Joe Rogan Experience #1431 - Owen Smith
Episode Stats
Length
2 hours and 33 minutes
Words per Minute
190.15402
Summary
Comedian Joey Diaz joins Jemele to discuss his early days in comedy, his move to Bali, and why he thinks Russell Simmons should be extradited to the United States. Plus, how he got to where he is today, and how he ended up at Def Jam s first TV show, "All Jokes Aside." Plus, why he bought a yoga studio in Bali and did a month of free yoga next to Russell Simmons. And why he doesn t like yoga. And how he s not a fan of Russell Simmons, which is a good thing because he s a great yogi. Plus, he talks about the time he met Russell Simmons at a yoga class, and what it s like to be a black comedian in the late 90s and early 2000s in the early days of the so-called "Black Friday" era. And he gives us the inside scoop on what it's like to work for Def Jam's first black sitcom, "Rodman and Rodman" and how it went from being a flop to being the number one sitcom on Comedy Central's "The Office" to becoming the number 1 sitcom in America's longest-running sitcom of all-time. . And, of course, he also gives us his thoughts on Russell Simmons and why we should be worried about him being extradited from the U.S. to in Bali. If you like it, tweet us and let us know what you think about it! or don t! and we ll talk about it on the next episode of Jemelec on ! if you have a story you d like us to tell us about it in a future episode of . . . or do you dave us a shoutout! or a story about how you d have us a place you d really like it in the podcast! in a review! on the pod! to be sure we ll send us a song about it. or we ll do it on Insta: :) ;) Timestamps: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 13. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.
Transcript
00:00:06.000
Russell Simmons, he moved to Bali because he's worried about them extraditing him?
00:00:10.000
I don't know if he's worried, but I... This is all conjecture.
00:00:15.000
But I just bought him up because he had a yoga studio here.
00:00:29.000
They give you the mat, towels, blocks, everything.
00:00:35.000
And I went every day for a month and did yoga next to Russell Simmons.
00:00:58.000
What do you think is more important than stand-up?
00:01:19.000
But raw alone is not good because some guys like Jessel Neck is very polished and he's very funny.
00:01:35.000
If you're a polished person and you try to come off raw, it's going to look corny.
00:01:40.000
So I bought that up because I am, I don't know, young 20s.
00:01:48.000
It just moved from New York to L.A. and Beverly Hills was where they're taping, which was ironic in itself.
00:01:58.000
You remember those, when you go hit it DJ and you have music cue like this?
00:02:03.000
So I auditioned and Bushwick Bill I was one of the judges.
00:02:10.000
I auditioned at All Jokes Aside in Chicago, and I got picked.
00:02:13.000
I was one of the people to get picked to tape Def Jam.
00:02:34.000
South Dakota, Minneapolis, where none of those Def Jam jokes worked.
00:02:40.000
So I started, like, getting polished a little bit, right?
00:02:45.000
So when I went to tape Def Jam, I did it, and I got...
00:02:53.000
I think seven applause breaks, but I didn't get the standing ovation.
00:02:57.000
And I remember when I got off stage, one comedian said, way to keep him seated.
00:03:07.000
Wait a minute, you got seven applause breaks and it wouldn't air?
00:03:12.000
I got my first rejection letter saying, thank you so much, but you won't be airing.
00:03:18.000
They aired Rodman and they aired two other people.
00:03:21.000
And then, so I felt like shit, you know what I mean?
00:03:34.000
What I auditioned with, it was straight from Maryland.
00:03:44.000
I went to these other cities and I was finding my style.
00:03:48.000
How many years had you been doing it at the time?
00:03:51.000
I started at 19, but I... You know, that's the college start.
00:03:58.000
But I think I started doing it full-time at 22, and I was probably 26, so maybe four years.
00:04:04.000
Like, you know, if I was your feature act, I always kept a time clock.
00:04:10.000
Sometimes I would go long, but I was very proud of, like, if they said do 12, I would do 12. You know what I mean?
00:04:20.000
And I was getting standard ovations, but I wasn't talking about nothing.
00:04:22.000
And then I started doing these other states, and I was like, okay, fine.
00:04:29.000
So my objection, I really needed Russell Simmons to like me.
00:04:34.000
He meant so much to the culture, and when he just didn't see me, I just was like, damn, years go by.
00:04:41.000
And the pain of it, like, diminishes, but it's still kind of in there.
00:04:45.000
But it's, you know, it's like a Marvel villain.
00:04:57.000
My only goal was just to make him laugh because he was at the audition.
00:05:11.000
I didn't know if it was going to match their show.
00:05:13.000
And what I'm saying is Def Jam prided itself on being raw.
00:05:29.000
So then when I saw Russell and Stan, I do my act.
00:05:47.000
So all the other comics are staying back to schmooze and, hey man, like I left.
00:05:54.000
And this is the show now when Russell was sitting in the audience and there are comics sitting up there and I'm doing my act and I was talking about HBO Hung, that show about white dude with a big dick for real, that's what we're doing.
00:06:08.000
And I did like the stereotype game and all this stuff.
00:06:10.000
And I did one joke and I remember Russell got up and gave me a pound in the middle of my set.
00:06:33.000
And then I would go, you know, and I was doing yoga with him for a little bit.
00:06:41.000
It was just like, you know, it was just like...
00:06:46.000
Did he call you and say, I'm giving you this month free yoga?
00:06:58.000
And I think I went there to pitch him something.
00:07:08.000
And so every morning I would wake up and drive.
00:07:10.000
And I didn't know I was going to be in his class.
00:07:23.000
Usher has videos online of him training at Black House, and he's legit.
00:07:31.000
Like, he's got, like, real good hands, he can throw kicks, everything.
00:07:42.000
You know, when I saw him in yoga class, I was like, who else is doing this?
00:07:50.000
Yoga is something you don't get any credit for doing.
00:07:53.000
Because it's fucking hard as shit, but it seems like no big deal.
00:07:56.000
Like, if you say, oh, I ran seven miles today, people are like, whoa.
00:08:00.000
You say, I did yoga today, they're like, bitch ass, what you doing?
00:08:12.000
And I don't think I didn't tell anybody I was doing it.
00:08:27.000
You know, it's about breathing in difficult situations.
00:08:37.000
Life is going to give you difficult situations.
00:08:40.000
And if you don't remember to breathe, you're fucked.
00:08:45.000
Well, I feel like we operate on a scale, and the least difficulty you have in your life, the more difficult it is to encounter real adversity.
00:08:56.000
So when you give yourself voluntary difficulty, so I volunteer to work out hard, I volunteer to do jujitsu, I volunteer to do yoga, I push myself to do these things.
00:09:08.000
When actual real-life difficulties come along, like, they're hard.
00:09:13.000
But there's never a time in life where it's as hard as a 90-minute yoga class.
00:09:29.000
You know it's going to end in 40, 50 seconds, whatever the pose is.
00:09:38.000
That I think it prepares you for other things other than the loss of a loved one or something like that.
00:09:49.000
Yoga class makes that stuff look like nonsense.
00:10:01.000
So before the Russell thing, I went to a hot Bikram class.
00:10:07.000
This is when I was single, so I was basically just following the asses.
00:10:12.000
I remember it was a big room, and everything was chilling.
00:10:26.000
I just remember they closed all the windows, and they stopped the fans, and it started getting really hot.
00:10:37.000
And the only thing I knew was it was supposed to be a place of no judgment that kept going.
00:11:12.000
I was trying to practice yoga, son, so I could not get judged.
00:11:15.000
And when I left, the teacher was on the cover of the magazine in front.
00:11:33.000
And the reason why they ask you if you're alright is because sometimes people are not alright.
00:11:38.000
Like, I've seen people almost black out where they have to lay down.
00:11:44.000
And if you're not used to that kind of exercise in that kind of temperature, if you have, you know, if you're one of those people that just, that stuff gets to you and you can handle it.
00:11:59.000
I remember I used to live on Bally's at the bottom of the hill and I belonged to Bally's.
00:12:06.000
And I would go, you know, I went through a period, I'm going when it opens.
00:12:19.000
And this lady's like, somebody's dead in the pool.
00:12:22.000
It was a dead body like floating in the valleys.
00:12:26.000
And then I never forget this other lady goes, at least he got out his contract.
00:12:33.000
Like, not even gave him a second to, like, no moment of silence.
00:12:38.000
Because Baddies was notorious for not letting you out.
00:12:47.000
They let you sign up for, like, 10 years for, like, a dollar a week.
00:12:53.000
They're like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll help you with your goals.
00:12:59.000
We're going to get ripped like Bobby over here.
00:13:02.000
And you're like, wow, I'm going to be like Bobby.
00:13:04.000
And then you just start eating chips, drinking soda, never show up.
00:13:11.000
What are the percentages of members in 24 hours, 24-hour fitness, that actually go on a regular basis?
00:13:23.000
Because then people would go, why am I signing up for that?
00:13:28.000
I had a 24-hour fitness for a moment, and then I would go, and it would be so crowded, I would just go home.
00:13:37.000
Then some of them, you couldn't use all of them, too.
00:13:55.000
Yeah, he was in there working out every morning.
00:14:02.000
He would shoot around, and I just kind of like...
00:14:08.000
When the ball went through the rim, I went and got the rebound.
00:14:25.000
Because a lot of basketball players would come up there.
00:14:28.000
And I would look at them like, man, I'm glad I couldn't.
00:14:40.000
I had hoop dreams until I played against Grand Hill in high school.
00:15:04.000
We were the home team, and Grant Hill comes in, and my coach had me check him.
00:15:19.000
And most people, if you cross over, I'm still in front of you.
00:15:23.000
Grant was so long when he did put the ball from this hand to this hand, I had to literally slide two steps.
00:15:31.000
And then when he went back, I had to slide back two steps.
00:15:33.000
And when he went up here, there was no way I could get up there.
00:15:50.000
That's a fascinating thing when you see someone who's a world-class athlete at the beginning of their journey.
00:16:11.000
Wasn't Jordan who didn't make his high school team?
00:16:16.000
Yeah, you know that coach had to, when he went home that night, had to talk to his wife like, I think I made a terrible mistake.
00:16:23.000
But he probably didn't realize it because at the time, Jordan probably, well Jordan is not the biggest guy in the world either, right?
00:16:30.000
But compared to some of those giants, like when you're standing there, Shaq is the most ridiculous human being I've ever met.
00:16:56.000
Where he came in, because we did it in Orlando.
00:16:58.000
He was a fan, so he brought his whole family down.
00:17:09.000
And I'm standing next to him like a little six-year-old with my dad.
00:17:14.000
But yeah, there's people that are just different, man.
00:17:20.000
And I bet Jordan, as good as he was, he needed that rejection to turn that burner on.
00:17:30.000
And that's always going to be a story, that he was cut from his high school basketball team.
00:17:34.000
I think he brought it up in his Hall of Fame speech.
00:17:36.000
The Hall of Fame speech when he kept shitting on all his different writers.
00:17:50.000
They would say that if you beat him at pool, he would hate you for two weeks until he'd play you again.
00:17:54.000
He used to have a pool tournament that he would do in Chicago every year, and it was for charity.
00:17:58.000
So he'd have all these celebrities come and play pool with them.
00:18:08.000
And if he got beat, he would be furious, apparently.
00:18:12.000
But that's the case with everyone who's great at something.
00:18:16.000
They don't want to lose that backgammon, Parcheesi, you know.
00:18:28.000
It's so unhealthy, but that's what makes them great.
00:18:30.000
It's like, there's a pro and a con to everything, you know?
00:18:35.000
I have this saying that I've always said, that greatness and madness are next-door neighbors, and they borrow each other's sugar.
00:18:41.000
You can't be great unless you're a little crazy.
00:18:45.000
And if you can't be the best ever, unless you're out of your fucking mind.
00:18:53.000
That speech when he's talking about the Hall of Fame, when he's talking about getting inducted and all the people that are wrong, all the people that...
00:19:03.000
This is one of your great highlights as recognized the greatest basketball player of all time.
00:19:11.000
Think about how many people have played basketball.
00:19:13.000
Millions of people all over this country and millions of people around the world.
00:19:18.000
Everybody says, who's the greatest basketball player?
00:19:25.000
You've got your dissenters who say, well, I think LeBron's better.
00:19:41.000
My friend and I, we were talking about what is greatness, right?
00:19:47.000
Greatness is clearly the numbers and the accolades and the wins, but greatness is also...
00:19:53.000
Being able to overcome great difficulty and still perform.
00:19:59.000
And so adding that into the formula, I feel like out of everyone that's a part of the conversation, LeBron is the only one who never met his dad.
00:20:14.000
Kobe, rest in peace, his dad played in the NBA. Magic knew his dad.
00:20:23.000
LeBron, tallest dude in Akron, walking around every day.
00:20:29.000
You see another tall dude, he had to be like, Dad?
00:20:38.000
So I feel like the question should be, Michael Jordan is clearly the greatest of all time with two parents.
00:20:45.000
But with one parent, LeBron is the greatest and Kevin Durant is like a...
00:20:55.000
But there's so many different variables that take place in your life from birth to death to just isolate one factor, like not having a father.
00:21:08.000
Jordan talked about when he got cut from his team, his dad was the one who pushed him.
00:21:22.000
Jordan went to NC State where Dean Smith was one of the greatest.
00:21:38.000
And I relate to LeBron because I was raised by a single mom.
00:21:42.000
So I recognize myself more in him than in Jordan.
00:21:55.000
But I feel like when people go, who's the greatest?
00:22:04.000
The thing about having two parents versus one, is there something about having one parent that gives you this insane motivation to drive, this drive to succeed?
00:22:17.000
Growing up because I didn't grow up with my dad.
00:22:20.000
I talked to my dad since I was seven years old.
00:22:22.000
So that and the fact that I knew him up until I was six and then didn't talk to him for the rest of my life.
00:22:34.000
That would make you like, I'll show you motherfuckers.
00:22:38.000
Like, there's something that, like, Mike Tyson had that.
00:22:43.000
A lot of great athletes had terrible upbringings.
00:22:48.000
You know, you could say that Jordan's dad was a positive factor, and that can work as well.
00:22:54.000
But also, sometimes it can be a positive factor to be ignored.
00:22:57.000
Having a difficult childhood can actually be a positive factor.
00:23:08.000
I'm just saying, in the debate of who's the greatest, it's like, there's two different ways that could go.
00:23:16.000
But it's also like, they're playing in different eras.
00:23:21.000
Did you see the Tyson Fury, Deontay Wilder fight?
00:23:40.000
He said he figured out in the first fight that Deontay, in the 12th round, he started backing Deontay up.
00:23:47.000
Because Deontay is a guy who pushes forward, and he's got this ridiculous power.
00:23:53.000
And everybody's scared of his power, so everybody's moving all the time.
00:23:56.000
And Fury realized in the 12th round, after Deontay knocked him down, almost knocked him out, he got up and started chasing Deontay, and Deontay fought Sloppy.
00:24:10.000
Deontay's known as being this guy who's got an eraser.
00:24:17.000
All the mistakes of the previous rounds all get erased with one punch.
00:24:23.000
And he has that confidence that he has that eraser power.
00:24:26.000
But with Tyson Fury, you realize, look, Tyson doesn't fight that way.
00:24:33.000
He does a lot of head movement and a lot of shucking and jiving.
00:24:37.000
It makes it very difficult for you to figure out what he's doing.
00:24:43.000
He'll come at you like this with two, three fake jabs, then a jab at a right hand.
00:24:46.000
He'll throw a right hand to the body, then he'll throw a left uppercut, he'll step to the side of you, he'll throw a right hand, he'll move out of the way, he'll pop you with a jab as he's moving away.
00:24:54.000
He's like a very technical, like really sophisticated boxer.
00:24:59.000
If you look at the movement that he does, for someone as big as him, it's really kind of crazy.
00:25:04.000
And it's not that he couldn't step forward and smash people and knock people out.
00:25:13.000
But then he realized for this fight, he had to fight a different way.
00:25:18.000
To shock Deontay, he had to come at Deontay, full blast, get in his face from the jump.
00:25:51.000
Like, Kronk was an attacking, aggressive style.
00:25:56.000
Like, they would wear those Kronk shorts, those yellow golden shorts.
00:25:59.000
You saw a guy with Kronk shorts on, that motherfucker came to kill you.
00:26:06.000
Emanuel Stewart would turn the heat up to 100 degrees.
00:26:09.000
So when they were doing, they were doing like hot yoga in the fucking cronk gym.
00:26:13.000
Because he wanted to build up endurance in these guys.
00:26:16.000
So when you would go into the cronk gym in Detroit, it was hot as fuck.
00:26:22.000
And that's how he would force everybody to train, under extreme duress.
00:26:28.000
He's the guy who rejuvenated Vladimir Klitschko.
00:26:32.000
When Vladimir Klitschko was falling apart, because he had gotten KO'd a few times, He didn't have an American style.
00:26:42.000
He had this sort of straight-up European style, and Emanuel Stewart just shifted his style and just made him concentrate on utilizing that long reach and the big power, that long jab.
00:26:54.000
When Tyson Fury went with a Kronk trainer for this, he was dead serious.
00:27:01.000
He told everybody that's what he was going to do, too.
00:27:06.000
Like him saying, I'm going to knock out Deontay Wilder.
00:27:11.000
Everybody's like, you're out of your fucking mind.
00:27:13.000
Even Deontay was like, you don't believe a word you're saying.
00:27:20.000
He figured out the puzzle in the 12th round of the first fight.
00:27:23.000
He just realized when he had him backing up, he's like, oh, this guy stumbles on his feet.
00:27:27.000
He gets all awkward and you got him backing up.
00:27:33.000
He took that L. That's what I wanted to talk to you about.
00:27:45.000
First, I want to thank you because you've been very kind about just promoting my stand-up on this platform.
00:27:57.000
And the fact that people don't know who you are, you should be filling arenas.
00:28:03.000
I made something, and I want to give it to your viewers so they can watch it and judge for themselves.
00:28:14.000
I'll send you some never-before-seen stand-up of mine.
00:28:26.000
You're doing the Improv With Me Wednesday, right?
00:28:32.000
And then after this podcast, see how many people, whatever, and I'm going to send you some never-before-seen stand-up.
00:28:44.000
Because you don't understand your kind words, how it's affected my life in a great way.
00:28:56.000
I felt like Vladimir Klitschko, basically, as far as comedy is concerned.
00:29:09.000
Most comics, when they get to your level, they're famous.
00:29:16.000
I was watching the last time we worked together, and I forget who I was standing in the back of the room talking to, but I was like, this doesn't even make any sense.
00:29:44.000
You make people fill in the blank sometimes and it makes things even funnier.
00:29:51.000
You just spent so much time writing, you know, and writing for sitcoms and writing for movies, and I know it's been very lucrative for you, and it's great, and, you know, you're a great writer, there's no question about it, but you're a world-class stand-up.
00:30:11.000
You know how the business changed, and I thought that if you just had quality work, that it would...
00:30:17.000
And then it just changed to something that I... The TV shit all went away.
00:30:51.000
They put my special out in 2014 and 2009. But the reality is it's just not the same anymore.
00:30:57.000
People aren't watching it like they used to watch it.
00:31:01.000
Yeah, well, they put out a lot of bullshit shows.
00:31:06.000
There's a lot of people that are scared of anything controversial.
00:31:09.000
Somebody told me they fired a lot of people over there, but you know, you hear that.
00:31:18.000
That fucking shit that he does with Face Swap is the funniest shit on Instagram.
00:31:33.000
He's a talented, creative guy, and the fact that they didn't pick that show up, but I knew they were fucking it up already because he showed me this one clip.
00:31:41.000
It was Caitlyn, you know, he does everything with face swaps, right?
00:31:44.000
He had Caitlyn Jenner on top of Donald Trump, fucking Donald Trump, and it was hilarious, man.
00:31:50.000
He shows it to me in the back room of the main room.
00:32:25.000
And it's one of the reasons why it's the greatest comedy show ever!
00:32:30.000
That's the thing about creating and depending on invisible people to...
00:32:39.000
Because you don't know where the no's coming from.
00:32:42.000
Like what you just said is an impassioned argument.
00:32:44.000
If you could sit down with the decision maker and go and just talk about it.
00:32:48.000
Maybe his show would have gone, but you don't know who anybody is.
00:32:56.000
It's so hard because there's the people that are watching it and then judging whether or not they're going to put it on television.
00:33:03.000
If they were, they would be doing what you're doing.
00:33:08.000
They think they understand comedy, and they also don't want to get fired, and they also don't want to get in trouble, and they also want to sell ads.
00:33:17.000
I wish I knew what their, they call it mandates, like what their mandates are, or what they're dealing with.
00:33:26.000
Because you get excited about something and you push and you go, this is what I want to do.
00:33:32.000
Sometimes you go, oh man, I don't think they're considering the actual audience sometimes.
00:33:44.000
They're also seriously worried about woke culture.
00:33:48.000
They want to make sure, like, I've had friends that wanted to pitch things, and they're like, where's the diversity?
00:34:02.000
You know, I think your diversity should be everybody who's good.
00:34:07.000
Don't exclude them because they're gay or trans or whatever, but don't include them because they are if they're not talented, because that's not good.
00:34:16.000
You know, it would be nice if it was easy for all those people of all different backgrounds to get up in stand-up comedy clubs and then get their career going.
00:34:27.000
I mean, I'm so far removed from open mics, it's hard for me to even talk about it anymore.
00:34:36.000
Hey, whatever happened to that thing we did with the notebooks?
00:34:44.000
I was thinking of giving that to people when they text Owen.com.
00:34:56.000
The people who loved it the most was All Things Comedy.
00:35:06.000
I had a manager at the time that they didn't connect with, so it kind of went away.
00:35:13.000
This should be on TV. It's such a clean, simple, fun idea.
00:35:45.000
I just got to get the first gut punch and then I'll keep going.
00:35:53.000
Everything people are doing on Instagram, I did when I was 18, 19, 20. Then you get a little bit older, you're like, what's this tape?
00:36:13.000
I never heard of this guy, but I used to watch his interviews, and he was always sponsored by something very cool.
00:36:23.000
We shot it in his home, and he would only average like 50,000 views.
00:36:29.000
But I thought Notebooks could be something like that that would speak to comedy fans.
00:36:36.000
Because I felt like stand-up was being homogenized.
00:36:40.000
Because when you would just do some of these shows, the set was built and you would just stand there and perform.
00:36:45.000
But it was no way of an audience member to go, I want to follow this guy.
00:36:49.000
I want to come see this woman or this guy live.
00:36:54.000
The show we're talking about is called Notebooks and it's basically...
00:36:58.000
The one thing comics never throw away is their old notebooks.
00:37:08.000
You watch Joe go back to where he was when he was performing it.
00:37:15.000
I could see you remembering where you wrote this stuff, where you came up with it.
00:37:23.000
We make it look easy, but it shows the journey.
00:37:33.000
And there's funny stories where you're like, I thought this bit was going to make me.
00:37:46.000
Because I can listen to a comedian and tell how long they've been doing it, you know?
00:37:51.000
I got to this place where I don't believe anybody...
00:38:14.000
But I mean, we got into this space where now...
00:38:19.000
People post everything online, so you're watching them.
00:38:22.000
I have videos of me in San Antonio, Texas in 1996. Not great, but it's on a VHS tape in my basement.
00:38:31.000
But now, that would be on YouTube, and people would be like...
00:38:35.000
So when I did hit, some people would be like, man, I can't stand Owen from something that they saw.
00:38:42.000
I thought fart jokes were funny, and I did them, you know?
00:38:47.000
You just got to worry about what you're doing right now.
00:39:03.000
It was great, but that's what was crazy about it.
00:39:05.000
And you were embarrassed when you were reading it.
00:39:11.000
I knew I had it, so I grabbed it and I brought it to you.
00:39:14.000
But I hadn't looked at it before you and I were sitting there.
00:39:18.000
Yeah, so when I was going through it, I was like, oh my god, this is so bad.
00:39:21.000
Thinking about my 23-year-old self writing jokes.
00:39:26.000
And sometimes you find a gem where you go, damn.
00:39:41.000
And what I love about it is comics aren't burning material.
00:39:48.000
I mean, I prefer to have somebody that's, you know, gotten their 10,000 hours in.
00:39:52.000
And so we can have, like, you know, those stories.
00:39:59.000
But my initial, my point is, I was like, I want to do this for YouTube.
00:40:04.000
But then I was like, man, maybe there's a televised play for this.
00:40:10.000
Yeah, I think nothing's worth bringing to TV anymore.
00:40:21.000
Half the people, and this is generous, Half the people that you deal with that are executives really don't give a fuck about anything other than their mortgage or their car or their career or getting respect or office politics.
00:40:36.000
They could easily be working at the History Channel or easily working at some other fucking network.
00:40:43.000
Here I am trying to create a platform for some of my friends.
00:40:49.000
And I'm like, if people just saw your work ethic, like how you write your jokes, people would be like, I like you now.
00:40:59.000
And I felt that that's what was missing from all these specials where people just stand in a spot and everybody has the same background.
00:41:07.000
No shade on that, but it's like very few people were popping off that.
00:41:12.000
And so much so, people thought I had one of those.
00:41:22.000
So, I'm going to name check some people on here, but I literally, but I'm not doing it for, it's all good.
00:41:34.000
So, George Carlin was performing at Homosa Beach Comedy and Magic Club.
00:41:42.000
At the time, Kimber Rickenball, who was Rick Mill Productions, she comes over to me and she goes, why don't we have a half hour on you?
00:41:50.000
She gives me her card and she says, give me 21 minutes and we'll make it happen.
00:41:59.000
And so I'm standing next to the guy who books Hamosa Beach.
00:42:08.000
So I had to do like three, seven minutes in pieces together.
00:42:24.000
At the time, I'm writing on Everybody Hates Chris.
00:42:32.000
Dave Becky and Michael Rotenberg managed Chris Rock at the time.
00:42:43.000
Once a month and sit in Video Village and just, you know, and so I was politicking.
00:42:49.000
I go, man, if I can get Dave Becky to contact Kimba Rickenball, maybe I can get with Three Yards because I had no manager in Three Yards.
00:43:01.000
Ali Leroy, the showrunner, was also managed by Three Yards.
00:43:04.000
He was just like, he just did like this to Dave.
00:43:09.000
So I was like, Dave, Mr. Becky, what's up, man?
00:43:13.000
Kimba Rickenball gave me the card, said if I can give her 21 minutes, you know, it's probable I'll get a half hour special.
00:43:19.000
I was wondering if I could do that through you.
00:43:29.000
I go, yo, I'm about to get a half hour special.
00:43:46.000
I go, this is going to be the start of us doing this a lot.
00:44:10.000
And it never dawned on me to call Kimber and be like, hey.
00:44:33.000
I had to drag my dumb tail back to LA. No special on the ride.
00:44:42.000
And that's why I said I could say her name because I never did that part, right?
00:44:46.000
Maybe I could have called him and, hey, da-da-da.
00:44:50.000
I went into, I was having like a pity party on the set of Everybody's Chris.
00:44:55.000
Ernest Thomas tells me, man, don't wait on Hollywood to give you permission to be great.
00:45:03.000
Did all that instead of just calling this woman like, hey, uh...
00:45:09.000
And so that's how I ended up shooting the first special of Anonymous.
00:45:30.000
Sometimes it's part of that world of not being all in in stand-up and being in that writing world.
00:45:39.000
Ian Edwards, I've been saying the same shit to him forever.
00:45:42.000
I'm like, you gotta stop taking those jobs, man.
00:45:47.000
Ian Edwards and I, we started out together, man.
00:45:58.000
Ian and I used to do Boston comedy in New York City in the village.
00:46:16.000
I remember I saw him and he was the coolest to me.
00:46:28.000
And he took me to like a general meeting that he had.
00:47:01.000
Yeah, but he was so kind to me that it's like...
00:47:07.000
Just showing that generosity in a space where he didn't have to.
00:47:15.000
I always take pictures of him every time he falls asleep because, you know, he's vegan.
00:47:21.000
And I don't mean there's vegans out there that are eating well.
00:47:25.000
He just eats vegan, but that means all it is is a piece of bread.
00:47:33.000
He doesn't exercise either, but whenever we're on a plane, that motherfucker passes out.
00:47:37.000
So I take all these pictures of him every time we go on the road together.
00:47:42.000
Every time he passes out, we're like, we're on the runway.
00:47:57.000
He got me and he's just got this huge smile and I'm out cold and he's sitting next to me and now every time I fly with him I'm scared of blacking out.
00:48:12.000
I woke up, like he was asleep, I woke up next to me and he was asleep and I was asleep and I wonder if he filmed me while I was asleep before he went to sleep.
00:48:25.000
Yeah, but dude, the video of him hovering over me while I'm out cold is one of the fun...
00:48:32.000
I landed and I checked my Instagram and I saw that and I just started fucking howling.
00:48:40.000
One time I was giving him smoothie recipes because he was asking about that stuff and...
00:48:50.000
And I was like, all right, so what you want to do is you want to, you know, you take strawberry banana, you take a protein, you take, you know, da-da-da-da-da-da.
00:49:02.000
Yeah, I mean, but that's kind of like defeating the purpose.
00:49:07.000
And so I think he's doing smoothies and stuff now.
00:49:29.000
So, I grew up in Prince George's County, Maryland, right?
00:49:38.000
I have a great Chappelle story because we're the same age.
00:49:42.000
So, when I was 19 and I just started Green Bell Comedy Connection, What I loved about Chappelle, I'm bringing this up because his Mark Twain Awards, he gave a shout out to a guy named Tony Woods.
00:50:02.000
And so at 19, I'm in this comedy club, Green Bell Comedy.
00:50:12.000
And his dismount off getting booed is something I've never seen before in my life.
00:50:22.000
Like, he just kept saying that and then just walked off.
00:50:25.000
And when he walked off, I was like, oh my God, they booed him?
00:50:29.000
Like, in my head, I'm like, if they booed him, I don't stand a chance in comedy because...
00:50:39.000
Nobody wanted to touch him because he had that bomb on him.
00:50:57.000
And I just can't stop looking at him because I'm watching.
00:51:08.000
And he's sitting there, and Tony Woods goes on stage next.
00:51:11.000
And Tony Woods is like, wow, man, god damn, like just kind of a similar cadence.
00:51:17.000
And Tony just destroys, got a standing ovation, like, night and day.
00:51:22.000
And I'm just 19, just nude, like, absorbing this.
00:51:31.000
As a comic, I'm just kind of, like, eavesdropping.
00:51:34.000
Like, I think I'm 5'7", but I'm fucking 6'5", but I'm just trying to, like, look at what they're going to do next.
00:51:42.000
I kind of just follow them out, thinking, I don't know what's going to happen.
00:52:01.000
And I knew that Tony had been doing it a lot longer than And I knew that Dave...
00:52:06.000
It's kind of like how when Kobe came into the league and was talking like Mike, and then Kobe leaned into who Kobe was.
00:52:20.000
And so you watched Dave do that separate from Tony.
00:52:24.000
But what I love about what Dave did, and this is why he's great, is he recognized Tony in his greatest comedic moment.
00:52:39.000
And what he said about Tony could not have been truer.
00:52:44.000
Because I was there at the epicenter when I was watching Dave figure it out.
00:52:51.000
And the material he was doing, it just didn't connect with...
00:53:26.000
I feel like six months later, I saw him on HBO or something.
00:53:29.000
So I was like, damn, he didn't let it stop him.
00:53:32.000
And so I learned all these lessons just sitting in the back of a comedy club.
00:53:37.000
Donnell Rollins, who might come in and interrupt us.
00:53:51.000
When he was on stage, people were saying he spoke Korean.
00:53:55.000
And he was the first comic I ever saw commanding audience.
00:53:59.000
And I thought the audience, because I was, again, 19. I had done comedy more than five times.
00:54:18.000
Like the audience had like requests, you know what I mean?
00:54:23.000
Like they know his work and they're requesting it.
00:54:26.000
But years later, I didn't know that those were like comics.
00:54:29.000
It might have been comics or it might have been his...
00:54:37.000
So I had all these references early on as, like, where you can take the art form, you know, and how fearless it was.
00:54:44.000
And then I went out to South Bend where it was just completely different.
00:54:51.000
But I had all this, like, these mental downloads of, like, of just how...
00:54:58.000
These different styles that hadn't really touched the Midwest comedy scene.
00:55:03.000
It's so funny when you're starting out, too, because you're trying to figure out what style is going to work.
00:55:14.000
And that's, again, bringing it back to what Notebooks is.
00:55:20.000
I know what mine was, but all of ours is different.
00:55:26.000
It's like we play the same sport, but we all play it different ways.
00:55:32.000
So yeah, it's ironic that you bought that show up.
00:55:36.000
Because I was like, should I bring that up again?
00:55:39.000
Yeah, I was so honored that you said you would do it too.
00:55:42.000
When I saw those numbers, I was like, oh shit, that's hilarious.
00:55:51.000
Yes, and I'm sure there were several times when...
00:56:05.000
And also when I was going through them, I was always thinking, like, maybe one day I'll find a gem.
00:56:32.000
It's going to be called In Context with Owen Smith.
00:56:34.000
Because what I started doing is I started reading a newspaper more.
00:56:37.000
And whenever I read the newspaper, my brain fucking explodes with a whole bunch of just...
00:56:49.000
But now I'm getting myself to doing the online stuff just because it's just more practical.
00:56:57.000
Because every time I go to get the paper, it's not...
00:57:00.000
I always feel so funny when I'm holding a newspaper now, like, what is this?
00:57:09.000
But I like, because you can see the words, and you can see, like, they use specific word choice, and my brain just starts going, damn, that's fine.
00:57:20.000
My act is more personal, but just, Chris Rock told me something a long time ago.
00:57:42.000
And D.O. Hughley told me a long time ago, if you read the newspaper every day, that's equivalent to having a master's.
00:58:00.000
Listen, when he said it to me, I was like, okay, you know.
00:58:04.000
But I didn't know he had his GED. There ain't no shade on D, but I was like, that stayed with me.
00:58:11.000
So I would always try to read a whole newspaper.
00:58:26.000
Every time I read it, they're just shitting on people.
00:58:36.000
New York Post, I grab that every time I'm back in New York.
00:58:44.000
But you know, shit that come to me in my sleep, conversations, and for me it's about finding what is the right...
00:58:54.000
I feel like where's the best place for this joke to live?
00:58:59.000
Could I get more traction out of this if it's a sketch?
00:59:04.000
And then if it is a sketch, how can I still make it sing as a stand-up joke?
00:59:09.000
And what's fun for me is if I do something and I revisit it and I can do it a lot cleaner and clearer, then I get excited because then I can play.
00:59:22.000
I remember, I think I saw Bill Maher or somebody like that performing.
00:59:31.000
And so I saw him come off stage one time, and he was like, man, that fucking audience sucked.
00:59:36.000
And I was thinking in my head, I wouldn't say it to him, but I was like, man, you just forgot to play.
00:59:47.000
Yeah, sometimes, you know, and so when I watch his show, when I can see he's playing, it's like, ah.
00:59:58.000
But when I saw him live that day, I go, ah, he was trying to figure it out still.
01:00:06.000
And so sometimes I could be too hard on myself trying to get it, like, technically right.
01:00:15.000
It's about creating moments and you forget all of that.
01:00:42.000
And so now I'm thinking about the guys listening to MLK. Like, it couldn't all be civil rights.
01:00:48.000
Like, I wonder if he turned any of them, you know?
01:01:03.000
How many people do you think we're assigned to listen to?
01:01:13.000
You're getting a peek into the world of somebody you're told is this one thing, and what if you, you know, you hear something and you just don't agree?
01:01:20.000
Like, I'm fascinated with stuff like that, so I try to, like, figure out if you can make that funny.
01:01:26.000
Sure, and that's where great bits come from, and they come from that uncertainty, like, okay, where is it?
01:01:32.000
There is something in some FBI, some square FBI dude listening to Martin Luther King.
01:01:38.000
He's like, oh, injustice anyway, you know, yeah.
01:01:42.000
Yeah, there's a thing that he could say that would turn him.
01:01:57.000
Comedians that always get to me are people that I didn't know comedy could do that.
01:02:06.000
And he was the first black millionaire to do stand-up.
01:02:12.000
But his best book I wouldn't say best, but my favorite book of his is called The Shadow That Scares Me.
01:02:18.000
And it's really him giving solutions to all of these problems that were in the narrative at that time about black folks.
01:02:29.000
And I was amazed at his writing, and I was blown away by his stand-up, some of the social commentary he would make.
01:02:39.000
And I was like, oh man, I want to do some of that.
01:02:43.000
So I used to, that was back in my 30s when I was trying to solve the race problem.
01:02:53.000
But I used to, because I was still in the orbit of the bring the pain, like, oh, I gotta have my.
01:02:59.000
And it just, I was like, it's not really changing the world, man.
01:03:05.000
But I kind of backed away because I used to do this bit about being at a rap concert, Busta Rhymes, and it's all white folks and I'm there and he goes, all my real niggas make some noise.
01:03:44.000
Like, I said, all my real niggas make some noise.
01:03:54.000
I was doing this shit like in Milwaukee, Appleton, Wisconsin.
01:03:57.000
And I go, and not only can we call them niggas, they paying $80 for the privilege to be called niggas.
01:04:05.000
And I go, white folks, tonight I'll call you niggas for $10.
01:04:10.000
$10 niggas sale, niggas clearance, cash only, because I know how you niggas are, right?
01:04:18.000
At the end of the show, I'm selling my dumb DVDs, selling my merch, and inevitably, a white person will always come up to me, give me $20, and call me Nick.
01:04:32.000
Late 20s, early 30s, you know, you're the angry comic.
01:04:38.000
And then, now that I'm a little older, I go, man, I'd be funny if I... Because I kept the money, you know what I mean?
01:04:44.000
Like, if that was my stick, like I didn't sell merch, look, y'all can call me whatever y'all want for $20.
01:04:53.000
You'd be like this millionaire and you're doing interviews.
01:05:06.000
But for me, just living in that space, man, I was just like, nah.
01:05:12.000
After I tried it, and I was getting that kind of response.
01:05:15.000
Well, there's a thing, too, where when you're a comic, you want to be respected.
01:05:19.000
So you want to come up with a bit that transcends comedy.
01:05:23.000
You want everybody to go, wow, Owen's on some real shit.
01:05:27.000
I think there's a danger in that, that you can kind of trick yourself.
01:05:33.000
I had some dumb bits that I did that were like, I was just trying to get people to think that I was really good, rather than it just being good.
01:05:39.000
Yeah, being good, being from a real personal place.
01:05:43.000
So much of it, I had this conversation with Robert Downey Jr. about acting, and something I said to him, and he said exactly, I said, isn't a lot of it just about getting out of your own way?
01:05:55.000
Because that's what a lot of it is with comedy.
01:06:02.000
Because the way you look at yourself, the way you want people to look at you.
01:06:08.000
How many conversations have you ever had with a comic and they talk about how they want the respect of the industry.
01:06:20.000
You're wasting all this mental fuel on this nonsense.
01:06:27.000
She goes, if you worry about yourself, you'll have a busy, busy time.
01:06:33.000
If you worry about you, you'll have a busy, busy time.
01:06:37.000
Because when you hear people going off, I want them, they don't see them.
01:06:43.000
All the shit you have to do, you focus on that, you'll be busy enough.
01:06:46.000
And nothing could be truer than that when I hear comics do that.
01:06:52.000
Comics come up with a lot of excuses for why things aren't going on.
01:07:03.000
I'm like, what in the fuck are you even talking about?
01:07:17.000
There are certain networks that are trying to get people that are not white men.
01:07:25.000
However, there's still a fucking shitload that are getting specials.
01:07:37.000
It just lacks so much self-awareness to say that there's a problem being a white man.
01:07:54.000
One guy came to me one time at the comedy store, and he was complaining about not being able to get on staff.
01:08:21.000
I go, you're not getting hired because you have a quote.
01:08:25.000
Like, no one's ever worked with you in the room.
01:08:27.000
Explain what that means for people to understand what that means.
01:08:36.000
When you sell a television show, they give you a contract of terms in case the television show goes.
01:08:42.000
And they agree to pay you an amount per episode of the show that you sold, whether it's a variety TV show, whether it's unscripted, whatever.
01:08:58.000
And that quote is specific to the studio you did the deal with.
01:09:07.000
So if you go someplace else, they may give you the bare minimum offer and you can go, I have a quote.
01:09:24.000
But typically, if you're a staff writer, I think you get paid...
01:09:27.000
I'm going to say it's less than $6,000 a week is how the math would work out.
01:09:39.000
You have this quote that's probably $30,000 an episode.
01:09:43.000
I don't know what that would track a week because they amortize it over however long you're slated to work.
01:09:49.000
And as a staff writer, you're getting paid like this amount.
01:09:52.000
So no showrunner in their right mind is going to just ask you to take a pay cut from your quote.
01:10:02.000
And no showrunner is going to hire you at that high quote if you've never been in a room before.
01:10:08.000
Like, I'm not going to pay you $30,000 an episode to learn.
01:10:14.000
So it's a lot of math missed in this complaint that you have built for yourself, which is fine.
01:10:23.000
I just don't want to hear it because I know the math.
01:10:29.000
But it's like, yeah, man, you succeeded at selling several shows.
01:10:33.000
So that's like the lane you're in unless you come in and go, listen, I'll take a pay cut.
01:10:45.000
You ever tell somebody like a different solution and the face they make is, I wish, you know how you take pictures of Ian's sleep?
01:10:52.000
I wish I could have pictures of like that face.
01:10:57.000
But the difference is, I think between successful people and people who are moderately successful is they're open to that, right?
01:11:04.000
Like you just told me put notebooks on YouTube.
01:11:15.000
You actually connected what I've been thinking the whole time.
01:11:22.000
Gave me that extra, like, incentive to, yeah, man, I'm doing this now.
01:11:31.000
And so I almost think, like, he needs to feel that he's being, you know...
01:11:37.000
Yeah, yeah, stacked against, so it fuels his...
01:11:41.000
Yeah, he needs to feel like he's being maligned.
01:11:51.000
Dude, the fact that you live here and figured out how to succeed outside of it is kind of diabolical.
01:12:24.000
I don't want to do anything more than what I'm already doing.
01:12:30.000
And I wanted to ask you, did you ever go for auditions?
01:12:36.000
Did it become a thing that you set out to be great at, or was it always something that you just were like, I'm going to see where this takes me?
01:12:46.000
I'll give you the craziest story about auditions ever, as far as success stories.
01:12:57.000
I auditioned for a show called Hardball that was on Fox.
01:13:01.000
It started off really good, but the network fucked it up.
01:13:04.000
And then I auditioned for NewsRadio, and I got that.
01:13:10.000
Did you have to go do the first audition, callback, test, and all of that?
01:13:20.000
See, NewsRadio was 26, so that was only like...
01:13:27.000
So I had a different feeling of fear and anxiety than a lot of people did.
01:13:36.000
And the open call, it wasn't an open call, but it was like a cattle call.
01:13:38.000
There was like 50 fucking dudes waiting to get in there.
01:13:48.000
So they gave you lines, and you had to play it straight.
01:13:54.000
I was a handyman at this radio station, so I had to figure something out.
01:13:58.000
And I was like, I don't know what's going on with it.
01:14:00.000
And they're like, but you're supposed to fix it.
01:14:02.000
Yeah, but I can't fix it, so I don't know what to do.
01:14:08.000
The pilot was really funny because I saw the pilot and there was another guy on the pilot.
01:14:11.000
Ray Romano was actually the original guy on the pilot and they fired him.
01:14:15.000
Replaced him with another guy and then they fired that guy and then they had a call to see who the next guy would be and then I went in to read for it and then the first script was not...
01:14:31.000
And so then I got a call back, and then I got new sides, and the new sides were hilarious.
01:14:37.000
And then I realized, like, oh, they're trying to cut out the corn balls.
01:14:40.000
They got a bunch of wacky, you know, fucking real obvious sitcom guys.
01:14:48.000
And they looked like they were about to get shipped off to Vietnam.
01:14:54.000
And I remember I looked at them and go, oh, I got this.
01:14:57.000
And I sat down and I plopped my feet up on the couch.
01:15:17.000
When I got an audition for Hardball, it was because Disney gave me a bunch of money for a development deal because I did stand-up on MTV. So I did the MTV half-hour comedy hour, and then MTV, they offered me the most ridiculous deal ever.
01:15:30.000
It was like $500 to do a pilot, and then if they decide to do it, even if they decide to shoot it and never film it, they have you locked up exclusively for two years.
01:15:43.000
It was because they had made celebrities with Dennis Leary.
01:15:47.000
Dennis Leary had become famous from MTV and then he left.
01:15:49.000
So they're like, we're going to keep people here now.
01:15:52.000
If we make someone a star, we're going to keep them.
01:15:54.000
So they offered the most ridiculously lowball deal of all time.
01:16:01.000
And then my manager sent my tape out and said, hey, this guy is about to sign this deal with someone.
01:16:11.000
I think he might have said MTV. So then we got all these offers.
01:16:24.000
So then two weeks later, I'm in Hollywood having meetings.
01:16:39.000
Jim Brewer was on the show with me and the pilot.
01:16:44.000
So me and Jim were buddies from back in the day, so we're all hanging out.
01:16:54.000
I'm just hanging out at the store every night, and then I'm ready to go back home to New York, but I had already signed a lease.
01:16:59.000
So I had this fucking apartment for a year, and I couldn't get out of it.
01:17:04.000
And then I got a development deal with NBC based on the hardball show.
01:17:08.000
And so they said, hey, before we talk to you about doing your own show, we'd like you to look at this pilot and see if you'd be interested in it.
01:17:15.000
And it's Dave Foley and Phil Hartman and Andy Dick.
01:17:24.000
And then I came in and read for it, and next thing you know, I had it.
01:17:27.000
Next thing you know, I'm on TV. I've been doing acting for like a couple of months, and I'm sitting at a table next to Phil Hartman.
01:17:36.000
And all these different people that were on the show.
01:17:41.000
It was fascinating, because it's not something I ever wanted.
01:17:48.000
But that's part of probably why I was able to do it.
01:17:51.000
Because it wasn't like this dream that was paralyzing me with anticipation and anxiety.
01:17:56.000
When I walked in that second audition, I saw those dudes sweating.
01:18:02.000
Because fighting, I used to love seeing how nervous people were before fights.
01:18:08.000
I would lay down on the ground, like in the bleachers.
01:18:11.000
Because just to let everybody know, I'm just going to go sleep.
01:18:20.000
When I would knock guys out, I'd walk away like it was normal.
01:18:25.000
I would just walk around like, that's what I do, dude.
01:18:30.000
And so when I was in that room getting ready to go in and read, I had the same feeling.
01:18:46.000
They weren't used to performing live and all that.
01:18:50.000
Like, when I would audition and, like, a really good-looking guy would walk in, I'd be like, he ain't funny.
01:19:13.000
The reason I did Fear Factor is because I didn't want to work with actors anymore.
01:19:19.000
Because I had auditioned for one or two sitcoms that I didn't get after Fear Factor.
01:19:25.000
But it also was a thing where I was like, man, I need to make some money.
01:19:28.000
I'm not making as much money doing stand-up, and I was used to making TV money, and I had development deals, and they didn't go.
01:19:34.000
And then I auditioned for a couple shows, and that didn't happen.
01:19:38.000
I guess it was like two years because Fear Factor, yeah, 2000, 2001. Fear Factor was 2001 and news radio ended in 99. And it was an opportunity to do something with no actors.
01:19:57.000
You're dealing with all these mind games that people are playing in the waiting room.
01:20:04.000
They're the strangest people because their life is centered around getting people to like them for auditions, right?
01:20:10.000
So they're always trying to pretend they're exactly what these casting people want in terms of their Their political beliefs, the way they talk, the way they act.
01:20:21.000
There's nothing weirder than being around unsuccessful actors.
01:20:27.000
Once they're successful, if you're talking to Robert Downey Jr., he's a regular dude, man.
01:20:32.000
He's a regular dude, but he's famous as fuck and super successful.
01:20:44.000
Before you get on the lot and you're competing with everyone, then that's when you hear people in Hollywood are shady, people are full of shit, you can't trust.
01:20:54.000
Because we all were basically unemployed Right.
01:21:03.000
But once I got my first gig, I met a different character of people.
01:21:14.000
And so it is something about people who figured out Yeah.
01:21:40.000
I know how to do all the tricks and all that stuff.
01:21:44.000
And when you start getting, when I started looking at colleges and getting recruited, it's becoming a business.
01:21:55.000
And I literally liked having fun playing basketball.
01:21:59.000
And I would be playing at some tournaments with some kids.
01:22:17.000
So when I came out here, I fell into the commercial world.
01:22:26.000
My wife was like, you should go back out for commercials again.
01:22:41.000
But then, like, because I write, too, I could see, like, all the rewriting happening on set.
01:22:49.000
Lately, they've been trying to cuten everything up.
01:22:53.000
But in the 12th hour, when you guys are deciding what, you know, the cute show's not going to make it.
01:23:02.000
We're, we're like, so I was, before we walked in, I was like, did you watch Curb last, um, last night?
01:23:08.000
I did a funny thing about a handicap placard, right?
01:23:11.000
And so, um, and it just spoke to, everybody wants one of those things.
01:23:15.000
It's, hey man, you got a handicap, you know, and they did a montage of all the stitch you would do if you had a handicap placard.
01:23:23.000
That might be in the pilot at first and you'd be howling.
01:23:26.000
And then as you're shooting it, man, the handicap thing is coming off a little mean.
01:23:33.000
And then they button it up to where it's not as gratifying because you're laughing at just the primal nature of, yeah, man, I would do the same shit.
01:23:48.000
So when you watch it, Back and you go, we got this show and we got this show.
01:23:58.000
But again, I am literally armchair quarterbacking.
01:24:09.000
It's not like there's a lot of people that are doing it right and there's a lot of great new shows.
01:24:17.000
I think, first of all, streaming services have changed the whole game.
01:24:25.000
Now there's a new show on HBO that I'm addicted to called The Outsider.
01:24:34.000
It grabs me, because I watch Curb, and I'll see the last two minutes.
01:24:42.000
Jason Bateman knows his shit, because Ozark's amazing.
01:24:45.000
Those kind of shows, they're so off the charts in terms of what you could get away with on network television.
01:24:58.000
They just can't do anything wild, anything outside the norm.
01:25:05.000
Spoiler alert, on The Outsider, you see a dead kid like 30 seconds into the first episode.
01:25:18.000
And if you can't handle that, it's not something you see a lot throughout the whole show, but it's enough to fuck you up.
01:25:25.000
They'll let you know, like, hey, this is not CBS. This is chaos.
01:25:30.000
This is as realistic a horror show as you're going to get.
01:25:43.000
If a network show is clicking, I can get how people would fall in love with the romance of that.
01:25:56.000
But the process, the creative process, coming from a stand-up brain.
01:26:06.000
And it is, like you say, it's collaborative with a lot of people who, at certain stages, you're like, ah...
01:26:19.000
So I'm being very diplomatic and I go, okay, why do you have this job?
01:26:25.000
And it's also like, how do we talk to one another?
01:26:32.000
So I'm using it as, and I think because I'm a parent now, so I'm in this space of just trying to figure out Yeah.
01:26:42.000
Because 26-year-old me would have been like, man, what the fuck are you talking about?
01:26:47.000
But I'm in this space right now where I'm like, okay, I know I don't like how you're talking to me right now.
01:27:08.000
The problem is it's never as good as your stand-up.
01:27:15.000
The problem is you are already a great stand-up.
01:27:18.000
I know, and it's like I'm trying to create a life over here.
01:27:28.000
They don't make money off your stand-up in this town.
01:27:32.000
Unless it's a fucking booking agency, they don't make shit off of it.
01:28:04.000
I did news radio that went to syndication, and then I did Fear Factor that did syndication.
01:28:09.000
I get offers all the time to do stuff on TV. I don't want to have anything to do with it.
01:28:38.000
And then ESPN... Obviously, it's on ESPN+. I got it.
01:28:51.000
I felt like I was watching an open-miker and a headliner both have a take on the topic.
01:29:04.000
If you're coming at martial arts, especially MMA, you have to have a deep understanding of the sport.
01:29:12.000
You can't just have a peripheral knowledge and communicate with someone like me.
01:29:18.000
I've been working for the UFC since 1997. And I've been involved in martial arts since I was 14, 15 years old.
01:29:42.000
You know, his whole thing is he's a great shit talker.
01:29:49.000
He's just a powerful communicator and an entertainer.
01:29:54.000
The problem is you carry that over to MMA, man.
01:30:04.000
I could have said some way, way, way meaner shit.
01:30:21.000
I mean, he just doesn't understand what went down.
01:30:25.000
He just ran right through a top welterweight in 40 seconds.
01:30:32.000
He's trying to apply the same sort of way of talking about sports that he talks about maybe if it's a basketball game or maybe it's something else.
01:30:39.000
He's trying to apply that to MMA. It's a different thing.
01:30:45.000
You get knocked down, the guy gets on top of you and punches your fucking face in.
01:31:01.000
You're allowed to elbow someone in the eyeball.
01:31:03.000
You're allowed to kick them in the fucking face with your shin.
01:31:17.000
So for that sport, you have to be super respectful and appreciative of what's going on because those guys are putting their health on the line in a big, big, big way.
01:31:31.000
That was one of the hardest things for me to get over, watching girls get fucked up.
01:31:50.000
Like girls that fight Amanda Nunes, she just beats the fuck out of them.
01:31:58.000
But I don't have anything against Stephen A. I like him.
01:32:01.000
We were talking about TV and the interesting ideas that come from a different place.
01:32:08.000
Even in that world, I don't want to be involved in that world.
01:32:10.000
If ESPN wanted to give me a job, I'd be like, nope, not interested.
01:32:16.000
We did this Fight Companion podcast on Saturday during the day.
01:32:20.000
The fights were from New Zealand, the UFC fights before the Ties and Fury fight.
01:32:25.000
And we were talking about it, and my friend Eddie was like, how come they don't do something like this on TV? I'm like, they couldn't.
01:32:36.000
You know, Brendan Shaw, every girl, this bitch's ass, and this and that.
01:32:44.000
We're sitting around, but we're doing it over the internet.
01:32:48.000
So it's one of those things where if a network had a show like that, they'd be like, this is a hit!
01:32:55.000
For a sports show to get way more views than the actual show it's watching.
01:33:05.000
And we're talking about the fights, but that gets more than twice as many views as the actual fights itself, which is kind of crazy.
01:33:13.000
But the only way that happens is if no executive, none of those half-in, half-out people we were talking about before that really could work at the Discovery Channel or the History Channel.
01:33:22.000
They're trying to cuten things up, trying to take the edge off.
01:33:24.000
Look, guys, we're going to cut that segment around when you're talking about those girls' asses.
01:33:29.000
And, you know, I've got kids of my own, and I've got daughters.
01:33:33.000
Like, you know, if we had a producer in here, some network schlub.
01:33:43.000
When I worked on late night talk shows, the whole narrative of freedom of speech was in the air.
01:33:51.000
And whenever we would write something, it all had to be legally approved.
01:33:57.000
And he'd be like, you guys can't say, you know.
01:34:06.000
And then you'd go out in the world and people are like, freedom of speech, man.
01:34:17.000
It's not, like you said, but when you guys can just say whatever you want to say.
01:34:22.000
The key is to narrow it down to as few voices as possible that have control, like this.
01:34:26.000
This is just you and me, and Jamie's hanging out.
01:34:29.000
This is a three-man crew that reaches millions and millions of people.
01:34:42.000
What I think is okay, in terms of drugs and violence and all the different things that I enjoy...
01:35:04.000
When you're putting together a show, there's no way you would ever let a person like me be responsible for the job of promoting something, being the captain of a show, where you've got all these executives and their jobs are on the line,
01:35:20.000
and you're going to have some loose cannon like me, who's a wild stand-up comic?
01:35:28.000
From the beginning, from fighting to getting the stand-up.
01:35:37.000
But there's no way you could ever have a network approve something like this.
01:35:40.000
There's no way the language, saying cunt, saying whatever the fuck you want to say, talking about things in an honest way, talking about what's bullshit, about life, about politics, about the state of the way human beings communicate with each other.
01:35:55.000
You gotta boil it down to just a couple of people.
01:35:58.000
When you boil it down, especially guys like you and me who are comics, who can talk real about stuff, who aren't scared of saying their flaws, aren't scared of saying where they fucked up and how, you know, those are some of my favorite conversations are when you talk about the shit you fucked up when you were young and dumb.
01:36:18.000
They don't like to feel like they're inadequate or they always like to feel like they were always good.
01:36:26.000
This kind of thing where you're doing a podcast, this is, I think, this is the future of all those talk shows.
01:36:41.000
If you look at the numbers, like Conan's show, it's horrible.
01:36:46.000
And all these guys are legends, but no one's watching that shit anymore.
01:36:49.000
Because you could watch this or any other podcast.
01:36:55.000
And you could watch them or listen to them anytime you want.
01:36:59.000
You could stop it when you have to take a shit.
01:37:01.000
You know, you don't have to wait for it to come on.
01:37:15.000
With the internet, there's too much real information for you to get spoon-fed nonsense on television.
01:37:22.000
When I watch those CBS shows, those crime shows, I'm like, old people are watching this, right?
01:37:27.000
Old people and people that have chemicals at work and they come home drunk.
01:37:34.000
They just want to sit and have something mindless spoon-fed to them.
01:37:39.000
Those network shows, that's what keeps those things alive.
01:37:42.000
Those things are so watered down and so nonsense.
01:37:48.000
I wanted to tell you, I got beef with Malcolm Gladwell.
01:38:06.000
But he was talking about how he could do stand-up.
01:38:12.000
And I just wanted to be like, Malcolm, come on, fam.
01:38:21.000
It's a certain set of thing in the room with people drinking.
01:38:28.000
That's like a guy who watches a fight and thinks, oh, fuck that dude up.
01:38:31.000
And when he said that, I was like, Malcolm, you!
01:38:40.000
And I watched a few clips of him here and I was like, man, I miss Malcolm.
01:38:44.000
But he needs to know, you can't be If he really said that, he just doesn't understand what it is.
01:39:13.000
And to me, it was like, man, you wrote a book about 10,000 hours, and you're sitting there going, I can do this.
01:39:20.000
It seems like, but this is what I've been saying about stand-up for a while, is that if you talk to someone, a lot of people have been funny in their life.
01:39:31.000
So all you're doing up there is talking, and you say something funny.
01:39:35.000
Yeah, but you're talking and saying something funny to people who know you and love you and know your quirks and your tics and all that stuff.
01:39:42.000
You're in front of strangers who may or may not be in that audience.
01:39:49.000
I don't know if you've ever seen this, but there's a lot of people that are maybe podcasters or they do other things and then they're doing stand-up occasionally in front of their crowd.
01:40:00.000
I think they're doing good stand-up, but then they'll go on in the store, and they'll get sandwiched into a lineup in the OR of murderers, and then it's ugly.
01:40:14.000
Because if they're all there to see you, and they're all your fans, and they paid money to hear you talk, they just want to see you.
01:40:24.000
And they've probably never been in the comedy club.
01:40:26.000
So if Malcolm is doing these speeches, and he's doing these speeches in front of these large audiences, he's probably said some funny things.
01:40:36.000
But when he got it, I was like, ah, man, I need to find a dude.
01:40:45.000
It's a very weird art form, because I think it's only truly appreciated...
01:40:52.000
Like truly appreciated in terms of what's actually happening.
01:40:55.000
And it took me years to realize that what was going on when you're killing is a sort of a form of hypnosis.
01:41:04.000
The audience is letting you into their mind and they're letting you think for them.
01:41:09.000
That's why when you have clunky shit or you blow yourself up or you have a distorted perception of yourself or you have too many words, it's like annoying, it's frustrating, it's hard for people to absorb.
01:41:20.000
You lose some of that grip that you have on them.
01:41:24.000
But when someone has an economy of words, and they lock in, and their jokes are tight, and then they keep going and going, you're lost.
01:41:36.000
One of my favorite things is to sit in the audience and love someone killing.
01:41:42.000
But to break that down to just sentences and words and you say this and you say that, it's not that.
01:42:01.000
Now that some of these ex-NBA players are on ESPN, because now they're speaking about the game from being players.
01:42:08.000
So you have people who clearly have never played.
01:42:28.000
There was a show like that for stand-ups where we could watch a stand-up special.
01:42:35.000
I know, because you come across as hating, but it's not...
01:42:39.000
You know, and I know there's something that should have never happened.
01:42:41.000
And you watch them, and you'd have to break it down.
01:42:54.000
You know some of my favorite people to do this with?
01:42:57.000
Me and Eddie Pep are sitting in the back of the room and just...
01:43:11.000
When you see bullshit, bullshit comedy is fun to watch sometimes.
01:43:14.000
But what I'm saying, I'm fascinated by that thing where...
01:43:20.000
We're truth-tellers, we're honest, we spend our whole lives trying to figure out what our truth is, but we can't speak truth about certain things still because it's bad optics, it's bad things.
01:43:40.000
That's why I said I'm not walking around going, this guy sucks.
01:43:47.000
But I just feel like you should have taken a year.
01:44:05.000
And then they try to fight professionally and they get crushed.
01:44:09.000
And then there's people that are really good at it.
01:44:14.000
What's separating the creativity, the aggression, the understanding, the technical aspects of it?
01:44:30.000
Maybe it's just a journey and they just haven't gotten to the point yet.
01:44:33.000
But there's also a thing where you were talking about...
01:45:06.000
But it's the same mentality as those phony actors that haven't made it.
01:45:11.000
They don't say, nice to meet you because they might have met you already, so they say, good to see you.
01:45:22.000
You know, me and my friend, Dwayne Kennedy, we were working on a show one time, and we walked a lot.
01:45:28.000
And we would just walk up to people and go, I'm hearing good things.
01:45:45.000
I have a person I know, and her boyfriend is not a comic, an actor that hasn't made it.
01:45:53.000
Because all he talks about is, like, that this guy, I don't like his choices.
01:46:06.000
Pay attention to you, and you'll have a busy, busy...
01:46:25.000
The struggle is a motherfucker because it's a mind fuck and then also the pressure of that struggle overwhelms you and then when you actually do get a break there's so much weight to it you can't carry it.
01:46:38.000
Do you have anything now Do you look back at maybe, like, have you seen some comedians, like, because, like, when you're in that struggle, you're not your best self, right?
01:46:53.000
Have you, like, ever, like, made amends or anything, like, you know, or just, like...
01:47:00.000
Forgiving people quietly because you understand it now.
01:47:05.000
Before you're a parent, you see the world one way.
01:47:14.000
I meet a guy, he's 42. Oh, he's always been 42. I'm a very forgiving person.
01:47:38.000
We're in a wild business where people take chances.
01:47:41.000
Wild people that take chances, you gotta cut them breaks.
01:47:46.000
You know who else embraces people being who they are?
01:47:52.000
It's like people want to protect people like that.
01:48:05.000
I'm like, I just want to know, yeah, man, whoa, whoa, and then what?
01:48:15.000
But I also, I like people realizing that they fucked up and then talking about their fuck-ups.
01:48:20.000
But that's what makes, like I say, it's the difference between greatness and, you know, talented people.
01:48:31.000
It's just a powerful human quality to forgive people.
01:48:35.000
Humility is big, but also just being a nice person is so valuable.
01:48:43.000
One of the things I love most about coming to the store, order the improv, is seeing all my friends.
01:48:56.000
Well, because I haven't had a special and all that shit.
01:48:59.000
No, you haven't had a special because you concentrated on writing.
01:49:08.000
When things aren't going well, assholes on the outside come up with solutions.
01:49:25.000
I think that there's always some solution that they've got.
01:49:29.000
That's a dangerous thing when things aren't going well.
01:49:30.000
All you need to do is, people, all you need to do is, you're listening.
01:49:34.000
People, even people that are really good, people come up with bad solutions.
01:49:38.000
Like, my manager, my own manager, I've had four.
01:49:44.000
He found me when I was an open miker in Boston.
01:49:47.000
But in the beginning, he wanted me to be clean.
01:49:58.000
But it's also because things aren't going well, right?
01:50:03.000
So people are like, hmm, how do we make it happen for you?
01:50:07.000
You told me I gotta dress up nice and be clean.
01:50:13.000
Let me ask you, do you think there's still value in that?
01:50:18.000
Why don't they have a late night talk show where comics can just do their actual act?
01:50:24.000
The problem is all those goddamn people you're talking about.
01:50:26.000
Like the same reason why you can never have this fight companion or even this podcast on a network.
01:50:34.000
I have a friend who's an executive and he actually talked to me about, you know, there's probably a lot of other things you could do with this show.
01:50:40.000
You know, you could do this and you could do...
01:50:46.000
You're not going to come over to the wild side.
01:50:56.000
And if you involve the internet and you try to bring the Hollywood people over, they'll just fuck it up.
01:51:04.000
So if any kind of wild ass late night talk show you have comics sitting around, they'll ruin that.
01:51:11.000
You'd have to bring it over to the dark side and just let people just...
01:51:15.000
All you need is a conference table and some fucking cameras and an internet connection.
01:51:25.000
I'll be watching stuff going, man, I want to die.
01:51:28.000
Dude, every comic should have a podcast just like every comic has a social media.
01:51:40.000
I'm going to keep it, but I ain't following nobody.
01:52:16.000
I'm trying to get rid of all my Twitter followers.
01:52:20.000
If I know you and I see you, I'm going to engage that way.
01:52:23.000
I'm only going to post stuff that I feel is funny and fun or whatever.
01:52:28.000
You have to be worried about the addictive nature of social media.
01:52:36.000
When I take a shit in the morning, I'll go over my email first, see if there's any important.
01:52:49.000
Him and Kyle Dunnigan are the best follows on Instagram.
01:53:00.000
And they were asking me, like, who do you want to star in it?
01:53:09.000
Plus, I don't even know if he's fucking with TV now because his music career is like...
01:53:26.000
It's certain when you see him, you know his goal is to be funny, and you just trust it.
01:53:33.000
Even though he hasn't, quote-unquote, been number one on a call sheet before, I was like, man, this dude would be...
01:53:45.000
They passed on the show, so I didn't have to go do with the casting thing anyway.
01:53:49.000
But in the back of my mind, I was like, man, he would be the perfect guy.
01:53:52.000
If you had a show that was produced by people that you respect...
01:53:57.000
Yeah, and other comics and really intelligent people that you trusted, that would be a different experience.
01:54:06.000
And it would have to be people whose lives didn't depend on the success of the show.
01:54:25.000
Well, it clearly benefits your stand-up writing because you have this...
01:54:31.000
Your stand-up, you vary widely in your subjects.
01:54:39.000
You have a very comprehensive approach to subjects.
01:54:46.000
I think a lot of that comes from your writing and a lot of that comes from also dealing with network notes and dealing with executives.
01:55:02.000
TextOwen.com You could do so many different things, man.
01:55:08.000
And if you want to do some gigs with me, I've got a bunch of gigs.
01:55:14.000
Does this come out tomorrow or is this out today?
01:55:30.000
What's the biggest place you ever performed at?
01:55:39.000
And let me tell you, the comedy store, my training in the comedy store prepared me for that.
01:55:43.000
Because at the run-through, I was like, how am I going to play this?
01:55:50.000
When I was on stage, the way it's set intimately, it felt like D.O.R., Really?
01:55:55.000
It felt like DLR. So from a technical perspective, I just had to stand there and trust the material.
01:56:02.000
And then when I would act out something, it was so much more effective than the first instinct.
01:56:09.000
It's like, if I was like a couple of, you know, just because of my build and my height, I was trying to figure out what's the best way to like connect.
01:56:23.000
Sometimes I pace, but the more I know it, the stiller I can get.
01:56:47.000
The drinks are being bought in and the tabs are being dropped.
01:57:14.000
I was like, oh shit, this is what I, this is, like, I'm that, like, I love that shit.
01:57:19.000
Well, especially for your style of comedy, too.
01:57:22.000
You have comedy, too, that's got plenty of room to think about what you're saying.
01:57:26.000
You know, and that's what you, in the theater, you gotta kind of slow things down a little bit, because I remember I went to watch Louis Black, me and Joey Diaz.
01:57:37.000
And we flew in early, and Joey was like, let's go across the street, because that was where the theater was.
01:57:43.000
And so we got in, we sat down, and I realized that when he's in New Jersey, the theater didn't have the best sound.
01:57:52.000
But when he was in the middle of his, he was killing, he had this big laugh, and then he would say a tagline, and I couldn't hear the tagline because everybody around me was laughing.
01:58:02.000
And then I realized, like, oh, you've got to hold these taglines a little in a place like this because the laughter is too loud because you actually hear people next to you going, ha, ha, ha, ha!
01:58:14.000
You can't hear what the fuck he's saying unless the volume is so overwhelming like you got to know and then on stage It's hard to realize that because there's the monitors and the monitors are you know You can hear yourself very loudly, but you might not the people in the audience might not be able to hear it It is a different pacing thing.
01:58:32.000
This is so interesting about that is when you What I like to do sometimes is look at what other acts come to that venue.
01:58:42.000
And a lot of times if it's like jazz ensembles or things where it's not a lot of laughter in that space, you gotta remember It's 52 weeks in a year.
01:59:03.000
So yeah, the place is even like, what the fuck is all this noise?
01:59:08.000
So yeah, you do, it bounces and you gotta like just...
01:59:14.000
What's your thing that you do when people are laughing a lot?
01:59:18.000
Like, if you got a lot of laughs, you know, some people like to do that fake laugh.
01:59:38.000
If I'm laughing, it's because I think it's funny in the moment.
01:59:42.000
There's a grossness to fake laughs that I just can't tolerate.
01:59:46.000
I see guys fake laugh, even good comics sometimes.
01:59:54.000
But if you're lying to me, you're pretending you think this is hysterical right now when you said it 150 times in a row exactly the same way.
02:00:01.000
And you're pretending like you just realized how funny it is.
02:00:04.000
Like, I had a tagline the other night that I never used before, and right after I said it, I started cracking up.
02:00:12.000
Because I realized, like, I had a point in the middle of this bit, and I said the point, and they're like, bah!
02:00:23.000
Like, in the moment, I came up with it, I ad-libbed, I said it on the spot, and then I started laughing.
02:00:28.000
Those are real laughs, but I don't hardly ever...
02:00:39.000
You know, most of the time I'm in the groove, right?
02:00:43.000
But there's times when I'm up there, I'm like, man, I can't believe I get to do this.
02:00:49.000
Remember, go back to thinking about the time when you were 19, you're watching Chris and Tony, and then think now.
02:00:54.000
You know, you get to do it in the best comedy clubs in the world.
02:01:03.000
And so that brings me back to Malcolm Gladwell, man.
02:01:28.000
And that was my man, because he had these podcasts when he was dissecting stuff.
02:01:35.000
And sometimes brilliant people overestimate their perceptions.
02:01:39.000
They overestimate their ability to break something down.
02:01:43.000
I mean, I've had conversations with people about fighting that way, where people say, hey, if anybody ever came up to me, I would do this, and then I would do that.
02:01:55.000
I'm just going to let you talk, because really, I want to just tackle you right now and choke the life out of you.
02:02:01.000
But people have this idea, because a person moves in a way that's similar to the way that they can move.
02:02:09.000
They have these ideas, and they think, oh, he's out there talking.
02:02:16.000
I'm always performing, because I'm always talking about this.
02:02:28.000
Before I criticize him, I'd have to hear his exact quote.
02:02:34.000
He was talking about jobs that are really hard, and he picked stand-up comedy, and there's a couple quotes.
02:02:43.000
It was a podcast they did somewhere, like an interview.
02:02:56.000
But basically, give me your synopsis of it then.
02:02:59.000
He thought people were too drunk, so it was really easy.
02:03:16.000
We've all seen shows where people are laughing at bullshit.
02:03:22.000
If there was a show and you went on and Jessel Neck went on and Diaz, maybe Louis C.K. dropped in.
02:03:41.000
But he's also right in that we've all seen mediocre thoughts get passed off and the audience laughs.
02:03:49.000
There's certain clubs, I don't want to mention any names, but you can go to them any night of the week in Burbank or in North Hollywood and you can see dog shit comedy and people are laughing.
02:04:14.000
You could watch someone do it poorly on a playground, or you could watch someone do it exquisitely as a professional.
02:04:23.000
Gladwell stated, comedians deal with people in a tightly controlled setting in that he cannot imagine an easier set of circumstances for navigating a social situation than that of a stand-up comedian.
02:04:35.000
They go to Vegas, they go to the comedy cellar, they control their environments.
02:04:47.000
Malcolm Gladwell Fails Stand-Up Comedy 101. Yes!
02:05:12.000
But what he doesn't understand is there's a mind wrestling that's going on before you actually go and do that.
02:05:19.000
And to sort of diminish the difficulty of that, it just shows that you haven't done it.
02:05:31.000
Because he said it in the same exact voice he says everything else in.
02:05:35.000
So when he's breaking down something I really want to hear him dissect.
02:05:52.000
Those motherfuckers did thousands and thousands of shows.
02:05:58.000
It's numbers and concentration and focus and just that being what you really want.
02:06:04.000
It's numbers of like passion, numbers of focus.
02:06:14.000
It is a tightly controlled environment, but it's so easy to bomb in that tightly controlled environment.
02:06:22.000
Some rooms are tightly controlled environments.
02:06:25.000
But starting, we didn't always perform in tightly controlled environments.
02:06:34.000
Yeah, there's so many other spots where you also have to make comedy happen.
02:06:40.000
Spaces where there's a big moat between you and the audience.
02:06:47.000
A Jack and Jill strip club in Woonsocket, Rhode Island.
02:06:56.000
And some of them were great, but occasionally they were terrible.
02:06:59.000
And this one, as far as I know, I think I was a one and done.
02:07:04.000
Because there was only like four people in the crowd.
02:07:09.000
Jack and Jill's strip club was an old concept that didn't really take off where couples would go and a guy would go and strip and a girl would go and strip.
02:07:20.000
And they both looked like their parents drank while they were in the womb.
02:07:25.000
This guy had terrible tattoos and he had them covered with bandanas.
02:07:28.000
So he had bandanas around his arm, and you could see the shitty tattoo poking out of the bottom.
02:07:36.000
He was built like a guy who lifts weights, but he drinks every night.
02:07:42.000
He wasn't like, if you go to Vegas and you see those men from Down Under, they're all six-pack looking ripped.
02:07:52.000
And I'd like to say I bombed, but bombing usually you hear some noise.
02:08:03.000
They were not even recognizing that I was talking.
02:08:07.000
So I got off stage and there was like a little pool table in the back.
02:08:11.000
And there was a dude who just happened to be in town because his family lived there, because it was around the holidays, and his family lived in Rhode Island, and he just wanted to get out of the house, so he came to this local bar.
02:08:26.000
My fucking family lives around here, and I just came here because there's nowhere else to go.
02:08:32.000
And he and I had a game of pool, and we were laughing.
02:08:48.000
A layer of protection where you could go up in front of those people.
02:08:51.000
Yes, and you also know when you get offered those gigs what it's going to be like.
02:09:02.000
There were some gigs that I'd get old school shitty bar gigs that were fun, man.
02:09:21.000
And he thinks it looks easy because they make it look easy.
02:09:28.000
That's like thinking that someone's making something, thinking that something's easy because someone's a master.
02:09:35.000
Like, did you ever see that video where Michael Jordan came out of retirement?
02:09:41.000
No, he didn't come out of retirement, but he had retired.
02:09:43.000
But there was a player who had been talking shit about him.
02:10:15.000
And this is a safe space to try to figure it out.
02:10:18.000
So you might see some people like, you know, whatever.
02:10:22.000
I'd be like, all right, put me in front of you.
02:10:27.000
And I would make sure I could see they face while I'm doing it.
02:10:34.000
Look, Chris Rock does that better than anybody.
02:10:36.000
I've seen Chris Rock go on after people killed.
02:10:40.000
He gets this giant round of applause and he goes, relax, relax.
02:10:47.000
I'm going to tell you right now, there's all new shit I'm working out.
02:10:51.000
And he'll walk around and joke and laugh and say, it's not that good.
02:10:54.000
And he'll bring everybody down, calm them down, and then purposely fuck around.
02:11:02.000
Damon Wayans, he's one of the unheralded greats.
02:11:07.000
Yeah, he is doing it again, but he's also doing sitcoms again, too.
02:11:18.000
But then he's like, he doesn't want to say anything crazy.
02:11:31.000
Look, he had a joke about Magic Johnson way back in the days when Magic went back to playing when he had HIV. I'll never forget this.
02:11:41.000
Everybody was afraid to cover Magic, except for Dennis Rodman.
02:11:46.000
Dennis Rodman was like, motherfucker, I fucked Madonna.
02:11:48.000
I'll spit in your mouth and accelerate your symptoms.
02:11:54.000
To this day, that was one of the best jokes I ever heard.
02:11:57.000
I'll spit in your mouth and accelerate your symptoms.
02:12:14.000
I got to witness, like, the stuff he says between the lines is so complete.
02:12:22.000
He should be recognized as one of the greatest of all time, but he went and did a bunch of TV shows.
02:12:27.000
And while he was doing those TV shows, you know, he did clubs and he fucked around a little bit like that, but he didn't dedicate to it the same way maybe Cat Williams did or some other guys did that became huge.
02:12:38.000
And had a bunch of big time specials in that era, but he still got it.
02:12:44.000
Damon, if he wanted to go on tour and start hitting theaters and start doing a Netflix special, he would blow people away.
02:12:52.000
He was one of the people that showed me it was okay to be tall and funny.
02:13:10.000
Great writer, great performer, and part of one of the great...
02:13:18.000
There's In Living Color and number one is Chappelle's Show.
02:13:21.000
Now, Chappelle's Show is number one because it only really lasted two years.
02:13:24.000
And still to this day has some of the most legendary sketches of all time.
02:13:28.000
Clayton Bigsby, one of the most legendary sketches of all time.
02:13:49.000
The world was a different place back then, but he had decided that he was going to do movies.
02:13:53.000
Remember he was in The Last Boy Scout with Bruce Willis?
02:14:00.000
He did that sitcom for a long time, and The problem with sitcoms is they give you that juicy check every week.
02:14:06.000
If you're a famous guy who's the lead of a sitcom, guys like Kevin James, you never have to work again.
02:14:29.000
Because at the end of the day, it's never going to be as good as doing stand-up.
02:14:34.000
There's a thing about when you hear a dude pop in the main room.
02:14:38.000
Like, you're in the back green room and you hear...
02:15:12.000
But it was basically saying that, like, it was basically mocking Terry Crews.
02:15:24.000
I mean, the idea that some agent touching his dick was actually terrifying is so ridiculous.
02:15:29.000
But Joey Diaz had this bit about, you shouldn't have done that underwear commercial.
02:15:35.000
You're bouncing your titties with that giant fucking hog.
02:15:42.000
But that bit, me and Santino, we were in the back of the OR. Literally, we couldn't stay in the chair.
02:15:51.000
We were just clinging to the table, just hanging on.
02:15:54.000
And Joey's screaming, and his sweat's flying off of him, and he's beet red.
02:16:00.000
Those are my favorite moments in life when someone hits those pops.
02:16:13.000
Do you think your insecurity rises when you are being coddled and treated like that?
02:16:21.000
I got fortunate in that when I did Fear Factor, I never stopped doing stand-up.
02:16:32.000
When I was on news radio, I went for a long stretch where I was barely doing stand-up.
02:16:42.000
I would do sets, but I wasn't writing any new material.
02:16:45.000
And then I had a writer, one of the writers, and one of the producers came to see me and I ate shit.
02:16:53.000
In the main room, like a late show on a Friday night.
02:17:03.000
They were like fourth row, and I'm like, oh my god, this is embarrassing.
02:17:06.000
And there was only maybe 30 people in the whole crowd.
02:17:10.000
Ray Romano's in the back like, this is who you hire?
02:17:12.000
He was already killing it with Everybody Loves Raymond by then.
02:17:27.000
But when I did that, I realized, okay, I'm fucking off here.
02:17:31.000
I'm just doing this sitcom and I'm losing the thing that I love.
02:17:39.000
And then a year later, I wound up doing my Warner Brothers special.
02:17:42.000
My Warner Brothers CD. I really got my shit together again.
02:18:01.000
One of the producers was like, why are you still doing stand-up?
02:18:11.000
He did Seinfeld and then stopped doing stand-up.
02:18:16.000
You know, it's hard to get hired as a writer, too, because it's almost...
02:18:23.000
It's almost like the difference between improv cats and stand-up cats, right?
02:18:29.000
So if you're a writer, if that's what you do, you write, then...
02:18:35.000
They may have a certain bias or feel a certain type of way towards a comic that writes.
02:18:48.000
And you basically, you're sitting in a room and you got two jobs.
02:18:52.000
So it's like, we got this job, but I'm also going to do this other job.
02:18:55.000
Nobody with one job wants to sit next to somebody with two jobs.
02:19:02.000
Especially with comedy, because their comedy is kind of unproven.
02:19:05.000
They think they're funny, but how do you know you're funny?
02:19:10.000
I was like, that's a courageous thing to invest.
02:19:13.000
You're a comedy writer, and you don't even perform.
02:19:25.000
No, because I really want to listen to him again.
02:19:31.000
If he was here right now, I'm sure he would see our perspectives.
02:19:34.000
Right, and then I could listen to him again because I miss it.
02:20:10.000
And I've seen her act talking about forcing men to eat her pussy.
02:20:13.000
And it's one of the worst bits I've ever seen in my life.
02:20:19.000
But yet she was able to write that thing on that platform.
02:20:23.000
And it's like an amazing thing that's happening.
02:20:28.000
Well, if there's money to be made in clicks, that's what it is.
02:20:33.000
Especially if you're writing an article shitting on someone who's done something wrong, like Louis C.K. or someone else, or Aziz Ansari, someone who's gotten in trouble.
02:20:41.000
And you go after them, and they know that, like, that's why the pylon happens, because it gets people's attention.
02:20:50.000
But yeah, there's a lot of people writing stories or articles about comedy where they're dismissive.
02:20:59.000
They don't really truly understand what they're talking about.
02:21:10.000
I don't carry it much, but it was so funny because when I sat here, I was like, oh yeah, Malcolm Gladwell sat here.
02:21:18.000
Jerry Seinfeld did something like that one time too.
02:21:21.000
He was on HBO talking to Bob Costas about comedy.
02:21:27.000
And Jerry said, I don't know who the next people are.
02:21:37.000
He said they don't know, they don't study the craft, or they don't know, I guess, who came before them or whatever.
02:21:48.000
So I'm at Homosa Beach Comedy Magic Club, and Jimmy Brogan, who I call the comic whisperer, He goes, you know, Jerry's performing.
02:22:00.000
So I go watch Jerry perform, and then he invites me in the green room.
02:22:05.000
I go, hey, man, you can't be going on TV saying comedians don't study.
02:22:35.000
But sometimes people say things and they're just talking.
02:22:39.000
They're just hoping they could formulate it as they're talking.
02:22:45.000
You're right, and he was right too to let it go, to agree with you.
02:22:53.000
Mark Norman, who's a friend of mine, does gigs with him.
02:22:58.000
Well, he still is doing it, and he's got $500 million in the bank, and he's still doing it.
02:23:14.000
Basically, he's one of those guys that did what you're telling me to do.
02:23:22.000
Some days when all I do is write comedy, I go, God damn, why don't I do this all the time?
02:23:32.000
You know how you said that you're consistently inconsistent?
02:23:46.000
You know, we don't necessarily have discipline.
02:23:50.000
I'm just very fortunate that I was involved in something else before comedy that required discipline because your fucking physical health is on the line.
02:24:06.000
When I come home from the comedy store and it's late at night, a lot of times I just want to go to sleep.
02:24:22.000
Come back inside and stare at that laptop, and then I'll start writing.
02:24:27.000
Maybe I'll do more than one hour, but I'm definitely going to do one hour.
02:24:38.000
So me and Mitch met at the Chicago Comedy Festival.
02:24:49.000
He was like, yo, oh, I'm about to be rich, man.
02:24:53.000
He had just signed this deal or whatever in Montreal.
02:25:11.000
And then I would go eat and get a gig and then buy it back.
02:25:43.000
And he goes, when I decided I wanted to do comedy, I hit acid.
02:25:50.000
I got my notebook, and everything I saw, I wrote.
02:26:07.000
And that's when I learned where cartoons come from.
02:26:09.000
Like, everything I saw was like a fucking cartoon.
02:26:16.000
Why is A, A? Why is B, B? Why is the letter green, green?
02:26:24.000
He's videotaping me and he literally goes, I clearly remember him going, you should do this on stage.
02:26:55.000
And I was like, I pray that I'm calling the girl.
02:26:59.000
As I was talking to her on the phone, and I was on the bed, and I was like, I want your pussy.
02:27:11.000
And I was like, why are you putting that shit in my head?
02:27:12.000
Like, because whatever she saw, I could see, like, I could physically see it.
02:27:18.000
And then I look over in the bed next to me, and Mitch is, like, fucking the girl that bought the thing.
02:27:25.000
And I'm like, oh, shit, I'm in an orgy, but not really.
02:27:34.000
And then, like, my body started shaking and the whole shit, like, left my body.
02:27:38.000
And so that's how, like, you know, that was my experience.
02:27:42.000
Never desired to do it again, but I did it with Mitch.
02:27:52.000
Separate of one another, and we would leave each other notes and shit, you know?
02:27:55.000
And he would be like, kill it, man, or whatever.
02:27:59.000
And one time I was doing some college in buttfuck Pennsylvania.
02:28:03.000
No, it was some buttfuck, but it was somewhere in Pennsylvania.
02:28:07.000
And he had just done, and that's when I learned about him passing.
02:28:10.000
Like, I was literally reading his note when I heard about the heroin shit.
02:28:16.000
So you were reading the note that he wrote to you?
02:28:19.000
That he wrote me when the news broke, like, did you hear about Mitch?
02:28:51.000
I think I was in Vegas independent, but we were cool, so I was there like, yo, this is crazy.
02:28:56.000
Yeah, right after he was married, something happened where his girlfriend mouthed up to a cop and they bounced her head off the hood and arrested her.
02:29:06.000
Anyway, we found out that Mitch had been brought to the hospital and they thought he was going to lose his leg because he had been shooting into this one same area and he got gangrene.
02:29:18.000
And then he got free of that and he healed up, but he went right back to it.
02:29:34.000
Because whenever I saw him, we were working out.
02:29:44.000
He liked me to open for him because he liked to work.
02:29:56.000
And then when he had to deal with the show and all of that shit, he would do material about it because it's such a different experience than from what he is.
02:30:08.000
Dealing with the notes of it all and all that shit.
02:30:22.000
To this day, I like to listen to his stand-up when I'm on my way to the airport.
02:31:05.000
People just never did that shit in front of me.
02:31:07.000
No one ever did it in front of me either, but I knew they were doing it.
02:31:10.000
I had a buddy of mine in New York that died from it.
02:31:17.000
That's what a lot of times they find out about Oxys.
02:31:25.000
That crisis is something that's just swept through the entire world.
02:31:32.000
I've never done it, but I did get a morphine drip once when I had my knee fixed.
02:31:42.000
You can hit the button every time you want some morphine.
02:31:48.000
It just made you feel like the world was filled with love.
02:31:59.000
Which makes sense that a lot of musicians and a lot of people wanted that because so many people that are like really super creative or they're kind of in pain.
02:32:07.000
A lot of those people are like, when you think of Nirvana, you think of Kurt Cobain, the screaming, all that, that's coming from a place of pain, right?
02:32:26.000
You know, Lenny Baez's passing of cocaine overdose scared me from doing anything because he was all muscle.
02:32:38.000
And I was like, if cocaine could take him down, I don't stand a chance.
02:32:49.000
When that happened, my brain was like, oh, that shit ain't for me.
02:33:07.000
But I just purposely just shit on his dumb white couch.
02:33:22.000
We'll be at the improv together Wednesday night for the 1030 show.
02:33:32.000
But most importantly, go to textOwen.com and I'll send you...