A trans person, a Christian and a feminist walk into a comedy bar
Episode Stats
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Summary
Mark Breslin is the co-founder of the Yuck Yucks chain of comedy clubs and has helped launch the careers of some of the top comedy figures in the English-speaking world. In this episode, Mark talks about the tragic passing of comedian Norm Macdonald.
Transcript
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Thanks so much for joining us for the latest episode of Full Comment.
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There's a lot going on in the comedy world today that's making headlines,
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and Mark Breslin, legendary Canadian comedy figure, is one of the best people to weigh
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Breslin is the co-founder of the Yuck Yucks chain of comedy clubs and has helped launch
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the careers of some of the top comedy figures in the English-speaking world.
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Well, maybe you should say that at the end of the podcast.
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I was reading about Yuck Yucks in 1976, the year you co-founded that, 45 years ago.
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I think a lot of things that maybe we'll talk about on this podcast is maybe how things
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I mean, I assume it's fair to say there's been a lot of things changing.
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There's been a lot of things change, but, you know, I've always liked the French maxim,
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the more things change, the more they are the same.
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Um, some of the things that are happening now in terms of not the comedy itself, but
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people's reaction to comedy, um, seems like it's completely new, but actually I'll, I'll,
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I'll show you that, um, it's just things that have happened over the years in a different
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Oh, that'll be really interesting stuff to get into.
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I know I wanted to talk to you about Norm Macdonald, and I thought there's no great place
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to put it in the podcast, uh, to talk about the unfortunate news, of course, loss of such
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a figure, uh, Norm Macdonald, you've spoken about him and his career.
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I mean, what have you been saying when, when people ask you, what was Norm like?
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Um, it didn't surprise me that he had cancer for nine years and told no one.
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That was exactly in the way that Norm operated in so many ways.
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His personal life was very much his personal life and he kept it personal.
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Um, and if you think about it, um, of all the big stars that you can think of, Norm was
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rarely in the tabloids, rarely did you hear about him, uh, and anything to do with his
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And the reason that he didn't tell anybody about the cancer, um, I think is because he
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didn't want that to get in the way of the way people appreciated his work.
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Uh, because if, you know, if you see somebody and they're being funny and you know that
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they're possibly dying, it completely changes the way that you look at, at their work.
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He had, um, an ex-wife and he was good to these people, but his work was his focus.
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A lot of people going back and revisiting his work or discovering him, younger people for
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One of the things when I was reviewing a lot of his stuff online, uh, after he passed away
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was his own show, lower production values, obviously not something that's getting like,
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you know, top tier ratings on major networks, but you look at the guests and you go, wow.
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I mean, he must've been such a comedian's comedian.
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And I feel like, you know, you look at your phone, Norm MacDonald's calling, doesn't matter
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Comedians knew that he was deceptively easy in his comedy, but actually what he was doing
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Um, he was honest to a fault and that's something that's really important for a comic, not all
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comics, but it's important for most comics to be completely honest.
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Um, he got fired from Saturday night live for his blunt honesty and comedians love honesty.
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And yet, is it becoming more difficult for that honesty, knowing that, I guess it seems
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like people feel like they have to look over their shoulder a little bit more, but I guess
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as you're saying it, that goes against the comics impulse.
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Well, um, yeah, this, I mean, this opens up our, our whole world of discussion about what's
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happening now and what has happened over the years.
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And if you want to start with that now, that's, that's fine with me.
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Cause I'm, I'm really interested in the idea that you've teased about how what's going
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on is nothing new because we've gotten, well, let's start with the most high profile
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Dave Chappelle puts that special out on Netflix and no stone unturned.
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He's making jokes about a whole lot of things that are out there in the news, transgender
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Uh, you have people at Netflix, uh, do protests.
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A couple of people resigned, uh, critics said, oh, it's the worst thing ever.
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But then you look at the rotten tomatoes or whatever it is.
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I didn't laugh every second, every word, but who does for any act, but I liked it.
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Um, but here's something that I think we have to have a little bit of historical perspective.
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There have always, since I got into the business in 1976, there have always been forces, um,
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that have tried to censor comics or tried to stop what they were saying or stop them from,
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Um, and what they were upset about has changed over the years.
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When I first opened up, um, the big, big, big problem came, um, from the Christian right.
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And all kinds of, uh, right-wing Christian organizations were appalled by what I was
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The language itself was enough to make people, um, insanely angry because for the first time
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on a Canadian stage, um, there was a show that had nothing but four letter words over
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and over and over and over and over and over again.
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And the second thing that they hated, um, was that there was a kind of hidden agenda.
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Um, I, I hesitate to call it an agenda because, um, you know, I've never been a political person.
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I've always been more interested in the psychology of comedy than the politics of comedy.
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Um, but, um, it's certainly, if you sat in, um, my club in 1978 and listened to what people
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were talking about, it was a definite libertarian pro-pleasure, uh, agenda that most of them
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were, uh, espousing because in that, in those days, Toronto was pretty uptight.
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But if you listened to what the comics were saying in those days, it was kind of pro-abortion,
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pro-sex, uh, pro-prostitution, uh, pro-drugs for sure.
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Um, and that used to drive the, the Christian right crazy.
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Now that eventually went away because we did not go away and things started to open up in
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And you started to hear the four letter words on the Sopranos at C on CTV at 10 o'clock
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So the culture kind of moved a bit towards us, which took a lot of the steam out of any of
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We were no longer the only people who were doing this kind of thing.
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10 years later, roughly, I started bringing in, well, I was friends, very good friends.
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In fact, I was roommates for a while with Sam Kinison.
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I used to, I started bringing him, bringing him into Yuck X, I'd say 1985 or so 1986.
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And, um, he was well known enough by then that it created the ire of a lot of feminists.
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And I had feminist pickets outside my club with signs that said, you know, feminists for
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And I thought, hmm, they've obviously not read their Freud, um, and a Freud and healthy
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That sounds as about as exciting as a sober orgy.
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Um, so, um, they were, they were using a feminist agenda to say, you know, this guy
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Uh, but, um, that was, that was happening then.
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And they were trying to close him down, shut him down.
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Uh, and to the woke people and they want to create a better world and start with language.
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Um, which if I were trying to create a better world, that's not really where I would start.
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I would start with legislation and then maybe, maybe I would work my way down to something
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as flimsy and as ephemeral as a comedy performance.
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So it's not that new for me to experience this kind of, this kind of stuff.
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One thing I find interesting about those comedy central roasts, I guess both the original
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versions and then the new incarnations that Jeff Ross is doing is it's not one comedian
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up there just saying their material out to the audience or, you know, out to the camera
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recording, but it's everybody there ripping on each other.
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And then you can kind of see that everybody takes their turn and it's all in good fun and
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I've always felt that's a nice dynamic to show people just chill.
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Like, you know, we can do it and we can take the piss out of each other and it's okay.
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Well, um, I would say that, um, if there's a problem with the ship, uh, can I use the
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Chappelle, uh, show as this Chappelle special as an example?
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Well, you know, to me, the problem with the Chappelle, uh, um, show that's Chappelle special
00:10:18.460
was not that Chappelle came on and said these things, um, making fun of trans people.
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To me, the problem was the trans people don't have their own special.
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And one thing I've always been proud of, at least in my own company is that long before,
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um, you know, multiculturalism became this, uh, wildly important thing.
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So, you know, in the early days you had a Greek comic, you had a Jewish comic, you had a
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And they would all take their turn in, uh, making fun of the others.
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And there was something else that I think was even more important is that there was an
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acknowledgement that we lived in a multicultural society.
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We weren't trying to pretend that the person living next to you wasn't black or the person
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Um, you were articulating that and you didn't see that being articulated in many places, but
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around the mid seventies, um, some things started to change in this city, at least.
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Another one was the Toronto sun and another one was city TV.
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And all those, they, all those, these three institutions were critical in exposing people
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to the idea that we now live in a culture that is not entirely white.
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And that white culture is not threatening, but kind of boring.
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Um, you know, so, um, those three things I think were important.
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And all of those, of those three things, by the way, come from some different political
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You certainly wouldn't say that the Toronto sun was the same as a city TV and its politics,
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but they were both committed to showing a different face of Toronto or a number of different
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You know, Mark, when you talk about inclusion and different voices, uh, there's lots of concerns
00:12:10.740
right now, for instance, that people are saying too much anti-Muslim, uh, comments online and
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And I noticed when I look at the lineup for Yuck Yucks, uh, you have a number of Muslim
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And it maybe seems like, you know, is, is, is, is laughter the best revenge.
00:12:24.360
And, you know, these gentlemen are doing their own acts, poke and find it, I guess, maybe
00:12:27.460
their own culture and at other people's culture.
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And they're just, they're, you know, they're getting into it.
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They're going, here's, here's my space guys, you know, make room.
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Um, well, um, you should know that eight weeks, you should know that eight weeks after, um,
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9-11, I hosted the first, uh, Muslim comedy festival.
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Um, and boy, did I get some, uh, did I get some blowback for that?
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What was the blowback for, for providing a forum for, for Muslim comedians?
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That was from, if I have to use left versus right, that was from right-wing elements.
00:12:56.400
Um, strangely, um, I got the most positive response from the Jewish community who felt
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So, um, but it was very controversial and we had to have extra security in case something
00:13:12.540
But I also had to provide a space upstairs of the club so that the, um, the audience
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And I certainly never had to do that before or afterwards.
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I, one thing when I was, uh, thinking about all the different comedy scandals or questions
00:13:29.140
we've had recently, I remember about 20 years ago, right after 9-11, didn't you bring in
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No, I never had any kind of a policy whatsoever on any kind of a joke.
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The Yuck Yucks has always been an absolute free speech zone.
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Um, I have never told a comic what to say in terms of content.
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I may have advised the comic what to say in terms of making their act smoother.
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Um, but it's never been, oh, you can't talk about that.
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In fact, as I remember, I was probably one of the worst people coming up.
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I wasn't performing at the time, but I was writing all kinds of 9-11 jokes on 9-12.
00:14:09.640
Cause I knew there was a scandal in Canada where a comedian made 9-11 jokes a few days
00:14:14.220
And the club owner, and I was Googling around the other day and I thought, was this Yuck
00:14:25.760
I wanted to talk to, talk with you about the issue, you know, of the whole tragedy plus
00:14:33.900
Cause there are some people, and again, I couldn't find the story, but there was at least
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someone who thought 9-11, uh, uh, we can't talk about it.
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You would not put any of those sort of rules there.
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And if they don't get the laughs, then they will change their material.
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If the customer doesn't laugh, well, then there's something wrong with the joke, or there's
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And the comic is the person who has to, um, figure out how to, how to change it or drop
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But it should never be at the level of the club owner to do so.
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Um, some people actually think that I should have some kind of, I should be providing some
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kind of moral leadership, um, when it comes to material of all kinds.
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And let me tell you the last person you want to provide moral leadership as a nightclub
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You know, it's interesting, the idea of testing out material.
00:15:49.400
And I've heard those stories about you go to a small club or you're at Yuck Yucks one
00:15:53.980
night and suddenly this surprise guest, this mega famous person comes on.
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You're like, Oh my God, I didn't know this person was going to be here.
00:16:01.880
And they're there because they want to try out the new material and they want the sort
00:16:05.860
And then to your point, they'll find, okay, this didn't get a laugh.
00:16:09.480
But I guess increasingly, uh, we have people who are there with the camera or the recording
00:16:17.440
That one didn't work, but then we got to go viral with that.
00:16:22.920
Well, I don't think it would happen at Yuck X because we have a policy of no cameras,
00:16:27.420
um, unless, uh, the comic gives the okay to me or to somebody who's running the room.
00:16:33.080
So, um, if we see somebody surrepetitiously, um, recording, we get them to stop.
00:16:39.660
And I heard that anecdote from a friend of mine who in 2019 went to see Louis CK at a
00:16:45.920
So 2017 Louis CK, he lost many gigs after the stories came out that he improperly exposed
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Several women alleged lost a lot, but I must ask you the question.
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What is a way to properly expose yourself to women?
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Because I've been trying to figure that out for a long time.
00:17:03.400
I'm trying to do the, the neutral preamble as to how the story's been discussed, you
00:17:07.940
know, you know what I'm doing here, but you were one of the first North American comedy
00:17:24.700
And then I know the phones were not allowed to be recorded.
00:17:29.160
You brought him into great controversy, but it seems like the series of shows was also
00:17:37.700
I mean, I've, first of all, it was kind of a, it was an unusual decision to make.
00:17:43.220
No other club owner made that decision with a, with an exception of two or three in North
00:17:48.760
Um, I believe I was the, oh no, the guy in Winnipeg who runs rumors, um, which is the
00:17:58.320
Um, after I brought him in, uh, but not that long afterwards.
00:18:01.140
I think the booking was done around the same time I, I had, I've always been a big fan of
00:18:05.120
Louis CK, which made the decision a little easier.
00:18:07.460
It's kind of hard to, uh, it's much harder to fight for free speech when you think that
00:18:15.240
I also thought, um, that, uh, the case was the, one of the weakest Me Too cases of all
00:18:24.540
Um, he seduced them and he actually just seduced them using his, uh, importance, um, in a hotel
00:18:33.720
Uh, he was on these, all of these events always happened when he was on, uh, when he was on
00:18:38.580
tour and he would have an opening act, the opening act would be a woman.
00:18:42.100
And he, he'd say, come on back to my, my hotel room.
00:18:45.440
Well, first of all, let me say, um, you know, you have to take some responsibility for your
00:18:50.500
And I would never, even as a man, I would never go to somebody's hotel room ever, unless
00:18:57.720
Um, always, I tell this to everybody, just don't go to the hotel room.
00:19:03.780
If you want to keep talking, but anyway, he went there, um, and after, I don't know,
00:19:10.140
some, maybe some drinks, maybe some pot, whatever, um, everybody, the two people were relaxed
00:19:16.780
And there'd be a series of reactions like no way I'm leaving or, Hey, that sounds hot
00:19:26.900
And then later on, much later on, they regretted their decision and believed that they did.
00:19:34.740
They made that decision based on him improperly using his position as an important comic to
00:19:45.560
Do you think Louis CK will make a comeback such that he is comparable to the stature he
00:19:52.680
Well, maybe not only because, uh, comics always have a kind of, uh, hot zone in their careers.
00:20:00.140
And he was certainly having a hot zone in his careers.
00:20:03.720
Um, but it won't, it may not be what, what it was.
00:20:11.840
Um, you know, he played the Air Canada Centre before he played Yuck Yucks.
00:20:16.140
Um, and the intervening scandal was the reason.
00:20:19.480
So I'm not saying he's going to go back to Yuck Yucks, but he's probably not going to
00:20:25.040
Maybe he's going to go to, you know, a mid-size, um, venue rather than an arena.
00:20:29.780
But something that might change that is his movie.
00:20:38.480
Um, I was lucky to be one of the few people to see it.
00:20:43.740
And, um, it deals with a lot of these issues and the issues of male lust that kind of consume
00:20:55.460
And, um, I saw it at the, at TIFF and then the scandal hit like, I don't know, a month
00:21:03.380
And he bought back the, um, the distribution rights from whoever the distributor was and
00:21:10.800
This may be his ticket back because it's such a brilliant movie, but it's also controversial.
00:21:18.280
The sort of the, the hidden product that just is kind of ghosted away.
00:21:22.520
I'd really like to see the new Woody Allen film.
00:21:24.720
It's called Rifkin's Festival or something like that.
00:21:33.700
A friend of mine, um, is Chinese and she has access to all these shadow, Chinese, Chinese
00:21:40.460
shadow sites and gave me a link and I watched it.
00:21:44.640
It's making a lot of money in Europe, but nobody wants to screen it in North America
00:21:48.060
or even put it online where maybe I can find somewhere to pay $34.99 for it.
00:21:51.560
I don't know, but I haven't been able to find it yet.
00:21:54.740
It's good, but it's not as good as the one that came right before it, which also had
00:21:58.680
issues, um, uh, you can kind of find it on Amazon prime.
00:22:02.500
If you poke around, it's called a, uh, rainy day in New York.
00:22:06.620
And, um, it's, I think that's the better of the two movies that have not been widely
00:22:11.020
seen, but certainly Rifkin's, uh, festival is, is worth seeing and anything with Wallace
00:22:19.000
Sean is the, uh, as the star is always worth seeing.
00:22:23.280
We'll be back with more full comment with Anthony Fury right after this.
00:22:28.680
Mark Breslin, I know a lot of young comedians, they come to you for mentorship.
00:22:31.740
You've helped to assist the careers of many people over the 45 years of Yuck Yuck's history.
00:22:36.560
I imagine mentoring young comedians now though, is a little different than it used to be in
00:22:40.800
terms of what we're talking about, political correctness and censorship.
00:22:44.020
And I'm sure a lot of them have, have some anxieties about all of this.
00:22:47.320
I mean, do they, do they express it to you and how do you respond to that?
00:22:50.400
Well, um, I once saw, um, Bernardo Bertolucci give a lecture and somebody asked him the question
00:22:59.540
of censorship and he said, censorship has never been a problem for me.
00:23:08.520
And I thought, you know, I'm that, that lecture must've been 50 years ago, but it all, it just
00:23:19.680
Um, you also have to figure, I mean, when we're talking about censorship, um, of comedians
00:23:25.220
that, uh, different venues are what's appropriate for one venue may not be appropriate for another
00:23:32.080
Um, Yuck Yucks is a completely free speech zone.
00:23:39.420
If it's not enlightened, if they're not enlightened, uh, and they laugh at a very unenlightened
00:23:43.580
joke, well, I might sit at the back going, no, that's too bad.
00:23:47.120
They'd like that, but it's their prerogative to like it.
00:23:50.920
Um, but, um, at the coffee, at the water cooler, the next day, um, you're not supposed
00:23:58.680
to tell that joke because that's not an appropriate place for it.
00:24:05.700
And I can understand why you're not supposed to do that at the dinner, these jokes at the
00:24:11.080
Um, long ago, um, I used to go to Friday night dinners at a friend's house when I was a teenager
00:24:15.880
and I was kind of outrageous all the way through.
00:24:19.260
And I would do this outrageous, these outrageous riffs at the dinner table.
00:24:23.780
And my friend's mother, who was extremely proper, would say, Mark, there are certain
00:24:28.840
things we don't talk about at the dinner table.
00:24:31.320
And of course, I realized my entire career has been telling those things you're not supposed
00:24:38.760
So it's all about where you, where you tell it.
00:24:42.180
Yuck, yucks is a very lucky sort of situation for me because I'm playing on a small enough
00:24:47.620
scale that I really don't have to worry about, um, too much, uh, blowback from people.
00:24:53.720
Uh, first of all, everybody knows what yuck, yucks is all about.
00:24:57.920
If you went and you ask people in the street, yuck, yucks, uh, do they do, um, nice comedy
00:25:07.860
So the marketplace becomes self-selective and the people who come know what they're getting.
00:25:16.300
Uh, just for laughs has their traditional nasty show, uh, which isn't really all that
00:25:22.360
nasty, but it's a nasty show compared to the other stuff that they have, right?
00:25:26.680
That show sells out faster than any other show.
00:25:30.000
They do eight of them, um, in a midsize venue to start off the festival.
00:25:36.240
So this is kind of what people want many times, not everybody, but this is, there are, there
00:25:42.840
are venues now in this city and probably in other cities where, um, it is censored.
00:25:50.040
Um, at least it's not, at least the, the comics themselves censored.
00:25:53.720
They know that they're going to a room which, uh, attracts a very downtown quote unquote woke
00:25:59.640
audience, um, that is expecting a certain kind of, um, politeness in the comedy, uh, uh,
00:26:07.600
They don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, that those things are really important to them
00:26:12.060
and that will attract that kind of audience and that will attract that kind of comic.
00:26:17.960
Um, when you get bigger than a comedy club, then you start getting into the problem of
00:26:22.440
you're probably existing with some level of corporate sponsorship.
00:26:26.320
You're probably existing with some level of governmental largesse and, um, you don't want
00:26:32.260
to threaten that because they're answerable to the people.
00:26:35.780
I'm not answerable to anybody except my customers.
00:26:38.960
How have you been able to do this for 45 years successfully?
00:26:44.700
But part of it is that I'm not, I'm not too big.
00:26:47.840
If I got bigger, um, and you know, if I had a thousand seat venue, then I, I would need
00:26:53.700
all kinds of sponsorship and, um, you know, government assistance and the things that everybody
00:26:59.160
And once you do that, then, um, you know, you're under the threat of, of having that,
00:27:05.880
Um, this is why Netflix took Louis CK's, uh, specials off.
00:27:10.700
They weren't, I, I assure you they did not, they were not personally offended by what,
00:27:18.200
They're worried about boycotts and they're worried about social media.
00:27:21.980
When I brought in Louis CK, I had some pretty negative social media, but incidentally it ran
00:27:34.420
Speaking of business struggles, Mark COVID-19, the pandemic, the government, of course said
00:27:39.580
And a lot of us understood why back during that first wave.
00:27:42.320
And then there's a lot of disagreement as to whether or not things should have, uh, been
00:27:48.300
And so on, uh, how was the shutdown for you at Yuck Yucks and, and how were you feeling?
00:27:53.900
How was the audience feeling about let's just get back in a room and, and, and laugh together?
00:27:57.620
Well, the past 18 months were among the most horrible of my life.
00:28:01.820
And I went to high school, so it was, it was pretty awful.
00:28:06.700
I mean, um, from a psychological and spiritual point of view, um, I guess you've read King
00:28:12.620
Lear, you know, what happens when a King loses his kingdom, it's not pretty.
00:28:16.900
And, um, I spent an awful lot of time in the house, just staring into space because I couldn't
00:28:22.480
It was a miserable, miserable, miserable time for me.
00:28:25.520
Um, and for the comics, they had, they lost their income and they, even maybe more important,
00:28:30.620
they lost their ability to connect with the world because comics, um, this is how they
00:28:38.000
Many of them don't have conventional or traditional personal lives.
00:28:42.040
Um, they live for their comedy and for the lifestyle that goes with comedy and it's gone.
00:28:47.080
Now it's come back and since they took away the, um, capacity restrictions, now, uh, things
00:28:54.400
feel like they're getting back to normal slowly, but nothing makes me happier than going to
00:28:59.220
my club on a Saturday night here in Toronto, um, and seeing 225 people sitting in the room
00:29:07.080
A lot better than when the capacity limits were limited to 90 in a 300 seat room and you
00:29:14.700
Well, you know, comedy, uh, works best when you jam people in, uh, because laughter is catching,
00:29:28.740
We're open in all our clubs across the country.
00:29:31.040
Um, but we're not necessarily back to the levels of audience audiences that we were pre-pandemic
00:29:38.620
I figure in the next three, four months, maybe as people think, well, I guess I have to go
00:29:47.940
Um, you know, that's the problem they don't have in the Miami clubs.
00:29:52.100
So I want to get your thoughts on another issue that was in the news recently, a Quebec comedian
00:29:57.160
going all the way to the Supreme court to say, I can make jokes about whatever I want, offensive
00:30:02.600
I can even make jokes about a disabled youth who is something of a celebrity in Quebec
00:30:09.360
This is 10 years ago about a young boy who had a disability, who would do a lot of, uh,
00:30:14.000
public singing at various events with high profile figures in front of the Pope.
00:30:17.820
And I guess he was held as a major figure in Francophone culture in Canada.
00:30:21.620
And Mike Ward said, I want to deflate some of these various characters.
00:30:25.960
Uh, his family took Mike Ward to the Quebec human rights tribunals.
00:30:29.540
They awarded, uh, him $40,000, him and his family in damages.
00:30:33.960
Mike Ward said, I don't want to pay that went to the court and the Supreme court did rule
00:30:38.480
You can make these offensive jokes, but it was close.
00:30:44.440
And what were folks in the comedy world saying?
00:30:46.780
Well, obviously everybody in the comedy world was pro Mike Ward, um, myself included.
00:30:52.060
I met with Mike, um, to offer my support, um, somewhere during this process.
00:30:57.680
Um, you know, the, it's an icky joke, um, because he's a kid, but the joke wasn't really about
00:31:05.400
The joke was about fame and how fame touches people and how, how people react to people's
00:31:15.040
Um, and, uh, because Mike Ward happens to be quite wealthy, um, he's a wealthy comedian
00:31:24.120
He could sell out Place des Arts, 2,800 seats, probably for a week.
00:31:32.200
Um, so he had enough money to be able to, um, shoulder the legal fees, um, to go all the
00:31:38.760
way through the Supreme court to get the Supreme court to say, well, you know, maybe what you
00:31:43.480
said was pretty ugly, but you still have the right to say it, which I think goes back to
00:31:49.720
I may not agree with them about what the man says, but I defend his right to say it.
00:31:56.160
Is there, because what you've said basically is these things shall pass too, because you
00:32:04.180
It was interesting, uh, to read Seth Rogen kind of renouncing his earlier work.
00:32:10.680
And we went and we, we rewatched super bad the other month, his sort of first big breakout
00:32:19.320
It's one of my favorite, a favorite movies of his.
00:32:25.800
Is he indicative of a sort of new culture of, I know he's not a standup or at least isn't
00:32:33.820
Well, I'm not sure he really believes what he said.
00:32:37.380
Um, it's really hard to get a movie going because somebody has to trust you enough to
00:32:41.380
give you, you know, $20 million or more, 20 million is on the low end.
00:32:45.700
And, um, you know, this is the mood that's in the, uh, in the air right now.
00:32:50.240
Um, so I'm not sure I, I necessarily believe him when he renounces it.
00:32:58.220
I mean, if anything, he could say, well, some of those jokes that we put in that movie,
00:33:05.000
That would seem to be sort of a more balanced reaction.
00:33:09.920
But I mean, there are jokes I told in 1978 that I wouldn't tell now, right?
00:33:18.080
I'm not going to tell those jokes, but there, there, there, it was an innocent time.
00:33:22.520
And, and, you know, the fact that people would get, uh, maybe get offended or hurt, um, didn't
00:33:30.700
I mean, in some ways it's sort of even better, but we had, but the important thing was it
00:33:35.660
was, there was access and whatever I might've said, the next person could go on and completely
00:33:41.440
But I want to make one thing very clear and it's this, and this guides me.
00:33:48.140
However, the censorship of comedians, of artists in general and comedians in specific, um, is
00:34:01.940
What might be the answer is a more, or what I believe is, is a good thing, is a more critical
00:34:08.640
reading of popular culture so that when you're, uh, ingesting it, that you don't just take it
00:34:15.620
as face value, that you maybe question it a little bit, um, that you wonder why people
00:34:21.640
And, and it leads to a discussion and the discussion is enlightening.
00:34:25.180
Uh, but shutting down the debate, I have no idea why anybody would want to do that.
00:34:31.840
They're exploring these spaces between the official version and the way people actually think and
00:34:43.900
Uh, well, I have something, well, I have something else to contribute to you that I, I don't think
00:34:48.200
I've ever said publicly because, um, I've just started to, I've just started to formulate
00:34:54.180
this as an idea and the idea doesn't make me feel or look very good.
00:34:58.600
Um, and I'll, I'll show you why for the past 45 years, I have been telling anybody who will
00:35:04.520
listen, especially my family, um, that what I do is really significant.
00:35:08.660
It has all kinds of important, important, uh, values that I'm imparting to the general
00:35:15.560
And, um, I look, I want a, an order of Canada because of this.
00:35:24.480
And now as I think about it, I'm starting to think the opposite, that comedy's value
00:35:30.160
is precisely in its ephemerality, that it doesn't change people's minds at all, that
00:35:37.400
people come into a comedy club, uh, with basically the attitudes and biases and prejudices that
00:35:44.600
they, they have, they watch a comic, the comic might take them on a journey away from what
00:35:51.020
they believe, but then nine minutes later, when the routine is over and another comic
00:35:59.680
And they're back to what they originally believed.
00:36:02.580
Now, the reason I say this is because I've had this happen a number of times where comics
00:36:09.380
will come to me and they, they'll tell me they got a festival and on a festival, you
00:36:12.960
might have, you know, 10 comics on and a big venue at any given time.
00:36:22.660
So they, the festival will book a comic known for their wokeness.
00:36:29.000
They will do the most woke jokes imaginable and the audience will be going crazy.
00:36:36.720
And the comic will be feeling amazing because not only is it there, are they making them
00:36:40.520
laugh, but they're also nudging them to a political and social position that they
00:36:46.620
They walk off the stage feeling like they're 10 feet tall.
00:36:52.540
The next comic has the exact opposite political and social view.
00:37:03.220
Completely contradicting what the reaction to the first comic.
00:37:07.700
And the first comic says, what am I, what, what, what's going on here?
00:37:18.020
And if a comic is good, he can get you, he or she can get you to go with them on whatever
00:37:28.100
They go back to whatever positions they had when they walked in.
00:37:36.520
And I hate to say this because it kind of undercuts my life's work, but I think it's true.
00:37:54.080
But we watch them, but we don't take, we don't take comics seriously.
00:37:58.140
You know, Woody Allen once said, as long as you're doing comedy, you'll never sit at the
00:38:03.300
And, uh, of course, that, that's, that's a quote that can come and bite him on the, on
00:38:10.180
But, um, it's just not, it's, it's wonderfully not taken seriously.
00:38:24.920
Who would you say, because you've got your finger on the pulse of the next big thing,
00:38:29.360
who do we take seriously in terms of who do we watch?
00:38:33.420
Who are you excited about right now these days?
00:38:35.320
Well, um, hard to say, hard to say, hard, hard to say.
00:38:40.260
I'm, I'm very excited about, of course, Canadian comedians because those are the ones I work
00:38:46.040
Um, I, it's, uh, it's, it's a good opportunity for me to criticize Hannah Gadsby, though.
00:38:54.840
So I watched the, the special, the, the Nanette special, and I, there's two parts to it, really.
00:39:01.060
The first part is her, um, being funny and, um, she's reasonably funny, but then she goes
00:39:07.280
into her, um, rant against comedy and pretty much against male comics, and she raises a
00:39:16.080
But I have to tell you, I disagree with her conclusions.
00:39:19.660
Her fabulous issue that she raises, and so succinctly, is what is the worth of a fantastic
00:39:26.740
artist if that fantastic artist treats people horribly?
00:39:30.680
Which is more important, the work that they leave, or the people whose lives they lay waste
00:39:40.980
And Picasso's a good example, because Picasso, um...
00:39:49.780
I mean, Picasso, um, had a, had a very, um, Picasso did not treat women well, let's just
00:39:57.360
say that, including the 17-year-old that eventually committed suicide, um, after, uh, having a long
00:40:04.080
affair with him, uh, uh, but he did do Guernica, and if you've stood in front of Guernica, you
00:40:10.980
just don't think of how badly he treated individual people.
00:40:15.160
What you think of is, this is the most moving picture against the horrors of war that I have
00:40:28.920
So, I, I love the fact that she brought this up, because this is an issue that comes up
00:40:33.280
again and again and again and again, and it comes up in Me Too comedy issues as well.
00:40:38.520
Um, and that is, sometimes, or quite often, horrible people make great art.
00:40:46.600
And it's very hard to find, in fact, people who, um, make great art that aren't horrible
00:40:53.820
And I'm not sure what, exactly why, because I'm not a psychoanalyst, but, um, if you want
00:40:59.620
to be consistent and you think that, you know, um, Woody Allen went, uh, went after relationships
00:41:06.740
with girls who were just underage, well, you better not listen, you better throw out your
00:41:10.760
whole record collection, because you know, the Beatles did that too.
00:41:13.860
I assure you, the Beatles were having, um, affairs with girls in Hamburg that were way
00:41:19.140
Um, uh, Led Zeppelin, throw those records out as well.
00:41:29.440
T.S. Eliot is my favorite, my favorite poet of all time.
00:41:33.120
He was also a notorious anti-Semite, and yet, and I'm Jewish, and yet, uh, a year can't
00:41:40.300
pass without me reading the, rereading The Wasteland and, and Prufrock and thinking that
00:41:47.420
So, I'm able to compartmentalize what a person's personal life is and what their personal beliefs
00:41:58.120
Uh, Hannah Gadsby is suggesting, no, you shouldn't do that.
00:42:04.800
Somebody told me once they thought that men have it easier in terms of compartmentalization,
00:42:09.760
that that's kind of more of a male brain thing.
00:42:21.260
You know, I've always thought we had it easy, the fact that Adolf Hitler, who was a painter,
00:42:26.820
Wouldn't it be rough if he was actually, like, the best painter of the 20th century?
00:42:30.080
And you're like, uh, how do we talk about this right now?
00:42:34.900
Um, and luckily John Wayne Gacy, um, you know, the serial murderer drew pictures of clowns.
00:42:40.920
Um, and you know that there are people who collect those pictures.
00:42:51.860
Not Warhol prices, but they, but five-figure prices.
00:42:58.700
Mark, I know you give a lot of advice, as we said to, to comedians.
00:43:04.840
What advice would you give to audience members, to regular folks who are seeing these schisms,
00:43:13.080
or whatever you want to call it, in comedy, and they're saying, look, I just want to enjoy it.
00:43:19.240
Well, first of all, if you're thinking of going out to a night, a night of comedy, the internet is a wonderful thing.
00:43:25.760
Um, you can research the comic that's being advertised, and I never understand why people don't.
00:43:30.740
Certainly, you wouldn't go to a, um, a Cineplex and say, what's playing?
00:43:34.720
Oh, okay, that looks, what's the next, what's the next showtime of whatever you have?
00:43:39.520
You would research what movie you want to see, and you would decide you like the people in it,
00:43:44.020
you like the, you like the director, you like what it's about.
00:43:47.280
So, so you should do the same thing with comedy.
00:43:49.440
I think people should be astute consumers, and it's easy to be an astute consumer these days.
00:43:54.440
The second thing is, um, I admit that one thing I've always wanted, um, was to make people less sensitive.
00:44:02.000
It's always been, um, a goal of mine, even before all of this Me Too thing started to happen.
00:44:07.800
Um, I was always bullied and picked on, and all these things when I was a kid,
00:44:12.460
because I'm really small, and I was Jewish in a non-Jewish environment.
00:44:16.340
Um, and I just got tougher, and there's almost nothing that can offend me now,
00:44:22.840
nothing that anybody could say to me that would ever offend me personally,
00:44:26.200
and nothing that anybody could say that it would offend me theoretically,
00:44:29.500
which is why I guess I'm the right person for my job.
00:44:32.960
But I would like to see people, um, not made of glass,
00:44:37.400
because it feels like they're made of glass, and they shatter much too easily.
00:44:42.440
The right person for the job. Mark Breslin, this has been a fantastic conversation.
00:44:48.520
Really informative stuff. Thanks so much for joining us today.
00:44:58.700
This episode was produced by Andre Proulx, with theme music by Bryce Hall.
00:45:05.100
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00:45:10.160
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00:45:12.980
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