Comedian Joe Pesci tells the story of how he went from working as a dishwasher to becoming a stand-up comic and how he became one of the funniest people in the world. Joe also talks about how he got his start as an open miker and how his manager Jeff Sussman helped him get to where he is today. And he talks about the time he almost got into a fight with a woman who thought she was pregnant. Joe also shares some of the craziest prop jokes he's ever thrown on stage and why he thinks Carrot Top is the best prop comedian of all time. And, of course, there's a story about how his wife almost died on stage in front of a bunch of people who thought he was a drunk guy. Thanks to our sponsor, Ajinomoto! A very special thank you to Joe for being a part of the podcast and for being the inspiration behind this episode. Thank you also to Alyssa Milano for coming up with the name of the song we used for the intro and outro. It was written and performed by our new song, "You Don't Know Me" by our main man, Nicki Minaj, which is out now. We hope you like it! It's a great song and we'll see you again next week! Thanks again for listening and God bless! Joe and Joe! -Josie -Joe and Judd Thanks Joe and Judd. - Thank you so much for being here and for coming on the pod! XOXO and for making this podcast! -PJodie and Joe and for supporting the podcast. Thank you for coming out and supporting us! Love ya! -Judd and Joe -Alyssa & Joe Thankyou, Joe and the rest of the crew at the podcast, Thank you, Joe, for being so much love you're so much more than you can do it, you're amazing and we appreciate you, you are amazing and you're beautiful, thank you, so much, you deserve it, and we love you, we really appreciate it, we appreciate it so much! -Amen and so much so much. -JODYOoooooo - - JODIE & JUDY & JOSIE -THANK YOU! -ROBBIE AND RYAN MCCARTAN
00:00:15.000Not only do I know your manager, Sussman, Jeff Sussman, when I was a kid, I loved comedy, so I got a job at the Eastside Comedy Club, which was in Huntington on Long Island.
00:00:29.000He was the bartender, and he used to give me rides home because I lived really far away, and I used to take a cab home and spend all the money I made as a dishwasher on the cab ride home.
00:00:43.000But I just wanted to be in the club near comics.
00:01:26.000He used to do a show once a week, and one of the things he did is he would just turn on the radio and scan through the channels and do improv based on what was on the radio.
00:01:36.000So if it was elevator music, he would do a dentist routine.
00:01:39.000If it was heavy metal, he would suddenly do a heavy metal guy.
00:04:30.000That's always the best when you make that mistake.
00:04:32.000Are you allowed to just give people shots?
00:04:34.000Like, what if you have an alcoholic, but they're sober, but you're so influential, they go, oh fuck it, one drink's not going to hurt, and then boom, you just throw their life off track.
00:05:34.000Yeah, he did it for a long time and he had enough at some point.
00:05:36.000Yeah, he explained to me how hard it is.
00:05:38.000Like you have to fill that room like every night.
00:05:42.000Fill in rooms, let me say, as someone who makes movies and is terrified that people will show up, fill in rooms scares me as well.
00:05:50.000Like, we have a movie, The Big Sick, it opens in New York and L.A. this weekend, and then in two weeks it opens around the country.
00:05:56.000It's Kamail Nanjiani, Holly Hunter, and Ray Romano, based on an experience that happened to Kamail Nanjiani when he met his wife, and he's from Pakistan, and his parents wanted him to have a...
00:06:07.000An arranged marriage, but he fell in love with an American woman.
00:06:10.000And then she quickly got sick and had to be put into a coma.
00:06:13.000And it's this really hilarious, fascinating true story about him hanging out with her parents while she's in a coma.
00:06:21.000It's just a very unique story, but it works great.
00:09:39.000If you stop and think about how you are when you're 11 and then how you are when you're 15, it's only four years later and you're a totally different human.
00:09:59.000And then whenever they give me a hard time, I just take it out and just start reading it in front of them.
00:10:04.000But it is all about how their brain isn't even cooked yet, that your brain isn't really cooked until your early 20s, and your impulse control and everything is gone, and that what you're supposed to do as a parent is model sane behavior, and if they see you not lose your shit thousands of times,
00:10:22.000maybe that will program them to handle problems well, but they are going to freak out a ton, and you shouldn't get that mad at them, because they're not capable of not freaking out, but that is hard advice.
00:12:02.000If you can afford it, but if you can't afford it, I guess you're still screwed.
00:12:05.000Yeah, you are screwed if you can't afford it, but it's pretty reasonable if you're just moving around a general area, like if you're hopping around West Hollywood and going from the store to the improv, people do it all the time.
00:14:31.000My wife, I met her when I wasn't doing stand-up.
00:14:34.000I did stand-up from the time I was 17 until I was 24. I met my wife when I was 28 or 29. So she didn't know anything about stand-up until three years ago when I started doing it again.
00:16:57.000And then I came back to LA and started doing the improv and the Comedy Store and Largo and...
00:17:02.000And then I would put these benefits together at Largo once a month, and to me, that was the most fun, because I could book a show and get, like, Shanling to come and Randy Newman, or, you know, Aziz and Fiona Apple, and we did them all as benefits, and I always liked producing things like that.
00:17:20.000And then slowly, my act got to the point where I thought, oh, I'm, you know, I deserve to be here.
00:17:28.000Well, you know the difference between someone who writes for television and movies and the difference between that and a lot of stand-ups is when you're making a living writing and producing and directing and doing all that, you're disciplined.
00:18:11.000And they would get funnier and funnier.
00:18:13.000And one day he said to me, you know, this is a job.
00:18:17.000You gotta sit down every day and write jokes.
00:18:19.000You don't just go to the mall and watch a movie every day.
00:18:22.000Like, if you sat down for two hours at a desk and treated this like it was a job that deserved your respect, you'll be a hundred times better than everybody else.
00:19:01.000And I'm doing a documentary about him now for HBO. And so the most fun part about it is he always went to the Comedy Magic Club and did stand-up, even in eras where you didn't know he was doing it.
00:20:19.000Hundreds and hundreds of jokes in every loose-leaf binder.
00:20:23.000Like a guy sitting at a desk all day, just crafting like two-sentence perfect jokes.
00:20:29.000Yeah, but there's like the balance, right?
00:20:31.000There's that, there's crafting the perfect jokes, and then there's just being able to be loose and fun and hilarious.
00:20:38.000Well, he also used to go on stage with just the setup, and he wouldn't know the punchline, and he would say the setup and hope the punchline came, which is pretty wild.
00:20:50.000You know, one of the great things about doing a documentary is you get to ask people for footage.
00:20:54.000So Seinfeld gave me the dailies for Comedians in Cars getting coffee when he interviewed Gary.
00:21:01.000And then the people who made the movie Comedian about Seinfeld gave me all the dailies of a sequence that they only used 10 seconds of in the documentary, which was Gary and Jerry going to the Comedy Magic Club and doing sets and also there that night as Nealon and Chris Rock.
00:21:20.000It's all their performances and then their entire conversation for three hours hanging out backstage.
00:21:27.000And it is unbelievable, the conversation, how funny it is.
00:21:34.000There's a moment where Chris Rock is doing the joke about how Nelson Mandela got divorced, that even Nelson Mandela, after decades of being in prison, he could survive that, but he couldn't survive getting out and being married.
00:22:12.000And that's what the best part of doing this documentary is, is just finding little magical moments that no one would ever see if you didn't dig deep.
00:23:11.000They go to 2015. And people forget that when the Larry Sanders show came on the air, you know, the shows on HBO, it was like First in Ten or Not Necessarily the News or Dream On.
00:23:23.000You know, Gary was the first show on HBO that made HBO go, oh, this is what HBO should be.
00:23:32.000We should be the quality network with this kind of groundbreaking television.
00:23:39.000And Gary was a guy who got offered all the talk shows.
00:23:46.000He was hosting The Tonight Show for Johnny.
00:23:49.000Him and Leno would take turns doing it.
00:23:52.000And he decided he'd rather satirize it than do it.
00:23:56.000And he wanted to explore the people and not be a talk show host.
00:24:02.000He wanted to show the world of ego that is...
00:24:06.000Not just talk shows, but just show business.
00:24:08.000He was fascinated with people's need for attention, his own need for attention, his own vanity and narcissism, and he wanted to explore that and satirize how we just want to be liked so badly, like what we do to be liked,
00:24:24.000which prevents us from actually feeling love because we're so obsessed with approval.
00:24:32.000Jay and I were talking about what it was like to host The Tonight Show and how much more fun he has now doing Comedians in Cars, or not Comedians in Cars, Jay Leno's Garage.
00:25:15.000But that, I think, was some of the fun of watching The Tonight Show.
00:25:18.000It's Jay interviewing a young actress and you know he doesn't care at all.
00:25:24.000And how is he going to make it amusing for himself and the audience?
00:25:28.000Did you see the Hicks bit that Hicks did about Jay interviewing Joey Lawrence and he blows his brains out and it forms the NBC Peacock on the wall?
00:27:04.000To that world of being a talk show host, there's not a lot of wiggle room, especially back then, you know, as opposed to now.
00:27:11.000Now with the internet, I think a lot of, like, subject matter and a lot of language has opened up more.
00:27:16.000You can kind of get it, like, if you see, like, what's going on now with Seth Meyers or, you know, any of the other late night talk show hosts, they have much more room.
00:27:44.000It was a crazy long rant and it was really hilarious because Trump came back and said a bunch of things about Colbert and being tasteless and talentless and being a loser and all these different things.
00:27:55.000And Colbert came back again and he goes, Donald Trump.
00:27:58.000He goes, I thought if there was one thing you understood, it's show business.
00:29:27.000I don't even need you to call me a Jew.
00:29:29.000That's the funny thing is that when people say nasty things on Twitter, they always start sounding like they make sense, but then bail at the end.
00:30:38.000What he's not understanding is there are public servants who have not made the choice to be billionaires who actually understand economic theories better than the head of Walmart or something.
00:30:51.000That just because you were able to figure out how to sell M&Ms doesn't mean you can run the economy.
00:30:57.000That there are people that they don't want to be rich.
00:32:41.000I mean, when you say you don't want a poor person running the economy, I think one argument for that would be you don't want anybody who wants radical redistribution of wealth.
00:32:49.000One argument rather would be someone who says, like, what we need to do is we need to figure out who the richest people in the world that own 90% of the money and then just take that money and distribute it to everyone else.
00:33:02.000There's some pretty radical arguments from poor people.
00:33:14.000He considers the head of Goldman Sachs to be the smartest man in the world, where there are people who don't seek to make that much money who are very smart and certainly capable of doing things.
00:33:27.000I think he sees people who are not the heads of industry as being incapable of...
00:33:32.000Of being in charge of aspects of the government.
00:34:57.000You talk to the average person on the right or the average person on the left about global warming, and you will see, like, it's really strange how you see these ideologically driven ideas that they have in their head about what global warming is, what causes it, and you can almost guess,
00:35:12.000based on their reaction to it, whether they're a Republican or whether they're liberal.
00:35:17.000And people, you know, obviously everyone talks about this, but people have chosen a side, and so now anything that that side does, people are okay with it.
00:35:26.000And so when suddenly we're so soft on Russia, and then all these, you know, being a Republican used to be so about the evil empire, and on a dime it's like...
00:36:10.000It's really weird when you see it so obvious, and it's so flippant.
00:36:16.000Like, there's not a lot of thought put into this.
00:36:18.000Like, you're talking about someone, like, in Julian Assange.
00:36:21.000I'm not a giant Julian Assange fan as a human being, but I think what he's done is pretty goddamn courageous, and he's taken a huge hit for it.
00:36:30.000I mean, he's been stuck in this embassy in London forever.
00:36:33.000If he leaves, he'll immediately be arrested.
00:36:35.000And who knows what's going to happen to him if that happens.
00:36:38.000And this guy's still out there trying to distribute information.
00:37:25.000I mean, it's so hard to figure out what happened here, but that Seth Rich guy, according to Kim.com and according to Julian Assange, he leaked...
00:37:34.000He worked for the DNC. He leaked some of the information that showed that the DNC was...
00:37:39.000What they were trying to do was they were conspiring to keep Bernie Sanders from winning the primary.
00:37:46.000And it proved to be true that they actually did do that.
00:37:49.000And Julian Assange was saying after that guy got shot that somehow or another he was alluding to that if you work with us there are consequences.
00:37:58.000So you had someone who was a renegade inside the DNC who released that dump.
00:38:02.000You don't have anybody like that on the Republican side.
00:38:05.000It doesn't mean that the WikiLeaks is corrupt.
00:38:08.000It just means that no one on the Republican side has done that.
00:38:12.000Only one guy, according to them, I don't know if it's true, some people say Russia did it, but according to Julian Assange and according to Kim.com, who's apparently somehow or another involved, At least part of it had to do with the Seth Rich guy.
00:38:25.000That doesn't mean that they're trying to exclusively release stuff that makes Democrats look bad.
00:38:32.000It just means no one's done it on the Republican side.
00:38:35.000Just because the information doesn't exist doesn't mean there's some sort of collusion.
00:38:39.000Well, that's, I guess, the mystery of it.
00:38:41.000I don't really know anything about the Seth Rich case.
00:39:22.000Contested and, of course, the Fox News narrative has, like, Sean Hannity has made a big deal out of it saying, we're going to get to the bottom of this, ladies and gentlemen, which makes me more suspicious that it's not true.
00:39:35.000But it is a possibility that he was one of the people that was releasing information.
00:39:41.000I would imagine if you worked for the DNC, especially if you were a Bernie Sanders supporter, and you saw what they were doing.
00:39:47.000What they were doing is essentially they were hijacking the democratic process from inside, from the Democratic Party.
00:39:54.000And if you were a Bernie Sanders supporter, it would be horrifying.
00:39:57.000It would really piss you off, especially if you're someone who's You've got this idea of what the future could be under Bernie Sanders, and you realize your own party is fucking him in the ass.
00:40:09.000And so, I don't know how much he released, or if he released, or if he was only one part of it, or Russia was a part of it as well, and hacking into the DNC. But the bottom line, at the end of the day, is it exposed corruption.
00:40:50.000Going on than we think, but I also think that most people are too dumb to not get caught almost every single time.
00:40:58.000Yeah, you say that, but there's a lot of shit that happens where people do get caught eventually, and you realize, oh, how long were you guys running this?
00:41:06.000What's your favorite conspiracy theory that turned out to be true?
00:41:09.000It's hard to say whether it turned out to be true, but JFK is the biggest one.
00:41:26.000Shot at Kennedy and other people shot at Kennedy at the same time and then he was a patsy and he was put up like he was obviously involved in a lot of intelligence agency shenanigans He went to Russia.
00:41:40.000He married a Russian woman came back to the United States.
00:41:43.000He had been involved in all sorts of communist propaganda shit He was definitely not like an above-ground guy.
00:41:51.000He was a shady dude and And it's entirely possible that he was one person out of a plot to kill the president, and they put it all on him, and they had Jack Ruby shoot him.
00:42:02.000But everybody goes black and white on that.
00:42:04.000You either go, Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, or you go, he was innocent, and the CIA had him assassinated because he was trying to get rid of the CIA, which he was.
00:42:14.000I mean, Kennedy was trying to pull us out of Vietnam, he was trying to get rid of the CIA, he was trying to get rid of the I always go to the simple thing,
00:42:30.000which is, why would Jack Ruby shoot him?
00:43:11.000You know, I mean, they helped him become the president.
00:43:14.000And there was absolute evidence that they were mad at him once he became president because then he started doing things that were against their interests.
00:43:21.000There was a lot of people pissed off at Kennedy.
00:43:23.000That's what's funny about the current Russia scandal.
00:43:48.000Not only that, this whole thing about Flynn and that the intelligence agencies were warning that Flynn was compromised and that he could be blackmailed by Russia.
00:43:59.000What they had on him, we don't know, but they're very convinced that there was evidence against Flynn and that the Trump administration knew this and they were still entertaining talks with him and they're still bringing him on board.
00:44:10.000And what's fascinating is this world of international lobbyists.
00:44:15.000Like Paul Manafort, what are they doing?
00:44:18.000Did you see this thing where Paul Manafort's kids, someone hacked their phones and they had all these texts where they were talking about how horrible their dad was and how he's responsible for people getting killed.
00:44:34.000And who knows if any of that's true, but There's an entire world of Americans going overseas and being involved in dirty politics and the work of governments like the Ukraine that we don't have any clue about what that is.
00:44:53.000Yeah, it's one of the last frontiers for really diabolical shit.
00:44:57.000You know, like Russia is one of the last, like, what he is, what Putin stands for, is like one of the last brutal military dictators that's kind of in a costume.
00:45:28.000I think he admires the take-no-shit guy.
00:45:32.000Yeah, I think he does, and I think there's also the possibility that he feels that what Putin stands for is this powerful superpower, and it's better to be friends with him than it is to be enemies.
00:46:41.000And I think it seems like Trump likes the idea of that what you present is a lie and what you do in private is figuring out solutions and that that's how the world works.
00:47:05.000Who was religious and had this thought, we are going to go to other countries, we're going to take down these leaders and they are going to find freedom and we're all going to change for the positive when they don't have these dictators.
00:47:22.000Trump is an old school guy who's like, you need the dictators to keep all these assholes in line.
00:47:27.000Yeah, but meanwhile, he's kind of right.
00:47:29.000I mean, look what happens when you take the dictators out.
00:47:32.000You create this power vacuum, and the places are way more chaotic.
00:49:05.000That's what we were warned about with Iraq.
00:49:07.000Like, people that didn't understand Iraq, including Bush, did not understand, if you take Saddam Hussein out of the picture, who's kind of secular, what you're left with is this Sunni-Shia civil war.
00:49:19.000And you're going to have this crazy situation where these two different sects of Islam are going to kill each other.
00:49:44.000Yeah, she said, these people are going to attack each other, we're going to create a mess, we're going to open a Pandora's box, and there are no weapons of mass destruction, and we should wait, and we don't have enough information.
00:50:33.000And he said, you'll see, we do not have the strength to not take these steps.
00:50:38.000I should clarify, I don't know if Janine's really a Noam Chomsky fan, but I know Chomsky was saying that, like, he was pretty adamant about that, like, very early on.
00:50:47.000I just watched the Chomsky documentary on Netflix.
00:54:33.000We have this alpha male chimpanzee thing going on where the one, like, Robama, love him or hate him, was a very articulate, really well-spoken, calm and measured guy.
00:55:37.000They're just thinking about their house and their yacht.
00:55:39.000People got bonuses even though the economy collapsed.
00:55:42.000Even though the economy collapsed as a direct result of the industry that they were involved in and the businesses they were running, they still got bonuses.
00:56:05.000And you would think that people who want their guns would also say, but I would like consumer protection so you don't screw me on my credit card.
00:56:12.000But for some reason, because it doesn't align up with their team, they don't care about the issues that would protect them.
00:56:20.000Isn't that super dangerous to have a right and a left?
00:56:28.000And what prevents there from being a logical third party?
00:56:32.000Well, I think we had it with Ross Perot, right?
00:56:35.000I think Ross Perot was a logical third party, and it became very dangerous for people, and that's one of the reasons why the Commission for Presidential Debates changed the threshold.
00:56:42.000Like, back then, you needed 5% in the primary in order to be included in the debates.
00:56:47.000You put Ross Perot in the debate as an independent and extremely wealthy man who understands a lot about tax codes, understands a lot about foreign relations, and he became a huge problem and most likely cost Herbert Walker Bush his second term,
00:57:54.000Are you, I mean, there are people who feel like left and right are the same thing when you really get down to it or they're protecting the same interests in some way.
00:58:10.000I think that the most of the people that are on the left and most of the people on the right aren't even really thinking about whatever their party stands for.
00:58:19.000They are just like you said, they are sticking with the team, whether it's the left team or the right team.
00:58:24.000I think radical ideologies, whether it's on the left or the right, they share a lot of common traits.
00:58:31.000And one of the things they share is that there's a complete lack of objectivity, lack of objectivity and lack of introspective thought in terms of like what their party is actually doing, what it means to be a liberal, what it means to be progressive, what it means to be Republican, what it means to be conservative.
00:58:45.000You just get into this groove like this is what we do.
00:59:48.000I'm aware of what those issues are, but I do think there are large choices that just affect millions and hundreds of millions of people.
00:59:58.000Like, for instance, when a guy like Donald Trump says, we're not going to give money to any aid service around the world that says anything about abortion.
01:00:07.000If they hand out a pamphlet and it says that's an option, they don't get money.
01:00:11.000So if you're a country in Africa and there's only one aid service Aid service that feeds starving people, but you also hand out a pamphlet on abortion.
01:00:20.000You don't get any of the money anymore.
01:00:22.000Trump's fucked up, and a lot of the things he does are fucked up.
01:00:25.000But did you have any problems at all with Hillary?
01:00:26.000Well, I had a big issue that she does not seem to understand...
01:00:33.000Certain issues, like the speech, getting paid for the speeches, that her blind spot, and she has revealed to still have it after the election, that like, why did I go there?
01:01:07.000I'm just saying she has a blind spot to the potential for corruption that people see in that.
01:01:16.000And that she, when you're getting, I mean, one article said it was like $150 billion between the two of them over like 10 years or so.
01:01:25.000The fact that she doesn't even have a good game to defend it, that you can't go up against Trump and say he's corrupt while you're getting that much money from corporate interests.
01:01:38.000She never even saw how offensive it was that...
01:01:43.000It's the kind that Bernie Sanders doesn't do.
01:01:45.000So people go, well, at least he's not lining his pockets with that money.
01:01:48.000Hillary's basically saying, I line my pockets with that money, but I still have my own opinions.
01:01:54.000And the blind spot, at least to the outrage of it, is something that threw me.
01:02:04.000Ultimately, the main choices that she wanted to make on a lot of issues are so much more in line with what I believe than Trump, that although not a perfect candidate, Trump is trying to get this healthcare thing through and doesn't seem that concerned about it.
01:02:27.000I think she represents someone who's dishonest, though.
01:02:41.000And that's a real problem when you're going to have a leader of this country.
01:02:57.000When she compared what she said, Comey said to her during the investigation versus what Comey was saying publicly, they were totally different things.
01:03:35.000Is let the smart rich people get richer and something nice might happen for you that he's so dishonest on a level that you can't compare to Hillary.
01:03:48.000Now, I'm fully with you on this, but I think that whenever people criticize Trump or whenever the people talk about Hillary, rather, one of the first things they do is say Trump is worse.
01:04:23.000I feel like there is a part of politics where people You know, like, say, my position was evolving on that.
01:04:31.000When, no, your position wasn't evolving, you just weren't fighting for what you actually believe.
01:04:36.000And Obama took a while to make big moves on that.
01:04:40.000But I still think, at core, people like that are trying to figure out the system to help people, and I can't say I understand what Trump is in this for, other than to be considered the greatest winner of all time.
01:04:54.000Yeah, I think that's probably exactly it.
01:04:56.000I don't think he really wanted to be president.
01:04:58.000I think he was doing it to sort of boost his brand.
01:05:01.000And along the way, he lost his television show, right?
01:05:04.000When he was doing all that build that wall shit and running, you know, the wall just got 10 feet higher.
01:06:16.000So now you have a blind spot that anyone in the world thinks it's weird that you give your son-in-law, a real estate developer, so much power.
01:06:24.000And he doesn't care at all because he doesn't trust anybody except like four people.
01:06:27.000So he's got to give them all the power.
01:06:28.000But he puts them in charge of fixing everything wrong with the infrastructure of government and the Middle East and two or three other things.
01:06:38.000And Trump doesn't understand how insane that appears and also how each task is impossible.
01:06:47.000He's going to fix government and the Middle East.
01:06:52.000The type of guy that doesn't realize, well, maybe there's one person for each of those jobs, that's where I just go, oh, he's full-out crazy, because who would even do that to their son-in-law?
01:07:03.000Maybe his son-in-law is a pain in the ass.
01:07:06.000He's like, this fucking kid thinks he could do things?
01:07:08.000Alright, I'll give you the worst job ever.
01:07:15.000And he's sitting there with his Ray-Ban sunglasses and his preppy outfit.
01:07:20.000I mean, you know, it's become so comical.
01:07:25.000You know, it's a fascinating thing because it's both terrifying and And comical.
01:07:31.000If this was a movie, it's too broad and you wouldn't believe it.
01:07:34.000You would just go, too much is happening in every scene, too many crazy thoughts.
01:07:39.000And what I guess what I wonder, and maybe you have an opinion about this, there are people who say it is the destruction of truth when you just make these lies up all day long, that you change the definition of truth or even people's ability to decide what they think is the truth.
01:07:59.000Is that a philosophy that someone like Bannon is executing in the White House or something that happens randomly and is organic out of them?
01:08:13.000I mean, there's always the concept, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
01:08:16.000And knowing that you're in some sort of a competition, knowing that there's people trying to knock you down, and you're in this position of power, and you're shoring up your defenses, and I think there's a lot of weird stuff that goes on whenever you're the winning team.
01:08:34.000And you realize you're being attacked at all angles by this other team.
01:08:38.000And then you've got this guy who's the head guy who's a fucking maniac.
01:08:56.000He's always bragging about how well his ratings are and how shows do really well because everybody knows he watches the show.
01:09:04.000It's crazy stuff that you just don't expect from someone who's in the position of President of the United States.
01:09:10.000I think almost all bets are off at this point.
01:09:12.000That's the one thing that I find promising about this, that people are so upset by how fucked up this is that they're going to get politically active and that they're going to realize there's some real holes in the system.
01:09:23.000The president shouldn't just be able to fire the head of the FBI because you don't like the investigation.
01:11:55.000My mom died of ovarian cancer, and I just remember going through those bills, and there was a lot of experimental medicine that potentially could save her, and you didn't know if insurance would say...
01:13:16.000I think there's too many things for people to consider, and I think people work all day, and then they have hobbies and families and things they enjoy doing, and they don't have the time.
01:13:23.000I mean, each one of those issues would require a full-time job all day long, investigating it, debating it, discussing it, whether it's Flynn's ties to Russia, or what Session knows, and how many times did he speak to the Russians, or what did Jared Kushner actually do in the Middle East?
01:13:41.000Like, what is he doing in the overall?
01:13:51.000Did you see the pictures of him with the bulletproof vest on overseas and he's hanging around with the actual soldiers and he's sitting there with his Ray-Bans on?
01:13:58.000And his masking tape with his name magic marker on it.
01:14:42.000And then I'll be in Providence, Rhode Island at the Columbus Theater July 25th and at the Ridgefield Playhouse in Ridgefield, Connecticut July 23rd.
01:14:51.000And I'm taping my special in Montreal at the Just for Laughs Festival because they seem to be Amused by me there.
01:15:11.000I could actually, if I did only two shows, I could panic the first show and then go, okay, now I only have one show to get it and panic again.
01:15:28.000And I haven't done something like that since basically the HBO Young Comedians special in 1992 with Ray Romano, the guy who got fired so you could have your career.
01:18:22.000I did a Largo show that he was on, and I was just watching him from the side of the stage.
01:18:26.000And just his level of intensity is so...
01:18:29.000You know, in a weird way, it's so professional.
01:18:31.000And I noticed it with you the other night, too, that you could get yourself in that state where...
01:18:35.000Where you care so much and you're so passionate and it requires so much energy and focus to get to that place, to perform with that passion.
01:18:46.000It's just really impressive because for me, I can just get tired and start staring at my shoes.
01:19:07.000Is the best way to do it slow and calm and let people soak in the idea?
01:19:12.000Or is the best way to do it to be intense?
01:19:16.000What is the most entertaining way that I would be engaging this material?
01:19:21.000Figure whatever that is and fuck with it and move it around and bring it up and bring it down and that's one of the things where the store is such a great place to focus on that kind of stuff because there's so many killers because the standards are so high that you have to really you really have to be on point and it's packed every night you go to the comedy store the main room which usually just be desolate like four years ago it's sold out like it's Vegas every night every night I walk in there I'm like I got some new jokes I'm like How many new jokes can I do
01:19:51.000when this is a big, sold-out, excited crowd?
01:19:54.000We've changed the face of comedy in L.A. now.
01:19:57.000I mean, comedy in L.A. is a different thing now over the last few years.
01:20:03.000A place like the Comedy Store, you know, our friend Adam Egat, who books it.
01:20:10.000Just one guy with good taste booking the club well, and suddenly everyone in town wants to run to that club again.
01:20:16.000Both comedians and the audience, because Adam does such a good job booking it.
01:20:21.000And opening up that back bar, where you gave us a place where the public can't go and the comics can go and hang out, that was giant, where there was a place to chill and hang out.
01:20:29.000People were like, you'd be sitting there with Ron White, like, I'm on in five, see ya boys.
01:20:33.000And he'd go out there and do a set, then Diaz would come back, and all these different people are hanging out there.
01:20:37.000And you're like, wow, this place is like something special.
01:20:54.000It's just the idea of being a part of that community.
01:20:57.000And it is a community of people that are really smart, you know, really, really funny, and I think generally an incredibly supportive community to each other.
01:21:08.000Yeah, well, I think especially now there's so many opportunities.
01:21:11.000I don't think people feel like as starved I think there was a famine mentality that was going on way back in the day when it was everybody competing for tonight show spots And then every now and then someone got an HBO special and it was holy shit There was not that many HBO specials but other than that you had to do talk shows And you had to do like a few minutes on a talk show or,
01:21:32.000you know, maybe you were like a Richard Jenny who thrived in that format and you could do 30 Tonight Show things and then fill up arenas because of that.
01:21:39.000But for most people, it was a scratch-and-claw environment.
01:21:43.000And people were fighting to try to get a sitcom and fighting to try to get movie roles and all these...
01:21:50.000But now, because of the internet, because of YouTube, because of social media, and then Netflix, which was giant, there's so much opportunity.
01:21:59.000And the comedians have also found way more of an audience.
01:23:01.000I can't think about it too much because sometimes I think, if there's so many people, why do it?
01:23:05.000But I'm trying to make it very much about the audience and me and that...
01:23:09.000You know, because I make movies and do TV, that my stand-up career really is just about getting to hang out with everybody and my relationship with that particular crowd that night.
01:23:21.000Like, I don't need it to pay the rent so I could do it from a very pure place because it's just about these...
01:24:15.000I also think you're connecting to some, you know, whatever.
01:24:19.000The creativity of the universe because you're in spaces with a lot of people, with a lot of other creative people, and you're hooking into creativity on some level.
01:24:29.000I've always wondered how comedy writers who don't do stand-up can do it.
01:24:33.000I've always wondered, like, how do they know it's funny?
01:24:35.000Like, how do they know what they're guessing?
01:24:37.000Well, it's weird to write jokes, make a movie, and then two years later find out if they're funny.
01:25:13.000And I respect it, but I do not have the courage to assume when I hit editing that I am such a genius that I will not have fucked up any of this in the writing.
01:25:23.000They have a weird kind of comedy, though.
01:27:46.000And he said that he got Saturday Night Live because he went in for the audition and he was retiring because his career hadn't worked out the way he wanted it to.
01:27:55.000And then someone said, do you want to go in for SNL? And he was so ready to be done that he had an amazing audition because he assumed he wouldn't get it.
01:28:02.000And basically it was like, fuck this business.
01:28:04.000And then that's the moment when he was his purest, funniest self and just got it.
01:28:28.000So this some asshole at a strip club got a video camera brought in a video camera and filmed like a fucking video camera back then like you had to carry it and he filmed Phil and his wife at a strip cup laughing just having a couple of drinks and I think Phil got a lap dance and his wife got a lap dance And this guy put a copy of this videotape in an envelope and nailed it to Phil's garage door with
01:29:02.000But it was different because Letterman's thing was someone he knew and this was not a guy he knew.
01:29:06.000And this was a guy who found out where Phil lived and said, I'm going to get this to all of the advertisers that you do commercials with and all the people you do films with.
01:29:16.000And I'm going to ruin your career unless you give me money.
01:29:27.000And he goes, hey, buddy, what's going on?
01:29:31.000Listen, I understand what you're saying, but you've got to realize, I don't have as much money as you think I do.
01:29:39.000I mean, I don't want the tape getting out, but you're making it out like it's a bigger deal than it is.
01:29:45.000And the guy was like, look, I'm telling you, and this and that, and the guy's like, look, I'm willing to work with you.
01:29:50.000Let's just come to a reasonable number.
01:29:53.000So they come to this reasonable number, and this whole time where he's doing this, he's recording this, and he gets it to this private investigator guy.
01:30:00.000And then this asshole meets the private investigator thinking he's gonna meet Phil and get paid and this private investigator guy scares the fucking shit out of him and threatens his life and takes his wallet from him, takes photos of his address and he basically says,
01:30:17.000Don't ever contact him again, or your life will radically change in a horrible way.
01:31:29.000I used to tell this story just because it's funny.
01:31:33.000My friend Dave Rath, who manages Pete Holmes, at some point was transitioning and starting his own management company and asked me for some money.
01:31:40.000Not much, but the only guy who ever paid me back, and quickly.
01:31:57.000It's always these people that have, dude, once this happens, then this is going to happen, and I'm going to be making this amount of money, and don't worry about it.
01:32:04.000It's all going to come, but I just need a little right now.
01:33:52.000For the first year, when I didn't know what I was doing, I would book that club, which also gave me an excuse to call all the comics who I admired.
01:34:00.000And it's funny, there's those people at a key moment Open the door for you.
01:34:06.000But it's not because you knew them, it's just because you're willing to put in all the work somehow.
01:34:34.000He used to say to me, Judd, come in, wait around.
01:34:36.000If someone doesn't show up, I'll put you up.
01:34:38.000And I was like 19 years old, and I would wait there all night, every night, thrilled to talk to everyone, because that's right when Sandler moved to town and David Spade and Schneider, and that's when I first met everybody.
01:35:01.000There's this woman, Mary Parent, who is one of the heads of Universal, and I sold her the 40-year-old virgin, and she said, Judd, the second you hand in the script, I'm going to greenlight it.
01:35:13.000I so believe in this idea and you and Steve.
01:35:16.000And I literally faxed her, like page 90 to 108, and then she called and said, okay, start prepping.
01:41:31.000Sprints and then relax, then sprints again.
01:41:34.000But I just think being active and doing something on a daily basis, forcing your body to get used to the fact that it's going to constantly be working, constantly being under stress.
01:42:01.000That's gotta come back at him at some point.
01:42:03.000He's fucking 70. I mean, I've come back at him already.
01:42:07.000But he also, I mean, he's not mitigating his stress.
01:42:11.000That's part of it is your perspective enhancing.
01:42:13.000For me, the most important thing about, I don't think, maybe not the most important thing, but one of the best things about exercise is that it gives me a perspective.
01:42:21.000A better, a more enhanced perspective.
01:42:23.000Because I'm not coming at it from a stressful body.
01:42:50.000Especially for you because you're working on things all the time.
01:42:53.000If you go in there with an idea, like I'll go in there with a bit.
01:42:55.000Like I got this bit that I'm working on right now that's kind of complicated and sometimes I'll just be sitting there staring at the wall just thinking about this one bit because I'm trying to figure out how to structure it.
01:43:08.000And I'll go in that tank, and I'll just sit there for an hour, and I'll just try to work out this bit, try to figure out if there are other angles to it, if there's other ways to come at it.
01:43:16.000The only confusing thing is when I have an idea in the tank, and it seems like, I got it, I got to get out of the tank, and I got to write things down.
01:45:17.000And a lot of it is that being a writer, your day becomes about waking up and engaging your brain all day.
01:45:23.000And so you just like look at writers and eat Chinese food and you're kicking stuff around and it's like developing the wrong muscle your whole life, or at least not only one muscle.
01:45:33.000And I know that I have to transition into that.
01:46:33.000Because I'm trying to read a lot, like, and you guys talk about it sometimes.
01:46:37.000I heard you talking about it with Russell Brand, just, you know, quantum physics and trying to figure out how to quiet my brain and to tune into what is left to do to not be crazy.
01:47:11.000Quantum physics theory that basically you get into a pattern of how you feel and it's in your cells.
01:47:18.000If you're a depressed person, your cells are depressed and if you get in a good mood, your cells try to get you back to depression because you've conditioned yourself to be in a certain mood all the time physically and it affects your whole body and that you can make a choice to change how you are physically by...
01:47:38.000Choosing to be in a certain mood and meditating about a certain mood and that you could change how your body reacts physically so it doesn't want to keep you in the same mental state you're used to being in.
01:47:53.000I'm always real cautious about what causes depression and what makes people depressed and what, you know...
01:48:01.000I don't suffer from depression, so like whenever someone says, you're depressed because of this, I'm always like, hmm, okay.
01:48:08.000I don't know how to address that because I don't know what, I know there's certain people that do have absolute chemical imbalances, but what does that chemical imbalance come from?
01:49:09.000So if you had any kind of trauma as a kid, I think you're wired to keep your eyes open a little wider, which also lends itself to some kind of depression.
01:51:40.000And I was a teenager, a young teenager, and I remember being in the audience while Richard Pryor was on stage slaying, and people were laughing so hard, and I was laughing so hard, I looked around.
01:51:51.000I'll never forget this moment, because I looked around at the crowd while the movie was going on, and all these people were like, ah!
01:51:58.000Falling out of their chair, slapping their knee, holding their chest.
01:52:01.000And I was like, this guy's just talking.
01:52:03.000He's just talking and he's this funny.
01:52:07.000I'm like, this is an amazing thing this guy can do.
01:52:09.000Like, I'd never seen real stand-up before.
01:52:12.000I'd only seen, like, you know, like someone on the Johnny Carson show do a couple minutes and tell a few jokes.
01:52:17.000That, in my mind, was what stand-up was.
01:52:20.000It wasn't until, and I'd listened to some of the old Bill Cosby stuff and some of the old Carlin stuff on records, but I'd never seen it, like seeing the movie, live on the Sunset Strip.
01:52:32.000And that planted, didn't plant a seed like, I can do it, but it did plant a seed like, holy shit, this is possible.
01:54:43.000There was some bits where he talked about having multiple sclerosis near the end of his life and he was still doing the comedy store.
01:54:51.000And on audio, they were riotously funny, brutally honest bits about What it felt like to be that sick.
01:55:01.000And I don't think it ever was on an album before.
01:55:03.000When he was doing that, when he was coming back to the Comedy Store when he was really sick before he died, I was the guy who went on after him.
01:55:57.000Amazing round of applause when he got on stage and took forever for them to get him to the stage because Chewy who worked the door and this guy Dave would carry Richard Pryor to the stage and slowly just move him towards the stage and all the time the people would be clapping and then they would sit him down and then they would put the microphone in place and crank that fucking thing up to 10 and then he would We're
01:57:48.000And, you know, Richard, they, like, I remember, like, he wasn't supposed to drink, but he drank anyway, like, because they had him on all this medication.
01:59:03.000They're used to comedy, and they're like, oh, now this guy, where in the old days you'd come on, and they couldn't go, and oh, we're about to enjoy this potpourri of people.
01:59:24.000I think what you're getting at the store now, and this is what's been really interesting lately, is you're getting a lot of comedy tourism.
01:59:31.000A lot of people fly over from Europe just to come to the store.
02:03:29.000And I thought, oh, there's a whole other step here that I need to kick into gear.
02:03:34.000I always want the material to be good, but that...
02:03:39.000There's a way to crush that's hard to do.
02:03:43.000To get that momentum and have the ideas.
02:03:45.000And obviously Chris Rock is one of the best of everybody at it because he has so many great ideas but understands how to get the room rocking really hard.