Roseanne Barr joins the Daily Wire Plus crew to discuss her role in the new comedy-drama, Mr. Burcham, as well as her new role as a high school principal in the hit show, "Roseanne's Big Little Lies." She also discusses her experience with cancel culture and class discrimination in Hollywood, and her recent work as a stand-up comedian in Austin, Texas. She also talks about why comedy is so important to her, and why she loves working with comedians like Adam Carolla, Joe Rogan, and the rest of the "Comedian Class" crew, and how she has been able to make a name for herself as one of the funniest people in the business. Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety. We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling. With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way, and offers a roadmap towards healing. If you're suffering, please know you are not alone. There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better. Go to Dailywire Plus now and start watching Jordan B. Peterson's new series on Depression and Anxiety. Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve. -Let This Be The First Step towards the Bright Future You Deserve. (Let This be the First Step Towards the Brightest Future you Deserve). - Let This Be the First Take a Step Toward the Brighter you Desired by Dr. Dr. P. Peterson on a Path to Feeling Better - Dr.Jordan B. B Peterson and Dr. B. on Depression & Anxiety - Let Me Help You Reach Out To Those Who May Be Feeling This Way - Let's Talk About This in a Positive Place In A Positive Place - Let That Be The Best Place You Can Be Helping You Reach Their Full Of Hope And Support Each Other In this Episode of This Episode Of This Episode: (featuring Roseanne Barr and Co-Hosts: Roseanne Roseanne Barcros ( ) Roseanne ( ) ( ) . RoseanneRoseanne Rosebawn ( )( ) ( ) ( . ( ) ( ) & Sarah ( ) . & Sarah ( ).
00:00:00.960Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.
00:00:06.480Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.
00:00:12.740We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling.
00:00:20.100With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new series.
00:00:27.420He provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy, it's absolutely possible to find your way forward.
00:00:35.360If you're suffering, please know you are not alone. There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better.
00:00:41.780Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety.
00:00:47.460Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.
00:00:57.420Hello, everybody. I got the opportunity today to talk to Roseanne Barr.
00:01:14.460We talked about her recent work with the Daily Wire Plus crew on Mr. Burcham.
00:01:19.480She plays a high school principal near retirement in that show.
00:01:23.220And then we talked a fair bit about comedy as such and exactly what a comedian does, what it's like to hit the mark so precisely that you can tell the truth in a manner that also opens people up and brings that unconscious joy that's associated with spontaneous laughter.
00:01:45.460Trying to nail down exactly what that means, it's part of this broader phenomenon that we see where so many people that are making their mark on pop culture are comedians, former and present.
00:02:00.860Rogan, of course, Russell Brand, many, many people, Dave Rubin, Stephen Crowder, Theo Vaughn.
00:02:11.360There's so many comedians that have made a name for themselves as interviewers.
00:02:19.160Her experience with cancel culture and class discrimination or difficulty in making class adjustment, let's say, in Hollywood.
00:02:27.800Her more recent experiences on the comedy scene in Austin, which is a real up-and-coming comedy renaissance city, in no small part as a consequence of Joe Rogan's enterprises there.
00:02:41.820So, join us for what proved to be a very interesting and enlightening conversation.
00:02:49.480Let's start by talking about Mr. Burcham.
00:02:52.320You're working with the Daily Wire Plus crew.
00:05:14.500That has, you know, their fascist definitions of everything where people must obey, must bow, must repeat, must parrot.
00:05:26.420And so, in all of that, there's this one gifted teacher who wants to do it his way.
00:05:33.040And he is, of course, under scrutiny by all the collective.
00:05:37.500And I play the principal who's about two weeks from retirement and doesn't give a damn, just wants to get the retirement and is trying to do what she has to do.
00:06:17.700He's a real, like, pronoun type, you know, guy that is all that.
00:06:22.860And he's trying to get Mr. Bertram fired, you know, using the rules that Mr. Bertram doesn't follow.
00:06:30.900And so, my character is, like, trying to protect Mr. Bertram and trying to protect her retirement.
00:06:36.780So, the best comedies, animated or otherwise, often have a very sharp and biting satirical edge, but underneath a certain amount of heart and genuine human connection.
00:06:54.500This was something that was very marked about The Simpsons, for example, because it was completely satirical.
00:06:59.660But at least for the 13 first seasons, there were some stellar shows after that, too.
00:07:05.660So, really what made the series so remarkable was the fact that you actually ended up identifying with and liking the characters, despite their manifold flaws.
00:07:20.120Do you ever watch The Trailer Park Boys?
00:08:33.560I think The Trailer Park Boys have a lot of insight that the people like that.
00:08:39.060They do have a lot of insight, but I think that it speaks greatly to class consciousness, which is what fascinates me more than anything else about American culture and Canada and the UK and I guess the West.
00:09:02.680The fact that everybody is kind of blind to the fact that we live in such a class-based culture, it's like the last thing that anybody ever notices or talks about.
00:09:15.420But it's just so present in that show, and it's just so hilarious.
00:09:24.540All the things that come with that whole working class thing, which I just love it.
00:09:30.620One of the things that always struck me, the town I grew up in, the town I'm in right now, because I'm up in northern Alberta, is a working class town.
00:09:39.180And I suppose climbed the class ladder after I left Fairview.
00:09:45.260But one of the things I really missed as that happened was humor.
00:09:49.760I mean, the people I grew up with here, basically all we did to amuse ourselves was to engage in competitive bouts of humor.
00:09:59.360And so, and that was ridiculously fun.
00:10:02.820And it was a way of gaining status too, because the funniest people had the most status.
00:10:07.340And also, obviously, the people that could take a joke.
00:10:10.300And in working class jobs, you need to be able to take a joke, that's for sure.
00:10:15.440Well, everyone does all the time in life.
00:10:17.820But, you know, among the intellectual class, frequently, especially among the posers,
00:12:55.360Well, the thing about discussing dark things with humor is that it has two advantages, I think.
00:13:01.700The first is you get to shine a light on the thing that's dark.
00:13:05.800But more importantly, you get to show that you can stand seeing it and also that you can sort of, you can transcend it at the same time, which is really what you're doing when you laugh it off.
00:13:17.540So you're showing that there's something there that's negative and maybe even that's causing suffering.
00:13:22.840But at the same time, you're indicating everybody's willingness to look at it and also to rise above it.
00:13:28.700And so that's a pretty damn good deal.
00:13:35.420You know, I always thought that comedy was, I mean, I do feel it's a gift.
00:13:41.280And a lot of us comics when we're drunk and sitting there talking to each other seriously, which we do when we're drunk and drinking and stuff and getting serious about comedy, which we do.
00:13:52.660It's probably really boring to, but it's probably really boring to non-comedians.
00:13:55.180But we talk about what a kind of a holy thing it is to be a comedian, to have the power of naming, you know, being able to name something and then to dispel its power over us.
00:14:16.180But more important than anything, the way I look at it, and I always bring it up, is to laugh power to scorn.
00:14:27.560And so we look at it as like, oh, it is a holy calling in a kind of a working class way of telling the king or the emperor, hey, you're naked as hell, buddy.
00:14:45.520Yeah, well, there's two things there you point out that I think are really interesting.
00:14:51.300I had never thought about that relationship between comedy and the power to name.
00:14:57.440So that's what God grants Adam in the story of Adam and Eve, right?
00:15:00.820He's supposed to, God, in fact, God brings everything in front of Adam to see what he'll name them.
00:15:06.860And it's interesting because naming something actually has that real tight alliance with wit.
00:15:13.520It's really hard to coin a word or a phrase, right?
00:15:16.580You have to hit the target dead center before you can come up with a new phrase that will spread.
00:15:35.720And then the scorn issue, that's also dead relevant.
00:15:39.440Well, I think this is partly why you can tell the tyrants because of their attitude towards comedians is that it's the people who don't want to be unmasked and especially who don't want to be unmasked in relationship to the fact that all their vaunted compassion is nothing but a play for power.
00:15:56.700They're the ones that detest comedians and have absolutely no sense of humor.
00:16:00.420That's a very dangerous thing in a person to have no sense of humor.
00:16:04.780And so what does that mean if you have no sense of humor?
00:16:08.820Watching comedy, I've always been a comedy fan and so was my father.
00:16:13.720He wanted to be a comic too and I think he made me one.
00:16:18.540But the content of the humor they like, because everybody laughs at something eventually, but the content and politics of the humor they like is something that I've studied as a comic for a long time.
00:16:37.720And it is kind of by class the way I look at it.
00:16:41.160It's very much by class and it's also by sex and it's also by a few other factors in my mind.
00:16:53.280But these people, they will laugh, but we always say they laugh downward.
00:16:59.620They laugh at their, quote, lesser, like less, they're less, I always call it academentia.
00:17:12.520They're less, you know, the riffraff or whatever.
00:17:18.840But, and sometimes they'll laugh upward and sometimes they'll laugh laterally, but it's very subdued.
00:17:27.620But the thing they will never do is laugh at themselves.
00:17:33.460And they really despise anything that puts them as a joke.
00:17:39.440You know, I got fired because I made fun of the Obama administration and their policies in the Middle East, even though they tried to say it was about something else.
00:17:51.760But that is what my tweet was about that got me fired and my work of a lifetime stolen, everything they did to me.
00:17:58.760And also misrepresenting what I meant and not allowing me the chance to explain or anything, you know, just dead, deadheading me.
00:18:10.620But he is, he and those leftists around him, leftists don't have a sense of humor at all.
00:18:21.120But they definitely don't want to be made fun of at all.
00:19:08.160Every time you connect to an unsecured network in a cafe, hotel or airport, you're essentially broadcasting your personal information to anyone with a technical know-how to intercept it.
00:19:17.480And let's be clear, it doesn't take a genius hacker to do this.
00:19:20.360With some off-the-shelf hardware, even a tech-savvy teenager could potentially access your passwords, bank logins and credit card details.
00:19:28.120Now, you might think, what's the big deal?
00:20:27.700Well, maybe it's harder on the Democrats to have working class humorists go after them because in principle, they're supposed to be advocates for the working class.
00:20:38.680And so, if it's working class humor, which does tend, in my experience, to be very self-denigrating, right?
00:20:46.320And I do think that's a real mark of character.
00:20:48.940It's one of the things I really like about British humor.
00:20:51.140And I think Canadian humor has got that edge too.
00:20:54.120You know, is that the Brits are very, very good at laughing at themselves.
00:20:57.320The Monty Python troupe was unbelievably good at that because their humor was all unbelievably good.
00:21:02.700And it made the comedy in some ways timeless too because it wasn't focused exactly on the political or actually very rarely on the political.
00:21:11.620And so, it's very strange to see that some of the jokes from the 1970s, many of the skits that the Monty Python troupe pulled off in the 1970s are still funny as hell.
00:21:21.260And still, you know, I talked to John Cleese at one point and he told me they were planning to do a Broadway revitalization of the life of Brian.
00:21:32.780You know, they wanted to cut out, you remember there's one section with the little cabal of left-wing radicals that the movie centers around.
00:21:44.460And one of them, I can't remember, the comedian, decides that he's a woman about halfway through the movie.
00:21:58.760And so, they obviously, in some spectacular way, foreshadowed all this trans nonsense that's been coming down the pipeline.
00:22:06.840But they were very resistant, the people who were going to produce it, were very resistant to continuing to include that in the Broadway revival.
00:22:15.440I don't know if that ever did get sorted out because Cleese was not happy about it.
00:22:19.680But that's also a testament to their satirical brilliance to have managed something, it's 40 years ago now, that still hits the target, you know, viciously enough to be of concern to the woke dimwits today.
00:22:33.680I mean, and it's so interesting because in the movie, In the Life of Brian, the desire of this character to be a woman is actually treated with a fair bit of, is it dignity?
00:27:25.780You know, we can't challenge ourselves more.
00:27:34.160And it had been such a long time where, you know, the world of comedy premises was decreasing, decreasing, getting tighter and tighter because there's just so many things that you couldn't say or you'd be attacked and run out of town, you know?
00:27:51.480But this is just a real free and freeing feeling.
00:27:57.140And it's just wonderful to look out and see people of all shapes, colors, sizes, ages laughing together at just the ridiculous absurdity of it all.
00:28:09.580It's just it feels like it feels like revolution, like we've always dreamed of, a revolution for free thoughts, free ideas, free people.
00:28:20.820When I go on stage there, I always say, I always thank Joe for, you know, creating the place for comics to have free speech.
00:28:29.580And then I say, my goal is to get 86 the hell out of here, you know, to go so far, you know, because, you know, comics, we like to get in trouble.
00:28:41.180Well, the thing is, the funniest things you can possibly say are right on the ragged edge of disaster, right?
00:28:51.540You want to push it right, absolutely, you want to push it right to the point of no return.
00:28:57.660And if you can dangle there, that's hilarious.
00:29:01.540You want people to be thinking, I can't bloody well believe she said that.
00:29:21.260Well, I've said for my whole career, you know, that I have mental health issues.
00:29:24.880So it is kind of funny that they, it's kind of like they're saying she has so many mentally, mental health issues that she's completely mentally health challenged.
00:29:49.760I've been to comedy shows where, comedy shows, where the people, and these are usually, you know, very early career comedy shows, let's say, where people come on stage and really do nothing but confess their sins, let's say, sexual and otherwise.
00:30:20.740No, if it's funny, if it's funny, it's sane, and it doesn't really matter.
00:30:26.320You know, and the thing about comedy, too, that's so interesting is that it operates at this profoundly unconscious level.
00:30:34.620You know, one of the things I noticed about having little kids is that even before they could speak, they had really good senses of humor that was associated with play.
00:30:45.540And so comedy, humor is so deep that it's there before words.
00:32:01.160Well, one of the great joys, I have 10 grandkids, so one of the great joys is, you know, trying to see how young you can get them to laugh.
00:32:42.340Well, it was something I really enjoyed about having little kids because I kept that sort of tradition that I grew up in of competitive comedy alive in the house.
00:33:21.700And so, and because there's always an edge to it, you know.
00:33:24.940And it's a challenge too in some ways when you speak and play like that.
00:33:30.820Because the challenge is to see if the people that you're interacting with can, well, can tolerate that and can understand it and can appreciate it.
00:33:39.180It's a lovely thing to be able to speak about serious things with that comedic edge.
00:33:44.640I mean, that's a real art, man, to transmute suffering into joy.
00:34:14.620But so they, I'm kind of like the comedy grandma.
00:34:19.120And I, you know, I'm, they all roast the people.
00:34:25.200But I don't want to do that because I said, oh, I'm just, I'm too famous and rich and good looking to do that.
00:34:33.040You know, so I have to do the grandma thing.
00:34:35.420Plus, I love to mentor the young ones.
00:34:38.180And so I said to her, you know, you, you are so lovely and people really love you.
00:34:44.880They love your comedy because you have the essence of comedy in you.
00:34:49.460We all see that you have reached down into that pool of pain that you obviously have lived through in your life and brought out beauty and joy.
00:37:07.900But that is, that's a real art form to be able to take those excruciating moments and to make them into something that's shareable and that enables everybody to rise above the pain at the same time.
00:37:19.520And, you know, like I said, I'm trying to think of the word that, oh, it used to be medieval where you would, where they would talk about transforming tin into alchemy.
00:37:49.580And the other thing is, you know, when you were in school and you weren't supposed to laugh, but something made you laugh, that's the best thing to watch from the stage when you see people going through that.
00:38:04.360And then you just push on and tell people, we always say, like, when the head goes back and there's an intake of breath, that's what you're killing.
00:38:15.800Because you actually are killing them in a way, but it's a good kind of kill.
00:38:21.640You know, I used to go work out with a couple of friends of mine in Boston.
00:38:26.660And one of the games we would play was to tell a joke when people were bench pressing because, well, when you laugh, you lose all your muscular force.
00:38:36.580And that's really interesting, too, because it and I've been trying to figure that out as a psychologist.
00:38:41.900It's like, obviously, laughter is associated with play and play is the opposite of power and aggression.
00:38:51.020That took me like four decades to figure out that play is the antithesis of power.
00:38:55.720And it's so interesting that when people laugh, they go, yeah, it's a very good thing to know, you know, especially in your relationships, because if you're playing with your children or you're playing with your wife, then you know that you're not being a tyrant.
00:39:11.220And you can do almost anything in a spirit of play.
00:39:13.800I mean, it's hard when you're suffering, that's for sure.
00:39:16.340It's hard to transmute real pain into play.
00:39:19.000But if you're doing anything perfectly, you're doing it in play.
00:39:23.000And it's so interesting to see that when you make people laugh, they lose all their muscular force.
00:39:28.380You know, they collapse into laughter, they dissolve into laughter, and it takes them over.
00:40:08.920Well, it's interesting to have people do that communally, too, because what that means, this is something that's profound, too.
00:40:15.340And it is really something that Joe Rogan is managing to foster this again in Austin, because it also takes a lot of trust to laugh jointly at a joke, right?
00:40:25.980Because especially if the joke is off-key or pushing the limits, the fact that you'll laugh with others means that a situation of trust has been established in the room, right?
00:40:38.160And I've spent some time thinking about trust.
00:40:41.200Like, I actually think that the only true natural resource is trust.
00:40:45.660That if people trust each other, they can make the desert bloom, you know?
00:45:40.020Well, so my tour manager was a stand-up comedian for a long time, John O'Connell.
00:45:44.920And he toured with stand-up comedians professionally as well as a manager.
00:45:51.280And there's a lot of similarity between what I do and what stand-up comedians do.
00:45:56.760And one of the similarities that I've really started to understand is I've talked to a variety of comedians.
00:46:04.740Jimmy Carr really helped me think this through because he's thought a lot about what he does and is able to articulate it well.
00:46:11.000Well, you know, Carr said that, and I know many comedians do this, and maybe you do this when you're preparing a set, is that, you know, he'll go, when he's preparing new material, he goes to smaller clubs and tries out his new material.
00:46:25.900And some of the jokes land and others don't.
00:46:29.880And he just collects the jokes that land.
00:46:33.340And so, and I thought that was so interesting because stand-up comedy looks like it's a monologue.
00:46:39.640But it's got that dialogical element in the initial practice because, like, he helped me understand that you could be a comedian by telling a lot of jokes and seeing which ones people laughed at and then just collecting those.
00:46:55.640And you don't need much of a hit rate, right?
00:46:57.500If you need to generate 90 minutes worth of material and you have five hours of jokes, you can just get rid of the 80% that aren't any good.
00:47:03.960The audience will tell you what's funny.
00:47:06.280And one of the things I love about the lectures that I do, which are spontaneous, is I'm always watching people, you know, in the audience.
00:47:14.340I'm always talking to someone, and I want to see them, I want to see their eyes light up.
00:47:19.660I want to see them be struck by something, right?
00:47:21.880I want to give words to something they already know but can't say.
00:47:25.660And people have told me that a lot, that they like my lectures because I say things they know to be true but haven't been able to articulate.
00:47:39.180And it is great because often, if I can make a point that has that characteristic but is also funny, I mean, that's a real, that's a blast if you can manage to pull that off.
00:47:51.780It's a real blast too, and when you're writing your set, you know, because I do 90 minutes, but you do it in groups, you know, you do your jokes in groups to build on an idea that culminates.
00:48:05.200You know, it's like little groups are probably five to seven minutes, and you start at one premise with a joke.
00:48:12.320And then the next joke is that kind of built on that previous premise, and it goes a little bit deeper.
00:48:48.640We thought she was going here, but the whole time she was taking us here.
00:48:52.380I love that misdirection stuff because that gets the biggest laughs because they thought they were getting set up for something completely different.
00:49:00.640I like to remove their expectations where they go, oh, yeah, I've heard this before.
00:50:34.840And one of the great memories I have of my mother is, and this is something I always knew about her, is I could always make her laugh.
00:50:42.300And so that was a big basis of our relationship.
00:50:45.580I could always make mom laugh by teasing her.
00:50:47.660In fact, I think the last thing I said to her when she was in the hospital, I was giving her hell about being in the hospital because my father was ill.
00:53:19.720I mean, I can't believe it sometimes, but I mean, I learned so much.
00:53:23.000I'd go to biker bars, I'd go to jazz clubs, I'd go to Unitarian Church, lesbian lunches, and, you know, to 20 people and, you know, small groups.
00:53:49.420It made me better because it made me fearless and, you know, fighting to keep my head above water until finally some men comics from L.A. came, and they saw me, and they went to the club that had censored me and said,
00:54:09.540You really should let that girl, that's what they called me, you should let that girl on.
00:54:15.680She's really funny, and they pressured the club to let me back in, and so they did because I had these really strong male comics who were well-known, who were traveling through Denver, advocate for me.
00:54:35.420So had I not had that, I don't know what would have happened, but they kind of treated me like a nice sister.
00:54:44.000You know, they were very brotherly to me, and once that happened, I kind of took off.
00:54:53.780And that was only a matter of about four years, then I went to Hollywood, and I had one of those overnight things that happened.
00:55:03.660I was there one night, and I got all these breaks and ended up on The Tonight Show.
00:55:09.760And my first time on The Tonight Show, Julio Iglesias was a guest and picked me to go on tour with him, and I got my TV show from that.
00:55:18.620So it was really a matter of one night.
00:55:23.080So why did Iglesias decide that a comedy show was a good way to open his concerts?
00:55:29.560Well, everybody had a comic opening for him back then, and I was doing housewife jokes, and his fans were women, and he thought it would be a good idea.
00:55:46.540I had not ever really been in front of big crowds before because I had just been in Denver, but to play the Astrodome in front of 50,000 people as just a stand-up comic, it was overwhelming and fantastic to stand there on stage in front of that many people.
00:56:05.660And here, the laughter coming down off the walls, like it's raining down from heaven, it was just wonderful.
00:56:15.420And we did that all through the United States.
00:56:18.980And so that made me more efficient as a comic, you know, and more excited.
00:56:31.500Oh, to be able to, as Mitzi Shore called it, who's the mother of all of us stand-up comics, really, from the comedy store in L.A., she would always say, your job is to deliver the mail.
00:56:45.540You were up there for two minutes, and you didn't deliver the mail.
00:56:49.320You were fumpering and humpering, and you weren't delivering the mail.
00:57:11.840And, you know, I had famous comic friends who they befriended and mentored me, like, you know, I met Rodney Dangerfield, and he chose me to play his wife.
00:57:28.040And, you know, Bob Hope, even, and Phyllis Diller, and Dick Gregory, Richard Pryor, all these people I could name that I love so much, would sit around and speak with me about comedy, and they taught me about removing the fat.
00:57:45.240Even an extra word is making you less efficient, because you want to say the least amount of words and the perfect amount of rhythm with the right inflection and expression, and, you know, that's a lot of stuff.
00:58:12.100Because they might be laughing really hard for a long time, and that screws up your punchline.
00:58:17.420And so you kind of get mad, like, shut up, I'm trying to deliver the punchline, and you're laughing.
00:58:21.800But then you go, hey, they're supposed to, that's what you're here for.
00:58:25.220Just, you know, you're going to have to chill.
00:58:27.100So you have to figure out, how am I going to navigate this to get the best punchline?
00:58:33.240Because I know it's a good punchline, and I want a huge laugh.
00:58:37.040I don't just, you know, because I monitor the laughs we all do, like, oh, I'm only getting a six when it should have been an eight.
00:58:45.020You know, you're just, the thing about my boyfriend is a musician, too, and we always talk about music and comedy is just a great way of being in the now.
00:58:58.340You know, you're not thinking about yesterday, tomorrow, nothing, even a minute ago.
00:59:02.260Well, you just have to be in the now to deliver the mail, you know, deliver the punch, deliver the art.
00:59:11.080Yeah, well, so you're touching there on a lot of motifs with regard to the sacredness, let's say, of comedy as well.
00:59:18.860It's like, well, you have to separate the wheat from the chaff, so you have to be efficient.
00:59:22.800I love Mitch Hedberg for that reason, because he could just deliver, like, God, amazing, amazing ability to just deliver nonstop short jokes and often so perfect.
00:59:33.240So, and then you talked about plate spinning.
00:59:37.760One of the things I really find fun about lecturing, and I think this is one of the things that makes my lectures akin to a comedic act,
00:59:45.060is that I like to bring five or six stories that I haven't told together and then to see if I can weave them so that right near the end of the lecture,
00:59:56.660they all come together and make the same point.
00:59:58.680We call that callback, so that, you know, when you build the story and you get to where you're reminding them that you were talking about that before and, you know, make the relationship come together.
01:00:12.740Those are the most fun when a callback will occur to you and you, because you will get the biggest laugh and applause on callbacks.
01:02:04.960Well, there's, and it's interesting, though, too, because you said that that often happens when you've written, you know, three pages of second-rate material.
01:02:14.760To get those moments, you have to put in that counterproductive work, too.
01:02:20.820I mean, when I'm writing, like, I throw away 80%, 90% of what I write.
01:02:26.780And that's often painful because, well, when I was finishing up my last book, which was only a week ago, like, I was cutting half chapters that took me a whole month to write.
01:02:36.800It's like, but it doesn't matter, right, because the fundamental issue is that you conserve that wheat and you get rid of the chaff.
01:02:44.980And the more that you get rid of that second-rate, the better you have, the better what's left over is.
01:02:50.600And, you know, the other thing that's kind of sacred about the comedic act is that you said that you're in the moment, is that you really have to pay attention to the audience and not be afraid of them.
01:03:03.160Because then you can feel where everyone is, like you're having a conversation with someone, because you are when you're on stage, even if it's a monologue.
01:03:11.120The audience has to be along for the ride.
01:03:13.500And that's where you can capitalize on timing.
01:03:21.360I can be funny on stage, but it has to be spontaneous.
01:03:24.020I've never really learned the art of telling a joke that I already knew.
01:03:29.820It isn't a skill that I've managed to develop, but I can see the connection with the comedic world by watching comedians pay attention to the audience.
01:03:56.800It's been hard for me also to learn, because I'm often lecturing about serious things, and I'll throw in a joke.
01:04:02.500It's been hard for me to learn to take the time to let the audience have a bit of a breather around the joke, you know, and not to rush ahead.
01:04:15.220But, you know, taking a drink of your Coke, you know, we all have learned those little things to let them catch up to you, let them catch their breath, reset their brain.
01:04:30.120Because especially if you've taken them into new territory, they need a little rest, you know, and so do you.
01:05:51.200Because you're nowhere, you can't be funny unless you're paying attention.
01:05:54.340You have to be, as you said, right in the moment.
01:05:57.060You have to see what's the right next thing to say to keep the conversation flowing, to throw in something from left field, but not to left field.
01:06:11.680You have to be, you know, when you get real meta with it, it's like, well, you're kind of in the past, the present, and the future all in the same now.
01:06:53.860Because, like, I was so sharp, and, you know, you're telling your friends, I was on it.
01:07:00.320I, you know, I did, you know, one more bragging to each other, you know, or explaining to each other.
01:07:06.860But, yeah, it's a heightened awareness thing.
01:07:11.720And I don't know, you're just, if you're funny in life, you're even funnier on stage because you've got the stress and the pressure of, I better be good.
01:07:48.720And then, of course, it doesn't work because I screw up the timing.
01:07:51.160But there are few things more awkward than making a joke that isn't funny.
01:07:55.800And you said you played in some pretty rough places.
01:07:58.640And, obviously, you exposed yourself to enough of that to.
01:08:02.540But I'm curious about why you were able to tolerate that to begin with.
01:08:06.100Because it's actually pretty painful to tell a joke that doesn't work, especially if you know it's funny and you just screwed it up.
01:08:12.380So, what do you think it was that impelled you to get through those bouts of self-consciousness that, you know, paralyzed most people to the point where they won't, you know, people are terrified of public speaking, much less doing stand-up comedy.
01:08:29.000So, how and why did you persevere through that?
01:08:35.560But it was a, I, I'll, because it was such a, I think it's because it was such a, so, it was such a survival mechanism in my family and my childhood.
01:08:50.320And it was a self-defense mechanism for me to survive a lot of crazy and painful things that it, in a way, I talk, I'm friends with Mike Tyson, you know, and it's a lot like boxing.
01:09:11.780I always talked about, we always compared when we talked about it, it's so much jousting.
01:09:20.320It's mental jousting to be on stage and to stay in control of one woman, you know, with, with no props, with no orchestra, with no video, just stay in control of a, you know, 5,000 seat room, just with your voice.
01:09:36.820Because it's a lot of mental jousting and, well, they're not going to defeat me, not after what I went through as a kid.
01:09:46.220I'm not going to let them defeat me because I can't be defeated.
01:11:50.820Well, I especially, I think that's especially the case if you're a comedian who's popular among the working class, you know, because working class people, the sensible ones.
01:12:02.320And I think most working class people over about 40 are pretty damn sensible.
01:12:07.920That doesn't necessarily mean they're particularly articulate, you know, and people can be wise without being articulate.
01:12:14.640And then if you're a working class comedian, then you have the, as you pointed out, you have the opportunity and the privilege of articulating that.
01:12:40.080Part of the joy of it is when I was on my TV show was, I would think, oh, here's something that some fat lady or some fat guy is going to say at the water fountain at work.
01:12:55.600So it's like arming people who may have suffered or felt, you know, marginalized.
01:13:05.560Here's a little bit of something for you, you know, because when I'd watched comedians as a kid with my dad on Ed Sullivan and hear Richard Pryor people, man, I felt like I was being gifted, especially Pryor.
01:15:19.220And so I started at age 28 to tell jokes.
01:15:24.960But the real thing is, when I was little and we'll watch TV and see, like, Father Knows Best and all these shows, I'd look around and go, hell, this is nothing like my family.
01:15:36.060Nobody has diabetes and none of the men are fat and covered in hair.
01:21:57.060One of the things that we've been dancing around here is the notion that the truth stated most perfectly is comedic.
01:22:05.820And isn't that amazing that what you get with the right kind of truth at the right moment is like a burst of pleasure, a release of tension.
01:23:09.820There isn't anything that's more fun than that.
01:23:11.760I was just thinking when I ran for president in 2012 on the Peace and Freedom Party, which my idol Dick Gregory also ran on that party as a presidential candidate in the 60s.
01:23:28.140And they say had votes really been tabulated correctly, he might have actually won.
01:23:37.520But, you know, considering the fact that he wasn't on every state ballot, but that always intrigued me.
01:28:24.220And I'm just loving that, the conversation with—conversations with intelligent people and fighting the good fight, trying to wake people up, trying to say the things that aren't—that are, like, missing.
01:28:41.060I like to go to the places that are not really being talked about.
01:28:53.460I pick them by—well, mostly it's people who call and want to be on, because a lot of people are calling and wanting to be on, which is flattering.
01:29:05.160And I'm like, yeah, I'd love to interview.
01:29:08.500I just had Tulsi Gabbard on, and that was a fantastic interview because—
01:29:17.140I mean, I also live in Hawaii part of the year.
01:29:20.020And to be able to talk about Hawaii and how it creates a different kind of culture and a person with a different sort of point of view than the mainland, we got to talk about that and then talk about politics.
01:29:34.020Of course, you know, I'm a huge Trump supporter, and so I like to talk about that and what that means.
01:29:41.040To me, it means populism and the awakening of populism, which I think that's the whole point of everything.
01:29:55.240What do you think of Trump as a comedian?
01:30:17.460But I read through that, and I thought, oh, man, like, he's definitely underappreciated as a comedian because, like, he's very pointed, like, very, very pointed.
01:30:39.440He's just hilarious, and people love it.
01:30:41.680That's what I appreciate most about him is, you know, how funny he is.
01:30:47.980And, you know, when they don't like you, like, when they don't like me, and they start writing your jokes up as if they're serious, that's serious, too.
01:30:58.060Just to be part of that or read it or watch it, it's like how arrogant they are.
01:31:03.200That would be like, you know, remember Henny Youngman's joke, Take My Wife, Please?
01:31:21.500Well, that's also one of the real dangers about being funny and telling jokes, because a really good joke taken out of context often looks very dark and bad, right?
01:31:37.980It has to be, because it's something that only works in the moment.
01:31:55.480But, you know, they had been trying to do that to me since I first walked into Hollywood, because I thought it was like, how dare she, who didn't go to Harvard, has no degree, how dare she reach people?
01:32:20.800Well, and, you know, Trump has faced that too, eh?
01:32:23.960I mean, he's always been, my impression is that he's always been an outsider to the elites, you know?
01:32:31.880And I also think that's part of the reason that he's attractive to working-class people is, you know, it's partly because they look at Trump, they look at an Ivy League-educated, what do you call them, academiced individual, and think, well, that's outside of my realm of possibility.
01:32:48.180But what Trump represents is something that I could conceivably have.
01:32:52.200So there's an American dream variant there.
01:32:55.460And I know Trump is also good when he's talking to military people, for example, and that's a hard thing.
01:33:01.640That's typically a very hard thing for politicians to pull off.
01:33:05.720I imagine he could probably do that because he's had a fair bit of experience with working-class people on the construction side of his life, which is also a difficult thing to manage.
01:33:17.000He speaks from the hip and from the heart.
01:33:44.580But Trump was a shock to the system of that because he's like, we can do better and we can use, you know, everything at our disposal to make things better and make it better for our people.
01:34:00.360Nobody had ever heard anything like that since Kennedy.
01:34:03.880And it's a shock to that system of, you know, that big boat they don't want rocked.
01:34:10.060And, of course, I was so excited because I love rocking that boat, you know?
01:35:53.640Well, my favorite example is when we left Egypt and, you know, the people who left slavery, the Israelites there, the tribes, they've just been taken out and had the sea open for them.
01:36:20.240You know, they had all these great miracles.
01:36:21.860They get to the other side dry and alive, and the first thing they do is start bitching about.
01:37:45.460And there's a scene, too, in the story of Adam and Eve when after Adam and Eve fall and Adam is hiding behind a bush because he knows he's naked, God comes along and says, you know, what the hell are you doing hiding from me?
01:38:00.540And Adam says, well, you know that woman you made me?
01:38:03.840And so it's so great because he blames the woman for his trouble and his nakedness and his cowardice, and he blames God at the same time, which is also a very nice little bit of comedic twist.
01:38:16.500And those are great comedic premises, you know, that God gave us because we're supposed to see ourself in them and go, hey, maybe I can...
01:38:26.580Well, we're not supposed to say maybe, but we're supposed to recognize that we need to change that in ourselves.
01:38:32.080Well, yeah, so men should stop blaming women and God, you mean?
01:38:37.380Well, you should be accountable for what you yourself do.
01:39:28.460And that's how you make sure the plagues get worse when you could have just learned the first time.
01:39:33.280Oh, that's a great, that's a great one.
01:39:35.100Well, there's the other part of that too, you know, which also sheds a light on refusal to admit to error, you know, because the Egyptians or the Israelites, they escape from the tyranny.
01:41:42.060Yeah, I think we should delve into that and how you've coped with that and what you plan to do about it in the future and what people should do when they find themselves in that situation and what you've done.
01:41:55.480So, that's what we're, if you guys want to come over onto the Daily Wire side, everybody watching and listening, I think that's where we're going to go with that.
01:42:02.900And so, thank you very much for talking with me today.
01:42:05.620It was a pleasure walking through your thoughts on comedy with you for sure.
01:42:10.780And I'm looking forward to meeting in person.