Comedian Brian Holtzman joins Jemele to talk about his new Netflix special, his time at The Comedy Store, and how he got into stand-up comedy. He also talks about his time working with Joe Rogan, and what it's like being a standup comedian in the 90s and early 2000s, and why he thinks it's a great time to be a comedian. And of course, he talks about a lot of other stuff too! Thanks to our sponsor, Caff Monster, and to everyone who joined us on our first ever live show at the Comedy Store. We hope you enjoy this episode, and we hope you have a great rest of the week! Thank you so much for being a part of this journey with us, and thank you to everyone else who has been with us along the way. We can't wait to do it again next week. -Joe Rogan and Jemele -Jemele Halpern -Caff -The Office -And we're Live! -and we're live! Thanks for tuning in, and thanks for supporting us, we appreciate you! Cheers, Joe, and God bless you, God bless! xoxo -Jon & Jerrod Jon & Jamey (and we'll see you next Monday! Love ya, Jerrod, Blessings, Cheers! -Jon and Jami and we'll See You Soon, EJ & Joe & JAMAR - And we'll Talkin' About It Soon, And We'll Talk About It, Thank You, Soon, and We'll See Ya, Thank you, Thanks, God Bless, Bye Bye, Bye, Love, See You, Bye Love, Love Ya, Love You, MRS. -PSP -YO -PSA - Jon & Gotta See Ya! -JAMAR & EJ - AND WE'LL SEE YOU SO MUCH, YA'LL, EYE! XOXO, PODCASTING, SONGS, ETC. -Jamey, SOTYO, JAMORO, ELLYANCHOR, EODY, JACOBYE, MOSCOYO & DADDY, KELLY, AND JOSEPH, JORDY, BOBBY, AND KAYLEE, AND MORE!
00:07:40.000You know, operated from such a place of just, like, it was so—it had to be honest to him, I think, and it just hadn't gone up in a while and was on stage and was just, like, in the room and just sat in it.
00:08:57.000You could tell that it wasn't structured, and some of it was really funny, and some of it kind of fell flat, and you could hear the clink of glasses and shit in the background.
00:09:11.000Richard Pryor back then, he was doing something that It's like he had figured out a thing that he could do that other people hadn't figured out and that thing was like just be Totally honest and also just explore ideas on stage in front of people like not even have it mapped out yet Just just fuck around and find what's funny And he'd be smoking cigarettes and just talking and he figured out a way to turn and then you would see it boiled in To like Richard Pryor live
00:09:41.000or live in the Sunset Strip or any of his specials you'd see it boiled down into that Yeah, yeah.
00:12:59.000I can watch it, you know, I can consume a high volume of it in a lot of cases.
00:13:10.000I've always been interested in whatever people are talking about.
00:13:14.000And it was just an interesting sampler of like, all right.
00:13:17.000What's fascinating about the story is the 15-minute blocks that you're seeing, these completely different viewpoints, 15-minute chunks.
00:13:26.000If you sit there for long enough, you sit there for a couple of hours, and you watch that many different people, you watch eight different people go up, it's very weird.
00:13:34.000Yeah, the strength of it, I think, for what stand-up is, especially right now, what it helps is it allows you to think of yourself in context.
00:13:48.000And that's more important now than ever, especially with stand-up.
00:13:54.000If you're on and you're competing against the 3,000 other specials that came out this week, It's in context of mass consumption.
00:14:07.000So if you're going up in the middle of a marathon show, you're going up in the OR in the middle of a show, and they saw eight comics before you, they'll see nine after you or whatever.
00:15:47.000Or if you're a character, that character needs to be Hammer the fuck down.
00:15:53.000Yeah, and who you are changes depending upon your environment.
00:15:56.000That's one of the things about the store.
00:15:58.000Like, since I've come back to the store, it's tightened me up.
00:16:01.000It's made me better coming back to the store.
00:16:03.000Because it's like being in that environment, being in that pressure cooker around all these other creative people and everybody's constantly getting after it.
00:25:21.000I remember one time, like, I was gonna do Letterman while Letterman was on Letterman, and I remember, like, sending a set in or whatever, and they responded, like, okay, you know, we could do it, but could...
00:25:37.000He'd do his jokes in a more traditional set-up, punchline format.
00:25:41.000And I remember just emailing back, like, I'll just do it when I'm famous.
00:25:49.000When I'm just not going to listen to this bullshit note.
00:25:52.000People, they change, that's the other thing.
00:25:55.000Again, compare yourself to a musician.
00:25:58.000Imagine you're a musician going on, and they're like, we like this song, but could the bridge come first?
00:27:09.000And I also want to be able to set them up.
00:27:11.000I want to be able to explain how I think about things so that by the time I get to something controversial, they already have a sense of how I approach things.
00:28:12.000It's perfect for it, and it translates very, very well.
00:28:17.000Well, when I watch those shows today, I'm like, why are they still a thing?
00:28:20.000When I see a late night show, and no disrespect to anybody who hosts a late night show, but to me, it's like they took a boat and tried to turn it into a plane.
00:28:30.000They're like, hey, it's 2018, but let's pretend it's not!
00:28:34.000We'll be right back with a commercial!
00:29:54.000Where it hits a wall, and what we're saying about comedy and what we're saying about a lot of things, is when a thing tries to be something that it's not.
00:30:03.000These late night shows, when they're just doing fun things that they think are fun and interesting, I love...
00:30:09.000You know, Kimmel always every year does like the parents that tell the kids that no Halloween, that they ate all the Halloween candy and the kids' reactions and stuff like that.
00:30:23.000But like when it, you know, when shows pretend to be, you know, 1989, it's just like when comedians pretend to be of a different era, pretend to, it just feels false.
00:30:35.000And I think that's what you check out.
00:32:26.000Well, I mean, you know, the unfortunate reality, or fortunate reality, I guess depends on, you know, what company you work for, is, I mean, that's, it's an advertiser's medium, right?
00:32:38.000And everything, they'll find a way to put the commercials, even with the internet, you know, like, YouTube becomes traditional television.
00:32:47.000The internet commercials are longer than the TV commercials.
00:34:26.000Because, I'm just saying, the reason it's hard to quantify is because it's like, it also is a thing that comes in phases or post-event, like, specific, like, depression.
00:35:21.00016.2 million adults in the United States, equaling 6.7% of all adults in the country, have experienced a major depressive episode in the last year.
00:35:29.00010.3 million U.S. adults experienced an episode that resulted in severe impairment in the last year.
00:37:31.000Some people's brains don't work right, and for whatever reason, whether it's nature or nurture, there's something going on that's real bad, and they're in a hole.
00:37:51.000The way he described it, it was like it was broken and I had to get it fixed.
00:37:54.000And he started off on medication, then weaned himself off on medication.
00:37:58.000But when he was on the medication, it's also when his career took off.
00:38:01.000And when his career took off, I mean, it alleviated a lot of the...
00:38:07.000What a lot of his issues were was also just like an unfulfilled life, frustration, expectation, unrealized, and then on top of that, compounded, there was like legit mental issues that were bothering him.
00:38:20.000I guess I was just unclear on what depression actually is.
00:38:24.000I'm like, because now that you say that stuff, I'm like, hmm, maybe I have felt that.
00:38:34.000But you also exercise a lot, and I think that probably helps.
00:38:38.000Yeah, I'm just souping myself up in my head and shit.
00:38:42.000Well, no, exercising just releases a lot of the bullshit that people carry around.
00:38:46.000A lot of what makes people feel terrible is that their body is fighting against their brain.
00:38:53.000Their body holds in so much tension and they're so fucked up and they never get an endorphin release and their body's like an overflowing battery, like oozing out of the sides.
00:39:40.000And also, what I think it does, one of the really good things that meditation does is it stops momentum.
00:39:44.000Because there's like a momentum of shitty thoughts and bad ideas and bad decisions and just anxiety and all these issues that could fucking just accumulate inside your consciousness.
00:39:55.000And they never, when unaddressed, they continue to like push at you from the back.
00:40:00.000And it's like you're just constantly in this state of momentum of all the bullshit that's going on.
00:40:04.000But if you have a time for real reflection and just pause, even if you're just concentrating only on your breath, it seems to stop that momentum and give you a chance at like a renewed perspective.
00:40:38.000So I went downstairs in my room and I meditated and I came back upstairs and I was like, he was sitting on the couch and I was like, I was like, Gerard, nigga.
00:41:09.000So when you do it, what's your process?
00:41:11.000How exactly do you practice TM? I sit there, cross my legs, in through the nose, out the mouth, in through the nose, out the mouth, until you get into the state.
00:41:23.000Dwight also, though, has the ability to completely clear his mind.
00:41:30.000He's one of those people that it takes me anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour to fall asleep.
00:41:36.000You know, like, even if tired, it's still like, alright, there's a moment.
00:41:40.000Jamar could immediately, like, immediately, just like, alright, being awake is over?
00:41:46.000Alright, and then just fall asleep, like, instantaneously.
00:41:49.000He can clear his head really quickly and, like, focus on one thing.
00:41:53.000You got a high level of, I don't give a fuck.
00:43:51.000You can also do that by just sitting there and just breathing and focusing on the breath, and then all of a sudden your mind starts going into an altered state, and then you'll start...
00:44:06.000I think exercise does that, especially cardio and especially yoga.
00:44:11.000Something about yoga classes that just forces you into this state of mind where you're only concentrating on the movements that you're supposed to do.
00:44:19.000So if you could clear your head and stay focused on the movements and not...
00:44:24.000Delve into, you know, your bank account, or your fucking credit card debt, or what's wrong with your car, or what other bullshit you have bouncing around your head.
00:44:31.000If you could just take the time to concentrate only on the yoga, it has this, like, cleansing effect.
00:44:37.000Yeah, it really makes you be like, hey man, fuck that shit.
00:45:09.000You know, like, if that's taken care of, usually it's like, oh, I don't, you know, there are things that are ongoing things to figure out, but, like, things that you could define as, like, a problem.
00:45:19.000And then just kind of Staying in that space of like, you know, control.
00:45:27.000Well, where there's like immediacy, like, you know, and when there are real problems, you know, a lot of times you handle it well.
00:45:37.000Like instinctually, the things like a lot of times people get calm and In, like, those intense situations, like, you know, like, they can handle, like, real problems.
00:45:48.000It's the anticipation of problems and the anticipation of solutions that that's what drives you crazy.
00:48:00.000Well, rewarded in the sense of like, you know, you get, you can get attention for, you can get attention for like, but I'm just saying by publicly airing, you know, a grievance about a project and I'm speaking especially specifically about how we respond to content is just like,
00:48:17.000by publicly saying this, you can speak to your respective group and you have an immediate reward for it.
00:48:27.000So it's like, you know, it's like, I don't even know if we're more sensitive.
00:48:30.000We're just more outspoken about, you know, things.
00:48:35.000Well, people are definitely more outraged.
00:50:14.000You try them, they stumble out, you gave it a shot, or you'll ad-lib something in the moment on stage, and even after you say it, you're like, what the fuck did I just say?
00:50:23.000I think there's some of that that people are trying to...
00:50:27.000Like I was reading this article the other day about some woman who was saying that yoga is supporting white supremacy.
00:56:41.000Like, and this fucking cunt, he goes over there, and they'll start talking about it like, this fucking dude, they'll literally say it in the same way you would say this fucking guy.
01:01:08.000If there's certain jobs where people have where they got off work and they went out with some co-workers and they told a dirty joke or started talking shit, that'll get back to human resources and they'll be fired.
01:01:20.000Bosses are now following their employees online and shit.
01:01:24.000Do you see that girl that got fired from NASA? Fucking hilarious.
01:01:31.000She's like, holy fuck, I got a job at NASA. And some guy tweeted her, he said, language.
01:01:35.000And she said, suck my dick and balls, I work at NASA. And he said, yeah, and I am one of the people that oversees something at NASA. And then that was it.
01:04:15.000And you could say, hey, man, they were probably psychologically distressed.
01:04:20.000They were probably dealing with the pressure of having come back from the moon and all this fame that they had never experienced their whole life.
01:04:57.000We probably lied about it, and we lie better than any other country on Earth, and I'm proud of that.
01:05:02.000There's a lot of weird shit with the video footage.
01:05:05.000There's a lot of footage where it looks like they're on wires, or they're dangling from wires, and they bounce back up from their feet in this weird way.
01:05:12.000It looks like they're being yanked up from the ground.
01:05:15.000There's a video where it looks like they're on trampolines.
01:05:18.000If you Google astronauts on trampolines...
01:07:02.000But the press conference is a strange issue.
01:07:04.000Yeah, it's the social aspect of it, because I won't begin to know how the flag is supposed to look and the waving and the shadows and the thing that a lot of people argue about.
01:08:54.000It was our pleasure to have participated in one great adventure.
01:09:01.000It's an adventure that took place not just in the month of July, But rather one that took place in the last decade.
01:09:13.000We all here and the people listening in today had the opportunity to share that adventure over its developing and unfolding in the past months and years.
01:09:29.000It's our privilege today to share with you Some of the details of that final month of July that was certainly the highlight for the three of us It
01:11:42.000The technology is proven and legitimate, and I don't think you could ever fake anything today like you could fake things in 1969. I think, if anything, for sure what they did is, it's been proven that they've faked some footage, for sure, some photographs.
01:12:03.000You recorded in a world where even the importance of syndication was known.
01:12:09.000I think they also lost the telemetry data, which is like the binary hard ones and zeros that show the distance between the Earth and lunar module at every step of the trip.
01:12:22.000But, you know, then again, you gotta realize, like, people die, and people are responsible for storage, and no one's paying attention, and there's funding, and their funding gets pulled, and there's plausible reasons for some of the fuck-ups.
01:14:56.000He was absolutely convinced that it was a hoax.
01:14:58.000What he was convinced was that there was a space race between us and Russia and that it was...
01:15:06.000It was essentially a militarized space race and what they were trying to do is prove military superiority.
01:15:11.000If you had the rockets that could get you to the moon, your technology was superior.
01:15:15.000And the way he framed it is like the United States had control over what was aired.
01:15:22.000They put it on television and no one foresaw the future.
01:15:26.000No one foresaw that one day you would be looking at these clips on YouTube and analyzing them and putting them in slow-mo.
01:15:32.000They didn't even think that that was going to be a thing.
01:15:34.000They thought they were going to show it on television and that would be it.
01:15:38.000Yeah, and they were going to show it in black and white and they were going to have it 3D projected so that you would project it on a screen and then people who were filming it would have to film the screen.
01:16:00.000Yeah, they broke it down so it looked more and more grainy and fake.
01:16:06.000If you were trying to do something that was not done to the technology of the day that would possibly obscure some fraud, they did it all those ways.
01:16:16.000There's so many things that they did In terms of conspiracies, it's a conspiracy theorist's wet dream.
01:16:26.000Because if it is a fake, it's the biggest fake of all time.
01:16:30.000And there's so many things that are squirrely about it.
01:17:09.000I'm thinking about, oh, that's three zeros.
01:17:14.000Because I was like, what map are you seeing?
01:17:17.000What's interesting is that no other human space mission, where a human's been a part of it since then, has ever gone more than 400 miles from the Earth's surface.
01:23:54.000There's also like photographs that are fucking wonky, lights that go at two different angles.
01:24:01.000And they say, well, that's possible due to, you know, uneven terrain and, you know, things reflecting off of things, all these different variables.
01:33:24.000There's also the difference in the autopsy.
01:33:27.000The autopsy in Dallas, the way they examined his wounds in Dallas versus the way they described him in Bethesda, Maryland, when they flew him to that hospital, completely different.
01:35:49.000Coupled with, it was right after like Christmas and the holidays, so I hadn't gone up for a few weeks.
01:35:55.000So being rusty, depressed at the Baltimore Comedy Factory, you know, is a combination that led to like, it almost, I remember experiencing it from up here.
01:37:41.000They're like, Rusty, where are you, Rusty?
01:37:43.000And then this guy, he's a firefighter, and he comes out, and he didn't even lose his house.
01:37:48.000He was just taking care of all these people that did lose their houses, and he built this house, and it was like his life savings, and his neighbor's house is gone, his house was spared, and he's just weeping.
01:38:01.000And then the director of entertainment, whatever it is for the college, comes in and goes, well, JB's not here yet, so I guess you'll just go on first.
01:38:30.000There's that moment, when you're a young comic, at the time I'd been doing comedy like four years, when I would go down with the ship four years in, there was no coming back.
01:38:40.000Like once I bombed, if I was doing pretty good and then I started bombing, there was no recovery.
01:39:25.000More than that, I'm actually more affected by...
01:39:29.000I remember starting out and going on to clubs and people, you know, the booker or whatever, likes to come in and give you the rundown of the room and whatever.
01:39:50.000Let it get in my head as I'm in my head.
01:39:53.000You don't want to hear, okay, there's a bachelor party in table two, and they're really rowdy, and we're going to try to talk to them first.
01:40:10.000The bachelor party, we've got it under control.
01:40:13.000They do it on, I mean, if you're doing press for certain things, like most things, they try and do like a pre-interview and it's all just these things that just rings out anything organic.
01:43:56.000If you are going to do it, like anything, if it is what you're choosing, it's just make sure that the articulation is yours and interesting.
01:44:10.000However you get into it or whatever inspired it or whatever, if you are doing it, do it.
01:44:16.000Do it at its highest level if you can.
01:44:19.000Yeah, it's just, I think, stand-up, like you were saying, it just doesn't get the respect that other art forms get.
01:44:26.000Because there's no, like, if you see someone play guitar, play the drums, or something like that, you don't have any illusion that you can go up and do exactly what they do.
01:44:33.000But a lot of people have the illusion in their mind that they can go on stage and be funny.
01:46:21.000I think when they changed out the improv and they swapped that lab for that back bar and they put that bar in there, it seemed like they removed a body part.
01:48:21.000That's part of the reason why it's interesting, because you're one of them, but it's also part of the reason why it's a fucking weird art form.
01:49:53.000I feel like there needs to be kind of this overhaul and even one in its presentation and two with the expectation of performer audience because it's a lot of like, I don't know, I'll go and I'll see a lot of like, you know, Trump stuff and a lot of things but it's like not like new perspective and it's like,
01:50:11.000you know, it's a lot of civil rights leaders And it's a lot of, you know, a lot of things.
01:50:17.000And, you know, and not even good civil rights leaders.
01:50:43.000This is the bubble where it is right now, right?
01:50:46.000If you go up and you, you know, speak for your group or you speak in this type of way, you can get rewarded for it and kind of these immediate rewards.
01:50:56.000But it really does kind of choke the art form.
01:51:00.000It chokes what's interesting about it.
01:51:02.000I think there's just so many people trying to stand out and it's so difficult to do that and they find these paths and one of those paths is to be someone who's like really moral and righteous and you know has something to say.
01:51:12.000But it's also under the illusion of being rebellious and edgy.
01:51:20.000It's under the illusion of these things because it's like When Dick Gregory said the things that he said, there was real danger.
01:51:30.000In a conservative country, there's real danger to a lot of things.
01:51:33.000He says, you get on stage and you're like, fuck Trump in Los Angeles in New York City.
01:51:39.000You're honing your skills and it's just like, oh, well, good for you.
01:51:43.000That unique perspective you bring about how this is the worst of times.
01:53:00.000It's what I was saying, what I like about even here, it's like, it's an art space that you have here where you can kind of create, like, in this immediate space and, like, exactly how you see it, it comes out in that way and you can record it and you capture it like that.
01:53:14.000And when your mind is in that space, you know, you need to only do things that it can be good at.
01:55:13.000I mean, this might be, in terms of, like, success to failure ratios, one of the most brutal art forms you could ever attempt to be a professional at.
01:56:00.000Kind of weird path, trajectory type of thing.
01:56:04.000I kind of was just on the side of it, I feel like, in this weird sense, and things kind of happened, and I kind of found an infrastructure that worked for me really quickly.
01:58:01.000That's why those, you know, the saddest comedians are the ones that they do stand-up for five years, they develop a half an hour, and it never changes.
02:00:06.000You know, those shows, those sitcoms, when they first started doing single-camera sitcoms, and they started doing them without an audience, people were like, what?