Joe Rogan Experience #1257 - Steve Sweeney
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 31 minutes
Words per Minute
180.81964
Summary
Comedian Jonathan Winters joins Jemele to discuss his early days in comedy and how he got his start as a stand-up comedian in the early days of his career. He also talks about his early run-ins with the law and the time he almost got into a fight with a man who stole one of his lines and threw it back in his face. And he tells the story of how he went from being a martial artist to becoming one of the most in-demand comedians of all time, and how it all started with an imposter on the set of Joe Rogan's show, The Office. And he talks about what it's like to open for B.B. King at the Sugar Shack in the late 60s and early 70s, and what it was like opening for the legendary rock and roll singer, B. B. King. Plus, he shares some of his favorite memories of growing up in Charlestown, Massachusetts, and some of the crazy things he did to get to where he is today. This episode is a must-listen for anyone who grew up in the 60s, 70s and 80s in the Boston area, or wants to know what it s like to be a comedian in Boston. Thanks to our sponsor, JCPenney! for sponsoring this episode. Thank you J.J.R. & Sons of Anarchy! We appreciate you, J.R., we really appreciate you! and we really do appreciate you. We really appreciate your support and your support. We appreciate the support. Thank you, we really really appreciate it. We can t do this. We love you. - Thank you so much, we can't do this without you, it means a lot. We're looking forward to seeing you back in the next episode. We'll see you back next week with more of you next week! -Jonathon Winters -Jemele J. R. Winters, J-R. and J-O.S. & J-E-J.O.K. J-VY.A.Y. XOXO, JCR Thank You, JJJ Thanks, JB & JB. & SAGA -EJ & J.M. & D-SZN -S.S -PJ. & P. O. & A.
Transcript
00:00:18.000
You know, movies, TV, all this stuff, stand-up.
00:00:29.000
Yeah, you've got fans, you know, that are like all these different ages and all different kinds of people.
00:00:38.000
One of the things that happened, you don't remember this, but you opened for me.
00:00:46.000
So people that want a little show business advice opened for me.
00:00:52.000
And then you get to go by me and I get to watch you guys become stars.
00:01:02.000
Some of the best stand-up comedy in the world is at Chinese restaurants in Saugus.
00:01:08.000
All those people that live there, they don't know how good they have it.
00:01:13.000
You and I have worked with guys that are like genius.
00:01:25.000
It's about going into these shitholes and, like, developing this extra skin.
00:01:30.000
You know, you're a martial artist and sort of you have kind of that mentality.
00:01:35.000
But, you know, when I started, it was like I came from, you know, I was an actor.
00:01:46.000
Paul Schofield and Laurence Olivier, you know, Rezonats and all this bullshit.
00:01:52.000
And I'd be playing at places like the Sugar Shack.
00:02:13.000
So in the back, I get heckled, my first heckler.
00:02:24.000
Yeah, and then I was doing, I will never forget this.
00:02:37.000
You know, it was like that Blues Brothers scene where they're throwing shit at the cage.
00:02:43.000
The bouncer, he says, you know, point to people and we'll throw them out.
00:02:47.000
So I'd point to them, but then they'd bring them out in the alley and beat the shit out of them, you know?
00:02:53.000
But I'm thinking because you're a martial artist, so I've kind of got this thing about fighting and growing up in Charlestown.
00:03:01.000
I think back on certain incidents when I was starting doing stand-up.
00:03:06.000
And I was at this place on Calm Ave, and this guy stole one of my lines.
00:03:17.000
And I'm thinking to myself, my friend says, I thought you wanted to be Jonathan Winters.
00:03:24.000
And then another time, we were at the Ground Round in Brighton.
00:03:31.000
So the guy on before me, the guy in the audience is throwing little ice things at him, right?
00:03:37.000
So I said, my opening line, usually you try to get the audience to like you, you know, or make them laugh or whatever.
00:03:47.000
So my opening line was like, the first motherfucker that throws something at me, I'm going to knock him out.
00:03:52.000
You know, you're not exactly setting the stage for a hilarious comedy.
00:04:02.000
People think, you know, when you do this for a while, you've never bombed.
00:04:14.000
And a guy comes up to me afterwards and he says...
00:04:18.000
He says, well, I could tell by your tone you're funny.
00:04:23.000
You know, but I'm doing shit like about subways and stuff.
00:04:33.000
There wasn't even a comedy club, so you just kind of did it.
00:04:40.000
I am now at that point, Joe, where people come up to me and they say, I'm so glad to see you.
00:04:47.000
I keep telling my husband, I'm telling you, he's not dead.
00:04:55.000
I don't remember the year, but I remember those- No, I don't remember.
00:05:08.000
I watched you one night at Nick's Comedy Stop kill so hard, I thought about quitting.
00:05:14.000
Because I'd only been doing comedy like a year, and I was like, fuck this.
00:05:29.000
I went to see that with Stephen Wright, and both of us walked out.
00:05:39.000
Well, you know, we got that feeling a lot in Boston.
00:05:42.000
And as a kid, starting out there, I tell everybody that I stumbled into the greatest comedy scene in the history of the known universe.
00:06:04.000
There was so many guys that were so fucking good.
00:06:08.000
There were so many guys that you would go, any night you would go and watch some of the best stand-up comedy on the planet.
00:06:18.000
To this day, people don't know who Mike Donovan is.
00:06:30.000
Yeah, he would do this long impression of John Rose.
00:06:33.000
But it's funny you say in your prime, because...
00:06:36.000
And I've talked to people who've been in it longer than me.
00:06:49.000
You just have to give the finger to the business because they're looking for the fat guy, the small guy, the black guy.
00:06:56.000
They're always looking for something other than what you are.
00:07:00.000
So you do what you do like you've done what you did.
00:07:03.000
Well, the business in terms of movies and television shows, yeah, they will try to lure you away.
00:07:10.000
But the business of stand-up comedy is really about what you do in front of that microphone and how the audience responds.
00:07:19.000
And she had a lot of TV credits, but she had no material.
00:07:27.000
It's like you're a trained fighter, you're a trained radio person.
00:07:30.000
You forget that in order to do it, you've developed a certain set of skills.
00:07:35.000
And like in Boston, they have a St. Patrick's Day breakfast where the politicians try to be funny.
00:07:45.000
And you forget, oh yeah, I do this all the time.
00:07:50.000
Before I came on this show, I talked to Nick DiPaolo, you know, your buddy.
00:07:56.000
And he says, well, Joe and I always talk about politics.
00:08:14.000
You know, where we are in this country now is like...
00:08:23.000
I don't like to not like someone because of what they believe.
00:08:30.000
I was thinking the other day with the Democrats.
00:08:35.000
But they've got the moderate lane, the progressive lane.
00:08:49.000
I fell into this because I kept thinking, I'm going to get an acting job and I won't do stand-up.
00:09:02.000
Kids will actually ask me for advice and I say, advice?
00:09:14.000
Don't ever work at a place that's named after the guy.
00:09:18.000
Like if it's Vinny's fucking pizza parlor or Joey's shithole or Bobby's money-making piece of shit.
00:09:25.000
When it's named after the guy, it's never enough.
00:09:50.000
And do you know that there isn't one inch of that building that I didn't do coke in?
00:09:59.000
I mean, it was like, I know that, you know, I lived in LA many years ago and it's like I'm driving around and say, oh, I know that spot.
00:10:07.000
So with Nick's, I know every spot in the building.
00:10:10.000
By the way, I didn't know that this was a camp area.
00:10:18.000
Well, they find these side streets where the cops won't kick them out.
00:10:40.000
One guy comes by with a Buffalo Bills jacket, and the other guy's in, you know, and they're just quietly talking to themselves.
00:10:54.000
Everybody is either really soft-spoken or I'm losing my fucking hearing.
00:11:00.000
I'm renting the car and the woman says, did you want a Honda?
00:11:08.000
In Boston, it'd be like, what do you want for a car?
00:11:17.000
Well, it's louder there and colder and people are angrier.
00:11:21.000
Out here, it's just, even the homeless people, they don't have it so rough.
00:11:24.000
If you're going to be a homeless person, this is the place to go.
00:11:31.000
I mean, the cold as it gets is like 40. That's as cold as it ever gets.
00:11:36.000
Yeah, but you know, if you're giving advice to homeless people, it's like I was sitting in Westwood in a Starbucks, right?
00:11:45.000
And the guy was just sitting there, you know, and all these people are having their lattes and shit, and he's just, you know, one of those crazy laughs.
00:11:57.000
Everybody's just going along with their conversation.
00:12:02.000
I don't know what to say about the homeless thing.
00:12:09.000
I myself was homeless when I was like 16. I was a hippie.
00:12:13.000
My father passed away when I was 15. It was a different time.
00:12:22.000
It's different than being homeless, but a couple of years.
00:12:30.000
I was lying, I was downstairs in this guy's house and I overheard his girlfriend saying, no, he was saying to his girlfriend, I don't know, I keep asking the guy to leave.
00:12:43.000
But, you know, I was, you know, here's what happened to me, Joe.
00:12:52.000
So I wanted to be Jack Kerouac and I wanted to be a writer.
00:12:55.000
So I did everything that Kerouac did, except write.
00:13:00.000
You know, I was living in YMCAs and drinking the wine and the whole thing.
00:13:07.000
Was it one of those things like, eventually you'll start writing?
00:13:21.000
But we did this movie, which I'd like to mention.
00:13:34.000
It's going to be the middle of March, but they can pre-order it.
00:13:47.000
I wanted to be able to get guys who I knew were tremendously talented.
00:14:02.000
It's very, like, demeaning sometimes, you know, for a guy who's really good at what he does and somebody's, like, texting and, you know, all this bullshit.
00:14:12.000
Like, I had a woman, you know, usually I'm, like, okay about it.
00:14:17.000
You know, I say, okay, listen, you're putting us out of work, right?
00:14:20.000
Like, in the future, I'll text you a joke, then you text back LOL. You know, silly little shit.
00:14:27.000
But I had one woman, and she's, the arrogance, you know, and it was a benefit, too, and she's doing this, and she said, it's okay, I can multitask.
00:14:38.000
So when I stick it up your ass, you're still going to be able to talk and everything?
00:14:43.000
So I see guys like Stephen Wright, who's in the movie, Nick DiPaolo, Bobby Slayton, Jonathan Katz, you know, all different styles of comedy, Lenny Clark and Tony V and Frank Santorelli.
00:15:00.000
Get in something where we could really work, you know?
00:15:04.000
They're all in the movie, and it was a fantastic experience.
00:15:11.000
It's the first time I've produced a movie, which is really hard.
00:15:19.000
No, I guess it's a comedy, but it has its moments.
00:15:23.000
The HBO, maybe, or Showtime, or some company comes to town...
00:15:32.000
But they say the characters, they're too local.
00:15:39.000
So I play five different parts, six different parts.
00:15:42.000
Like a Peter Sellers kind of thing from Doctor Strange.
00:15:53.000
But I had just come off the equalizer with Denzel Washington.
00:15:58.000
And that was an interesting experience because, like, I got this beard, you know, and the director who did training day, he said to me, You know, you gotta shave your beard.
00:16:11.000
And I said, listen man, I saw my face 25 years ago.
00:16:23.000
Then he told me how much money I was gonna make.
00:16:25.000
I said, would you like me to shave my balls too?
00:16:31.000
So my scene, if you haven't seen it, Ben Stiller's thing's caught in the zipper.
00:16:40.000
I said, you know, I don't have to grab his crotch, right?
00:16:45.000
I said, I don't have anything against it, but I just can't do it.
00:16:50.000
Then he told me how much money I was going to make.
00:16:57.000
Do you really feel like it's demeaning working clubs?
00:17:03.000
I mean, out here, of course, we do the Comedy Store all the time.
00:17:21.000
But when I'm driving to fucking East Methuen Elks Club...
00:17:28.000
I get a fucking depression you wouldn't believe.
00:17:43.000
You know what I think shifts is you stop drinking.
00:17:53.000
Yeah, I say to people, if I kept drinking, my career would be through the roof, you know?
00:18:08.000
I'm just giving you the other side of the story, because...
00:18:12.000
You know, people do get into this and they don't have an idea of what the life is like.
00:18:19.000
Like a lot of my friends are now doing cruise ships.
00:18:25.000
And if you eat shit on a cruise ship, you're stuck with those people for seven days.
00:18:30.000
And they keep coming up to you, you were awful.
00:18:50.000
Then when we're 150 miles out in the shark-infested water, they scoop me up, tell a few stupid jokes, then they throw me overboard.
00:18:57.000
You know, I got fired from a cruise ship For the weirdest, for religious joke.
00:19:05.000
And, you know, I said this dumb joke about Mitt Romney.
00:19:09.000
I like Mitt Romney because it's hard being a Mormon in Massachusetts.
00:19:26.000
I never fit in, anyway, with those cruise ships.
00:19:29.000
It's really good if you are an active alcoholic.
00:19:39.000
The lunch buffet, the breakfast buffet, the midnight buffet.
00:19:43.000
I know, it's like you go on, you look like a normal human being.
00:19:54.000
It's like, I love your warehouse here and everything.
00:20:02.000
And these cruise ships, you can't even go to the pool without hearing 80s disco.
00:20:09.000
If you're not having a good time, there's something fucked up about you.
00:20:17.000
Give people something to fill their time with when they're stuck on a floating vessel.
00:20:29.000
I probably overstated the other one, but I'll tell you what does shift is when people are there to see you.
00:20:38.000
That's a nice thing because then you're actually able to make people feel good and in service.
00:20:44.000
But I've always had the same problem, Joe, is when people try to help you by heckling or whatever, and they think, you know, this is their help or whatever.
00:20:58.000
You feel that temper come up when it comes up quick, and you've got to contain it and react.
00:21:06.000
But in real life, I wouldn't want to know those people.
00:21:13.000
Yeah, and I just feel like, you know, you prepare this material and you've worked on it.
00:21:25.000
You know, so, I mean, it's just you want to be realistic.
00:21:29.000
Like when somebody's kid asks you, you know, what is it like, you know?
00:21:35.000
You know what an audience I hate is an open mic audience.
00:21:40.000
Because the other comedians, they're really tense.
00:21:46.000
Because they're thinking it's like an audition.
00:21:54.000
I remember Teddy Bergeron going up an open mic night.
00:21:56.000
There's another one I wanted to stop doing comedy.
00:22:01.000
When I first started in 1988. The first night I ever went on.
00:22:07.000
And Teddy went on and did a set and I was like, good lord.
00:22:10.000
His fucking timing, his material, everything was so sharp and so good.
00:22:19.000
So that was a thing about open mic nights in Boston.
00:22:24.000
They'd stop in and let you know how it really should be going.
00:22:27.000
Well, I was at the comedy store when Richard Pryor was working shit out.
00:22:43.000
The best part about being in this business, for me, is the people that I've worked with.
00:22:50.000
Just meeting them and seeing them and seeing people great at what they do.
00:22:55.000
I'm sure you feel that way with MMA or whatever.
00:23:00.000
You know, I mean, it's been amazing watching people develop their acts and just to know that that's a process that we all have to go through.
00:23:09.000
You know, the process of creating material, it never gets any easier.
00:23:15.000
I mean, to this day, when you're working out new material, it's probably weird, right?
00:23:22.000
I'm at that point where it just sort of, events write it.
00:23:33.000
Does this sound like a bitch session right now?
00:23:38.000
What I don't like is, it's Trump all day, and then all the late night shows, it's more Trump.
00:23:47.000
Well, that's what they think people want to hear.
00:23:55.000
Unless you've got something really funny to say.
00:24:03.000
You don't hear Stormy Daniels is doing stand-up now?
00:24:20.000
I think it was Richard Lewis and Dennis Miller and a couple of other guys came through Knicks.
00:24:56.000
In all fairness, what I used to see, and I saw this many times at Knicks, was some poor fuck who had a couple of TV credits, who thought it was hot shit, and they would go on, and they would headline at Knicks, and they would stack the deck,
00:25:14.000
It was you, and Lenny, and fucking Knox, and all these savages would go up, and Boston-style comedy where there's no breaks.
00:25:27.000
There's a style of comedy like a, hey, I know you worked all day.
00:25:30.000
You don't want to hear anybody bullshitting up here.
00:25:32.000
Everybody talks fast and they're fucking funny.
00:25:36.000
And then these poor bastards would go up after them.
00:25:38.000
And just these people with their TV credits, you would see them just be, within five minutes they'd be lost.
00:25:50.000
They would see three world-class headliners do 15 minutes in front of them.
00:26:01.000
You know, he had been up for a few days, obviously.
00:26:20.000
But I said, Sam, this isn't L.A. These guys, Joey the Job and Billy the Frog, you know what I mean?
00:26:33.000
And I said, Sam, I'm telling you, these are the wrong guys to piss off.
00:26:46.000
Well, not only that, they don't want to be fucked with.
00:26:50.000
Boston is some of the weirdest people in terms of the way the rest of the world works.
00:26:57.000
There's a lot of people that are ready to fight.
00:27:09.000
It's one of the last places, when we used to tour there.
00:27:17.000
Like, me and him, we were leaving Faneuil Hall once, and there was a fucking brawl breaking out in front of this McDonald's.
00:27:23.000
And he's like, you fucking people are savages here.
00:27:26.000
I'm like, I'm telling you, it's a different kind of human.
00:27:34.000
Everybody's ready to fight, and everyone's drunk.
00:27:37.000
Well, you know, I grew up in Charlestown, right?
00:27:41.000
They did a movie about the town and all that bullshit.
00:27:44.000
It's a bullshit movie, but anyway, I grew up over there.
00:27:49.000
And you didn't have to win, but you had a fight.
00:27:58.000
There was a lot of draws because they break it up right away.
00:28:06.000
One time I'm in the projects, this kid Davey Ladder, he did the one thing you're not supposed to do.
00:28:15.000
And then everybody jumped and beat the shit out of him.
00:28:19.000
The one thing about kicking people in the balls, too, don't have a mess.
00:28:26.000
It doesn't work as good as people think it does.
00:28:36.000
I wanted to fight as an amateur, like in martial arts tournaments, because I was scared of street fights.
00:28:56.000
Do you remember that day when you were in grammar school?
00:29:03.000
So from 8.30 in the morning till 3 in the afternoon.
00:29:10.000
And then you're in the schoolyard and they're all circling around you, you know, and it's this whole thing.
00:29:15.000
But my father used to train fighters, boxers, over at the New Garden gym.
00:29:21.000
And me and my brother, we would get into terrible fights.
00:29:29.000
It just gives us these big enormous freaking gloves.
00:29:41.000
Or maybe he wanted us to beat the shit out of each other.
00:29:47.000
Maybe you want to just figure it out on your own.
00:29:50.000
Or, you know, I remember coming back and this kid, he beat the shit out of me, Bobby Buckley.
00:29:59.000
And my father said, what are you doing at home?
00:30:08.000
There's a lot of different ways to be in Charlestown growing up.
00:30:12.000
I mean, I grew up with some guys that were unbelievable.
00:30:17.000
There's a whole moral thing, maybe, or a social thing about, say, robbing a bank.
00:30:22.000
I mean, would that ever freaking cross your mind?
00:30:27.000
That's one thing that is true about that movie, The Town.
00:30:29.000
But what I was in awe of, people that would do it.
00:30:38.000
This friend of mine, Joey Rocco, who's no longer with us.
00:30:45.000
So I see him up there, and he's got like his lunch.
00:31:00.000
I was waiting to rob Crimson Travel, and I had my gun there, and I was interrupting his work.
00:31:13.000
I was like practically a standing ovation, whatever.
00:31:29.000
I was like, wow, there's got to be a lot of money in here.
00:31:32.000
I said, you think I'm here to case the joint for you?
00:31:40.000
Part of the thing about Charlestown growing up was you had a shoplift.
00:31:49.000
You probably were terrified, right, of getting caught?
00:31:59.000
But anyway, there was a department store called Jordan Marsh.
00:32:12.000
So we've just, you know, stolen a football, right?
00:32:22.000
This other kid says to me, pick up the end of this canoe.
00:32:31.000
So we're walking down Washington Street in Boston with a canoe, right?
00:32:34.000
Now, I don't know where you're from, but it's not a big item in Charlestown.
00:33:13.000
They've got this part of Boston called the Seaport.
00:33:19.000
There's no kids, there's no neighborhoods, there's no characters.
00:33:40.000
Yeah, but there's normal neighborhoods in LA, like around here.
00:33:44.000
Like Woodland Hills, like you wander around West Hills, like, yeah, Studio City.
00:33:57.000
I was in Portland, Oregon, and there was a whole city of homeless people.
00:34:14.000
There's thousands of homeless people wandering through the streets.
00:34:24.000
We would film it at these abandoned warehouses.
00:34:27.000
They would rent them out, and we'd throw people off the roof and shit.
00:34:31.000
And there was this one area where you would go...
00:34:36.000
Where, and I'm not exaggerating, there might be a thousand people on this block like a concert just let out.
00:34:42.000
Like they were having a homeless concert and they're all just wandering around.
00:34:46.000
There's needles everywhere and tents and garbage in the streets and people just shuffling around, walking back and forth.
00:34:53.000
So I guess there's some homeless centers where people can go and get food and things and shelter.
00:35:09.000
You know, every city I go to, I say, wow, it seems like there's more and more homeless people.
00:35:15.000
And other people are saying, oh, let's go to the Freedom Trail.
00:35:24.000
San Francisco has an app where you can find where the people are shitting.
00:35:32.000
There's so many people shitting in San Francisco on the street.
00:35:36.000
My friend Jake Shields got a photo of this guy taking his shit right in front of him.
00:35:41.000
Just shit spraying out of his ass right into the street.
00:35:53.000
The person with the app or the guy taking a dump?
00:35:56.000
Well, I think there's a certain open-mindedness that San Francisco has.
00:35:59.000
A lot of very progressive, open-minded people, which is good, but the problem is it opens the door for some ridiculous stuff, like people shitting on the street.
00:36:18.000
That's a dark puddle of shit where so many people are shitting on the street in that area.
00:36:35.000
That reminds me of the parades when they used to have the horses.
00:36:40.000
Are you going to give these people a place to live?
00:36:47.000
That's what people don't understand about a lot of these folks.
00:36:56.000
And if they don't want to be on medication, they don't have anywhere to turn, they don't have anywhere to go, they're going to stay there.
00:37:06.000
And I don't know if they could put up porta-potties and say for homeless folks only.
00:37:11.000
We're not going to solve that on the Joe Rogan show.
00:37:18.000
I was thinking to myself, you just, you know, just shit in your pants.
00:37:25.000
What else is the problem that we have in this country?
00:37:30.000
Why is everybody so pissed off in this country?
00:37:37.000
There's so much going well in terms of the economy, in terms of safety, in terms of that.
00:37:42.000
So people are focusing on other things to be mad at.
00:37:45.000
Moving away from war to, you know, like, you know, when you don't have to worry about as much violence, people concentrate on microaggressions.
00:37:56.000
There's definitely problems in this country, for sure.
00:37:59.000
But I think that part of the outrage is that people are, it's recreational.
00:38:03.000
They're looking to be outraged about things, because there's no real problems.
00:38:08.000
When there's real problems, people focus on, you know, you have to really worry about violence, or you have to really worry about health.
00:38:19.000
People are only happy if they have a certain amount of adversity that they have to deal with.
00:38:24.000
When there's less and less adversity, I find that people become more and more outraged.
00:38:31.000
Or they're denying that people should be allowed to just fuck up and make some mistakes here and there.
00:38:36.000
They concentrate on those mistakes like it's the end of the world.
00:38:39.000
This person should be ostracized from society and kicked out and this is the end.
00:38:46.000
If you get in a discussion with somebody you agree with, you still end up being pissed off because you're pissed off at the other side.
00:38:53.000
Or the other political thing is you're angry at each other for different points of view.
00:38:59.000
But I always think to myself, as I'm sure you do, It's an amazing place to be.
00:39:19.000
My opinion is to develop whatever talents you have and then share it.
00:39:37.000
What I don't like is when we let other things get between us as human beings.
00:39:47.000
Outside of rare exceptions, a Buddhist country is never going to invade another country because the whole principle is mindfulness.
00:39:57.000
So you don't have to push your beliefs on other people.
00:40:01.000
Like, I have a lot of friends who become Christians, which is great for them.
00:40:14.000
You know, how the fuck are you going to answer that?
00:40:23.000
It's like one of those unanswerable things, you know?
00:40:26.000
Well, it's also a thing where people can hold over you.
00:40:28.000
Muslims, Christians, it seems like they believe that, you know, people have to hear this great message, and if they don't hear it, they shove it down your fucking throat.
00:40:40.000
I think half of them don't even think you have to hear it.
00:40:44.000
They've accepted Jesus into their life, and you haven't, so they win.
00:40:50.000
I mean, you see so many hypocritical Christians that don't really follow, turn the other cheek.
00:40:57.000
They don't really treat everyone as if it's their brother.
00:41:06.000
That's because that standard is like, you're going to be Jesus?
00:41:18.000
I'm sure someone can, but most of the people that are proselytizing aren't.
00:41:23.000
No, people that processize anything, it's like, it's very, you know, it's like, what?
00:41:37.000
We used to talk about, it's like when you try to get people to do things, they're less likely to do those things.
00:41:42.000
As soon as you are angry at them that they're not doing it, they're going to go the other way.
00:41:48.000
Well, it's just like if somebody wants to get sober, right?
00:42:03.000
So if they're ready, everything you say, you're like...
00:42:11.000
If they're not ready, it doesn't matter what you say.
00:42:21.000
I've been in the field of substance abuse for a while.
00:42:28.000
It's not, you know, you don't make any money, but...
00:42:49.000
No, and I take the summers off too because it's intense.
00:42:56.000
You know, I had one guy, he came in, and you do divide people ethnically.
00:43:02.000
White guy, but 6'6", big fucking, you know, he did state time, he was all jacked, and he was wired, and he started complaining about the place.
00:43:17.000
You know like that guy Haas you had on your show?
00:43:22.000
It's just you breathe in four, you hold it four, you let it out.
00:43:28.000
So anyway, this guy, I said, hey, this place isn't a hotel.
00:43:53.000
So I said, so you guys pray like five times a day.
00:44:00.000
He says, the guy said, well, if I'm doing a heist in the afternoon, you know, I'm going to miss that prayer.
00:44:12.000
The guy, the big giant guy that was angry, did he have a certain amount of time before he got out?
00:44:31.000
Prison society is very polite because every little thing, just picture, you're trapped with all these other guys.
00:44:42.000
But every little thing is picked up on and reacted to.
00:44:46.000
It's like that scene in Heat between De Niro and Pacino where they're just reacting to each other.
00:44:54.000
I pass it because at any minute, that's what I try to teach.
00:45:03.000
You're dealing with a bunch of very impulsive people that also have a very short fuse.
00:45:12.000
So what I say to them is I have the same thing, but it's not through violence.
00:45:31.000
Rather than going up in your mind, take that breath.
00:45:36.000
And you know, like when something's happening, like a car crash or something, first impulse is, hold your breath.
00:45:46.000
I mean, a lot of traditions have this, you know, Tai Chi, you know, pranayama and yoga.
00:45:55.000
When Wim Hof teaches it, you know, if you follow those methods, you can really change your physiological state.
00:46:07.000
You know the thing that I don't buy, though, is that fucking cold water.
00:46:29.000
You know, I think two of the most boring subjects on earth are like how cold it is and how wonderful the weather is out here.
00:46:38.000
And then the other one is how someone lost weight.
00:46:41.000
You know, I look at them like, what makes you think I give a fuck how you lost this weight?
00:46:45.000
And then they'll ask me how somebody else lost weight, like Frank Santorelli lost weight.
00:46:50.000
And he wanted to tell me, Frank, we have to talk about something with more substance.
00:46:56.000
And then people will say to me, how did Lenny Clark lose weight?
00:47:00.000
It's like, I don't give a shit how he lost weight.
00:47:08.000
The good thing about cold weather, though, is it teaches people character.
00:47:11.000
The people out here that have never had to deal with an earthquake, they don't know any weather-related, nature-related hazards.
00:47:19.000
If you stay here, it just stays warm, and then it gets a little cool, and then it stays warm.
00:47:30.000
Trying to get sitcoms and never getting anything.
00:47:35.000
And I was staying in one of these corporate apartments.
00:47:42.000
And the guy next door was from Jamaica and he was on the phone all fucking night.
00:47:46.000
He said, this is the only time I can talk to her.
00:48:01.000
I've been here more than anywhere else in my life.
00:48:10.000
From, I guess, 13 to, yeah, 13 to 14. I lived there for a year, and then I lived in Newton from 14 to 20. And then I lived in Revere, and I lived in Saugus for a while.
00:48:34.000
Well, it's just what we were just talking about.
00:48:45.000
Well, you had Tyson on, and it was interesting that he didn't want to go back to it.
00:48:50.000
Do you know Marvin Hagler has the same problem?
00:48:53.000
Well, he was the only guy that ever just quit at the time.
00:48:58.000
Because that thing comes up in him where he wants to do it again.
00:49:09.000
I always looked up to him when I was fighting because I remember the discipline that that guy had.
00:49:47.000
When you think about, like, most boxers, they didn't have that kind of a physique.
00:49:52.000
His physique was, like, almost like a gymnast, you know, when he was in his prime.
00:49:59.000
And then beat the fuck out of everybody and then lost that one very controversial fight.
00:50:13.000
Apparently, I mean, I've never seen an Italian movie with marvelous Marvin Hagler in it.
00:50:25.000
The rumor was always that he threw the fight with Leonard, that he could have KO'd Leonard, but all he had to do was let Leonard go to a decision, he would lose that decision.
00:50:37.000
They'd pay him a boatload of cash, and he goes to Italy.
00:50:50.000
Oh, that's a long time ago because he looks really young back then.
00:50:59.000
Well, you know, they made all those spaghetti westerns with Clint Eastwood.
00:51:15.000
Well, he's still jacked in that movie, so he must have been doing some kind of exercising.
00:51:26.000
So, Indio, it looks like, oh, this is so hilarious.
00:51:32.000
Now, you know, when you do a movie and the guy hits you, you're supposed to move your head so that he's not actually hitting you.
00:51:47.000
I did a movie in Boston called Southie where the guy throws me in a dumpster and kills me, right?
00:51:55.000
And the guy just got out of Walpole, the state penitentiary.
00:52:00.000
I'm not going to mention his name, but he's the director now out here, as a matter of fact.
00:52:03.000
I said, hey, do you know this is a fucking movie?
00:52:06.000
You know, because he's firing the shot, the starter's pistol, and he kept throwing me over.
00:52:16.000
This one was 1989. 1989. So, 1989 was probably just a few years after he retired.
00:52:21.000
I feel like he retired somewhere around 86, 87. When did he fight Leonard?
00:52:31.000
We used to watch, remember you'd go to see closed circuit fights?
00:52:35.000
We'd go to a theater and you'd watch it on a big screen, closed circuit.
00:52:37.000
I can't tell you how many, I got so ripped off because you had Tyson on.
00:52:42.000
I remember driving, I was out here to go to this big fight, 50 bucks and I walked in and Tyson knocked him out in the first round.
00:52:51.000
People were trying to figure out if it was worth it.
00:53:11.000
I remember seeing Marvin with hair at the gardens.
00:53:19.000
He had an extra inch of skull or something they were saying.
00:53:26.000
They said he was almost like built with headgear.
00:53:35.000
Mugabe, he hit Marvin Haggard with an uppercut and snapped his head back.
00:53:39.000
And this is an uppercut that he was knocking everybody out.
00:53:45.000
He said the fight only started when he started to bleed.
00:53:48.000
I think Juan Roaldan was the only guy that ever knocked Marvin down, but it wasn't a real knockdown.
00:53:53.000
It was a trip, and they counted it as a knockdown.
00:53:58.000
Look at how inside, look at how he gets inside.
00:54:09.000
Like you would hit them and they would go flying, but not Marvin.
00:54:12.000
Marvin stood right in front of him and eventually KO'd him.
00:54:17.000
Once he realized that this motherfucker could stand right in front of him and beat the shit out of him.
00:54:25.000
Hey, now that we have a break in the action, I'd like to plug my movie, Sweeney Killing Sweeney.
00:54:42.000
But that guy, Marvin Haggard, was to me, he was the epitome of discipline.
00:55:00.000
And to this day, I saw him in an interview recently.
00:55:05.000
I had some chowder with him at the Prudential Center.
00:55:14.000
Yeah, like no brain damage, no slurring of the words.
00:55:20.000
When a fighter can figure out how to get out before all that stuff hits, that's amazing.
00:55:25.000
They feel like no one else should tell them when to quit.
00:55:35.000
Because I think that I read he was fighting at 57 in Russia or something.
00:55:41.000
I think he was 62. I think he was 62 when he had his last fight.
00:55:48.000
It looked like maybe Mickey thought it was real and the gentleman he was fighting...
00:55:58.000
I believe he was 62 or 63 when he hit his last altercation inside the ropes.
00:56:03.000
You know, boxing gyms, the old ones, were fun to hang around.
00:56:07.000
I remember I was sitting there with these five guys and we were talking about some election.
00:56:16.000
And the guy said, do you realize that we're all convicted felons?
00:56:20.000
Like, why are you talking to us about who to vote for?
00:56:31.000
Looking good for 65. Looks like he's at some sort of a homeless shelter or something.
00:56:41.000
I just saw something with him and he was walking a fashion show.
00:57:00.000
Like, one of the things that he did that was probably very questionable was when he was at the height of his movie career, he decided to stop and become a professional boxer.
00:57:08.000
But I think he was a fighter before he was an actor.
00:57:13.000
I think he kind of felt like acting was fake and that he needed something real in his life so he was going to have some professional fights, but...
00:57:21.000
Apparently, that's why he started getting all that plastic surgery.
00:57:38.000
I didn't find out about MMA until I... What's that like, being in the ring?
00:57:44.000
The thing about it, too, is there's no money in it.
00:57:46.000
You're fighting for free, and you're training for months or weeks or however long it is that you have.
00:58:09.000
Unless you're doing it professionally, you gotta know when to stop.
00:58:25.000
Boston fighters, there's not a lot of technical sparring.
00:58:30.000
When you technically spar with somebody, if you hit them, you hit them like this.
00:58:35.000
You tap each other so you know where you're making mistakes.
00:58:45.000
You know what's like that, that I still go to, that I love, is the golden gloves.
00:58:59.000
You know what's amazing is that this friend of mine, Jimmy Farrell, had a gym in Quincy.
00:59:05.000
And I look at these guys and I say, wow, this guy's amazing.
00:59:09.000
He said, that guy's record is five wins and 13 losses.
00:59:23.000
Like, a lot of fighters are very impulsive people, so they're often inconsistent.
00:59:27.000
Like, they'll get in shape for a few fights, and then a few other fights they'll fuck off, they drink too much, they party, and then they go in the ring and they lose, and they'll lose a close decision, or they'll lose a war.
00:59:42.000
My favorite fight ever, from a boxing point of view, was Ali and Frazier.
00:59:50.000
Because, well, for one thing, it was a fight to the death.
00:59:57.000
But Joe Frazier was an inside fighter, and he was so low.
01:00:01.000
And then Ali would stay away from him and just jab, and it was just a beautiful exhibition of Fighting styles.
01:00:09.000
Do you think there's anybody listening to this that is interested in this shit?
01:00:15.000
The left hook that Joe Frazier dropped Muhammad Ali with.
01:00:19.000
The left hook Joe Frazier dropped Muhammad Ali with when he won the title.
01:00:25.000
And that was like, this is one of the greatest punches of all time.
01:00:30.000
Yeah, I mean, just swung that wild left hook and clipped him right on the chin and dropped him.
01:00:35.000
It's one of the most iconic photos of all time.
01:00:37.000
It's Joe Frazier leaping through the air, landing that left hook on the jaw of Ali and Ali going down.
01:01:01.000
His father was like a sharecropper, and he got involved in gangs and all this.
01:01:18.000
I think he ended his career as like a bouncer in Vegas.
01:01:22.000
You know, like a doorman or something like that at a casino.
01:01:25.000
But one of those guys, like Joe Louis, whatever.
01:01:33.000
Did you ever watch that fight with him and Floyd Patterson?
01:01:42.000
But I remember when, I'm old enough to remember when Cassius Clay beat Sonny Liston.
01:01:49.000
That was another fight where a lot of people thought it was fixed.
01:01:59.000
You could see the punch, but he called it an anchor punch.
01:02:03.000
Because it's like, as Liston was coming forward, he dropped it down on him like that.
01:02:12.000
The question was whether or not he decided to stay down once he got hit.
01:02:17.000
If you watch it, it just doesn't look realistic.
01:02:20.000
Like, if you watch when he goes down, the way he went down seemed maybe legit, but the way he stumbled around, he didn't stumble around like a guy whose central nervous system got jacked.
01:02:44.000
The question was whether that was enough to take him out.
01:02:50.000
See if you can find the knockout, Jamie, because what's crazy about it wasn't him dropping him, because I think that was legit.
01:02:58.000
What's crazy was how afterwards he stumbled around like he couldn't move, like he couldn't get up.
01:03:09.000
I don't know if they're going to show the actual thing.
01:03:24.000
He goes down, and he just sort of laid down on his back.
01:03:29.000
And then he kind of stumbled around and acted like he couldn't get up.
01:03:36.000
And people who say it's not, they've never seen people get KO'd.
01:03:40.000
Because people get KO'd in all sorts of weird ways.
01:03:44.000
A human being getting punched in the face, weird shit happens.
01:03:52.000
People get touched with a jab sometimes when they go out.
01:03:57.000
And also sometimes, here it is, it's right here.
01:04:00.000
Also sometimes it's weird because you might have gotten hurt real bad in training.
01:04:05.000
So a lot of guys come into these fights and they're already injured.
01:04:24.000
That seemed like he decided to stumble and go down.
01:04:35.000
And so the referee was Jersey Joe Walcott, who's a very famous champion of his own.
01:05:18.000
Billy Collins Jr. No, he took all the padding out of his gloves.
01:05:22.000
Back in the day, they used to use horse hair with the gloves, and you could put a little hole in the gloves and pull the padding out.
01:05:32.000
Panama Lewis was his trainer, and Panama Lewis was also the same guy that gave Aaron Pryor that little jab of cocaine right before he knocked out Alexis Arguello.
01:05:45.000
He said, give me the other bottle, the one that I prepared.
01:05:47.000
He gives it to Aaron Pryor, and then Aaron Pryor goes out and starches Alexis Arguello.
01:05:51.000
And they had a crazy war of a fight, and then he gives them something in this little bottle, and then Aaron Pryor goes out like a bat out of hell.
01:05:58.000
And the question was always, what was in that bottle?
01:06:02.000
Because there was no sophisticated drug testing back then.
01:06:06.000
But there was one of them that actually put cement or something in their gloves.
01:06:26.000
But he beat up some really prominent fighters that way.
01:06:42.000
Pull up his record, because he did it to some legit fighters.
01:06:49.000
And they were like, it didn't even make sense how hard he was hitting me.
01:06:51.000
Because he would put plaster of Paris, apparently, inside the wraps.
01:06:57.000
And then Miguel Cotto beat the shit out of him in the rematch.
01:07:00.000
And Shane Mosley, Sugar Shane Mosley, beat the fuck out of him.
01:07:04.000
After he knocked out Miguel Cotto, when he beat him up in the 11th round, he stopped him, and it was a horrible stoppage, too.
01:07:11.000
Then, the Shane Mosley fight was the fight that he lost.
01:07:14.000
That was the next fight, and during the wrapping of the gloves, Shane Mosley's camp was to go, what the fuck is in his wraps?
01:07:22.000
They recognized it and had him re-wrap his hands, and then Shane Mosley beat his fucking ass.
01:07:28.000
And then he beat Robert Garcia, and then Manny Pacquiao fucked him up, and then Miguel Cotto fucked him up.
01:07:33.000
But the Miguel Cotto fight, the first one, it was bad.
01:07:37.000
I mean, his face was busted up, and that's when people had suspicions.
01:07:42.000
But they didn't know until they saw the wrapping of the gloves, and then they looked at every one of his fights before that, and they would go, oh, this motherfucker had plaster in his gloves.
01:07:56.000
It's about club fighters down in Stockton, California.
01:08:02.000
One of Jeff Bridges' first movies, and John Huston directed it.
01:08:08.000
This fight that I was talking about earlier, the Louis Resto fight, this Billy Collins Jr. guy, he was an up-and-coming contender, and he was blinded in the fight, and he could never fight again.
01:08:18.000
This kid that he fought, Louis Resto, they pulled all the padding out of the gloves, And he just fucked up this guy's face to the point where he had detached retinas and he couldn't see straight and became an alcoholic afterwards.
01:08:41.000
I think at the end of the other guy's life or at some point he admitted that he did it.
01:08:46.000
There was some documentary about it that the guy finally admitted that he was using.
01:08:53.000
I was sparring with a guy once and I went to touch his gloves and I was like, what the fuck is in your gloves?
01:08:57.000
And his padding had all been, it was those old style boxing gloves.
01:09:02.000
The padding had all been pushed back and it was like, it was all like almost raw knuckle.
01:09:11.000
What's interesting now is that people are actually fighting bare knuckle.
01:09:15.000
There's a whole bare knuckle boxing organization out of Wyoming.
01:09:30.000
Is there a more fucking Boston name than Bobby Salve?
01:09:34.000
I fucking hit him with a fucking overhand, fucking left.
01:09:37.000
He fucking went down like a fucking sock of potatoes.
01:09:47.000
I used to beat guys like you up on the way to a fight.
01:10:00.000
There's a thing about when someone gets inside your head, someone's really mean to you.
01:10:16.000
Well, if you go back to that fight, the reason why, and this is Ali did this on purpose, he acted like a crazy person.
01:10:23.000
Because he's like that Sonny Liston was a bully, and Sonny Liston was a big scary man, and what he felt like Sonny Liston would be afraid of is a crazy person.
01:10:33.000
So in all the press conferences and all the different things leading up to the fight, he would scream at him.
01:10:37.000
He would show up at Sonny Liston's house and honk the horn in the middle of the night and get on his lawn and scream and yell at him.
01:10:43.000
He did a lot of crazy shit to Sonny Liston to fuck with him psychologically.
01:10:50.000
He wanted Sonny Liston to think that he was a crazy person and that he would never stop.
01:11:14.000
And they were doing his blood pressure, and his blood pressure was so high, his heart rate was so high, they weren't going to let him fight.
01:11:22.000
He had to calm himself down, because he got himself worked up into a lather.
01:11:26.000
He was just so angry and so hyped up, trying to act like a crazy person, that when they were doing his pre-fight medicals, they were like, hey, you can't fight.
01:11:58.000
There'd never been anybody like him psychologically that could just...
01:12:08.000
Howard Cosell said to him, Champ, you seem very truculent.
01:12:12.000
He goes, whatever truculent it is, if it's good, I'm that.
01:12:26.000
And they were always laughing and joking around together.
01:12:33.000
And on top of that, he could fight his fucking ass off.
01:12:37.000
And he was a heavyweight that moved around like a middleweight.
01:12:42.000
I mean, he was a 200-plus pound, 215, 220-pound man, and he would shuffle and move and bob and weave, and he would be out there almost like a welterweight.
01:12:54.000
Boy, it's hard to say who's the greatest heavyweight of all time, but he's certainly in the conversation.
01:13:00.000
I mean, you would have to say, how would he have done against some of the bigger, stronger guys of the past, like a Lennox Lewis, who was in his prime, the high 240-pound range.
01:13:21.000
There's Ali before 1967 when they took his license away, and there's Ali after 1970 when he came back.
01:13:27.000
And when he came back, he was never as fast, he was never as fleet of foot, because he didn't work out at all for three years.
01:13:34.000
No, and when he came back, his return fight, he just didn't look right.
01:13:58.000
But he just didn't look like Muhammad Ali that fought...
01:14:08.000
Yeah, I try not to go to too many live events anymore because I go to so many of them with the UFC. Yeah.
01:14:21.000
It's nothing like being ringside for Golden Gloves.
01:14:40.000
I'll get you right there on the floor, right in front of the cage.
01:14:52.000
Like, when you get used to watching the UFC, sometimes it's...
01:15:06.000
The UFC, because there's takedowns and kicks and strangleholds and arm bars, it's just way more wild.
01:15:16.000
It's like a super technical street fight between trained killers.
01:15:49.000
And to this day, I think I saw some of the best comedy of my life ever when I was a young man coming up.
01:15:55.000
And when I was just starting out and opening for guys like you.
01:16:00.000
You know what made it special is nobody was doing it as a job.
01:16:15.000
Performing, you know, acting or stand-up is you're in the moment.
01:16:21.000
Well, Fitzsimmons is a good buddy of mine, and Greg Fitzsimmons, we started out together.
01:16:26.000
We talk about it to this day that back then, we didn't think of having a career.
01:16:32.000
The best thing that we could ever envision was one day we'd be able to pay our bills doing stand-up comedy.
01:16:40.000
Because I would look at guys like you or all the Boston guys that were getting, you know, that were making a living.
01:17:03.000
I did a movie with Rodney back to school and I'd just watch him.
01:17:10.000
You know, like the one line, like a haiku poem.
01:17:13.000
I go to the dentist the other day for yellow teeth.
01:17:22.000
I'll tell you another guy who's a fantastic joke writer.
01:17:35.000
He was on The Tonight Show and Johnny said, How you doing?
01:17:40.000
He said, Johnny, I'm as busy as jumper cables at a Puerto Rican wedding.
01:18:02.000
Did you like the documentary, When Stand Up Stood Out?
01:18:09.000
Because I didn't want my family to go through watching that.
01:18:15.000
It was about the decadence of it all and drugs and all that.
01:18:19.000
I like to think, you know, the important thing is the work.
01:18:23.000
Well, it was a little bit about the decadence, but it was also about this really unique thing.
01:18:34.000
I was very sad, but I was very happy to know him.
01:18:38.000
I used to say to Barry, I'd be on a gig with Barry, And I'd say, Barry, these people are here to drink.
01:18:48.000
You're making references to the third undersecretary of state's policy in frickin' Uganda.
01:18:56.000
So you can't get mad at them for not getting it.
01:18:59.000
But he was, you know, I didn't agree with his politics at all.
01:19:12.000
He was one of the reasons why no one respected any hacks in Boston.
01:19:24.000
It was a very unique environment because of him.
01:19:28.000
He said, when somebody steals a joke from me, It's like they're hitting one of my kids or something.
01:19:37.000
Well, you know how it is when you're working on a bid and it doesn't work well in the beginning.
01:19:42.000
And then it takes months to figure out how to twist it and perfect it.
01:19:46.000
And then someone comes along and takes the finished product.
01:19:51.000
But Barry made sure that that environment of Boston wasn't just that there was no thieves.
01:20:00.000
Like, if you were doing, like, cop donut jokes or shit, he would just fucking spit in your face.
01:20:09.000
I remember when I was an open mic, I was so intimidated by him.
01:20:13.000
When he started being nice to me, I was like, huh...
01:20:22.000
Well, I was worried that all those guys were going to hate me.
01:20:28.000
You're terrible when you're first starting out and you see guys like you and Gavin.
01:20:32.000
I always felt like I was never going to be inside.
01:20:45.000
You're open for me, you're gonna hit the big time.
01:21:02.000
Tonight, Thursday, it's at the Lemire Music Hall here in Beverly Hills.
01:21:13.000
I have a show at 8. I'm at the Improv, I think.
01:21:21.000
Well, even if I can't make it on Thursday, I'll definitely...
01:21:25.000
Yeah, I'm at the Improv at 8 o'clock, unfortunately.
01:21:44.000
Because I mostly just do the Comedy Store when I'm in town and the Ice House in Pasadena.
01:22:12.000
It'll be hot, and people will know you from the show.
01:22:17.000
So, when you decided to do this movie about Boston comedy, and you didn't want to do that When Stand Up Stood Out documentary...
01:22:29.000
So you knew it was just going to be about the decadence, but it was also documenting what stand-up was like in the ding-ho days?
01:22:42.000
You know, it's like sometimes you make decisions that are really fucked up.
01:23:01.000
So I'm auditioning for this show, and I'm saying, here I am, auditioning for a show I don't want to do, and I've been turned down.
01:23:16.000
I auditioned for sitcoms that I really didn't want, or movies, rather, that I really didn't want.
01:23:27.000
Last movie I did was a Kevin James movie, but it's Kevin's a buddy of mine.
01:23:31.000
And I would do something with him just for a goof, but I don't enjoy acting.
01:23:41.000
I like hanging around with comedians so much that when I'm hanging around with actors, I'm like, God, I wish you guys were comics.
01:23:48.000
Because, yeah, comics, they don't have any filter.
01:24:19.000
But a lot of them, you know, like Bill Hicks, got off the drugs and was probably even better when he was off the drugs.
01:24:38.000
And they're funny when you look back, but they're not so funny when you're in the middle of it.
01:24:42.000
Well, the Ding Ho, when you guys were starting out, that was the legendary place.
01:25:01.000
As though it's like, you know, mutually exclusive.
01:25:04.000
You know, Chinese, you know, you don't know if they're pissed off.
01:25:25.000
His name was Sean Lee, and he was a compulsive gambler.
01:25:33.000
No, it was a restaurant, the Ding Ho restaurant.
01:25:37.000
There was a stage, but one time it came in, the doors were locked, he lost it.
01:25:43.000
And what you guys would think of as a card game, but apparently...
01:26:01.000
People say to me, if it was the 90s, I don't remember the day of it.
01:26:12.000
I came around in 88. And people were like, ah, you missed the Ding Ho.
01:26:19.000
I was Sunday nights, and I'd do all these crazy characters.
01:26:28.000
But one week, that's when the magic happened, is Peter Lasalli from The Tonight Show came in, and at the time The Tonight Show was The Tonight Show.
01:26:36.000
He saw Stephen Wright, and the next week Stephen Wright was on The Tonight Show.
01:26:42.000
Because there we were, catapulted from Inman Square frickin' Chinese restaurant to...
01:26:57.000
When people found out there was some money in it.
01:27:04.000
Do you remember that there was one time where there was Duck Soup, across from Duck Soup, was Nick's Comedy Stop.
01:27:11.000
Down the street from Nick's Comedy Stop was The Connection.
01:27:14.000
And above it was Comedy at the Charles Playhouse.
01:27:16.000
Remember Mike Clark was booking Comedy at the Charles Playhouse for a while?
01:27:19.000
So there was four clubs on the same block in Boston.
01:27:32.000
Do you remember when Nick's was doing three shows in three different rooms?
01:27:35.000
They were doing the disco downstairs, they had the smaller middle room, and then they had the upper room.
01:27:39.000
One Saturday night, I did Stitches, which was on Calm App.
01:27:48.000
And at the end of the night, I was just, I was saying to the audience, did I already do that joke?
01:27:57.000
I'd be like setting it up and then, what's the fucking punchline of this shit?
01:28:09.000
Sometimes you're not even thinking about what you're doing.
01:28:15.000
And I say, then you say, well, you realize you're not saying it right.
01:28:22.000
And you know, Then you deliver it, and they laugh, and then there's this other voice in your mind saying, wow, that's interesting.
01:28:35.000
I mean, I can remember, if you want to hear a horrible Coke story, I was down in New York.
01:28:42.000
I was up for a show called Not Necessarily the News.
01:28:47.000
So we're backstage at Catch a Rising Star, and that place...
01:28:53.000
You know, when somebody comes out to see you on these shows, they're always late.
01:28:58.000
So I'm downstairs and the guy says, they're not here yet.
01:29:11.000
And now time is going faster because you're fucked up.
01:29:17.000
He said, well, you just asked five minutes ago.
01:29:23.000
So by the time I'm on stage, there's no comedy when you're jamming.
01:29:31.000
It's like the intensity is fucking unbelievable when you're on stage like this.
01:29:40.000
And I go out and I did this and I was like setting up a joke and not doing the punchline and starting shit and ideas and it was fucked up.
01:29:50.000
It was like Charlie Sheen, you know what I mean?
01:30:07.000
I said, I thought I was out there for like an hour.
01:30:17.000
You know, when I talk to kids, they say that sometimes.
01:30:22.000
And the closest thing I can say is something we say in the program.
01:30:35.000
Then I came back to life, you know, and now I enjoy every day.
01:30:49.000
And you're going to be at The Improv tomorrow night, 8 p.m.