Bankas Podcast - Mark Breslin, Owner of Yuk Yuk's ｜ Bankas Podcast

00:00:00.000 hey guys welcome back to bankers podcast today we have the legend himself mark breslin in the house

00:00:06.960 uh well technically i mean i'm in austin he's in toronto so he's in his house which uh i don't

00:00:14.900 know potentially toronto might be toronto usa we don't know but uh how would you feel about that

00:00:21.260 mark with the the trump stuff i love america but i also love canada and uh i'm glad that there's

00:00:29.860 two different countries they're very different in in in their feel and um i like living here but i

00:00:36.180 would love to live down somewhere with better weather of course um that's the main appeal of

00:00:41.380 the states for me it's nothing else really do you think you like yuck yucks would become a an american

00:00:47.760 wide brand if if you had the ability without any you know there was never anything there was never

00:00:55.160 anything stopping us from opening opening up in the states and in fact during the 80s we had

00:01:00.300 three clubs in the states we had one in rochester new york one in buffalo new york and one believe

00:01:05.660 it or not in maui and you're probably wondering why maui what because it was warm and you wanted

00:01:13.580 to go there sort of i mean i had you know i was producing joan river show and living in la and then

00:01:20.360 they canceled it and gave me a big big check which was the rest of my contract and i thought what do

00:01:25.620 i want to do with this i'm kind of burnt out so i moved to maui and when i was there of course i can't

00:01:31.100 just do nothing and i saw a space that was appropriate and i opened up a yuck yucks there it was all fine and

00:01:37.560 then six months later i decided to go back home and it didn't last more than another couple of months

00:01:43.160 before it fell apart people don't realize that yuck yucks is is it the oldest comedy

00:01:49.740 club brand no no i think the i think the improv uh and the comedy store predate us

00:01:57.840 but here's something you might find interesting um i am now the world's longest running club comedy club

00:02:05.960 owner wow because mitzi shore died a couple of years ago and bud friedman died a couple of years ago and

00:02:12.240 rick newman died a couple of years ago so i'm the last man standing 48 years of doing this

00:02:17.980 it's incredible what do you think is different now doing what you do versus when you started

00:02:25.640 oh well first of all it's a business now it was never a business when i started it in fact i made

00:02:32.460 every possible move that i could to stop it from becoming an actual business if you can imagine that

00:02:39.360 you know our attitude was completely punk which fit in with the times it was you know mid late 70s

00:02:45.980 um i we used to alienate the audience and not care if people walked out um we did everything on the

00:02:53.180 cheap and so it didn't really matter um the idea was if it was good it was good and if it was bad it

00:02:59.180 was even better do you think that made it more popular like because i know there's so many one of the

00:03:04.520 coolest things uh i mean there's tons of cool things about yuck yucks but one of the cool things

00:03:08.380 is that every yuck yucks has these articles posted around it on the walls articles from newspapers all

00:03:15.860 over canada and probably the u.s as well maybe even if europe i don't are there any european ones but

00:03:21.260 i don't think so articles about you and the club and um you know cool things that were happening there

00:03:27.680 and there's a few articles from the 70s and 80s so and people so it really just got people talking

00:03:32.940 it was kind of like i mean the newspaper was social media there was no social media so it's true but

00:03:38.820 also word of mouth really helped too you know we've always believed this social media is just another

00:03:43.480 form of word of mouth um it's just not happening in in physical world but people would come to the

00:03:50.280 club they would be shocked in a very pleasant way at what they were seeing because it felt so modern

00:03:57.500 compared to whatever else was going on in comedy and they would tell all their friends come down

00:04:02.320 no not all of their friends liked what we were doing and people were walking out i'd say in the

00:04:07.140 first year of our real opening which was 1978 that's like the full-time yuck yucks we were losing a

00:04:13.380 third of our audience um every night every night a third of the audience would walk out and not only

00:04:19.380 would they walk out they wouldn't just kind of quietly walk out they would walk out in a way that

00:04:23.980 let you know that they hated it they absolutely hated it and sometimes they would scream at me as

00:04:30.120 they were walking out there are young people in here what are you doing these are the worst uh values

00:04:36.560 you are ruining christianity in this okay so they would do that kind of thing and of course uh what i

00:04:42.120 would do is i would pull out my wallet and then i would take out a stack of bills that were in my wallet

00:04:47.020 and i would wave it at them and i would say okay go back to your stupid lives but just remember

00:04:51.920 the jew has your money the jew has your money and then i would have everybody in the audience chant

00:04:58.220 the jew has your money the jew has your money very funny very punk but that's not the end of it

00:05:05.360 the end of it is this because these people could not believe that the owner would be on stage doing

00:05:10.640 this so they would write me a letter which is what people always did in those days dear sir uh we went

00:05:16.240 to your club the other night and we were shocked and appalled at the kind of language and the topics

00:05:19.860 that were being covered but the worst thing of all uh what the worst thing of all uh was your mc

00:05:25.840 who uh who uh waved a bunch of money at us uh when when we left um can you do something about this

00:05:34.020 please so what i did was i had a stamp made up a rubber stamp right it was big it was like that big

00:05:41.160 and in huge block letters it said eat shit and die and then in nice uh kind of wedding script it would

00:05:47.640 say the x management and then i would take the i would take the the letter that they sent and stamp

00:05:53.840 it with eat shit and die the x management and then i would send it back to the address on the

00:05:58.440 back of the envelope that they sent us it's incredible so that didn't care we didn't care

00:06:04.840 we didn't have to make a living i think i was living on uic unemployment insurance uh at the time

00:06:10.260 and um nobody was making any money nobody ever thought nobody ever thought that this was actually

00:06:15.160 going to be a real job until jim carrey came along a number a couple of years later and then became a

00:06:19.900 huge star and that sort of woke everybody up and what everybody went oh we could have an actual career

00:06:26.000 out of this we could actually make money out of this maybe we wouldn't have to have us like a day job

00:06:31.700 but that never occurred to people until jim carrey made it around 1981 82

00:06:37.320 so when i do some do shows at yuck yucks and people get mad does that kind of do you like you

00:06:47.280 must part of you must be like this is exciting now because there's somebody who's mad and it's it's

00:06:52.460 that's part of the vibe of i mean i think it's the vibe of comedy you know if you're a comedy fan you go

00:06:59.420 to a comedy show and then you're the comic says something you're laughing and somebody's offended and

00:07:04.480 they walk out it just you're like this is amazing i can't believe this is what i'm watching in real

00:07:09.480 time is it's real entertainment that's how i feel yeah but ben you know as good as you are you've

00:07:14.700 never provoked an actual riot and um there have been comics uh rick shapiro was one of them do you

00:07:21.920 remember rick shapiro no here i'll pull up he's an amazing comic out of new york very much tied into a

00:07:28.620 kind of lower east side um sort of uh beatnik sensibility and i thought he was going to be

00:07:34.960 another kinison and a lot of people thought that yeah there he is a lot of people thought that too

00:07:40.480 and when i would bring him in um people would walk out and start screaming um at at the audience for

00:07:46.640 sitting there and then somebody in the audience would get up and scream back and it looked like

00:07:50.280 there was going to be a big fist fight it never actually happened but it came close the problem with

00:07:54.880 rick poor rick rick has serious parkinson's and just isn't performing or able to do much anymore

00:08:00.500 but he was he's an amazing act so you're saying that there were nights where every single person

00:08:06.840 would leave that was a kinison night and this is the story that norm mcdonald tells in his book and

00:08:12.560 he gets it right except for one detail um what happened was i used to go down to los angeles to find

00:08:19.240 uh headliners for the club because at the time there weren't enough canadian headliners

00:08:23.660 and part of my philosophy was always to book canadians first and develop a canadian

00:08:27.620 comedy industry but there just weren't enough headliners so i would go down to um down to los

00:08:33.180 angeles and the people at the comedy store would put on their inventory of people they thought i would

00:08:37.560 like and i would watch them and i would book somebody maybe two people so one night i'm down there

00:08:44.160 and i'm watching everybody and yeah they're all good and then they come up to me and say well the show's

00:08:49.140 over actually but we put this last guy on to clear the room uh so people will pay their bills and get

00:08:54.600 out and we can close up so you could leave now and i said no no i don't want to do that he'll see me

00:08:59.100 leave that looks really bad i might as well just stay for the last 15 minutes and not offend anybody

00:09:04.200 and then i watched this guy break a stool on stage and start ranting about his marriage

00:09:08.920 and i thought he was brilliant and so the people from the comedy store came up to me and afterwards

00:09:13.800 and said okay so uh did you see anybody who wanted to book and i said yeah the last guy and they went

00:09:18.000 oh yeah he's great his airline uh his airline food material is the best in the business and i went no

00:09:23.760 no no no not him the actual last guy and they went you want to book sam kinnison i said yeah and remember

00:09:31.140 this is before anybody knew him before he was famous in any way so i booked him he came in and our

00:09:38.420 shows then for features started on wednesday went through saturday he did the wednesday show

00:09:43.700 it was kind of tepid didn't quite work but the thursday show he walked every single person in the

00:09:52.020 room i mean every single person in the room there were 150 people there how like what was it wait so i

00:10:02.740 walked backstage and i took out my wallet this is becoming the jew with the wallet now is becoming

00:10:08.040 kind of a trope i take out my wallet and i take a hundred dollars out and what sam is probably

00:10:13.700 thinking okay he's gonna pay me a hundred bucks to get out of here and i'm fired but no what i said

00:10:20.760 was sam this is a hundred dollars it's your bonus for tonight on top of what we're paying you and

00:10:25.560 that's for walking everybody else in the room and i will pay you a hundred dollars for every other show

00:10:30.540 in which you do that but you have to walk absolutely everybody to get your bonus and he was

00:10:35.740 stupefied but it was also the beginning of our our good friendship did he now when more mcdonald tells

00:10:42.620 that story in his book the detail he gets wrong is that i gave him a thousand dollars as if i'm a guy

00:10:48.540 who'd walk around with a thousand dollars in my in my wallet so it was a hundred not a thousand but the

00:10:55.500 story is true and so he was he doing drugs and stuff like was he on drugs no no no he just you know

00:11:05.300 ben and you should know this from your own personal experience when you try to do something new in any

00:11:11.520 art form um it's immediately perceived as being ugly and then you keep doing it and you find the way

00:11:20.060 to just change 10 of it maybe less to just get it right exactly so that people can um assimilate the

00:11:29.220 shock of the new and if i can give you a an example from um the past um in 1913 um uh the rites of spring

00:11:42.480 was performed in paris at the opera and it was considered so radical a kind of music to be performed

00:11:51.500 at that time that there were actual riots at the paris opera well i find that anybody rioting at an

00:11:58.400 opera i mean that's funny to me to begin with like anybody would really care um

00:12:03.460 ah okay see there it is it's igor stravinsky but so there was a riot and the moral of the story is now

00:12:14.280 that piece of music is just considered a standard of every orchestra in the world

00:12:19.360 and the next time i brought sam back he was better didn't clear anybody out but he wasn't quite sam yet

00:12:29.060 and then the third time i brought him back which was about 18 months after the first time

00:12:33.420 he started killing the room and he was on his way did you what did you see in him like what do you

00:12:40.880 look for when somebody's kind of at that stage where you're like you just said he wasn't super killing

00:12:46.700 but you just loved what he was doing and you knew like what what are those pieces that you see and go

00:12:53.580 okay that's going to turn into something well it's hard it's or maybe specific you could be specific

00:13:01.260 to sam well it's not like i have a formula but i am looking for authenticity i am looking for a new

00:13:07.920 voice and you know a lot of people talk of these days about finding a new voice and the new voice has

00:13:13.540 to be a new voice that's somehow a different ethnicity but that's not necessarily a new voice because

00:13:20.160 anybody from any particular ethnicity could be simply doing what everybody else did except it

00:13:25.380 was a different ethnicity like talking about immigrant parents everybody talks about immigrant

00:13:30.420 parents it's not new they think it's new because it's new to their community but jewish comics talked

00:13:36.580 about their immigrant parents italian comics talked about their immigrant parents and so forth so on and

00:13:42.140 so forth so i'm looking for something that's really a cry from the heart look i have a background in

00:13:47.760 literature that's my that's my background and i'm i'm consistent in what i like in terms of stand-up

00:13:54.320 novels uh poetry uh music like i just saw the bob have you seen the bob dylan documentary

00:14:01.360 not the uh the bob dylan movie no but i heard it's really good i need to see it's amazing but i have to

00:14:07.800 tell you that bob dylan i always said to myself i'd like to do comedy or to find comedy that is to

00:14:14.880 comedy what bob dylan is to music i'd like to find comedy that is to comedy what norman maylor

00:14:22.060 or philip roth was to literature this is what i'm looking for um i'm basically i was very steeped in

00:14:29.800 the beatniks not the hippies but the beatniks because they were really literary they actually

00:14:33.880 wrote books instead of just smoking joints and i i that bias carries through for the last 50 years

00:14:41.340 do you think things are more political now than like i mean when you started yucks or the the first

00:14:47.840 10 years of yuck yucks that i feel like now you talk about politics is more talked about especially

00:14:55.020 in canada where i feel like traditionally canada nobody really cared about politics at all that much

00:15:00.720 i don't know nobody i would not call yuck yucks a place of political comedy that's for sure i mean

00:15:08.120 you could sit there for a week and not hear the word trudeau not even hear the word trump not not

00:15:14.040 at all the reason for this i think is just practical comedians are generally trying to uh develop an

00:15:20.900 inventory that they can use for a long time unless you're on television every night um or you have a

00:15:26.100 podcast every night where you can talk about stuff that's happening that day um you're trying to find

00:15:30.320 stuff that's more universal that you can use for years in clubs so you're going to develop material

00:15:34.620 about relationships and sex and pop culture and things like that so when sam and you were friends

00:15:40.800 you were legitimately friends for for kinnison yeah we lived together you lived with sam kinnison yeah he

00:15:47.740 lived in my place because he couldn't get he couldn't get arrested in the states so but you have no idea

00:15:53.920 people think he was a star from the get-go but it was such a struggle for him

00:15:58.940 so what are you arrested he couldn't get arrested in the states like because he was doing drugs or

00:16:05.280 like no no i'm sorry that's a phrase that people use couldn't get anybody interested in him

00:16:10.500 oh no i see what you mean yeah yeah that's that's just a phrase that sometimes people use couldn't get

00:16:16.640 arrested but it's interesting the more i mean i've been reading some books about random things i mean

00:16:23.300 i was reading elon's book and um just it's incredible how many times how much canada has

00:16:31.180 an influence on so many things that people don't realize like if you read a biography about an

00:16:36.280 american comedian and then all of a sudden they're like next thing you know i'm in toronto canada you

00:16:40.560 know what i mean or they're meeting somebody like you who's able to give them insights that the that

00:16:47.220 people in the the states wouldn't be able to give them or that they wouldn't have access to somebody

00:16:53.460 who'd be able to have that level of interest like for instance somebody like sam kinison comes to

00:16:59.760 canada and you're like no no let's let's actually like get into it and talk and and and brainstorm and

00:17:06.420 i think that that's like i think you've done that for a lot of comics that went on to become

00:17:11.880 like i mean george carlin has performed at yuck yucks yeah he was he was in toronto doing

00:17:18.620 what was it called with the shining time station it was a kids show oh yeah the um is that what it

00:17:26.460 was or top thomas the train yeah maybe it was thomas the tank engine yeah he was there for about a

00:17:31.860 month and a half he came every night and performed and then took everybody out for a late dinner and

00:17:37.820 paid for it every night and was he what was his vibe backstage was it he was great he was great

00:17:46.480 in every way i think he was not heavily into drugs at that point i think he had already passed that

00:17:52.680 point so this is like in the 90s then probably oh yeah yeah i was definitely in the 90s he but he

00:17:59.300 was great he was absolutely great but there is a funny story to this as there often is um this was in

00:18:04.260 the winter the dead of winter so he showed up at the box office in toronto you know he had a turtleneck

00:18:10.620 sweater he had a a kutuk on and he said how much is it to get in and the box office guy said it's eight

00:18:19.440 dollars and he pulled out eight dollars and he paid eight dollars to get in i later found that out and

00:18:25.140 of course you know i said you don't pay to get in here and uh yeah but they didn't even know who he was

00:18:31.280 and he's i mean he was mega wealthy at that point probably yeah i don't know if he was ever mega

00:18:38.300 wealthy in the way that you know our definition of wealth has changed so much in the last while i

00:18:43.500 mean now if you tell somebody hey you look like a million bucks they go oh that bad you know so you

00:18:48.200 don't really it it wasn't seinfeld kind of money or kevin fox kind of money but he was successful

00:18:55.220 yeah he was successful there's that story about because he i think carlin had some affinity to

00:19:02.880 toronto and i remember that russell peters told a story in his book where he goes to the uh toronto

00:19:09.300 blue jays celebration for the world series and sees george carlin in the crowd for some reason and

00:19:15.900 talks to him from unless it's all made up but um i don't think russell would bother to make up a story

00:19:21.500 when he has enough stories they're a good story but it was a good story about how he sees him and

00:19:26.400 he asks him a question he wasn't i don't even think he did comedy yet he was like young and he

00:19:30.820 was like i want to be a comedian and carlin stood there for a minute and actually talked to him and

00:19:35.420 told him stuff and i think that's here's the part of the story i find a bit suspicious

00:19:39.860 why did russell peters who was a broke kid from brampton have enough money to sit in the same

00:19:48.040 seats that george carlin would be able to sit no it was uh it was during like the like everybody

00:19:53.520 walking around when it all right i mean it's a bit suspicious but okay let's let's let's say it

00:20:00.560 happened but i'm not aware that george carlin was particularly had any affinity towards canada or

00:20:06.740 or toronto i was never aware of that was hat was howie mandela yuck yuck's comic yes in a very in a

00:20:14.000 very real way too i mean i really took howie under my wing because i loved what howie was doing right

00:20:19.960 from the get-go and i'll tell you what really attracted me to howie um he would do anything for

00:20:25.040 a laugh i mean anything for a laugh and that was so not canadian the canadian tradition was to be you

00:20:31.380 know you'd make polite jabs at politicians and that was considered kind of racy but howie would come

00:20:38.160 out there and he would we don't use the term anymore retard but he had a retard character

00:20:43.400 that he did and it was fantastic absolutely fantastic um i don't know if you can find that

00:20:49.400 anymore uh it's it goes right back to 1977 um but um he would do stuff that no one would do and also

00:20:58.240 i mean some of the stuff didn't work and it was kind of funny when it didn't work i remember he did

00:21:04.080 this piece where he came out in a like a kind of cowl and there were bags of potato chips stapled

00:21:13.020 all over the whole thing must have taken him hours to do this to sing a song called i'm a chip monk

00:21:19.020 get it wow like he's a monk and there's chips and he and he didn't get a laugh and he must have spent

00:21:26.540 i don't know how long the night before you're stapling stapling stapling did you laugh

00:21:32.820 yeah of course i left at anything how he did and i almost still do and so he was like an original

00:21:40.000 basic like 77 76 is when yuck started no actually it was 78 when we opened up the new the full-time

00:21:48.680 place so and how so how he was already there from 77 no 78 78 79 but so how he was like pretty

00:21:58.040 one of the first like who was in his group of so that was jim carrey steve brinder larry horowitz

00:22:06.800 a bunch of people that you probably never heard of the troupe grotesque who are wonderful

00:22:13.440 and actually got me into the business wasn't it just uh jim carrey that originally you

00:22:18.900 said no to him when he auditioned or something like that i did worse than that i gave him the hook and

00:22:23.760 pulled him off the stage like physically took him off yeah yeah he was 14 okay so this is in the days

00:22:31.020 of the first club now the first club was only one night a week on a wednesday in the basement of a

00:22:36.420 community center um the club had originally been a bowling alley so it was long and narrow it was the

00:22:42.880 worst place to do comedy but we did it and we did it completely uncensored and we did it our way

00:22:48.340 so then this kid shows up in a powder blue leisure suit and says he wants to go on and we put him on

00:22:54.660 and he did all these impressions of like why would anybody want to be rich little was how we sort of

00:23:02.300 thought you know and he but it was he was terrible so we had different ways at the time of getting

00:23:07.040 people off stage and one of them was a simple old vaudeville hook and i took the hook and i wrapped

00:23:13.120 it around his neck and i was standing backstage and i went and he went he went flying he was so

00:23:18.340 so affected by this experience um by the way i'm blurry right now is there a reason yeah i think just

00:23:26.040 move a little bit uh if you move it'll like refocus yeah actually this is how i feel so i i think this

00:23:33.880 is a very good camera it sees inside your soul is this good enough yeah i mean it's it's okay it should

00:23:41.160 clear up this changes anything uh so wait i haven't finished so he was so disturbed by that

00:23:49.220 experience and i don't blame him he waited two years to come back that by then we had opened up

00:23:53.780 the full-time club and he was way better i still didn't particularly care for what he was doing

00:23:58.660 because as i say i wasn't looking for the next rich little i was looking for the next lenny bruce

00:24:03.100 or at least the next robert klein and did he tour like did he do all those

00:24:09.960 did yuck yucks do tours then like a yuck yucks on that was pre all of that this that started like

00:24:17.860 around 1980 uh we opened up club in montreal we still we did our first western tour but no

00:24:23.920 jim and how we both predate that so did they just do yuck yucks and then immediately go to the u.s or

00:24:30.980 pretty much yeah so how he was also in the u.s pretty quickly after well we took him to the u.s

00:24:37.240 we would have we we went to to los angeles with him for the first time when he went

00:24:41.540 um because we worked with a comic named michael raphor uh who was out of rochester um he was a bit

00:24:49.040 of a blowhard but he knew people and he said to howie when he performed at yuck yucks hey you're

00:24:54.580 really interesting i think i can get you on the comedy store at the comedy store so how he started

00:24:59.820 talking about it uh how uh howie wagman from ottawa and myself uh thought okay why don't we just go

00:25:06.480 down we'll have a we'll have a bit of a holiday in la and we'll go down with howie so the four of us

00:25:10.940 flew down together but just to show you how things have changed how he went into the bathroom and came

00:25:16.880 out as donnie in his diaper like in the airport yeah no in the pl on the plane oh my god wait wait

00:25:24.980 it gets better and then took the public address system system and started doing shtick on the

00:25:29.940 public address system and everybody howled and laughed as opposed to now where the uh air marshal

00:25:36.000 would shoot you that's crazy yeah that's amazing that's i mean people miss that i mean people would

00:25:42.220 love to go back to that i don't think that's ever going to be possible but i love the 70s i think

00:25:48.160 toronto specifically peaked in the 70s were people just smoking on the plane and everything too

00:25:53.140 drinking i think so i think you could smoke still oh yeah you could smoke still which is an idiot

00:25:58.360 which was always idiotic because the smoke will go wherever it wants to whether you're in the back

00:26:02.660 of the plane or the front of the plane you're still going to have smoke yeah smoking movies at that time

00:26:07.420 you must remember that were the comedy clubs filled with smoke oh yeah and i i'm a non-smoker so i hated

00:26:13.980 it every night when i came home i i had to click i had to take my clothes and i just put my clothes

00:26:20.600 it into the dry cleaners um i i had a constant cough and they said when they had the they made

00:26:28.300 the law about non-smoking that this was going to kill all the restaurants this was going to kill

00:26:33.020 all the bars i'm just going to kill all the clubs but it did nothing of the sort all that happened was

00:26:37.700 people who were really into smoking would walk out halfway through they'd have a smoke break and

00:26:42.620 they'd walk back in that's crazy that it was just that filled with smoke ron votary used to have his

00:26:49.520 opening line with something like hey can i get a little smoke in here the hams aren't cured yet

00:26:54.760 right when people would people smoke dope like or try to no then they'd be kicked out that was

00:27:01.900 clearly illegal but they came stoned yeah is it do you think that if they brought smoking back that

00:27:10.580 people would should we bring smoking back inside no no it's cancerous it's bad call no it's cancerous

00:27:18.520 there's no there's no way it's a good thing um people should not smoke in indoors unless it's

00:27:23.580 their own home and then they can do whatever they want so when you went to la with howie

00:27:27.820 was that like a party too yeah i mean i i mean can you know it's early on we don't really take it all

00:27:35.280 that seriously as a business it was a way to have some fun make enough pocket money so that

00:27:40.560 we could live simply but independently which i think is important and meet girls that was always

00:27:49.220 a key part of all of this is to meet girls and how my my social life just exploded as soon as i got

00:27:56.840 into show business which is what i want to tell all these incels all these incels you know are sitting

00:28:01.960 in their basements no no get the stupidest lowest job in show business and you'll get laid you can't

00:28:08.040 help but get laid in show business were you having parties at your place like after shows and stuff

00:28:13.360 like that like no but we went to all night restaurant there were a lot of really good

00:28:16.720 all night restaurants that we used to go to and uh we would party there that you could drink all night

00:28:22.320 too or was it still till 2 a.m i don't i don't drink so i don't know oh so you never really

00:28:29.080 i never drank i never smoked i never did any of those things i i my comedy is my vice you know

00:28:36.940 show business is my vice really was howie did howie drink no so like nobody you guys all just

00:28:44.280 went sober to la and well there were only four of us i think my nephew um howard he drank a bit but it

00:28:51.380 was it was not party drinking it was just you know wine with dinner would the women drink if you guys

00:28:57.560 were hanging out with girls well first of all there were almost no female comics in those days

00:29:02.060 almost zero in fact i'm always trying to uh you know whenever there's this there's a documentary

00:29:08.700 or something done about yuck x i'm scrambling to find women who were there in the beginning and it

00:29:13.360 was pretty tough it was marjorie gross um who went on to write all the all the good seinfelds

00:29:19.180 but she was gone early there was marla lukofsky who was really great um and i'm still in contact

00:29:25.460 whether in fact i'm having lunch with her in two days um katie ford came along a little later who

00:29:31.080 was really young she was 14 years old but she was really funny and she wound up writing uh miss

00:29:36.100 congeniality for sandra bullock wow there were a few more a few more but there weren't a lot of

00:29:41.800 there weren't a lot of women in it so but you said you said your idea what or you wanted to meet

00:29:48.440 girls so which how the audience but where would you hang out with them just at the club no we take

00:29:55.780 them out for coffee so everything seems so and then i would date and then i would date them if i

00:30:03.380 liked them and they yeah yeah were there comics stuff the only unconventional part of it is that they

00:30:09.960 would meet you and already think you were some kind of genius for how is standing on stage and making

00:30:14.900 people laugh for two hours right but there was um there were some comics that must have been

00:30:23.060 kind of alcoholics even from the beginning sure absolutely but i was very i was very careful about

00:30:31.600 who i partied with and who i hung out with i tend to like the more serious intellectual types

00:30:38.240 who was the comic that the canadian comic mike something that he was mike mcdonald oh mike mcdonald

00:30:50.420 was so brilliant mike mcdonald is probably the greatest stand-up to ever come out of the country

00:30:55.180 seriously and did he live in the u.s at one point yes he did it uh and then he got sick and he came

00:31:02.420 back for health care oh really like towards the end of his life yes well he was touring in the states

00:31:10.520 and everything or he wasn't getting much work he got more work in canada than he did in the states

00:31:15.940 but he did like some serious like party this isn't even the word i mean listen he was a hair he did a lot

00:31:25.160 of heroin and i remember one one evening we got him a gig at western university western ontario

00:31:33.560 and so my friend joel axler and i drove him in and before we went to the gig i had a meeting of uh

00:31:43.380 like a dinner meeting with somebody who thought they wanted to open up a yuck yucks um it didn't happen

00:31:49.020 and later on in life of course i opened up oh he's so great uh it brings a tear to my eye

00:31:55.000 he was a wonderful friend and a brilliant brilliant performer anyway um so uh mike had mike was doing a

00:32:03.540 lot of heroin a lot of heroin so we go to this dinner and mike strung out like you wouldn't believe

00:32:08.900 and it's a nice italian restaurant the owner says well what would you like and so i said oh i'll have

00:32:14.820 a lasagna please and then my uh my friend said oh i'll have the spaghetti and meatballs and mike says

00:32:20.600 i want 10 coca-colas line them up in sequence and as we're sitting there having a meeting

00:32:28.360 the four of us mike mcdonald is doing nothing but sipping glugging cokes finishes one takes the next

00:32:38.300 gluck gluck gluck gluck gluck gluck gluck gluck takes the next that's all because you crave sugar

00:32:44.660 when you're um when you're an addict now here's the interesting part so then after this we drove

00:32:50.340 to the university and mike went on and did a brilliant two hours brilliant two hours you would

00:32:56.040 never know that he was on any kind of a drug or that he was incapacitated ever at all ever and then

00:33:02.760 we got in the car drove home when he slept through the hole did he have do you have an opening opening

00:33:08.200 act i don't remember i don't think so two hours is are there any comics right now that you would want

00:33:15.540 to go see them do two hours well there's because i'm 72 years old there's nothing i want to do for

00:33:21.280 two hours i want to get as many interesting things in my life as possible but um i think a comic should

00:33:27.860 do about an hour is a really good time for a comic to do i think after that it uh starts to

00:33:33.280 wear on you you know woody allen said that when he made his early movies the the like the ones were

00:33:38.680 which are jokey right pure comedies he said he always aimed for them to be 95 minutes long because

00:33:44.560 he didn't think an audience would laugh if they were really laughing that they couldn't laugh for

00:33:48.720 much more than 95 minutes yeah however the first comic i ever saw live i guess yeah it was the first

00:33:57.660 one was uh the black comic uh oh god how could his name escape me uh he was the one sorry eddie murphy

00:34:08.840 no no way before this we're talking 1972 1972 red fox nope he was really a serious comic like he was

00:34:17.860 he talked about really serious things not richard not prior but he influenced prior completely

00:34:24.540 his name will come to me in a moment but he but he i got an invitation to see him at a place called

00:34:30.680 the earth shoe dome which was um it was above a store and it was all carpeted you sat on the floor

00:34:38.380 it had we got there flip wilson no rudy rudy no no no keep going keep going i will find him

00:34:47.880 he's famous he's truly famous bill cosby no it wasn't cosby but i got a cosby story for you as we

00:34:56.840 all do do you have do you have a cosby sir okay we'll do that i'll go into a minute but let's find

00:35:00.860 this guy already george george george wall wasn't george wallace paul mooney nope although i have a

00:35:07.100 paul mooney's great uh love red fox no no no no dick gregory gregory thank you dick gregory did four

00:35:18.480 hours holy shit four hours and this is before i got into comedy right and i'm watching this guy so the

00:35:27.700 first hour is all jokes the second hour um he gets into race stuff right because it's this like just

00:35:35.500 the tail end of the 60s then the third hour is his pet project which is um his vegetarianism and

00:35:43.960 eating properly and he does an hour on that and then the fourth hour um is an hour condemning global

00:35:49.720 capitalism four hours wait and we're sitting on the floor where was this a place called the earth

00:36:00.840 shoe dome um it's it's in toronto yeah there's a company there was a company called earth shoes which

00:36:07.300 kind of predates roots and their big thing was negative heel shoes do you remember this at all

00:36:11.980 this was a real thing and it turned out that it made everybody give it gave everybody arthritis so

00:36:17.160 they stopped making them but um they were they had a space in a very chic building in yorkville at the

00:36:24.720 top of the building there was this big empty space with a gorgeous rose window and that's where they

00:36:30.840 had it and it held about 200 people i don't know why i got tickets but i got tickets it was a really

00:36:36.620 tough ticket to get and i wasn't in the business i don't know how i got tickets i cannot remember

00:36:40.900 was it mostly white audience yes because toronto at that time was mostly white we're going back to 1972

00:36:48.680 or you said it was almost the 60s wasn't it well that was the tail end of the 60s i see but so

00:36:56.520 the 60s didn't start wait then the 60s didn't start till 1963 and the 70s didn't really start till 1973

00:37:04.600 okay that makes sense but did so did

00:37:08.260 were people racist then or like were they like i feel like people weren't racist in the sense that

00:37:17.320 they're like oh i would love to see this black comic like they maybe were more you maybe not

00:37:21.540 politically correct but they were they weren't actually racist this this was one show in one

00:37:27.800 place and you had to be kind of super educated super uh you had to be somehow placed there were a lot

00:37:36.580 of people there from like the government there were a lot of people there who would have the industry

00:37:41.820 it was a real like vip kind of kind of situation nobody there is going to express any racism

00:37:46.440 they were all people who were working in their way as i was at the time for some of the civil rights

00:37:52.320 movement were you inspired by that performance specifically no because i had no idea that i was

00:37:59.340 going to go into comedy later i just thought it was kind of an amazing thing to see later on i realized

00:38:05.560 what i'd seen but that wasn't that was hardly the the reason for me to get into comedy i mean it

00:38:10.920 started right so much earlier with mad a subscription of mad magazine when i was eight years old

00:38:15.880 wow you know that's saving my taste for comedy were you bored at any point in four hours of

00:38:24.660 dick gregory's show no but my ass hurt because you're sitting on the ground yeah well i was carpeted but

00:38:31.900 you were just you know you're not meant to sit on the floor that's weird that there'd be no why

00:38:36.540 were there no chairs or they either would have taken up more space oh they wanted to get as many

00:38:41.540 people in as they could it was free i remember all it was free very very interesting what was your

00:38:48.080 bill cosby story the bill cosby story is simple we uh you know i do uh i'm involved a woman to sleep

00:38:55.040 um we the bill cosby story is kind of a simple story you know i do i'm involved in a charity called

00:39:03.500 humor me uh once a year and it's a ceo executive challenge we raised about two million dollars on

00:39:09.780 in one night and we've been doing this for about 15 years and at the end of the show uh which is made

00:39:16.840 up of ceos performing mostly uh we have a big name and one year we had bill cosby it was exactly

00:39:26.920 two weeks before everything hit the fan if it had happened two weeks later we would i don't know what

00:39:34.760 we would have done would we have canceled the show would we have found somebody else i don't know what

00:39:39.120 we would have done but it was so funny that it was just two weeks before and everybody was coming

00:39:43.400 up to me congratulating me for the booking this is the greatest booking oh man we've always wanted

00:39:47.380 to see cosby this is terrific wow this is incredible my wife and her mother came and went

00:39:52.580 up bill cosby he's the best and then two weeks later you know he's the biggest pariah on the planet

00:39:58.900 was it funny though well he has a different way of working um than any other comic i've ever seen

00:40:05.400 he deliberately bores you for the first 15 minutes and we're watching this and we're thinking uh-oh

00:40:12.360 did we book the wrong guy has he had it is he over the hill no he does it deliberately to kind of

00:40:19.120 lull you into a certain headspace and then he starts piling on the material the real material

00:40:25.480 that's how he works even seinfeld said to me once a lot of comics come out and they like to do their

00:40:31.980 first best joke off the top he said i like to do my worst joke off the top when did he say that to

00:40:38.920 you sometime in the 90s maybe did you ever did you just how did how were you ever we used to book

00:40:48.720 him all the time we used to laugh in fact seinfeld was one of the people that we had one year oh he

00:40:54.060 was pricey um seinfeld was one of the people we had one year at that humor me uh uh show and um

00:41:00.680 i had read this but seinfeld came up to me and said before right before he went on he said mark

00:41:06.600 can you believe it i'm about to cross the one billion dollar uh threshold for comedy he said uh

00:41:14.340 remember i used to pay me a hundred bucks a show and it's true i used to pay him a hundred dollars a

00:41:19.880 show and he was grateful for it before he had a show before before these people had anything

00:41:28.620 ben you gotta understand right now and for the last 25 years there's a whole network of clubs to play

00:41:35.320 that did not exist in in the beginning there was yuck yucks in toronto there were um a couple of clubs

00:41:42.580 there was the improv in new york and there was the comedy store in la and then i think there were

00:41:48.260 people there was a place in san francisco and mr kelly's which was not a it was a jazz club but

00:41:54.460 they booked comics in chicago that was it that was the whole that was the comedy business so when

00:42:01.640 you said to somebody hey i got a week for you in toronto they were thrilled had you have you worked

00:42:07.660 with joe rogan no i missed joe rogan on his way up and then at a certain point these people become

00:42:15.640 too expensive to do clubs yeah i'm trying to think who else just off the top i mean obviously norm and

00:42:23.960 and i i don't know if i know you're planning some stories about norm and and stuff and norm i'm

00:42:31.520 planning stories or you mentioned something to me about was it you're going to be part of a small

00:42:37.400 documentary or something i don't know well i found out that judd apatow is doing a doc on

00:42:42.200 norm mcdonald and i think that's great because he couldn't be in better hands so um i i i imagine

00:42:48.480 they'll come and talk to me because i was there at the beginning but not the very beginning the real

00:42:53.640 beginning is for norm is in ottawa so what happens is we have an amateur night in ottawa this would

00:42:58.880 have been sometime in the 80s early 80s probably no no late 80s probably late 80s maybe even early

00:43:04.620 90s and he went on the amateur night and he did well which people usually don't do the first time

00:43:10.440 out right and then he walked out and went to go outside and leave the club and on the way out

00:43:18.040 he muttered to howard wagman the manager uh well that's the last time you'll see me

00:43:25.060 oh yeah couldn't understand he ran after him into the street he said norm what are you talking about

00:43:32.200 you did really well he said i did you call that well he said for a first time yeah he said i want

00:43:38.320 to see you here every week every every week on amateur night and that's what happened and norm

00:43:43.860 started to do amateur night and it didn't take long for him to get off amateur night and then he did

00:43:47.900 ottawa and then i went out to ottawa um to perform and i saw norm and i said norm you got to move to

00:43:53.360 toronto and norm moved to toronto uh the rest is history he was pretty quick to get just for laughs

00:44:01.060 and then from there just start touring the states i think things i mean the possibility of things

00:44:06.800 happening quicker than i don't know if it's greater but i think that i mean he was so talented that i

00:44:12.720 don't think it mattered would matter what time or when that would happen right well i think of norm

00:44:19.260 in the same way i think of alanis morissette in that it's an alternative uh performer who can reach

00:44:25.400 a mainstream audience so when norm was on you could be just an average person and laugh at backseat

00:44:32.240 middle but if you were you know a bit alternative and really into like a comedy maven um you'd see

00:44:39.560 much more interesting and deeper stuff in what he was doing so he satisfied both audiences

00:44:45.060 which is rare was like he was an artist do you see him like as more of like an artist like do you

00:44:52.340 are there some comics you see more as artists than others like i like to think that most of the comics

00:44:57.420 i work with are artists i mean um i'm not working with jugglers and i'm not working with mimes and i'm

00:45:04.760 not working with you know what i hate i like almost all comedy but i hate whimsy and anybody i i just

00:45:11.720 don't like whimsy you know what i mean right what's like whimsical yeah yeah you know like

00:45:17.640 cute little stuff uh yeah i don't like that but otherwise i think everybody who's working in the field

00:45:24.760 uh with any level of competency and and seriousness is art it has an artistic bent and an artistic

00:45:30.900 way of doing things yeah you were telling me about the first like you you introduced norm to

00:45:38.020 gambling by accident or something like that yeah um we did a junket the comics and i went along with

00:45:44.740 it even though another thing i don't do i don't gamble but i like vegas anyway because i like people

00:45:49.640 watching i like the weather you know food all those things so we took norm down norm had never been in a

00:45:56.620 casino before and the story goes as i remember it he went into the casino they showed him how to play

00:46:03.740 blackjack he hadn't booked he hadn't like gone into the room yet he hadn't checked into the room

00:46:08.820 he said he just wanted to see what it was like and two days later he still hadn't checked into the room

00:46:13.040 he was hooked he was completely hooked in fact it was a junket so it was like a charter and norm was

00:46:20.740 late for the plane coming back we had to run back to the hotel and like literally grab him off the

00:46:25.920 tables to bring him back to the plane so the plane could take off

00:46:28.740 do even the best comics like i mean you've worked with and you've seen shows of some of the biggest

00:46:37.820 comics ever have they do everybody has bad shows were there bad shows where you uh that you remember

00:46:45.280 i mean we talked about kinison but that was kind of like a bad show on purpose slash kind of for your

00:46:50.120 entertainment but did you you know like did seinfeld have a bad night did what did norm have a bad night

00:46:56.900 seinfeld has never had a bad night in his life seinfeld has never had a bad day in his life

00:47:02.540 seinfeld is a person who was born a winner and what do you think like what are what what makes

00:47:09.060 him that preparation just talent focus work keep going you're you're naming all the things that are

00:47:16.920 that are that are right that's what you need you need to have kind of everything to be at that level

00:47:23.160 i think so yeah so when he came to yuck yucks he was treating that like just like he would treat

00:47:29.940 doing the biggest shows imaginable you you at the time it was the biggest show imaginable but you know

00:47:37.980 what he may have been somebody who was already opening up for um singers you know deon warwick or

00:47:43.980 somebody in in atlantic city because there was that but that only happened occasionally and you had

00:47:51.100 to watch what you said and i know seinfeld's not a dirty comic but you know in in the casinos they're

00:47:56.700 very very uh careful about what you can say and can't say so um so even for seinfeld it would be a

00:48:04.980 bit of a um uh it would be a good thing for him to play a club where he didn't have to worry

00:48:09.600 when he played the club were you watching that going this guy's gonna like be no no we didn't think

00:48:17.220 in those terms it was only after jim carrey became a movie star that we thought wait a minute

00:48:22.820 wait a minute there's an enormous business out there and people are going to start and it there

00:48:29.840 was an infrastructure and all kinds of things seinfeld would never have gotten a show on the air

00:48:34.780 in the 70s or even 80s i don't think that was something that happened in a very particular way

00:48:42.840 where um networks realized they could go up strip mine uh a comic sensibility and if they could turn

00:48:50.000 it into a narrative then it could be very very popular look they did it with roseanne they did

00:48:55.460 it with tim allen they did it with seinfeld give me some more names brett butler they did it with so

00:49:01.040 many people and now they don't do that anymore which is kind of too bad because those shows were great

00:49:06.480 shows all of them did you work with did roseanne come to yucks too no i never saw roseanne i never

00:49:12.780 met roseanne hmm interesting what was was jim carrey did he stay in touch when he became a movie star

00:49:20.800 no no jim carrey and i never were close um he did he has done a couple of favors for me over the years

00:49:27.380 which is great but we were never quite close just be just because or different people i mean you can't

00:49:35.240 be close with everybody um so you know of course norm you stayed close with though pretty much

00:49:42.560 throughout us as much as you can stay close with norm norm was always a very sphinx-like creature

00:49:49.500 and uh revealed very little about himself but stuff would poke through

00:49:56.840 through from time to time nick swartzen is a was pretty good friends i think with with

00:50:04.700 norm norm like he talks about him all the time i did nick swartzen never perform a yucks no i feel

00:50:11.460 like he no no it's interesting that seinfeld um i guess i don't know how like no no no i i don't

00:50:21.040 think you've got it right here the and as of about the mid 80s late 80s i stopped booking american talent

00:50:27.840 almost completely because they didn't need them anymore i see so all the people that i was close

00:50:33.880 with which included gilbert gottfried bob saget steven wright who i was really close with i have a

00:50:40.100 steven wright story which i think you'll like um steven all these people predate that steven wright

00:50:46.840 is a like he's a he's an icon really too for especially for one liner comedy so i'm working

00:50:55.600 in the states so my first job ever in the states and it's a terrible job it's writing for evening

00:51:00.920 at the improv on the first season uh and in that season they were doing back little backstage sketches

00:51:07.480 and they brought me in to write it because it was canadian money involved in that production

00:51:11.800 and they had to they had no choice but to book canadian writers and the guy who was the producer

00:51:17.760 was a friend of mine so he got me the job even though i had no real writing experience but i had

00:51:21.960 three years four years of you know stand-up experience anyway steven wright was already a friend

00:51:27.880 of mine uh and when i was in la he called me and said i have great news i said what is it he said i got

00:51:34.380 the tonight show i said that's fantastic um he said i'll be there uh can you come i said no

00:51:39.660 unfortunately i gotta work but i'll be watching it on tv afterwards so he goes on and as you know

00:51:45.260 it's a legend this never happens he did his set he goes in over to the couch and johnny says i want

00:51:53.100 you back tomorrow can you come back tomorrow and of course he said yes then steven wright called me and

00:52:00.220 said mark i have a problem i said what's the problem he said well you know johnny asked me to

00:52:06.860 to come on tomorrow as well i said yeah i know i saw it i hi that's fantastic i said what's the

00:52:12.540 problem you don't have enough material said no i have enough material but i don't have a shirt

00:52:17.100 i said what i don't have a nice shirt to wear i wore my nice shirt already he said do you have a shirt i

00:52:23.420 can wear i said yeah so i packaged up a shirt and i left it for him at the desk at the hyatt hotel

00:52:30.540 and he wore it on the show so the moral of the story is i've never been on the tonight show but my

00:52:35.500 shirt has that's incredible what were you ever wanting to be on the tonight show like as a comic

00:52:44.540 or even as just well my stuff was so acrid in so many ways that there was very little chance i would

00:52:50.780 get on anything i did get a couple of shots on the on the alan thick show but that's only because

00:52:56.700 alan was a good friend of mine and alan was simply overruled all his talent people and said no no we're

00:53:03.660 putting mark on mark goes on he's mark breslin of course we're putting him on and i did stuff that was

00:53:09.180 you know very sexual or whatever and the guy who was the producer at the time a guy named paul block

00:53:15.740 which of course is a very appropriate name kept saying i don't want you on the show this is what

00:53:21.100 he would say to me before i would go on because he did four shots he said i don't want you on this

00:53:25.180 show but uh alan's making me put you on you've always been i mean kind of a arbiter of free speech

00:53:34.620 and i know you've won an award in canada for free speech right i did didn't you win an award in canada

00:53:41.500 for free speech no i wore i i got the order of canada for creating an economic uh engine that

00:53:49.740 uh hired you know it was put okay i don't know why i thought it was dollars well wait that put so

00:53:56.220 many millions of dollars into canadians uh performers pockets yes they also uh cited the

00:54:02.780 free speech thing and they also cited humber college is another thing for so for those three things but

00:54:07.500 i'm going to tell you a little something about free speech free speech is not really what i'm

00:54:11.420 interested in i'm interested in the what happens from speech free speech i'm interested in what

00:54:16.620 people say when they have that free speech and in so many cases in so many places you can't say this

00:54:23.180 and you can't say that and it's changed over the years when i first started it was all about language

00:54:29.500 language was the big thing you can't say on tv you can't say at nightclubs you can't say anywhere

00:54:34.860 in fact we used to have people from the police plainclothesmen standing at the back of a club

00:54:39.340 taking notes right so but what i'm really interested in is not free speech so much as bad taste

00:54:48.940 i love bad taste that is fascinating to me i love pedophile jokes because they're bad taste taste is

00:54:57.500 something which is a social construction what's considered bad taste in one place is not considered

00:55:03.100 bad taste in another but all i know is this when i was a teenager i used to go over to my friend's

00:55:08.540 house for friday night dinner and i would start riffing and as i always did even then about topics that

00:55:15.500 you know would make people cringe and my my friend's mother would say to me mark mark there are some

00:55:21.660 things we just don't talk about at the dinner table and those things became my career

00:55:27.180 mm-hmm yeah but free speech doesn't particularly interest me in the abstract i'm interested in it

00:55:34.700 uh in its practical applications like in a comedy club like on tv like in the arts were you ever did

00:55:43.340 you ever write for any of those canadian tv like they're like yuck yucks was around at the same time

00:55:48.540 obviously as as ctv was happening and air farce and were those comics part of yuck yucks at all no i

00:55:55.420 was an outlaw and in some ways i still am yeah um it's a can i say this i think i've written five

00:56:02.140 funny books because i can't stop you from writing a book um and uh i had an act which brought down the

00:56:08.060 house every night and yet i never got anything on i was never asked to do any television in canada

00:56:14.060 except i produced the ralph ben murky show but that was as a producer after i'd produced the

00:56:18.620 joan river show so they felt i had the experience to do it but that isn't the same as writing on this

00:56:24.620 hours 22 minutes or a number of sitcoms that have been produced i'm completely shut out of that and

00:56:30.940 here's the one that really amazes me you don't know this about me it's a small thing but i used to be a

00:56:37.260 debating champ in high school like i was i would do these debates for my high school i'd come in first

00:56:43.660 all the time there's a show called the debaters i've never been asked to be on it yeah yeah i do

00:56:52.300 think that i mean even now i mean i'll use myself in this example i mean obviously i wanted to go to

00:57:00.300 the states i gained some popularity in the states from canada through social media and my content but

00:57:07.260 even like when you were doing this it's crazy to me that there wasn't more of a

00:57:14.780 you know like you weren't involved more in those types of things like or asked to be part of or

00:57:21.100 or that they wanted you to be part of those types of things let me put this into some context there

00:57:26.540 used to be a thing in toronto called the variety club and the variety club was made up of all these

00:57:30.540 people in show business in the city um and they would do charitable work and every year they would

00:57:36.860 have a big uh luncheon for everybody that was uh in show business everybody i don't care how low you

00:57:44.060 were you got invited to this i never got an invitation that's the canadian versions kind of of what's that

00:57:51.820 club where all the you know friars club friars club is comedians this was more likely to be

00:58:00.860 symphony people or you know everything everything in the arts everything in entertainment everything

00:58:06.220 in entertainment journalism and i was never asked to go to i was never invited so you know over the

00:58:12.780 years i i i have made friends and i have made inroads um into certain show business communities i was

00:58:19.820 when when we had an actual studio system in canada during the capital cost allowance years in the

00:58:26.620 80s um i was friends with all the movie big movie moguls in the city they all liked me and they they

00:58:32.620 gave me some work some some writing work in fact but um outside of that no not much not much at all

00:58:40.060 now i'm a survivor you know i'm the last man standing so yeah i get invited to stuff and and you know

00:58:46.620 people will always put me in a documentary or whatever but i think in terms of writing for

00:58:52.780 shows and things i've probably aged out anyway yeah yeah no i'm more meant just in terms of the

00:58:59.260 conversations that are happening around just so many different things in the country i think that you

00:59:04.300 have a super unique voice and also just a like a legitimately canadian perspective on things um

00:59:16.380 well this year i was asked and this shocked me because i've never been really tight with the cbc

00:59:23.260 for obvious reasons but they said that they wanted to have me uh uh once uh once a week uh

00:59:31.260 ian hamansaming does this um one-on-one with people for 15 minutes on the national which is a

00:59:37.420 big deal and they asked me to do it and then ian asked me all the right questions all the right

00:59:44.700 questions about censorship and free speech and bad taste and all the rest of it they did not shy away

00:59:51.420 from it and i got to say for a very mass audience what i've always been saying for a smaller audience

00:59:57.180 mm-hmm yeah no and i'm really happy you came on to the pod and obviously we have well i'm sorry

01:00:04.380 because actually i don't know i wanted to apologize my agent told me that i was doing this podcast out

01:00:10.220 of austin so i naturally thought it was rogan then i found out it was you but you're a friend so i thought

01:00:15.420 i'd do it anyway no i appreciate it but i think that i mean i obviously want to be on rogan's pod at

01:00:22.700 some point and want to you know talk about you a little bit uh for sure because i mean you

01:00:31.740 you're a big deal to me for everything that i've done in comedy and you've kind of looked at me

01:00:37.980 you were the first guy to say no and also the first guy to say yes in a way because when i was

01:00:43.100 like 22 you were like i liked one joke everything else was shit or so you said something like that

01:00:48.380 it was no it probably was i was 22 years old right um but you made me really dive way deeper

01:00:56.700 and i i didn't come back to yucks for like four four years of self-reflection and and stuff and then

01:01:03.260 when i came back and you saw me that time at uh the the kosher kush comedy show that ronan put on

01:01:10.700 and uh i i wasn't part of yuck yucks but ronan had me on and i had a an incredible set and you were like

01:01:16.300 like that was awesome do you even really want to do this though and at the time i was doing like

01:01:21.180 commercial real estate and i was like yeah this is what i want to do and you know i ended up quitting

01:01:27.020 that job once i got signed to yuck yucks which people like are you crazy like you're making decent

01:01:31.900 money i was like yeah but i don't like it i don't you know and and i think that not enough people

01:01:38.540 nowadays are willing to stop doing something they don't really like to start doing something they do

01:01:44.300 like that is risk that is risky you couldn't be more correct about that i've seen this this pro this

01:01:52.220 devolution of people's souls over the years because when i was you know like a young adult everybody

01:02:00.860 said follow your dream do what you want to do do do what makes you feel whole what makes you happy and

01:02:08.140 you know if you're any good at it you'll find a way to make some money at it now it's a completely

01:02:12.620 different system of course i've got a 14 year old in the house 14 year old boy and um i can see the

01:02:19.740 different pressures on him to not do what he finds fun or interesting but to get a good job

01:02:28.460 and that wasn't the idea then we never thought in terms of a good job

01:02:32.860 yeah i think that that's the best thing i ever did a blow job the best thing i ever did was just go

01:02:41.340 yeah i much you know i i barely i just made under like a hundred thousand dollars after like doing

01:02:48.780 commercial real estate for four years you start out making nothing like 30k and then you know if

01:02:53.980 you're making over 100k as a young guy in that industry it's pretty good you got to work your ass off

01:02:59.180 but i realized like this is it it taught me okay i know how i know what money feels like i mean it

01:03:04.220 wasn't millions it wasn't even over a hundred thousand dollars canadian which is like 60 70k

01:03:08.780 american but it just made me go i know what money feels like and if it's not coming from something

01:03:15.820 i love it doesn't you know first of all i think you want to spend it way quicker if you get money from

01:03:21.660 something you don't love you're just like oh i don't you know okay that's interesting i never thought

01:03:25.580 out of that maybe that's true i don't know but when when you get it from something you love you

01:03:29.820 like kind of like do i want to really spend money on this because you're you know everything's coming

01:03:34.940 from the comedy it's not like a day job you know cash coming from a day job or something like that

01:03:41.100 you want to put it towards things that are gonna then help help you do what you're doing more

01:03:46.700 more effectively i think and i think that's what's missing maybe that's what you were about to say

01:03:51.820 sorry to cut you off but i was just saying no i was just gonna say ben don't worry because you

01:03:55.500 believe i can see the future and the future is you will make far more money doing what you're doing

01:04:00.140 now than you ever would have made selling commercial real estate oh for sure well you know that's that's

01:04:06.860 the plan but my my point in all this and you know having you on the pod for my fans and other people

01:04:13.020 who are just finding me and and to hear your voice because you're you're an important figure in canadian

01:04:19.180 comedy and therefore american comedy and therefore the global comedy and i think that these stories

01:04:27.740 that stuff you know i want to keep having you on every once in a while if not every once in a while

01:04:32.460 maybe a little more because um it's important to have your perspective and as i gain popularity with

01:04:40.220 the pod i want to put it out there and people know to know that i also didn't get much of a chance to

01:04:46.620 talk about vaginas today but that's okay there's always another time is are you are you more

01:04:51.660 passionate about vaginas than comedy well people always say you know are you a breast man are you

01:04:56.140 a leg man but i've always been a big vagina man frankly because i'm a practical man yeah i had a

01:05:01.340 there was a guy that i worked with when i did commercial real estate that would always say that

01:05:04.860 he's like yeah no i'm a big guy i just like pussy i don't know i wouldn't say i don't like

01:05:09.180 pussy i like vagina there's a difference you like there's a big big difference um i like to medicalize

01:05:15.580 as much as i possibly can that's good that's good but uh thank you for coming on and you know is there

01:05:22.620 anything you want to tell anybody that i mean go to yuckyucks.com saturday nights if you go to toronto

01:05:28.460 yuckyucks you might get a chance to meet mark breslin in person is that right or friday i try to go twice a

01:05:34.540 week usually one of the weekend nights and one of the weekday nights but people not not enough

01:05:40.140 people know that oh my daughter's here hi we're almost finished babe come but uh yeah yuckyucks.com

01:05:49.500 yes babe

01:05:52.780 keep it down i know she's like keep it down

01:05:54.780 i'm just going to come say hi to daddy's friend come here come here come come come

01:06:07.980 come over here she's like where is he here's my kid oh say hi remember you remember you met mark a

01:06:15.420 couple days ago no she doesn't remember that's okay comedy remember funny can you say funny here say it

01:06:23.820 into here say funny say funny say it all right okay i lost they never do what you want them to do

01:06:36.780 i know but uh no seriously i really appreciate you mark and thank you for everything you've done and

01:06:42.300 all the advices and and just kind of giving artists a space to be artists is an important thing that

01:06:50.300 doesn't exist that much in canada or anywhere and as i'm finding out in america how unique yucks is and

01:06:58.700 how unique you are so thank you so much thank you thank you very much ben thank you i appreciate it

01:07:05.500 and we will talk soon this she likes playing with my somebody made me a doll actually and brought it

01:07:10.140 to yuck yucks in niagara falls the night after were you there i think it was the second night yeah i was

01:07:15.500 there the first because i feel like you would have definitely seen it if it was the first night

01:07:19.820 somebody made i never saw that but just make sure they don't put pins in it yeah seriously yeah but

01:07:26.140 that's uh from the special that i filmed at yuck yucks which is just over a hundred thousand views now

01:07:31.660 it's called permission to laugh so thanks mark we'll talk to you soon okay okay sounds good enjoy yourself

01:07:37.900 take care okay bye bye say bye dal okay good bye

Bankas Podcast - January 17, 2025

Mark Breslin, Owner of Yuk Yuk's ｜ Bankas Podcast - #079

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