Comedian Patton Oswalt joins Jemele to talk about his love for stand-up comedy and what it's like to be a comedian in the 21st century. He also talks about why he doesn't want to go back to college and why it's a good thing he's not going to college. He also shares some of his favorite memories of growing up in a small town and how it's made him appreciate what he has now more than he ever could have ever imagined. It's a great episode and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did making it. Thanks to everyone for all your support and stay tuned for the next JRE episode! -Jon Sorrentino JRE is a production of Native Creative Podcasts. JRE Radio is produced in Los Angeles, CA and is available on most major podcast directories, including Podcoin, Crackle, and Podcoin.org. If you like JRE, please consider becoming a patron patron and leaving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever else you get your favorite podconionship through the linktr.ee/nativecreativecommons. Thank you so much for being a patron and supporting the JRE Podcast! We really appreciate it. Thank you. - Jon and his team at Native Creative and all the hard work that goes into making this podcast possible. We appreciate you. -Jon and his crew at JRE! - Thank you for making JRE so much of what we do! -Jon & his support JRE and all of our lives are amazing! -The JRE -Patton Oswalt -JRP - JRE - @ JRE @ & JRE at LAX, LAX @ LA, LA, CA @ LAX at LA, PA @ LA , LA, NY @ LA @ LA & LA, CO @ LA & LA @ LFW @ LA at LA , LA @ NYX, PA, NY at LA at LFW at LA & NY at NYC at LA / LA at SF at LA @ NYC at LYX at SRO at PODCO etc. @ LA / PHOTOGRAPHY AND LAX & LA at NYX at SFAT & SFAT at LPC at COTTON ST at COSCO & CHICOTRO at BOSCO at BUM & BUM
00:01:53.000I appreciate just being able to talk to you.
00:01:55.000I appreciate just having my friends that I can communicate with and just talking shit to each other and making each other laugh and saying horrible things over text messages.
00:02:08.000If this comes back, if we get to do stand-up again ever, I just feel like comedians are going to be so much more social and just happy to be with each other and appreciate the...
00:02:33.000I'm trying to sit down and write every day.
00:03:12.000Most of the time it comes from an essay.
00:03:14.000Yeah, and I also miss the deleting of stuff where you write something down and then your mind is awesome and you go up on stage and the beginning part's great and the end part's great and you're like, this whole middle section I thought I was going to be George Carlin and I could lose all of that this bit and this bit and that's what it is.
00:03:33.000Yeah, it's a weird art form where I think the only art form that I'm aware of is that you must have an audience in order to fully create it.
00:05:31.000Are you really willing to have something on your phone that shows who you've been in contact with and who your phone has come near and whether or not they're negative or positive?
00:05:42.000And also, are there ways, and this is, again, Yes, we do those too.
00:05:55.000When you do an antibodies test, there's one line that shows whether it's an active virus, and there's another line that shows that it's just the antibodies of a virus that you got and recovered from.
00:06:09.000And a lot of people that recover from it, apparently, they didn't even know they had it.
00:08:24.000And again, I don't like to predict the future.
00:08:27.000If we do get to go back to doing comedy, I just feel like I'll never talk about this on stage.
00:08:32.000The last thing people are going to want to see on stage is my funny COVID story, which is going to be just a variation on everyone's funny COVID story.
00:09:03.000On the other hand, someone will come along like a tell, or someone will come along and have the perfect take on it, and you're like, oh, well, there it is.
00:09:13.000Or on the other end of the spectrum, Joey Diaz will come up and do the rawest, most personal, uncomfortable, but also brilliant take, where you might actually have a unique story, but after hearing Joey, you're like, yeah, I don't need to share mine.
00:09:57.000Yeah, he actually was here in studio the week before he went to New York.
00:10:03.000He was burning the candle at both ends, flies to New York with no sleep, does radio, does all the promo shows, does everything, does stand up at Gotham, flies back with no sleep, drives the next day We're good to go.
00:11:02.000His doctor says if we put him on a ventilator, his lungs are just going to give up and he could die.
00:11:07.000So they don't put him on a ventilator.
00:11:09.000Then it turns out In New York City, and they don't know if this is a correlation or causation, obviously, but 80% of the people they put on the ventilators wound up dying.
00:12:33.000Another thing he had was a vitamin D deficiency.
00:12:36.000I I didn't know about that until after I did a podcast with Dr. Rhonda Patrick, and she was talking about studies that have been done in New Orleans and Indonesia and several different studies.
00:12:46.000One of the things they've shown is the people that are in critical care or in the ICU, there's a large percentage, in some cases over 80% of them are vitamin D deficient.
00:12:57.000Versus the people who have sufficient levels of serum vitamin D in their body, those people, it's less than 5%.
00:13:04.000So it was 4% of them that were in the ICU, the people with sufficient vitamin D, and more than 80% of people with deficient.
00:13:12.000And vitamin D is not just a vitamin, apparently, according to her.
00:13:15.000It's actually a hormone, and it regulates many things in the body, and most people are deficient from it.
00:13:20.000And in the United States, More than 70% of people have insufficient levels of vitamin D, and 29% are deficient to the point where it actually can cause medical issues.
00:14:52.000It's one of many factors that they think is at play with people that get really sick from this disease, vitamin D. Yeah, well, that's another thing.
00:15:03.000I reread Guns, Germs, and Steel about the Spanish flu and the way that diseases rewire and reboot your body to benefit themselves and stuff.
00:15:59.000But it's not okay to go to some places.
00:16:02.000And I feel like people need to have the ability to take their own chances and need to have the ability to protect themselves.
00:16:09.000Like, you need to give people the opportunity to work.
00:16:12.000Especially in situations where you're dealing with people who their entire life could fall apart over these couple of months where you tell them they can't work.
00:16:33.000We're not looking at the whole spectrum of possibilities that we can do here to move on.
00:16:40.000Obviously, anyone could In this case, in this scenario, you taking your own risks tips other people who might not want to take that risk into those areas.
00:16:54.000And I absolutely understand that someone's life can fall apart in two months if they don't work.
00:16:59.000I think that's more of a symptom of there not being the social safety net that we have to have out there for these kind of situations.
00:17:05.000We're sort of seeing that in a very stark way.
00:17:08.000But what I'm saying is, if we don't follow these harsh...
00:17:16.000The way we got over it is it kind of just burned itself out.
00:17:20.000And we need to burn it out of the population that way.
00:17:23.000And it sucks that that's right now the only way we have to do it because we clearly don't have the testing capacity that we need.
00:17:40.000Well, we don't have the stuff to implement what I'm saying right now, but we do have the information as far as things you can do to boost your immune system.
00:17:49.000Make sure you get better sleep, don't eat this, don't do that.
00:17:52.000But then you've got people that, look, you know how many kids relied on school for food?
00:19:48.000We existed in a Goldilocks period in this country, from World War II on to here, where there's an Instagram page, History, and they had this...
00:20:03.000This really sobering post about imagine if you were born in the year 1900. And then it goes on to what would happen by the time you're X years old, the Spanish flu starts.
00:20:14.000By the time you're Y years old, World War II. And it just goes on and on and on and shows how fucking horrific it was for people who were born 120 years ago.
00:20:35.000Except it feels like now, especially Gen Z is repeating a version of what people born in 1900 went through because a lot of them remember, oh my god, it was 9-11 and then now this.
00:20:47.000They actually remember a lot of disasters.
00:21:16.000And that's going to start becoming typical summers.
00:21:21.000That is going to become the norm if a radical, drastic change isn't made.
00:21:26.000But maybe, you know, you were talking about how, what if there was a shift in consciousness in terms of knowing how fragile and how precarious everything is?
00:21:34.000I think it'd be really cool if America switched to, I don't mind America flexing its might and saying we're It would be so cool if we change that flex to the way a small town gangster flexes and he goes,
00:21:50.000look, everyone here, if there's some old lady that's about to get evicted, I pay for it.
00:21:54.000Everyone in my five blocks is taken care of.
00:21:58.000Yes, he drives a nice car and wears a suit, but it's that brag of my flex is no one in this country goes hungry, doesn't get medical care, and that's what we flex to the world instead of flexing Look at our billionaires.
00:22:13.000We have like 20 crazy rich billionaires.
00:23:23.000Well, one thing that we are realizing from this is that there's a lot of people that have that libertarian bent, let the market decide, we need a small government, this and that.
00:23:33.000When something like this goes down, you realize, oh, you need structure.
00:23:37.000You actually need a pandemic response team.
00:23:40.000You need people to figure out a way to get food to folks.
00:23:44.000We need to plan like this can happen again.
00:23:48.000I mean, again, visit any third world country after an earthquake and look at all the crumbled buildings with no rebar and go, do you really want no building inspectors and no regulations on it?
00:23:58.000Like, is that what you're fighting for?
00:24:33.000The inspectors are there to protect the people that are actually doing it correctly because a lot of times the people doing it correctly have got to go to subcontractors.
00:25:47.000They planned to make as much money as possible by selling as much food as possible every single week, and then they were basically spending all that money and investing all that money and distributing all that money.
00:25:57.000They didn't have enough money for a couple of months off.
00:26:00.000They don't have enough money for anything to go sideways.
00:26:46.000At the end of the boom, there were a lot of comedians that, for a time, you could be not great and make $100,000 a year because there were clubs everywhere.
00:26:55.000And these guys spent money like, I'm going to make $100,000 a year forever.
00:27:47.000I'm not saying you have to dress in sackcloth and have shoes made out of rope, but I'm saying dress nice, take care of your needs, not your wants, your needs, and then the baller move is, and I'm ready if shit goes south.
00:28:24.000Well, sometimes the thing that makes you very successful in comedy is to still be in touch with being a child and being over-emotional and over-sensitive to things.
00:28:33.000That's where some of the best material comes from.
00:28:51.000Like I have a friend and he doesn't have kids and he said to me, he goes, I forget sometimes that you're a dad because you're such a fucking child.
00:28:57.000And I'm like, yeah, but I'm actually a responsible father.
00:29:03.000Look, I still get all wound up about the new comic book releases or some viral things that's in line, just like a goddamn 20. But then I'm also like Alice, vegetables and then chicken and have a little bit of mac and cheese.
00:29:16.000But you've got to eat all those first and then whatever you have.
00:29:32.000It's tricky because you love them and almost they're like your little friends, but they're like, can I just do something?
00:29:37.000Like sometimes my daughter has this cute little trick, she'll ask my wife first, and then she'll say no, but then she comes to daddy, because daddy's the big softie.
00:29:56.000My wife Meredith is such a great mom, but she was raised With very responsible parents and very, not strict, but just like, if I say this will happen, she's consistent both ways.
00:30:10.000If I say we're going to the beach on Saturday, it will happen.
00:30:42.000And I'm like, hey, you can't do this to me.
00:30:45.000Are you noticing that people are, through this nonsense, are at least taking a little bit better care of their health or recognizing that this is a real thing they need to invest in?
00:30:58.000I've noticed it myself that, unfortunately, a lot of this...
00:31:03.000A lot of the lockdown means you've got to eat a lot of processed food because it lasts longer and that's how you make your food dollar stretch in a lot of ways.
00:31:12.000And you see the immediate effects of not having food.
00:31:45.000That's what you were saying before about a flex for the whole, you know, like, we're taken care of.
00:31:51.000That is something that's really missing in this country in a big way, is that we'll spend a lot of money fixing up other places that we've blown up all over the world, but we'll spend no money trying to balance out Baltimore, or South Side of Chicago, or Detroit.
00:32:40.000Especially if someone's annoying and they're attached to this presidential canyon, like, oh, that guy?
00:32:48.000Whenever I'm supporting people now, I try to use my platform and not my voice.
00:32:54.000I remember when I was at Sundance, When they had the Women's March, the day after Trump was inaugurated, I think it was January 21st, I was at Sundance, I was a judge on the short film panel, and I begged the organizers,
00:33:11.000I was like, please, please, please, don't have the march here in Park City.
00:33:16.000Do not have photos of celebrities in front of the Vivian Westwood outlet in Park City, Utah, because all that is is going to be fuel for the other side.
00:33:46.000And also it annoyed me because sometimes I've been guilty of that.
00:33:49.000Because we're in this business because we're narcissists.
00:33:53.000And so part of it is, I want it to be me supporting this person, whereas it should be your platform and your audience supporting that person.
00:34:00.000And that's a very delicate line to cross, which I fumble all the time.
00:34:06.000We're at a point now where it's like, who the fuck would want to be president?
00:35:59.000The standards are definitely different now than they were even five years ago.
00:36:03.000But there's a generation of people putting luminol on people's online history that that will die out and it'll turn into, if it was something horrible a week ago, yes, let's talk about that.
00:36:16.000If you dug up something someone did 10 years ago, everyone's going to go, yeah, you should see this shit, but that won't land the way that it is now.
00:38:05.000They don't get nearly enough credit for it either, because while they were doing it, before the lockdown, they were doing it 250 plus days a year, traveling all over the country, throwing each other on tables.
00:38:16.000Different time zones, a bad jet lag, bad food, no sleep, like...
00:39:43.000My most conspiratorial thoughts are that this is AI, and that AI is slowly bringing us deeper and deeper into the hive, into the matrix.
00:39:56.000And the way they're doing it is by disconnecting us from each other, making social distancing the norm, cover your face with a mask, don't touch anything, everything you're going to do virtually, and slowly but surely it's going to lead to this new way of life.
00:40:11.000Where you're no longer at risk by going out there and making yourself susceptible to all these biological nasties.
00:40:44.000Actually, they're making it so that we'll be happy when we're shown that we're living in protein pods in the wastelands.
00:40:49.000At least there's order in the universe, and it's not just completely ridiculous.
00:40:54.000I mean, I've had those arguments with people about there's a very strong case to be made for Cypher's character in The Matrix of like, no, plug me the fuck back into this.
00:41:06.000So I'm nude with no muscles, acrophied muscles, hairless in a jagged wasteland of radioactive slag, or I could be in this world where I have a nice And I eat a steak and marry someone.
00:41:55.000People always miss that line where Smith says, you know, when we first did The Matrix, it was just flat-out paradise.
00:42:02.000And you guys couldn't handle that, and you rejected it.
00:42:05.000Like, we literally had you where probably the first version of The Matrix, everybody could fly, and orgasms lasted three months, and you could just eat all the chocolate you wanted.
00:43:33.000We're also deeply distrustful of people who tell us what to do, because we know that when people have the power to tell you what to do when they didn't have that power before, and that's what's going on right now in the state, there's new power, right?
00:43:46.000The governor has the power to shut businesses down.
00:43:48.000The mayor has the power to shut everything down.
00:43:50.000When people get into that position of power, I know we don't ever want to think that, and we want to think that all of the reasons why they do things are altruistic, they're great people, they just...
00:45:10.000And a person that has power and new power, like the power to tell people you can or can't do something, that's a very tricky position.
00:45:19.000But it's so weird how those are the kinds of statements that we push back on, and yet there are other more blatantly controlling statements that we will absolutely accept.
00:45:56.000You were so rightfully suspicious and cautious about that statement, and yet that one got no review from you, and you just went, great.
00:46:05.000I don't know what you're talking about in particular, because I didn't see Trump do that, but the thing about him, like, mocking a Bible, even if it's offensive, it doesn't stop people from doing anything.
00:46:15.000What these orders are, they're stopping people from making a living.
00:47:20.000And how about the other family of the soldier that had died, and he had been in some sort of a dispute with the family, and openly dismissive about that situation?
00:47:32.000Well, I thought it was fascinating when they asked, because the father went up and said, what have you sacrificed?
00:47:36.000So then the interviewer was talking to Trump, How do you answer that?
00:48:37.000One of the reasons that Trump has been able to stick around in office and he's going to have his full term and maybe have a second one is, as horrible as it is, it is a fascinating psychological study of a soul in torment that we get to watch for free every week when he gives an interview or does a rally.
00:48:54.000There's something where you get to go back and watch this thing like, I've got to go look at this thing again.
00:49:06.000You're basically representing bankers, and you've got a bunch of special interests tugging at you, and you've got your agenda, but the way he interacts with the press, he needs to be coached.
00:49:17.000If he had a coach, someone who's very socially astute, maybe even a comic, someone who could say, look, man, you've got to show some humility.
00:50:16.000Yeah, and then they had to stop doing it because we're trying to get a story about Biden, get some traction, and you keep taking all the air out of the news.
00:50:24.000We need you to sit down for a couple days to get this going.
00:51:19.000It's a weird time, man, but it's an opportunity.
00:51:26.000I'm not looking at this like, let's look at the positive side.
00:51:30.000Because look, it's negative for a lot of people, particularly people that have lost people and people that have lost their own health.
00:51:36.000But there's an opportunity for us that haven't to restructure and just rethink this thing and recognize what it really is because you just run around with momentum thinking, well, I'm in the business and I got to do this and I got to do that and hey, this is what I do and,
00:55:15.000There's some times where, honestly, in the first couple weeks, especially after a special, I'm like, boy, I might have hit the fucking bottom of the well.
00:56:53.000It was one of those weird moments where he had this routine that he was working on where he'd basically say, fuck everything.
00:57:00.000He would say, fuck Israel, and fuck comedy clubs.
00:57:03.000He had this list of things that he was saying fuck to, but it didn't...
00:57:07.000I think he was just going through a lot of weird stuff in his life then.
00:57:11.000There was some substance issues that he had had.
00:57:14.000He had money problems with the IRS, owing too much money to the IRS. There was a lot of shit that was going on in his life at those times.
00:57:21.000And also, I think that he was a little bit freaked out by, you know, he had opened the door, him and Pryor, especially in terms of language and subject matter, and now here's people like Sam Kinison and Andrew Right.
00:57:43.000I think there was a couple years where he felt like, am I John Wayne at the end of The Searchers?
00:57:48.000I've rescued everyone, and I've helped progress the world, but I don't belong in the world, and then I'm just going to walk away into the desert.
00:57:55.000There's always that moment of sometimes your bravery helps bring about a world that, ironically, you don't belong in anymore.
00:58:03.000That's a I mean, I feel like that's what happened to Joan Rivers at the end of her career.
00:58:09.000She broke so many goddamn barriers for women and for talking about certain subject matter, and then at the end of her career, she suddenly saw all of her stuff get parsed by this new generation that's like, this generation that's attacking her and parsing her stuff, you're enjoying the freedoms you're enjoying partially because of the shit that she did.
00:58:28.000She laid down barbed wire so you could run across it and then point at her for not using the correct language.
00:59:06.000At some point, there will be another wave of podcasters that won't understand the stuff that you and Maren and people like that did podcasting-wise, and will do it and look back at you guys like, what are you even talking about?
00:59:18.000It's like, the reason you're doing what you're doing is because of the shit that we laid down.
01:00:21.000I understand how you feel a certain way, but the other thing about film to think about a guy like Scorsese, where he needs to be put in a much better perspective, is that when you think about some of the stuff that he did in the 70s,
01:00:38.000Movies had only been around for like real movies for like 40 years.
01:00:53.000You're talking about some of those Scorsese movies, or the Coppola movies, like Apocalypse Now.
01:00:59.000Think about how crazy that movie is, when you really stop and think about when it was actually created, and what a short time films had even been made like that.
01:01:10.000Yeah, and how crazy the execution of it is.
01:01:15.000It's like, when I hosted the Independent Spirit Awards, the year I hosted it, John Waters' first film, which he made when he was a teenager in Baltimore.
01:01:26.000It's called Hag in a Black Leather Jacket, and it's about an interracial wedding being sided over by a Klansman.
01:01:33.000It's a Klansman marrying an interracial couple.
01:01:37.000He shot it on his parent's roof in Baltimore in the 60s, and I told the audience, this is the 50th anniversary of John Waters' first film.
01:01:45.000Any of you guys are like, are we pushing too far?
01:02:11.000Getting back to what you were saying, it's weird that you brought up I have friends who love stuff that I hate but I don't give a shit.
01:02:18.000The reason my special is called I Love Everything is when you get to There's still stuff that annoys you and stuff you don't like, but you're like, but I know where this is coming, or I know why he's acting that way.
01:02:31.000I'm not a fan of Donald Trump, I think he's fucking horrible, but I also know about his childhood and how he was raised, and I know why he is the way he is.
01:02:39.000He grew up in a monster factory, and it was a really well-run monster factory, and it made an incredible monster.
01:03:02.000You have children, you have a child, I have daughters, and when I think of people now, I think of them as babies that grew up And when I was younger, I used to think, if I knew you now, I'd think, oh, Patton has always been this Patton.
01:03:17.000But now I can see, because I've seen little babies become little people, and I go, oh, okay.
01:03:23.000You just got terrible input, terrible feedback, bad epigenetics, a lot of shit wrong here.
01:03:30.000You're a victim of circumstance as much as you are, you know, being an asshole.
01:03:35.000You're actually, the reason why you're an asshole is because you're a victim.
01:03:42.000Yeah, and sometimes people can become an asshole.
01:03:45.000Obviously some people can become an asshole because Trump had a lifetime Yeah.
01:04:14.000Well, also, it's not beneficial to anybody to be confrontational and to be angry about things all the time.
01:04:24.000Even though it seems fun when you're young, as you get older, you realize it's a terrible way of using your resources.
01:04:44.000There's no moment where you feel like this is a human being, and I'm a human being, and I make mistakes, and they make mistakes, and let's figure out how we can be nicer to each other.
01:04:55.000I mean, that's what everybody would like.
01:09:32.000You need to just wake up after it's over and go, Oh my god, I gotta change everything.
01:09:36.000Who am I? I'm so glad for all the LSD trips I took back in the 90s because you come out of it and just kind of go, oh yeah, okay, maybe I need to...
01:09:46.000Anything to shrink yourself in the universe and make you more secure with like, oh, this is actually vast and I'm tiny in it.
01:09:54.000Knowing how tiny you are actually gives you more strength and freedom because you're like, if everything I do is insignificant, then I can do anything.
01:10:02.000If it's ultimately all crumbles, just do whatever you want.
01:10:05.000Well, sometimes when I get really high and I feel real vulnerable, I feel almost like there's magic in the world.
01:10:13.000Whereas when I'm sober, everything seems sort of standard.
01:11:08.000Harlan Ellison, who was very anti-drug, very anti-drink, but he was putting together an anthology and he had Philip K. Dick's story, Faith of Our Fathers, in it.
01:11:16.000He was like, I've never advocated the use of psychedelics or drugs, but my God, if I could write on this level, maybe I would totally gobble them because he's operating on a different level right now.
01:11:27.000Well, I think people are scared of him because, for rightly so, because we've all heard stories of people losing everything, lose their mind.
01:11:34.000You know, we were talking yesterday about this O'Farrell theater sign that Hunter S. Thompson had given this couple on their wedding anniversary or their wedding day.
01:12:09.000Hunter gave it to this couple along with 20 hits of acid, and the woman took all the acid and was immediately checked into a mental institution and never got out.
01:12:20.000So on the day of their wedding, Hunter S. Thompson ruined it.
01:13:14.000The first time I did Acid was the night that Bill Clinton won the presidency.
01:13:19.000This was in 92. And I was in Matt Weinhold's apartment in San Francisco.
01:13:24.000And Matt Weinhold and his roommate, this illustrator named Derek Robertson, Marvel illustrator, great comic book guy, did Transmetropolitan.
01:13:32.000He illustrated Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan and The Boys for Garth Ennis.
01:13:36.000They owned every action figure in In the world.
01:13:40.000And they had them all on little shows.
01:13:42.000The walls were nothing but action figures.
01:13:44.000So I'm sitting there and, you know, the patterns in the table started to melt and move a little bit.
01:13:49.000And then that Fleetwood Mac song, Don't Start Thinking About Tomorrow.
01:13:52.000Remember they were all dancing to that on stage?
01:13:57.000And the figures weren't going crazy, but as the music played, they were all just kind of subtly, just kind of bounced, like they were in line outside of a sound check, just listening to the music.
01:14:08.000And it gave me this feeling of such absolute, like, oh, everything in the world is bouncing to a better beat right now.