does feel really good to--
I felt like there was just something a little bit weird about you your whole life
and why do I want to make people laugh,
but then I want to disappear also?
And then you--
You meet all these other people
that are just like you, and they liked the shows
that you liked when you were a kid,
and people thought they were mean,
and people thought they were weird,
and you're all weird together.
And they become like your family,
but then it makes you...
retract from-- from normal people.
We speak the same language,
and I never really feel
as comfortable as I feel with comedians
with anyone else.
And then bringing a guy around comedians, like,
"This is Joe,"
and they're all like, "Okay."
And I'm like, "Oh, you're right."
How much of it is an enjoyment of--
of making the other two laugh?
Oh, it's the best. Well, I'm--
This is where I'm a little more different than these two.
There are guys that Jimmy doesn't like us
talking to on the radio,
and I can't wait for them to call in,
hit that phone, knowing it's gonna drive him nuts,
or, you know, back in the old days
more than now,
I would really push people's buttons
to the point these two would get so uncomfortable,
and you would think that would be my cue
to back off, but now I'm like,
"Oh, they're uncomfortable?
Let me see how far I can take this."
And I've had these guys, like, walk out of the studio,
walk behind equipment.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Just completely...
Horrified. Horrified, embarrassed.
It really is uncanny how uncomfortable
he could make me with talking to certain guests.
It was-- it was funny, and I look back on it,
and they're some of my favorite moments,
and it's-- but it's like--
I don't have the ability to do that.
Like, I would just go, "Oh, no, I'm just kidding."
Right, right. Like, I would have to fucking, you know,
emotionally whore it out and ruin it.
I've always been self-centered.
I think you have to be self-centered
in order to do this kind of thing, a little bit.
So much of comedy is confidence
and believing, you know,
faking it till you make it, I think.
When I was doing "The State,"
I was among 11 friends,
ten of them guys,
on MTV doing this show in our early 20s,
and it was a dream for us
because we had the keys to the kingdom.
We got to make our own TV show
just out of college, it was crazy.
But among the group,
the 11 of us, it was very competitive
and very painful at times.
March of 1977,
and Paul Shaffer was in town, in L.A.
And Nancy and I were
staying with a friend of ours, and--
My girlfriend Nancy, later to be my wife--
and Paul was in town,
and he was gonna have dinner with Billy Murray,
who just, you know, started that year
on Saturday Night Live.
And Nancy and I were walking along
Santa Monica Boulevard.
We're going to go to the Sunset Marquis Hotel.
And I just said to her,
"I can't walk anymore."
"What do you mean? Are you having a stroke?"
I said, "No, I just--
I gotta sit down."
So we sat in the bench.
She said, "What's wrong?"
"I can't go and have dinner with Paul and Billy
"and pretend to be happy for everyone's success,
"because I am floating,
and I don't know what to do."
"Ahh."
"How long do we sit here?"
"I don't know. I don't know.
Maybe the night."
So later on, whenever we would pass it,
we'd call it, oh, "There's Breakdown Corner."
Remember Breakdown Corner?
We had a conversation once where, you know,
you were trying to do a TV show, and I was saying,
"All we're trying to do is get movies."
And it's this sort of...
not happy with the room you're in
no matter what the room is.
So...
We're on this gigantic television show,
and all of us are just thinking, well,
"On hiatus, we gotta get a movie,
"'cause we want to be a movie star,
because we should be movie stars."
That, thankfully, has completely changed,
and now I love vacations
and love having downtime to a certain extent.
But there is still that part of me that,
you know, wants to be-- wants to be working.
My dad was very protective of me,
another way in which he protected me
was actually say to me,
I really would not forbid you
but really, really encourage you
to stay away from stand-up comedy,
because it's a ruthless world
and it's a tough life,
as I knew, as a kid,
and then the club circuit,
very different than what he did,
an even tougher life,
and I think he really wanted to protect me
from that moment when some heckler shouted out,
"Where's the funny, Carlin?"
The theory, that comedians are
veterans of a shared combat experience,
not foxhole buddies,
more like snipers who've--
- Did you write that? - Yes.
With similar stories of kills and misses.
Ahh. That's fantastic.
There's only so many bell towers.
Yeah, no kidding. I brought my lunch.
I could be up here all night.
I have a box of dynamite, too, in case it gets out of hand.
I think there is a fraternity of comedians.
That's how I look at it.
Men and women.
Other than one or two people
that you detest beyond all measure,
we all get along with each other,
and when you're working together,
you're on their side.
I've been in many shows
where even people I didn't like very much,
the crowd will have a go at them
and I would go on after and fucking mop up,
on behalf of them.
I've done it before, I remember a time in L.A.
I won't say who the comic was, but he didn't do very well,
and the crowd was on his dick,
and I came up after him and went,
"You people are fucking morons.
"That guy's a genius, and don't ever,
ever do that in my presence again."
You know, and then I've had crowds
be racist when you're with a black comic,
to the black comic, and then I'll get up and go,
"You're making a mistake, you think that,
"'cause I'm white, I'm on your side.
"I'm on his side,
'cause we're friends, and I hate you."
One time I masturbated in a church.
Um...
We'll take that. Okay.
Yeah. I mean, I was--
I was, you know, a teenager.
It was almost a soc...
a socio-religious experiment.
I'm gonna do this, and I wonder if
anything bad's gonna happen,
or I wonder if this is okay,
or if this is natural.
And then I did it, and nothing really happened,
and I was like, "Well, I guess I can
check that off the list."
I've not done that since then.
It was really just the one time.
Was it during confession?
It was--
I didn't masturbate in front of the altar.
No, that's-- If I had done that,
I would have been a serial killer,
as I was shaving my whole body,
masturbating in front of--
that didn't happen, it was, you know,
I-- look, look.
I masturbated in a church
in the best way that you could have,
which was quietly in the bathroom,
like, it wasn't out in public.
Well, I think it's important you clarify,
'cause a lot of us had you in the pews.
I was not in the pews.
I was going pew-pew-pew, pew-pew-pew-pew-pew.
I always find it fascinating even now,
but when I was back just doing stand-up
that, if you go to parties, comedians end up together.
They flock, they flock together,
and, like, you can be at a party, any--
You can be at the biggest,
craziest, you know,
Oprah's whatever party, you can be at the--
And all the comedians end up at the same table or in the same corner.
And then we get together and talk about the hits and misses.
The hits and misses, that's exactly what it is.
You get together, and you want to hear road stories,
and you want to hear, like, "Oh, no, I know that booker,
"Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah," or "I opened for that person,
oh, they're the worst," or whatever it is.
It's just-- it fascinates me.
Or you can go like, "Who is that comedian that
"did the-- remember, they did the bit with the--
"There was, like, a midget in--
And you go, "Oh, I know who that was, that was--"
And you just say the person's name,
it's like, thank God you were here 'cause
no one else would get you.
By the time I got to be 15,
the juggling in the show
was shrinking,
and I was talking more and more.
And then I realized, though, after that,
that all the jokes these comics were
handing back to me were about me.
And I went, "Wait a minute, you don't have to be a--"
You know, a hen could figure this shit out.
I have to talk about myself.
Let's talk about anything but this routine.
I don't want to do it.
I don't want to say it, I know it's gonna work.
I don't care, it's worked a thousand times--
I don't give a shit.
I hate you for laughing, you sheep, you lemmings.
For 40 years, I've been punching out of a paper bag
to find out what I'm allowed to say and not allowed to say.
So take your pants off and don't move
is kind of the theme of my comedy.
The first thing you learn is how to avoid...
pain and the ultimate failure, which is death.
You'll never be dead, they'll just make you finish one day.
And I was in Buffalo, and I was in the middle of--
It wasn't a packed house,
but I was in the middle of a joke,
and I'm like, I can't do it.
I just-- I'm tired of myself.
I'm saying this out loud. I'm like,
I don't know what we're gonna fucking do,
but I can't do this.
And they're all sitting there like, you know,
you're in charge, and you're just
looking out at people like...
- You know, right? - Is this part of the act?
Yeah, right. And I'm like--
But you know, we really-- my fans are like,
"All right, Maron's just gonna... let him find it."
He's struggling. He does this sometimes.
You know, on some level,
if they are my fans, it's like,
"It happens, I know him."
So...
So I sat up there for, like, 45 seconds
just sort of like, "Oh, shit."
Like, in that silence, and there's nothing more...
There's no more present than that.
You know, where you're like, you know,
they have expectations, you're not filling them,
and you're alone on stage
and they're watching you sit there,
and I'm like, "Oh, goddamn it."
Nobody wants my advice. No comedians want my advice,
but if I was gonna give advice to people,
my advice would be, if you say something funny
in the moment, you better write it down.
Stop editing yourself.
"Oh, that won't work on stage"
or "That was too funny" or--
I am proud of myself that I write
almost every single thing down,
funny, unfunny, laundry lists.
I heard a thump,
and I looked to the side of the stage,
and somebody threw their prosthetic leg onstage
with a shoe on it, a hiking boot, and a sock.
It was kind of rubber.
And...
the crowd was just as astonished as I was,
and I said, "Who threw the leg up here?"
And nobody would answer.
And I think if you're just starting out as a comic,
it might throw you, but, because I've been
doing it so long, and I'm looking
for something like that, we had a lot of fun with it.
You know, I put it up on the stool,
we tried doing forensic research on it.
Well, you know, from the--
You know, from the texture of the rubber,
it doesn't look like this person works out much.
It looks like a male Caucasian leg,
about five-eight,
about 200-plus pounds,
and you know, the audience was loving it, you know.
Whose is this? Hop up here and get it.
Houston Laugh Stop, it was one of the...
craziest ever, just chaos.
Like, literally people beat each other up.
Just customers beat the shit out of each other.
I was like, "Wow."
I'm ordering beers on stage, no one cares.
Just a free-for all, so after that, I have no plans.
Once people start beating each other up,
I'm now just another customer.
You know, you can be on stage doing your stand-up routine,
and because you've done it 50 times already,
your mind can slightly wander,
even as you're saying your act.
You're doing your act, the audience is responding,
but your mind is actually thinking about other things,
You can consciously be in two places at once.
You can hear your mouth moving,
but you can be thinking,
"Where are we gonna eat after this?"
It's a very bizarre thing,
and I remember once being on stage and--
and I just was very aware of the absurdity
of the whole situation,
like, not just the fact that
I was in front of a room talking, which was weird,
when you step above it, that seems weird,
and that your job is to make them laugh,
like a jester, that was weird,
but also the-- the pointlessness of it all
and I remember sort of feeling...
and then kind of coming back again,
back into that moment, and, like, oh, well,
there's nothing else to do.
This is as good a thing to be doing at this moment
as anything else.
Should I share my life with somebody?
Uh... was I a good enough husband?
Can I actually coexist
with another human being?
Do I tell people that I love that I love them enough?
Have I told my parents enough that I love them?
Am I honest enough with the people in my life?
Am I grateful enough for how lucky I've been?
These are the questions that nag at me
when I'm in the car,
when I wake up in the middle of the night,
and I'm just-- I'm up from 4:00 to 6:00 a.m.
And this is the stuff that I end up making movies about,
and I think this is the stuff that we end up
all... writing comedy,
writing books, making movies,
painting paintings, this is the stuff
that finds its way into the work,
and if you're not doing-- if you're not
working on that stuff,
then you're not really working on anything.
I've carried for so many years a chip on my shoulder
from my childhood or my working class background
that, you know,
when I meet a kid who grew up with cash,
and he's a comic or something, I'm very dismissive of them.
I'm like, "You don't fucking know.
What do you got to talk about?"
And now, I'm bringing up one,
and it's like... I guess what you do is
you don't give them anything and you make them have jobs,
you make them buy their own car,
and there's things that I can do
that my parents made me do through necessity
that I can just do to be a dick.
But there's things that I'm not willing to do.
I'm not-- I'm not willing
to take him on shitty holidays...
and that was a lot of my memories,
is sitting in a caravan park
with my parents, 'cause I don't want to have
shitty fucking holidays.
I want the coconut on the island,
so that means that little cunt's gonna be
sitting there with a coconut, too,
being waited on hand and foot.
So how do I stop him from being a fuckwit?
And then if he wants to be a comic,
I-- you know, I think about that as well,
like, people go, "You think he'll want to be a comic?"
I go, "Why the fuck would he want to be a comic?"
It's like, I was watching some talent show,
"America's Got Talent," and they had a family
of people that were on unicycles
spinning basketballs,
and they had eight kids or 12 kids or something--
there was a lot of kids, and all the kids...
were spinning basketballs,
riding unicycles.
And I just think, that's got to be
one person's passion in that whole group.
It can't be that much of a coincidence.
It can't be that much of a coincidence
that the whole family is going, "You know what?
"That's what I'm into as well.
Unicycle basketball spinning."
And especially to be spinning a basketball
when you're 19,
and your sister's three.
It's like, "Come on and practice
with your sister on the unicycle,"
and you're like, "I don't wanna--"
You know, I don't care how religious you are,
or that you have so many kids,
and you want to have a family that sticks together,
but I think--
I know you didn't ask me about parenting,
but I think about it a lot at the moment.
I think parenting
is getting them so they don't need you.
Stand on your own.
Yeah, I think it's getting--
And then, hopefully...
they love you and want to visit you occasionally.
I feel that there's safety
in accomplishing something
and being in the middle of a task.
Safety.
Yeah, the safety is in the doing.
You know, for a long time, I thought,
"If something succeeds,
that'll make me feel better."
And having had certain things succeed,
I've had certain things fail,
but I've had things succeed,
to the point where you think, "Well,
that's the moment where happiness will happen."
You know, the movie did well,
or people liked it, and I realize,
I'm getting almost no happiness out of it.
That, for me,
it's all in the moment.
- It's just... - The doing it.
It is, it's editing, it's...
it's trying to figure things out,
and that makes me feel a little safe,
that I'm in the process
of trying to make something work out.
And so...
that's not healthy either.
And so, to realize, "Oh, I need to find
a way to be happy,
not when something worked out,
and not in the process,
but just in nothing,
and I am so far from accomplishing that.
Right, so that's the essential question, right?
That's what every-- every comedian wonders.
Do you have to be miserable to be funny?
Every comedian's history and background
and reason that they--
you know, realized they were funny,
and they started to do comedy in one form or another,
it has some roots in trauma and pain and sadness.
Not misery but maybe annoyance.
Jesus, why be miserable?
I don't-- what's the upside in that?
So when I see a vegetable tray, I'm annoyed.
I'm like, no one wants that.
Why are you putting it out there?
Trying to pretend that you're healthy?
People are just gonna eat the guacamole.
Don't even put out the radishes.
What is this, a seder?
No one's gonna eat that.
I think people who don't quite fit in,
given the subject today and find an outlet in comedy
and find that that's the thing where,
if you-- the steam lets out if you can just find that knob
and make a joke out of it.
Yeah, I think that happens,
and I think it's one of the great reasons for comedy.
I'm not personally miserable.
I make those around me miserable.
You know what makes people miserable?
My gesturing.
But he had said at one point, he goes,
"I've had my foot on the stool."
And I was like, what does that mean?
And then I was like, oh, my God,
literally, like, he's thinking about not living anymore.
And I'm like, how could somebody
this funny and original not want to live?
So I said, hey, man, before you think about killing yourself,
why don't you go record a podcast?
And he goes, yeah, that's the cure for death.
I was like, it could be, I was like,
every time you're on Smodcast with me,
people love you.
People love Walt, they think you guys are funny
and original and stuff.
Three weeks after he records the first podcast,
he sends me this e-mail where he's like,
"I backed off the stool,"
and I was like, "It's the talking cure, dude."
As long as you're always candid with them, it's win-win.
The audience will stick by you
and be like, "This motherfucker--
"He will tell me horrible things about himself.
Like, he'll tell me that he takes
fucking dick medicine 'cause it don't get hard or whatever,
he'll tell us-- if he'll tell us that,
next ten things he says are fucking honest and shit.
It's more of...
Just accepting who he was, man.
I think once my mom was okay with it,
I was okay with it.
As long as I saw that it was hurting her,
and she was having a tough time on her birthday--
that was the day he chose to end his life--
you know, it...
Then I didn't enjoy any of it,
but once I saw that she was more comfortable
and once she saw that I--
that I had done what I did,
and I wasn't gonna fall down that route,
it's just not-- it's just not in me.
I think everybody has that...
has that moment at some point in their life
of, "Are people better off without me?"
And your brain is either gonna allow you
to pull the trigger or take some pills,
or it's not, and mine won't.
So she-- and we had that conversation,
so once she knew that, everything else was kinda--
just sort of fell into place.
You know, there's still things I can't
possibly wrap my head around.
But I'm just wired differently
than my father was, you know what I mean?
I'm not-- I'm not as funny as him,
he's not as cool as me.
That's just the way it goes.
He was just like,
"I'm so far away from the stool at this point,
"and it's all from talking about who I am
"and who I am was who I hated the most
that put me toward a stool."
So this was a guy who never thought about doing comedy,
but comedy saved his fucking life.
And it's not traditional comedy in the way, like,
you'd find a guy at a mic,
standing on a little stage with a mic, you know.
It's a guy talking out his shit
but with an inability to do it in a dry way
or in a serious way.
He has to deflate his own balloon constantly,
and, in doing so, like, sharpen his comedic chops,
introduce himself to an audience
who were like, "We like what you have to say."
Suddenly, you can make a living off of doing that stuff,
and not just make a living, like, pay his bills,
but he can live.
He's living because of this.
I wanted to tell him, like, I booked my first job,
right, I booked...
There was a show called "Family Matters"
with Urkel, right? Everybody knows Urkel.
And I had, like, four lines.
I was a kid who brought a gun to school,
and they were trying to get me--
Don't I look thuggish?
Don't I look like a bad kid?
- And... - Also, who would say--
Also, who would say, "Get me Freddie Prinze Jr.
for the kid who comes to school with a gun"?
Yeah, right? That's the only role I book,
is the gangster, right?
Scooby Doo was way gangster.
So I booked this job, and I was crazy excited,
the audition was at Warner Brothers.
Forest Lawn is right behind Warner Brothers.
I drove straight there,
and I just had to say "Sorry,"
and I had to say "Thank you,"
and I had to get angry,
all in one conversation.
It was like, "Thank you, I love you, fuck you."
It was everything,
but it all came out, and it was just--
When you can sort of vomit emotion like that,
everything else starts to kind of mellow out,
and then when people tell you stories
about your dad...
fucking everything in L.A. but his wife,
it doesn't hurt as bad,
because you've kind of gone through way worse.
So you know, as far as...
My mom's relationship with it,
she has to believe what she has to believe in,
and I respect that,
and she very well could be right, you know,
but for me to get by,
and for me to accept
in any way, shape, or form
what kind of a man he was,
then I had to be okay with...
with how I perceived it and how I saw it.
When someone dies, the last thing
you think of is, "Did they do the dishes?"
You're like, "Oh, my God, I hope...
he had enough sex, I hope he was happy--" you know?
It's awful.
You know, once we started speaking
honestly about ourselves,
and having a point of view
and not just being, you know, a type of clown.
Once comics started to talk out loud
about their life and life around them,
people made this assumption, like, "Oh, they got--
They're all incredibly fucked up."
But I don't-- I think that's a mischaracterization.
You know, I...
I think that struggle is necessary,
but I don't think misery is necessary.
You know what's an interesting thing?
Maybe you have to be insecure to be funny.
Maybe that's part of it.
You don't have to be miserable.
But there has to be something wrong with you.
I don't think in theory
one needs to be miserable to be funny.
But I don't know anyone close to me
that's not miserable.
The people I know really well
that are the funniest are the most miserable.
I'm not miserable.
I think I'm just indifferent.
I'm miserable right now
because of what I'm going through with my finances,
and, at 58, I didn't want to be in this position,
and whoever said "money doesn't buy happiness,"
I hope you're fucking dead, 'cause you're an idiot.
'Cause you know what?
I'm only miserable
because I'm so depressed
because I'm working so hard for so little,
but there's a lot of people
doing a lot worse than I am, you know?
"At least you got your health."
Whatever Jewish idiot said that, you're wrong.
Health is good, money is good.
The combination is just great.
And I've talked about this on stage a lot.
I've suffered from depression.
Been on and off antidepressants for the last...
Probably ten years or so,
and at times I've been suicidal
and not because of comedy, but just, you know,
other pressures from the world,
and whatever, and I realized
that happiness isn't...
isn't all about stand-up comedy,
and I've only realized that just recently,
and people ask you in interviews, they go,
"How would you like to be remembered?"
And I've got to come to terms with--
I might not be remembered, and that doesn't matter.
The only thing I care about now
is how my son remembers me.
And if everyone else sorta liked me, that's all right,
but as long as he thinks I was a good guy, you know--
When my dad dies, I don't think
he was just a carpenter,
I don't think he's gonna be remembered
by the whole world,
but he'll be remembered by me.
And that's--
I'm working on making that more important
than being remembered as a great comedian.
Everyone's miserable, everyone has misery in their lives,
but really, you know, misery is just a form
of dissatisfaction, and so maybe--
You know, maybe comedy is really
just taking dissatisfaction and discomfort
and spinning it
in a way that helps you deal with it,
and then people relate to it.
Um, I think you at least have to know misery.
I don't think comedians corner the market
on loneliness and need for attention,
but I think they have to know it, certainly.
Yeah.
I think that's where it comes from.
Sort of a fear
and...
a protection of that fear.
To this day, I'm...
there's nowhere that I'm funnier
than in a doctor's office,
'cause I'm a little scared and a little--
I'm hilarious in a doctor's office.
I bartended for a long time.
Let me just tell you, the general public's
kinda miserable.
I don't think it's because--
I think we just have a faster track to misery,
and it's more available.
I mean, we walk into work,
our job,
and somebody goes, "You want a shot?"
Well, that doesn't happen at IBM.
You don't show up at 9:00 in the morning,
there's a guy with a bottle of Peach Schnapps.
"Hey, you in?"
So if you are leaning toward any bad habits,
this is the perfect lifestyle to engage in,
but again, rule follower.
Control, I'm never gonna--
I'm not shooting heroin with you
by the trash can at 9:00.
What, are you crazy?
I do try to, on some level,
even if I'm telling a joke about a gaping butthole,
I do try to have it colored by the fact
that I like people,
I enjoy being alive,
and, um...
Gratefully, you don't have a gaping butthole.
Yeah, not yet, you know?
You know, the self-loathing darkness
where you wake up 3:00 in the morning and kinda go--
but this is an old Steve Martin bit
where you just kind of, like, go in,
you sprinkle some water on your face,
and you look at yourself in the mirror, and you say...
"What is happening to me?!"
You know?
"Why am I in this hotel?"
By the way, I figured that out two-and-a-half years ago.
That's right. That would be...
54-and-a-half years of living in self-loathing darkness,
so you get past that,
and things seem to be a little bit better, don't they?
I had a panic attack on stage once that was terrifying,
because I did not know
there was such a thing as panic attacks.
The thought of having to be on stage
for another 50 minutes
and then two more hours after that
was unendurable,
and I walked offstage,
and I walked out of the club,
and the club owner was in the lobby,
and he looked at me, and he went,
"Who's on stage right now?"
I just went, "No one."
And I walked into the men's room,
and I just stood in the stall for a minute,
and it kinda passed.
Then I finally get to the right doctor,
who said,
"I think you might want to take a pill for this."
And he just--
"Yeah, panic disorder.
People have it."
My sort of hippy-dippy friends would say, like,
"You know, you're still feeling the anxiety,
you're just masking it with medication."
And I go, "Yes."
That's what it says on the label of the prescription, "masks."
In the winter, I still feel the cold.
I mask it with a coat.
Because I'm a coward.
I wrote "Swingers" after suffering from a breakup.
That aspect was autobiographical,
and through the experience of writing that thing
alone in my rented room,
I was pouring my heart and soul into this thing,
and then...
By the time I had to perform it,
I wasn't really connected with that pain anymore,
and then, by the time I showed it,
there was laughter and the opposite
of the feeling I felt in the breakup,
because I was now connected
with these thousands of people around the world,
and everybody who saw it or a screening I went to,
now I felt like I was part of a collective,
I felt like I was-- people understood me,
I understood them, and we shared a heart.
I've done a lot of plays in Midtown, Broadway and whatever,
and, like, I'll do the walk,
I'll do the 40-block walk, full talking to myself,
reliving shit that just happened,
having full conversations with people that I wanted to have,
"Fucker, why the fuck do you keep doing this?"
Something like that, you know,
you want to have that conversation, you don't,
you have it with the other guy, and you're like,
"I swear, tomorrow, I'm gonna say something."
It doesn't happen, but I--
I get it all out, like, in 40 blocks,
walking and talking.
Nobody fucking bothers me.
I think artists are, you know, brave people,
but we're fucked up.
Yes, there are...
really fucked-up people in show business.
The people that talk about
how fucked-up people are in show business,
have they met anyone that's not in show business?
The same pain,
the same suffering, the same angst,
the same tortures,
the same doubts,
the same misery are all there.
In show business,
you show what you're feeling.
So, yes, they show the angst,
but they're showing the angst of humanity,
the angst that we all share.
If you had a comic
that truly had experiences
that were outside of the realm
of the general humanity,
no one would go see them.
Right now, I'm still making the decision of,
am I a comedian?
I shuffle the job title
on the web with what I do first,
depending on what I'm doing.
And I'm a comedian, and I'm proud to be a comedian.
It took me a really long time
to take out the word "American"
and put "comedian."
Don't you take my truck, I'm a comedian.
You know, we'll do a montage at the end.
It can be viewed as questionable babysitting.
I'm in charge of these people,
but I shouldn't be.
But I am, and let's just hope it doesn't get weird.
To this day, I don't know what happened.
I don't. I don't. All of a sudden,
it went from them loving me to them hating me.
But maybe I'm not that funny, so I'm not that fucked-up.
That's the consolation.
The best type of conversation you'll have,
you're talking,
and someone's listening, right?
It's the narcissist fantasy.
Don't be-- don't ruin it for everybody.
With your feelings.
Exactly.
This whole thing about feelings, I just--
I couldn't absorb it.
Yeah.
Even though I had them.
I made a girl cry in college.
I feel bad.
I'm a horrible person. They hate me.
This is the end of my life and career.
I will never recover.
They will never like me again.
I'm stupid, I'm--
It's all of that put together.
I used to be a smart-ass in class,
and I'd get sent to the principal's office.
And now...
You get sent to the bank.
I get sent to the bank.
If the ego is making the decisions,
then you're never gonna be satisfied.
It's also hard to imagine
somebody...
anywhere near normal writing the great American novel,
you know, I think.
Exposing the absurdity of life, like,
its preposterous pointlessness.
Not just like, "Oh, it's a powerful drug,
and you can make a lot of people laugh,
and it feels great to make people laugh.
Comedy can save your fucking life.
I think artists are, you know, brave people,
but we're fucked up, and, like...
You know, it's the difference between,
like, us,
and the guy who, you know,
kills a whole bunch of people,
you know, is not that wide. It's very small.
I don't believe you have to be miserable to be funny,
but I do believe you have to be miserable
to be really funny.
I hate to say it, I really do,
I just think you're funnier when you're miserable.
I think you are, I think it's funny.
You laugh at how miserable you were,
but I think that's what makes you laugh,
'cause you're just going,
"This is awful, my life is awful."
And then you're like, "Wait, my life is awful,"
and you're like, Yeah, that was awful,
and that was bad.
And then you're, like, you're through
your whole Mead notebook of,
like, all these-- "Oh, my God, that was awful, too."
And you get excited how awful things were
because that feeds you, it feeds the beast.
So, sadly, I would--
I don't know, I think-- I think,
Yes, you have to be miserable to be funny.
But there's ways you can turn it on and off,
and the older you get, you'll figure
how to enjoy parts of your life.
Yeah, I wish I had a better answer.
So sad.
It's so true, oh, my God.
Cut, great.
Genius, perfect. Perfect.
What does everyone say? What does everyone say?