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#0134_ STORY INSPIRE: When One Choice Changes Everything_ Arsenio Hall · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast
• 0:08
  by night, all day. All right. Slap some headphones on. Hello, sir.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Yes. Our old friend would be so happy. Not just
• 0:20
  that picture, but so much that you've done. Do you
• 0:24
  believe that people who have gone on know what we're
• 0:30
  doing or see us?
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: You'd like to think that you're that important.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: I have a feeling they have more important stuff to
• 0:40
  do on the other side.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess if you're in heaven, you're not thinking
• 0:43
  about the mothership.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Right. Well, the mothership definitely is from her.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Yes. Yeah.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's an incredible tribute to her.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Well, the bar is named after her.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I've heard all the comics. I've heard Shane and
• 1:00
  Ian and all the guys talk about it. After they
• 1:02
  came back. And that's just an honor, man. Plus, you know,
• 1:09
  I used to say to people, if you haven't taken
• 1:11
  something from watching Richard Pryor, you're probably doing it wrong.
• 1:16
  And Mitzi made the greatest comedy mecca ever. And you
• 1:24
  got to copy what she did.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: A hundred percent.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, she taught me everything about how to run
• 1:32
  a club, how to do it right. Basically kind of
• 1:35
  let the comedians run it, let the inmates run the asylum.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're perfect inmates for that. And right now the
• 1:43
  Comedy Store is greater than ever.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: That's awesome.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's wonderful there because, you know, I even got
• 1:50
  Jay Leno to come back, you know, because he remembered
• 1:53
  the old days and hadn't gone back. And I'm like, dude,
• 1:56
  it's different. They... pay you for coming. They split the
• 2:01
  door in a different way now. And there are phones
• 2:05
  in bags. I had to explain that concept.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah. We had encouraged them to do all that.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That was your era.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, once we left, we started doing that at
• 2:15
  the mothership for all the shows. Then other comedy clubs
• 2:19
  started falling. So it's the way to do it. People
• 2:21
  are too fucking distracted.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And I think it frees us up in a way.
• 2:28
  I'll say things and try things and not worry about
• 2:31
  seeing them on YouTube when they're not ready or when
• 2:35
  I've made a mistake and gone too far and said something.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Oh, 100 percent. It's also you have to be free
• 2:41
  to fuck around and experiment. And if someone takes that
• 2:44
  fucking around and experiment, you don't know what's coming out
• 2:46
  of your mouth. Like right now, I don't know what's
• 2:48
  coming out of my mouth right before I say it. Right.
• 2:51
  And people have to understand that. This is not like.
• 2:53
  When you're on stage and you're working out, a lot
• 2:56
  of it is free-balling. You've got material that's pre-established and
• 3:03
  you've got the bones of it. But you're also fucking
• 3:06
  around in the moment. And sometimes you fuck around in
• 3:09
  the moment and it works. And sometimes you fuck around
• 3:11
  in the moment and it does nothing. Or it's terrible.
• 3:15
  You said something awful. You're like, whoops, sorry. Yeah, we
• 3:18
  make mistakes. You're just fucking creating something. And then stand-up
• 3:23
  is the only art form that you have to kind
• 3:25
  of create in front of a crowd. You can't really–
• 3:28
  you can get ideas and the concepts and the flesh
• 3:32
  of it alone. But you have– it comes alive in
• 3:35
  front of the crowd. You have to be able to
• 3:37
  fuck around.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Me and Chappelle– and you've done this kind of thing.
• 3:44
  Me and Chappelle met Chris Rock in Cleveland because Chappelle
• 3:48
  lives in Ohio obviously. He's done something very similar to
• 3:51
  what you've done, but we'll get into that later.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's done something really cool.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: Incredible.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Basically took over a whole town. Yeah, yeah. It's funny,
• 3:59
  and especially he had a really funny joke about it,
• 4:02
  about how when white people move into a neighborhood, it's
• 4:04
  called gentrification. And he goes, they don't have a word
• 4:07
  for what I'm doing to these motherfuckers.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's crazy to be Dave Chappelle, the most important
• 4:13
  man in town.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: But Chris Rock was doing Cleveland. And we met him there.
• 4:21
  And that was the first time I saw the bags.
• 4:26
  And I was apprehensive. As a matter of fact, I
• 4:29
  saw a celebrity in L.A. who didn't want to put
• 4:32
  his phone in a bag. And so they had that
• 4:34
  motherfucker stay outside.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's too many snitches in this world. Too many
• 4:39
  people just want to film everything for the gram.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: Like, stop. Yeah, sometimes we're saying the wrong thing. Sometimes
• 4:46
  we're drunk.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah. For sure, a lot.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot. Dave loves to get lit and go
• 4:52
  on stage. But it's also like that's one of the
• 4:55
  ways he creates. Like I've seen him do entire shows
• 4:57
  where he's just completely fucking around and he films everything.
• 5:01
  So then afterwards he goes over it and he's like, oh,
• 5:03
  there's a seed right there. Let me plant that seed.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: There's an idea there. And then, you know, that's how
• 5:08
  you come up with stuff.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I never drink or smoke before going on stage,
• 5:15
  but I love to create at home. And the next day,
• 5:19
  because sometimes you can write something down and it'll be like, uh,
• 5:22
  blazer button envelope. And the next day you're like, I
• 5:25
  don't know what the fuck I thought was funny about
• 5:27
  that last night when I was smoking. But I like
• 5:30
  to smoke and create at home and then take it
• 5:32
  to the stage. But when I'm on stage, I've had
• 5:35
  bad experiences trying to do it high and saying, this
• 5:37
  will make me creative. I'll be like Hendrix of comedy.
• 5:41
  That's all wrong.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: Your memory will go.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Your memory will go. One time I was at
• 5:45
  the laugh factory and, uh, I came off and George
• 5:49
  Lopez said to me, why you come off? And I said,
• 5:53
  I told you I do 20. And he says, you
• 5:55
  did five. I was in tonight show mode or some shit.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: I got to clear something up. Speaking of this has
• 6:04
  nothing to do with you, but I did a podcast
• 6:07
  last week with Theo Vaughn. And in it, there was
• 6:12
  like a video on the internet that was accusing me
• 6:14
  of lying about something. And what I said was, that
• 6:18
  I was in the mountains of Utah when the Charlie
• 6:20
  Kirk thing was going down. What had actually happened was
• 6:24
  I was here doing a podcast with Charlie Sheen when
• 6:28
  the Charlie Kirk thing went down. We stopped and took
• 6:33
  a piss break, right? And that's when we found out
• 6:34
  about it, right? And then when I was in the
• 6:38
  mountains of Utah, that's when the Jimmy Kimmel thing was happening,
• 6:42
  when Jimmy Kimmel was getting in trouble. And I was
• 6:44
  getting all these messages, but I didn't have any service
• 6:46
  out there, so I had to hook up to Starlink
• 6:48
  in order to find out what was happening. When I
• 6:50
  did the podcast the other day, it seemed like I
• 6:53
  was saying that I was in the mountains when Charlie
• 6:57
  Kirk got shot. I probably was saying that. I was
• 7:00
  exhausted when I did that show last week. So I
• 7:04
  did a show on Tuesday night at the club, and
• 7:07
  I have this thing that I do, unfortunately, where I
• 7:10
  come home, and it's the only time that I get
• 7:13
  alone time is when everyone's asleep. And I stayed up
• 7:16
  way too late. I stayed up super late. Then I
• 7:18
  had to take my kid to school in the morning.
• 7:20
  And I was like, I'll just power through. The problem
• 7:23
  when I do that, when I get no sleep is
• 7:25
  my memory is dog shit. Like I have a really
• 7:28
  good memory and a terrible memory. It's really good a
• 7:31
  lot of the times. And then sometimes, especially when I'm tired,
• 7:34
  it's fucking terrible. It's like from doing thousands of podcasts,
• 7:39
  My memory is like a room that's filled with boxes
• 7:44
  and files. And I don't know where the fuck everything is.
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: As you were talking, the first thing, everything goes to
• 7:50
  sports for me. Some of our greatest home run hitters,
• 7:54
  they strike out a lot because they're swinging all the
• 7:57
  motherfucking time trying to get it to McCovey Cove or something.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Of course.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: And I think that's how we are. Well, not we. You,
• 8:05
  especially right now, you're doing this constantly. You're talking to
• 8:08
  lots of people saying lots of things. And every now
• 8:11
  and then, it's going to be a swing and a miss.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: Let me explain that. Yeah, but the real problem was sleepy.
• 8:16
  The real problem was not getting any sleep. And I'm
• 8:18
  not going to do that anymore because I keep doing it.
• 8:21
  I get home at night.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: Have you had that problem before, like sleep deprivation and
• 8:25
  you get yourself into something?
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: I've had that problem before. Usually I can fix it
• 8:28
  with creatine. So creatine is a great supplement when you're tired.
• 8:33
  It really– there's been studies that show that creatine supplementation,
• 8:38
  especially like 10 to 20 grams, it actually alleviates all
• 8:44
  of the problems that happen with sleep deprivation in terms
• 8:48
  of cognitive function. But I've been– I just was doing
• 8:51
  some blood work. So when I knew that I was
• 8:54
  going to do my blood work, I didn't take any
• 8:56
  creatine for a month. Because I want to– because I
• 8:59
  had read something about creatine possibly being bad for your kidneys.
• 9:02
  So I wanted to get a baseline, do it, and
• 9:05
  then do it again when I supplement.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: So I had this like strategy. But the point is
• 9:10
  like– Creatine? Yeah. My brain was foggy. And so for
• 9:14
  the people that like heard that and like, what is
• 9:17
  wrong with you? That's what I thought when I saw–
• 9:19
  like somebody put a video on the line. Why is
• 9:21
  he lying about this? I'm like, oh, I forgot. I forgot.
• 9:24
  It wasn't why it's just my brain sucks when I
• 9:27
  don't get sleep and I'm not going to do that
• 9:29
  anymore because it's like when I get home at night
• 9:33
  is the only time I'm alone. It's like my only
• 9:36
  alone time. And I'm, I, even though I knew I
• 9:38
  had to get up in the morning and take my
• 9:40
  kid to school, I was like, I don't fucking care.
• 9:41
  I'm staying up. The problem with that is like when
• 9:45
  I have to do this the next day, I just
• 9:48
  don't function as good. I've done it. I've done it before,
• 9:51
  but I feel it the next day. Like, I can't
• 9:54
  recall things. My, words don't come out as smooth. I
• 9:57
  don't have as much. My vocabulary is limited. It's like
• 10:00
  there's too many problems with it. So I mean, two
• 10:03
  things are going through my mind. First of all, do
• 10:05
  guys with these arms do creatine?
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: I mean, would it help me?
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's great for everybody.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Creatine is not just a supplement for muscles. Creatine is
• 10:14
  actually a really good cognitive function supplement. It's actually a
• 10:18
  cognitive enhancing supplement.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of research on that. Yeah.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: And the other thing that hit me is I was
• 10:24
  listening to you talk recently and you talked about smoking
• 10:29
  herb and how it enhanced the weightlifting process.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: What's that about?
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: You feel it in your tissues, man. It's like you
• 10:38
  feel it's really good for coordination exercise. Like there's a
• 10:41
  lot of jujitsu guys who smoke weed. They smoke weed
• 10:44
  right before class. Like get ripped.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: So the Gracies were high when I first started seeing them?
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: Not those guys. Those guys don't do it, but a
• 10:52
  lot of guys do. I don't want to throw them
• 10:55
  under the bus, but one of the brothers was really
• 10:58
  into smoking weed and doing jiu-jitsu. Arguably the best one.
• 11:02
  Definitely the best one. But a lot of jiu-jitsu guys
• 11:05
  do it. And a lot of guys like to do
• 11:08
  it before kickboxing. You just feel your muscles more. You
• 11:13
  feel your coordination more. You're more sensitive. It's weird. It's
• 11:17
  like instead of you being like abstract with your movements
• 11:21
  and just kind of like doing it, it's like you
• 11:24
  feel all the tissues, all the connection. When you lift weights,
• 11:27
  you're like– like you feel all the fibers of all
• 11:31
  your shit moving. It's like it just makes you more sensitive.
• 11:35
  It's such a misunderstood substance. Not for everybody. I really
• 11:40
  believe some people should not get high. I think for
• 11:43
  some people, it throws them off and sends them down
• 11:45
  a dark road and it's just not.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: Causes them to procrastinate about their life and personal responsibilities.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of that. There's a lot of people
• 11:53
  that just wake and bake and just live in the
• 11:54
  cloud all day and never get anything done. And then
• 11:57
  there's a lot of people that also get like super
• 11:59
  paranoid and they get anxiety and they freak out. And
• 12:02
  then there's people that– there's a lot of connections to
• 12:06
  marijuana and psychosis or schizophrenic states. But the problem with
• 12:14
  that is were they already– Like, did they already have
• 12:18
  a propensity towards schizophrenia and marijuana pushed them over the edge?
• 12:21
  Were they going to get it anyway? Like, it's hard
• 12:23
  to say.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: A lot of those guys on a diet Coke would
• 12:25
  have problems.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right?
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of guys just fucking red lights freak
• 12:29
  them out. There's people that just life is too hard
• 12:32
  for them and they don't need something else that fucks
• 12:35
  with it. You know, if you already have mental health struggles,
• 12:38
  probably shouldn't do mushrooms.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: If you're already fucked up, if there's already some things
• 12:43
  that you're like struggling to hang on to everyday life. Yeah,
• 12:46
  you probably shouldn't do acid. You know what I mean?
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: You should probably just try to like keep your shit together.
• 12:53
  But that's not everybody. It's like alcohol. Like alcohol is
• 12:56
  not for everybody. But some people can have a glass
• 12:59
  of wine at dinner and just start laughing. It's a
• 13:01
  nice social lubricant. Some people, they have one drink and
• 13:05
  they're doing coke and they're getting hookers and they're fucking
• 13:08
  driving on the freeway. They're shooting at cops. They go crazy.
• 13:12
  Like some people just can't handle alcohol. doesn't mean it
• 13:15
  should be illegal. Right. That's crazy. And there's the same
• 13:18
  thing I feel with pot. Pot is super beneficial to
• 13:21
  a lot of people.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: It has been for millions of years. Yeah. For me,
• 13:27
  that's my like in the old days, you'd watch a
• 13:30
  television show and a guy would have a martini when
• 13:32
  he comes home.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: I even talk about that in the book. When I
• 13:35
  come home, my girl has me a joint laid out
• 13:38
  on the counter. You know, and nice little raw papers.
• 13:43
  And that's my, that's daddy's cocktail.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's a nice one, too, because it doesn't fuck
• 13:49
  with your body. The problem with alcohol is, you know,
• 13:53
  it feels good while you're doing it, but then the
• 13:55
  next day you're like, oh.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: Your fucking head and your body's tired.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: I hear swelling, you know, and different kinds of things.
• 14:05
  And also, I'm from a home. Where my favorite person,
• 14:09
  my cousin, because I didn't have brothers and sisters, biological
• 14:13
  brothers and sisters. So when my cousin came to live
• 14:15
  with me, a male, he's a teenager, and he had
• 14:19
  a drinking problem. Like I would go inside my toy
• 14:24
  box and find scotch.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: Oh, he would hide it?
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he would hide it. He's parked in the garage
• 14:30
  when there were already two cars in the garage. And
• 14:34
  I loved him and he was hilarious. And he, in part,
• 14:38
  helped to make me who I am. But a bad
• 14:41
  experience like that in your youth can make you a
• 14:44
  little bit leery about liquor. Oh, yeah.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: I had a friend of mine when I was in
• 14:48
  high school, and his cousin sold Coke. And I watched
• 14:52
  this guy fall apart. I watched him do cocaine constantly
• 14:55
  and fall apart. His life just went down the toilet.
• 14:58
  And I never touched cocaine because of that. I never did.
• 15:01
  I've still never done Coke. And I think that's why,
• 15:04
  because I watched this.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: So you've never tried a line? Never. That's heavy, man.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: Not once. Yeah.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: Because I had to try it to see what it
• 15:11
  smelled like, you know?
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: I mean. I'm sure I'd like it. My friend Jimmy said,
• 15:16
  don't do this. You'd love it. But he's probably right.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: But you also have a certain kind of discipline where
• 15:20
  I think you could do a line. And say, okay,
• 15:23
  I get it. But I love that you have the
• 15:26
  discipline to never try it. I don't have that kind
• 15:29
  of strength. I got to see what it's like once.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: The thing is, like, I don't know anybody who's had, like,
• 15:34
  cocaine was really good for me. Like, doing cocaine was
• 15:37
  really good. When I started doing cocaine, my life just
• 15:40
  really changed. I really got clarity. I started focusing. I
• 15:42
  was nicer to people. I don't ever hear that story. Never.
• 15:45
  Not once.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: I did a little coke, and then I was president
• 15:48
  of Yale.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: I do hear people say that about speed. which is weird.
• 15:53
  You hear people say that about amphetamines, like especially Adderall,
• 15:56
  like how like, oh my God, it makes me so productive.
• 15:59
  I get so much done, but it's generally, it's like
• 16:02
  journalists and people that have to write a lot. Students.
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: I'm very curious about Adderall because I'm hearing so much
• 16:11
  and I'm thinking like when I was doing the book, right?
• 16:15
  I'm like, would Adderall Would it be good to focus
• 16:19
  me to do for me what it does for students
• 16:21
  that I hear talk about it?
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: Probably. Probably, but I don't— It's a pill, right? It
• 16:26
  scares me, though, because I know a lot of people
• 16:29
  with problems with it. It's a real catchy one. It
• 16:35
  gets you. And then you start leaning on it.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: So that's one of the downs is it's extremely addicting.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: Very addictive.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: But what's the other downside?
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: Well, I would imagine when you get off of it,
• 16:45
  you're exhausted. Because I would imagine whenever there's– there's always
• 16:49
  some sort of a biological– there's– whenever– there's no free lunch, right?
• 16:57
  Anything that speeds you up is going to bring you down.
• 16:59
  Like there's– if you're ramping your body up where you're
• 17:02
  focusing for fucking 16 hours just sitting in front of
• 17:05
  the typewriter.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: And that's what like why journalists like it. I would
• 17:10
  imagine the back end of it– you've done it, Jamie.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: Only twice because it kept me up for two days.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: See, that's what I'm talking about. That's the main thing.
• 17:18
  That's it. It's an amphetamine.
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, I went to try to go to bed
• 17:21
  and was like, well, this isn't happening. So let's get
• 17:23
  up and see how we're up all day. All right.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: Two days? Yeah, I just had.
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: To call off work.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: It wasn't good. And then you feel real dopey after
• 17:30
  it wears off, right?
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn't feel like I succeeded on anything that day.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: Man, that is a fucking problem for me. It's like
• 17:38
  the lack of sleep thing. After this whole Charlie Kirk
• 17:41
  thing with this, what I was just talking about, I'm
• 17:43
  really going to concentrate a lot more on sleep. You
• 17:46
  can't fuck with that because it's like, especially me, it's
• 17:49
  like I need my brain to be functioning at its
• 17:53
  highest potential most of the time. Like that's what you're doing,
• 17:56
  especially when I'm in here. I was talking to Theo Vaughn.
• 17:59
  I didn't think it was that bad. be that big
• 18:00
  of a deal. Theo's a comic. We're just going to
• 18:02
  be silly.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: The most recent one?
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the one I was just talking about. It would
• 18:05
  probably be good to be loopy. Because the writers on
• 18:10
  news radio, they would stay up all night on purpose
• 18:13
  just to get loopy because they didn't really do any drugs.
• 18:17
  They just would use sleep deprivation to be silly. It
• 18:21
  was hilarious. These guys would start writing at like 2
• 18:25
  o'clock in the morning. Like they would stay up, they
• 18:28
  would play video games and they would start writing a
• 18:30
  script at like two o'clock in the morning. And then
• 18:32
  they would stumble in to like, when we have a
• 18:34
  table read, they would stumble into the table read, like
• 18:37
  just finishing the script. They would lay it out to us.
• 18:39
  They just got done printing it. And these guys would
• 18:43
  be fucking just completely out of it. Hair all fucked up, barefoot.
• 18:47
  It was really funny the way they operated, but it was,
• 18:50
  there was a method to their madness. And that method was,
• 18:53
  The more tired you get, the more exhausted you get,
• 18:56
  you get into sleep deprivation, you get loopy and you
• 18:59
  get silly and you start thinking silly things. Yeah. And
• 19:02
  those guys, that's how they would use it. They would
• 19:04
  use that weird state of mind, that loopiness to write.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 19:09
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• 20:31
  Speaker 2: I need my sleep, man. If I have sleep, I
• 20:33
  can do anything.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: I feel like they could have got there with weed
• 20:36
  without all the The loopiness, you know, you want to
• 20:39
  get there like you get there with weed and, you know,
• 20:42
  you don't have to stay up all night. You get
• 20:44
  it like right away.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but weed ain't for everybody.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: It's not for everybody.
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: It ain't for everybody. But yeah, I love having my sleep.
• 20:53
  As a matter of fact, that's the drug that's most
• 20:58
  important to me. Having an Ambien nearby.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: You like that? Yeah.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: A quarter. Just a little bite of Ambien.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: A little bite. Yeah.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: We'll hook you up.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: I knew a dude who would take that shit every day.
• 21:11
  He had to take it all the time. And then
• 21:13
  he was taking two. And he told me, like, dude,
• 21:16
  my house could be on fire. And I would have
• 21:18
  no idea. I'm like, that can't be good. But he
• 21:22
  needed it. It was the only way he could go
• 21:24
  to sleep. But he was also taking Adderall. So he
• 21:26
  was taking Adderall in the day. And then he was
• 21:28
  taking Ambien at night. Can't believe he's still alive.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's too much.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the Adderall fucked his life up, too. Woo. Yeah.
• 21:39
  It's not, you know, I don't think you should rely
• 21:42
  on anything for sleep. For me, I just, I've never
• 21:45
  had a sleep problem, fortunately. I could go to sleep
• 21:48
  on a bag of rocks. I could just crash. It
• 21:51
  drives my wife nuts. Yeah. Because, like, if we're on
• 21:53
  a plane, the moment the plane takes off, I'm out cold.
• 21:57
  I could just go to sleep.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: The bad thing about me is I can sleep best
• 22:00
  in places I shouldn't sleep. Like church. Or sit and
• 22:06
  talk to my woman's grandma.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: Church will make you sleepy. I don't know why. Why
• 22:09
  does church make you so sleepy? Or reading.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: Reading will put you out.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: There are some audible books that are worse than ambient.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: Right. Yeah. Something about physically reading puts me out.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: Just sitting there looking at the pages. I just start
• 22:24
  nodding off. Yeah. I.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: The Alchemist, I have been on page 12 for like
• 22:32
  a year and a half. Sit down on a plane
• 22:36
  and just read The Alchemist at the top of the
• 22:39
  page and I'm out.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's fiction for me that puts me out. Nonfiction
• 22:44
  doesn't really put me out. Nonfiction is more, like I
• 22:47
  guess it's more stimulating because it's real. Because I'm reading
• 22:51
  about real things. Something about reading fiction is what puts
• 22:54
  me to sleep.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: For me, it's just reading. I can take out my license,
• 22:58
  you know, and look and say, oh, halfway through my name.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: Out.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: This is cool, man.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Not having sleep is like a person that's got like
• 23:11
  legitimate insomnia. That's got to be the nuttiest fucking problem.
• 23:15
  Like that's that movie, The Mechanic. No, The Machinist. Did
• 23:18
  you ever see that movie, The Machinist? No.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: Is that an action movie?
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: Well, that's the movie with, what's, Christian Bale. Christian Bale
• 23:28
  where he lost an insane amount of weight. Christian Bale
• 23:31
  is a big guy. I think he got to like
• 23:34
  130-something pounds.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: And the idea was that this guy was going completely
• 23:39
  insane because he couldn't sleep. And so he wasn't eating.
• 23:42
  And so he was just like up all the time,
• 23:44
  like out of it. And he like– if you see
• 23:47
  what he looked like when he made that movie, it's–
• 23:51
  that's what he looked like in the movie. Oh, shit.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. That looks like he's about to make a
• 23:55
  whole different movie.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like he was about to die. And then he
• 23:59
  went from that and right afterwards he did Batman. So
• 24:03
  he got super jacked. He went from that. And by
• 24:06
  the way, the movie sucks. So this guy like wrecked
• 24:09
  his health for a movie that wasn't even good. And
• 24:13
  I mean, I wonder how good it could even be
• 24:17
  when your main guy is dying. Look at that image
• 24:22
  on the far right. The one that you just– look
• 24:24
  at that. Look at the difference between– that was like
• 24:27
  six months later.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: That can't be healthy.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: No. Fucking terrible for you. It has to be terrible. Terrible.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: Do you like to act? No.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: I don't hate it. I don't like the process. I
• 24:41
  don't like waiting around all day. I don't like being
• 24:44
  on set. I don't like dealing with– some actors are great.
• 24:48
  Some actors are just like all kinds of people.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: Cops.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of cops that are awesome.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: Because I know you had a point in your life
• 24:53
  when you could probably do anything you want, and I
• 24:57
  never see you pursuing any acting roles.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: No, I avoid them. I've been offered some fun stuff,
• 25:04
  and I was like, I'm not going to Bulgaria for
• 25:08
  three months. Fuck that. It's not my thing. If it
• 25:12
  was my thing, I'd feel very fortunate, and I'd dive
• 25:16
  on it.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: So when you look at something you've done, and you're
• 25:19
  watching a role in dailies or– At the premiere, you
• 25:24
  don't love what you see so much that you do
• 25:26
  more of it?
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: It doesn't bother me. It's just not what I enjoy doing. Again,
• 25:32
  it's the process that's the problem. It's the 16-hour days.
• 25:37
  And it's being around actors because you're around people that
• 25:42
  need to think and need to talk in a very
• 25:46
  specific way because they're always worried they're going to be
• 25:49
  cast out of the kingdom. You know what I mean?
• 25:52
  So it's like this very disingenuous way of communicating that
• 25:56
  a lot of actors have.
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: And you always feel when you do something that this
• 26:00
  person's going to be your friend for life. I'll see
• 26:02
  you next month. You never see that ever again. It's
• 26:06
  such a disingenuous environment.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: Do you enjoy it? Do you enjoy acting?
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: I kind of like it. But at 70... I prefer
• 26:15
  to just be at home.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: You're 70. Yeah. You look so good. Oh, thanks, dog.
• 26:20
  That's kind of crazy that you're 70.
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: And no creatine.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: Imagine how good you'd look if you had creatine.
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: I'm going to get it.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: 70, man. If you told me that you were 45,
• 26:31
  if I didn't know you, you told me you were 45,
• 26:32
  I'd believe you. That's nuts.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: That's a blessing.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: Isn't that crazy?
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. And I'm happy. So that's unusual. That's unusual.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Right. A lot of people when they're 70, they're
• 26:44
  bitter and tired.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I, I, um, I talk a little bit in
• 26:49
  the book about Richard Pryor coming to my first condo.
• 26:53
  I bought a condo so I could, I didn't have
• 26:55
  a car yet. And eventually I got one, but when
• 26:58
  I first came to LA, I wanted to be between
• 27:00
  the comedy store and the improvs. I could get to both.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: Oh, right.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: So I bought me a condo and I told Richard
• 27:06
  Pryor that I got a condo.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: It's one of those. I think I heard you in,
• 27:11
  Shane talking about how you see your heroes now and then,
• 27:15
  and sometimes you say the wrong shit. And I was
• 27:18
  expecting this to be the wrong shit, but it's all
• 27:20
  I could think of. And I said, Richard, I just
• 27:22
  bought a condo. And he said, oh, wow, I'd like
• 27:26
  to see it. And I was like, oh, okay. And
• 27:33
  him and Rashawn, his body man, came to see my condo.
• 27:38
  And that was the coolest thing in the world. But
• 27:40
  the one thing I remember, I remember I had no furniture.
• 27:44
  And Rashawn had told me, his guy had told me
• 27:46
  to get some Cavasier. So I had some Cavasier, you know.
• 27:50
  And we sat on the floor and drank Cavasier and
• 27:54
  listened to a boombox with jazz on it and talked.
• 27:58
  And he looked around at one point and he said,
• 28:01
  this reminds me of when I was happy.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: Whoa.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: And I don't even have to tell you what went
• 28:07
  through my head. and what I thought that meant, and
• 28:10
  I didn't listen to him then. That's the thing is
• 28:14
  people disperse knowledge to us from their experiences, and sometimes
• 28:17
  we're too young and dumb to listen.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: What did that mean to you at the time when
• 28:20
  you said, this reminds me of when I was happy?
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: You know, I was so excited that Richard Pryor came
• 28:26
  to see my condo. I didn't process it. But years later,
• 28:29
  I started realizing that he bought things and philosophies that
• 28:39
  made his life more complex. And he was happy. This
• 28:43
  is what I think it means. He was happy with
• 28:45
  the simple shit, you know? And sometimes, I mean, it's
• 28:49
  nice to have... Isn't it cool to have money but
• 28:52
  still eat burgers if you want to? I mean, because
• 28:54
  I remember walking through supermarkets and pretending I was shopping
• 28:58
  and eating out of the child cart, that little top part,
• 29:04
  and then leaving the supermarket, you know? So it's nice
• 29:07
  to be able... to buy anything we want. But at
• 29:10
  the same time, I get that thing of the simplicity and,
• 29:15
  you know, no guard gate.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Um, nobody's knocking down your door trying to get to you. Yeah.
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: Just, just a condo with no furniture. And for a
• 29:25
  guy like that, for the greatest that I've ever known
• 29:28
  in our world to say, I was happy when I
• 29:31
  had a little place with no furniture, um, I didn't
• 29:36
  think about it enough then, but later I realized what
• 29:38
  he meant when I was in a house that was
• 29:41
  too big with guest houses. You walk into a guest
• 29:47
  house and cobwebs get on your face because you ain't
• 29:51
  been in there in a while and you realize, okay,
• 29:53
  this is what Richard was talking about. I'm doing a
• 29:55
  lot of shit for other people that I don't need.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: Right. And too much complexity. Yeah. Too much complications.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: Somebody said, my business manager said something about my staff
• 30:05
  and it dawned on me, what the fuck do I
• 30:08
  have a staff for? You know, and I've simplified things
• 30:14
  a little bit in my life and I'm really happy.
• 30:16
  It's just, you know, me and my woman and a
• 30:21
  scaled down life.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: That's better. Yeah. There's a lot of people that just
• 30:27
  want a lot of people around them because it makes
• 30:29
  them feel important. They have a big staff. They have
• 30:32
  a lot of people working for them, a lot of
• 30:33
  things going on, a lot of different projects. Keep moving.
• 30:36
  Keep moving. But no peace.
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: Not good. I always tell comedians like they're like, oh,
• 30:42
  I got to get an assistant. I go, no, you don't.
• 30:44
  Just do less shit. Don't get an assistant. You get
• 30:47
  an assistant, that person is going to want to kill you.
• 30:49
  That person is going to feel entitled. You're making all
• 30:52
  this money. They're not. You're famous. They're not. They see
• 30:55
  you for who you really are. They're like, you ain't
• 30:58
  a fucking regular guy. Why has he got all this?
• 31:01
  Like David Spade's assistant duct taped him and tased him.
• 31:04
  Remember that? Yeah. Try to kill him.
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: That's heavy, man. And I've heard that the people who
• 31:11
  work for us always hate us. I've always avoided.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: It's not always the case.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: You know your housekeeper hates you.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: And I'm like.
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: No, she's been with me 22 years. It's like, that
• 31:23
  bitch hates you. And I don't want to believe that.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: It's not always the case, but it is often the
• 31:31
  case that people that are around people that have so much,
• 31:34
  they feel like, why don't I have this? Like, I'm
• 31:38
  working for this person. What am I not doing? But
• 31:40
  why am I not rich? This person could just make
• 31:41
  me rich. It's weird. You know what I mean?
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: Like, that's not what the job is. The job is
• 31:47
  you're a gardener. The garden doesn't make $ 5 million a year.
• 31:51
  Like this is– you're kind of being crazy. And then
• 31:55
  you get people that take advantage of you where you
• 31:57
  get a bill and you're like, why does it cost
• 31:59
  this much? Like this is– like I have a friend
• 32:01
  who's very wealthy. He's a businessman. And he goes over
• 32:05
  every fucking little thing that people charge him and he's
• 32:08
  always looking for– they're fucking trying to overcharge me.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: He signs his own checks.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But he gets crazy when he thinks people are
• 32:14
  overcharging him. But I'm like, dude, you're almost 80. And
• 32:18
  you're worth a billion dollars. Like why do you– why
• 32:21
  are you looking at like how much the car wash
• 32:23
  guy charges you? This is crazy.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: Maybe that's why he has a billion.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: Perhaps. I mean he's a businessman. That's his thing. But
• 32:30
  what drives him nuts is this idea that people are
• 32:34
  overcharging him because he's wealthy. They're taking advantage of him.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: Joe, the craziest I ever went was I had a
• 32:42
  barber when I had hair. Yeah. And, you know, a
• 32:47
  black barber is a skilled scientist, you know, because back
• 32:51
  then I had fried, dyed, laid to the side with
• 32:54
  three Adidas stripes over on the left. And, you know,
• 32:58
  my shit was intricate that year. And my business manager
• 33:04
  happened to be a business manager for two other entertainers.
• 33:08
  And he's also my friend. And one day he says,
• 33:12
  you know, that guy charges the three of you different prices.
• 33:16
  And I'm like, get the fuck. So I found out
• 33:21
  that Johnny Gill was paying 100. I was paying 350.
• 33:27
  And that drives me crazy because basically, like you say,
• 33:31
  he was charging based on who I am.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: He like you can afford it.
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. And I had a friend. who had more
• 33:40
  money than me, and he was charging him a crazy amount.
• 33:43
  It was like the rental of a rose. Crazy money.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, that's what comes with the territory. People just
• 33:52
  think you're not going to notice. They don't care, you know.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess, yeah.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: Do you think you are happier now than you were
• 34:03
  when the Arsenio Hall show was at its peak?
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I'm happier now because with that peak
• 34:14
  comes a lot of pressure and a lot of work.
• 34:18
  And I'd be a liar to say I don't enjoy
• 34:21
  having the money without the other shit. You know, I
• 34:25
  did a good job of investing and making sure that
• 34:29
  when the lights went out, I was good. So. i
• 34:35
  love my life right now man more relaxed oh and
• 34:38
  being the og and pretty much your responsibility is just
• 34:42
  uh giving advice to a comic in the hallway.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah you know a lot of the young guys don't
• 34:47
  understand what you did because what your show was like
• 34:52
  back in i guess when was it when did it
• 34:55
  first come on the.
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: Air what year probably uh Coming to America was like 86, 87.
• 35:00
  I left New York and went and started this show.
• 35:02
  So 87, 88, sometime around in there, I'm bad with years.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah. During that time and in the 90s, it changed
• 35:09
  the whole landscape of late night television. It completely changed it.
• 35:14
  Because late night television was stiff. It was like, yeah,
• 35:19
  fucking the desk. The desk made no sense to me.
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: I talk about the desk and how I got rid
• 35:24
  of it.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: It made no sense. But I was like, oh, finally,
• 35:28
  he got rid of the desk. Are we being lectured?
• 35:31
  Am I in the principal's office? What is the fucking
• 35:34
  desk for? But when they first started doing that in
• 35:36
  the 1950s, if you went to work, you had a desk.
• 35:40
  You had to wear a tie. You had a desk.
• 35:42
  And they all smoked cigarettes while they were on the job.
• 35:45
  You watch like the Johnny Carson show.
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: During commercials, Johnny would go under his desk, get a cigarette.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, they would often smoke on air. They would
• 35:53
  do it all the time back then. They all smoked cigarettes.
• 35:56
  How about planes?
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: How about the fact that we could get on a
• 35:59
  plane to go to a gig and there was a
• 36:01
  row behind us where smoking began? Right.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: Which made no sense.
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: And I'm in the no smoking row and the bitch
• 36:07
  behind me got a cigar.
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And it was just flooding the entire cabin. Yes.
• 36:13
  You know, Dice used to have a joke about it.
• 36:14
  You're in a fucking tube. Where's the air going? Yeah.
• 36:19
  But it was a weird time. But the whole idea
• 36:24
  was what I was getting to was like late night
• 36:26
  television was very stiff. It was, you know, it was like.
• 36:33
  And then your show came around.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: Paul Anka wrote that.
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: Did he?
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. Your show came around and then all of
• 36:40
  a sudden it was fun and loose and And I
• 36:44
  remember when Clinton came on your show and played the saxophone.
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: And, I mean, everybody was like, what is happening? The
• 36:51
  fucking president of the– was he the president back then
• 36:54
  or was he running?
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: He was a governor.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's right.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: And he was trying to get the young vote, so
• 36:59
  he did me. And then the next day they decided
• 37:02
  to do MTV because I think what my show did
• 37:07
  that night was changed how you run for the highest
• 37:10
  office in the land.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: Look at that. Yeah. Look at that.
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: The joke I had just done was finally a Democrat
• 37:18
  blowing something other than the election. When you look, you
• 37:23
  remember jokes in the moment. And, dude, so what's interesting
• 37:28
  is after this, presidential candidates realized they had to come
• 37:34
  to Rogan and Sunday morning to meet the press, you know.
• 37:40
  And I like that, you know. They have to go
• 37:43
  everywhere now.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: Well, they go where the people are paying attention, right?
• 37:48
  But it was different because if they did The Tonight
• 37:51
  Show with Johnny Carson, it would be a very competent interview,
• 37:57
  but it would be stiff. It was like very– I
• 38:00
  mean not even stiff is not the right word. It
• 38:03
  was traditional. Yeah. It was like this was different, like
• 38:06
  him playing the saxophone, running for president, playing the saxophone.
• 38:09
  I was like, what is happening here?
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: And I tried to get I told Jenna Bush this
• 38:14
  last week. I'm on this book slinging tour. And I
• 38:19
  told her, I said, I invited your grandpa because back
• 38:22
  then there was a mentality that you do equal both sides.
• 38:28
  And I don't think it was a rule, but but.
• 38:32
  First of all, my dad was a Republican. My mother
• 38:34
  was a Democrat. So I was used to hearing both
• 38:36
  sides and learning both sides. And I thought the best
• 38:39
  thing I could do for young people is show them
• 38:41
  both sides. And that would be fair of me as
• 38:44
  a host. And we got a call from a man
• 38:46
  named Marlon Fitzwater who said, no fucking way we're coming there.
• 38:51
  I wonder why. It's almost like what you talk about
• 38:56
  with the desk. Society... at a certain point is stiff
• 39:01
  and it takes certain people to loosen it up and
• 39:04
  make a change. And, uh, I, I think it was just,
• 39:08
  they're not used to it. It's like, why are they barking?
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: And what is, yeah, you know, that's right. Things that
• 39:15
  make you go, Hmm.
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: There was a lot going on.
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: I had a couple of hooks going.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: Oh, you had a great hook. The things that make
• 39:22
  you go, whom everybody used that all day long. Like when,
• 39:25
  if something weird was going on in the office, people
• 39:27
  have things that make you go, Hmm.
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: And, it was so cool. Then they wrote a song
• 39:32
  about it and I would turn on TV and I
• 39:34
  would see that CNC music factory.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: Yes, that's right.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And, um, um, I would turn on TV and
• 39:39
  like Nordstrom's would have a sale that makes you go.
• 39:42
  And I was like, that's very cool. You know, and
• 39:46
  it came about sitting with the writers and, um, I
• 39:51
  had done it at the comedy store and he says,
• 39:53
  you know, we could use that and just throw any
• 39:56
  joke in there like randos that we don't know where
• 39:59
  to put.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: And so it really was a cheating technique for a comic. Yeah.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: Perfect non sequitur.
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: Just the transition.
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: Every now and then, hey, why don't black women breastfeed
• 40:11
  chocolate milk? And you have no place else to put
• 40:14
  that thought. Right. So it's a stream of things that
• 40:18
  make you go, hmm.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it was just finally there was a
• 40:24
  different kind of talk show. It was like finally there
• 40:27
  was a talk show that was more fun.
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: Hey, the desk thing, my partner and executive producer Marla
• 40:36
  Kell Brown, we were sitting around one day and she said,
• 40:39
  after coming to America– I had done the Joan Rivers thing.
• 40:42
  I had filled in for her for 11 weeks. And
• 40:45
  I think her husband committed suicide and she was going
• 40:48
  through all that period, right? Conan's creating the Wilton North
• 40:52
  Report in the room that I leave. And I go
• 40:55
  to Paramount and she says, I'm asking you one thing.
• 40:58
  She said, I watched you do stand-up the other night
• 41:01
  at the Comedy Store. And there is a freedom that
• 41:05
  you have. that I would like you to have on
• 41:07
  the talk show. And I don't think we can have
• 41:09
  it with that desk between you and the guest. So
• 41:12
  I want you to just try without the desk. And
• 41:16
  I tried it without the desk and never went back.
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you changed it. I mean, like, and then George
• 41:23
  Lopez did No Desk when he did his show. A
• 41:27
  few people have tried the No Desk thing. Yeah.
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: For us, I think it's great. And you know what?
• 41:31
  I was able, like somebody like Rosie Perez, who would
• 41:34
  be nervous- I'd hold her hand. And you can't reach
• 41:39
  across the desk and hold somebody's hand.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: Well, also the desk was always elevated.
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: The desk was always above the guest.
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: We must be higher.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: Which is weird.
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: Well, that's a bizarre. I don't know if that's the
• 41:51
  ego of the entertainer or whether that's some ass-kissing prop
• 41:57
  set designer move. Because we always wanted to be higher.
• 42:02
  And I remember they put something under my seat.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: So I make your seat higher. Yeah.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: So I'm sitting even with Kareem, which is bullshit. Yeah.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: It's a weird thing. It's like, why would the host
• 42:16
  be above movie stars and rock stars? Why? That doesn't
• 42:22
  make any sense at all.
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Unless your host is David Bowie.
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Right. Unless he decides to do a talk show.
• 42:30
  Even then it doesn't make any sense. It's like, if
• 42:32
  you want to have a conversation the way you did,
• 42:34
  it was the best way to do it. Just be
• 42:36
  sitting there.
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: Sitting with each other, you know, and now you can
• 42:40
  lean in. Oh yeah. Yeah.
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: You could, you could touch the person.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: Now we have a different era where everyone can do talk.
• 42:52
  I saw Mike Epps talking on his back from his
• 42:55
  bed the other day, holding his phone above him. And
• 42:59
  that's when it hit me. It's like, Now we have
• 43:01
  a hard time finding a guest that doesn't have a show.
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: Anyone can have a show now. Yeah. And that's kind
• 43:09
  of cool.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: It is kind of cool. And it's just like, and
• 43:12
  you find your, as long as you do it long
• 43:14
  enough and you put the right attention to it and
• 43:18
  do it honestly, you'll find your own lane. You'll find
• 43:21
  your own way of doing things.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: I have friends who have children who have shows. makeup
• 43:26
  tutorials and successful things going on in their bedroom.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: One of the biggest shows on YouTube for a long
• 43:32
  time was a kid that was like unboxing toys.
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's cool.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: And it was sort of, but then they started monetizing
• 43:40
  it and I think, you know, as soon as your
• 43:42
  parents start making all that money off of you opening
• 43:44
  toy boxes, shit gets weird. It's weird for kids to
• 43:47
  get famous, period. But it was just like no one
• 43:51
  had thought that out. Like that there would be a
• 43:53
  lot of people that were interested in you watching toys.
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of shows that I watch on YouTube
• 44:02
  that it's just people cooking. Oh yeah. I love watching people.
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: I watch a lady cook with big titties and just
• 44:10
  an apron. You know, side boobage be coming out.
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: That's a trick. She's tricking you. I like watching people
• 44:18
  cook with no talking. It's just ASMR. You know, just
• 44:21
  they're like chopping up the food and you hear the
• 44:23
  sizzle in the pan. I don't know why I like it.
• 44:27
  I love watching people do things.
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: Isn't it amazing that you're younger than I am, but
• 44:32
  when I was growing up in Cleveland, we had three channels. Right?
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: I remember those days.
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And the shit signed off at two.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: And you'd fall asleep watching TV and that would wake
• 44:45
  you up.
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: Because it would be just crackling. Like, oh, geez, I
• 44:49
  stayed up too late. You'd have to shut her off
• 44:51
  after the American flag. Because the American flag would wave
• 44:54
  on the TV, right?
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah. There would be a match fade from a soldier
• 44:59
  to the American flag.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And then it would just go static at two
• 45:03
  in the morning. And then I remember when Fox came
• 45:06
  out and everybody's like, this channel is crazy. Fox, they
• 45:11
  had The Simpsons and Married with Children.
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: It changed my life, man. Tracy Allman. And then, of course,
• 45:19
  they discovered that they could get numbers with me and
• 45:23
  Living Color. And Fox was really important to us.
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: Fox was important to America. I mean, it was a looser,
• 45:32
  wilder network. It was like a network that was a
• 45:35
  little crazier. They were doing things. They were getting nuts.
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: And they had to. They had to take some chances
• 45:41
  and roll the dice in a different way.
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: Right. Yeah. And then cable came along. It was like
• 45:46
  the slow descent into madness. And then all of a
• 45:50
  sudden you have 150 channels. And now you have like
• 45:53
  literally an infinite number of channels because of streaming and YouTube.
• 45:57
  You can never run out of things to look at.
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: Which is crazy because I turn a lot and I'm like, Yo, motherfucker,
• 46:05
  they got two million stations and you channel chasing? You
• 46:08
  can't find something? But I'm a big YouTube guy because
• 46:13
  I don't like commercials. I want what I want and
• 46:16
  I want it in small increments. I actually, as a 70-year-old,
• 46:19
  fit more into this culture than I did the culture
• 46:21
  I was born into. I like things for three minutes.
• 46:25
  It's fucked me up, too. I don't want long shit.
• 46:30
  I want quick shit. And I'm jumping around.
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: Well, when I'm watching TV, I'm generally trying to check
• 46:37
  out or I'm trying to be educated. So either I'm
• 46:42
  watching some like particle physicist talk about the way they
• 46:48
  find new particles by using particle colliders and large hadron
• 46:53
  colliders and the amount of energy required to duplicate the
• 46:58
  conditions that happen right after the Big Bang.
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: I watch a lot of that shit and then I
• 47:03
  just watch people play pool. I watch people play pool
• 47:07
  and I watch people make furniture and people cook. I'm
• 47:12
  just trying to unwind. I'm just trying to relax.
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: That's so heavy. I heard you and Kat talking about
• 47:19
  the pyramids. As a matter of fact, it was part
• 47:25
  of the reason I was afraid to come here. I've
• 47:28
  heard you talk about the re-explosion of It's just when
• 47:33
  you hear that kind of shit and you're like, I
• 47:35
  don't want to be his like pussy crazy, huh? I
• 47:39
  don't want to be that guy. So it's intimidating to
• 47:44
  watch intelligent people have an exchange. And say, I got
• 47:47
  to go there.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: Is it? Oh, yeah.
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: You don't want to be the first idiot in the room.
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: Oh, you definitely wouldn't be the first idiot on this show.
• 47:56
  And you're not an idiot anyway. But there's been plenty
• 47:59
  of really fucking dumb people on this show that were great.
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: But do you know somebody that is really intelligent and
• 48:05
  conversation with them is intimidating?
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: Oh, sure.
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: So I was afraid of this room. I mean, I
• 48:10
  know people like Bill Clinton. The first time I sat
• 48:13
  and talked to Bill Clinton, not on the air, or
• 48:16
  the second time, I guess I should say, it was
• 48:19
  kind of daunting because he, no matter what your politics is,
• 48:24
  he's a really smart guy. Yeah. Cat Williams is the
• 48:27
  same way. That motherfucker read a lot more books than
• 48:30
  I read.
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: Well, Cat's brilliant. I mean, you can't be that funny
• 48:35
  and not be very intelligent.
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: It's the reason Bill Cosby was so funny. He was
• 48:39
  a bright man. Mm-hmm. Uh-oh.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: Uh-oh. He just– that's a problematic subject. Also Bill Clinton.
• 48:49
  I wish Bill Clinton didn't have so many problems because
• 48:52
  I would like to talk to him. I would love
• 48:53
  to have to sit down with him on a podcast.
• 48:57
  The problem is like how do you sit down and
• 48:59
  not talk about all the chaos and all the nutty
• 49:02
  shit and the Epstein files and all the other shit?
• 49:05
  Like you kind of almost have to talk about it.
• 49:07
  So it's too bad. Because I think he's a fascinating person.
• 49:11
  And I think he's one of the greatest presidents of
• 49:14
  all time for sure. And if you go back and
• 49:16
  look at what he accomplished during his administration, they balanced
• 49:20
  the budget. That was like one of the first times
• 49:23
  in the history of this fucking country that we didn't
• 49:25
  have a gigantic debt. Now our debt's like $ 39 trillion.
• 49:29
  It's crazy. Everybody's so bad at balancing the budget. And
• 49:33
  you go back and listen to him talk when he
• 49:35
  was running for president, he's like super Like everything he
• 49:39
  said made sense.
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: And didn't he move a little to the right?
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: I mean it wasn't to the right. It was just sensible.
• 49:46
  Like what is to the right and what is to
• 49:47
  the left? It doesn't mean anything anymore.
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: It's accepting that a lot of things are valuable that
• 49:54
  are not a part of your party's philosophy. I think
• 49:58
  we have to be willing to compromise and move a
• 50:01
  little bit. And that goes for all politicians. We have
• 50:04
  to be able to move a little bit to be
• 50:06
  logical and serve all of America.
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: For sure. But I think the problem is parties all
• 50:12
  have to agree and then they form ideologies that you
• 50:16
  cannot stray from. So if you're one of those people
• 50:18
  that says like, hey, maybe an open border is a
• 50:21
  bad idea because terrorists can come through. No, there's– no
• 50:26
  one is illegal on stolen land. You get– Everybody gets
• 50:30
  crazy because there's a party line that you have to
• 50:32
  stick with. This is today. Today, things are incredibly polarizing.
• 50:36
  But if you go back and listen to some of
• 50:38
  the things that Clinton was saying when he was running
• 50:39
  for president and when he was president, boy, these are
• 50:43
  like almost right-wing talking points in a lot of ways.
• 50:46
  But it's not really right-wing. It's just sensible. Like what
• 50:52
  is right and what is left? Left used to be–
• 50:56
  First of all, freedom of speech was of paramount importance.
• 51:00
  It used to be that they were very open-minded. It
• 51:03
  used to be that education was of crucial importance and
• 51:08
  that discourse was crucially important and that you have to
• 51:12
  look out for citizens in the sense of having social
• 51:16
  safety nets and having welfare programs and food stamps and
• 51:19
  all those things which are really important for a society
• 51:22
  because not everybody is in the same position in life.
• 51:25
  And If we're a community of people, which is what
• 51:27
  a country is supposed to be, you're supposed to look
• 51:30
  out for everyone. That's sensible. That's what the left used
• 51:34
  to be. And then it became trans women are women.
• 51:37
  Men can get pregnant.
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: And by the way, when you deal with left and right,
• 51:42
  you have to almost attach a year because we've seen
• 51:45
  parties change. I'm always reminded that the Democratic Party was
• 51:53
  the party of the Klan. If you go far enough back.
• 51:56
  So I'm a Republican. I have to look at it all.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: But wasn't Lincoln a Republican? Oh, I believe Lincoln was
• 52:05
  a Republican. I think the Republicans were the ones who
• 52:08
  were trying to abolish slavery. There was a lot of
• 52:11
  there's a lot of weird things that shift back and
• 52:14
  forth and that you you think of right wing and
• 52:18
  left wing in today's standards. Like we were playing a
• 52:21
  clip of Hillary Clinton the other day. when she was
• 52:24
  running for president, I think it was, was it 2008
• 52:25
  or 2012? Eight. She was running for president. She's like,
• 52:32
  If you're here, illegal from another country, you should have
• 52:35
  to pay a stiff penalty. You should have to learn English.
• 52:40
  And if you have any criminal history whatsoever, no questions asked.
• 52:44
  You get out of the country. And everyone was cheering like,
• 52:47
  the lady's MAGA. That sounds completely MAGA.
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: That's why I say when you deal with Democrat, Republican,
• 52:52
  you have to attach a year because it's evolved and
• 52:54
  changed many times.
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: That's all. You're just being manipulated. And you're being manipulated
• 52:59
  by– these two teams and you have to pick a team.
• 53:02
  You have to decide which team you want.
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: I hate that.
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: It's so stupid. I'm politically homeless. I've always been political.
• 53:08
  I've been politically homeless for a long fucking time. Neither
• 53:12
  one of them make any sense to me. We need
• 53:13
  like a logical centrist government that like just says there's
• 53:19
  a lot of things that we should do to make
• 53:21
  this country a better place. We can do these things
• 53:24
  and we don't have to attach them to left or
• 53:26
  right and anything that The left says that's logical. The
• 53:30
  people on the right, they immediately dismiss it because it's
• 53:32
  coming from the left. And that happens the same where
• 53:35
  the left does it to people on the right. It's dumb.
• 53:38
  It's a team thing. It's like the Dolphins versus the Raiders.
• 53:41
  It's just you pick a fucking team and you lay
• 53:43
  that team sucks.
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: What a horrible game, by the way.
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: You pick a team and your team rules and the
• 53:49
  other team sucks. And there's a lot of people out
• 53:52
  there that are not that– they're not open-minded and they
• 53:56
  love a good– rigid ideology that they could adhere to
• 54:00
  so now I don't have to think for myself I
• 54:02
  have a predetermined pattern of opinions that I could just
• 54:05
  adopt and I'll just accept those and that's how I
• 54:09
  think and that's what I'm going to argue.
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: With when I was young I used to in some
• 54:15
  jokes say my my heart is democratic but my wallet
• 54:19
  is republican yeah you know but it's not even that
• 54:21
  simple anymore it's gotten much more complicated.
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah much much more complicated it's like Everyone should be anti-fraud,
• 54:28
  whether you're on the left or on the right.
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: Unless you're committing fraud.
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: Then I'm pro-me.
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I think a lot of people that are
• 54:38
  certainly benefiting from fraud would like to dismiss it, whether
• 54:41
  it's the left or the right. We have a problem
• 54:45
  in this country where we have a two-party system. Two-party
• 54:48
  systems are inherently flawed because there's no fucking way that
• 54:51
  one side is going to represent you entirely. And it's
• 54:56
  much more likely if you have like five, 10, 15
• 54:59
  different parties that are all legitimate because we don't have
• 55:02
  another legitimate party. If you vote for libertarian and I
• 55:05
  voted libertarian before, you're basically saying, fuck these people. You know,
• 55:09
  fuck these people. I'm voting.
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: You're jacking up the Dolphin Raider game. Yeah.
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: I'm voting for rugby. You're basically saying you're like, I
• 55:20
  can't get behind either one of these motherfuckers. So I'm
• 55:23
  going to vote for this guy who has no chance.
• 55:26
  And I've done that before. I did that with Joe Jorgensen.
• 55:29
  I did that with Gary Johnson. I voted for both
• 55:31
  of them.
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: But why do you think we've not been able to
• 55:35
  come up with legitimate third, fourth, and fifth parties?
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: Well, they got it locked down. They've got it locked down.
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: With donations and money?
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's money. Money and politics. When they allowed corporations
• 55:47
  to just essentially give as much as they feel like it,
• 55:50
  And not.
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: Just corporations, but other countries.
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. A lot
• 55:57
  of people hit stretches where money gets tight. And it's
• 56:00
  not just the bills. It's the constant pressure, the mental load,
• 56:05
  the second guessing of every decision. And honestly, one of
• 56:08
  the biggest difference makers isn't some perfect budget. It's having
• 56:13
  a solid support system when things feel heavy. And if
• 56:18
  that support system includes therapy, even better. Because while it
• 56:23
  can't solve your money problems, it can change your relationship
• 56:27
  with finances. It can help you manage the stress, anxiety,
• 56:31
  and maybe even any shame you feel around money. A
• 56:35
  good place to find a quality therapist is BetterHelp. Plus,
• 56:39
  they do a lot of the work for you. Literally,
• 56:42
  all you need to do is answer a few questions
• 56:45
  and BetterHelp will match you with a fully qualified therapist online.
• 56:50
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• 56:53
  fancy way of saying that they typically get it right
• 56:57
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• 57:00
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• 57:04
  therapy can help. Sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com
• 57:10
  slash J-R-E. That's BetterHelp.com slash J-R-E. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 57:18
  It's not good. It's not good. Money in politics is
• 57:21
  the real problem. You know, it should. The whole thing,
• 57:24
  it's a mess. And then you find out how much
• 57:26
  money politicians make.
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: While TSA guys have nothing. Yeah. And politicians are still
• 57:32
  getting their motherfucking check.
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. Well, I felt that way also about the
• 57:36
  lockdowns in California. I was like, all these people that
• 57:39
  are saying that you should have no outdoor dining, your
• 57:41
  paycheck should be entirely dependent on the GDP of your city.
• 57:45
  And if your city starts suffering, you should fucking suffer.
• 57:48
  And I guarantee you want those businesses to open right
• 57:51
  the fuck back up because it didn't make any sense.
• 57:53
  They were doing things for optics only. And they were
• 57:56
  doing things because they like control. People love control. They
• 58:00
  love it. And once you give them power over people,
• 58:02
  they're in the control business. They like to keep that control.
• 58:04
  And it just gets gross. And they don't have any–
• 58:07
  there's no repercussions. They don't get in trouble if all
• 58:10
  these– like California.
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: Lost— Somebody should be in trouble for the Epstein Files. Somebody.
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: At least one person, please. Yes.
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: It's crazy that we're sitting around looking at that.
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: It's crazy.
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: And we know it and we say it, but ain't
• 58:23
  a motherfucking thing we can.
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: Do about it.
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: It's like right now there's some talk about journalists getting
• 58:30
  in trouble for leaking information about the downed pilot and
• 58:35
  that they want to prosecute these journalists. At the same time,
• 58:38
  no one's being prosecuted for the Epstein Files. Yeah.
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: That's nuts.
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: That's a sick society.
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: As a kid, I did magic, right? And there's a
• 58:49
  thing in magic. I take a coin and put it
• 58:52
  in this hand. There's a thing called misdirection. That's what
• 58:55
  I just did to you. You looked at that hand.
• 58:56
  I'm doing some shit right here. That's the story of
• 58:59
  American politics.
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Whenever something weird is going on. Look, when
• 59:03
  Monica Lewinsky, when Bill Clinton got caught with Monica Lewinsky,
• 59:07
  they started bombing some other countries.
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: Got to distract these people. This is just too complicated. Look,
• 59:13
  the Epstein files comes out. We go to war with Iran.
• 59:16
  It's a good way to get people to stop talking
• 59:19
  about certain things. You give them a new problem to
• 59:21
  think about.
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: Hey, this morning, I wake up in a very nice hotel,
• 59:25
  thanks to you. Breakfast was paid for. The tip was done.
• 59:28
  All that shit.
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: It was kind of cool.
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: Um, and I was nervous and I'm thinking I'm nervous
• 59:36
  to go see my guy and talk, which is insane.
• 59:40
  But then, you know, sometimes you try to focus on
• 59:42
  why you're really nervous. Why am I so nervous? And
• 59:45
  I realized it wasn't just coming here. I had watched
• 59:48
  about a half hour of news and it was making
• 59:52
  my stomach hurt because I feel so sad. On a
• 59:56
  lot of levels. And anxiety.
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes. News just gives me anxiety.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: But I got to, as a comic, I got to
• 1:00:03
  watch because I got to know everything. I got to
• 1:00:05
  have that mental Rolodex loaded. Yes. For crowd work or whatever.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: You have to know what's going on in the world, unfortunately.
• 1:00:14
  If I wasn't a comic, I would have no social media.
• 1:00:17
  I would never consume the news. I would just hide.
• 1:00:20
  I would just like go to a peaceful place. I'd
• 1:00:23
  probably have a place in the mountain somewhere and just
• 1:00:25
  fucking chill. I would not want to have anything to
• 1:00:28
  do with any of this bullshit that's going on in
• 1:00:29
  the world. And I know a lot of people say, oh,
• 1:00:31
  you have to participate and this and that. Man, yeah,
• 1:00:35
  I guess. But I don't think your participation is having
• 1:00:39
  the kind of effect that you'd like it to have.
• 1:00:41
  I think it's having an effect on the way you
• 1:00:42
  think and feel much more like a disproportionate effect. On
• 1:00:46
  your mental health and your anxiety levels and all these
• 1:00:49
  different things that you cannot control by paying attention to it.
• 1:00:52
  You can't control what these fucking people are doing. And
• 1:00:56
  it just drives you nuts.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: And it's frustrating because we realize, I mean, you and
• 1:01:01
  I are both millionaires. You a lot more than me.
• 1:01:04
  But at the same time, we realize we don't have
• 1:01:07
  enough money to really affect it.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, you. You can affect some things, I guess.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Now that I think about it.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: I don't want to. I don't want to affect– if
• 1:01:18
  I can affect things in a positive way, I can. Yeah.
• 1:01:21
  I mean there's some things.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: That I'd like to do. We affect things by dispersing
• 1:01:23
  information of candidates.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: And helping to inform people. But that kind of money
• 1:01:29
  that you have to have to have a dinner in
• 1:01:32
  Malibu and later get some shit done that you want
• 1:01:37
  to get done because the president is your guy now.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Or girl. That's very complicated.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: And that kind of complication comes with a lot of scrutiny,
• 1:01:47
  a lot of weirdness. And also, like, you don't really
• 1:01:50
  know these people. You support people, like, for running for
• 1:01:54
  president or governor or mayor or whatever. How much do
• 1:01:58
  you know them? Are you really sure? Is this, like,
• 1:02:02
  is there no good option so you go with the
• 1:02:04
  least evil option?
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: Well, a lot of us do that. And that's really
• 1:02:09
  painful to think that. the lesser of two evils is
• 1:02:12
  a horrible thing as a philosophy for a place we
• 1:02:16
  raise our children. Right. Yeah.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: There's no one person that really comes along. We like, finally,
• 1:02:22
  like a peaceful, God loving person who's just looking out
• 1:02:25
  for everybody's best interest, who really only wants to do
• 1:02:27
  this because they think they can affect change. And then
• 1:02:29
  once they do try to affect change, they get fucking
• 1:02:31
  shot because, because nobody really wants that because they're all
• 1:02:34
  making money.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: When we were coming up, remember the Sam Kinison bit?
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: Which bit?
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: Um, I think it was very similar to that. People
• 1:02:43
  who have an idea, we kill them.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: Oh, that was Bill Hicks.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: Oh, it was Hicks.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: Hicks, Hicks had a great bit about that. Yeah. And
• 1:02:50
  it's totally true. I mean, anybody that really wants to
• 1:02:53
  rock the apple cart, like that, that person's a problem,
• 1:02:56
  you know, and all these people that are making all
• 1:02:58
  these sociopaths that are making fucking billions of dollars just
• 1:03:02
  being cunts. They do not want you coming along and
• 1:03:05
  waking people up to that and saying, Hey, we should
• 1:03:08
  put a stop to all this. We should, you know,
• 1:03:10
  We should stop these people from– like that's why people
• 1:03:13
  cheered when that guy got shot, the UnitedHealthcare guy. He
• 1:03:17
  got shot. People were happy. They were happy.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: Like finally– At first I thought it was– I thought
• 1:03:22
  homie who shot him, I thought it was his eyebrows
• 1:03:25
  because women were going crazy. He's a hot guy.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: He's a good-looking guy too. He's a perfect guy to
• 1:03:30
  be like a martyr, like an assassin.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: By the way– Have you noticed throughout history good-looking people
• 1:03:38
  get treated differently when it comes to the justice system?
• 1:03:41
  They've done experimental trials where the hot guy gets off
• 1:03:45
  for murder easy because 11 women were cool with it.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: Well, women are weird with killers. You know, when guys
• 1:03:55
  are even serial killers, when they go to jail, women get.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: Great letters, proposals. Weird.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: Marry me. Yeah. Even like Richard Ramirez was getting all
• 1:04:04
  these proposals while he was in jail.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: But the ultimate game for a woman is to be
• 1:04:08
  married but not have to live with that motherfucker. So
• 1:04:11
  that might be kind of cool.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: Kind of. I don't know what it is. I heard
• 1:04:17
  someone talk about that, saying that there's women that like
• 1:04:21
  men that are capable of killing. Because back in the day,
• 1:04:27
  if you needed someone to protect you, you didn't want
• 1:04:31
  someone that would hesitate if they were going to kill someone.
• 1:04:34
  You wanted someone who has experience killing people. So it's
• 1:04:37
  almost like an attractive trait that someone's willing to cross
• 1:04:40
  that terrible line and just has no problem murdering people.
• 1:04:44
  And if they like you, they won't murder you, but
• 1:04:46
  they'll murder other people, like anybody that's a problem.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: I knew a girl who went out with a couple
• 1:04:51
  of friends of mine. And her M.O. was to do
• 1:04:55
  something publicly that would make the man whip somebody's ass
• 1:05:00
  to defend her honor or something. Because that made her
• 1:05:05
  feel better.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: That's a crazy bitch. I've been around people like that before.
• 1:05:09
  I always got rid of them real quick. I've had
• 1:05:12
  a few ladies like that.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: You're going to let him say that to me?
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: I'd be like, why'd you say that to him? Don't
• 1:05:17
  get me involved in this stupid shit. But it's hard, man.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: I was in a club as a young man. On Sunset.
• 1:05:23
  Left the Comedy Store, went down the street to a
• 1:05:25
  place called Carlos and Charlie's. And back then they had
• 1:05:29
  this garment called a tube top. Oh, yeah. It was
• 1:05:31
  just an elastic piece about eight inches, depending on your breast.
• 1:05:37
  And I watched a dude take his finger and just
• 1:05:41
  pull the girl's tube top down. Titties fell out. And
• 1:05:44
  I'm watching her man. He didn't know what to do,
• 1:05:48
  you know, because... You don't want to fight these guys.
• 1:05:52
  You almost want to just say, baby, just put up
• 1:05:54
  your top and let's go home. But he had to fight.
• 1:05:58
  And in that situation, I think you have to fight.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: But you just definitely shouldn't be there in the first place.
• 1:06:05
  That's the problem with going to clubs.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: That's the wrong clue.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: Running into the potential psychopath is just too– like that's
• 1:06:13
  where they go. Where people act like cunts, that's where
• 1:06:17
  they go.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: When is the last time you went to a club? Yeah,
• 1:06:21
  it's been a long time for me. I mean, there
• 1:06:23
  is no club for 70-year-olds.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: No, no, no.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: That's called ARP.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: Well, if you do go, it's sad.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you don't want to be the oldest.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: At the bar.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: Hey, ladies. What is fucking grandpa doing here?
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 2: But do kids dance now?
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: That's a good question.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: My son has, like, I remember a time when you say,
• 1:06:41
  I'm doing the Cabbage Patch now. You know, it's like
• 1:06:44
  you knew what the latest dance was. My son never dances.
• 1:06:47
  I've taken him to New Year's Eve parties. He never,
• 1:06:50
  during a slow record, says to a girl, you want
• 1:06:52
  to dance? You go out and slow dance. What happened
• 1:06:55
  to that shit?
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: That's true, right? Well, because clubs got associated with violence.
• 1:07:00
  Clubs get associated with people getting drunk. They're doing drugs
• 1:07:04
  and chaos and people getting shot. There's just too much
• 1:07:08
  of that going on. You hear about that at concerts too.
• 1:07:11
  But yeah, you're right. There's no new dances. There's no
• 1:07:15
  things that you have to learn.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know what's replaced it? Maybe the entire
• 1:07:21
  family on TikTok. Right.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 3: TikTok has definitely got dances that you've got to learn.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: Oh, really?
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: That's all it is. Oh, really? Yeah, I mean, for
• 1:07:28
  people that are way younger than us. Right, that's where
• 1:07:30
  the dances are. That's where the dances are. They're not
• 1:07:32
  going to clubs.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 3: The Korn song just got viral again because they're dancing
• 1:07:35
  to Freak on a Leash. It's a 25-year-old song that
• 1:07:39
  has got to dance to it.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: What's the dance? Show me the dance.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: Couldn't even begin to start it.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: I can show you the video. Get up here and
• 1:07:45
  do it. I can show you the video. You do it.
• 1:07:47
  You've been practicing?
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: No. I used to.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: Show me the video. What's the corn dance? In my head,
• 1:07:53
  you're like, get up and do it. Do we have
• 1:07:56
  to not play the music? Yeah, probably not play the music.
• 1:07:59
  So this is the dance?
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: See, it's a new day. You don't go to a club,
• 1:08:03
  you do it with your girl.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 3: I think they made it back on Billboard because the
• 1:08:07
  song is Oh, that's hilarious. It's got so many plays
• 1:08:10
  on it.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: That's hilarious. 1998. Yeah, it's old. Wow, that's crazy. I
• 1:08:17
  don't know.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 3: And then to contrast to this is the club in
• 1:08:21
  Austin where everybody goes. They're not necessarily doing those dances.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: What club is this? This is called the Concourse.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: Oh, see, I can't go to a club with no
• 1:08:28
  shirt on.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: And what do they do here? DJs. Oh, DJs. So
• 1:08:33
  they just bounce around.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 3: A bunch of lasers.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: This is like a Jazzy Jeff concert.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: Jazzy Jeff! Yeah, they just bounce around. They're all in ecstasy.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 3: Everybody stares at the DJ stage like they're performing music.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: How weird. Yeah, this is a sign of a sick culture.
• 1:08:51
  Not that there's anything wrong with DJs.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: A different culture.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: But there's no the other thing. There's no people dancing.
• 1:08:58
  You know?
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: On the old days. Like if you go back and
• 1:09:01
  you watch nightclubs from the 1960s and 70s, what was
• 1:09:05
  everybody doing? Like the disco days, right? That's a perfect example.
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: When Tramp was singing, burn this mother down. Yeah.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: People were dancing. Well, I remember when I was a kid,
• 1:09:17
  Saturday Night Fever came out. And that's when everybody wanted
• 1:09:23
  to learn how to dance. Because John Travolta, he could
• 1:09:26
  fucking dance. And they would have dance-offs.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 2: And black people were saying, we got to step up
• 1:09:31
  the game if this boy can do that. So we
• 1:09:33
  had to get better.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: And then you had Soul Train.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: Where everybody was dancing on TV. Yes. Saturday morning was...
• 1:09:42
  That was life for me.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: There's no shows... Where there's like a bunch of people
• 1:09:48
  performing music on TV anymore.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 2: Well, that's the that's that gap between me and you
• 1:09:54
  as talkers. One of the problems I had and I
• 1:09:59
  talk in the book about this. I love music and
• 1:10:01
  I grew up wanting to do that show. So when
• 1:10:04
  they start telling me, you know, you can get better
• 1:10:08
  numbers with Howie Mandel just talking, then you can. Because
• 1:10:14
  I put Boys to Men and The Temptations together once.
• 1:10:18
  I had to fly Boys to Men from Philly. And
• 1:10:21
  they wanted it less black. And now I've got 14
• 1:10:24
  brothers doing choreography. And it's like, no, that's not what
• 1:10:27
  we need.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: They wanted it less black? They would say shit like
• 1:10:30
  that to you? Oh, yeah.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: They wanted– this is the carrot. They said, we know
• 1:10:37
  Johnny's going to leave one day. You know, you always
• 1:10:40
  think it's going to be two years. So you can
• 1:10:42
  inherit his audience if you do the right show. But I, Joe,
• 1:10:47
  I used to do the talk show in my basement, man.
• 1:10:50
  And we put on a Temptations record. And my friend
• 1:10:52
  Junior would be my guest. And he would sing Get
• 1:10:54
  Ready on Soul Train. They lip sync. We knew the
• 1:10:57
  microphones wasn't plugged in.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: He would sing, and then I'd interview him. I wanted
• 1:11:02
  to do that show.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: But you were doing that when you were young?
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: How old were you when you were doing that? Eleven. Really? Yeah.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 2: My mother would have rent parties, and so she'd rent
• 1:11:13
  these card tables and chairs. And the people, like in L.A.,
• 1:11:18
  we call it town and country, right? You can rent
• 1:11:20
  stuff for your party. So the next day, they'd come
• 1:11:22
  and pick up the stuff in the truck. But before
• 1:11:24
  they'd pick it up, I would do a talk show
• 1:11:26
  with that stuff. And I dreamed— Of everything that I
• 1:11:31
  did eventually in my life.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: And it was the show I wanted to do. So
• 1:11:38
  at a certain point when they say, does Prince need
• 1:11:42
  a purple piano? You know, I said, yeah, he want
• 1:11:45
  a purple piano. And the show I was doing was
• 1:11:48
  just too expensive. And you and I talked once. at
• 1:11:52
  the ice house when I tried to do the reboot show. Yeah.
• 1:11:54
  I was telling you how complicated it was. They wanted
• 1:11:56
  my Twitter site.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: They took your, I was telling people they took over
• 1:12:00
  your fucking social media and they wouldn't give it back.
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It was hard to get back.
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: That's crazy. I remember you telling me that we were
• 1:12:07
  standing outside the outside area of the ice house and
• 1:12:10
  you were like, I can't get my fucking social media back.
• 1:12:12
  I'm like, that's crazy. They took your social media.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: And they would use it to promote other shows. Absolutely.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: And the end of, of that reboot experience was, didn't
• 1:12:22
  go down exactly the way I wanted to. Like, like
• 1:12:25
  I got picked up first and Jay Leno came out
• 1:12:27
  and read a letter from Les Moonves that I was
• 1:12:29
  picked up for a second season. And then we start
• 1:12:32
  talking about the second season and here's the great thing.
• 1:12:36
  They wanted you, you really got to stop doing the music.
• 1:12:40
  As a matter of fact, how about no house band?
• 1:12:42
  And it's interesting. Well, what, But economically speaking, Joe, when
• 1:12:47
  I look at it, they wanted me to do Joe
• 1:12:49
  Rogan before there was a Joe Rogan. They just want
• 1:12:51
  you to talk to people and stuff. I'd watched Fallon
• 1:12:55
  with Will Smith one night and Will Smith rode in
• 1:12:58
  on a horse. And I'm like, that's expensive. You know,
• 1:13:02
  they wanted me to do what we're doing right now
• 1:13:05
  because this is cheaper to do. I would love for
• 1:13:09
  us to have a hip hop star here right now
• 1:13:13
  following me. But this is economically sound. It's a new day.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: Right. So that's all it was? It was just a
• 1:13:20
  money thing?
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 2: Well, that was the reboot show. The first show, you know,
• 1:13:26
  if they want me to be in the position to
• 1:13:29
  inherit Johnny's audience, because they wanted me and themselves to
• 1:13:35
  make more money, a lot of money, keep making money.
• 1:13:38
  And I was kind of kicking the bag because... I
• 1:13:43
  had wanted to do this show since I was a kid.
• 1:13:45
  I couldn't imagine.
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: But meanwhile, the thing is, your show was so popular.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 2: And by the way, they got numbers one night when
• 1:13:51
  Whitney didn't sing. She just came on. And that was
• 1:13:57
  the kiss of death in my morning meetings because they
• 1:13:59
  were like, look, Whitney's saying nothing. And look at the numbers.
• 1:14:03
  So they were shooting for the Joe Rogan experience before
• 1:14:07
  there was an experience.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: Those fucking people concentrating on the numbers. It's like you're
• 1:14:11
  missing the trees.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: But you got to, Joe. Sometimes it's really important for
• 1:14:16
  me to look back and say, I love that show
• 1:14:20
  that I did, and I don't regret a moment of it,
• 1:14:22
  but I get a corporate organization saying we can make
• 1:14:30
  more money and we can get more people in. Yeah.
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: If I was a– I would be a terrible corporate executive,
• 1:14:37
  by the way.
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 2: Because you would leave with your heart. Yeah.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: I would say just be you. Just have fun. And
• 1:14:42
  whatever ads we get, we get. Whatever money we get,
• 1:14:45
  we get. And that's good. You get plenty. It will
• 1:14:48
  be fine. You can't– you got to let– it has
• 1:14:52
  to– I feel like every show has to be a
• 1:14:56
  unique expression of the person that's hosting it and what
• 1:15:00
  they're trying to do. Like let that person be free.
• 1:15:03
  Like imagine if Quentin Tarantino had to sit down with
• 1:15:06
  a group of people that were executives before he wrote
• 1:15:10
  a script. You would never get any of these fucking chaotic,
• 1:15:14
  crazy movies. They were like, no, no, no, no, no.
• 1:15:16
  You can't bash a woman's head on a mantelpiece. That's nuts.
• 1:15:20
  Don't do that. No, you can't. You know, like in
• 1:15:22
  Jackie Brown. No, you can't fucking shoot that girl in
• 1:15:24
  the parking lot. That's nuts. You can't do that. You
• 1:15:27
  can't do any of these things. You've got to let
• 1:15:29
  someone just be free. And then it finds its audience.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 2: I remember when Ice-T came on to explain Cop Killer
• 1:15:39
  and his way.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: Of explaining it. Tough sell, by the way. Yeah. And
• 1:15:44
  it was a metal band.
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: People don't realize that. Like Ice-T, people forgot. Body Count
• 1:15:49
  was a metal band.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you got to search that, y'all.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: Right. A lot of people don't even know that he
• 1:15:55
  did that. You think of Ice-T, you think of Six
• 1:15:58
  in the Morning, you think of, you know, Hustler, you
• 1:16:01
  think of all those classic songs, Colors, you think of that.
• 1:16:04
  You don't think of Body Count, which is like Ice-T
• 1:16:08
  reinvented himself. And he was like, I always love this
• 1:16:12
  kind of music. You can't tell me what the fuck
• 1:16:14
  I do. I like this kind of music too.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: Amazing career.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: I know. And now he plays a cop for like
• 1:16:20
  25 years.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 2: How about that for irony? I knew him when he
• 1:16:24
  was a pimp.
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: And now he's a cop. That's crazy. Remember when he
• 1:16:28
  was in Pimps Up, Hoes Down? Yeah, absolutely. He was
• 1:16:30
  in that too.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, he was talking about the pimp game. It's hilarious.
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he came on. By the way, they didn't want
• 1:16:39
  me to do that. you know, uh, book him. But,
• 1:16:42
  but I thought it was, I thought it was cool
• 1:16:45
  to expose America to some conversations they might not hear normally.
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 2: And the more power I got, the more I tried
• 1:16:52
  to push that envelope and do those things. He compared
• 1:16:55
  it to Schwarzenegger. He says, you don't think he's really
• 1:16:58
  the Terminator, right? And he says, I'm not a cop killer,
• 1:17:03
  but there's a message through this character. Right. And I'm paraphrasing, but,
• 1:17:07
  but it was nice to, To hear people who I know.
• 1:17:11
  I would talk to Tupac and I would say, say
• 1:17:15
  that on the air. You got to talk about that
• 1:17:16
  on the air. And that was, we didn't have Twitter.
• 1:17:21
  We didn't have the Bluebird. I was kind of the Blackbird.
• 1:17:23
  And I was able to have these, like Tupac called
• 1:17:26
  me once and he says, man, they want me to
• 1:17:28
  take an AIDS test before I do this movie. And
• 1:17:31
  unless I'm really going to fuck Janet, I don't think
• 1:17:35
  I should have to take an AIDS test. And I'm like,
• 1:17:37
  please don't say any more. Just come on the show.
• 1:17:40
  And this fit into both categories. Come on the show.
• 1:17:43
  Don't do any music. Just sit and talk. And those
• 1:17:46
  nights would do really good.
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: Of course. Of course. Because people want to hear people
• 1:17:51
  really talk, especially in those weird settings where most of
• 1:17:55
  the time when people are coming on talk shows, they
• 1:17:57
  would just have this like very canned, Sort of like
• 1:18:00
  pre-programmed thing that they would talk about. They would talk
• 1:18:04
  about their character in the movie.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: People don't know we have pre-interviews, which you don't have
• 1:18:09
  in a show like this. But I get a card
• 1:18:12
  that morning. It's like, OK, here's what Jackie Collins would
• 1:18:15
  like to talk about. Or Nicole Kidman has requested that
• 1:18:21
  you don't mention Tom Cruise. And I'm like, well, tell
• 1:18:25
  Nicole the only reason that bitch is here is because
• 1:18:28
  I think Tom Cruise is going to walk out. You know? Oh,
• 1:18:31
  it was crazy.
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: That's crazy.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 2: Back then.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, it was all PR people. And it's, again,
• 1:18:37
  you're dealing with too many different people that are peripheral
• 1:18:40
  people where all their money is dependent on this one
• 1:18:43
  person performing. So they just want to make sure they
• 1:18:46
  make the maximum amount of money possible. Like, don't make
• 1:18:49
  any ripples. Yeah. cause any waves. Don't cause any problems.
• 1:18:52
  Just go out there and smile and we'll sell more.
• 1:18:56
  We'll sell more records. We'll sell more movies. TV show
• 1:18:58
  will get better ratings. Don't mess it up. Yeah.
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 2: Guys like Prince used to be frustrated with the fact
• 1:19:04
  that if something's a hit, Can you give us something
• 1:19:08
  like that again? How many beats per second is that?
• 1:19:10
  Can you give us that again? Or any big artist.
• 1:19:13
  It's like we want more of Waterfall.
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. No, Prince was one of the most revolutionary
• 1:19:22
  artists ever. And people that don't know the early stuff,
• 1:19:26
  they don't know how crazy it was that this guy
• 1:19:28
  was– how a song called Head. Just sing it about
• 1:19:32
  getting head.
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 2: First time I saw him, he was opening for the
• 1:19:36
  Rolling Stones.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 2: And the audience didn't dig him because it was different
• 1:19:41
  back then and he was singing soft and wet.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: Well, Prince was just, he was so unique, man.
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 2: And he predicted a lot of the things that we're
• 1:19:51
  dealing with now and going through. I remember the first
• 1:19:52
  time he talked about what became Napster and he talked
• 1:19:57
  about owning your own property and what was going to happen,
• 1:20:01
  slave on his jaw. And we thought that was silly,
• 1:20:03
  but it meant something.
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: Well, he was dealing with these crazy contracts where these
• 1:20:10
  record companies, these predatory record companies would lock you into
• 1:20:14
  these contracts and they fucking owned you. So his response
• 1:20:17
  to that was like, okay. I won't perform as Prince anymore.
• 1:20:20
  Now I'm fucking this shit. I'm a symbol. I'm a symbol.
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 2: With a slave insignia on my jaw. What are you
• 1:20:26
  going to do now?
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: I'm a symbol. I'm not even selling myself as Prince.
• 1:20:29
  And he would just, I mean, how revolutionary is that?
• 1:20:32
  This guy said, okay, I know the workaround. I won't
• 1:20:35
  use my name anymore. I'll just be a symbol.
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 2: He was bad.
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: But he was such a bad motherfucker that people like,
• 1:20:42
  I know who that is. I don't care what that
• 1:20:44
  fucking symbol is. That's Prince. Let him sing. Let him
• 1:20:47
  do things.
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: Did you ever meet him?
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: No, I had one opportunity to fucking see him live. Yeah.
• 1:20:53
  And I blew it at the Great Western Forum. No,
• 1:20:56
  it was at it was at one of the hotels
• 1:20:59
  in Vegas. But it was a really late show. And
• 1:21:03
  I had a show earlier that night and they said–
• 1:21:06
  and Prince was doing small shows back then. It was
• 1:21:09
  like this small like intimate audience. But it was like
• 1:21:12
  after midnight. I was like, I'm fucking tired. I'm going
• 1:21:14
  to go to sleep. And this is like– I fucked up, man.
• 1:21:18
  I fucked up. It was like when his career was
• 1:21:21
  in a weird place because he wasn't doing like big
• 1:21:24
  shows anymore and he was doing this late night show.
• 1:21:28
  And people were saying it was really good. But I
• 1:21:29
  was like, I'm tired. I'm not going to see this.
• 1:21:31
  And then years later when he was dead, I was like, God,
• 1:21:34
  did I fuck up. I always thought Prince was going
• 1:21:36
  to be around.
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: And we lost Prince to fentanyl.
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah. A lot of people don't even know that. Alone
• 1:21:41
  in an elevator. God damn. I remember the Musicology album
• 1:21:46
  where he toured and he attached the album to the
• 1:21:50
  ticket so that when you bought a ticket, you were
• 1:21:54
  buying an album and it instantly became a million dollar seller.
• 1:21:57
  With that philosophy. He had genius that was way ahead
• 1:22:01
  of the pimps.
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 2: I love it.
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: He just knew that he was being fucked and he
• 1:22:07
  knew that all they're selling is his brilliance. They don't
• 1:22:11
  have anything. What is a record company selling? They're only
• 1:22:13
  selling the art. That's it. They don't make it.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 2: And they were getting a penny a copy. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: The record company was getting most of it. Now it
• 1:22:23
  makes even less sense because nobody even buys albums anymore.
• 1:22:27
  It's like how the fuck are these record companies even surviving?
• 1:22:30
  It's so crazy that they still figure out a way
• 1:22:34
  to latch their tentacles onto these young artists. And for
• 1:22:37
  young artists, they feel like they've made it when they're
• 1:22:40
  a part of a record deal. Like I got a deal.
• 1:22:43
  And I almost want to tell them like– That ain't
• 1:22:46
  a deal. You got to deal with the devil. Like
• 1:22:47
  if you just put your shit on YouTube or on
• 1:22:49
  SoundCloud or anywhere where people hear it and they start
• 1:22:52
  sharing it, You'll be huge.
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah. We're getting smarter and learning how to deal with
• 1:22:58
  the pimps. Yeah. You know, I talk in the book
• 1:23:02
  about Prince also had a great sense of humor. You
• 1:23:05
  would have loved him, you know, as a person beyond
• 1:23:09
  the musician. And there was a time when I was
• 1:23:12
  hosting the MTV Awards and he had no ass in
• 1:23:15
  his pants. And, you know, so when he's coming past
• 1:23:22
  me down the hall, I realize, oh, shit. Because this
• 1:23:26
  motherfucker ain't got no ass in his pants. We'll be
• 1:23:29
  talking about this tomorrow. So obviously when I get back
• 1:23:32
  to the show, my first monologue is about that night. Yes! Yes! 1991.
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: Isn't that crazy?
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: That was nuts. 1991. So I do jokes about that
• 1:23:47
  in the monologues. And like a week or two after
• 1:23:52
  the jokes, I get a box in the mail at Paramount.
• 1:23:58
  And it's from Prince. And I open it. I figure
• 1:24:01
  it's maybe a hoodie. I opened it. And it's a
• 1:24:05
  beautiful black and white suit with all the Prince symbols
• 1:24:08
  on it. Made me look like I was the drummer
• 1:24:10
  for New Power Generation or something. It was a cool suit.
• 1:24:14
  And I'm looking at it, and my assistant said, turn
• 1:24:18
  it around.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: I turned it around.
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: There was no ass.
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: Did you wear it?
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: No leg. Hell no. Not even at the crib. I
• 1:24:31
  never put it on. It's like I could never bring
• 1:24:34
  myself to putting on that suit. It had no back, Joe.
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's hilarious.
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 2: But that's his sense of humor.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: That's hilarious. That's so funny.
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 2: I took him to an after hours joint once. I
• 1:24:44
  talk about that in the book. Because he was very
• 1:24:48
  interested in what people listen to and what moves people
• 1:24:50
  in clubs. And I told him about an after hours
• 1:24:53
  joint down the way south of Wilshire that was in
• 1:24:55
  a lady's house. And you have pit bulls and a
• 1:24:59
  fence and they let you in. They lock the chain back,
• 1:25:02
  bring you to the back. And, you know, you put
• 1:25:05
  money on the counter and they put your liquor in
• 1:25:07
  a solo cup. You know, not a legal place. And
• 1:25:11
  I told him about the place and he said, I
• 1:25:13
  want to go. And I took him down the way
• 1:25:17
  to this spot. He had an acrylic cane. And a
• 1:25:21
  suit where the shoes match the suit. Exact same material.
• 1:25:25
  And he sat with me in this after hours joint
• 1:25:30
  and listened to the music. And it was where the
• 1:25:33
  strippers were going.
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: What year was this?
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 2: Oh, God. This was maybe two years after I left
• 1:25:38
  the talk show.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: So did he need the cane back then? Was that
• 1:25:42
  when he was having hip problems?
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 2: I think so. Now we understand that maybe he had
• 1:25:46
  a replacement. a hip replacement or something. I thought it
• 1:25:50
  was fashion, but it probably was a little necessary that year.
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: Well, he was all his dancing.
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 2: Oh, he used to jump off speakers, Joe.
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 2: And land with heels. Mm-hmm.
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: That's what fucked him up.
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 3: A lot of pictures with him as a Kano for
• 1:26:07
  the time, though.
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: Well, he probably was struggling even back then because there's
• 1:26:12
  a lot of guys that blew their hips out. Yeah.
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: He probably needed it.
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 2: Because he was an athlete, per se.
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: Oh, for sure. I mean, his dancing was insane.
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 2: And he was a good basketball player. Hey, I have
• 1:26:27
  one of those. The police hat with the chain? He
• 1:26:32
  sent me that one day. So I'm sure there are
• 1:26:34
  a few of them. But just to have one of
• 1:26:37
  those from him. And he sent me what looks like
• 1:26:41
  a Smith & Wesson 38 long, but it was.
• 1:26:45
  Fixed up so the microphone was where the barrel is.
• 1:26:49
  So he could hold the gun and sing into it
• 1:26:51
  like that.
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 2: I have that. Oh, wow. It's very cool. Very cool.
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: I became good friends with Charlie Murphy. Oh, look at that. Yes.
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 2: Wow. Wow. I have one of those. I don't know
• 1:27:05
  how many there were, but I have one from that.
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: That's crazy.
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 2: Wow. But Charlie Murphy?
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: Well, Charlie had all those great stories about Prince that
• 1:27:14
  he did on Chappelle's show.
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, that was like that whole segment of like
• 1:27:19
  how good Prince was at the basketball. And then people
• 1:27:22
  didn't believe it because, you know, he's so short. But meanwhile,
• 1:27:25
  he could fucking play like a motherfucker.
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 2: He had a crossover move that was crazy. And he
• 1:27:30
  could run escape. And. I mean, amazing with a lollipop
• 1:27:36
  back on one foot, you know? So he, he was,
• 1:27:40
  he was an athlete.
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Really? I mean, you can't dance like that and
• 1:27:44
  not have incredible body control.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: But the problem is when you're doing show after show,
• 1:27:49
  after show, after show, after show for years, you're, you're
• 1:27:51
  tearing your fucking joints apart. And that's probably what blew
• 1:27:54
  his hips out.
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 2: That's one thing about us with the exception of the
• 1:27:57
  shit you used to do on a stool, that balancing act, uh.
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: Oh, the Kardashian joke?
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Our life of jokes isn't very– No. All we
• 1:28:06
  got to do is take care from the neck up,
• 1:28:08
  take care of your mind, our body. No comedian has
• 1:28:12
  a bad hip.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: Well, you generally don't get it from performing on stage,
• 1:28:16
  that's for sure. But when you're dancing and jumping around
• 1:28:19
  and doing all that shit, like Ted Nugent blew his
• 1:28:22
  knees out jumping off of speakers. Like a lot of
• 1:28:25
  people did that. They just went crazy. They were just
• 1:28:28
  putting on a show and you don't realize you're doing it.
• 1:28:30
  Maynard from Tool, he blew his hip out stomping on
• 1:28:33
  the ground all the time. Wow. Just stomping while he
• 1:28:36
  was singing. He had to get a hip replacement. Yeah.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 2: I like being a stand-up.
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: Well, it's definitely easier on the body. That's true.
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 2: You still get up on stage ever?
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, all the time.
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 2: In your own club?
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 2: What nights do you go up?
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: Usually Tuesday and Wednesday I do it, but I do
• 1:28:53
  it off nights too, different nights. But Tuesday and Wednesday,
• 1:28:56
  almost every week, I do a show there.
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 2: I promised my woman I wouldn't go to the mothership.
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 2: When I told her, she's like, when you go, I
• 1:29:05
  want to go. It's a big deal if you're a comic,
• 1:29:07
  you know? I mean, it's a huge deal. But I
• 1:29:12
  want to come one night, fly in, and just let
• 1:29:15
  me have 10.
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: Dude, you can go up anytime. You can go up
• 1:29:18
  tonight if you want. I got a show tonight.
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I got it. I got to fly home and
• 1:29:22
  do it. I'm still slinging this book, man.
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: I hear you, brother. Well, anytime. Anytime you want to
• 1:29:27
  come by and do a set, you're more than welcome.
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 2: I love it.
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: Come and hang out.
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 2: Everybody's been so friendly.
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: The green room's an amazing hang, too. That's what I hear.
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 2: But I've heard both sides of that. I've heard don't
• 1:29:37
  be in that motherfucker if you're not supposed to.
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: Well, the problem is you don't want anybody coming in
• 1:29:42
  and fucking up the conversation. So, you know, you got
• 1:29:46
  to be kind of vetted. But it's only like during
• 1:29:48
  shows when you're not on. You know, if it's a
• 1:29:52
  show and you're on the show, everyone's allowed to be
• 1:29:55
  in the green room. It's just like we don't allow
• 1:29:58
  people to just come in out of nowhere. It's like
• 1:30:01
  you're from out of town. You want to come in
• 1:30:02
  and hang out in the green room. Then there's too
• 1:30:04
  many people in the green room. And then people have
• 1:30:06
  to prepare. They're going over their notes. The green room
• 1:30:08
  is supposed to be a hang with the comics on
• 1:30:11
  the show that are getting ready to go on stage.
• 1:30:13
  And the problem is that's the cool spot. That's where
• 1:30:16
  Shane Gillis is and Ron White is and Tony Hinchcliffe
• 1:30:19
  is it. Everybody wants to come in. And, you know,
• 1:30:21
  it gets to be a little bit of a problem.
• 1:30:24
  So you can't go in the green room if you're
• 1:30:26
  not on the show, unless we know who you are
• 1:30:28
  and you know you're in town and you want to
• 1:30:29
  come hang. But it's like, you know, it's like you're
• 1:30:31
  having a party. You can't let everybody in. The problem
• 1:30:34
  is everybody wants to be there.
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 2: I mean, look at the level I'm at and how
• 1:30:37
  long I've been doing it. And I know about the
• 1:30:39
  green room and want to get in there.
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: You can get in any time.
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 2: When you were living in Hollywood still, did your kids
• 1:30:49
  ever want to act? No.
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: No, they're not interested in that.
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 2: Never wanted to do stand-up?
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: No, they wouldn't. First of all, rich kids are not
• 1:30:58
  going to be good stand-ups. You're not going to be
• 1:31:02
  able to deal with the torture of bombing.
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 2: And they don't have to.
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: And they don't have pain. You know, their pain is
• 1:31:09
  so minor in comparison to the pain of poverty, the
• 1:31:13
  pain of struggle, the pain of, you know, not getting
• 1:31:16
  enough attention when you're young and, you know, moving around
• 1:31:19
  a lot. All the different shit that most comics go through.
• 1:31:22
  I've never met a good comic who had a great childhood.
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 2: As you're talking, I'm thinking, I'm like, do we know
• 1:31:28
  any comics who are good, who are from wealth?
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: None. I don't know any. I'm sure they can exist.
• 1:31:34
  I'm sure it's possible. But it takes a very exceptional
• 1:31:36
  person to want to be a great comic that's grew
• 1:31:40
  up wealthy. It's just not a thing that they seek
• 1:31:44
  to do.
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 2: So much comedy comes from our pain.
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: I think the only exception to that would be the
• 1:31:49
  Wayans brothers because the sons of the Wayans brothers all
• 1:31:54
  went on to be great comics. They all went on
• 1:31:57
  to have big careers in movies and films and television.
• 1:32:00
  But I think that's, it's like a family thing over there.
• 1:32:03
  Like I remember Damon telling me that he set up
• 1:32:05
  a stage in his house.
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. That's absolutely true.
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, they love stand-up so much they would fucking
• 1:32:11
  do stand-up for each other. Just fuck around. I used
• 1:32:15
  to see, first of all, I think to this day,
• 1:32:18
  Damon is one of the most underappreciated great comics of
• 1:32:22
  all time.
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 2: And he's back out there now. I noticed in my room,
• 1:32:27
  Damon is at the Improv.
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: Well, he's always been out there. I thought he quit. No, no, no.
• 1:32:31
  He never quit. He was always doing stand-up, but he's
• 1:32:33
  low-key about it. He makes his money off of television.
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: And even like he wanted to do– we talked years
• 1:32:39
  ago about him coming on my podcast. And he was like,
• 1:32:43
  I'd like to, but I'll say some crazy shit and
• 1:32:45
  then I'll get in trouble. Because he was in what
• 1:32:48
  I call the velvet prison, the TV velvet prison. You're
• 1:32:52
  doing TV shows. You're playing a dad on a TV show.
• 1:32:55
  You can't come on a podcast, talk about getting your
• 1:32:58
  dick sucked.
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 2: It's just– Howie Mandel goes through that. I work with
• 1:33:02
  him a lot. And Howie is on America's Got Talent.
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 2: This real commercial television vehicle. But nobody is more real
• 1:33:14
  and edgy than Howie Mandel.
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: When he's on stage and in the green room hanging out.
• 1:33:18
  He's done sets at the Mothership. He's come and hung
• 1:33:20
  out with us. He did my podcast and he came
• 1:33:23
  to the club. He's like, fuck, I want to be
• 1:33:25
  like that. I want to do what you guys are doing.
• 1:33:27
  I'm like, you can. You can do it. But he's
• 1:33:30
  worried that he would lose that velvet prison.
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 2: Hey, when we're working and they have the phones in bags,
• 1:33:37
  that's when he's amazing to watch. Yes. Because he'll drop
• 1:33:40
  the C-bomb in a minute.
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: He was saying it. He was saying it on stage.
• 1:33:43
  I'm just so happy I can say cunt. Yeah. I
• 1:33:45
  just want to say it. But he was funny. It
• 1:33:48
  was like he was having a good time. He was loose.
• 1:33:51
  And you could tell. It was like, Because Howie was
• 1:33:53
  a great comic. Like, Howie had some hilarious fucking specials.
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 2: I hated following him at the Westwood Comedy Store. Mitzi
• 1:34:00
  used to send us there to get better. Me, him,
• 1:34:03
  and Pauly. That's the one thing I loved about her.
• 1:34:06
  You know how we have Nepo babies? She didn't have
• 1:34:09
  no Nepo babies. She was like, Pauly, you're not ready. Yeah.
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: Oh, she would make you work. And sent his ass
• 1:34:14
  to Westwood. Oh, she made Pauly work. Yeah. I mean,
• 1:34:17
  Pauly's a rare dude in that regard. Like, he became...
• 1:34:20
  a really funny comedian while he was, you know, living
• 1:34:24
  with a woman who's the great as, as in terms
• 1:34:27
  of like people in comedy that are like the, some
• 1:34:32
  of the most critical, important people. She is the most
• 1:34:35
  important person in the history of comedy. That's not a comic.
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. There, there is no argument, no argument.
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: There's no one even close to her and her son,
• 1:34:44
  You know, I mean, went on to have huge success
• 1:34:46
  in films and movies.
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 2: I took Mitzi. Remember when we had the Universal Amphitheater?
• 1:34:51
  I got tickets and took Mitzi to see Pauly open
• 1:34:57
  for Sam Kinison.
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 2: And it just blew her away because she had never
• 1:35:01
  seen him in that large environment. And it was really
• 1:35:04
  cool to watch her watch her son.
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: Well, she let him grow the right way. You know,
• 1:35:10
  she didn't give him a silver spoon.
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 2: By the way, Mitzi Shore started the comedy store and
• 1:35:16
  she's the mother of Pauly Shore. Because I say Mitzi
• 1:35:18
  to you like it's a cousin.
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: Right. Well, we talk about her so much. I think
• 1:35:23
  a lot of people listening know. But she's the most
• 1:35:27
  important person in comedy that wasn't a comic. And more
• 1:35:30
  important than most comedians. Like she would tell you how
• 1:35:32
  to do it right. And if she liked you, man,
• 1:35:36
  it was like.
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 2: She'd tell you how to do it. In her opinion.
• 1:35:40
  I've seen her tell some people some crazy shit.
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. She was not right a lot of times.
• 1:35:45
  She had some wild ideas that weren't good.
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 2: She had a girl put on a green wig one time.
• 1:35:49
  And I'm like, I'm not sure. But she was trying
• 1:35:53
  to find some kind of hook for this girl. And
• 1:35:55
  I'm like, if you don't want to have to wear
• 1:35:56
  the green wig, go home and figure out a hook.
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah. She made Joey Diaz call himself Fat Baby.
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 2: Ouch.
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: When you would look at the lineup, like I bet
• 1:36:09
  you could find it online if you looked. There's lineups
• 1:36:11
  from the Comedy Store. It'd be a bunch of comedians,
• 1:36:14
  Bill Burr, blah, blah, blah. And then you'd see Fat Baby.
• 1:36:16
  And that was Joey Diaz. She would call him Fat Baby.
• 1:36:19
  She wouldn't even let him use his fucking name in
• 1:36:23
  the lineup. It would be Fat Baby.
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 2: I remember having a conversation with her and Paul, and
• 1:36:29
  Paul was exacerbating the problems. Because she was like.
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: Rodriguez?
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 2: Paul Mooney.
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: Oh, Mooney. Oh, man.
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 2: We got so many Pauls in our life.
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: God, I love that dude.
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 2: So we're sitting, talking, and Mitzi's about to start the
• 1:36:41
  Belly Room because she thinks women need a place to
• 1:36:44
  perform and to get better.
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: That was what the Belly Room originally was.
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 2: A little college up there for ladies. And she was
• 1:36:51
  trying to think of a name for it. And she says,
• 1:36:55
  I'm also thinking about having one night of just black comics.
• 1:36:59
  You know, because there was only George Wallace, Dave Tyree,
• 1:37:02
  and Mooney at one time when I arrived.
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: What year was that?
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 2: I came in 1980, New Year's Eve.
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 2: I drove out from Chicago because I'm from Cleveland, and
• 1:37:14
  there were no comedy clubs in Cleveland back then, so
• 1:37:16
  I had to go to New York, L.A., or Chicago.
• 1:37:18
  And my mother was living in Chicago at that time,
• 1:37:20
  so I went there because rent was free for a while.
• 1:37:24
  And that was a lot of fun. But Mitzi... For
• 1:37:30
  the Black Knight, she said, Paul, what do you think
• 1:37:32
  I should call him? And she says, I was thinking
• 1:37:35
  Cotton Comedy. And I'm, no, Mitzi, no, no, you can't,
• 1:37:41
  you can't. And I was trying to explain why. And
• 1:37:43
  Paul was like, oh, that's wonderful. That's exactly what we
• 1:37:48
  should call him.
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: Oh, homie.
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 2: Oh, homie.
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: Cotton Comedy.
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 2: He was cool.
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: Oh, man, Paul, that guy would write. And there'd be
• 1:37:58
  something that would happen in the news like the day before,
• 1:38:01
  and Mooney would go on stage and have like 15
• 1:38:03
  minutes on it and just crush.
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 2: And he did something that I know I hated. He
• 1:38:08
  requested the last spot.
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: Oh, he loved that.
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 2: Wanted to go on late, wanted to stay on as
• 1:38:13
  long as he wanted, and would fuck with you if
• 1:38:15
  you tried to get up. Oh, you don't like a
• 1:38:19
  smart nigga. But don't leave too early. My friend's at
• 1:38:24
  your house robbing that man.
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: He would have so many things like that so many
• 1:38:28
  hooks and he was just so good at working those
• 1:38:31
  small crowds. He just liked the freedom of just being
• 1:38:34
  able to fuck around.
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 2: With a bottle of champagne, with a straw.
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: A little tiny bottle of champagne. Yeah, the little spit.
• 1:38:41
  And he would sip on it during punchlines.
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 2: Oh, nigga, please. And then take a sip.
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: We'd always just sit in the back and watch him.
• 1:38:49
  It's like if you thought you were good at comedy,
• 1:38:50
  you'd watch Mooney and go, God, I got so much
• 1:38:52
  to learn.
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: I got so much to learn.
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 2: All the great comics that we know now at one
• 1:38:58
  time would sit in the back of the OR and
• 1:39:02
  come late to watch Paul.
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 2: I used to, on the landline, I used to call
• 1:39:07
  Kenan and say, yo, I'll meet you there. We were
• 1:39:09
  going to see Mooney at 115.
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: I would always love to see Mooney when something fucked
• 1:39:14
  up happened in the news. Mm-hmm. Like if there's something
• 1:39:17
  fucked up happened in the news, like when's Paul going up?
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: You know, it's just like you had to go see
• 1:39:21
  him because he always had a take. And, you know,
• 1:39:24
  that take was always like, oh, shit. You know, it
• 1:39:26
  was like he would get you. He would like find
• 1:39:29
  an angle where you'd be like, oh, my God. Oh,
• 1:39:32
  my God. He was he was so clever.
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 2: The coolest conversations at the comedy show when Richard would
• 1:39:39
  come up every night and Richard would go from five
• 1:39:41
  minutes to an hour and then it would become. a
• 1:39:43
  great special that you go to at the theater to see.
• 1:39:46
  But I would watch Paul Mooney before we had cell phones.
• 1:39:50
  After it was over, Richard would go and have a
• 1:39:51
  cigarette in the main room, like on a Monday or Sunday,
• 1:39:54
  I think it would be closed. And that's where he
• 1:39:56
  would call it holding court. He would go in there
• 1:39:59
  first and just want to dry off for a minute,
• 1:40:02
  smoke a cigarette. And Paul would come in with a
• 1:40:04
  napkin with stuff written on it. And he would just,
• 1:40:08
  you know, oh, and how about this? And he would
• 1:40:10
  give him tags. As a matter of fact, Richard on
• 1:40:13
  the back of an album, that joke, you go to prison,
• 1:40:16
  you get justice, just us, nigga. And he gave that
• 1:40:21
  to Richard and it was on a prior album. But, oh, those, Joe,
• 1:40:26
  that was a time Richard would work out every night.
• 1:40:29
  He'd work the original room, go in the main room
• 1:40:32
  and entertain his guest. And it would be like Burt Reynolds, Moses,
• 1:40:39
  Charlton Heston.
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 2: Bernie Casey. You would see like– oh, Burt Reynolds would
• 1:40:46
  have Sally Field with him. Wow.
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: It was amazing.
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 2: They would all come and bow to the king, dog.
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, he was so different. I always say that
• 1:40:56
  the godfather of comedy who started everything was Lenny Bruce.
• 1:40:59
  But then Richard figured out a way to take that
• 1:41:03
  and make it way funnier. He figured out how to
• 1:41:06
  take that kind of honesty– and social commentary and figure
• 1:41:10
  out how to like talk about life. Cause people don't
• 1:41:13
  know that before, before Lenny Bruce came around, it was
• 1:41:18
  just jokes. It was just like two Jews walking to
• 1:41:22
  a bar. They buy it.
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: It was jokes.
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 2: It was like, it was Dangerfield's rhythm.
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But you know what? Dangerfield was a, he was
• 1:41:31
  a special guy too.
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 2: He was a beast, man.
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: And he didn't, he took like 10 years off. And
• 1:41:37
  never stopped writing and was selling aluminum siding.
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: And then came back and made it in his 40s. Yeah. Wow.
• 1:41:46
  Look at this. That's the main room.
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 2: That's the main room.
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: That's crazy. Burt Reynolds, Sally Fields.
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 2: Now you see that picture. One night I'm in that
• 1:41:54
  room and Stevie Wonder. is over on the piano. Remember
• 1:41:58
  how the piano used to be in the main room
• 1:41:59
  on the far left of the stage? Stevie's playing and
• 1:42:03
  there are a few people snorting coke. I think to
• 1:42:06
  this day, Stevie still thinks a few of those people
• 1:42:08
  have allergies because, you know, he's just sitting playing and people. Wow.
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: Wow. Look at that. Burt Reynolds on stage, Robin Williams.
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 2: I saw Burt Reynolds give the parking attendant a hundred
• 1:42:21
  dollars and I thought I was on another planet. I'm like,
• 1:42:23
  Get the fuck out of here. I should be parking cars.
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: Fuck. Stand up.
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was that. And for people who are looking
• 1:42:31
  at this picture, that's Richard holding court after his set.
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: Wow. What an amazing photo. Well, Jamie, we should get
• 1:42:41
  some of these photos and yeah, get some of these
• 1:42:44
  photos and let's print them up and put them in
• 1:42:46
  the green room at the mothership.
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 2: I saw a picture.
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: He's got the Ciro signs in the back.
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Wow. That tells you a lot about the history.
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: Search Ciro. That sign used to be, Mitzi had this
• 1:43:00
  warehouse room, like was just not a warehouse, but, you know,
• 1:43:03
  it was a storage room where she had all the
• 1:43:05
  old Ciro stuff. And I remember seeing that sign there.
• 1:43:08
  And they eventually hung it up in the back bar area.
• 1:43:12
  And you just look like, wow, this was a mob
• 1:43:15
  club in like the fucking 50s. Yeah. That's crazy.
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 2: I saw a picture you have in the entry of
• 1:43:25
  Richard Pryor's mugshot.
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 2: I had never seen that. What did he do?
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: I don't remember. Yeah. I don't remember, but he was
• 1:43:36
  very young. That mugshot was, I think he was like 18.
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 1: I don't remember what it was. I have mugshots from
• 1:43:43
  everybody who got arrested.
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw Larry King.
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: Larry King was like bad checks. He was writing bad checks.
• 1:43:49
  He had a gambling problem. Oh, yeah.
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: Willie Nelson's up there.
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: I got everybody up there.
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 2: There is a book that I have in my garage,
• 1:44:00
  and it's the first edition to tell you how much
• 1:44:05
  of this kind of stuff existed. But it's all celebrities
• 1:44:09
  and their mugshots. So it's a coffee table book of
• 1:44:12
  just the mug shots.
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: Oh, I should probably get that book. I bet there's
• 1:44:15
  a few in there that I don't have.
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 2: And I bet there is a second one that they
• 1:44:19
  could do. Yeah. Because the book's only like a half
• 1:44:22
  inch thick.
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: We got a lot of good ones out there. But,
• 1:44:26
  you know, so many people got arrested. You know, we
• 1:44:30
  got David Bowie out there. Of course, Morrison. You know,
• 1:44:35
  it's like Hendrix got to have that mug shot. That's
• 1:44:38
  a classic.
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: There was a lot of mug shots.
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 2: Have you ever taken a mug shot?
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: No, I've never been arrested.
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've never been arrested.
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 1: I'm a good boy, believe it or not.
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, I mean, we've done things, but not
• 1:44:53
  enough to have to take those pictures.
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, luckily. But also we live in a different time,
• 1:44:59
  you know, in the 1960s and 70s when those guys
• 1:45:02
  are getting arrested. They're getting arrested for like having a
• 1:45:04
  joint or something like that.
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Richard, or excuse me, Jimmy, I think he
• 1:45:09
  got arrested in Toronto for having heroin on him. I
• 1:45:12
  think that's what he got arrested for.
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 2: I got pulled over and had a joint in my
• 1:45:17
  ashtray in 1989. And I was scared to death. And
• 1:45:24
  the cop was real nice to me. But he did
• 1:45:27
  the corniest thing. He says, get out of the car.
• 1:45:30
  And he made me rip up the joint and drop
• 1:45:33
  it in the sewer at the curb there.
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: And he says.
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 2: Now get your life together.
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: Like, bitch, this is helping me get my life together. Absolutely.
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 2: It makes me funnier.
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: That's funny. That's hilarious.
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 2: The good old days, man. I remember you talked about
• 1:45:49
  Rodney earlier. Rodney Dangerfield. You know how we love comedy.
• 1:45:54
  We'll never stop doing it. We'll do it until the
• 1:45:57
  wheels fall off. And I remember him on stage at
• 1:46:00
  the Laugh Factory near the end of his life.
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: I saw him there.
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 2: And his wife. was in the balcony giving him lines
• 1:46:08
  through a wireless earwig. And if you went up top,
• 1:46:13
  you would hear her say, I don't get no respect.
• 1:46:18
  I don't get no respect. And first of all, two things.
• 1:46:23
  First of all, it warmed my heart that the woman
• 1:46:26
  who loves you is going to help you do what
• 1:46:28
  you love. So that made me feel so good. And
• 1:46:32
  it was like, I want love. a woman with that
• 1:46:34
  kind of heart, because I know I'm going to want
• 1:46:36
  to do it when I'm older.
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: She gave us his notes from one of his Tonight
• 1:46:40
  Show appearances, and they're framed on the wall in the
• 1:46:43
  green room. It's his handwritten notes in bold. He would
• 1:46:47
  write it in bold where the punchlines were. It's sitting
• 1:46:50
  there right above the couch.
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 2: That's cool, man.
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was one of the first things. Whitney Cummings
• 1:46:56
  hooked it up. She got it for us from her.
• 1:46:59
  She wanted us to have it.
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 2: Whitney Cummings, right?
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: I saw Rodney live when I was a security guard.
• 1:47:06
  I was a security guard at Great Woods, Great Woods
• 1:47:10
  Center for the Performing Arts, which was in Mansfield, Massachusetts.
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 3: Oh.
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: I lived in Boston. Yeah. Me and a bunch of
• 1:47:17
  the black belts from this Taekwondo team that I was
• 1:47:20
  on got jobs as security guards. And I was 19
• 1:47:23
  and I was backstage and Rodney was walking around with
• 1:47:25
  a bathrobe on with nothing underneath it. That was when
• 1:47:28
  he was going on stage with a bathrobe. He got
• 1:47:30
  to such a fuck it point in his life. Where
• 1:47:33
  he would literally go on stage with nothing but a bathrobe.
• 1:47:36
  He would walk out there with a bathrobe and slippers
• 1:47:38
  and just fucking murder. I remember being in the audience.
• 1:47:42
  And I wasn't even thinking about doing stand-up back then.
• 1:47:45
  Back then, I was just fighting. And I was a
• 1:47:48
  fan of comedy. I always loved comedy.
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 2: Your fighting friends talked you into doing stand-up, right?
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, one of the guys that I trained with,
• 1:47:54
  my friend Steve. but when I, when I went there,
• 1:47:57
  I remember like, like you want to talk about not
• 1:48:00
  giving a fuck. Like this guy really didn't give a fuck.
• 1:48:03
  Like he had gotten to a point where he had
• 1:48:04
  so much success and so much money. And this is
• 1:48:07
  after back to school and all those big movies. And
• 1:48:10
  he was still just going out there doing standup. He
• 1:48:12
  was smoking weed back there. And he just would go
• 1:48:15
  on stage with a bathrobe on. And I remember thinking
• 1:48:18
  that is the wildest shit I've ever seen in my life.
• 1:48:20
  I remember as a young man, because I was always,
• 1:48:23
  you know, you're fucking 19. You're scared of everything. You're
• 1:48:27
  worried about the future. You don't know what, you know,
• 1:48:29
  you have no security in your life at all. And
• 1:48:32
  here's this guy with, you know, millions of dollars, massive
• 1:48:36
  amounts of fame. And he got to that I don't
• 1:48:39
  give a fuck stage. But he really did. He wasn't
• 1:48:43
  faking it. Nobody told him he has to go on
• 1:48:45
  stage in a bathrobe. I was like, I'll tell you
• 1:48:47
  what I want to do. I want to go on
• 1:48:48
  stage in a bathrobe. He just went on stage in
• 1:48:51
  a fucking bathrobe.
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 2: See if you.
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: Can find some photos of him on stage with a
• 1:48:55
  bathrobe on. I know he did it for years.
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 2: I got in trouble because Eazy-E came on my show
• 1:49:01
  in his bathrobe. And he was like, you gave it
• 1:49:05
  to me. That's hilarious. You know, because we would give
• 1:49:07
  out bathrobes. And so he said, well, fuck it. I'll
• 1:49:10
  wear it out there. And he wore it out and
• 1:49:11
  had a– he was picking his teeth with a knife.
• 1:49:14
  And Paramount was like, oh, man, this is not what
• 1:49:18
  we asked him for. This is really not what we
• 1:49:20
  asked him for. He'll never replace Johnny.
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 1: Oh, fuck off. But I knew– Those people were ridiculous.
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 2: Hey, I was where I was because I snuck in
• 1:49:29
  through syndication, did a first run syndication. I know– Network
• 1:49:33
  wasn't for me. And when Letterman got CBS, I knew
• 1:49:36
  I was really in trouble, so I had to figure
• 1:49:37
  out an exit plan. But the bottom line is for
• 1:49:40
  six years, I did it the way I wanted to
• 1:49:42
  do it, and I wouldn't change a thing, man. To
• 1:49:44
  do it for 26 years, I wouldn't trade those six.
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: The thing about it is, man, everybody wanted to be
• 1:49:50
  Johnny back then. It was so crazy. Even Letterman.
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 2: I joked at the Emmys. I said I had a dream.
• 1:49:55
  I wanted to be an old white man with a desk.
• 1:49:59
  And that was my– to the point, Joe, that when
• 1:50:02
  I made it, I hired Johnny's architect that built his
• 1:50:07
  house to build me a house. I was deep into
• 1:50:09
  the shit like that.
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: Well, he was the guy. People don't realize like that
• 1:50:14
  was the carrot. That was the thing that they– I mean,
• 1:50:17
  Jay Leno and like that famous scene in that movie
• 1:50:20
  that talked about it where Jay Leno would hide in
• 1:50:22
  the closet and listen to them talk about it because
• 1:50:25
  he wanted that spot when Johnny retired. But they wanted Letterman.
• 1:50:29
  And it was like this battle between like it made
• 1:50:31
  no sense to me. Letterman has the Letterman show. It's
• 1:50:34
  fucking huge. It's amazing. Why would you want to do
• 1:50:37
  anything else? But everybody wanted that Tonight Show. Absolutely. They
• 1:50:40
  all wanted the Tonight Show.
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 2: And when I was a kid, I was a magician.
• 1:50:43
  That's how I started.
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: And.
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 2: I read an article that said that Johnny did sleight
• 1:50:48
  of hand and was a magician. So to me, that
• 1:50:50
  was God speaking to me.
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: It was like, you are.
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 2: A magician and you do a talk show in a basement. Ooh.
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: One day.
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, one day.
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 1: Isn't it crazy, though, that it had to be the
• 1:51:02
  Tonight Show for everybody? It wasn't get your own talk show.
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 2: Joe, doing stand-up, getting that five minutes, having Jim McCauley
• 1:51:11
  come see you. I got on... Dinah Shore. No, no.
• 1:51:15
  Mike Douglas. And I got on Merv Griffin. Didn't do
• 1:51:19
  it for me. I needed Jim McCauley say the Tonight
• 1:51:23
  Show is yours.
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Isn't that crazy?
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 2: Did you?
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: You were too young. I was too young. And it's
• 1:51:28
  also like, for me, I didn't understand it. Like, I
• 1:51:34
  used to like watching when comics were on the Tonight Show,
• 1:51:37
  but it didn't.
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 2: Like you remember the night Roseanne came on?
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 2: I'm a domestic goddess. Yeah. I was like, oh shit,
• 1:51:43
  she's funny.
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 1: Oh, she was so funny.
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 2: She can write.
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 1: She was so funny. Roseanne was like way ahead of
• 1:51:48
  her time. She was so wild. There was no one
• 1:51:51
  like her when she came out. Yeah. She's still wild.
• 1:51:53
  She comes to the mothership all the time.
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 2: And as wild as she is, Joe, the night I
• 1:51:58
  called her and said, I need to rearrange the show tonight.
• 1:52:05
  Her and Tom were coming. Tom Arnold? Yes. And it
• 1:52:09
  was the morning that I'd gotten a call from Irvin
• 1:52:12
  Magic Johnson that he was HIV positive. So I needed
• 1:52:16
  the whole show. And this is how cool she was.
• 1:52:19
  She says, give me another date, but I'm still coming
• 1:52:23
  because we love Irvin.
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 3: Oh, wow.
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 2: And they came and stood on the side that night
• 1:52:27
  when Irvin came and talked about it.
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 2: She's cool.
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 1: She's cool. She's crazy as fuck.
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 1: She's cool. Aren't we all?
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 2: And don't we have to be?
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: You have to be. Yeah.
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 2: A little bit. We got to be the different kid
• 1:52:42
  in the neighborhood.
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. If you want to be as good as she was.
• 1:52:45
  Because people, they don't. You got to go back and
• 1:52:48
  watch some of her specials. She was killing in a
• 1:52:51
  way that no woman killed like that. It was different.
• 1:52:54
  It was like aggressive. It was aggressive and angry. It
• 1:52:58
  was so funny.
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 2: With a tent dress on. Yeah. She didn't sell us
• 1:53:01
  any sexuality at all. It was just great writing.
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 1: Just great writing and great performing and a lot of
• 1:53:06
  I don't give a fuck. And it was just, ugh.
• 1:53:10
  Do you find any photos of Rodney with a bathrobe on?
• 1:53:13
  I mean, yes, but not on stage.
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 2: No?
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 3: There's only, yeah, I don't even know if they exist.
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 1: They don't exist. That's crazy.
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 2: That was a pre-show right there. You think he's not ready,
• 1:53:26
  but he's dressed to go on.
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 1: Right. He's in there writing.
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 2: Look at the phone. Look at the landline.
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: Isn't that crazy?
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 2: I showed my son one of those. He couldn't believe
• 1:53:37
  that to drop dollar nine, it was.
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: And if you missed one of them and fucked it up,
• 1:53:41
  you had to start from scratch. It was crazy.
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 1: Back in the day.
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 2: I remember when the iPhone first came out. And it
• 1:53:52
  didn't have actual buttons like a StarTAC. And I was freaking.
• 1:53:57
  It's like, how will I know where the L is? Yeah.
• 1:54:00
  I can't feel it.
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 1: I remember I had a BlackBerry back then. You couldn't
• 1:54:04
  convince me that I needed to get an iPhone. I
• 1:54:06
  was like, this is ridiculous. I'm not typing on that
• 1:54:08
  stupid thing. I don't even know where the buttons are.
• 1:54:10
  It makes a click sound. That's stupid.
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 2: Before you know it, we were doing it. We turned
• 1:54:16
  off the click, and it says a lot about progress.
• 1:54:18
  Don't be afraid of change.
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: Well, now I talk to it. Now I hardly ever text.
• 1:54:22
  I just say, text Arsenio. Like, say, hey, man, looking
• 1:54:27
  forward to seeing you tonight, blah, blah, blah, and just
• 1:54:29
  send it.
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 1: I make most of my text messages, I just talk
• 1:54:32
  to my phone.
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty much. Me and Siri, and you can't say
• 1:54:38
  the N-word to Siri. The other night I was writing
• 1:54:40
  the joke. She won't say it? No, she won't fuck
• 1:54:42
  with the N-word.
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 1: I wonder if Google will.
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 2: She's like, I'm not getting canceled, you know, and let
• 1:54:48
  Alexa have the whole business. I'm not to get, you know, but,
• 1:54:51
  you know, I'm writing a joke and I said the
• 1:54:53
  N word. Of course, I didn't say N word. I
• 1:54:56
  said negative. And Siri would not write it. And then
• 1:55:00
  when I kept saying it, she started writing other things,
• 1:55:02
  you know, that started with an N, you know, but
• 1:55:05
  they weren't even words. And I'm like, so they got
• 1:55:08
  Siri trained.
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 1: That's so weird.
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 2: She's not getting canceled.
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: It's weird that It took– it wasn't even 10 years.
• 1:55:17
  And then everybody just got accustomed to having a phone
• 1:55:20
  with them all the time. Like there was– think about
• 1:55:24
  like the difference between like– it was probably like– what
• 1:55:27
  is it? Like 97, 98 when everybody had those Motorola's, right?
• 1:55:32
  It was around then, right? Yeah. It was around then,
• 1:55:35
  like 96, 97.
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 2: My friends laughed at me. My first phone was in
• 1:55:41
  a Halliburton briefcase. And you opened the silver Halliburton briefcase,
• 1:55:45
  take the phone out, and the phone was maybe 10 inches.
• 1:55:48
  And I had an antenna that screwed on the outside
• 1:55:54
  of the briefcase because you had this big possum tail.
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I had one on the roof of my car. Oh, yeah?
• 1:56:01
  In 1989.
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 2: Back then, I couldn't imagine that kids would be watching this.
• 1:56:09
  on the phone.
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: Right. Playing games, watching movies, and that would be most
• 1:56:14
  of their social life was communicating through that thing. Yeah.
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 2: Remember, there was a time when dudes said to each other, yo,
• 1:56:20
  he got a strong rap, man. His pimp hand is crazy.
• 1:56:23
  He can get a bitch in a second. You know,
• 1:56:24
  and blah, blah, blah.
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 1: He can talk.
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 2: And now, young men don't know what the fuck to
• 1:56:29
  say to a woman leaning against a wall in a club.
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 1: No, they have dating apps now.
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, swipe left.
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 1: They're just swiping.
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 1: Crazy. But what I was going to get at, like,
• 1:56:37
  how quickly... The culture changed from, let's just say, 98
• 1:56:43
  when a lot of people had a phone. At least
• 1:56:45
  half the people had a phone on them. 2008, everybody
• 1:56:48
  had a phone. 2018, you'd be crazy to not have
• 1:56:52
  a phone. 20 years. Like that.
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 2: Okay. Now, hold your thought.
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 2: I remember a time when you and I were the
• 1:57:03
  only parents that didn't allow cell phones online. In the
• 1:57:08
  hands of our kids. Because I remember my son said, Dad,
• 1:57:13
  you've got to let me have a phone. And I'm like,
• 1:57:15
  I'm not doing it. Until you were a certain age,
• 1:57:18
  I'd set it up. And I said, does everyone in
• 1:57:20
  your class have a phone? And he said, no, two
• 1:57:26
  of us don't. And I realized you were the other
• 1:57:29
  parent that was saying no. We're not fucking with this.
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 1: I gave her a phone that has two numbers on it.
• 1:57:35
  There was a weird little cell phone that you get
• 1:57:37
  for kids where she could dial, like, my phone number
• 1:57:41
  or my wife's phone number. It was like, that's it.
• 1:57:45
  It was like, I forget what it was called. It
• 1:57:46
  was like the frog or something like that. Some little
• 1:57:49
  cell phone that was just for kids. A safe phone
• 1:57:50
  for kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you didn't have to
• 1:57:52
  worry about the things that kids have to worry about now. Like,
• 1:57:54
  I was watching this thing about Roblox, you know, that
• 1:57:57
  game that kids like to play, that they're getting, like,
• 1:58:01
  Predators are on roadblocks and they're trying to pick up
• 1:58:04
  kids like child predators. So you have to worry about
• 1:58:08
  the games they play. you have to worry about them
• 1:58:11
  getting dm'd by creeps you have to worry about so
• 1:58:14
  much more access than just a phone to call people.
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah there was a time when my kid used to
• 1:58:21
  play games with a headset on and he would play
• 1:58:25
  with people you don't know just somebody in the world
• 1:58:28
  they would gather.
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah and um.
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 2: I remember feeling like this can't be good.
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 2: You know, because these probably aren't all kids he's playing with.
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 1: A hundred percent.
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, when I first started playing video games, you'd
• 1:58:44
  have to chat by pulling down a window and you'd
• 1:58:47
  have to type in the things that you wanted to say.
• 1:58:49
  You couldn't talk to people. And then when people started
• 1:58:51
  talking to people in video games, I'm like, oh, this
• 1:58:54
  is crazy. But then the problem is whenever there's anything
• 1:58:57
  the kids are doing, you're going to have some creeps
• 1:59:00
  that are targeting kids. And they find where the kids
• 1:59:03
  are hanging out, what the kids are doing, and then
• 1:59:05
  they try to get those kids to meet them somewhere.
• 1:59:08
  That's what's scary about cell phones and the internet and
• 1:59:11
  all that shit is that it's not just a phone.
• 1:59:14
  It's a way that you can connect with people. And
• 1:59:19
  there's always creeps that are trying to connect with kids.
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 2: I was lucky as a kid because I talk about
• 1:59:25
  being a magician. And I worked at a magic shop
• 1:59:27
  when I was 12, took cash because I couldn't actually
• 1:59:30
  have a job. And I remember meeting older magicians. I
• 1:59:35
  remember going to people's house to see a new guillotine trick.
• 1:59:40
  And my mother, my mother worked two jobs. I was
• 1:59:43
  a latchkey kid. I never had any problems and I
• 1:59:46
  never was warned about it, you know, but, um, I
• 1:59:50
  could have been a target. Yeah, you got lucky. Yeah,
• 1:59:53
  I really got lucky. Because when I was writing the book,
• 1:59:56
  I'm looking and I'm saying, there was a guy I
• 1:59:59
  met who worked until he died for Penn & Teller.
• 2:00:05
  And this dude, I met him at a magic show.
• 2:00:07
  And every year when he would come to Cleveland, I
• 2:00:09
  would go sit with him. My mother never knew I
• 2:00:11
  had this 40-year-old friend.
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: Weird, right?
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but he was cool and I got lucky.
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the thing about latchkey kids. I mean, the
• 2:00:21
  thing is, though, I was watching this YouTube video where
• 2:00:25
  they were talking about kids of our age, our generation,
• 2:00:30
  latchkey kids that grew up like that are so much
• 2:00:34
  more resilient because no problems were solved for you. You
• 2:00:39
  had to figure it out on your own. You went
• 2:00:40
  out on your own. You were outside with no cell
• 2:00:44
  phone communication, no way to call anybody. when you were 10, 11,
• 2:00:47
  you're wandering around with your friends. It's like, it was
• 2:00:51
  a different world. You had to figure life out in
• 2:00:53
  a way that like helicopter parenting and parents that are
• 2:00:57
  like tracking their kids, you know, like a lot of parents,
• 2:01:00
  like they're tracking their kids on their phone. They know
• 2:01:02
  where they're at. You said you were at Debbie's house.
• 2:01:04
  You're not at Debbie's house. Where are you right now?
• 2:01:06
  Like everyone is like looking out for their kid's Maybe
• 2:01:09
  a little too much. It's like you want your children
• 2:01:11
  to be safe, but you also want them to have
• 2:01:14
  a little bit of freedom to figure out who the
• 2:01:16
  fuck they are.
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Gosh, as a kid, when I would tell my
• 2:01:21
  mother I'm spending the night at Kenny's house, I was
• 2:01:26
  never at Kenny's house. You know, my girl, when I
• 2:01:32
  was 14, had a mom who was a nurse that
• 2:01:35
  worked the 11 to 7 shift. So we kind of
• 2:01:39
  lived together like a couple. You know, I would tell
• 2:01:42
  my mother I'm going one place. I'd go to Robin's house.
• 2:01:44
  I would stay at her house till morning when I
• 2:01:46
  went home to get ready for school. You know, I
• 2:01:48
  was like a grown ass man.
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 1: Wow. That's wild.
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 2: Until one day her parents had the grandparents come to
• 2:01:55
  town and surprise her. And so it's the moms at work.
• 2:02:00
  There's a knock at the door. And she said, it's
• 2:02:03
  my grandmother. We had little peep holes. It's my grandmother,
• 2:02:05
  my grandfather. And I had to jump with my clothes
• 2:02:10
  off their balcony. That was my action adventure teenage period.
• 2:02:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a different world. I don't know if it's
• 2:02:19
  better or worse, but I think it definitely made you
• 2:02:22
  more resilient. And that was this argument that they were
• 2:02:25
  making in this YouTube video, that that generation is the
• 2:02:27
  most emotionally resilient. And that this generation coming up is
• 2:02:31
  like the least emotionally resilient. That's why they're always looking
• 2:02:35
  for things that are better. You know, problems. They're always
• 2:02:38
  looking for things that bother them, things that cause them anxiety.
• 2:02:42
  They're always looking for things that, you know, they can't tolerate.
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 2: Where's my bike helmet? You know, we used to have
• 2:02:48
  a car. It was a station wagon. And the back seat,
• 2:02:52
  you sit facing the opposite way. No seatbelts. That had
• 2:02:57
  to be dangerous.
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 1: It's all dangerous. Those cars were dangerous. They could barely stop.
• 2:03:02
  They had drum brakes everywhere. You ever drive like an
• 2:03:05
  old– I have old cars, but I have what they
• 2:03:06
  call resto mods where they take an old car, but
• 2:03:10
  they put like modern suspension, modern brakes, modern steering. It
• 2:03:14
  handles like a new car, but they have all the
• 2:03:16
  outside of an old car and then the dashboard of
• 2:03:19
  an old car and all that stuff. That's what I like.
• 2:03:22
  If you drive a real– like if you try to
• 2:03:24
  drive a 1968 Camaro, you're like, what is this piece
• 2:03:27
  of shit? They can't brake. You can't go around a corner.
• 2:03:31
  There's no traction.
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 2: What was your first car?
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 1: I had a 1973 Chevelle.
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 2: I had a Cutlass.
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 1: I had a Cutlass once. Yeah, I had a 70,
• 2:03:43
  a 70 Cutlass. Those are great cars. God, they knew
• 2:03:46
  how to make a beautiful car back then.
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 2: You like muscle cars.
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love. Well, when I was in high school,
• 2:03:52
  like those were the, so I was in high school
• 2:03:54
  in the 1980s. I was a freshman in 1981. I
• 2:03:55
  had four kids in the 1980s. Wow, that's crazy. I'm
• 2:03:56
  much older than you. In those days, those cars were
• 2:04:05
  the cars that we all like looked at. Like you
• 2:04:09
  couldn't believe when someone had it. I remember I have
• 2:04:11
  a 1970 Chevelle that I got. To this day, I
• 2:04:16
  have it because when I was like 17, my friend
• 2:04:20
  picked me up in a 1970 Chevelle with his buddy
• 2:04:24
  and it was perfect. It was a perfect car. I
• 2:04:26
  couldn't believe this guy had it. I was like, how
• 2:04:28
  do you have this?
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 2: And when you say perfect– To non-car people like me,
• 2:04:32
  what does that mean?
• 2:04:34
  Speaker 1: First of all, it was what you would call cherry,
• 2:04:37
  meaning there was no dents, no scratches, perfect paint. It
• 2:04:40
  was beautiful. The sound it made when he pulled up,
• 2:04:44
  I think I was 16 because I don't think I
• 2:04:45
  had a license yet. And I remember getting in the
• 2:04:47
  backseat of the car going, how does this guy have
• 2:04:50
  this car? This is crazy. You know what a 1970
• 2:04:54
  Chevelle looks like? Absolutely. With the white stripes, black with
• 2:04:57
  the white stripes. That was it. I have that exact
• 2:04:59
  car right now. I love it. Whenever I get in,
• 2:05:01
  I think about when I was 16. I think about
• 2:05:04
  all those years ago.
• 2:05:06
  Speaker 2: When Burt Reynolds drove up, those pictures we just looked at,
• 2:05:09
  when he drove up, he had what was called a
• 2:05:11
  Trans Am. Yes! And it had a big eagle on it.
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 1: Yes! Smoking the bandit car.
• 2:05:16
  Speaker 2: I almost lost my mind.
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 1: Oh, my God. That was the smoking the bandit car.
• 2:05:20
  That was the car that he had in those movies
• 2:05:21
  with Sally Fields.
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 2: $ 100 tip. Have you ever been to Jay Leno's spot?
• 2:05:29
  Speaker 1: With the cars? Yeah. I did his show once. I
• 2:05:32
  brought my Corvette on. I have a 1965 Corvette and
• 2:05:36
  I brought it to his show. It's a Restomod too
• 2:05:38
  and Jay drove it around. He's the only person that's
• 2:05:40
  ever driven it other than me. Wow. It's an honor.
• 2:05:43
  But you go to his place, it's like, He has warehouses,
• 2:05:47
  not a warehouse.
• 2:05:49
  Speaker 2: And he never sells one. He swears to me he's
• 2:05:54
  never sold a car. So anything he's ever bought, he keeps.
• 2:05:57
  And he recently told me.
• 2:05:59
  Speaker 1: Why did someone turn it gold?
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I phrased a clip.
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 1: Thumbnail. Someone's YouTube video. No. Go to the other one.
• 2:06:05
  The other picture with the real picture. I was just
• 2:06:07
  clicking around. But go to the real picture so you
• 2:06:09
  can see what it looks like.
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 2: You know what he has now that's kind of cool?
• 2:06:12
  He has two tanks. two army tanks.
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 1: That's us right there that's my car look at that
• 2:06:20
  see but that like you see that modern suspension modern wheels.
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 2: Those are exhaust pipes on the side.
• 2:06:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah that that car is so fun do those things
• 2:06:29
  get hot yeah yeah you'll fuck your leg up if
• 2:06:32
  you got shorts on your leg touches it you're in
• 2:06:34
  trouble the outside part won't because like the outside is
• 2:06:38
  like to protect you from the actual exhaust pipes but
• 2:06:41
  underneath it is exhaust pipes But where Jay's leg is,
• 2:06:45
  if he backed up right there, if it was hot,
• 2:06:47
  he'd singe the back of his calves.
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 2: Joe, he has tanks.
• 2:06:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he has everything.
• 2:06:52
  Speaker 2: He has steam engines. The king of Jordan gave him
• 2:06:55
  a tank, and this motherfucker was riding through Sherman Oaks
• 2:06:59
  with the tank.
• 2:06:59
  Speaker 1: He drives everything he has, too. That's the thing about Jay.
• 2:07:03
  It's kind of nuts.
• 2:07:03
  Speaker 2: It's a lot of rotation.
• 2:07:05
  Speaker 1: Well, he crashed one of his motorcycles just a few
• 2:07:08
  years ago and fucked himself up.
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 2: He does a bit about that. He's fucked himself up
• 2:07:13
  without a motorcycle.
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 1: Oh, that was the one time he was climbing up
• 2:07:15
  a hill?
• 2:07:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah. We've done a lot of dates together. We have
• 2:07:19
  the same agent, right? And he called us one day
• 2:07:21
  and he says, how about you, Jay and Craig Kilbourne,
• 2:07:25
  and we call it Kings of Late Night. And so
• 2:07:27
  we went out and did like five dates and it
• 2:07:29
  was a lot of fun. And me and Jay enjoyed it.
• 2:07:32
  So we added 20 more dates to it.
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 1: Oh, that had to be great. He was a great
• 2:07:38
  comic in the 70s.
• 2:07:39
  Speaker 2: People don't know when I was in college, we would
• 2:07:42
  go in the TV lounge and watch Jay Leno. To
• 2:07:48
  this day, I remember him saying I was a philosophy major.
• 2:07:51
  And so I just got out of college and I
• 2:07:53
  opened up a little philosophy shop you know just to
• 2:07:57
  to explain what bullshit majors were actually being peddled to.
• 2:08:01
  Speaker 1: Well he was the edgy comic in the 1970s and
• 2:08:04
  when he would go on Letterman's show he was like
• 2:08:06
  the edgy guy that would sit on the couch and
• 2:08:08
  be crazy Letterman would say what's your beef yeah and
• 2:08:10
  he would always be mad at something he was like
• 2:08:13
  people don't realize that you'd see him as but again
• 2:08:15
  that carrot the carrot for him was the Tonight Show
• 2:08:18
  that was more important to him Than anything. And once
• 2:08:21
  he got that Tonight Show, everything else was like, took
• 2:08:24
  a back seat.
• 2:08:25
  Speaker 2: Did you do Letterman as a stand-up?
• 2:08:27
  Speaker 1: No, no.
• 2:08:28
  Speaker 2: That was my first.
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 1: That's a classic. That was a great place for comedy.
• 2:08:34
  Because Letterman, he really loved comics. And he really loved
• 2:08:38
  solid stand-up. I never liked doing stand-up on those talk shows.
• 2:08:43
  Speaker 2: Was it the five minutes?
• 2:08:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah. To me, I was a different kind of comedy.
• 2:08:47
  My comedy needs some time. I need to cook. You know,
• 2:08:50
  I need time to open up ideas.
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 2: And I didn't like the censorship.
• 2:08:56
  Speaker 1: I didn't like TV comedy. It's not my, I was
• 2:08:59
  a nightclub comic. That's all I ever wanted to be.
• 2:09:02
  I wanted to be a nightclub comic. I like doing
• 2:09:04
  comedy for drunk people.
• 2:09:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah. But when I first saw you, It all wasn't dirty.
• 2:09:09
  Some of it was TV stuff.
• 2:09:11
  Speaker 1: Well, it wasn't necessarily dirty, but it was free. It
• 2:09:13
  was like I was being free. I was doing whatever
• 2:09:16
  I wanted to talk about. I didn't like the idea
• 2:09:19
  of being constrained by any sorts of standards and practices.
• 2:09:23
  I'm not interested. I've been not interested in that.
• 2:09:27
  Speaker 2: I worked on my Tonight Show set to try to
• 2:09:30
  get on the Tonight Show with Johnny. And the guy
• 2:09:34
  would come see me a lot. He would change my jokes.
• 2:09:37
  That I hate. I hate when they say, well, try
• 2:09:41
  saying vacation instead of gift shop. And I'm like, oh,
• 2:09:45
  let me just do my thing. But after a year
• 2:09:49
  of him trying to get my set right, he says,
• 2:09:52
  you're not a Johnny comic.
• 2:09:54
  Speaker 1: Oh, God.
• 2:09:54
  Speaker 2: You're not a Johnny guy.
• 2:09:55
  Speaker 1: What does that even mean?
• 2:09:57
  Speaker 2: But then I got on on a Monday night with Joan,
• 2:09:59
  because I guess I was a Joan guy. And then
• 2:10:02
  I got to sit with Johnny just as a guest
• 2:10:04
  to promote Coming to America. So- finally full circle from
• 2:10:08
  my basement.
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 1: That's amazing. I watch a lot of his old clips,
• 2:10:12
  like with Don Rickles and all these.
• 2:10:15
  Speaker 2: Oh, Don Rickles talking about Snooki, the brother in the band,
• 2:10:19
  you know, and he would do a, a noise of
• 2:10:21
  a blow gun. It's like Snooki, you're liking this stuff. Oh,
• 2:10:25
  you know, and you can't fuck with that now. No,
• 2:10:29
  there's so much. It's funny how we've come forward into
• 2:10:33
  a new era, but we've gone backwards and, In certain ways.
• 2:10:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:10:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:10:38
  Speaker 1: You can't joke about certain things anymore.
• 2:10:40
  Speaker 2: Like I'm scared to death right now. And I'm going
• 2:10:41
  to say something that I shouldn't say. And I'm going
• 2:10:45
  to be in TLC prison.
• 2:10:46
  Speaker 1: No one can do shit to you now. They can't
• 2:10:48
  do shit to you now.
• 2:10:49
  Speaker 2: They can just be mad, I guess.
• 2:10:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:10:50
  Speaker 1: Let them be mad. Just don't pay attention. That's what
• 2:10:52
  I do. I just don't pay attention. Really? Yeah. I
• 2:10:55
  just don't read anything about me.
• 2:10:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:10:57
  Speaker 1: Stay away. That's the best way.
• 2:10:59
  Speaker 2: Are you a comic who, when you're on stage, it
• 2:11:02
  can be 200 people laughing and But that one person
• 2:11:05
  who's not laughing annoys the fuck out of you. You
• 2:11:08
  can't even enjoy the others. You don't even look at
• 2:11:10
  that person.
• 2:11:10
  Speaker 1: No, those people have their own problems.
• 2:11:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And by the way, sometimes they're just not laughers.
• 2:11:17
  Because that person will sometimes come up to you and say,
• 2:11:19
  love what you're doing. Love the new stuff.
• 2:11:21
  Speaker 1: Some people just like to smile. They don't want to laugh.
• 2:11:23
  They just want to sit there and watch. Or they
• 2:11:25
  just want to take it in, take in the performance.
• 2:11:27
  Doesn't mean they don't like it. And then some people
• 2:11:29
  just are upset by everything. You can't control that. Just
• 2:11:33
  control what– the only thing that bothers me is if
• 2:11:37
  I'm off. That's it. If I'm off, if I stumble
• 2:11:41
  on a word, if I fuck something up, that's the
• 2:11:42
  only thing that bothers me. The audience is like, you
• 2:11:45
  can't control that. Why be upset at things you can't control?
• 2:11:48
  Because who knows what their trip is? Who knows what
• 2:11:50
  they're carrying around with them?
• 2:11:52
  Speaker 2: As a famous star now, do you ever bomb?
• 2:11:57
  Speaker 1: I have jokes that bomb for sure. New ones. We
• 2:12:00
  trot out a new one. Especially like we do this
• 2:12:03
  show called Bottom of the Barrel. And Bottom of the
• 2:12:06
  Barrel at the Mothership is there's like a whiskey barrel.
• 2:12:09
  And you reach into the whiskey barrel and you pull
• 2:12:11
  out premises, just ideas. And you just run with it.
• 2:12:14
  That's tonight actually. And so you pull out a piece
• 2:12:16
  of paper and have a subject. Ice cream, sundae, whatever.
• 2:12:22
  Whatever the fuck it is.
• 2:12:23
  Speaker 2: That takes intestinal fortitude.
• 2:12:24
  Speaker 1: Oh, a lot of those fucking go nowhere.
• 2:12:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:12:28
  Speaker 1: But some of them don't. Every now and then you
• 2:12:30
  get a great premise out of those. And it's like
• 2:12:33
  a little premise factory. But the audience knows it though.
• 2:12:36
  So it's different than like when they go to see
• 2:12:38
  you and they paid money and they're expecting a polished show.
• 2:12:42
  And you have a new joke. And the new joke
• 2:12:44
  is just not right. It's not ready. Something's missing. You're
• 2:12:48
  not finding it. You're trying to work through it. Yeah.
• 2:12:52
  It's always going to happen. And if it doesn't happen,
• 2:12:53
  you're not taking enough chances. Yeah.
• 2:12:56
  Speaker 2: See, I'm not. As chance-driven as you are, I'd be
• 2:13:01
  afraid to do that because my feelings get hurt too easily. Yeah.
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 1: Well, it's part of the process.
• 2:13:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you're right. You're right. We should do the things
• 2:13:09
  we fear.
• 2:13:10
  Speaker 1: You definitely have to if you want to write new shit.
• 2:13:14
  You're going to have to– there's that moment where you're like,
• 2:13:16
  do I trot this new one out? Fuck it. Let's go.
• 2:13:20
  And a lot of the new ones, the way they
• 2:13:23
  come out, for me at least first, is just a framework.
• 2:13:27
  It doesn't have sides. It doesn't have windows. It doesn't
• 2:13:29
  have doors. It's just a frame. And I have to
• 2:13:32
  figure out how to make a house out of that frame.
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 2: That's what I loved about going to the original room
• 2:13:37
  back in the day when we were young, watching Richard
• 2:13:40
  take out a pack of cigarettes, take a cigarette. And
• 2:13:43
  Mitzi had those smoke things that popped. It got smoke
• 2:13:48
  and everything. And Richard would have two minutes. And then
• 2:13:53
  he'd have five. Mm-hmm.
• 2:13:54
  Speaker 1: It was just build.
• 2:13:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And it was like when Grandma used to make
• 2:13:58
  a quilt.
• 2:13:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:13:59
  Speaker 2: And it gets bigger and bigger.
• 2:14:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:14:00
  Speaker 2: And you've got an hour. I used to love watching
• 2:14:02
  him develop it.
• 2:14:04
  Speaker 1: I heard that Richard would go in on a Monday
• 2:14:08
  and have a joke that bombed, and then it would
• 2:14:10
  be murdering by Saturday.
• 2:14:12
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 2:14:12
  Speaker 1: And that's what he would do. He would just go
• 2:14:14
  and figure it out on stage. Damon used to do
• 2:14:17
  that a lot. Damon used to go and sit on
• 2:14:20
  stage and just sit with a premise. Just sit with it.
• 2:14:24
  And he would trot it out for like 10 minutes
• 2:14:27
  and try to figure it. And then finally he'd find
• 2:14:29
  something and everybody would be dying.
• 2:14:31
  Speaker 2: We got away from that earlier. But I totally got
• 2:14:35
  your point. Damon is one of the great ones. And
• 2:14:39
  I hope he continues to do stand up and pop
• 2:14:41
  out to the clubs because he's one of the great
• 2:14:43
  ones that a lot of people don't realize.
• 2:14:45
  Speaker 1: They don't realize how great he was when he did
• 2:14:47
  the last stand. That one HBO special that he did
• 2:14:50
  way back in the day is a phenomenal special. It's phenomenal.
• 2:14:54
  He was so good. But he wanted to be a
• 2:14:56
  movie star.
• 2:14:59
  Speaker 2: Like Richard, he had an ability to also be vulnerable
• 2:15:04
  and tell the truth about something that most of us
• 2:15:06
  wouldn't tell. Like you talk about having a club foot
• 2:15:10
  as a kid. And he was special. And I'm glad
• 2:15:14
  he's back out there.
• 2:15:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I think he never really– you know one
• 2:15:17
  other thing that he did that is very unique? Damon
• 2:15:21
  brings a camera to all of his shows and he
• 2:15:24
  films all of his shows and he archives them. Every
• 2:15:28
  set he ever does. Really?
• 2:15:30
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 2:15:30
  Speaker 1: And he goes over it.
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 2: That's work.
• 2:15:32
  Speaker 1: It's work. Because one of the things that he does,
• 2:15:34
  like I said, is like he'll take a premise and
• 2:15:37
  just try to find it on stage, try to figure
• 2:15:40
  out what about it works, what about it pops. Like
• 2:15:43
  what is it? And, you know, I guess like doing
• 2:15:47
  that with a camera and then you can go home,
• 2:15:49
  sit and watch it on the computer and just go,
• 2:15:52
  what is in this motherfucker? There's something here. I got
• 2:15:55
  to find it and just look at it from every angle.
• 2:15:58
  Look at it over here. Look at it over there.
• 2:16:00
  Try to do it backwards. Try to figure out what
• 2:16:03
  the fuck makes it work.
• 2:16:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:16:04
  Speaker 1: And he would just he had no fear of silence.
• 2:16:08
  Speaker 2: See, that's the sentence right there. When it's quiet in
• 2:16:11
  the comedy club, I lose my mind.
• 2:16:16
  Speaker 1: Chris Rock does that too. Chris Rock did a lot
• 2:16:19
  of that at the comedy store. He would come in
• 2:16:21
  and just he would have material that he was working on.
• 2:16:23
  Like one time I remember I brought him up on
• 2:16:26
  stage and everyone's going crazy. Chris Rock's here. They're cheering, cheering, cheering.
• 2:16:30
  And he goes, relax, relax. It ain't going to be
• 2:16:33
  that funny. Just let people know I'm working on some
• 2:16:36
  new shit. This ain't going to be that funny. But
• 2:16:39
  with confidence. Everybody already knew he's funny. They already saw
• 2:16:44
  Binger and Blacker. They already saw his specials. It was
• 2:16:47
  Bring the Pain. Everybody already knew.
• 2:16:50
  Speaker 2: The one where he shot with three different outfits in
• 2:16:52
  three different places?
• 2:16:53
  Speaker 1: I hated that one.
• 2:16:54
  Speaker 2: You didn't like that one? No.
• 2:16:56
  Speaker 1: Not that I didn't like the material. I didn't like
• 2:16:58
  the idea of swapping outfits. The problem with that is
• 2:17:02
  it you realize he's saying the same thing in all
• 2:17:04
  these different places. It takes away from the, but it
• 2:17:07
  takes away from the magic of a performer. I want
• 2:17:10
  to see you and I don't want anything to distract
• 2:17:13
  me from these. I don't want to say, Oh, he
• 2:17:15
  just performs this the same way everywhere. I want you
• 2:17:20
  to just be saying it. The magic, like the trick
• 2:17:22
  is you are in the moment with whatever you're talking about.
• 2:17:27
  If you're changing outfits and, All of a sudden you're
• 2:17:29
  in Johannesburg and now you're in Cleveland. Like, don't do
• 2:17:33
  that to me. Why you got a leather jacket on
• 2:17:35
  in the beginning? And then the punchline, you got a
• 2:17:37
  fucking silk shirt. Don't do that.
• 2:17:40
  Speaker 2: See, I saw it as a guy creatively trying to
• 2:17:43
  find new horizons. and do different things.
• 2:17:46
  Speaker 1: Some horizons suck. It's not that the jokes were great.
• 2:17:52
  It's like he's a great comic. It's not that. It's
• 2:17:54
  like I just didn't like the idea of changing outfits.
• 2:17:57
  If I was friends with him back then, I would say, don't.
• 2:17:59
  I don't like it at all. And I would explain.
• 2:18:01
  The problem is you're taking people out of the premise
• 2:18:04
  and then there's a new additional thing that they have
• 2:18:06
  to think of. Oh, this is a different set. Oh,
• 2:18:07
  he's wearing different clothes. It's a new thing to distract
• 2:18:10
  you from the most– the primary thing. The primary thing
• 2:18:13
  is what are you talking about? Like what is this
• 2:18:16
  thing you're talking about? Let me get inside your head
• 2:18:18
  while you explain this thing that's so hilarious. But if
• 2:18:21
  you're doing that and changing outfits and changing stages, like
• 2:18:24
  I know you perform in different places. I know you
• 2:18:27
  wear different clothes. Don't show me right now.
• 2:18:30
  Speaker 2: In retrospect, I wonder how he looks at that special.
• 2:18:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. I mean he never did it again.
• 2:18:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, you don't want to do it again.
• 2:18:38
  Speaker 1: Right. I mean, he did it once. He tried it.
• 2:18:41
  Different people like to do different things and try them.
• 2:18:43
  I just didn't like that for that reason. I felt
• 2:18:45
  like it was an added element that took me away
• 2:18:48
  from the premise itself.
• 2:18:50
  Speaker 2: And by the way, something that's come out of this
• 2:18:53
  conversation in my head is the guys who are the
• 2:18:56
  best seem to go deeper and work the hardest. I mean,
• 2:18:59
  when you talk about archiving your practice sets.
• 2:19:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah. All of them. Damon has all of them. And
• 2:19:06
  he told me this years ago because I saw him
• 2:19:09
  at the improv. He was in the lab. We were
• 2:19:11
  in the big room and he was in the lab.
• 2:19:13
  This was not that long ago. When I say years ago,
• 2:19:15
  like 10, nine years ago, something like that. And I go,
• 2:19:20
  you record all of them? He's like, every set since
• 2:19:22
  like 1990 something. He goes, I record them all. I
• 2:19:26
  got this camera. I take them all and I archive them.
• 2:19:29
  I put them on my computer. I'm like, whoa. It
• 2:19:31
  made me think, fuck, I'm lazy.
• 2:19:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That's exactly what I'm thinking. And I'm also thinking
• 2:19:37
  what an amazing documentary if we could go through the
• 2:19:42
  history of Damon's personal archives. That would be a great–
• 2:19:46
  I think there's a special there.
• 2:19:48
  Speaker 1: Probably. Yeah, probably. But, I mean, I think that's just
• 2:19:52
  part of his creative process. And, again, I just think
• 2:19:56
  people don't realize– Especially in the 90s, the early 90s.
• 2:20:00
  What a monster he was on stage. He was a monster.
• 2:20:04
  He was one of the first guys that was like
• 2:20:05
  a really famous guy that I saw at the store.
• 2:20:08
  I came to the store in 94. And he was
• 2:20:11
  one of the first guys who was like, oh shit,
• 2:20:13
  Damon Wayans is here. Like it was weird. It was
• 2:20:15
  like weird when people would show up like you'd seen
• 2:20:17
  him in movies and shit. And all of a sudden
• 2:20:19
  they're there in real life. You know, I was just
• 2:20:21
  coming from New York. I didn't know anybody. And I
• 2:20:23
  was like, this is so strange. I can't believe I'm
• 2:20:25
  around these people.
• 2:20:26
  Speaker 2: So you went from Boston to New York.
• 2:20:28
  Speaker 1: Boston to New York.
• 2:20:29
  Speaker 2: Catch a Rising Star. Where did you work out in
• 2:20:31
  New York in those days?
• 2:20:32
  Speaker 1: Well, I did the Boston Comedy Club, you know, the
• 2:20:35
  little place that Barry Katz had. I did The Cellar.
• 2:20:39
  Speaker 2: That's Jay Moore's manager, right?
• 2:20:41
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 2:20:42
  Speaker 2: Barry Katz.
• 2:20:42
  Speaker 1: I did Catch a Rising Star back when that was there.
• 2:20:47
  I did, what was there?
• 2:20:49
  Speaker 2: Comic Strip?
• 2:20:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I did The Strip. Yeah. I did. the clubs
• 2:20:53
  in town. I did danger fields a lot. But honestly,
• 2:20:56
  when I lived in New York, I really liked doing
• 2:20:58
  the road more because when I did the road, I
• 2:21:01
  could make money. So like I came up in Boston
• 2:21:04
  and in Boston, you made a lot of your money,
• 2:21:07
  not in the clubs in town, but you made a
• 2:21:09
  lot of your money in like the bar shows, you know,
• 2:21:12
  outside of town in the suburbs. And the thing about
• 2:21:15
  that is like you could headline. And so you could
• 2:21:17
  do 45 minutes or an hour. And that, that allowed
• 2:21:21
  me to grow and like to really become a headliner
• 2:21:25
  whereas like i found like a lot of the new
• 2:21:27
  york comics that i would go on the road with
• 2:21:29
  when i would work with them even when i was
• 2:21:31
  a middle act and they were a headliner they had
• 2:21:34
  like these 10 and 15 minute sets that they'd stitch
• 2:21:38
  together to put to make an hour whereas the guys
• 2:21:41
  that i work with in boston like the big headliners
• 2:21:44
  in boston they had a real hour like that fucking
• 2:21:46
  that was an hour of thunder They had a beginning,
• 2:21:49
  a middle, and an end, and it was tight. It
• 2:21:52
  was tight. And I felt like I could do sets
• 2:21:57
  in New York, but I don't think it's really helping
• 2:21:59
  my career. There's no one there to see me. I
• 2:22:03
  felt like I'm going to make money. I could do
• 2:22:05
  a set in New York and I'd make $ 25, or
• 2:22:08
  I could do a set in Connecticut and make $ 250.
• 2:22:10
  I was like, I'll go to Connecticut. Plus, the people
• 2:22:14
  are more fun. They're more loose people. They're a bunch
• 2:22:17
  of fucking crazy drunks. I love doing Long Island. I
• 2:22:20
  love doing New Jersey. I like doing the road more.
• 2:22:24
  That's what I liked.
• 2:22:25
  Speaker 2: I think I'm a product of my childhood environment. I
• 2:22:31
  discovered stand-up because I was a drummer, had a band,
• 2:22:34
  I was a magician, had doves, boxes and shit, and
• 2:22:37
  then my house burned down. So I lost everything. But
• 2:22:41
  I had gone to an Al Green concert, and Al
• 2:22:44
  Green had a comic come out. House lights are on.
• 2:22:47
  People are still making their way to their seats. And
• 2:22:51
  this guy slowly gets them. And then the lights go down.
• 2:22:56
  And by the time he gets to 30 minutes, he's killing.
• 2:22:59
  And all he had was a glass of juice, something
• 2:23:02
  on the stool. And this is a kid who just
• 2:23:05
  lost his house and his cymbals and his Tom Toms
• 2:23:07
  and his doves and his boxes. And I'm like, that's me.
• 2:23:11
  Johnny was a stand-up.
• 2:23:12
  Speaker 1: So I'm still dreaming. Wow.
• 2:23:14
  Speaker 2: And to this day... Or even when I start making
• 2:23:19
  a lot of money, after seeing that guy, I loved
• 2:23:23
  opening for people. I went on the road with everybody
• 2:23:26
  from Lou Rawls to Patti LaBelle. Still to this day,
• 2:23:30
  I'm comfortable doing 30 minutes because that's what I did.
• 2:23:32
  But I had money. Like I would come to the
• 2:23:35
  comedy store and I would have a really nice car
• 2:23:38
  because I'd spend most of my time on the road
• 2:23:42
  with Patrice Russian and Johnny Guitar Watson.
• 2:23:45
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. That's a different world. Opening for musicians is
• 2:23:48
  a different kind of comedy because, like, they're not there
• 2:23:51
  to see you.
• 2:23:52
  Speaker 2: And that's what I found to be the challenge. It's like,
• 2:23:54
  I'm going to make you motherfuckers who don't know me
• 2:23:57
  and are mad. Because a lot of, you know, people
• 2:24:00
  would look at you like, that ain't one of the temptations.
• 2:24:02
  Speaker 1: Right, right, right, right.
• 2:24:04
  Speaker 2: I got to get them. And I like that challenge.
• 2:24:07
  Speaker 1: It is a real challenge because there's a lot of
• 2:24:09
  people like, boo.
• 2:24:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:24:11
  Speaker 1: Bring on Metallica. Yeah. Yeah, they... They don't want to
• 2:24:16
  see you. They want to see the music act.
• 2:24:18
  Speaker 2: I opened for Blood, Sweat, and Tears once.
• 2:24:20
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 2:24:21
  Speaker 2: And they really did not want to see me. You
• 2:24:23
  think the Johnny Guitar Watson audience didn't want to see me?
• 2:24:26
  Them motherfuckers from Blood, Sweat, and Tears not fucking with me.
• 2:24:30
  Speaker 1: Well, it's definitely running with weights on, though. If you
• 2:24:33
  can make those people laugh, boy, you take those weights
• 2:24:36
  off and go to a comedy club where they're there
• 2:24:37
  to see you. It's like, oh.
• 2:24:39
  Speaker 2: Just there to see comedy. Mm-hmm. Made it easier.
• 2:24:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I just don't. want to perform for people that
• 2:24:45
  aren't there to see comedy. But there's a value in it,
• 2:24:48
  I think.
• 2:24:49
  Speaker 2: But that's when you're young.
• 2:24:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:24:51
  Speaker 2: And I had a nice condo because I had just
• 2:24:55
  come off the road with Aretha.
• 2:24:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I did a few of those. I opened up
• 2:24:59
  for Bon Jovi once. I opened up for Bon Jovi
• 2:25:02
  for VH1. They had a theater in the round show,
• 2:25:06
  like a performance in the round. My job was to
• 2:25:08
  open up for Bon Jovi and then get the pretty
• 2:25:10
  girl's And move them to the front so that they
• 2:25:13
  could be on camera. That's what they told me to do. Yeah.
• 2:25:15
  So I did some stand-up, and then I had to
• 2:25:18
  get people, like, come up here, come closer.
• 2:25:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:25:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:25:23
  Speaker 2: I remember those times being on the road, and if
• 2:25:25
  there were six girls in the green room and you're
• 2:25:28
  opening for The Temptations, number six is yours. The other
• 2:25:33
  five go first to The Temps.
• 2:25:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That's a different world, opening for musicians. That's a
• 2:25:40
  hard world. And I know a lot of people made
• 2:25:42
  a living just traveling with bands. And that's all they did.
• 2:25:46
  They would just open up for bands.
• 2:25:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would open up for R & B acts.
• 2:25:51
  And as a matter of fact, I got discovered by
• 2:25:54
  a jazz singer, Nancy Wilson. And I used to love
• 2:25:56
  jazz audiences because that was the perfect type of music
• 2:25:59
  for a comic. Because they were mellow. Jazz audience don't scream,
• 2:26:04
  get the fuck off.
• 2:26:05
  Speaker 1: Right, right, right. Alonzo Bowden, he does jazz tours. Still
• 2:26:11
  like he'll do like he'll do like a jazz cruise ship.
• 2:26:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:26:16
  Speaker 1: You know, like and he'll do stand up with the
• 2:26:18
  jazz audiences.
• 2:26:20
  Speaker 2: Hey, every year.
• 2:26:21
  Speaker 1: But he loves jazz.
• 2:26:22
  Speaker 2: I love jazz, too. And I remember going to see
• 2:26:27
  the Playboy Jazz Festival and Bill Cosby was the host
• 2:26:30
  at the Hollywood Bowl. I host that every year now.
• 2:26:33
  I still love jazz. And that's the coolest two days
• 2:26:36
  of my summer.
• 2:26:37
  Speaker 1: What is it about jazz? What do you love about it?
• 2:26:40
  Speaker 2: Oh, about the actual... By the way, the coolest experience
• 2:26:44
  was sitting on the beach in Malibu with Miles Davis.
• 2:26:50
  After he came on the show once, he says, why
• 2:26:53
  don't you come over to the house, hang out? And
• 2:26:55
  he was a painter. And he was sitting with his trumpet.
• 2:26:59
  It was a red trumpet. I had never seen a
• 2:27:01
  red trumpet, like a crimson trumpet. And it was sitting
• 2:27:04
  beside him. And he wouldn't use an easel. He had
• 2:27:07
  the canvas on a table and he'd roll a new
• 2:27:10
  piece out and he would paint. You ever thought about painting? No,
• 2:27:16
  I'm not a good artist. But being a jazz fan,
• 2:27:20
  that was the coolest moment ever. And what do I
• 2:27:25
  like about it? I almost equate my comedy to jazz
• 2:27:29
  because I love to say I'm going in D, guys,
• 2:27:32
  and just play, as a stand-up. I used to love
• 2:27:38
  to equate how I worked to jazz.
• 2:27:41
  Speaker 1: But it takes a very specific type of person to
• 2:27:43
  be like a jazz fan that really enjoys listening to jazz.
• 2:27:47
  Speaker 2: I'm also a musician, and I know that some of
• 2:27:50
  the most respected musicians in my mind are jazz musicians.
• 2:27:55
  The intricacy... spending time with, I talk about this in
• 2:28:00
  the book, spending time with Quincy Jones, who was from
• 2:28:04
  the world of jazz and a former trumpet player and
• 2:28:07
  all that stuff. Then he ends up the year I
• 2:28:10
  meet him, he plays for me these tracks and I
• 2:28:14
  don't know what I'm about to listen to. And he says,
• 2:28:16
  you hear this? He takes out, he slides all the slides.
• 2:28:19
  Now he says, listen to this. And he plays this thing.
• 2:28:21
  I'm like, what is that? He says, you ever heard
• 2:28:25
  of Sheila E man? And I said, yeah, the Escovito family.
• 2:28:30
  And I know the family. And he says, she put
• 2:28:33
  different amounts of water in little pop bottles. And that's
• 2:28:36
  her tinging on those bottles. Then he starts bringing up
• 2:28:40
  the pots and you hear the bass and the drums
• 2:28:43
  and you realize you're listening to stuff from off the wall.
• 2:28:48
  And it's just this incredible moment when I realized, yo,
• 2:28:53
  he getting ready to bring Michael back in a crazy way.
• 2:28:57
  I'm listening to, to, you know, you got me working,
• 2:29:00
  working day and night, you know, and he would just
• 2:29:02
  take out everything and just have Michael's voice. And I'd
• 2:29:05
  never been in a recording studio. And he's at the board,
• 2:29:08
  18-channel track studio. And then he says, you're from Ohio, right?
• 2:29:14
  And he had seen me do stand-up at the Roxy
• 2:29:16
  and invited me to his studio. And he says, you're
• 2:29:18
  from Ohio, right?
• 2:29:19
  Speaker 1: And I said, yeah.
• 2:29:20
  Speaker 2: And so he says, let me play you this, man.
• 2:29:21
  And you have to take big, giant reels and put
• 2:29:23
  them on this machine. And he put the reels on.
• 2:29:27
  and the song starts and he says, this is a
• 2:29:29
  scratch track. And I'm like, what's that? He said, that's
• 2:29:30
  a demo. And he says, they want me to find
• 2:29:33
  a singer for this. And he plays me James Ingram,
• 2:29:36
  find 100 ways. And James Ingram just wants brilliant, beautiful songs.
• 2:29:43
  And I'm like, what's wrong with that guy? He says, yeah,
• 2:29:44
  I'm thinking about it, man.
• 2:29:45
  Speaker 1: He pretty good. He pretty good.
• 2:29:46
  Speaker 2: And it ends up being the James Ingram from Ohio. And,
• 2:29:50
  and that was an incredible day. But I, I tell
• 2:29:53
  that story to say this great jazz musician, had this
• 2:29:58
  talent that other producers didn't have because of his music genius.
• 2:30:05
  And he was able to bring us the off the
• 2:30:07
  wall album and put Michael back in the mix. Yeah.
• 2:30:10
  Speaker 1: Layers and layers to the sound.
• 2:30:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:30:13
  Speaker 1: That's the thing. When you hear a song, you don't
• 2:30:15
  realize like how much shit is going on in the background.
• 2:30:18
  Speaker 2: Sheila E with pop bottles.
• 2:30:20
  Speaker 1: Crazy.
• 2:30:22
  Speaker 2: I love that day. That's a, That's a favorite time
• 2:30:25
  because Michael had been missing, you know, and I had
• 2:30:27
  bought the Moving Violation album. So I knew he needed Quincy.
• 2:30:32
  Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, there's some geniuses of music, man. I had
• 2:30:37
  Rick Rubin on the podcast and he's explaining like his
• 2:30:41
  creative process and just like that guy's out there.
• 2:30:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. I had to go his way when I
• 2:30:47
  started the talk show that I took over for Joan Rivers.
• 2:30:51
  When I first had the idea that I want to
• 2:30:53
  try to find my own friends of the show. I
• 2:30:56
  want to find my show. And I put on LL
• 2:31:00
  Cool J doing a song called I'm Bad. And that
• 2:31:06
  night I found what I was going to do, win
• 2:31:08
  or lose. Next I booked the Freaks Come Out at Night, Houdini.
• 2:31:14
  Speaker 1: Oh, I remember that.
• 2:31:16
  Speaker 2: So I found my home.
• 2:31:17
  Speaker 1: When you did the Joan Rivers thing, did you think
• 2:31:19
  that that was going to lead to you doing your
• 2:31:21
  own show?
• 2:31:21
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 2:31:22
  Speaker 1: You did.
• 2:31:23
  Speaker 2: I was like, I am. Because Joan leaves, goes through
• 2:31:27
  all the stuff she's going through, and they give me
• 2:31:31
  this show for 11 weeks, and it starts to get numbers.
• 2:31:35
  And I know that she left because of a lack
• 2:31:38
  of numbers. And I'm like, oh, this shit is mine.
• 2:31:42
  So when I come back from coming to America, I'm
• 2:31:44
  going to come back to Fox and do this show.
• 2:31:48
  And one day I walk into the cafeteria. And I
• 2:31:52
  realized they had hired Conan O'Brien to create a show.
• 2:31:57
  And I think the show was called the Wilton North
• 2:32:00
  Report or something like that. But I realized I wasn't
• 2:32:03
  in their future. So Paramount, they were popping over to
• 2:32:10
  say hi, sending me flowers. And when I finished coming
• 2:32:15
  to America, actually halfway through, they were like, when you finish...
• 2:32:19
  you can do that talk show here in first run syndication.
• 2:32:22
  And they had to explain that to me. And at
• 2:32:24
  the same time, I was being pitched by the King
• 2:32:26
  brothers who created Oprah. So I kind of understood that
• 2:32:30
  first run syndication could work, except Oprah had ABC networks
• 2:32:34
  behind her, which is good. I had some CBS affiliates
• 2:32:36
  and it, it all worked out right now with the
• 2:32:42
  exception of Byron Allen. I don't think anybody, gets rich
• 2:32:47
  in first-run syndication.
• 2:32:48
  Speaker 1: Well, he's a very unusual case, you know?
• 2:32:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:32:51
  Speaker 1: I mean, he's figured out a cheat code. Byron Allen,
• 2:32:56
  you know, I heard that.
• 2:32:56
  Speaker 2: And when they cheat him, he sues them and wins.
• 2:33:00
  Speaker 1: I think Byron Allen's show, Comics Unleashed, is going to
• 2:33:03
  replace Colbert. Absolutely.
• 2:33:05
  Speaker 2: That was just announced this week. Yeah.
• 2:33:07
  Speaker 1: Late Show will be replaced by Byron Allen's Comics Unleashed.
• 2:33:09
  That's crazy. That's how... Isn't that weird? Like, Late Shows
• 2:33:14
  just don't work anymore. They just don't have the same
• 2:33:18
  thing anymore. Like that standard model show.
• 2:33:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:33:22
  Speaker 1: Where people like, I don't think they do well.
• 2:33:25
  Speaker 2: And they're expensive, Joe.
• 2:33:26
  Speaker 1: Oh, I can imagine. They were saying the Colbert show
• 2:33:28
  was costing them like $ 50 million a year to keep
• 2:33:32
  it on the air. That's, I don't understand it. Like how,
• 2:33:35
  how's it cost you so much money?
• 2:33:37
  Speaker 2: Oh gosh.
• 2:33:38
  Speaker 1: Well, but you know what I'm saying? Like you have ads.
• 2:33:39
  Speaker 2: When there were three channels though, and only one had
• 2:33:42
  a talk show, everybody was there and it, It made sense.
• 2:33:46
  It made dollars and cents.
• 2:33:49
  Speaker 1: There's also the problem in that when you compare it
• 2:33:52
  to things that are on the internet is that you
• 2:33:54
  have to stop conversations every seven minutes for a commercial.
• 2:33:57
  That's an issue. It's an issue with depth. You don't
• 2:34:00
  get to go– like you and I have been talking
• 2:34:02
  for two hours and 40 minutes. Wow. Yeah. So like
• 2:34:06
  when you're doing this kind of thing, you just flow.
• 2:34:09
  Everything flows. You just have a conversation. You just have
• 2:34:11
  a good time. It's so different. When you're stuck in
• 2:34:15
  this format where you only have an hour, everything is
• 2:34:19
  like you got to cut to the commercial in five, four.
• 2:34:22
  We'll be right back. We'll be right back. Where are
• 2:34:24
  you going? Stay here. No, you have to sell Tide.
• 2:34:28
  It's like that format is so limited. It's so restrictive
• 2:34:33
  that people knowing that there's other things out there now
• 2:34:37
  where you could just go and watch it anytime you want.
• 2:34:40
  You don't have to tune in at 11 p.m. We
• 2:34:42
  used to have must-see TV.
• 2:34:44
  Speaker 2: And we would all gather as a nation to watch
• 2:34:46
  the finale of Cheers. And now we don't do anything together. Nope.
• 2:34:51
  Speaker 1: As a nation. Except sports. Except like Super Bowl. There's
• 2:34:54
  only sports. Live boxing events, UFC, that kind of shit
• 2:34:57
  where it's live. That is the only thing that people
• 2:35:00
  all watch together.
• 2:35:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:35:02
  Speaker 1: That's it.
• 2:35:02
  Speaker 2: Did you watch Chris Rock live? Selective outrage.
• 2:35:06
  Speaker 1: I didn't watch his live special. I watched it after,
• 2:35:10
  but I didn't watch it when it was live.
• 2:35:11
  Speaker 2: So you knew it was available.
• 2:35:12
  Speaker 1: I was busy.
• 2:35:13
  Speaker 2: When we grew up, shit wasn't available the second time.
• 2:35:17
  Speaker 1: But I did a live special on Netflix for that
• 2:35:19
  very reason, just because I thought it was scary. Just
• 2:35:21
  because my last one I did live. And I only
• 2:35:24
  did it live because the first time they asked me,
• 2:35:25
  I said, no, fuck that. And then I was like,
• 2:35:29
  why are you being such a pussy? And I remember
• 2:35:30
  driving home. I had a conversation with my manager, and
• 2:35:32
  I called her right back. And I go, let me
• 2:35:34
  decide tomorrow. I go, I'm thinking about this. Hold on.
• 2:35:37
  Because I was driving home feeling like I was a
• 2:35:39
  pussy for not wanting to do it live.
• 2:35:41
  Speaker 2: And now in retrospect, what did you get out of
• 2:35:43
  agreeing to do it live?
• 2:35:45
  Speaker 1: Fear.
• 2:35:48
  Speaker 2: You wanted to feel that.
• 2:35:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I wanted to be nervous. I was legitimately nervous.
• 2:35:52
  I never get nervous for shows anymore. I get excited.
• 2:35:56
  Speaker 2: When you're killing a wild— I heard you talk about killing
• 2:35:59
  a wild hog. When you go hunting like that, it's
• 2:36:02
  the same kind of.
• 2:36:03
  Speaker 1: It's a very different kind of fear. That's a primal thing.
• 2:36:06
  That's very different. That's a very different thing. That's like,
• 2:36:09
  that's a life or death. You're in, that's a weird,
• 2:36:13
  that's a weird primal connection with nature where you're going
• 2:36:17
  to eat this thing. You're sneaking up on this thing
• 2:36:20
  that has these survival instincts and sense of smell and
• 2:36:23
  ears pop up and you have, you know, you don't
• 2:36:25
  want to fuck it up either. You have one moment
• 2:36:28
  to take a shot. That's even more intense, honestly. Like
• 2:36:31
  elk hunting with a bow and arrow is even more
• 2:36:33
  intense than doing a live comedy special, if you can
• 2:36:36
  believe it.
• 2:36:38
  Speaker 2: Wow, yeah. Yeah, I believe it.
• 2:36:40
  Speaker 1: I like things that scare me. I like things that
• 2:36:43
  are scary to do because I think it's good for you.
• 2:36:46
  Speaker 2: Except cocaine.
• 2:36:48
  Speaker 1: I don't want to ruin my life. That's the problem.
• 2:36:50
  I just, like I said, I don't hear any success
• 2:36:53
  stories from cocaine. Nobody's got like a meth story. It's like, man,
• 2:36:59
  I started doing meth and I started seeing the world
• 2:37:01
  for what it really is. Started being more at peace.
• 2:37:04
  I was living in the moment.
• 2:37:07
  Speaker 2: Nobody says, right before I invented the hard drive, I
• 2:37:09
  did coke for three days. Right.
• 2:37:11
  Speaker 1: No. No. I'm not interested in anything that's going to
• 2:37:15
  ruin my life. But I'm interested in things that are
• 2:37:18
  going to help me grow and help me expand my
• 2:37:22
  capacity to do things that are scary.
• 2:37:25
  Speaker 2: Would you do stand-up live again?
• 2:37:27
  Speaker 1: 100%. Yeah, I'm thinking about doing my next one live.
• 2:37:30
  again too. I liked it.
• 2:37:32
  Speaker 2: Did you make any mistakes?
• 2:37:34
  Speaker 1: No, I didn't make any mistakes, but I prepared more
• 2:37:36
  than I ever prepared before. One of the things I did,
• 2:37:39
  I listened to my recordings every night and I wrote
• 2:37:42
  out my act over and over and over and over again.
• 2:37:45
  I wrote it out both on paper like hand to paper,
• 2:37:50
  and I wrote it out with keys, like typing it
• 2:37:53
  on a laptop. I did it over and over again.
• 2:37:55
  I listened to recordings. I watched recordings. I had way
• 2:37:58
  more preparation than I had ever done before for any
• 2:38:01
  other show.
• 2:38:01
  Speaker 2: The night that you did it, did you change anything
• 2:38:04
  or do anything new? No.
• 2:38:05
  Speaker 1: No. But I was free. I felt very loose. Once
• 2:38:09
  the show started, I felt like a regular show because
• 2:38:12
  I was prepared. But it's just like a fight. Like
• 2:38:14
  if you go into a fight and you're like, oh,
• 2:38:16
  I should have done more road work. Oh, I should
• 2:38:18
  have sparred more. Oh, I should have hit the pads more.
• 2:38:20
  That's not a good place to be. To hope that
• 2:38:23
  you could pull it off, you have to be 100% prepared.
• 2:38:26
  And that's the thing about doing a live show as
• 2:38:29
  opposed to usually when I would film a special, I
• 2:38:32
  would have four shows. So I'd film all four of them.
• 2:38:36
  And I'd be like, oh, fine. One of them is
• 2:38:38
  going to be great. I'll just use that one.
• 2:38:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:38:41
  Speaker 1: When it's just one and the whole world, like millions
• 2:38:43
  of people are watching simultaneously, it's very scary.
• 2:38:47
  Speaker 2: It makes you prepare.
• 2:38:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It makes you prepare. It makes you prepare and
• 2:38:51
  it also, it's like it's fucking fun to do something
• 2:38:54
  that scares the shit out of you. Like, let's go.
• 2:38:57
  Speaker 2: Where did you shoot it?
• 2:38:59
  Speaker 1: San Antonio.
• 2:39:01
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 2:39:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That's cool. Yeah.
• 2:39:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've only done one Netflix episode.
• 2:39:05
  Speaker 1: I barely leave Texas these days. Really? I fucking love
• 2:39:08
  it here. I love it. I love it.
• 2:39:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was amazing when you made the move, man,
• 2:39:13
  because that's what I asked you when we first started talking.
• 2:39:16
  It's like, were you thinking about this in L.A. but
• 2:39:19
  way back, like 20 years ago?
• 2:39:21
  Speaker 1: I was thinking 20 years ago about getting out. I
• 2:39:24
  moved to Colorado for a little while in 2009. For
• 2:39:27
  Legal Weed? No, no, no, no. I just wanted to
• 2:39:33
  get out. I just wanted to try. But I went
• 2:39:37
  too crazy. I got a house in the mountains that
• 2:39:39
  was 8,500 feet above sea level. It was too much.
• 2:39:44
  But when I came back to L.A., I always had
• 2:39:47
  this thing like eventually I got to get out of here.
• 2:39:50
  First of all, I always thought L.A. is 100 percent
• 2:39:53
  going to have a massive earthquake. One day.
• 2:39:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:39:57
  Speaker 1: Like a massive earthquake where everything fucks up and falls apart.
• 2:40:00
  Speaker 2: You lived through the Northridge earthquake. I didn't.
• 2:40:02
  Speaker 1: Oh, I came to California right after it happened.
• 2:40:05
  Speaker 3: OK.
• 2:40:06
  Speaker 1: And when I got there, like parts of like one
• 2:40:08
  of the freeways was collapsed on the other one. I
• 2:40:10
  was like, this is nuts. The freeways fall down here.
• 2:40:13
  This is crazy. So I feel like I've always been
• 2:40:16
  thinking that there's going to come a time where that
• 2:40:18
  place just breaks off and sinks into the ocean. And
• 2:40:21
  it's just not well run. Like the whole thing is
• 2:40:25
  like just waiting for one little catastrophe. There's very little coordination,
• 2:40:31
  very little– people don't– they don't– there's not like a
• 2:40:35
  sense of community in the greater Los Angeles area like
• 2:40:38
  you get in a smaller place like Austin. Austin like
• 2:40:42
  feels like a small town that has everything you want.
• 2:40:46
  Whereas LA just feels like a poorly run, bureaucracy-driven, chaotic
• 2:40:53
  shill game. It's like just a shell game of bullshit
• 2:40:58
  and money and people just grifting and fucking the homeless
• 2:41:04
  situation is nuts. Like, everything's nuts in L.A. It's just
• 2:41:08
  beyond fixing, I think.
• 2:41:10
  Speaker 2: Here in Austin, a lot of homeless?
• 2:41:12
  Speaker 1: Not nearly as many. I mean, it's a very small problem.
• 2:41:15
  You're always going to have homeless people because you're always
• 2:41:17
  going to have mental illness. You're always going to have
• 2:41:19
  drug addiction. You're always going to have some people that
• 2:41:21
  have problems. But in comparison, like, Skid Row is 50 blocks.
• 2:41:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:41:27
  Speaker 1: 50 blocks. Five zero blocks of homeless people just outside,
• 2:41:33
  just camped out.
• 2:41:34
  Speaker 2: I left a Laker game recently and went through that area.
• 2:41:38
  Speaker 1: It's nuts.
• 2:41:39
  Speaker 2: Broke my heart, man.
• 2:41:40
  Speaker 1: It broke my heart in 2005. I was filming Fear
• 2:41:44
  Factor downtown in like 2005.
• 2:41:46
  Speaker 2: Shout out to David Hurwitz.
• 2:41:49
  Speaker 1: You know Dave.
• 2:41:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:41:50
  Speaker 1: Shout out to Dave. He was my intern.
• 2:41:52
  Speaker 2: I set him up for you. That's crazy. I taught
• 2:41:54
  him so he could come and get worms for you.
• 2:41:56
  Speaker 1: That's crazy. That's crazy. Yeah. We were filming downtown and
• 2:42:00
  I went for, I was driving home and I took
• 2:42:02
  a wrong turn. And all of a sudden I was
• 2:42:04
  in Skid Row. I was like, this is crazy. And
• 2:42:06
  this was back then. And no one was talking about
• 2:42:08
  it back then. I was like, there's so many homeless people.
• 2:42:11
  It's like a zombie movie. I remember I came to
• 2:42:13
  the set the next day. I was like, if you
• 2:42:14
  guys ever go, go this way and take a left.
• 2:42:17
  It's fucking nuts. There's so many homeless people. Again, they
• 2:42:21
  figured out a way to keep them there. They just
• 2:42:24
  pushed people there. Like they started doing it decades ago
• 2:42:28
  where they would take all the problem people out of
• 2:42:30
  Los Angeles and Beverly Hills and they would just bring
• 2:42:33
  them to downtown and go, you got to stay here.
• 2:42:35
  And that's what created Skid Row.
• 2:42:36
  Speaker 2: When we were kids, I used to hear about mental institutions.
• 2:42:41
  We don't have that now.
• 2:42:42
  Speaker 1: Oh, they shut them down during the Reagan administration. That
• 2:42:45
  was one of the giant errors of society when they
• 2:42:48
  shut down all the mental health institutions and they just
• 2:42:51
  let all these people just exist on the street with
• 2:42:53
  schizophrenia and just let them do drugs. And then in
• 2:42:57
  some places, give them drugs and give them needles and
• 2:42:59
  encourage them to come there and give them money so
• 2:43:02
  they could stay on the street.
• 2:43:04
  Speaker 2: Austin loves you, but you ever think about back in
• 2:43:07
  the day not leaving California and running for governor?
• 2:43:10
  Speaker 1: Fuck that. I don't want to be a politician. Why
• 2:43:12
  would I want that job?
• 2:43:13
  Speaker 2: It's a terrible job. The problem you see, you want
• 2:43:16
  to help.
• 2:43:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you ain't helping nothing, man. You're going to get killed.
• 2:43:20
  My help would be expose all the fraud and lock
• 2:43:23
  everybody up and then they wind up killing me.
• 2:43:24
  Speaker 2: Then you'd lose the big money from the rich.
• 2:43:26
  Speaker 1: They're not going to give it to me anyway. It's
• 2:43:29
  like– I'm not the guy. I'm not– I wouldn't be
• 2:43:31
  good at it. I wouldn't be good at the job.
• 2:43:33
  I'd be a good advisor. I'd tell people what the
• 2:43:35
  people want. But no one is going to listen. I
• 2:43:37
  think politics, what we're talking about with money being involved
• 2:43:40
  in it, it's almost inexorably unfixable. It's almost impossible to
• 2:43:46
  untangle that fucking– beehive of chaos. So much dirty money involved.
• 2:43:53
  Speaker 2: And if I'm a politician, I'm not going to stop
• 2:43:56
  taking this money. I'm not going to be first. If
• 2:43:58
  we all are going to do it, I'm not going
• 2:43:59
  to be first.
• 2:43:59
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Look at all these congressmen that make $ 170, 000 a
• 2:44:03
  year and they're worth $ 80 million. How the fuck did
• 2:44:06
  that happen? What did you do? And how do you
• 2:44:10
  have time to invest? Aren't you busy being a congressperson?
• 2:44:13
  How the fuck do you have all that money? You
• 2:44:15
  got all that money because you're a grifter. They're all
• 2:44:17
  grifting and they're all just like doing it sneaky. It's
• 2:44:20
  red and blue. If you look at, we pulled up
• 2:44:23
  the numbers of people, whether it's a Democrat or Republican,
• 2:44:27
  how many of them are insider trading. It's across the board.
• 2:44:31
  They all have just unexplainable amounts of money. It's a
• 2:44:36
  dirty fucking business.
• 2:44:37
  Speaker 2: It's not like one of the parties loves money more
• 2:44:39
  than the other.
• 2:44:41
  Speaker 1: No.
• 2:44:42
  Speaker 2: See, I get in trouble for that because usually my
• 2:44:44
  humor is written around Not liking any of them.
• 2:44:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:44:49
  Speaker 2: And people want me to take a side.
• 2:44:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a problem.
• 2:44:52
  Speaker 2: I had a joke in my Netflix special about, you know,
• 2:44:56
  the Democrat versus the Republican that was running at that time.
• 2:44:59
  And it was like, that's like asking me who my
• 2:45:01
  favorite Menendez brother is. Motherfuckers did not.
• 2:45:07
  Speaker 1: That's a great joke.
• 2:45:09
  Speaker 2: Kind of like Lyle. He made it in prison with
• 2:45:13
  a toupee.
• 2:45:14
  Speaker 1: He's special. Weren't they trying to get them out recently? Oh, yeah. Bro,
• 2:45:18
  that documentary on them was nuts. The docudrama series where
• 2:45:22
  they recreated it?
• 2:45:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:45:23
  Speaker 1: Oh, my God.
• 2:45:25
  Speaker 2: I love documentaries.
• 2:45:26
  Speaker 1: Well, that was a docudrama. Actors. Yeah, actors. So you
• 2:45:31
  don't know how much of it is true, but boy,
• 2:45:33
  did they come off like fucking complete psychos.
• 2:45:35
  Speaker 2: I remember for the... O.J. Simpson scripted Doc. They wanted
• 2:45:41
  me to come read for O.J.
• 2:45:43
  Speaker 1: What?
• 2:45:43
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, yo.
• 2:45:45
  Speaker 1: How the fuck are you going to be O.J.? That's crazy.
• 2:45:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you're going to have Judge Ito barking because I'm
• 2:45:49
  just too recognizable as me.
• 2:45:50
  Speaker 1: Exactly. That wouldn't work at all. That's crazy.
• 2:45:53
  Speaker 2: I think they chose Cuba Gooding Jr.? That's right.
• 2:45:56
  Speaker 1: That's right. He actually did a great job in that.
• 2:45:59
  But that story was nuts. He was the first famous.
• 2:46:04
  There it is. Yes. Wow.
• 2:46:06
  Speaker 2: And that's Kim's dad.
• 2:46:09
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 2:46:10
  Speaker 2: That's Mr. Kardashian's second.
• 2:46:11
  Speaker 1: John Travolta's in there too. I forgot Travolta's in there. It's,
• 2:46:16
  those are fucking so weird.
• 2:46:17
  Speaker 2: That's the dream team.
• 2:46:18
  Speaker 1: Famous people pretending to be.
• 2:46:22
  Speaker 2: Other famous people. So, uh, I do a story in
• 2:46:25
  my book about OJ coming to stage 29 at Paramount
• 2:46:29
  to whip my ass one time. He was angry.
• 2:46:32
  Speaker 1: Uh, Did you say a joke on the show or something?
• 2:46:37
  Speaker 2: I booked– it was when Naked Gun was out, and
• 2:46:42
  I booked Leslie Nielsen. And we got a call from O.J.
• 2:46:46
  's people because he wanted to come on, obviously. He
• 2:46:49
  was in that movie. But the second one, it had legs,
• 2:46:52
  so I booked Priscilla Presley, who was a great guest
• 2:46:56
  and a lot of history. And after that, I get
• 2:47:00
  a call from the gate.
• 2:47:02
  Speaker 1: Was it O.J.
• 2:47:03
  Speaker 2: Simpson here at the gate? He wants to talk to you.
• 2:47:05
  And he didn't park. He didn't want a space. He
• 2:47:08
  parked outside the elephant door of Stage 29 and wanted
• 2:47:11
  me to come out. Uh-oh.
• 2:47:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:47:14
  Speaker 2: And by the way, this is at a time when
• 2:47:16
  we didn't know he cut a motherfucker's head off.
• 2:47:18
  Speaker 1: Also, at a time we didn't know. about CTE. Oh, yeah.
• 2:47:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:47:22
  Speaker 1: Which is probably a lot of what OJ was going through,
• 2:47:26
  a lot of that violent behavior.
• 2:47:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:47:28
  Speaker 1: It was probably a lot of CTE.
• 2:47:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, man. I mean, when you think about it, those
• 2:47:34
  days in San Francisco when he couldn't quite cut the
• 2:47:37
  way he used to, he was getting hit. He was
• 2:47:38
  taken forever. He had on shots.
• 2:47:40
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. And the NFL back then was nuts.
• 2:47:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel bad for him and Junior Seau and
• 2:47:45
  some of those guys. Junior Seau was trying to scream
• 2:47:47
  to us what was going on. Right. You know, he
• 2:47:50
  committed suicide, left a note, made sure he didn't damage
• 2:47:53
  his brain with the bullet.
• 2:47:54
  Speaker 1: Right, so they could check it out.
• 2:47:57
  Speaker 2: But O.J. stopped by, and we had a talk.
• 2:48:00
  Speaker 1: So he was mad that you didn't have him on
• 2:48:01
  the show?
• 2:48:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he was a little mad.
• 2:48:05
  Speaker 1: But was it your call?
• 2:48:06
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah. I mean, but by the way, it was
• 2:48:11
  my call to just do things that would get numbers. Right.
• 2:48:15
  You know, well the, um, the Leslie Nielsen one, I
• 2:48:20
  liked him cause I saw him someplace with a little
• 2:48:22
  thing in his hand to make fart noises.
• 2:48:25
  Speaker 1: I saw that. Yeah.
• 2:48:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So I, so I knew that I would say
• 2:48:28
  to him, so you got a big hit here and
• 2:48:30
  he would do it, squeeze the thing. And, um, Yeah,
• 2:48:34
  I was just trying to find the funniest guest. And O.J.,
• 2:48:38
  you know, he told me, he said some shit about,
• 2:48:40
  you know, I thought having a black host, things would
• 2:48:43
  be different. You know, and I'm like, don't you play
• 2:48:47
  the race car.
• 2:48:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, settle down.
• 2:48:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, not you, Juice. But I ran into him in
• 2:48:54
  a club one night. I was hanging out with a
• 2:48:57
  couple members of New Edition. And we're in this club
• 2:49:01
  and he comes over and he gets drunk with us.
• 2:49:03
  And After we're pretty tanked, Nicole and this gorgeous girl
• 2:49:09
  named Faye Resnick, I'll never forget her name.
• 2:49:12
  Speaker 1: She was beautiful.
• 2:49:13
  Speaker 2: And these two women come over and I realize, oh, so,
• 2:49:17
  because OJ is alone. I realized he was going to
• 2:49:20
  places finding her. And so she comes over and she.
• 2:49:24
  Speaker 1: Says, juice.
• 2:49:26
  Speaker 2: You know, what do you do? And he says, hang
• 2:49:28
  out with these guys. And he's, you know, when you're drunk,
• 2:49:31
  spit be flying. I wasn't drunk enough that I didn't
• 2:49:33
  see the spit And so she said, well, I'm going
• 2:49:37
  to be over here with Faye and blah, blah, blah.
• 2:49:39
  Say something before you leave. And so we sit there
• 2:49:42
  and talk. But he said something that night that blew
• 2:49:44
  me away. We talked about her and he said, I
• 2:49:47
  still love her. I've tried to give her up and
• 2:49:50
  I can't.
• 2:49:51
  Speaker 1: Wow. And that's crazy.
• 2:49:54
  Speaker 2: Not too much later. She was dead. That's what that's
• 2:49:58
  around the time, too. I remember missing the show. Because
• 2:50:02
  one thing that's addictive about the talk show is anything
• 2:50:05
  in the news, you get to handle it. Right. And
• 2:50:08
  I remember watching a basketball game and seeing the freeway
• 2:50:12
  chase with the Bronco. And I was like, I want
• 2:50:15
  a monologue tomorrow. You know, I couldn't believe I didn't
• 2:50:19
  have a show that night. That's the only time I've
• 2:50:21
  ever really missed it because most of the time you
• 2:50:23
  just go to the store.
• 2:50:24
  Speaker 1: Right, right, right. That's hilarious.
• 2:50:26
  Speaker 2: I wanted to talk to the nation that night.
• 2:50:28
  Speaker 1: Well, listen, brother, you had a gigantic impact on culture.
• 2:50:31
  You really did. Your show was amazing. You know, you
• 2:50:35
  have an incredible life. And I'm really happy to hear
• 2:50:37
  that you're happy now and just enjoying life, you know,
• 2:50:41
  and you look fucking fantastic for 70. That's amazing.
• 2:50:45
  Speaker 2: Thank you, man. I appreciate you inviting me. This is
• 2:50:48
  one of those shows.
• 2:50:50
  Speaker 1: Next time you're going to come to the club. Next
• 2:50:52
  time you're in town.
• 2:50:53
  Speaker 2: I've got to.
• 2:50:54
  Speaker 1: Let me know anytime you want to come. The show
• 2:50:55
  is important, but I can't wait. Come to the club.
• 2:50:57
  Speaker 2: I look at the mothership behind you, the neon mothership.
• 2:51:00
  Speaker 1: That was actually before the mothership was made.
• 2:51:03
  Speaker 2: Oh.
• 2:51:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this was six years old, this sign. We got
• 2:51:07
  this sign. My friend Brigham got me this when I
• 2:51:10
  first moved to Austin.
• 2:51:12
  Speaker 2: So what did the spaceship mean before there was a
• 2:51:15
  club to use?
• 2:51:15
  Speaker 1: I'm just a UFO fanatic.
• 2:51:17
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay.
• 2:51:18
  Speaker 1: I've always been obsessed.
• 2:51:20
  Speaker 2: Because that looked like some shit. I went to a
• 2:51:22
  Parliament Funkadelic concert where they landed in some shit like that.
• 2:51:25
  And George Clinton came out and sang One Nation Under
• 2:51:28
  a Groove.
• 2:51:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:51:30
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 2:51:30
  Speaker 1: I've just always been obsessed. That's all it is. But
• 2:51:32
  next time you're in town, you're coming. Promise?
• 2:51:35
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 2:51:35
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 2:51:36
  Speaker 2: I'll come. I won't be in town. I'll figure out
• 2:51:39
  a way to hit you and say, Siri, Joe, I'm coming.
• 2:51:44
  Speaker 1: Let's go.
• 2:51:44
  Speaker 2: And I'll be here. Thanks for doing this, man, because
• 2:51:47
  your demographic reads... And I know I sold some books today.
• 2:51:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Tell everybody the name of your book. Oh, we had.
• 2:51:54
  Speaker 2: A long ass meeting about that. Do we call it
• 2:51:56
  things that make you go, hmm, a life that makes
• 2:51:58
  you go, hmm, do we call it? We didn't know what.
• 2:52:01
  And then finally, one day we named it Arsenio. Perfect.
• 2:52:05
  That's it.
• 2:52:06
  Speaker 1: That's perfect.
• 2:52:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And there's a book on tape for those who
• 2:52:09
  don't like to read. Oh, that's the book. And you
• 2:52:11
  know what? If you open it and you don't want
• 2:52:13
  to read it, there are really cool pictures inside.
• 2:52:16
  Speaker 1: There you go. All right.
• 2:52:18
  Speaker 2: The art department threw some AI on me. I'm 35
• 2:52:21
  in the picture.
• 2:52:22
  Speaker 1: You look 35 right now.
• 2:52:24
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 2:52:25
  Speaker 1: Appreciate you, brother. Thank you, dog. Bye, everybody.