Latest / The Joe Rogan Experience / #2557 - Yakov Smirnoff

Transcript

#2557 - Yakov Smirnoff · The Joe Rogan Experience

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: The Joe Rogan Experience.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Let's go, Yakov. What's happening, baby? How are you?
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: I'm doing good.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Good to see you.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Nice to see you.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: I know, Jamie snuck it up on us. Bam! Just
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: turn it on.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Bam!
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: That way you don't have a chance to freak out.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: What's in the bag? What do you got in there?
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Okay, so there are a couple of things.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Oh, a couple of things.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: One is... It's a mural, a piece of the mural
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: that I painted at the Ground Zero. And I thought
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: it would be interesting for you to have.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: You painted a mural at Ground Zero?
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, wow. So that was something. And I actually
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: sent them, Paul Harvey did the rest of the story
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: about that. And I sent them a video if they
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: wanted to.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know if we can play that, unfortunately.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: I think it's got like a copyright to it. Actually,
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: I was in touch. We were told. Isn't that what
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: they said? It would be tough.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Right.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: So there's the mural. There's a photo of the mural.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Right, right. And I was in touch with Paul Harvey Jr.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: asking if that would be okay. And they said it's fine.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but I don't think they own it. You know
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: what I'm saying?
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: They own his voice.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: Right, but it's probably, if it's on Paul Harvey's television show, right?
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: No, no, no.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: A radio show.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: It was a radio, yeah.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: Right, if it's on Paul Harvey's radio show, it's probably copywritten.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: Did we have a problem when we played the Taylor
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Sheridan one? Remember we played that whole thing? It's just
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: an issue? It's an issue.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: It's an issue. We don't want it.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: So anyway, you had a mural. Yeah, that's, and there
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: was a couple of other little, You got to talk
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: into the microphone.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Sorry.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: That's all right.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: You wear headphones if you want. I will. That way
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: you can hear yourself.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: You don't have to.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: This is real. This is real.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: What do you mean?
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: No, like I watch you and I'm in such an
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: awe of what you were able to, your career, your trajectory,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: how you were able to sustain that longevity and then
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: transition to this amazing voice. um it's just it's been
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: an honor to know you and be here so i'm
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: i'm a little nervous.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Well don't be nervous uh because listen it's all just
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: dumb luck there's a giant percentage of it that's dumb
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: luck that's a fact i mean i'm very persistent that
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: helps but uh this thing this the podcast is a
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: lot of it is luck you know people like talk
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: about like having a vision board i had a vision
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: board i imagined and People say that to me all
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: the time. Like, I'm sure you did that with this show.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: I'm like, I didn't do anything of the sort. I
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: just kept doing it and it got big. But it's
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: just people talking. Simple. Just like you and I talk
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: in the green room.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: We're talking here. It's no big deal. It's just a
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: bunch of people get to listen to it.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Yes. Yes.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: It's nothing that spectacular. The spectacular thing is my guests.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: That's the fortunate thing. I'm the fortunate one because I
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: get to talk to so many cool people. Look at
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: you with your fucking American flag on your... On your
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: phone cover. Look at that.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: Don't get fooled by the accent, ladies and gentlemen. You know,
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: we were talking about your story in the green room
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: and I was like, we have to do a podcast
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: because your story is so crazy how When the wall fell,
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: so did your career.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: Like, you had this massive career. I remember you from
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: The Tonight Show.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: I remember you all the time.
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: You know, in Russia. You always have these jokes about Russia.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: And it was great because, like, you were a Russian
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: comedian doing stand-up in the United States.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: And then once the Soviet Union fell.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Yes. David Letterman had a top ten list. of things
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: that will now change, that the Soviet Union is no
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: longer there. And I made number one on the list.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Yakov Smirnoff will be out of work. And I thought
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: it was humorous because I was living in Pacific Palisades
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: next to Tom Hanks and Arnold Schwarzenegger. I mean, I
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: thought the American dream will never end. And all of
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: a sudden it Six months later, none of my contracts
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Reno, Tahoe, none of them
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: were renewed. And I could not find work, literally. I mean,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: I tried back to clubs, and they wouldn't have me either.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: What?
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It was the comparison. There was Van Meter that
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: was impersonator of John F. Kennedy. He was... an impersonator,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: was very popular at that time. And then after the assassination,
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: his career went nowhere right away. And so somewhat, in
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: some ways, it was similar to that, that I was
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: associated with the Soviet Union, and my humor was associated
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: with that. And it was helping, I was helping... President
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: Reagan write jokes for his speeches for when he would
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: go to Moscow. You have a picture somewhere, Jamie, of...
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, it was amazing. All of a sudden, I
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: was like a joke supplier for the White House. And
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: it was... My career was just growing higher and higher.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, it was gone.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: And I was... It doesn't make any sense.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: I mean.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: you still had great jokes.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: And I'm sure people still wanted to see you. That's
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: what didn't make any sense.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: It wasn't, I guess I wasn't relevant because they associated
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: me so much with that. And so I started after
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: not having work and not being able to pay mortgage,
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: I started looking for a place where they did not
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: know that the Soviet Union collapsed. And I ended up
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: In Branson, Missouri. I joke about this in my show,
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: but it was a blessing in disguise because I was— all
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, my humor was family-friendly, and this town
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: is very much like that. And they embraced me, and
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: I— I mean, it wasn't right away, but it grew and
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: grew and grew.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: Wow. And what is Branson like? Because I would always
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: hear about it. Like, it was always— Like, we would
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: hear about it in L.A., that it was this, like,
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: freaky Bible town, that it's, like, creationist museums and stuff
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: like that. Like, here's a reconstruction of the Ark. Like,
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: that's the kind of stuff that you would hear. Obviously,
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: I never went, so I don't know.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I didn't want to go to Branson, okay? I
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: was living in L.A. I didn't—I mean, I— Did you
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: move to Missouri? Eventually, I had to, yeah, because I
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: had to sell my house. I mean, the whole thing
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: went— So what happened is I didn't know where to go.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, it literally was scary. I have two little
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: kids at that time, and I can't find work. So
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: my agent calls me, and he said, Will Nelson is
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: doing this Farm Aid concert, and would you like to
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: co-host with him? And I didn't have it. I said, sure,
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: but I don't think farmers would know who I am
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: And I got there, 50,000 people, I did my SAT,
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: and they gave me a standing ovation. And I went like, wow,
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: this is, I didn't expect that. So I go to
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: say goodbye and say thank you to Willie. And I
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: opened the door and the smoke comes out. And I
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: was proud to say that I didn't do drugs, but
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: after I opened that door, I couldn't say that anymore.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: So through the smoke, he goes, Yakov, you should go
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: to Branson. They'll love you there. And I was like, okay,
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: I heard about it, but I was not sure. So
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: I go to Branson just to check it out. And
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: it's March of 1993. And I've been struggling now for
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: two years after the Soviet Union collapsed. And I go in,
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: and I walk into one of the shows, and it
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: was Soji Tabuchi's show. It was a Japanese fiddle player
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: that was just playing country music. I didn't know about him.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: And I walk in, and it's a matinee, and there
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: are 2,000 people in that room.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: Whoa.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: And I'm going, what is going on? Right? This is crazy.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: I was in Vegas. Parallel universe. Right. So then I
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: go Andy Williams' show, and it's the same thing, 2,000
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: people full. And I'm going, well, if they can do this,
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: I can do it as well. And so in May,
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: I rented the small theater, and I just set my
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: shop there, put my name on the wall, and I got,
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: for a show, 17 people came in. And I'm going, oh, boy, I...
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: I don't have a place to go, but this is
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: not going to work. But then I started doing, I
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: was pretty creative. I started, I said, I'm going to
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: serve breakfast in the showroom. I'll call it yuck in
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: a box. And I'm just going to make my mother
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: recipe of breakfast and people will pass it, eat, and
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: hopefully more people will come. So I would do two
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: shows a day in the morning and in the evening,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: dinner and breakfast. And little by little, it grew, it grew,
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: it grew. And then a year later, my average was
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: like 400 people a show. And then the buses, that's
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: the big business there, is the people come by bus
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: in those days, a lot of them. And they would just...
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: discovered me, and I started to become more and more popular,
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: and then I bought 2000 Seat Theater, and now I
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: entertain over 6 million people there, and it became, yeah,
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: this is kind of.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: That's your theater.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: Look at you.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's been a very successful... journey overall, I'm,
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm kind of the only celebrity or national
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: known person there now.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: Wow. And so how often do you do shows there?
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: Now I got down to like 30 shows a year
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: towards fall. But I used to do 400 a year
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: just to make more money and People were coming, and
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: it worked out for me.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: Well, good for you for adapting. I'm sure that must
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: have been very nerve-wracking.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: It was.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: Especially with young children.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: Big time.
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: And you're from another country. You come to America. You're
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: killing it. You think, oh, my God, I'm the American dream.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: This is incredible.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: And then it's nightmare all of a sudden, and you.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: Don't know what to do. That's the problem with the
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: world before social media. Yeah.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: Because before social media, like you couldn't just put some
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: clips out there and show that you're still performing and
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: still going places.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: Because back then there was like a narrative. And if
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: that narrative got out, you were done. You know, so
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: the narrative was canceled.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was canceled. And I didn't have anything to
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: do with it. It's not like I had a scandal
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: or something. It just I was helping Reagan to chisel
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: the wall down. But there was a writing in the wall.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: That I didn't see. It says get a day job,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: you know, and I didn't see it.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: So that's how it happened.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: It's amazing that you found Branson. What would happen if
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: you didn't? That's what's really crazy. Do you think you
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: would have been able to figure out a way to tour?
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: Was it that clubs wouldn't book you or people wouldn't come?
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: Both. Because people were not buying tickets, the clubs didn't
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: book me. And the whole effect is just, you know.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: So it was just the fall of the Soviet Union
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: that people got in their mind, oh, Yakov is done. Yeah.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: Wow. It was that quick.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: That's what's fucked up about it is because, like, you
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: have very funny jokes. I did. Like, you're a good comic.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: It's like the idea that you can't be a great
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: comic and talk about other stuff is so stupid.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: But what happened, it was an evolution for me. I
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: think that... I look back and I'm going, thank you
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: for this, because it was kind of a one-note tune.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: And then it made me, forced me to go, okay,
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: that topic is not necessarily the right thing right now.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: It's not, nobody cares because Soviet Union not there and
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: nobody's scared of it because I was kind of like,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: you know, it was a headache. uh, from the, you know, or, uh,
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: the pain in the butt, uh, Soviet Union and I'm
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: preparation age and I, they used me. And then after
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: swelling and itching went away, you don't need it anymore.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: So that's how it happened. So, so I went into it.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: That also coincided with my divorce and, um, And I
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: was struggling trying to figure out what direction do I go.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: And I realized that I was helping the Cold War
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: to end in some ways by being involved with Reagan
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: and helping with that. And when that happened, I figured,
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: you know, my divorce is happening. I know laughter helped me.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: the world become a better place. Why is there laughter
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: in the beginning of the relationship with men and women?
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: And then when there's divorce, the only people laughing are attorneys.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: And I put that question to my audience. So it
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: became kind of like my laboratory of laughter. I just
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: start asking people, I said, how many of you remember
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: laughter being part of that honeymoon stage of your relationship
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: and they all applaud. And I go, how many would
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: go on a second date if you didn't have laughter
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: on the first date? And no one applauded. So I
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: became like, this is kind of a universal thing that
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: I was, my dad was an engineer and inventor, so
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: my brain is kind of constantly, I'm looking for reverse engineering.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: Why is it that laughter goes away in a relationship.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: So as comedians, we gauge our relationship with the audience
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: with laughter every time.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: Did the relationship fall apart because you had to move
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: to Missouri?
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: Or was it just going south? Yeah, it added to this.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: But I think I was looking for the root of this,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: more like what is that that I am missing that
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: I didn't do? Because, you know, I was.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: You had a gimmick. I had a gimmick.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: But that was with my audience. What was happening with
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: my wife? Why was that falling apart? So I start
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: seeing the parallel. And the kids were little at that time.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: And I was trying to explain to them what was
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: going on. And I can show you what I did.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: I brought this with me. I showed this to, I know,
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: show and tell. I brought it for my, I started,
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: I took magnets and I was showing my kids. I said, look,
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: mommy and daddy, and we attracted one another and we
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: had you and we had love and laughter and what
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: was happening. And then something happened. And I don't know
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: if you can show it, Jamie.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: There's people listening as well.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: The magnets, they attract. But then when things don't go well,
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: they repel. So I was going, what is it that's
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: attracting us and what is it that's repelling us? And
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: then after doing this, and I went to University of Pennsylvania,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: got my master's degree in psychology, got my doctorate degree
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: at Pepperdine. I mean, I was digging in.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: You did all this while you were doing Branson?
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: While I was performing Branson, yeah.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: How were you doing that?
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: I would travel. I would just go do a weekend.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: I would take my schedule, make it the way I wanted,
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: and whatever I had to do, I would just travel
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: to Pennsylvania to— And do that.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: And you were taking in-person classes?
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: But how were you doing that if you were doing four?
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: You were on the weekends.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: On the weekends.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: You can do that?
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: There were classes, yes. Wow.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: So you would work all week and then fly on
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: the weekends. Why were you doing that?
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting. That sounds exhausting. I was searching for
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: a purpose. I think that was, I noticed something that
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: was universal. And I wanted to prove that scientifically to
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: myself and I did because it was important to me.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: And what I figured out, and as a comedian, you'll
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: understand that every time we tell a joke, this setup
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: is we're meeting their needs. They're interested in that topic.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: You and I talked in the green room. Like you
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: need more topics, for example, for your one hour more
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: to add. And so the topics that you're looking for
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: are you're meeting the needs of people. They aren't curious.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: And then your humor is the punchline, and that creates laughter.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: If you don't meet their needs, if they're not interested,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: then your humor doesn't matter much. So in the relationship,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: the same thing happens. So if I put this, and
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: I know people are listening, but they can maybe picture that.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: If you put needs in the middle, then you— You're.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: Talking about magnets. You've got to remember a lot of
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: these people.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: Are not watching. Okay, so I'm going to abandon that.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's abandon that. This episode is brought to you
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  Speaker 2: off your first purchase of a website or domain. I
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: get what you're saying.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The needs is the flexible thing in our humor
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: stays the same. But the needs or the setup is different.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: So if every business is successful when they figure out
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: what is the need. Like Apple, for example, they say,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: we develop product that you don't know you need, but
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: then you can't live without it. That's their model. So
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: the same thing, a restaurant, if they figured out what
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: need is that community has, they're successful. You figured out
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: what is the need that people have, and they're listening
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: to you, and they love it.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: Is it a need? Like we're talking, the word need
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: is a weird one. Because for me, need is like
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: food and shelter and community. That's the real needs. Everything
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: else is desires. Well, in... Or interests.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: In the hierarchy of needs with Maslow, they just go
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: higher and higher. I see what you're saying. So when
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: you find, he called them needs. I couldn't find a better.
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: No, that makes more sense now. Yeah, I get it. Yeah, um.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: I feel like the most important thing about comedy is
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: you have to actually be interested in what you're talking about. Obviously,
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: it has to be funny. That's the most important thing.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: But other than that, the second most important thing or
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: the thing that really resonates with people is when someone's
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: on stage. and they're talking about something that means something
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: to them, I get invested. I'm invested in people that
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: are fascinated with stuff. I'm invested with people that have
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: hobbies that they love. Even if I have no interest
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: in it at all, I want to hear them talk
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: about it.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: Exactly. You found that whatever you want to call it, desire, need,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it, but whoever zooms in
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: on that and understands it, they're successful in what they do.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: So in marriage, my focus switched from the Cold War
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: between countries to Cold War between couples. And understanding that
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: men and women are different is very important because they
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: have different needs. And so part of my dissertation was
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: to give that understanding so then The person is not
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: like searching and doesn't know what he's looking for. I'm
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: married and I'm happily married now. And my main goal
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: is to figure out what does my wife need. And
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: if I can anticipate it, then we have love and
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: laughter and it's living there. But if I don't or
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: if she doesn't, then we start arguing and that happens
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: in every family. So... I'm easier. So there's a book
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: by Dr. Willard Harley called His Needs, Her Needs. And
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: what he did, he was dealing with a lot of
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: couples that was getting a divorce and he was trying
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: to help them in marriage counseling. And he asked, he
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: identified like 10 emotional needs and he asked these people
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: to prioritize men and women. And it was interesting that
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: he said, I was shocked that five top needs for
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: men were totally different from five top needs for women.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: So if we don't know that, so the needs for
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: women were affection, conversation, openness and honesty, family commitment, and
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: financial support. Not for every woman, but that was majority.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: And then for men, it was sexual fulfillment. It was admiration.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: Sexual fulfillment again. But it was admiration, attractive spouse, recreational companion,
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: and domestic support.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: Makes men seem really base.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: They are.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: Base and stupid. We are.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: We are.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: That sexual attraction is number uno.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: And then it's in there. How's it in there twice?
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: That doesn't make any sense. No, I just fucked it up. No,
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: I was joking around.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was joking around.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's funny. Like admiration is a funny one. That's funny.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: Admiration is huge. That's hilarious.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: You need admiration from your wife. That's hilarious.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: Well, but it's not because if you think that I
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: ask the audience, so here is what I do in
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: my show.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: Uh-huh.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: And it's they're laughing, but they're also learning something. I say,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: how many of you gentlemen here at least once in
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: a while would like to hear your wife said, you're
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: such a good man. Thanks for doing things for us.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: Applaud.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: And few people applaud. And I go, well, not every
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: man is applauding because they're scared and they laugh. And
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: then I go, so let me ask you the same
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: question from an opposite point of view. Any of you
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: gentlemen disagree with that? Silence. Then I go, you see, ladies,
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: you used to do it. You don't do it now,
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: but you used to do it in the beginning. That's
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: what that attraction was, was the man needed that. And
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: women don't. They don't want to be acknowledged or admired
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: for what they do. They want to be loved for
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: who they are, kind, beautiful, smart, selfless, And I ask women,
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: is that true? And they applaud. And it's subconscious, but
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: I know for me that's a very important thing, that
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: if I'm doing something, all I need is, like, thank you.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: And sometimes it's overlooked, and that doesn't feel right.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: That's interesting. It definitely resonates that men don't necessarily care
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: if a woman does a thing. Like if she's really
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: good at a thing. Right. Like men, I mean, this
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: is obviously a great generalization because there are probably some
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: men that one of the things they love is the
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: talent that a woman possesses or the drive.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: But for the most part, what men want is someone
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: to be nice. Be nice and be pretty. Like my
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: friends have joked around about this before, my single friends,
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: about like I don't give a fuck if a girl
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: works at McDonald's. Is she nice? Is she pretty? Is
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: she nice?
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: And is she not completely annoying to talk to? Is
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: she fun to talk to? You don't care what her
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: job is. If she's cool and she's fun, but a
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: woman meeting a cool, good-looking guy that's nice that works
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: at McDonald's, you fucking loser. No shame to the people
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: who work at McDonald's. I worked fast food when I
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: was younger, too. The first place I worked at was
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: a burger place called Newport Creamery. I worked at a
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: place called Papa Gino's.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: It was a good place.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: Italian fast food place. Nothing wrong with working at McDonald's.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: Point is, women don't respect it for whatever reason, especially
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: the women that want to have a family and settle
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: down and all that jazz. They look at a guy
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: working at McDonald's like, you don't have any ambition. And
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: that's the thing that women want from men that men
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: don't seem to really care that much from women. Women
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: want a guy that has ambition and men do not
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: care generally. Although I got to say, Phil Hartman... When
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: he obviously did not have a good marriage because his
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: wife killed him and then killed herself. Obviously didn't have
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: a good marriage, right? When he had almost got divorced
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: a few times. And I remember one time he and
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: I were having a conversation about it. And he said,
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: he goes, he goes, if I fucking get divorced, he goes,
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: my next wife, she has to like something. He goes,
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: I don't give a fuck what it is. I don't
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: care if it's a rock client. You have to be
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: into something. So that was his thing was like that.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: He was really into things. Like he got his pilot's license.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: Like the place that I actually bought in California, I
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: found out about that part of California because of him
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: because he took me up on a plane. And he
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: was explaining to me like there's other counties that you
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: could live in. And these counties like they have land.
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: It's like, yeah, it's a drive, but it's like more
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: peaceful and relaxed. You don't have to be like in
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: the heart of everything. So he was into being a pilot.
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: He played music. He always had a bunch of different
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: interests that he was pursuing on top of being an
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: actor and being a comedic actor. And so he was
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: really frustrated. One of the things he was frustrated is
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: that his wife didn't have any ambition. She didn't have
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: any interests.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: Well, but she also probably didn't admire him for what.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: his accomplishments were?
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: I think she wanted to be famous as well. She
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: probably shouldn't talk about this too much, And I think
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: there was probably some resentment in his success. I think
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: she was trying to be famous as well.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: Well, that's like those magnets repel. Yeah.
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: Well, it's like sometimes when a couple– I've seen it
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: the opposite. Like a friend of mine, she was dating
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: this guy who was a comedian. And when she started
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: doing well, he started getting really shitty with her. He
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: started getting very resentful and he would be insulting. And
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: she could tell that there was– he was not happy
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: that she was doing well.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: Because she started to take off and he wasn't.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: And it was like he was very frustrated and they
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: broke up. And she was like, that always really hurt
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: because I really felt like if I was doing well,
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: if he loved me, he was going to be happy too.
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: He wasn't happy.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: It's nice if this was discussed in the beginning of
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: the relationship.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: Well, sometimes the man doesn't know and the woman doesn't
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: know how they're going to behave. You don't know what
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: your character flaws are until you're presented by something that
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: tests you.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. Absolutely. So my goal was to understand it better.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: And there's a painting I sent Jamie. I painted this
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: painting that kind of helped me If you can find it,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: it's a tree of love. And it helped me to
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: understand better what my role is because my first marriage,
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: I did not know what my role was. I met
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: a woman, American girl, beautiful. Everything was great. When I
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: shook her hand or she shook my hand, she almost
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: broke my hand. And my... subconscious was like my mother
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: was very strong in my parents' relationship. Mom was the
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: leader and dad was creative, wonderful man, but he would
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: follow her. And I subconsciously went with that script, the
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: manuscript of my life. And so this helped me to
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: see something that I wanted, who do I want to be?
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: I wanted to be that strong man who is able
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: to give life to a woman that she can be free, creative,
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: bring our fruit, children, so she doesn't have to worry
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: about that. In my previous marriage, I didn't understand that.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: So on stage, I came across like I was this,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: you know, strong guy who was invited to the White
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: House to perform. I was, you know, I was commanding
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: a big group of 2,000, 3,000 people. And she saw that.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: And then in the relationship, I became like, Now she
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: knows what to do. I don't have to do anything.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: So I said, I do. And I didn't do it.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: I didn't know what it was, what my role was.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: So it took me 20 years and all of that
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: education to get to that place that who do I
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: want to become to attract a woman that wants to
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: be In that role.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: Damn, dude, you thought about this shit deep.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: I did.
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: You were going through it, man.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: I got to tell you.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: You were going through it because you're going through that,
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: which is always a bummer for people, especially with children
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: when you're getting divorced. But then on top of that,
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: your career goes away because the Soviet Union collapsed.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: And then you said, fuck it. That's very admirable. You said,
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: fuck it. I'm going to get educated and figure out
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: what's wrong with me.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Yes. And I don't know if you have a
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: picture of my wife and the kids. And a kid.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: Now I'm 75 and I have a one-year-old. What? Yes.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: When did you get married? How long did you?
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: Seven years ago.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: So you spent like 20 years single. Yeah. Just trying
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: to figure yourself out.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Damn, man.
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: You went on a walk through the wilderness.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: I went to all Tony Robbins. What? Yeah. All of
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: his trainings. I mean, I needed to become, I wasn't
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: that strong person. I was... more like my dad, and
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: I needed to become who I wanted to be. I
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: wanted a woman to trust me that I can sustain
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: no matter what. And I have a feeling there's my wife.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: Did you meet your wife in Missouri?
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: No, she is from Ukraine. That's an interesting... You have
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: a one-year-old?
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: Dude, it's time to get you on some peptides. That's crazy.
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: You're 75, you have a one-year-old?
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: I do.
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: We got to go to work on you. We've got
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: to keep you alive. That's nuts.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: It's wonderful.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: You're almost 20 years older than me and you have
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: a one-year-old. That's crazy.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm excited. That's crazy. I'm excited because I figured
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: that I figured out something. So the way, so I was,
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: you'll get a kick out of it. So I was
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: married to an American woman. Then I was dating other women.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: It wasn't happening. So I took my kids, grown kids,
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: to Ukraine. And I want them to show I'm from Odessa.
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: So when they're with them, they were like probably in
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: their 20s. And so and on the way back, I
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: forgot my passport on the plane from Odessa to Kiev.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: And I had to stay behind for a day to
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: get a temporary passport. So I went to a park
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: and I was waiting for this. And I see this
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: lunchtime and this gorgeous women are going to lunch and back.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: And they're like, I feel like I'm in Paris watching
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: a runway show. I mean, it's like beautiful women. And
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: I'm going, I can relate to that. I would like
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: one of those women.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: Wait a minute. But how old are you at this time?
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: That was 10 years ago, so 65.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: And how old are these ladies?
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: Well, my wife is 42, so in their 20s, 30s.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: 42 and 75 doesn't seem offensive for whatever reason. You
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: know what I mean? Like 20 and what would be
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: the equivalent? Well, I wasn't looking. I wasn't looking. I
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: wasn't a playboy. I was looking for a wife.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: I believe you. But women don't care about that. If
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: they find out that a man is like that much
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: older than a woman, they kind of get upset.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: Well, probably that culture is a little bit different than
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: American culture. And so what I did, I said, okay,
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: how do I do that? So I went to Ukraine
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: and I tried to meet women through like agencies that
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: introduce people. It wasn't working a couple of times. Then
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: I decided I'm going to just hire three different agencies
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: at the same time. And I'm just going to go
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: for two weeks. And I had 51 dates.
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: So you went to Ukraine just to meet a woman?
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: I went to look for a wife. It wasn't a woman.
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: Right, but it has to be a woman.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so... Yes, so that's what happened.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: And I would just have breakfast, lunch, and dinner with
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: different ladies. And it didn't take me very long because
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: I had all that training and education. I was new.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: And I was looking for a woman who has a
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: father that is really good for her. I mean, I
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: knew that if the father... If they're afraid of masculine energy,
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: if they're being with the abusive dad or something is
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: not right, they will not trust my energy. And that
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: was for the handshake. I could tell pretty much if
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: that woman and all 51 dates were, it didn't work.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, I just knew in a couple of seconds
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: that it wasn't right, but then I have to eat,
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: you know, so I gained weight. just because I had
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: to eat all this time, three meals a day.
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: You were going out with three different girls a day
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: to try to find a wife?
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: That sounds kind of crazy.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: Well, so then I go, it didn't work, right? So
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: what do I do? So now I decide I'm going
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: to do a seminar in Kiev. On relationships. Because I
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: was teaching at Missouri State University at that time. So
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: a professor from America is going to teach this course
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: on relationships and laughter. Right? That was my hook.
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: But you did this all just to meet women.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: I did.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm not ashamed of it because I was very focused.
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: Listen, it's pragmatic.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: Very focused.
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: You have a good strategy.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: Very focused.
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: It seems like the same strategy that led you to
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: serve breakfast in Branson. You're an industrious guy.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: And get out of the Soviet Union.
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: You find solutions.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: Exactly, exactly. So then I need somebody to promote this
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: and to find the venue and bring women. But the
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: logic was that the women who will come to– A
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: seminar are different kind of women that go to those agencies.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: Those agencies, they're hunting for somebody from outside the country.
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: They're looking for somebody. These women were just wanting to
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: know more about the relationship.
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: So what do you mean they're hunting for someone outside
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: the country? So they're trying to escape Ukraine?
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That's what they're doing.
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: So they're trying to find a husband that's going to
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: take them out.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Exactly. So they're more In a masculine energy, they're
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: more like, I'm going to get somebody. And I wasn't
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: into that. I wasn't interested. So someone recommended this lady
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: who can do this, promote this. And that was my
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: future wife. It was my Olivia, who I'm now married to.
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: And when I met her and she promoted this, I
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: already knew that I didn't need the seminar. I just
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: I met somebody that I really wanted to be with.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: And it didn't, it wasn't immediate because we're age difference.
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: So at first I was like, what were you talking about?
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: And I wasn't, I was just professional and doing this professionally.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: But little by little, we started learning about each other.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: And then I invited her to America, proposed to her
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: on her, birthday on a hot air balloon ride. I mean,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: I was, you know.
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: Very romantic.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. That way she could not get out that way.
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: I could give her that. Wow. Yeah.
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: That is a creepy place to propose.
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: To propose, well.
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: Like you're already scared.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: You're prepared.
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: Are you going to take care of me?
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: Please.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: Let's get this thing down to the ground.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: I put a big banner on the ground. Will you
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: marry me? Aww.
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: Aww.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: And And she didn't know how to read English.
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: That's hilarious.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: She did not say yes. And then I opened the ring,
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: and then she said yes.
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: Did she speak Russian? Is that what they speak in Ukraine?
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: Primarily? Is there a Ukrainian language?
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there is. There is. That's the tension between two
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: sides of Ukraine. One is very Western, very Ukrainian. The
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: other one is Russian. And they, Russian speaking don't mind
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: the other side. The other side does mind. So, yeah.
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: Got it. Got it. Well, it's like, what was it
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: like starting out doing stand-up in the Soviet Union? That's
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: where you started, right?
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I did.
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: How old were you?
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: I was 15.
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: And what is it like over there when you're 15?
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: Is there like a version of The Tonight Show in Russia?
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: Well- No, it's a lot. At those days, you know,
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: it was very structured, very Communist Party controlled. So there
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: was only like two comedians in the whole country that
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: were government approved. So they would be on the radio
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: and television. And Nobody else was really doing comedy.
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: What were the comedians like?
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: More like vaudeville.
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: What were their names?
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: Arkady Rykin. You could probably Google him, Arkady Rykin. He
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: was the main guy that I would listen to. And
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: in each apartment, there would be a little speaker that
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: would be on all the time so they could brainwash you. Whoa.
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: You had a speaker in your apartment all the time. Yeah.
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Wow.
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: So, but then on Sunday mornings.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: This is what, 66? Yeah.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah. 51. So, yeah. Yeah. It's about that time.
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: That was the guy. Yeah.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: Wow. That was the guy.
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: Very famous speaker. The only people from America that we
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: saw were Charlie Chaplin, and that's it.
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: Just Charlie Chaplin?
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: Charlie Chaplin.
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: So you thought America was just silent movies?
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: Well, they portrayed it.
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: He did a Charlie Chaplin impersonation.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Wow. Yeah.
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: He's got wacky wigs and shit.
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: I would listen to his, so every other Sunday or
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: every once a month, he would have a different monologue
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: that was written and approved by the Communist Party. Yeah,
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: so I was really into it, so I would record it,
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: and we had a big tape recorder like this, and
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: I would record it, and I would memorize it. And
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: because there was nothing to be approved, because it's already
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: been approved, then I would go to like a club
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: in my... and I would tell jokes, his jokes. And
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: people knew that it was his jokes, but they would laugh.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: And that's how I got my understanding that I really
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: wanted to do that.
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And little by little, then I went to the military,
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: and I did that there kind of as an amateur.
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: So you just stand up for the military?
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but it would be just like holidays, like if
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: it was May Day or October Revolution, they would look
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: to me to entertain. So I would do that. And
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: then I came out of the military, went to college
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: for art degree. My parents didn't think that I could
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: do anything. Comedy would not be like, nobody even thought
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: that that's even a possibility. And so I kept doing
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: it and then start working on the Soviet cruise ships.
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: And they had in the Black Sea, Soviet cruise ships.
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: So I went, they asked me to go and perform
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: there on the cruise ship. Yeah, you're like, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: So it was- How old were you at the time?
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: I was 20, 21. Okay.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: Now I'm getting paid, and I'm getting a cabin. And
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: now prior to that, I lived in a communal apartment
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: with my parents in the same room until I was
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: 26 years old. Whoa. So, yeah. So no phone, nine families.
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: What if your parents wanted to get frisky? They'd tell
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: you to go for a walk?
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: They would go look out the window.
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: Go look out the window? Yeah.
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: Well, I joke about this.
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay, okay.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And then they say, what do you see? What
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: do you see in the window?
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: I might jump out that fucking window. Yeah.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: And they say, what do you see in the window?
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: I said, our neighbors being frisky. And they say, how
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: can you tell us? I said, because their son is
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: looking at me. So that's the joke I tell. But
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: that was my life. And here, all of a sudden,
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: I'm introduced to this So tourists from other countries would
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: take those cruises around Black Sea. And all of a sudden,
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: I'm introduced to this group of people that I was
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: not allowed to talk to, foreigners. We were not allowed.
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: To even communicate. What countries were they from?
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: Germany, Britain, some Americans, some Australians, Yugoslavians, whatever, from Soviet bloc.
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: Who was the president?
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: Brezhnev was the president at that time, yeah. And so
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: I did one week of performances, and then they said,
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: would you like to stay on board? And I said,
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: can I bring my parents with me? Can we give
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: another cabin for them? And they said, no, you don't
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: get any special privileges. We have hundreds of people like you.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: Get out. And I was like, okay. So I left.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: And a couple of hours later, a messenger comes. We
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: have no phones. So it's like messenger comes and brings
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: two sets of tickets for me and my parents. And
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: I never heard that it's even possible, like, that they
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: would go back on their word. So I go on
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: the cruise, and I go to a cruise director. I said,
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: what happened? And he said, well, here's what happened. These
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: ships normally are rented to European companies for like nine
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: months out of the year. And we learned from them
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: that if somebody is valuable, we give them more perks.
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: the captain liked your performance and he told them, the company,
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: that even if you have to give him my own cabin,
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: I want him on the ship. And the light bulb
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: went in my head. I said, wait a minute, wait
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: a minute. Are you saying that in capitalistic world, if
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: you're more talented, you get more things? And they go, yeah.
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: That was, it's hard to imagine. It was like, Changed
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: my life.
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: Well, it's hard to imagine for people that didn't grow
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: up in the environment that you grew up with a
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: speaker in your apartment. Just you saying that to me,
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: my mind is rattled. I was like, oh, my God.
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: They could just broadcast in your apartment anytime they wanted.
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: What a great way to brainwash people.
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: And they would jam, because we had a big radio,
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: and they would jam Voice of America. But my dad
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: would wake up like in the middle of the night.
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: He was wanting to know what's happening out there. And
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: he would sit there and listen to that quietly. And
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: I remember as a kid, I asked dad, what are
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: you listening to in the middle of the night? And
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: he goes, shh, don't let neighbors hear us. This is
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: the voice of America. We're not allowed to listen to it.
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: Wow. So you had to keep it secret? Yeah.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: But at nighttime.
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: How did he listen to it?
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: Just quiet, just sat there.
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: Right, but if they jammed it, how did he listen?
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: No, they would jam it during the day, but at nighttime,
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: they didn't think anybody would wake up at 3 o'clock
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: in the morning and sit there and listen to it.
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: How do they jam it?
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: It's just, I don't know.
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: Say that again? Yeah. I don't know. So they had
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: some way to jam that signal, whatever signal was on.
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: Exactly, exactly, yeah.
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: It's shortwave, so it goes in and out anyway.
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: What did he get out of listening to Voice of America?
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: Like what was he, did he talk about it?
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. I would then start also waking up and listening.
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: And it would be just standard American thing. Give me
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: you're tired, you're hungry, you're poor, something like that. And
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: they would, that there's a Statue of Liberty waiting to
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: greet you. If you come to the United States and
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: he would always say, you know, this this would be
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: something that I would love you to experience. And and
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: my mom was she hated that because she was afraid
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: that we'll get in trouble. And so she didn't want
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: to even talk about this. If I drew a picture
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: as a kid, I would draw a picture of Statue
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: of Liberty. And she was like, don't do that. Don't
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: let anybody see this. We'll get in trouble. And after
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: I experienced the cruises and got to know this different environment,
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: I came home and I go, Mom, Dad, I think
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: we should consider trying to get out. And Mom was
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: like mad at my dad. And my dad stood up,
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: which was good for him at that time. Normally he
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: would just be quiet, but he said to my mom, Clara,
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: would you like your son, when he is my age,
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: sit there by the radio and listen to Voice of America, hoping,
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: wishing that he would be doing something like that? Or
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: would you like him to be in America doing this?
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: And my mom kind of went, you know what's going
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: to happen when we apply for a visa. People who
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: consider your friends, they will cross the street and they
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: will not want to talk to you and be seen
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: with you and you're going to go through hell. And
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: my dad said, yeah, we will. And she said, well,
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: if you're willing to do it, so am I.
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: And that's all you had to do is apply for
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: a visa?
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: Well, What was happening at that time, Jimmy Carter was
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: the president here, and he wanted to see some human
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: rights in the Soviet Union. And the Soviet leadership, they
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: were starving. They didn't have food, so they needed food
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: from America. So Jimmy Carter made a deal that we're
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: going to give you grain and you allow people to
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: get out. And that's how we were kind of exchanged
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: for some wheat, you know. That's how we got out.
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: Holy shit, man. Yeah.
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You sometimes need to be reminded how fortunate you are.
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: You know, Americans in particular, we're very, you know, it's
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: not our fault. People become accustomed to where they live.
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: And they think this is normal, which is one of
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: the reasons why this push towards communism amongst young people
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: is so infuriating to me. It's like I understand that
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: it comes from this desire for empathy and kindness. I
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: get that. The idea of socialism comes from an idea
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: of empathy and kindness, that you think the world would
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: be better if we all shared and that why are
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: there people that are so rich and people that are
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: so poor? And you're right. But the solution is not
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: to make the government decide who gets what because they
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: never decide the right way. They do what people do.
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: What people do when they have power is they enact
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: total control over the population so that they can maintain power.
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: And then they live in luxury and then you wait
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: in line for bread. And that's how it is all
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: over the fucking world. And if you step out of line,
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: they shoot you. That's where communism goes. So what we
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: need is like a more– a more moral and ethical
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: version of capitalism. So we need capitalism, but with empathy, capitalism,
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: but with philanthropy, like real philanthropy, not like scams, where
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: you find out that 90% of the money is actually
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: going to all the people that work there. And we
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: need to figure out a way to be more empathetic
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: as a culture, but recognize that the pursuit of freedom
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: and the ability to have freedom is so huge. And
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: it's such a great gift. We're so lucky that we
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: have this experiment in self-government that is the United States
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: of America. And that we were, that at least I
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: was born here. We're lucky as shit, you know, and
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: you don't throw that away because it's not good enough.
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: Don't throw that away because it's not, it's not perfect.
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: You're not going to get perfect with human beings, but
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: this is the best system. Is it corrupt? A hundred percent.
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: That should be fixed. The corruption should be fixed and
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: guardrails should be put in place and maybe more regulations
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: in regard to some things should be put in place.
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: But the purpose of this whole thing is to allow
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: people to have freedom to do whatever they want. And
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: that's not ubiquitous in the world. That's not everywhere. This
• 55:56
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• 56:55
  Speaker 1: No, no. And I've been kind of a poster boy
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: child for American dream in a way.
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: Look at your phone. Look at that phone case. If
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: I had that on, people would call me a fascist.
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: We have an American flag.
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, in Branson, that's not.
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: That flag to me doesn't represent whoever is in, it
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: didn't represent Biden when he was in office. It didn't
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: represent Obama. It didn't represent Trump. It's That represents all
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: of us, right and left, independent, black, white, Asian, Russian,
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: fill in the blanks, Filipino, everybody from everywhere. Who cares?
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: It's America. It's America. This is the great melting pot.
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: And that's how we really should be. And that flag
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: shouldn't represent. Some people think the flag represents racism or colonialism.
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: Come on, stop. That flag represents hope. And if you
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: were a kid like Yakov Smirnoff, is that your real name?
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: No.
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: What's the real name? Pokhys. Say that again?
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: That's why. Pokhys, P-O-K-H-I-S, is my real name. But I
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: was a bartender, a bar boy at first when I
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: came here. And my first job was a bar boy
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: in the Grossinger's Hotel in the Catskills. Oh, wow. Yeah.
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: What year was this?
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: 77.
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: Who did you get to see perform there?
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: Oh, Freddie Roman.
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: Eddie Fisher. Yeah, yeah.
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: Freddie Roman, old school, baby.
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, old school. I was learning.
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: Red Skelton, did you see those guys?
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: Uh-huh, I did. Later, later in Atlantic City, but yeah. Yeah,
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: I was learning English. I was learning about chop a
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: quiddick or stuff like that. I was like, what is that?
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: You know? So I was, I was definitely learning English there.
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: Have you ever seen the television show on Amazon, The
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: Marvelous Mrs. Maisel? It's really good, man.
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: The first scene, the first season rather is incredible. It's
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: about a young woman who's married and decides to become
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: a stand-up comedian. Like, she's married with kids, the whole deal,
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: and she decides to do stand-up. And part of what
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: she does, she does some stand-up, like, in the Catskills.
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: Interesting.
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: And, like, that is, for people that don't know stand-up, there's, like,
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: stand-up comedy is, as an art form, is a very
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: new art form. Very new in terms of human history.
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: It's only existed in this form that we call stand-up,
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: where you have comedy clubs and stuff like that. It's
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: only existed like that since the 60s.
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: It's true. It's vaudeville pretty much started that, right? It's
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: a different form, but I was learning from those jokes.
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: But a big part of it was the Catskills. A
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: big part of it because... People from New York and Pennsylvania,
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: they would go into the Poconos and the Catskills, and
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: they would do that on summer vacation. And people would
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: get jobs there, and comedians would go and book themselves
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: at these places. It was a big deal.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: It was. It was. And I didn't know about that.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: So you just got a job there.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: Well, how it happened, I decided I need to learn English.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: I didn't speak English, right, to start with. So how
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: do I learn English? And I thought maybe if I
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: can be a bartender, because in the cruise ships, bar
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: was in the same proximity as the stage was. So
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: I figured it's the same people coming to enjoy evening,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: and I can talk to them individually and learn English.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: That was my clever idea, right? And so I went
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: and got a bartending, it's called, degree of mixology. In
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: New York, there was a makeshift school on Fifth Avenue,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: two weeks, $ 200, and you get a degree of being
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: a mixologist. And I don't speak English, but I collected
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: this $ 200, got the degree. And they promised you to
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: get a job, right? So first job, they got me
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: there was a restaurant in Lincoln Center called Monk's Inn.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: And it was, you dress as a monk and it's
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: a French restaurant and you don't have to speak. You're
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: a waiter, but you don't have to speak. It was perfect.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: And then the same school said they're requesting some bar
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: boy in the Catskills at the Grossinger's Hotel. And I
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: didn't know anything about it. And on my day off,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: I went upstate New York and walked into this place
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: and it was gorgeous. It was a beautiful bar, like
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: an 18 bartenders or whatever, it's huge. And then 2,000
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: seat theater. And when I saw it in my brain,
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: I said, I don't care what they pay me, I
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: want to work here. And so I took that job
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: and actually I was nervous because I didn't know that
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: I can quit the other job because they just gave
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: it to me like a week ago. And so I
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: go back and I'm so nervous. I go to the manager.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: I go, I know you gave me a break, but
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: there is an opportunity here. And he said, Yakov, it's America.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: You should take the opportunity. And if you ever need
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: the job, you get it here. And I was like Rocky.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: Was he calling you Yakov or was he calling you,
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: you'd already used that name?
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: Yakov is my real name. Yakov is my real name.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: But you said it wasn't your real name.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: Pokis. Pokis is my last name.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: Oh. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: Yakov is my real name. So I took.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: Yakov Pokis would have made it?
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: Pokis, Yakov Pokis.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: You had to do Smirnoff?
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: And people could not pronounce my name. So in the bar,
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: I would see that they can say, I'll have some Smirnoff.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: And I'm going, hmm, maybe that's a good name. And I...
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: And it stuck. That makes sense. That became my name.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: That makes sense.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: But when you think about how many different people in
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: show business changed their names back then, that was a
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: super common thing. Like you didn't keep the name that
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: you were, if you had a goofy name, like Arnold
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: Schwarzenegger was a groundbreaker because he was like one of
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: the first guys to say, regardless of whether or not
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: you could spell my name or even say, that's my name.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: I'm going to keep that name.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: So many people changed their names and made their name
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: sound more appealing.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, mine kind of worked because Yaks is like jokes. Right.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: And Smirnoff kind of makes people happy.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: So it kind of worked.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's great. Yeah. That's a great idea.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: So you're a young kid and you're at these Catskill shows.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: How long did you work there?
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: Not very long, about seven. maybe seven, eight months.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: And did you slowly learn English when you were working?
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: I was learning English and I was translating jokes and
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: I would try them on the audience or my customers.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: And I would just tell a joke. And if they laughed,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: then I knew that I understood. And if they didn't
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: laugh or I didn't get a tip, then it wasn't working.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: So that was my That was my gauge.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: And you were a busboy when you were doing this?
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: I was a bar boy.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: Bar boy.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: So bar boys bringing ice and mixing pina coladas, whatever.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: And then you became a bartender. And then I would
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: ask the guy, I asked the guy who was the
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: manager of the main room, Barry Wise, his name. And
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: I asked him if I could try my comedy. And
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: he said, no, you can't do it in this room.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: But in the lobby in afternoons, they have a game
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: with older people, Simon Says. And the guy who master
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: of ceremony is there will probably let you do a
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: couple of minutes of stand up. So I did. I
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: walked on stage and I It's a little stage in
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: the lobby, and I'm telling a couple of jokes. And
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: some woman in the back started, I thought she was laughing.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: It was like, ha, ha, ha, ha. She had seizures.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: And I didn't know. And I'm thinking I'm doing well.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: And they're getting her on her knee out of there.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: And people coming over and saying, you were killing, you
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: were killing. I'm going, no, no, I wasn't killing. The
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: whole thing was, but at least I told a couple
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: of jokes and that gave me some confidence. And then
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: I did a couple of shows in Catch a Rising Star,
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: which wasn't very good for me.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: In New York?
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: In New York, yeah. And then I was working as
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: a shipping manager in a company called Greeting Bells and
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: just to make some money. And the lady said, I
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: know somebody in Hollywood, his name is Ted Bergman, he
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: is the executive producer of Three's Company, which was a
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: huge show at that time. He said, if you go
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: to Hollywood, I can arrange a meeting. And I said, okay,
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: I'll go. So I had a plan. I bought a
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: ticket for 10 days to go to Hollywood, become a star,
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: and then come back to New York and buy Fifth
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: Avenue apartment for my parents. That was my desire, which
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: is crazy, right? But I go, okay, he's an executive
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: producer of Three's Company. He'll put me in the show.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: I'll become a star right away. I know, it's crazy, right?
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: But I really was that naive, right? So I go there,
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: and Ted Bergman says, I would like to see you perform.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: So I need to find a spot. And I go
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: to the comedy store. And I get on the open
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: mic list. And then the message comes that he is
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: not going to make it. But I'm already committed. So
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: I'm doing my five minutes. And I'm bummed because now
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: it's day four. And I'm not even close to getting
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: a television show. So I'm walking away and I'm on
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: Sunset and this girl, Chrissy, her name was Mitzi's secretary
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: at that time. And she runs after me and she goes, Yaakov, Yaakov, congratulations.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: And I go, why? I mean, the guy didn't show up.
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: And she goes, no, no, no, no, no. Mitzi liked you.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: And I go, Who is Mitzi? I know, I know.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: It's silly to see in front of her portrait. And
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: she goes, she owns the comedy store, Go talk to her.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: So I go sit down next to her in that
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: booth that is next to it.
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sure.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: Original room. And I have no idea who I'm talking to.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: And she says... you're very funny. Stay in Los Angeles.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: There's always place for good and different. And I'm again,
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: I'm like, okay. I said, I'm sorry, but I, you know,
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: I have parents in LA, in New York, and I
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: need to go back because they rely on me. And
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: she goes, so what does your dad do? And I go,
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: he's a building construction engineer. And she goes, can he
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: be a carpenter? And I go, I think so. And
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: she goes, okay, why don't you bring him here? I'll
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: give him a job.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: I like your Mitzi impression.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: It's pretty close. And she goes, and where do you live?
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: I go... I was staying with some friends. She goes,
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: I have a house up the hill, and you can
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: rent a room for $ 120 a month if you want to.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: That was Crest Hill?
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: Crest Hill, yeah. So I still don't know, again, who
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: I'm talking to. And she goes, and come back tomorrow
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: and watch a regular show. So I come back.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: How old were you at this time?
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: I'm 26, 27 now. Yeah. So I go in next
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: day and I sit in the back. And first person
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: that Harris Peet, you probably remember. Yeah. Harris Peet introduces
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: Robin Williams first on stage. And he was, he just
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: hit number one show on.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: Morgan Mindy.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: And after him is Billy Crystal. After him is David Letterman.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: After him is Richard Pryor. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. It's lined
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: up like, and I'm sitting back there and I'm going,
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: this is day five. I'm ahead of schedule. If she
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: likes them and she likes me, I'm staying. I don't care.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: And that's how it started. And she gave me a job.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: So basically I was helping my dad as a carpenter
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: because she wasn't, I wasn't ready to perform there really.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: But she believed in you.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And she gave me a break. And little by little,
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: once a month, she would say, why don't you go
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: up and do what you, you know, and I was practicing.
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: I would do other clubs meantime, just to get better
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: and better and better. And And then, you know, she
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: had been an amazing supporter, you know, and I continue.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: I built a lot in the belly room. I built
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: a lot of things in, and she, my main job
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: was to go to her house. And Paulie was a
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: young kid who was smoking pot. And to prevent Mitzi
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: from walking into on him, he would take off the
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: doorknobs of the door and he would throw them away.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: And my job was to go and buy new doorknobs
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: and put them in. It was like a full-time job,
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: you know. And so, yeah, she's been a blessing, a
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: blessing for me.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: Paulie's at the club this weekend.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: Oh, is that right?
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: Oh, cool.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's on the 25th.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: That's cool. That's crazy, man.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: And so how good was your English back then?
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: It was getting better, you know.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: Were you taking courses or reading books?
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I was relentless. I would do whatever it
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: takes to learn. I mean, I isolated myself totally from
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: Russian speaking, except my parents. I was speaking to them
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: in Russian, but everybody else I spoke in English. So
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: it was getting better and better. And then, little by little,
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: I got, you know... kind of the Robin got me
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: a part at, uh, Moscow on a Hudson movie. Uh,
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: that was the first, uh, this is.
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 2: All in the seventies, right? So this is probably like
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: you got arrived there.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: Like what?
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: 78.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And then the movie was 80 and started in
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: 82 came out in 84. Uh, so at that point
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: I was doing night court a lot. Um, uh, like
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: seven episodes. Um, I could not get on The Tonight Show.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: There was a producer, Jim McCauley, who didn't think that
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: Carson's going to like me. And so I became, and
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: he would come every day. Mitzi was very supportive of this.
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: She would have like a showcase once a year of
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: people for him to look at. And he would come
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: and he would say, Carson's not going to like, he's
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: not going to like, he's not going to like. And
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: on year six, he came and he said, Jakob, let's
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: save time for one another. You'll get on that show
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: when the hell freezes over. I swear. So I started
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: watching Weather Channel. Well, I didn't have a shot. I mean,
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: and I just kind of moved on. And then I
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: got Miller Lite Commercial, which... became very popular. I don't
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: know if you can show that, Jamie. You could probably
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: see it. It became really big. All of a sudden,
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: I was during Super Bowl shown, and all of a sudden,
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: people kind of got to know me. And then Carson
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: saw this commercial, and he told Macaulay, he said, this
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: guy is funny. How come we don't have him on?
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: And Macaulay said, oh, yeah, we were just about to
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: get him. And so Mitzi calls me. I'm in Raleigh,
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: North Carolina, in the club. And she calls me, and
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: I remember on the pay phone, I call her back,
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: and I go, what's going on? She goes, guess who, Hall?
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: I go, who? Macaulay, he's such an ass. He now
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: wants you on the show right away. And my gut
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: reaction was like, I want to tell him to go
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: shove it. And then I go, no, no, no. So
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: I did the Tonight Show and Carson liked me and
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: called me over to the couch, which was kind of
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: a big deal at that time. And I sat down
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: and I said, Johnny, You know, in America, you have
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: things we never had in Russia, like policemen have warning shots.
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: And he almost fell off the chair. And we went
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: to a commercial, and McCauley comes over and gets between
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: me and Carson and goes, can you do another shot
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: like this, like a couple of months from now? I go,
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: when the hell freezes over? He goes, touche, touche. And
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: I did six, seven, seven episodes of Carson.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 2: And people today, young people, especially listening, don't understand what
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 2: a big deal it was to be on Carson. And
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: I think the only thing that's close today is Kill Tony.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 2: Kill Tony is a place where people's careers are actually
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 2: really legitimately launched. And there's a bunch of people like
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 2: Cam Patterson's on SNL now. You know, there's guys like
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: When I did a show, a podcast with the Black Keys,
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 2: they were asking for William Montgomery to perform. Like, can
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: we go see William Montgomery? Like, there's people that are
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 2: stars from that show now.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: Amazing. That's pretty cool. Well, I'm here with you because
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: I did that show. And here I saw you and
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: you invited me. So I'm very grateful to Tony that
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: kind of got us.
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 2: Well, Tony has done that for a lot of people.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 2: I mean, he's blown up Adam Ray. He's blown up
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 2: so many of these guys. Kyle Dunnigan. So many of
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 2: these guys have taken off because of Tony.
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: It's a really amazing platform because it's just comedy.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Totally. Totally. Love it.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: It's like a more important platform for comedians than a
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 2: regular podcast like this one because this podcast is not
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 2: always comedy. Like sometimes I'm talking to scientists. Sometimes I'm
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 2: talking to a lot of weird different people.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 2: But that show is just funny. And there was nothing
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 2: like that back then. So the closest thing to it
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 2: was The Tonight Show. And if you got on The
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 2: Tonight Show and you did stand up– I mean that
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 2: was the first time I remember watching Richard Jenny was
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 2: on The Tonight Show. And there was a bunch of
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 2: other people that I saw on The Tonight Show too.
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 2: But everybody would stay up late at night. And when
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 2: there was a comedian on The Tonight Show, you'd get excited.
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 2: Like, oh, there's a comedian. Yeah. Let's see if they're funny.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: And if you were good and you were on The
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 2: Tonight Show, then you could perform at clubs all over
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 2: the country.
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 2: And they would say, as seen on The Tonight Show. Like, oh,
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: The Tonight Show.
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 2: It was a huge deal. And if you had that
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: credit and people had seen you.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: Also back then, like, what were the numbers? The numbers
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 2: were crazy. 30 million. Yeah, because there was only four channels,
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 2: three at the time, not even four. Fox didn't even
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 2: exist yet. So there was three channels and a huge
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: percentage of the country was watching this one thing.
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I was very blessed.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: Isn't that crazy?
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 2: 30 million.
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And one time I offered them, he loved to
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: do impressions of Reagan, Carson. And I offered them to
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: do a skit of me as an interpreter, he as Reagan,
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: and then had a Gorbachev lookalike. And it was a
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: huge hit. It was really very, very well received. And
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: that's another interesting thing that, you know, like when I
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: met Reagan, I was still fairly unknown. And I was
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: playing a club in Washington, D.C., and it was called
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: Comedy Cafe. And somebody came over to me after the show,
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: and a guy, I didn't know who he was, and
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: he said, I'm having President Reagan and Nancy Reagan as
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: my guests, dinner guests, at my home in two weeks.
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: I would like to invite you to be one of
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: the guests. And I'm thinking, this guy's nuts. Who is this?
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: And he was chief editor of Washington Times newspaper. And
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: the reason I brought this up, because so he sent
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: me tickets. I come back. And then this is like
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: a scene from like a Die Hard or something. We're
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: pulling into his house. There's two helicopters are hanging over
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: the neighborhood. There's FBI everywhere. And I'm going, there's going
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: to be a mess. They won't let me in. I
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: just didn't think it's possible. So they get him out
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: of the car. They frisk him. They ask for his IDs.
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: And he said, I'm the owner of the place where
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: the president is going to dinner. And they said, we
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: don't care. So they get him, and then they shine
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: the light. I'm sitting in the passenger seat, and they
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: shine the light on me. And the guy goes, Miller
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: Light Commercial, right? Go in.
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: That's how I met the president. And then it was,
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: the moment we met each other, it's like locked in,
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: like the same, And all of a sudden, he was like,
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: have you heard this joke? And he starts telling me
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: Russian jokes. And then it was back and forth. And
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: certainly 18 people in the room. And everybody's laughing. And
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: that's how we started that relationship.
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 2: Wow. That's crazy.
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And then I get a call from Dana Rohrabacher,
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: who was his head speechwriter. And he calls me a
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: couple of weeks later and he said, Reagan is going
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: to go to Russia to meet with Gorbachev. He is
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: going to do a speech in front of all the
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: Russian politicians in the University of Moscow. He would like
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: you to write some jokes for his speech. And this
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: is like insane for me to hear this. I'm going,
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: if something doesn't go right, I don't have any countries
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: to go to. This is like, where am I going, right?
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: So I write some jokes. They put them in the speech.
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: And then Dana goes, do you mind looking over the speech?
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: Because we want to make sure that the tone of
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: the speech is right. I'm going, this is too much.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: This is too much responsibility. But I was honored. I
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: read it. And I said, I don't. personally don't think
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: that the tone is correct. I think you're kind of
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: talking down to them and they're not going to like it.
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: And he goes, then rewrite the speech. I'm going, okay.
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: So I just changed. I didn't rewrite the speech. I
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: just changed some tone of kind of putting them on
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: the equal level as opposed to being talking down To
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: the Soviet leaders, they didn't appreciate that.
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 2: Can you explain how he was talking down?
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: Just teaching them that capitalism is so much better than
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: what they got and they should switch to that form
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: of politics as opposed to kind of appreciate what they...
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: And their empire at that time that is still very
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: big So I didn't, I just felt that I would
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: be just nicer. And they liked it. They changed some
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: of the things that, and they kept it that way.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: And so I don't know how, Mitzi used to tell me,
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: you and Reagan changed the world. I go, yeah, Mitzi,
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: you're right. I'm just telling jokes. He goes, no, it
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: was his secret weapon. That he used to get to Gorbachev.
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: Maybe there's some truth to that.
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 2: Well, certainly truth in that you kind of understood how
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 2: they would receive what he was saying. That he was
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 2: saying something that would, they would become defensive and they
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 2: would be offended by it.
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. That was my concern that, but, you know.
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: Well, you know that culture way better than anybody else.
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: And that's what he was saying. He was asking me,
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, at some point he goes, how would you
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: deal with Gorbachev? He was literally, it's like, and I'm
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: like going, am I the most qualified person to answer
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: this question? And he goes, you are, because you lived
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: there 26 years. None of us politicians have. So he
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: was really very receptive to my suggestions, whatever they, you know. Wow.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 2: That had to be weird. I mean, you're talking to
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 2: Well, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall.
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: I didn't write that joke. I did not.
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 2: It wasn't a joke. It wasn't a joke.
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 2: But crazy that it actually happened. Changed the world. Yeah.
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: Changed the world.
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 2: Literally changed the world.
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: Changed my world for sure.
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 2: Unfortunately. That's what's crazy. What's crazy is that. It's like,
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 2: but that was the problem with the world back then
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 2: with only a few channels. Yeah. They could just decide
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 2: you were done and you were done.
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, that happened to a lot of, like, if
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 2: actors ran afoul of certain people.
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 2: You got cast out. You got blackballed. And that was it.
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 2: You never worked again.
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 2: And that happened to a lot of people. Yeah.
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm happy that I found Branson. I'm happy that
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: I was able to adjust. It's just like when you
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: look at trajectory of my life, I realize that that's
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: one of my strong skills to be able to adjust.
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: Just having the idea that I will be able to
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: do comedy in America was insane. For most people.
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 2: Well, just adjusting from the culture of living in Russia
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 2: to living in America is insane, too. You made a
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 2: lot of adjustments.
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: A lot. Because we were coming through Italy to come
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: to America. And in Italy, they kept us three months
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: to check all the documents and make sure that we
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: are not like Communist Party or don't have a record.
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: We're not a spy. Yeah, right, right, right. Right, right.
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: And we had to survive. That was another interesting moment
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: of our life because we were going and they didn't
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: want people to leave because that looked bad for the
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: Soviet Union. So they would only like change you $ 100
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: per person and you're supposed to survive like three months
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: of living in a foreign country. And so, but they
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: would give you a list of things that you could
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: take with you. So like a photo camera hat, something
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: you could sell there to live on. And yeah. And
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: two suitcases for each person and very strict list of things.
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: What was an interesting kind of loophole. We found out
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: through the grapevine that, um, condoms was a very expensive
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: item in Italy for some reason. In the Soviet Union,
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: you could buy them for a penny, and in Italy,
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: you could sell them for a dollar. And so my
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: quest was, like when I learned that, and there was
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: no restriction how many you can take with you. So
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: I would go to each pharmacy, whatever I could get,
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: and just, I was... You know, we got like half
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: of the suitcase of condoms and we put it in
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: my mother's suitcase. So that way, hopefully nobody's going to
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: ask her what, why, you know, they would be embarrassed
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: or whatever. So they didn't ask. And we got through.
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: And so my job and my parents' job was to
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: go on the open market every Saturday and Sunday. and
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: try to sell those condoms so we can pay rent
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: and food and whatever else. So my parents, it was
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: so funny how they transitioned. They were these two very
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: conservative people, and they're embarrassed, but then they realized we
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: need money to eat. So they would, mom became pretty smart.
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: She translated from Russian into Italian, if you don't want
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: to have a kid like this and would point at
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: me and would hold that card and said, then buy
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: a condom. And people would laugh. They would laugh and
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: they would buy two or three. It was just more
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: of a joke. But we were we were, you know,
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: surviving on that for a long time.
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Wow. Yeah. So it was kind of bang
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: for the buck, kind of a, you know, it was
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: not expected, but we survived. So a lot of those
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: moments in life when you, I look at my life
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: and I go, that was a survival, then coming to
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: America and getting a job and getting to, Uh, God
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: is that helped you and me to become who we are. Uh,
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: that's just God's hand on that.
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 2: That's amazing. Yeah. You adapted, man. You adapted multiple times.
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 2: That's so crazy. God. Yeah. Trying to survive in Italy.
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 2: You didn't speak Italian. No. Did you guys speak anything
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 2: other than Russian?
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: No, no, we just, but there was immigration. There was
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: other Russian people that you could kind of communicate with.
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: And I would go, even in Italy, I would go
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: to a movie theater. And I was so determined. There
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: was one movie theater in Rome that would, for a dollar,
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: you can sit and watch English-speaking movies. And you can
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: sit there all day for a dollar. And so I
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: would go, it was like my, I was learning English,
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: listening to listening. And then one time, I remember a couple,
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: I needed to practice. And there was a couple, I
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: asked them, speak English? And they said, yes. And the guy,
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: the girl was from Belgium. The guy was from Washington, D.C.
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: And they said, we'll help you. And we'll just come
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: every week. like on Monday or some, whatever it was,
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: and we'll just go to a coffee shop and we'll
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: talk to you so you can practice English. And I
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: remember they asked me, like, what did you do in Russia?
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: I said I was a comedian. Somehow through dictionary, whatever
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: I could to make that. And they said, what do
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: you want to accomplish? when you're in America. And again,
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: I don't know anything about America. And I have this,
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: I asked them, I said, where is the most successful people,
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: comedians perform? And they said, Las Vegas. And I said,
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: in five years, somehow I'll be in Las Vegas. And
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: it's exactly what happened. Five years later, I was at
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: the Tropicana Hotel with Murray Lansden, the unknown comic, doing
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: a show in Las Vegas.
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 2: I remember that guy with the paper bag over his head. Yeah.
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 2: From the Gong Show.
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Which was a great show.
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: It was a great show.
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 2: It was a crazy show.
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It was kind of an early version of Kill Tony.
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 2: In a lot of ways.
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 2: In a lot of ways. Because some of the people
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 2: were just like unbelievably untalented. Yeah. And then you would
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 2: hit the gong.
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 2: That show was great.
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 2: Didn't they try to bring that back? Didn't they try
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 2: to bring the gong show back at one point in
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 2: time with someone else?
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: I think they did.
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 2: Who did they bring it back with? Do you remember, Jamie?
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 2: But do you remember? You don't remember.
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: I don't, yeah.
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 2: Off the top of my head, no. It was someone
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 2: that you're like, huh. I wonder why they chose that person.
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 3: Actually, yeah, 2000, David Tell.
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's right.
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: Who was it?
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 2: It was Dave Attell.
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: Oh.
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 2: That's right. It was 2012?
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 3: Well, it says briefly in 2008 and then again in 2017,
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 3: and I don't think he was involved in that one.
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: Oh.
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 2: 2008, is that what you said?
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah, he's perfect for that. The problem is once
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 2: a show's been done, you try to redo it. It's
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 2: always going to be meh. There's been three different versions
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 2: of Fear Factor now. It's like now they're doing it
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 2: with Johnny Knoxville. It's kind of crazy the amount of
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 2: different things that have happened in your life. And then
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 2: now to find yourself with another revival because of Kill Tony.
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: Yes. And going back on tour, I have a... I
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: have a poster. I don't know if people on the
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: radio can't see it, but I have a poster of
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: my tour.
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 2: Well, we'll send it to the website.
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so I am excited.
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 2: And where are you going? Comedy clubs?
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah. All over the place? Yeah. Atlanta is the next one.
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 2: No one can read that. Oh, okay. Yeah, put that down.
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 2: Go to the website. Jamie will pull up the website.
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And it's on yakov.com. Yakov, brought a sign.
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 2: That's hilarious, man. So what was the Kill Tony experience like?
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: It was great. I mean, I am, obviously, my show
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: is kind of G-rated. And so Kill Tony is not.
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: And so, but yet it was.
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 2: It doesn't matter.
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: It doesn't matter.
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 2: It doesn't matter.
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: He was so respectful of this, Tony, and set me up.
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: You know, I mean, I felt like my head was
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: this big, and he was seeing me as a super legend,
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: and I am very grateful. It's hard for me sometimes
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: to accept that, that people see me, because I've been
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: doing this for 60 years. 60 years comedy.
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 2: That's crazy. Yeah. Well, I remember the first time we met.
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 2: We met at the comedy store. Uh-huh. Ooh. I want
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 2: to say, what was that, like 15 years ago or
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 2: something like that?
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: Probably, yeah.
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 2: You dropped in, and I had never seen, and I
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 2: was like, oh, what is he doing in town?
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 2: And you just decided you wanted to come by the
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 2: store and see what was going on with the young
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 2: guys and do some stand-up. And we hung out for
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 2: a little bit in the green room. And I remember
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 2: telling everybody, Yakov Smirnov's really funny, man. He's fucking cool.
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you.
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 2: It was fun. It was fun to hang out with you.
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 2: It was fun to see you hanging out with all
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 2: these people. Weirdo, young, pot-smoking, fucking animals.
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: Coming from Branson, right?
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you were coming from Branson. You're hanging out with
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 2: Joey Diaz.
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: We were.
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 2: Laughing, though. We had a good time, man. It was
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 2: a really good time.
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: It was fun. It's fun. And I go back to clubs,
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: and my goal was really to, last year, I would
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: go to small clubs and develop an hour of material
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: that is totally current. I talk about relationships. I talk
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: about having a one-year-old in my life. I talk, and
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: it's interesting. I was doing it at your club, and
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: it's great to watch the reaction of the audience, how
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: they have a lot of respect, but they're also laughing,
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: and they're seeing it's fun because I talk about relationships. So,
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: They might come in disconnected, but then all of a
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: sudden you see how they put their hands next to
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: each other. But I like it.
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 2: You're a uniter. You're bringing couples closer together with your comedy.
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: That's really my goal.
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 2: I like that you like that.
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: I enjoy seeing families. Nate Borghese is really the one
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: who kind of got me out of Branson because he–
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: Showing that there's a need for that humor. Yes. And
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: families come. And when you go to his show, it's
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: like looking around. Yes. grandma and and and grandchildren and parents.
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 2: But everyone's laughing the thing about Nate that's so unique
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 2: is Nate is hilarious to me yeah Nate is hilarious
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 2: to a 20 year old kid in college Nate is
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 2: hilarious to their grandmother. Nate is hilarious to your children.
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 2: You could bring your 10-year-old kids to see Nate. Nate
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 2: is a genius. And that is who he is all
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 2: the time. He's like a really funny, very smart guy
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 2: who's got a perfect style. It's like, I mean, didn't
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 2: he make like the most money ever or something like
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 2: that last year doing stand-up? Sold the most tickets ever?
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: $ 80 million.
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 2: Or something crazy. But it's like he's doing this. Like
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 2: selling out stadiums two times in a night.
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Yeah.
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 2: And he does like 3 p.m. shows. It's nuts. Right.
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 2: It's incredible.
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: But it shows that there's a need for that.
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 2: Well, it shows that it doesn't matter. It's just funny.
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 2: Like Brian Regan's another great example. Brian Regan, squeaky clean,
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 2: un-fucking-believably funny.
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 2: So talented.
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 2: So funny.
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 2: And it's just funny. It doesn't have to be clean
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 2: or dirty or... And we have that at the club, too.
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 2: The club gets labeled as some kind of extreme anti-woke thing.
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 2: It's nonsense.
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: I performed there at their club a couple of weeks ago.
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: They totally loved it. Nobody expected anything, and they just
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: enjoyed it. They laughed all the way through. I love
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: doing that. So to me, I see young people who
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: don't know me, and they're totally relating, and I'm relating
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: to them, which is great. great. That's what I want
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: to do.
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 2: We're human beings telling jokes. That's it. That's all it is.
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 2: And if comedy done correctly is done from your perspective,
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 2: whether your perspective is Nate Bargatze or your perspective is fucking,
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 2: you know, fill in the blank, David, whoever it is, right.
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 2: Joey Diaz, Brian Holtzman, like whatever it is, it doesn't,
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 2: it doesn't matter. It's like, it's what's funny is funny
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 2: and it might not be your thing. Like that's the
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 2: thing too. The, one of the problems with comedy is
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 2: that there's only one, there's like one label and And
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 2: you might go see like Brian Holtzman's like death metal
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 2: comedy or you might see Nate Bregazzi who's like, you know,
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 2: I don't know what's the, you know, what's equivalent.
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: Well, Leanne Morgan is another one that was kind of
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: out of nowhere became very successful because she has that
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: clean southern humor and the Netflix embraced her and all
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: of a sudden– She is touring and doing concerts.
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, all you have to do is be funny. It's
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 2: like funny from whatever perspective you're coming from. And again,
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 2: it's not going to be for everybody. That's just how
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 2: it is. Right. There's a lot of people that aren't
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 2: going to like A or B. It doesn't matter. It
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 2: doesn't matter. But the thing about comedy is like when
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 2: you go to a comedy club, you don't know what
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 2: you're going to get. You might get Run DMC or
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 2: you might get ACDC. You have no idea. Right, right.
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 2: It's all just comedy. But I think that's one of
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 2: the cool things about it.
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: Right. And I totally agree with you, and I want
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: to be able to do that one-hour straight comedy. There
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: was an interesting thing that happened about a year ago
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: or so. A young comedian, he said, you know, I
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: was writing some jokes, and he was helping me, and
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: he said, Yakov, you know that you're not a stand-up comedian.
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: You're a one-man show. And I go, at first I
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: was like, kind of, what? What are you talking about?
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: And because I tell, in France, it's like more storytelling
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: and not just punchline, punchline, punchline. And he was correct.
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: So at first I got kind of, Like, what do
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: you mean? Who are you to tell me I'm not
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: a stand-up comedian? And then I go, Chad GPT, is
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: Yakov a stand-up comedian or is he a one-man show?
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: And Chad GPT said, Yakov Smirnov used to be a
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: stand-up comedian, and now he is a one-man show. And
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: now coming from Chad GPT, I'm going, dang, that's now official?
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 2: Hello.
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: Wait a minute. So it took me a whole year
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: to rewrite everything that I needed to rewrite to say
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: it's punchline, punchline. It's just straight comedy. So I became
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 1: a stand-up comedian again.
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 2: Well, there's nothing wrong with one-man show stand-up comedy either
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 2: because some people do their comedy like a one-man show.
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 2: Some of the best comics, like Colin Quinn. Colin Quinn
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 2: does a series of one-man shows, but if you ask ChatGPT,
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 2: who is Colin Quinn, he'll say he's a stand-up comedian.
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: Right. But ChatGPT got me wrong, whatever it was.
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 2: It doesn't know. It's not even a person. Right.
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: Fuck ChatGPT. But it's actually helped me to tune in
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: my comedy because I was maybe a little bit more
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: relaxed being in my own theater room. with all people
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: coming to see me. So it's not like you're in
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: a club when you're like with other comedians when you
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: have to be really, really sharp. And that's what I
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: think it did for me. So I spent a year
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: doing that. Now I have that hour and I'm ready
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: to go and that's why I went on the tour.
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 2: That's awesome.
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 2: I love when comics are still interested in it and
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 2: still writing and still love it after all these years.
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 2: You know who I draw some inspiration from as well
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 2: is Argus Hamilton.
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 2: Argus is still killing it.
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 2: Still killing it in L.A.
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: Keeps going.
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 2: And every time there's something new in the news, he's
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 2: got a great fucking line about it. He's a funny dude.
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: He is.
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 2: And he's still getting after it. He still loves it.
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 2: And, you know, Argus used to, like, famously be into
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 2: the substances. And now all he does is run. And
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 2: I remember one time we were at the comic store
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 2: and we were in the parking lot. And it was
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 2: after the show. And Argus showed up with fucking running
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 2: shoes on and just ran in. And I'm like, what
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 2: are you doing, man? And he's like, I have to
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 2: run every day.
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: And do a set.
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: Because to him, that's his motivation. Yeah.
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 2: And he does, like, I think he runs, like, 10
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 2: miles a day.
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 2: He's in his 70s.
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: And interesting that. You know, and I was so naive
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: because Argus was very friendly with Mitzi. And I would
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: go to their house and I would see Argus there
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: in the morning. And I was like, why is, you know,
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: and I couldn't connect those two things. I mean, I
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: could not. I mean, honestly, it was, I'll tell you
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: how naive I was. so Mitzi gives me that work, right?
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: And I live in that house. And Andrew Dice Clay
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: moves into that house, right? And Andrew teaches me English, okay?
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: Can you imagine that? But that was a party house.
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, this was a house where... Was Kennison living
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: there then? Kennison would just hang out there all the time.
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: And They would scream at each other, Andrew and Kennison.
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: And that was just kind of a joke between those two.
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 1: And they go, ah, ah. And I would have to
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: go to bed because I got to get up early
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: in the morning to go work. And those guys are
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: screaming at each other just for fun. And I go
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: downstairs and I go, hey, guys, you're friends.
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 2: Stop.
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: So we're playing this joke and they're, yeah, whoo. Screaming,
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: and I go, you know what, why don't you, you're
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: close to the comedy store, why don't you go downstairs
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: and scream there? And they look at each other and go, okay,
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 1: let's go. So it's midnight, and we're all going, whoever
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: lived there, going to the comedy store, and Sam gets
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: on stage and starts screaming, this is the first time,
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: That he ever got on stage and he went to the,
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: and very few people in the audience, and he went
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: into their face and, ah, you.
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 2: No way.
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 2: That's where it came from?
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: That's where it came from. Whoa. And then after that,
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: it just became like his thing and the rest is history.
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 2: That's crazy.
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That was happening there. A lot of stuff was
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: happening there. They would come. And do drugs, you know,
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: like Robin and Richard Pryor, they would do. And I,
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: it tells you this is silly, but I would wake
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: up in the morning and I would see a mirror
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: on the table, right? Okay, so bear with me. So,
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 1: and there's like white powder on the table.
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 2: So you'd clean it up.
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: I was thinking they're eating donuts off the mirror. So
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: I would clean whatever it was, hang it up. And
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: next morning I go, Argus, why don't you guys use plates?
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: You have a dishwasher. And they would laugh. at me,
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: and they wouldn't tell me what's going on.
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 2: But weren't they mad that you threw away their coke?
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: No, no, there was not much. I mean, it was just, yeah,
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: there was residue. I had no idea. I wasn't testing it.
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 2: That's how much coke they had, that they left some
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 2: of it on the mirror. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? That's crazy.
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: It was, but I didn't know. So I kind of
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: lived in that wholesome kind of a world.
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 2: So you were there while Kinison was developing.
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 2: Did he arrive at the store around the same time
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 2: that you did?
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: A little bit later.
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 2: A little later?
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a little later.
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 2: Well, like what year did he arrive?
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 1: Probably 79, I would say.
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 2: And he really hit around like, what, 85, 86?
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes.
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 2: I think 85 he did Letterman.
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes.
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 2: And then 86 he had that HBO special that blew
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 2: him up.
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: Probably, probably.
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 2: You know how I found out about Kinnison? It's a
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 2: funny story. I've told it before. I apologize if the
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 2: audience has heard it. I was working at a health
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 2: club at a gym called the Boston Athletic Club in
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 2: South Boston. And I was a trainer. I teach people
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 2: how to lift weights. And there was this girl who
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 2: was a volleyball player. She was hilarious. She was this
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 2: big girl, big athletic girl. She was very funny. She
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 2: was just like boisterous, like a really loud, funny lady.
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 2: And she was like my age. And she told me
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 2: about Kinnison. And then she told me about his bit.
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 2: She's like, oh my God, I saw this guy on HBO.
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 2: She had a heavy Boston accent. This guy on HBO,
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 2: he was so fucking hilarious. And he did this bit about...
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 2: people having sex with corpses. So she does this bit.
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 2: She laid down in the parking lot of the Boston
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 2: Athletic Club and did that bit. So Kinison had a
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 2: very famous bit about homosexual necrophiliacs who were paying money
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 2: to spend moments alone with the freshest male corpses. So
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 2: she is lying down on the parking lot, on the
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 2: ground in the parking lot. And she's like, oh, I'm
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 2: going to lie down. She did the whole thing. I'm
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 2: going to be with Jesus, and now I'm dead. Oh,
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 2: what is this? It feels like someone's fucking me in
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 2: the ass. You mean life keeps fucking you in the
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 2: ass even after you're dead?
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: It never ends.
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 2: So she was doing his bit, and I was laughing
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 2: at her doing his bit. I'm like, I gotta see
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 2: this guy. This is crazy. So that was my introduction
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 2: to Sam Kinison. My friend lying on her stomach doing
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 2: an impression. I'll never forget that, man, because I was
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 2: 19 years old. I remember that. And I remember thinking,
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 2: so it was 86. So I remember thinking, this is crazy.
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 1: Unbelievable.
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 2: I had no desire to do comedy back then. I
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 2: wasn't even thinking about it. It wasn't even on my radar.
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 2: It was never even a thought. I loved comedy. I
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 2: loved watching it, but I never thought about doing it.
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 1: So what made you, what was the transition when you started?
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 2: Well, I was heavily invested in martial arts. That's all
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 2: I wanted to do. My goal was to compete, and
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 2: that's all I was doing. That's the reason why I
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 2: got the job at the gym, so that I could
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 2: have a place that I could work out and also
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 2: I could make money there. And my friends that I
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 2: used to train with, they're the ones who, told me
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 2: to do comedy. But I was like, listen, you laugh
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 2: at me because you're also psychos. Like the things I'm
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 2: saying are fucking crazy. Like we're all fighters. We're all
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 2: traveling around the country fighting. Like this is not a
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 2: normal activity. This is not normal humor. But my good
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 2: friend Steve Graham, who I'm still friends with to this day,
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 2: he's the one who taught me to doing it. And
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 2: then I went to an open mic night and I realized, oh,
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 2: everybody sucks in the beginning. Like it's just like martial arts.
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 2: You start off and you suck and then you get
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 2: better at it. But my introduction to comedy was that lady. Really,
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 2: my introduction to Kinison, rather. The idea. Because when I
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 2: saw Kinison, I was like, oh, comedy is a lot
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 2: of different things. There's a lot of different forms to it.
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 2: Because I always saw guys like Jerry Seinfeld who were
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 2: very funny and they'd tell these jokes. But I never
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 2: thought that was me. I couldn't do that. But I
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 2: saw Kinison. I was like, oh, this is a bunch
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 2: of different kinds of comedy. This is very interesting. And
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 2: then when I started out in 88. Boy, the guys
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 2: in Boston used to talk about the comedy store like
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 2: it was Mecca, like you had to go there. You
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 2: had to go to the store. The store was where
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 2: Richard Pryor started and Sam Kinison and all these comics
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 2: and David Letterman. They all came out of the store.
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 2: Bill Hicks was a doorman at the store. And everybody
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 2: talked about the store. It was one of those things
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 2: where it was like you had to go there. And
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 2: then when I first made it, got on a television show.
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 2: I flew out to L.A. to do a pilot, and
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 2: that was the first time I ever went to the store,
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 2: and I remember being so weirded out, just being in
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 2: the building, like, wow. I can't believe I'm at the
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 2: comedy store.
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 1: When did you meet Mitzi?
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 2: I met Mitzi in 94. So I did the pilot.
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 2: The pilot wound up getting picked up. Then I came out,
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 2: and I was on a TV show. It only lasted
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 2: like six episodes. It was called Hardball. It was a
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 2: sitcom about a baseball team, and I played the star player.
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 2: I played this crazy dude who was always crashing his
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 2: Lamborghini and that kind of shit. And so I would
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 2: spend my nights every night at the store. I didn't
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 2: have any friends, and I didn't know anybody there, so
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 2: I just would just go– To the set. And then
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 2: after the set, I'd go hang out at the store.
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 2: And then I eventually, Mitzi showcased me. I became a
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 2: non-paid regular. So I got to go on after the
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 2: comedians performed. So the way it worked at the comedy store,
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 2: they'd have a show that was scheduled from like 8 p.m.
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 2: to like 1 a.m. or close to it. And then after,
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 2: it was probably like really midnight, but it always was
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 2: like 1 a.m. by the time I got up. And
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 2: then I would go on after everybody else. And I
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 2: did that for a few months. And then she passed me.
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 2: And I remember thinking, like, when she passed me, like,
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 2: I was like, oh, no, I think I can be
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 2: a comedian now. Like, this is, I actually can make
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 2: a living doing this. Because before then, I wasn't sure.
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 2: Even though I was getting paid and I would do comedy,
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 2: I'd get paid to do comedy, it was still, like,
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 2: very iffy. I'd bomb a lot. It was like, it wasn't.
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 2: Also, I was, like, in the middle of this sitcom,
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 2: so I was working all day. I didn't want to
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 2: do that anymore. I liked it because it paid a
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 2: lot of money, but it wasn't really my thing. I
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 2: wasn't into acting that much. To me, it was like
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 2: comedy was more exciting. It was live, live audiences. The
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 2: sitcom thing was fun because you got to use your
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 2: skills in telling jokes as a comedian. But it wasn't
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 2: the same thing. And then I got news radio, which
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 2: was much more fun. Much better show. And then I
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 2: was like, well, this is different. There's other levels to this.
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 2: And that's how I met Hartman and all those other people.
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 2: But it was, to me, the most important thing was
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 2: getting passed at the store. I was like, wow. That
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 2: was more important to me than getting a sitcom or anything.
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 2: I was like, I can't believe it. I got passed.
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 2: My name's on the wall of the fucking comedy store.
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 2: It was so exciting.
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 1: In lights, too, now, right? Do you have it? Is
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 1: it the neon inside?
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm on the wall inside.
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 2: It's just like this lady, Mitzi Shore, like people don't understand.
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 2: She was the most important figure outside of all the comedians,
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 2: the most important figure in comedy.
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 2: By far. There was no one like her.
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 2: And she was a mentor. Yes. She was like a.
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 2: She was a curator of a mental health asylum. And
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 2: she would joke around about it. She's like, the inmates
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 2: are running the asylum. And that was originally when we
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 2: came to Texas. I was going to call it the asylum.
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because I thought, as a nod to Mitzi, the
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 2: idea was that, because she was always saying, the inmates
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 2: are running the asylum. She would say that all the
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 2: time when we were there. She encouraged it. She liked
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 2: when comedians were out of their fucking minds. She loved it.
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 2: She loved that environment. And so as a nod to her,
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 2: we were going to call it the asylum. But then
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 2: I was like, one of the things that someone said, Because,
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 2: you know, Ron White was the first guy to move here.
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 2: He was really like patient zero in the Austin comedy
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 2: experience and the new version of the Austin comedy experience.
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 2: And he was like, it's in the center of the country.
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 2: I love it because I can fly to New York.
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 2: I can go to Florida. I can go everywhere. It's
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 2: in the middle. You know, it's like the flats aren't
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 2: as long. People are nice. I love it here. And
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 2: I was like, oh, well, it's like the mothership. And
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 2: then all the other places like Lynch launch out. That's
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 2: where it got you. And also I'm obsessed with UFOs.
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 1: I can see.
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, obviously. A bit of a UFO problem. Yeah. So
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 2: that's why we called it the mothership. But I mean,
• 1:57:23
  Speaker 2: the bar's named Mitzi's.
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes. And it was, you know, losing her that early,
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 1: I still think she went. Too early, you know.
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 2: Well, for me, it was like she suffered for so long.
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true.
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 2: It was really hard to see her. You know, she
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 2: had a neurological condition.
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 2: Later in her life, it was very hard to see her. Yeah.
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 2: She would come around a storm.
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 2: But, you know, she nurtured so many comedians and helped
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 2: us all. And not always. Like, sometimes she had terrible advice.
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 2: She would... Change your whole act, make you have a
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 2: fake name. She tried to turn Joey Diaz into Fat Baby.
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 1: Is that right?
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 2: That was his nickname or his name. So on the lineup,
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 2: instead of Joey Diaz, it would say Fat Baby.
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 1: Ah.
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 2: She did that for like a couple of years.
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah.
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 2: It was nuts.
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 2: You can find some of the old lineups. Uh, Jamie's
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 2: found them before online. It'll still like a lineup from
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 2: like 2001 or something. It says fat baby. That's what
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 2: she was calling them. Yeah. And, uh, She was a
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 2: special person, such a special person. And just that lady
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 2: loved having that place. She knew that there was something
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 2: going on there and there had been something going on
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 2: there that was very unique in the world of comedy.
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 2: And it was necessary, you know, to have a place
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 2: like that where the comics all felt at home. Like
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 2: we would perform in other places. Like we would do
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 2: sets at the improv. We would do sets at the–
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 2: I remember one time I did New Year's at the
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 2: improv show. And I came back to the club and
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 2: Harris Peet says, I love it. You go over there,
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 2: you do your shows, but you come back home. I
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 2: was like, yeah, we're all, this is our home. This
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 2: is our weird fucking home.
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 2: You know, the home for lost children. Like Mitzi would
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 2: call it the home for the island of broken toys.
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 2: Just a bunch of weirdos.
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 2: But all like feeding off of each other.
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 1: But to be able to seize. Somebody who barely speaks
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 1: English and does five minutes and spot him somehow.
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 2: Well, she loves developing comics. Yes. She loved developing comics. Right.
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 2: She loved finding a comic and getting them.
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 2: Which is one of the problems. It's really interesting. Jerry
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 2: Seinfeld went and she didn't pass him because he was
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 2: already developed. Right. Isn't that crazy?
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 2: Like she didn't like that. He's done.
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 1: He's done.
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 2: She liked taking people when they were really raw. That's true.
• 1:59:59
  Speaker 2: And shaping them.
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 1: Roseanne was her big project for sure.
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah. She came from Denver. She had a lot of
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 2: big projects. Yeah.
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 1: And so is.
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 1: Jim Carrey, and many, many others.
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 2: She also had very specific techniques she would use to
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 2: test you. She would always take comics and put them on,
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 2: especially the young new ones, after all the really good comics,
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 2: like she did with you. When you're talking about doing
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 2: that set, Richard Pryor's going up, Robin Williams, and that's
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 2: what she would do. She would take young comics that
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 2: she thought had potential and she would shove them after
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 2: the biggest names, people that were killing. Yeah. She was
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 2: such a unique person and such an important person in comedy.
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 1: And Peter, that was a big moment of my life.
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 1: I went to her funeral and Peter, her son, asked
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 1: me to be one of the pole bearers in her
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 1: funeral and I felt like full circle. She gave me
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 1: my life in a totally different way. If I didn't
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: meet her God knows what I would be doing.
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 2: No, I mean, she helped all of us. And I
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 2: think it's one of the reasons why we talk about
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 2: her so much. And it's the reason why we named
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 2: the bar after her.
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 2: And the spirit of what she was trying to do
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 2: at the store, we try to do at the mothership.
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 2: It's all the weirdos. Welcome, weirdos. Welcome, weirdos.
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 1: I'm in.
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 2: Let's have fun.
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 1: I'm in.
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 2: Let's go. Yeah. How many times have you performed at
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 2: the club now? Twice.
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 1: Twice.
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 3: Twice.
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. It feels like the original room, the little room,
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: the little boy's room.
• 2:01:44
  Speaker 2: Well, you know what I say? It's like the little
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 2: room is like if the original room and the belly
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 2: room had a baby. And then the big room is
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 2: like the original room and the main room had a baby.
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 1: Right, right.
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 2: It's true. Very close.
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 1: It's true. But you've done a great job. It feels...
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 1: It feels like home when you walk in there.
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 2: It feels great. I basically copied everything that I learned
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 2: from her and added more stuff that the comedians requested.
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 1: And it's interesting that I was helping to build that
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 1: belly room and then Kill Tony started in.
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 2: The belly room. Yeah. You might have been the last
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 2: person to work on that belly room, too, because that
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 2: fucking room scares the shit out of me. I've been
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 2: in the bottom, like in the bar area, ordering a drink.
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 2: And like roast battle be on stage and you see
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 2: the ceiling move. You're like, Jesus, Yakov, get back up
• 2:02:38
  Speaker 2: there with a fucking hammer and add some support.
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 1: I'm not taking the responsibility. I was just doing. Booths and.
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay, okay.
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 1: So I wasn't doing structure.
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 2: Okay, that's good. Somebody was.
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 2: I just think some... There's no code.
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 1: There is no code.
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 2: Roast Battle. When you have Roast Battle up there, like
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 2: they would get so wild and rowdy and it would
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 2: be packed. It would be packed. And it's only supposed
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 2: to seat like what, 70 people or 80 people?
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 1: Right, right.
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 2: It would be a lot more than that. That fucking
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 2: ceiling would move a little. When you were in the bar,
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 2: you're like, bro, I hope this doesn't cave in. That
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 2: would suck.
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 2: That place is a magic place. And it's also a
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 2: magic place because it was like a magnet for crazy people.
• 2:03:29
  Speaker 2: You'd have the weirdest, nuttiest people that would just come there.
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 2: Like that one guy. There's one guy that used to
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 2: come there. He was a really nice guy. And he
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 2: would always dress as Jesus.
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 1: Yes, I remember that.
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 2: Do you remember his name, Jamie? Heavenly Light. That's right.
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 2: And he wound up dying and everybody was so sad.
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 2: They were really sad because this guy was, it seems
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 2: like a gimmick, but we got used to it. And
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 2: he was really nice. And he was just like this
• 2:03:56
  Speaker 2: nice guy that dressed like Jesus all the time. There
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 2: he is. But it was part of the fucking cool,
• 2:04:02
  Speaker 2: crazy weirdness of the comedy store is that we had
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 2: a guy that dressed as Jesus that was there all
• 2:04:10
  Speaker 2: the time. Yeah. You know, and. Like, I don't know
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 2: if he ever did stand-up. Did he ever do stand-up?
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 3: I never saw him on stage, but he would be
• 2:04:21
  Speaker 3: in the room sometimes, and he definitely had timing to,
• 2:04:24
  Speaker 3: you know, to give a joke.
• 2:04:26
  Speaker 2: But, like, I don't remember ever seeing him with a
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 2: mic in his hand. Isn't that crazy, though? Like, he
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 2: was just always there hanging out, and he was like,
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 2: but that was the part of how nutty that place was.
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 2: The place was just strange.
• 2:04:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:04:41
  Speaker 2: We ran into so many, like, Completely schizophrenic people in
• 2:04:44
  Speaker 2: the parking lot. Like, they would just wander their way
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 2: back there and start talking to us and explain to
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 2: us about the voices in their head.
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 3: He's on Brody's show with Zach.
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow.
• 2:04:55
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, Brody had him on his show. It
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 2: was just... That's how weird that place was. It was
• 2:05:02
  Speaker 2: just such a fucking... Just an unusual spot.
• 2:05:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:05:07
  Speaker 2: And so we've done our best to make our own
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 2: version of that here.
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 1: And the.
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 1: That Crest Hill house was also a crazy place, you know.
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not doing that. I think that was a
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 2: terrible idea. I'm not going to buy a house and
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 2: have a bunch of comedians live in it. That sounds
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 2: like a recipe for a fucking disaster. I just can't
• 2:05:28
  Speaker 2: manage all that. You know, I almost bought Crest Hill
• 2:05:32
  Speaker 2: at one point in time. Yeah, they were selling it
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 2: and I was really thinking about buying it. But I
• 2:05:36
  Speaker 2: had a dog at the time. His name was Frank
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 2: Sinatra and Frank Sinatra was an escape artist. That was
• 2:05:43
  Speaker 2: not a big enough– I'm a firm believer that if
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 2: you have a dog, you really have to have a
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 2: big yard. I think otherwise it's cruel. I think dogs
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 2: need exercise. They need something. If you don't have a
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 2: big yard, you got to be able to take that
• 2:05:59
  Speaker 2: dog out every day and exercise and bring them around. Otherwise,
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 2: it's rude. And Crest Hill had that little tiny backyard, remember?
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 2: And it was on the hill. I'm like, he's getting
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 2: over this fence. He was a pit bull. I'm like,
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 2: he's getting over that fence like that. That dog could
• 2:06:12
  Speaker 2: get out of anything. I was like, that poor guy.
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 2: I'm not doing that to him. So I never bought
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 2: it because of my dog. Literally, I was thinking about
• 2:06:19
  Speaker 2: buying that house, and she was selling it. But I
• 2:06:23
  Speaker 2: went to look at it. I went to look at
• 2:06:25
  Speaker 2: it to see if I could buy it. I think
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 2: some comics might have been even living there at the time.
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 1: They sold it several times since then. I was just
• 2:06:35
  Speaker 1: there not too long ago, and it's all kind of
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 1: destroyed because the guy is kind of wacky, and he's
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 1: remodeling it. But it was a big part of my life.
• 2:06:48
  Speaker 1: It was a museum. I was living there in a
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 1: little room. Andrew dies clay downstairs, and he's teaching me
• 2:06:57
  Speaker 1: how to date women. I know. I know.
• 2:07:01
  Speaker 2: It's sad.
• 2:07:02
  Speaker 1: It's crazy, but I was so naive. And he was
• 2:07:05
  Speaker 1: clean at that time. You know, his act was very clean.
• 2:07:09
  Speaker 1: He would tell, you know, he would do impressions of
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 1: Elvis and John Travolta and Sylvester Stallone. So he's... And
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 1: he would be very funny. We were pretty good friends.
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 1: He would just... But he would play with me. He
• 2:07:29
  Speaker 1: would say... He would play that, you know, I would
• 2:07:33
  Speaker 1: have a girlfriend come, and he would say, so now
• 2:07:37
  Speaker 1: you want me to go downstairs? Can you imagine Andrew
• 2:07:40
  Speaker 1: being this, you know, crazy guy? He said, now I
• 2:07:44
  Speaker 1: got to go downstairs, and I'll be all by myself,
• 2:07:48
  Speaker 1: and you're going to be with this girl, and you're
• 2:07:51
  Speaker 1: my best friend, and how is that going to... I go,
• 2:07:54
  Speaker 1: get the hell out of here. She's going to be here.
• 2:07:57
  Speaker 1: And then she would come, and he would do it,
• 2:07:59
  Speaker 1: and front of her. Well, you guys are going to
• 2:08:02
  Speaker 1: have fun now and I'm going to have to go downstairs.
• 2:08:06
  Speaker 1: There's nothing there. And he would just play and play along,
• 2:08:10
  Speaker 1: you know. And then Tom Wilson was living there too.
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 1: Tom is the guy who did... Biff in Back to
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 1: the Future. He was the bad guy, right? And so
• 2:08:26
  Speaker 1: Tom was kind of a clean-cut guy, and Andrew was,
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 1: you know, not. So one time I was supposed to
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 1: break up with this girl. I wanted to break up
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 1: with her. And Andrew goes, I have an idea for you.
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 1: We're going to go to a jewelry store. We're going
• 2:08:47
  Speaker 1: to get a gift for her so it will be
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 1: easy to break up. So we go. We buy a ring.
• 2:08:56
  Speaker 1: And I'll bring it. I brought it back. And I go, Tom,
• 2:09:02
  Speaker 1: Andrew told me to buy this ring to give it
• 2:09:04
  Speaker 1: to this girl so it would be an easy breakup.
• 2:09:08
  Speaker 1: And he looks and he goes, it's an engagement ring.
• 2:09:11
  Speaker 1: You know that. And I go, but Andrew told me
• 2:09:15
  Speaker 1: to buy it. I'm going to. He goes, Tom goes,
• 2:09:22
  Speaker 1: Andrew is not a representative of a human race. So
• 2:09:26
  Speaker 1: don't listen to what he's saying. So that's how it
• 2:09:31
  Speaker 1: was kind of a fun relationship. But it was interesting
• 2:09:35
  Speaker 1: because I was very enterprising. And I'm working for Mitzi.
• 2:09:40
  Speaker 1: You know, she's paying me whatever minimum wage. But I'm
• 2:09:45
  Speaker 1: saving money. And we live with those guys, and we
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 1: have a two-car garage, but no cars in it. So
• 2:09:54
  Speaker 1: a friend of mine says to me, why don't we
• 2:09:57
  Speaker 1: go to Germany together? We'll borrow some money, we'll buy
• 2:10:02
  Speaker 1: two Mercedeses, and we'll sell one, and we'll get one
• 2:10:07
  Speaker 1: for free. It was kind of an interesting idea. So
• 2:10:12
  Speaker 1: we went with some complications. I was able to bring
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 1: two cars and sold them. So here's, these guys are
• 2:10:21
  Speaker 1: sleeping till like noon and they don't have a car
• 2:10:27
  Speaker 1: and they don't, they're just bombing around. And I have
• 2:10:29
  Speaker 1: two Mercedes in the garage. I sell one and then
• 2:10:34
  Speaker 1: I go to Europe. They hired me to do a
• 2:10:39
  Speaker 1: Bob Monkhouse show, which was kind of a Johnny Carson
• 2:10:42
  Speaker 1: show for England. And I fly there and they give
• 2:10:46
  Speaker 1: me a bag of money, 10,000 euros, not euros, pounds,
• 2:10:54
  Speaker 1: in a bag to do this show. So I buy
• 2:10:57
  Speaker 1: a Rolls Royce and ship it to America. So now
• 2:11:01
  Speaker 1: I have a Mercedes 450 SL and a Rolls Royce,
• 2:11:07
  Speaker 1: but I live in a room for $ 120 a month, right?
• 2:11:09
  Speaker 1: And so.
• 2:11:15
  Speaker 1: Um, this is how weird it is. And, and this,
• 2:11:20
  Speaker 1: and I want to buy a house, but I don't
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 1: have enough money. So this realtor passes by one day
• 2:11:28
  Speaker 1: and I'm polishing the Rolls Royce. And she goes, can
• 2:11:32
  Speaker 1: I borrow like a hammer to put the sign in?
• 2:11:36
  Speaker 1: I go, you know what? You're a realtor. Maybe you
• 2:11:39
  Speaker 1: can help me. I'm looking for a house. Um, And
• 2:11:44
  Speaker 1: I liked when Mitzi had that big house, 5,000 square
• 2:11:47
  Speaker 1: feet overlooking LA. I'm like, I want something like that.
• 2:11:52
  Speaker 1: And I said, I tell her, I want a 5,000
• 2:11:56
  Speaker 1: square foot house with an acre of land. And I
• 2:12:02
  Speaker 1: wanted to buy it for, with the view of LA.
• 2:12:07
  Speaker 1: And I want to buy it for $ 150, 000. And I'm
• 2:12:11
  Speaker 1: thinking she's going to hit me with a hammer. She goes,
• 2:12:15
  Speaker 1: I may have something for you. And I go, really?
• 2:12:20
  Speaker 1: And she goes, yeah. And there was a house literally
• 2:12:27
  Speaker 1: like a block away from where Mitz's was. Similar structure,
• 2:12:31
  Speaker 1: only it was destroyed. It was a house that Lenny
• 2:12:35
  Speaker 1: Bruce used to live in years ago. uh, was, um,
• 2:12:40
  Speaker 1: the Seymour Cassell, who is, uh, he is a character actor.
• 2:12:45
  Speaker 1: I don't know if he's still around. Maybe Jamie can
• 2:12:48
  Speaker 1: find it of him. Uh, he was a character actor
• 2:12:53
  Speaker 1: and he got into drugs and lost that house to
• 2:12:59
  Speaker 1: his attorney who, and, and so, um, So I go
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 1: look at the house. It's totally destroyed, but my parents
• 2:13:08
  Speaker 1: needed a project. They were, and I needed them to
• 2:13:12
  Speaker 1: have a project. So I said, how much would he,
• 2:13:15
  Speaker 1: and he said, he'll take $ 150, 000 because it's totally destroyed.
• 2:13:20
  Speaker 1: There's stuff, swimming, but there is stuff in the basement,
• 2:13:27
  Speaker 1: like flooded. The windows are broken, destroyed. So- I buy
• 2:13:35
  Speaker 1: that house, but I want to buy it. But I
• 2:13:40
  Speaker 1: have to get all the paperwork. And I go, I
• 2:13:45
  Speaker 1: need this. There is some kind of discrepancy that a
• 2:13:49
  Speaker 1: sliver of the land belongs to a neighbor or something
• 2:13:53
  Speaker 1: like that. So I need to sign that guy, Seymour Cassell,
• 2:13:57
  Speaker 1: supposed to sign something off. And I go, where am
• 2:14:00
  Speaker 1: I going to find him? I go, the attorney goes,
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 1: I know where he is. He's in jail. So I
• 2:14:06
  Speaker 1: go to jail and I figure I'm going to offer
• 2:14:10
  Speaker 1: him money to sign this paper. And I go in.
• 2:14:16
  Speaker 1: I have like $ 500 in my pocket. And I go,
• 2:14:21
  Speaker 1: I need you to sign this paper. And he goes,
• 2:14:26
  Speaker 1: I said, how much? And he goes, 50. I go, 52.
• 2:14:33
  Speaker 1: He said, no, $ 50. I go, why $ 50? He said,
• 2:14:39
  Speaker 1: they won't allow us more than $ 50 in jail. So
• 2:14:43
  Speaker 1: now I'm in jail with a $ 100 bill trying to
• 2:14:47
  Speaker 1: get change, which is not a good place to do it.
• 2:14:52
  Speaker 1: I got it, and now I own that beautiful home.
• 2:14:57
  Speaker 2: You still have it?
• 2:14:58
  Speaker 1: No, I sold it and moved to Pacific Palisades that time.
• 2:15:05
  Speaker 1: And when my kids were, my daughter was born and
• 2:15:09
  Speaker 1: then had to sell that house and lose a lot
• 2:15:12
  Speaker 1: of money to move to Branson.
• 2:15:14
  Speaker 2: And are you in Branson still?
• 2:15:17
  Speaker 1: I do.
• 2:15:18
  Speaker 2: You live in Branson?
• 2:15:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I owned a theater there.
• 2:15:22
  Speaker 2: So how did you start coming out here?
• 2:15:25
  Speaker 1: It was a desire to kind of do what I
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 1: felt compelled that I can still offer something valuable to
• 2:15:38
  Speaker 1: the audience out there. Watching Nate Bergazzi doing that. And
• 2:15:46
  Speaker 1: he had me actually, I was in Florida and I
• 2:15:52
  Speaker 1: wanted to go see his show. And he is in a...
• 2:15:56
  Speaker 1: this Hertz Arena, 12,000 something people. And I asked if
• 2:16:04
  Speaker 1: I could just go come see the show. And he said,
• 2:16:07
  Speaker 1: why don't you go on stage and do a set?
• 2:16:11
  Speaker 1: And that was like, I walked out there and I
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 1: felt like I was back in the 80s. You know,
• 2:16:22
  Speaker 1: the audience just, The moment they said my name, they
• 2:16:27
  Speaker 1: knew who I was. That audience knows who I am.
• 2:16:31
  Speaker 1: So they just went crazy. And I felt like Rocky
• 2:16:35
  Speaker 1: standing there bowing. And then I did like eight minutes.
• 2:16:39
  Speaker 1: And so he's very respectful and very he feels like
• 2:16:45
  Speaker 1: I one of the people that kind of paved the
• 2:16:49
  Speaker 1: way for comedy to be what it is today.
• 2:16:54
  Speaker 2: That's awesome.
• 2:16:55
  Speaker 1: So I've been very blessed.
• 2:16:57
  Speaker 2: And so how did you wind up in Austin?
• 2:17:01
  Speaker 1: I came here for the festival that was that— Moon Tower?
• 2:17:07
  Speaker 1: Moon Tower. And then I had Adam. Adam got me
• 2:17:12
  Speaker 1: a spot. And that's when I met Tony. And Tony said,
• 2:17:18
  Speaker 1: why don't you be a guest judge on my show?
• 2:17:22
  Speaker 1: And I was going with my family to Europe because
• 2:17:28
  Speaker 1: my family's from Ukraine, so my wife's family from Ukraine,
• 2:17:32
  Speaker 1: so they moved to Europe. And so we went there
• 2:17:36
  Speaker 1: for two months and I said, Tony, I can't do
• 2:17:38
  Speaker 1: it right now, but end of August, I would love
• 2:17:40
  Speaker 1: to do it. And that's how it all kind of
• 2:17:44
  Speaker 1: came together. Wow. Yeah.
• 2:17:46
  Speaker 2: That's awesome.
• 2:17:47
  Speaker 1: Small world.
• 2:17:47
  Speaker 2: What are you doing tonight?
• 2:17:49
  Speaker 1: I don't have any plans. I was just hoping to
• 2:17:53
  Speaker 1: get through this. Because you never know. I'm hoping that,
• 2:17:58
  Speaker 1: you know, I'll be happy to do whatever is out there,
• 2:18:01
  Speaker 1: you know.
• 2:18:03
  Speaker 2: You were hoping to get through the show? Well, you
• 2:18:05
  Speaker 2: have to know.
• 2:18:06
  Speaker 1: I mean... your show, I don't think you can fathom
• 2:18:13
  Speaker 1: how big your show, I mean, I know you know
• 2:18:16
  Speaker 1: the numbers and you know, but to get, to have
• 2:18:25
  Speaker 1: the conversation for three hours and not really knowing where
• 2:18:30
  Speaker 1: it's going to go, what's going to happen, how it's
• 2:18:32
  Speaker 1: going to be, you get nervous, you know, and I
• 2:18:36
  Speaker 1: feel like I was going to Nashville, and that was
• 2:18:42
  Speaker 1: Nashville Comedy Festival a year and a half ago. And
• 2:18:47
  Speaker 1: I went there, and I walked into Ryman's auditorium, and
• 2:18:54
  Speaker 1: Brian Dorfman, you probably know, he's a promoter. He remembered
• 2:18:59
  Speaker 1: me from the years in the past, and there was
• 2:19:03
  Speaker 1: a show that... all the Nate Borghese's, the protégés were doing.
• 2:19:13
  Speaker 1: And I walked in, I didn't know what was going on.
• 2:19:17
  Speaker 1: And he said, you want to go up? And I go, okay,
• 2:19:22
  Speaker 1: I'll go up. And I went in the middle of
• 2:19:25
  Speaker 1: the show and I did 15 minutes and the crowd
• 2:19:31
  Speaker 1: gave me a standing ovation in the middle of the show.
• 2:19:34
  Speaker 1: And I know it's I get emotional because I feel
• 2:19:38
  Speaker 1: like an ugly duckling that goes in and doesn't know
• 2:19:46
  Speaker 1: if this young people going to accept you or not.
• 2:19:50
  Speaker 1: And can you still do it? I was, I'm in
• 2:19:52
  Speaker 1: Branson for 33 years. I'm very comfortable in that environment.
• 2:19:58
  Speaker 1: But going into with the young comedians, it's like a
• 2:20:02
  Speaker 1: boxer who hasn't been out there And there is respect,
• 2:20:07
  Speaker 1: but also respect only lasts 30 seconds after they introduce you,
• 2:20:14
  Speaker 1: but then you have to prove that you got what
• 2:20:18
  Speaker 1: it takes. And that's what I feel like I want
• 2:20:24
  Speaker 1: to continue to do this because I believe I can
• 2:20:27
  Speaker 1: still offer something valuable to the audience, that family audience
• 2:20:34
  Speaker 1: that could learn something from me, could laugh with me,
• 2:20:39
  Speaker 1: whatever it is.
• 2:20:40
  Speaker 2: That's very wholesome, Yakov. You're a wholesome guy.
• 2:20:43
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you.
• 2:20:45
  Speaker 2: I mean that with all sincerity.
• 2:20:46
  Speaker 1: Well, I'll tell you, it's interesting. When I graduated from
• 2:20:54
  Speaker 1: Pepperdine and I came to Comedy and Magic Club in
• 2:20:58
  Speaker 1: my Hermosa Beach.
• 2:21:00
  Speaker 2: I love that place.
• 2:21:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, me too.
• 2:21:02
  Speaker 2: Shout out to Mike Lacey.
• 2:21:03
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes.
• 2:21:04
  Speaker 2: He's the best.
• 2:21:04
  Speaker 1: And I showed up in my cap and gown, kind
• 2:21:08
  Speaker 1: of proud. And Jay Leno is there all the time,
• 2:21:12
  Speaker 1: every Sunday. And Jay goes, so what's up, what's up,
• 2:21:17
  Speaker 1: what's up with that?
• 2:21:18
  Speaker 2: What's up with that?
• 2:21:20
  Speaker 1: And I go, well, I decided to get a doctorate
• 2:21:23
  Speaker 1: degree because I really think that there is a, research
• 2:21:28
  Speaker 1: on laughter that you could really help people understand it better.
• 2:21:35
  Speaker 1: And he goes, Yakov, you're a comedian. You write a joke,
• 2:21:40
  Speaker 1: you tell a joke, you pick up a check, and
• 2:21:45
  Speaker 1: you go, and you go, and that's it. And I go,
• 2:21:49
  Speaker 1: but what about like humanity? And no, no, he goes, no, no,
• 2:21:53
  Speaker 1: you don't get it. You write a joke, you tell
• 2:21:56
  Speaker 1: a joke, And you pick up a check and that's it.
• 2:22:03
  Speaker 1: I feel like there is more that I can do.
• 2:22:07
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, that's Jay's perspective. Right. My perspective is
• 2:22:10
  Speaker 2: much more aligned with yours. I think there's a lot
• 2:22:13
  Speaker 2: more going on. And I think comedy is very valuable
• 2:22:15
  Speaker 2: to people, including me. If I don't feel good, then
• 2:22:18
  Speaker 2: I go watch people. tell great jokes and laugh. I
• 2:22:22
  Speaker 2: feel better. I like it. I like it. People like it.
• 2:22:26
  Speaker 2: People keep coming to see it. There's a reason why
• 2:22:27
  Speaker 2: people come. It's medicine. It really is. I know that's
• 2:22:30
  Speaker 2: like very cliche. No, no. Laughter is medicine, but it is.
• 2:22:33
  Speaker 2: There's something to it. It's a lubricant.
• 2:22:35
  Speaker 1: It's like engine without, if you don't have oil in
• 2:22:40
  Speaker 1: the engine, it will not go. And I think laughter
• 2:22:45
  Speaker 1: in the relationship, Is that lubricant.
• 2:22:48
  Speaker 2: And with friends. It's just a fun thing to do.
• 2:22:51
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 2:22:52
  Speaker 2: That's one of the reasons why I like going there. Yes. Because, like,
• 2:22:55
  Speaker 2: we get to hang out together and laugh.
• 2:22:57
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 2:22:57
  Speaker 2: Speaking of which, do you want to do a set tonight?
• 2:23:00
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 2:23:00
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 2:23:00
  Speaker 1: You know anybody who can get me in?
• 2:23:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I know a guy. It'd be my show. I'd
• 2:23:04
  Speaker 2: love it. So you'll do a set on my show tonight.
• 2:23:07
  Speaker 1: Oh, my God.
• 2:23:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Okay.
• 2:23:08
  Speaker 1: I'd love it.
• 2:23:09
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 2:23:10
  Speaker 1: Oh, my goodness. Wow.
• 2:23:10
  Speaker 2: We'll have some fun.
• 2:23:11
  Speaker 1: What a gift.
• 2:23:12
  Speaker 2: Thank you. And if people want to see you, other
• 2:23:14
  Speaker 2: than that, you're on tour.
• 2:23:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:23:16
  Speaker 2: What is the website? Is it yakov.com? Yakov.com.
• 2:23:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, my next show is in Atlanta this weekend.
• 2:23:23
  Speaker 2: Well, people can go to it. It's up on the screen.
• 2:23:25
  Speaker 2: There it is.
• 2:23:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:23:26
  Speaker 2: Stand-up podcast host legend. You have your own podcast?
• 2:23:30
  Speaker 1: I did for about a year. What happened? A baby
• 2:23:35
  Speaker 1: was born.
• 2:23:36
  Speaker 2: Oh, you're doing a lot of good spots. You're doing
• 2:23:38
  Speaker 2: the Punchline. You're doing the Punchline in Sacramento. You're doing
• 2:23:42
  Speaker 2: Cobbs in San Francisco.
• 2:23:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:23:45
  Speaker 2: Comedy Works in Greenville. Greenwood, rather. That's the other Comedy Works.
• 2:23:50
  Speaker 2: There's two Comedy Works. Nice. Side splitters. Great spots. Beautiful.
• 2:23:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:23:55
  Speaker 2: People will come see you, man.
• 2:23:56
  Speaker 1: I hope so.
• 2:23:57
  Speaker 2: And you're very funny. Thank you.
• 2:23:58
  Speaker 1: So it's good.
• 2:23:58
  Speaker 2: It's good to see you out there.
• 2:23:59
  Speaker 1: Still doing it. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
• 2:24:02
  Speaker 2: I really enjoyed talking to you in the Green Room.
• 2:24:03
  Speaker 2: I'm glad we did this because that's a crazy-ass story.
• 2:24:06
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you.
• 2:24:07
  Speaker 2: My pleasure. You're a good dude, Yakov. I love you.
• 2:24:10
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 2:24:11
  Speaker 2: I love you, too. Bye, everybody.