Comedian Jessie Chastain tells the story of how she was nearly raped on stage, and how her manager almost killed her during a stand-up set. She also talks about the time she thought she was about to be raped at a comedy club and how she managed to get away with it. Plus, she tells a story about how she almost died on stage at a Comedy Central comedy club. And she talks about why she thinks comedy should be made in black and white. And why she doesn t think it would be a good idea to make a comedy special in Black and White. Thanks to our sponsor, Caff Monster Energy Drink. Caff is available in Vanilla, Mocha, and Salted Caramel. Logo by Courtney DeKorte. Theme by Mavus White. Music by PSOVOD and tyops. The 500 is a production of Native Creative Podcasts. Our theme song is Come Alone by Suneaters, courtesy of Lotuspool Records, and our ad music is by Build Buildings Records. Music by Haley Shaw. Artwork by Jeff Kaale. We are produced by Riley Bray. Thank you to my good friend John Doe and my band, The Wanger! and our sponsors, MySpace. Please rate, review, review and subscribe to our podcast, and tell us what you think of our work, and we'll be sure to mention us in next week's episode on the next episode of NextDoor! Subscribe to our new music review and review us on Apple Podcasts! and other social media platforms! We'll be listening to your thoughts, too! Send us your thoughts on the podcast! on Anchor.fm/instant review, and other links to our insta-canceling your reviews and reviews? on Podchaser, and more! in the podcast next week! Thanks for listening to us in the pod? and your reviews, reviews, recommendations, and your thoughts about our podcast recommendations! we'll get it out on the pod, and reviews and shout it out to us on social media! etc. on the road? on Instagrains, too much love, your comments, etc., etc. etc. & more. etc., etc., the whole world can be reached on instagraced, and all that good stuff like that, right away!
00:03:48.000Actually, Burr did one of his best specials in black and white.
00:03:50.000I'm not shitting on black and white specials, but that this guy's artistic jizz that he wanted to throw into the soup was to turn my special black and white.
00:04:10.000Everyone's always trying to, first of all, if you're not a comic and you don't have a long history of studying and appreciating stand-up comedy specials, You're just filming something, right?
00:04:21.000You might be filming a sketch, you might be filming a television show, you're just filming something.
00:04:25.000And it happens to be someone doing stand-up, if you're not really into stand-up.
00:04:28.000Or if you don't really study stand-up comedy specials.
00:04:32.000But if you do, you recognize that what you're trying to emulate for the people at home is a version of what it would be like to be in that audience.
00:07:42.000You know the thing is like a lot of comics have had great success just making their own specials and putting it on YouTube and the amount of views, like Joe List, his new special has 5 million views.
00:08:40.000It's like they just decide to censor things based on ideology or based on what they think, you know, it could be like what the current science is.
00:08:49.000Like for the longest time, If you had a video on that talked about the lab leak hypothesis, Facebook would just remove it.
00:09:06.000But if you went back a year ago, When this was all going on, and especially when Trump was president, nobody believed it.
00:09:13.000Everybody was like, this is a terrible, dangerous conspiracy theory.
00:09:16.000And if you have this up, we're going to delete things.
00:09:18.000And so they're doing that with all kinds of stuff on YouTube.
00:09:21.000And it's not just having to do with COVID. It's having to do with all kinds of things in politics and anything where they find that what you're doing doesn't fit into their narrow, rigid box of what's acceptable.
00:09:35.000Yeah, isn't there a way for you to do it not on YouTube for free?
00:10:31.000They're on us like flies on shit right now.
00:10:34.000Well, we're in this weird class of humans that are allowed to talk shit and we can say things that we don't really mean that are completely the opposite of what you're supposed to be allowed to say.
00:11:36.000But this thing, this art form has been around for a long time in the same way, like where people talk shit and they said crazy things that everybody knew.
00:11:43.000But somewhere along the line over the last, like, I don't know how many years, people decide to try to take it literally just to attack people.
00:12:24.000I've sat with a couple of my friends and been like, let's just try and just sit and watch.
00:12:28.000Because I laugh at a lot of comics, but sometimes I've been like, this person gets a lot of laughs and I don't get it, so let me just sit and try to understand what's going on.
00:12:37.000And I don't understand why the crowd is laughing at what they're saying, but I I've come to realize that I think a lot of it is confidence and they're a salesperson.
00:12:48.000And even though the jokes are, there's nothing there and it's like really just clever and just, you know, kind of like a monologue, they're good salespeople.
00:12:57.000Well, you can't hate people for charisma.
00:17:06.000There's a helmet that you can get, there's like a HEPA filter, it cinches tight around your neck, you look like a space alien, and there's a fan in it.
00:25:29.000So he also is good at hacking and doing things on the computer, so they'll end up getting screen-shared, and he'll convince them that he's buying things and gift cards that they want him to buy.
00:28:33.000Maybe a lot of Chinese people move to the East.
00:28:35.000I'm afraid of saying anything right now that might be considered offensive.
00:28:38.000The thing is, like, the further west you get, the less like, well, that's not true, because Los Angeles, and, well, that's terribly not true, because San Francisco is a huge Chinese community.
00:29:07.000They built the railroads all the way across America.
00:29:10.000And there's images of Chinese folks working on the railroads from the 1800s and the despair in their eyes, treated horribly, terribly abused.
00:30:07.000If Chinese-American cooking, if there's any pork, which is not a kosher food, it's usually concealed inside of something like a wonton.
00:30:14.000A lot of Jews back then and even now kept strict kosher inside the home but were more flexible with food they ate at restaurants.
00:30:21.000See if you can find pictures of Chinese folks working on the railroads because it's one of the darker, more unsung chapters of American history.
00:30:31.000People don't really talk about it that much.
00:30:33.000I read an article many years ago about it.
00:30:45.000I don't remember how or why it was Chinese people, but there's some...
00:30:52.000See if you can find some pictures, because there's some crazy pictures of these folks working there, and it's just like, you see the looks in their faces, and they're Malnourished and hammering fucking spikes into the ground and putting railroad ties down just all the way across America.
00:33:14.000Like if you have an iPad, you gotta go like, oh, that's Mike.
00:33:16.000You have to like hit the next page and then look through all the boxes and then, you know, like it lights up.
00:33:22.000But still, you have to keep looking and try to see who's talking.
00:33:26.000So can you press on that box and they go full screen when they're talking?
00:33:29.000You can press on a different, like a thing up top to make it that person is the center of the page.
00:33:36.000How long before we're all standing in front of screens?
00:33:39.000Like when diseases are everywhere and you can't leave your house, we're just standing in front of giant screens and you're gonna talk to everybody like Minority Report.
00:33:46.000Everything's gonna be screen to screen.
00:34:52.000Well, my mom's a therapist, so my mom suggested a trauma therapist who sent me to do therapy with a horse, and it was supposed to calm me, but I don't know if you realize how big horses are.
00:42:51.000You know, the episode that you did of Your Mom's House Live, I don't think it had this in there, but other ones they have had, where guys were fisting each other.
00:46:05.000Well, there's something that they say happens to people when they get scolded for shitting their pants when they're really young and really punished and shamed.
00:46:15.000For some men in particular, and it seems to mostly be men, for some men that becomes a thing that gets somehow attached to sexuality.
00:50:45.000Yeah, there was a lot of prolapsed Assholes what they've done and we talked about this before the podcast started is an amazing thing They've put together like a real legitimate production and every month or so they put on these Phenomenal shows where they they do a live show you you buy it online It's completely pay-per-view so they can show you the wildest most fucked up things online There's no censorship at all You don't have to worry about it being taken down.
00:51:37.000I can't think off the top of my head, but there's definitely more.
00:51:40.000That I can name, I can only name like four.
00:51:43.000I can't think right now, but there are some.
00:51:47.000It's super rare, but those guys are at the top of the heap.
00:51:52.000It's so unusual that you have a top flight male and a top flight female comedian, and then they have a family, and their kids are hilarious, and they've decided to partner together and put on this wild ass fucking live show.
00:52:58.000The problem is when someone complains.
00:53:02.000If someone complains and then Vox runs a story on it, then they're going to want to ban you.
00:53:06.000But if, like, OnlyFans, for a while, they were talking about not having any naked content and not having any pornograph, and then they realized that's 90% of the people on OnlyFans.
00:58:07.000At this point in time, it seems like when each generation sort of moves forward, whatever weird ideas that people were holding onto because of ignorance in the past,
01:11:20.000Do you know there's a real problem with that in martial arts?
01:11:23.000Like, there's a whole branch of martial arts that's completely fake, and it's based on a bunch of people, like, touching people with magic, and the people, like, fall down, like, all their disciples.
01:13:04.000And they have these followers that are basically cult members.
01:13:08.000And so the master will do this to one of the followers, and the followers will start spasming and falling down on the ground, very much like a revival church session.
01:19:03.000Well, I remember when I was a kid, we would hear stories about girls who wanted to maintain their virginity, so they would let their boyfriend fuck them in the ass.
01:20:15.000The thing about everything falling apart and people going wacky and crazy and screaming at people from a mile away to put their mask on, I like it.
01:21:25.000You're like, oh my god, the world's ending.
01:21:27.000No, it's 3,000 shut-ins that are emotionally stunted fucking weirdos who are angry at you for whatever, and most of it's not real, and most of it would be resolved if you were in a face-to-face conversation with them.
01:22:21.000They type it out on Twitter, and people read it, and they get this weird thrill out of attacking people that they're throwing a rock over the fence and listening for a window break, and exciting, I broke something.
01:22:35.000It's part of the thing, because it's completely alien and completely out of...
01:24:02.000I had this guy Mike Baker on a couple days ago, who's a former CIA operative.
01:24:07.000He's explaining that what they're trying to do, what Russia and China is trying to do to America, is just keep us at each other's throats and encourage dissent, encourage a distrust in the political system.
01:24:22.000He was saying that when they were talking about Russia, that Russia wanted Trump to win or Russia wanted Hillary to win.
01:25:00.000Her name is Renee DiResta, and she did a study of all of these Russian troll farms and memes.
01:25:07.000There's a place in Russia called the Internet Research Agency, and all they do is create pages And then post memes and have things on these pages like it could be a Black Lives Matter page or it could be a Texas separatist page.
01:25:21.000It could be a pro-life page or it could be a pro-choice page.
01:26:09.000The managing at scale, and this is the thing, people criticize YouTube and they criticize Facebook and all these social media platforms, but the reality is these people are managing at scale and they're dealing with billions and billions and billions of human beings that are posting content all day long.
01:27:53.000There's MDMA therapies that they're doing right now with soldiers that have had PTSD that's been incredibly successful.
01:27:59.000That's a really interesting psychedelic because MDMA relieves a lot of your anxiety and it makes you very loving and it just drops all of your insecurities.
01:28:34.000They make people feel humble in the face of these overwhelming experiences and they make people realize that we're kind of all in this together and the only thing that really counts is love.
01:28:45.000And the reason why people lash out online, like most of them, don't have any love.
01:29:12.000Psychedelic drugs and I don't even like to say drugs because drugs you fall into this blanket of a bunch of shit that's has completely different psychoactive effects on the mind but Psychedelic compounds I think could have a significant impact on the way we see the world and the way we treat each other I really do I really really think that that could have a huge shift Whether it's microdosing,
01:29:35.000just to change the tone of general everyday society but still remaining functional and being able to, you know, compete in the marketplace and do your art and, you know, take care of your kids.
01:29:47.000There's a lot of things that people can do that can enhance everyday life.
01:29:51.000It's based on these compounds that we already know exist.
01:32:18.000Because my wife used to say, oh, you're watching your boyfriend on TV. She would always joke around because I loved that No Reservation show.
01:41:33.000It's a film that is not that famous in terms of, you know, he was in Pulp Fiction, he's been in so many films, but that is probably his piece de resistance.
01:42:54.000You realize that there's actors that are just trying to be famous and then there's people who are legitimately artists and they can do things in a movie that no one else can do.
01:43:03.000They can do things just like the way a comic can kill.
01:43:09.000You've been doing comedy for 25 years.
01:43:28.000Like we think about, you think about what an actor is.
01:43:30.000Like you go to see a movie and this guy is the captain of like a spaceship and, you know, he's talking to this guy who's the president, but you know who these people are.
01:47:11.000When you say you like mindless things and you like video games, is there anything else that you do to just disconnect other than video games?
01:47:20.000I mean, being with my kids, I completely disconnect when I'm around them.
01:48:55.000No, because there's rules about how you have to say the score and that little area in the front here, that line, that area is called the kitchen.
01:49:02.000You can't hit from inside the kitchen.
01:49:05.000Why it's even called that is it almost gets confusing.
01:49:08.000My mom is like a top player in her town.
01:50:23.000It's a lot easier on the body, and it's a lot easier to pick up.
01:50:26.000Most racket sports require hours and hours of lessons, but with pickleball, you can walk onto a court, pick up a paddle, and within five minutes of learning how to play, you can be playing a competitive game with your friends.
01:50:37.000Oh, all of a sudden I want to play pickleball.
01:52:07.000Well, sometimes he was lazy with it and it looked like he just ran over an animal and just threw it in the air and wherever it landed, it landed.
01:52:15.000Whenever I think of toupees, I think about Goodfellas and that dude, Morty's wigs, where you jump in the pool.
01:59:15.000You know initially it can last between five and ten years.
01:59:19.000So so what do you do after five years though?
01:59:22.000That's what I'm saying Go to Travis Barker said this might be the better option to everything else over it Yeah, Travis Barker and Jason Ellis has his head tattooed like I think he's got a wolf's head up there I think that's a better idea to just get something random and Travis Barker's got wild shit tattooed on his head.
02:01:11.000I mean, he had to get a bunch of skin grafts and all kinds of stuff.
02:01:14.000Skin grafts weren't taking because he's a vegan, so he was telling me he was eating a bunch of beef jerky and shit, just eating all kinds of meat just to try to get his body to heal quicker.
02:03:51.000Well, you feel a bunch of people that work in an environment where they're under the thumb of human resources every day and every microaggression is analyzed and everything you do could possibly be misconstrued as being, you know, whatever it is, sexist,
02:05:24.000I think for women, like, for a woman to go on stage, like, in a hot dress, like, tight and everything like that, I think it's a very, and I think women don't like seeing that.
02:05:35.000Like, they want to be like, ah, this bitch, who the fuck she thinks she is?
02:05:37.000Well, I think some male comics do help women like that.
02:05:41.000Oh, because they're trying to fuck them?
02:07:17.000Especially in New York, it's amazing to watch because one minute in, if they're not funny, it doesn't matter who, and I've seen it with the biggest, the biggest, most famous people.
02:08:03.000Because there's like a certain amount of resentment that they have for you being famous already that they don't even realize they had until you were bombing.
02:08:54.000But then the internet came around, and people started uploading their stuff on YouTube, and they started having podcasts, and they realized, oh, there's room for everybody.
02:10:16.000He was a Boston comic, and it detailed the rise of Stephen Wright and Lenny Clark and Steve Sweeney and Don Gavin and Kevin Knox and all these huge Boston comedians.
02:10:28.000Don Gavin, who's in my opinion one of the greatest of all time.
02:11:24.000It was a crazy place and there was Packed houses every night packed packed houses I mean except for open mic night, which is kind of sparse But they always are on you know Tuesday Wednesday, whatever the fuck it was.
02:11:37.000There was always big crowds and And these guys would sell out shows every weekend, all over town.
02:11:44.000There was Stitch's Comedy Club that was on the other side of town.
02:11:46.000There was another place called Play It Again Sam's that was like a movie theater that had comedy.
02:12:04.000Jay Leno, so many comics came from Boston.
02:12:07.000Did you just start doing, I don't know if you talk about this a lot on the podcast, but I'm just curious, did you just start doing open mics?
02:16:39.000Yeah, people, like, they want to pretend that things are different than what they are, you know?
02:16:43.000And they feel like just by pretending they did well.
02:16:46.000But don't you, I mean, I never think I, I could get a standing ovation and look at the one man just staring at me and be like, that did not go great.
02:17:27.000I always say to the crowd, no matter how much you clap, it'll never fill the hole.
02:17:34.000And some of them look confused and I'm like my emotional halt like it'll never I just but I think the best comics feel that way I think so I think to be really good You I think you have to be really self-critical because you're always changing and analyzing and you're always You're auditing your act you're looking at the bits and like is this worthy?
02:18:09.000Doug Stanhope told me, I think he said he looked at his act like he was trying to defend it like a defense attorney and then would go over the bits that way, like if you had to defend them in court, which is very smart.
02:18:28.000And I had a similar approach in that I would go over it like if I was someone who hated me and saw me do comedy, Like, what part would I mock?
02:18:55.000Yeah, and those jokes, it's like sometimes you can hang on to them and they'll grow and blossom and become something killer, but you never know when.
02:19:02.000You never know if you should abandon them or keep going.
02:19:34.000I worked with Shane Gillis last night, and he's got these new bits that he's working on, and it's so funny because he goes on stage, he's killing, and then he has these new bits that he inserts, and he goes, and then I fucking eat shit.
02:19:47.000Because these new bits are just not ready.
02:19:51.000And I go, but one day, they'll be ready.
02:20:17.000The scariest time for me in comedy, for sure, is when I put a special out, and then I have to write a whole new act, and then people come to see you.
02:22:07.000That's a good way to come up with comedy because you hit that weird headspace that you hit when you're killing on stage and then you can find ideas and figure out a way to do them.
02:22:17.000But I feel like you got to write right too.
02:22:39.000I'm concerned that the editorial decisions that streaming networks might make about bits in the future are going to get more and more stringent.
02:22:50.000They're going to decide jokes you can and can't say.
02:22:53.000Even if you have a point, even if there's a definitive position that you're taking because you're trying to explain, you're trying to talk about language, you're trying to talk about If you say certain words, people are going to say, you can't do that.
02:23:30.000They're playing a game where they want to piss off the least amount of people while entertaining the most amount of people.
02:23:36.000And anything that stands out, it has to be so popular.
02:23:42.000That they'll let this controversial idea flourish and then they have to deal with the wave of articles that get written in all these woke online websites where they attack them for violence or for creating unsafe environments or for this or that.
02:26:15.000The thing is, those unreasonable people, Are at least slowly in many circles being exposed because their unreasonable takes are so predictable because that's what they do.
02:26:27.000They attack things, they attack things, this very rigid, woke ideology that's oftentimes unsustainable.
02:26:35.000And then usually someone will dig through their Twitter and find some shit that they said like 10 years ago or seven years ago and we find that out, but...
02:27:22.000And when there's no viable targets, they'll find one.
02:27:25.000That's the problem with this online mob shit is that they keep moving the goalposts about what's acceptable.
02:27:32.000It's not like they get everybody in a good, agreeable pattern and they go, okay, we're not going to attack anyone anymore.
02:27:38.000No, there's already a common pattern of attacking people online.
02:27:42.000So if everybody toes the line and wokeism has a very clear line in the sand, they'll just move that line 100 yards to the left and start attacking people that used to be okay.
02:27:55.000I mean, I've been accused of things that I'm not, and it really was very upsetting.
02:28:00.000You know, and I freaked out, and then someone said to me, Jessica, this will be gone in about maybe 48 hours, and that's exactly what happened.
02:29:46.000When do you think you'll do another special?
02:29:48.000I made a goal to do one in about six months, and I'm going to put it out on YouTube because I am not going to depend on any network to try and sell it to anymore.