Comedian Charlie Murphy stops by the Joe Rogan Experience studio to talk about his time in the military and what it's like being in a firefight with a general. Joe also talks about his new comedy special he's doing at the Ground Zero memorial and why he thinks it's a good idea to have a show in the middle of the night in a military base. Joe also tells the story of how he got into trouble with the general at a comedy club and how he managed to get out of it without getting into any trouble at all. Joe and Charlie also talk about what it s like to be a comedian in the entertainment industry and how to deal with the pressures that come with being a comedian and being in the comedy industry, and how it can make you feel like you're not alone in your career. The Joe Rogans Experience Podcast is brought to you by The Fleshlight. Click on the link below to get 15% off the code "ROGAN" when you enter the code name ROGAN at checkout. You'll also get a discount code at checkout when you purchase the Fleshlight, which is the number 1 sex toy for men. It's the sex toy of the 21st century, and it's the most popular sex toy in the world! You can't ask for much more! You're not going to get more than $15 when you buy a Fleshlight product, and you're getting 15% all day, plus free shipping throughout the rest of the week! XOXO is giving you the chance to get $5 off your purchase when you use code ROGRogan at checkout, plus an additional $5 at checkout! you'll get an extra $5 when you place an ad discount when you sign up for the deal starts in the site, and they'll get $15% off your first month. XO gets 10% off their first month, and I'll be getting $10, plus I'll get a freebie when you get an ad on my ad on the site. I'm giving you $10% off my ad discount, and a free copy of the entire site gets the ad starts in two weeks, and the rest gets $25, plus they'll receive $5, plus a $5 gets a discount on the first week of the ad gets a maximum of $50, plus shipping starts after that gets my ad gets my carted through the ad goes through the site gets my first week.
00:01:59.000Well, there was a great story that Louis C.K. wrote on his blog about going overseas to entertain the troops and how enthusiastic the troops are and how good it felt and everything.
00:02:10.000But he said he kept getting in trouble with the shit.
00:02:56.000Everybody out there running around playing doctor.
00:02:59.000You want to know how the world really works?
00:03:02.000Even when they show on the news and they show live footage of a firefight on the news, if you was never in the military, you was never around a real firefight, That's not the same thing as being there.
00:03:15.000What you see on the news, it has an effect on you definitely, but being there when it's going on has a different effect.
00:03:54.000If you ain't got nothing going on, it's not a bad choice, point blank.
00:03:58.000If you ain't really doing nothing, if you're sitting around going, well, that's a hard life, I don't want to do that, and you're not doing anything, you need to do that.
00:06:48.000That's the way I can identify with the fear of it happening at my house.
00:06:51.000But if I look at it on my block and I've seen tanks coming up the block and all that, that would be really, you know...
00:06:57.000Well, we like to pretend that we're the peak of civilization, right?
00:07:00.000But we're doing that to somebody else.
00:07:02.000The peak, you know, there easily could be an advanced race above, you know, or an advanced country, rather, above this one.
00:07:10.000There could be some new military power that all of a sudden starts taking over, and we could be in the same situation that, you know, other countries are as opposed to us.
00:08:36.000If you try to come into the U.S., they shoot and kill them.
00:08:39.000If you try to go into Cuba, they shoot and kill them.
00:08:42.000Isn't it fucked up that that's cool, that we allow that?
00:08:45.000There's some Area 51 spot where if you cross the line, there's a certain line where you get too close to Area 51. They're just allowed to shoot you.
00:08:54.000Yeah, it's like, once you cross this line...
00:09:11.000you know national security you might think about it what's what's behind what's over there in area 51 you might be like if you knew what it was you would be like listen they gotta shoot anyone that comes in here i've always wondered whether or not i always wondered whether or not it's really alien shit or whether it's just secret government projects you know Everybody claims alien shit, but if you don't know what the fuck they're capable of, and you think it's one thing but it really is far more advanced, you'd probably think it was alien.
00:09:41.000And then the rumors get spread, and if you're some scientist that thinks he's a bad motherfucker, but meanwhile there's some Russians that figured out some shit that nobody else has, and we've got their information, and it's in a hangar somewhere in the desert, you'd stumble upon that, you'd probably think that's alien.
00:09:57.000You'd probably think, where's this coming from?
00:15:09.000And what he does is he looks at, they took a picture of the New York skyline, a 360 picture of the New York skyline, and they showed him the pictures, and he's got the pictures all up close to his eyes, to these thick glasses, and then he walks into a room, and he paints!
00:15:28.000With a pencil, he draws the whole skyline exactly to a T from memory.
00:15:34.000That's the kid that can look out the window.
00:15:37.000Yeah, we've talked about this kid before.
00:15:38.000He can look out a window of a plane and see a city and then draw that exact image.
00:16:06.000And when you see these savants, you see these people with crazy abilities, what that represents to me is potential.
00:16:12.000This is a potential performance of the human body.
00:16:15.000It's just not working in all of us yet.
00:16:17.000But if this guy can do it, yeah, yeah, he shits himself, and yeah, yeah, he can't fucking watch TV without screaming and running into the walls, but he can still take a picture with his mind and draw, and you can't do that.
00:16:28.000If you could do that, too, and all the other stuff you do.
00:17:06.000To get out there, to really get out there, to hit the highest highs, you almost have to just be fucking nuts.
00:17:12.000You almost have to just let it all go.
00:17:14.000You almost have to be just willing to go to places that other people won't go quicker than they're willing to go, harder, with more discipline, further, further, further.
00:17:23.000And as you're doing that, man, you separate from humans.
00:17:28.000You get so wrapped up in trying to accomplish something, and you become crazy.
00:17:58.000Like, if you want to grow 35 plants, then you need to have 35 clones, but you have to catch them at the right month, and you would know everything.
00:18:05.000Yeah, but he bought a new suit recently, though, so things are on the ups and ups with him.
00:20:39.000He came up, he was primarily displaying his fake dick, and I was sitting in the back going, wow, you know, we can say what we want, but that is show business.
00:21:55.000And we got to become friends, but I... I was always impressed that you were an actor, essentially, when you went on Chappelle's show.
00:22:05.000You were just a guy who was really good at telling stories and a really good actor and the brother of the most famous stand-up comedian possibly of all time.
00:22:15.000And you just jumped right into headlining, man.
00:22:23.000I think about when I first started doing stand-up, if someone said, okay, now you're going to do 45 minutes, I would have just shit all over myself.
00:24:16.000And touring all over the fucking country, constantly performing.
00:24:19.000For the first two years, I didn't believe that it was real.
00:24:24.000It was like, okay, they're being courteous to you because they like you on the Chappelle show, and they're not booing you or nothing, so go get this money and have fun.
00:24:35.000But don't take it serious because at any moment, it's going to disappear.
00:25:50.000I have fans my age, but I have also a lot of fans that are 21, 18. And now because of the new show I'm doing with Terry Crews, are we there yet?
00:26:29.000That's why I've been able to go all around the world and have had no problem because when we get there, I'm not struggling with, oh, I'm in Stockholm now, so how am I going to...
00:26:40.000No, I'm in Stockholm, so you're going to get the same thing in Stockholm that you're going to get in Hollywood or that you would get in New York, you know?
00:26:52.000There's something beautiful about that.
00:26:55.000That's a wisdom and an approach when you're 42 that you don't necessarily have when you're 21. When you're 21 and you first start out doing stand-up, you really shouldn't be talking.
00:35:21.000Because I'll take you out of Gleason's right now and pick out any heavyweight, somebody who you've never seen on TV, and he'll make you call him the greatest.
00:37:10.000You watch, like, there's a guy named Marius Pujanowski, world's strongest man, does those crazy fucking things where they throw the beer bottles in the air and lift up cars and shit, you know, that strongman shit.
00:39:31.000I'm telling you, if you come around me and talk about who you can whip, because a lot of my friends are friends, and I see them in the room, I'm not just letting them know how you feel.
00:41:05.000You just see the press conference when Rupert Murdoch was getting interviewed and this dude tried to come in with the pie and hit him from the side and his wife came out with the open-hand palm strike and broke his nose, man.
00:44:21.000That told me that it's something that you definitely got to have as part of your game.
00:44:26.000If you're going to be standing up on the stage talking to people, you have to have the ability to do that.
00:44:33.000If it comes up, you got to shoot them down and keep it moving.
00:44:35.000You can't be haggling with them because that's going to break the whole continuity of the show up.
00:44:40.000The guys that can just hit them with the hammer and keep it moving are the best, man.
00:44:44.000It's an unfortunate side effect of comedy, but we started out, Freeze and I were fucking comedy store veterans, man, and that was a place that nobody patrolled.
00:44:53.000There was no manager shushing the room.
00:44:56.000The comedy store was run by the guy on stage, and occasionally dudes got kicked out because the comic would go, just get these fucking people out of here.
00:46:29.000Richard Pryor was performing that night, and she was standing by the back door, and this other chick came around and was getting ready to come up.
00:48:37.000He was more in prison after you heard him do stand-up.
00:48:41.000Because it was a realization, like, this is a man who has his wits but does not have his motor skills and his functions, his bodily functions, too.
00:48:56.000And that was, that just was, even though he was funny, even though he was sharp, that just, it was sad.
00:49:02.000Yeah, he would, it seemed to me like there was a, there was a disconnect, too, towards the end.
00:49:06.000I don't think he was completely lucid.
00:49:08.000So when he would go on stage and talk about things, like, they didn't always make sense, and, you know, it was, it was, it was, he was dying, you know, and Joe Rogan!
00:54:18.000Yeah, imbalance is a frightening thing when it comes to your health, you know, when it really could be terminal, like you could have terminal imbalance.
00:54:26.000You could get your whole system so fucked up from thinking the wrong way, doing the wrong way, eating the wrong way, treating your body like shit, treating people like shit, and then next thing you know it.
00:54:38.000Holding on to anger, all of that kind of stuff, holding grudges, all of that stuff, it has to manifest some way.
00:54:45.000Resolving a grudge is one of the best feelings ever.
00:54:48.000When you're cool with somebody, when you weren't cool with them, and then all of a sudden you're cool with them, it's a nice feeling.
00:54:54.000As a human being, it's a good feeling.
00:55:21.000You want to tell them to fuck themselves for life, bitch.
00:55:24.000I was reading on Twitter the other day and somebody quoted a quote from Mandela and he said, resentment is like drinking a bottle of poison to kill your enemy.
00:55:47.000It's almost like you've got to figure out a way to make people that you hate, people that annoy you, people that only become a source of positivity to you.
01:02:38.000So I seen the whole journey from the guy who was a regular dude that was scared and all these people were around him and telling him, you could do this, and he did it, and he became this bigger-than-life person all the way to the end to now the person that he is now.
01:02:57.000Because if you see Mike now, Mike got his shit together.
01:07:38.000But every business in that whole complex has Manny's pictures up and Manny's signed things and he's got boxing gloves on and pictures of him eating in this restaurant that's right there.
01:08:00.000I was going to bring that up when we were talking about Tyson because I was watching this thing on Victor Ortiz and he was talking about his childhood.
01:08:06.000I was watching it right before he came over.
01:08:15.000So he was only raised by his dad, and his dad just beat the shit out of them, hit them with sticks, hit them with anything, and then when they were 12, his dad left.
01:08:23.000So it's him and his fucking brother like wild dogs at 12 years old taking care of themselves.
01:08:35.000And, you know, to come from that, man, there's a certain amount of resolve that that kid's going to have that the average person is not going to have.
01:08:41.000But is that going to be enough to deal with Floyd motherfucking Mayweather, dude?
01:09:24.000He makes these little short movements and throws guys off, little quarter turns and shots from different angles that you expect, and he gets through.
01:09:32.000He finds out where you're going to step, and then he's waiting for you before you do it.
01:10:45.000And ever since that one fight, he's felt terrible about that.
01:10:49.000He was losing his fight and he got dropped and he just called the referee off and quit.
01:10:54.000And people really heavily criticize his heart.
01:10:57.000But what it was was he wasn't 100% focused on either his training or fighting itself or the consequences of losing or whatever the fuck it was.
01:11:11.000That's some shit that young guys will do, man.
01:11:13.000They'll fuck up and they'll have a bad camp or they needed to learn something or they needed to be pushed and broken to rebuild and come back again.
01:11:21.000So ever since that fight, he's been a fucking monster.
01:14:38.000He just got really badly, badly wounded.
01:14:41.000And what happened was they think that the tiger got confused because a woman had feathers in her hair, like some crazy peacock feathers, and they think the tiger might have freaked out and thought that was an animal, so grabbed him to rescue him, to pull him away from that.
01:19:34.000Yeah, those little, there's like a few of these little type of crazy animals that scare the shit out of me, you know, of different species like wolverines and like honey badgers and shit like that.
01:19:46.000They scare the fuck out of me, man, because they're only, they might only be like 15, 20 pounds, but they'll kill you.
01:21:19.000They just sneak up behind a snake, bite them in the head, and sometimes they get bit, they get hit by the venom, and you know what happens?
01:21:25.000They fall asleep, and they wake up an hour later, and then they eat the snake.
01:21:29.000He blacked out from venom and his little crazy murderous body processed the venom and he got up like he was drunk and just started eating that snake again.
01:21:38.000Snake bit him with its poison and the poison didn't do shit but make him take a fucking nap.
01:25:33.000Other than that, it's like, what, am I just watching a bunch of people die because of some stupid curse?
01:25:37.000This new one has a bridge that's collapsing, like it's broken in the middle, and it's during rush hour, and it's just like the car's skidding in, and it's just all in 3D. Wow.
01:27:21.000This dude, he sounded way too California.
01:27:24.000He was like, there was times, like in deep battle, he was a great Conan.
01:27:28.000When he was fighting things and killing and yelling and screaming, he was a great Conan.
01:27:32.000But then he was sitting down and talking, it was like, alright dude, you need to work on your Conan voice, because this shit, you sound like some dude I would meet at Target.
01:27:40.000It doesn't sound like someone who came from that era at all.
01:29:26.000Imagine that poor kid has to grow up knowing that, you know, the governor was just banging his mom and he had a real dad that he grew up with but that wasn't really his dad.
01:31:17.000We started talking about it earlier when we got off the subject.
01:31:20.000I was talking about how I've been here for six weeks, so that's why every week we go to the Laugh Factory, getting ready to go downtown.
01:31:29.000I don't just sit back and go, okay, I'm doing a TV show, I'm making money, I'll do comedy when it's over, because I know that the comedy's going to suffer.
01:31:39.000If you take eight weeks off and don't do no stand-up, There's no way when you go back eight weeks later, your next show is going to be as good as your last one.
01:34:37.000Not taking this with you, but he said this.
01:34:39.000He said, you know, I flew 20 hours here from South Africa.
01:34:43.000I really had a hard time, and I did my research, and I didn't want to offend anyone.
01:34:47.000I found this one organization called the Ku Klux Klan, a very racist organization, and it just baffled me that Ku Klux Klan actually means circle of brothers.
01:34:58.000To be someone that hates black people, why would you call yourself the circle of brothers?
01:39:41.000And the guys that are with them are actors from an acting school.
01:39:45.000And they fooled these guys very briefly in a movie, but when they realized that it was a trick, They go back to the acting school, beat up all the actors, find out who told, what the whole plot was, what the plan was, that Joe used to trick us.
01:40:15.000So from the beginning of the movie all the way to the end, while this story is unfolding with these two guys that stole his money and they're basically trying to find a way to give the money back without getting killed.
01:40:26.000It's like in that movie, Which Way Is Up?
01:43:35.000So what we're going to do on the bio channel is everyone has something, maybe not as extreme as me, but something that you did to somebody in your past that you wouldn't mind apologizing for.
01:53:20.000That's when your dad showed up to whip your ass on Saturday.
01:53:24.000As a result, when I grew up and became a man, when it came time for me to deal with women, I learned how to deal with women by listening to guys that were in the street, bums.
01:53:37.000Guys named T-Bone and Slick and Big Willie and whatever.
01:53:41.000And because of that, the first couple of relationships I had with women, I was an abusive dude, man.
01:53:48.000I would think, what, you're talking back to me?
01:53:50.000The answer is I'm supposed to hit you.
01:53:55.000That's not what you're supposed to do.
01:53:57.000If your dad is there to teach you that, you know better.
01:53:59.000But if you don't grow up with that around, you grow up with something else, because you're going to be seeking the knowledge, you go out and do the wrong thing.
01:54:07.000So that's what I think about with my kids.
01:54:10.000You want to be there to make sure you're there to deliver all the lessons they need.
01:54:13.000But then when you go, half my team is gone.
01:54:17.000And there's nothing I can do about that.
01:55:54.000I don't go when it's peak, when everybody's there, because then I become Goofy or Mickey Mouse, you know what I'm saying, to the other people who came there on vacation.
01:56:03.000The other day we were staying on 1717 Vine Street, a hotel called the Redberry, right?
01:56:10.000It's right on the Walk of Fame and all that.
01:56:12.000My kids are in a hotel looking out the balcony.
01:56:16.000And I was like, okay, you can go for a walk with a nanny.
01:56:18.000There's no way I want to walk on a Walk of Fame in broad daylight with my kids.
01:56:23.000And I know that that's a tourist attraction.
01:56:26.000There's people on buses, you know, driving around.
01:56:28.000They have the tour buses driving around on star searches or what have you.
01:56:32.000And if you're from Kansas or wherever you may be from and you go to Hollywood and you see someone you've seen on television, what are you going to do?
01:56:39.000You're going to go crazy, and you should.
01:56:41.000So that's why I was like, you better stay in your room.
01:56:43.000Because if you go down there with your kids, it's not going to be...
01:56:46.000Have you ever thought about, like, disguises, like blonde waves?
01:57:02.000A week before that, it was a blackout in my town.
01:57:06.000I had lost power in my house for like a week.
01:57:09.000Staying in New York at the London Hotel.
01:57:11.000So St. Patrick's Day was during that week.
01:57:14.000I'm not Irish, even though my name is Murphy.
01:57:16.000I don't be aware when St. Patrick's Day is coming up, you know?
01:57:21.000My last name is Rogan, and I don't know when it's coming up.
01:57:23.000I walked outside with my two kids, and we was walking around Manhattan, supposedly going to walk over to Central Park, and I see all the hoopla on Fit Man.
01:57:42.000I walked them up to the crowd, put my daughter on my shoulder, and we were watching the parade, and I heard somebody go, yo, that's Charlie Murphy.
01:58:18.000Just push through the crowd and run with my kids, man.
01:58:22.000And as I'm doing it, I'm going, you're an idiot.
01:58:24.000What made you think that you could stand on Fifth Avenue in broad daylight on St. Patrick's Day in a crowd with your children and that was a safe thing to do?
01:58:34.000But I forgot for that one split second what I'd do for a living.
01:59:12.000But when you're with your children, it's different.
01:59:14.000You're thinking about their safety or whatever, especially in a crowd situation.
01:59:17.000And then when you have somebody that's really not acting like an adult, jumping around and screaming loud, that's horrifying to a kid, man.
01:59:26.000So, yeah, I'm real sensitive about that.
01:59:51.000And luckily, you could pretty much take care of business if you have to.
01:59:57.000Like, Louis C.K. had an episode last week about the same thing happening where he was out with his kids and these two guys came up and started like, yeah, we're gonna get you.
02:00:05.000You know, like, get his kids and stuff like that.