Felipe Esparza

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Speaker 1 Quince.com/slash fly. David, Felipe Esparza.
Yes. It's a great stand-up comedian.
Our guest today on Fly Home.

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 2 good dude. I actually

Speaker 2 was quite entertained by him. He had a great story.
And,

Speaker 2 you know, that was one of the ones I have to say, I'm not tight with, but I think you had met him. And

Speaker 2 I was introduced to him through you as far as his comedy. And then when I looked him up, I thought, oh my God, this guy has been around doing great.

Speaker 2 And it's just one of those blind spots when you're not in the same places as people, but he has a huge career.

Speaker 1 Huge, huge following. His story is so interesting because

Speaker 1 he came to the border illegally years ago with his mom and his brother. And I think his brother had to be dressed up as a girl or something.
But anyway, his stories of how he got to America

Speaker 1 and how he started his career in America and how he's become so successful. It's just a great, great ride.
And he's funny and charming as well. I think you're going to really like him.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I had a great time talking to him. He's a good-looking dude.
If that matters to anyone, it does to me.

Speaker 3 Does every irony?

Speaker 1 He's very young for his age.

Speaker 1 He has a great head of hair. We couldn't get over it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, cool hair and a good attitude. And I had a lot of fun with him.
So hope you like it. Here he is.
It's Felipe.

Speaker 3 I just thought of a rich person's metric or people have a little extra money. Either you go to a salon, you go to a barbershop to get haircut or the haircutter person comes to you.

Speaker 3 It's the first sign of having a couple extra bucks in your pocket. Also, depending on

Speaker 4 who you're working with, too.

Speaker 4 And Company Central, they'll have like a hairstylist. But when you're working with like BET or Def Jab, there's like two barbers there from the hood.

Speaker 2 There's a barbershop on the set.

Speaker 4 You don't even know what's going on. You sit down and go, and you hear the comedian go, give me a Chicago fade.

Speaker 3 I've heard that.

Speaker 4 And I'm like, give me, I'm like, I have long hair. Give me a cholo number five.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Bump, bump, bump, bum, bump. Cholo.
And you don't get any kind of food product with that. You just get hair done.
There's no sense of any sort of food with that. A cholo.

Speaker 4 That first story is stand up. My hair was really short, like a gang member.

Speaker 3 It was really short.

Speaker 4 And then, you know, I used to get pulled over on the way home. So I just started letting it grow.
And I just let it grow. And then

Speaker 4 I haven't cut it yet.

Speaker 2 What length is it past gang member?

Speaker 3 Yeah, when does the length of the hair reduce being pulled over?

Speaker 4 Oh man, you gotta be like

Speaker 4 Bill Burr.

Speaker 3 Yeah, officer, I'm some fucking speed in here, all right? I'm I'm going to the fucking comedy store, all right?

Speaker 3 He's aggressive, that

Speaker 3 listen, give me some pickles.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 You know what drives me out of my fucking mind? Meeter-mates, get a fucking car. I don't need a golf cart.
Give me a pocket ticket, you fucking meeter-made meetlehead.

Speaker 3 Anyway, that's kind of Bill Barbara.

Speaker 3 I used to do that. I used to do this East Coast stand-up.
But so for our audience, why don't we just quickly go

Speaker 3 where you came from and who you are is extraordinary. So we've never had a guest quite with your story.

Speaker 3 So don't be shy. Yeah, don't be shy.

Speaker 3 You grew up in Mexico and you made your way to America and

Speaker 3 you're incredibly successful. You play giant places, have a huge amount of fans.
So that's just kind of an American dream, would you call it or a Mexican dream? Or what is it?

Speaker 3 How are you processing it?

Speaker 4 I got here when I was like four years old or five.

Speaker 4 My brothers and I,

Speaker 4 with my mom, we came here illegally. My father was already here living in America.
And so were all my dad's relatives. They were working for Warner Brothers.

Speaker 4 It's funny, they all had jobs putting the record inside of the

Speaker 3 cardboard. They were at the

Speaker 4 record pressing company.

Speaker 3 Oh, fascinating.

Speaker 3 That's a good thing. Someone has to do it.

Speaker 3 Dude, it's not bad.

Speaker 2 I'm telling you, Felipe, I used to work when I moved to LA, I tried stand-up.

Speaker 2 Of course, I wasn't doing that well because I'm in Glendale, putting the A-team dolls in boxes in a warehouse to send to anyone who ordered one.

Speaker 3 But it was kind of boring.

Speaker 2 But every day, I'm like, did they want the box? They want the A-team actual figure. They also want the headband.
Nope, they didn't order that.

Speaker 2 So I'd have to figure out from the order what they wanted. tape it up physically.
So I'm with you, dude.

Speaker 3 Geez,

Speaker 3 I'm just going to say it i pity the fool he pity me for sure mr t i used to work at the back of um

Speaker 4 north broadway where the broadway warehouse used to be

Speaker 4 and i used to separate all the clothes hangers the plastic ones oh yeah you gotta keep them separated so i was in a room full of hangers bro like the whole room with hangers and my friend and i would just get high during lunch and start grabbing hangers all day.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 2 Those type of jobs are just mind-numbing. You have to do something.
We used to take decks at him to wake up. It was like so stupid.
But anything.

Speaker 3 Did you ever grab your friend by the scruffies of his neck and say, we got to get out of here, man?

Speaker 3 I can't hang here no more. I don't know.
Tonight, I can't do it.

Speaker 3 I can't hang.

Speaker 3 So you, when you came across the border, okay, illegally, I'm not going to judge, you know, came across illegally. How hard was that? And how old were you? Were you scared?

Speaker 3 You had your little brother with you, right? Was it scary? We were kids.

Speaker 4 I don't remember being scared. I remember being caught

Speaker 4 because we made it through the border, like the

Speaker 4 Sidro, the border.

Speaker 3 San Isidro. We made it through there.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 there was another checkpoint. Like, I guess there were Medic Men or something, something,

Speaker 4 but there was like the

Speaker 4 San Clemente Sheriff Department or somebody had a, there was an extra checkpoint that

Speaker 4 that city made. So they were randomly stopping cars that were on the five south, on the five north.

Speaker 3 Right, right. I guess.

Speaker 4 So they stopped us and our driver was

Speaker 4 he was a

Speaker 4 Mexican travel agent, you know, a wild coyote, a coyote.

Speaker 2 He was a coyote.

Speaker 4 My favorite said, yeah, man, it was a Mexican

Speaker 4 travel agent. So he was American.
They let him go.

Speaker 4 And my mom and my brothers and I, we got arrested. And my mom was released to go back to Mexico.
And then we were released like three hours later.

Speaker 4 And we crossed the border and we stood there another month. figuring out plan B.

Speaker 4 Then we borrowed our cousins' passports

Speaker 4 and it was two boys and one girl on a passport. And my mom looked at my brother, my little brother, and said, well, I guess you're going to have to be Fati.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 what did you do to make him look like his passport photo?

Speaker 4 I mean, oh man, he had to wear a dress for a whole week just to get a character.

Speaker 3 Getting character.

Speaker 3 Getting character.

Speaker 4 Yeah, man, he went all like, he went all into it, man.

Speaker 4 And when we got to a border, they had like makeup on him and a little dress.

Speaker 4 And they asked him, what's your name? He goes, my name is Pati. And he's gay now, but you know what? He took one for the team.

Speaker 3 That's all that matters.

Speaker 2 That was nice.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 3 That's a whole other podcast. He's gay now, Starring Philippe.

Speaker 3 Nothing wrong with any of that. But so was he.

Speaker 4 He's a hard child, by the way.

Speaker 3 Did you, I mean, you're looking at your mom as the adult and she's like sinking. sinking are you reading her feelings at that moment you know

Speaker 3 like oh we're getting caught but then really

Speaker 3 determine a month later you go back and then you do this thing and now you're in america yeah

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 2 yeah when do you figure out like you've got this gift of gab for laughter took a while

Speaker 4 like Like we didn't know everything we did

Speaker 4 back then was bad.

Speaker 4 Nobody like sat us down and said hey everything was bad don't do it again

Speaker 4 and we didn't know we were illegal man i remember calling kids illegal and i was illegal

Speaker 3 i remember telling kids go back to go back to uh el salvador or go back to wherever you came from and i should be going with them

Speaker 4 listen when you get when you come out of school don't talk to strangers don't talk to anybody just run home.

Speaker 2 Jeez,

Speaker 2 no matter what you're doing in life, just run back home after run back home.

Speaker 3 Scary. Wow.
How long did that go on, that kind of fear?

Speaker 3 When did it turn for you? I mean,

Speaker 4 I don't know. I guess when

Speaker 4 we were in America for a while and we went back to Mexico. to take care of some paperwork and then we crossed the border and we went to

Speaker 4 we went back.

Speaker 4 We crossed the border and we went to the section for

Speaker 4 illegal immigrants, but not the deported ones, I guess.

Speaker 4 And we had Mexican ID

Speaker 4 and we filed for green cards right there.

Speaker 2 How scary. So you went and it was almost like admitting it.
So you're like, here we're going illegal. It's hard to get back the second time.

Speaker 4 So we had a bunch of,

Speaker 4 I don't know what we did to, I know that we had to leave, we had to,

Speaker 4 we self-deported, I guess.

Speaker 3 What we did first, we went back to Mexico

Speaker 4 on our own

Speaker 4 when we went back. And then I guess like a week later, we all came in legally.

Speaker 2 How scary, though, to go back and go. We know once we go back, that could be it.

Speaker 4 Yeah. I forgot that part.
I never mentioned that part about our voyage that we actually

Speaker 3 uh reported ourselves yeah for no reward and then we decided to come back in the legal way and what growing up in mexico to that age and then what was your vibe of america and i kind of want to know

Speaker 3 do once did you go to disneyland i mean what did you what was it like is it was oh man

Speaker 4 first of all uh when we got here

Speaker 4 The coolest thing was that the bathroom was inside the house because our bathroom was an outhouse.

Speaker 3 And you were that was in

Speaker 3 the inside bathroom. Blue your mind.
Okay.

Speaker 4 Yeah, man. And we could flush the toilet.

Speaker 3 Do you ever miss an outhouse?

Speaker 4 We could flush toilet paper inside the toilet. We couldn't do that at well.

Speaker 4 And some houses in Mexico,

Speaker 4 they'll tell you, hey, don't flush anything in the toilet.

Speaker 2 Literally anything, not even poop.

Speaker 4 Anything, bro. Put it in no pocket.

Speaker 3 Did you have?

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's funny. Cause, yeah.

Speaker 3 Did you, when did you kind of

Speaker 3 sort of feel American? Or, you know, what was that?

Speaker 4 When we were in kindergarten,

Speaker 4 we went to, we went to, we went to elementary school, kindergarten.

Speaker 4 All the kids were speaking English, and I was the only one who didn't speak English well, but I caught on fast. I started watching American shows.
That's how we watched.

Speaker 4 And we didn't know how to pronounce a lot of words with like

Speaker 4 they had like a K in the middle

Speaker 4 for some reason. Like we didn't know how to say Bionic

Speaker 3 or

Speaker 4 binoculars or

Speaker 4 any word with a C in the middle like that.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 It was hard for us to pronounce because

Speaker 4 my brother would call Bionic woman Balayan woman.

Speaker 3 So what were you, what were you watching? I'm sorry. Yeah.
What shows?

Speaker 4 We will watch all those shows that were on CBS. For some reason, man, that channel would come in looking good.

Speaker 3 No antenna. Crispy.

Speaker 4 So we have no antenna. So whatever channels look good,

Speaker 4 it was on channel nine, Telemundo, of course. Telemundo, you could break your television.

Speaker 4 unplug it and telemundo will still come off

Speaker 3 What about what do you people say?

Speaker 2 They learn from watching TV. I don't, I've been overseas, I don't learn anything from watching a foreign language, but it must be easy, I guess, to pick up phrases.
Or how do you do that?

Speaker 4 Yeah, we watch a lot of movies. My dad, he liked watching movies, so we would go to a driver's a lot.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 he likes Clean Eastwood and Stephen Queen and Charles Bronson.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Charles Bronson, but that was where the beanie just like him, even though he was not a vigilante.

Speaker 3 And he He always looked at the gold.

Speaker 3 I saw it, yeah. Yep, Charles Bronson used to be a big impression to do in the clubs in the 70s.

Speaker 3 I can't, I never, there were some good ones.

Speaker 2 You couldn't do it of all people.

Speaker 3 Well, I didn't get excited about it. I just, I took, by the way, I took basically Spanish for like eight years, and all I know is Donde Estada Biblioteca,

Speaker 3 Como Está, y tu, mi bien, gracias, that's a lot, uh, Mucho Torbajo.

Speaker 3 That's mucho. Because we work with a lot of people from south of the border.

Speaker 3 We have skilled gardeners, all kinds of people.

Speaker 4 Yeah, but I wouldn't take

Speaker 4 their Spanish for granted because my dad,

Speaker 4 he dropped out of school in the sixth grade.

Speaker 4 So his Spanish is pretty much basically as good as any American speaking Spanish.

Speaker 2 Is it Spanglish? Is that a real thing?

Speaker 3 Where it's like I don't know, man.

Speaker 4 And where I grew up, they call it Chicanics.

Speaker 2 Chibonics to Chicanics.

Speaker 4 Chicanic. Hey, man, like, hey, man, hire the radio.

Speaker 2 Higher the radio.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Or they say, oh, it makes English and Spanish. Oh, right now I have

Speaker 4 grand headache. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 Grande, yeah.

Speaker 2 I know some. Look at that.

Speaker 3 Being Being bilingual and working in both languages, which we get to it. First one to do a special in both languages.
What can you tell us about English and Spanish? I mean, is one more romantic?

Speaker 3 Is one easier landscape laughs for you when you do your set in Spanish? Or is it just

Speaker 3 something we have no experience with?

Speaker 2 In one language, and it kills it.

Speaker 3 The phrasing and the timing in English and Spanish is different, right? I mean,

Speaker 4 what happened with me was that a lot of the words that I was speaking in Spanish were chiconics,

Speaker 4 you know, like words that a lot of Mexican-Americans in the southwest have used as Spanish. But when I went to Mexico, those words don't even exist in a Spanish language.

Speaker 4 Like when I was saying,

Speaker 4 I was saying, fix my breaks in English, and in English, in Spanish, I would say, I would add an A-S,

Speaker 4 a regular mi brecas.

Speaker 4 Brecas is not even

Speaker 4 a Spanish word.

Speaker 3 Oh, it's a fake word for breaks.

Speaker 4 I don't know how to say breaks in Spanish, apparently. I was just saying, like, because I know that white people they add an O

Speaker 4 after every English word when they can't don't know what to say, like, your son is not doing his homework.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I did, I did that in Italy. Yeah, people do that.

Speaker 4 We had AS in the beginning when we don't know English word, like Esprite,

Speaker 3 you know, or

Speaker 3 excuse me.

Speaker 4 So I had to go to Mexico and

Speaker 4 I started, I actually started off open micing in Spanish first.

Speaker 4 And I started building up a set so I got to one hour when I was comfortable in Mexico.

Speaker 2 Wait, so in Mexico, you're doing a Spanish set basically of things

Speaker 2 everyone can relate to there.

Speaker 2 And then you come over after you got it.

Speaker 3 That's an hour is a lot.

Speaker 4 Yeah,

Speaker 4 I translated my jokes first of the

Speaker 4 hour in English into like in their language they could understand. Okay.
Except some words were play on words. So I had to get rid of the whole joke.

Speaker 3 Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 3 And by the way, this is on Netflix right now. It was done in 2020.
Bad decisions, English-Spanish versions.

Speaker 4 Pretty translate this, and it's called Mala Deciciones.

Speaker 3 You know what's funny?

Speaker 4 When I was in Tijuana, Mexico, a lot of the audience were people that were deported by all the previous presidents.

Speaker 3 There's people there that were deported by President Obama, there were people that deported from Bush, people deported from

Speaker 3 what?

Speaker 3 I don't know. Clinton.

Speaker 4 A lot of Clinton gang members.

Speaker 3 Was that like a thing?

Speaker 3 Hey, I'm a Clinton, man. I'm a Clinton Clinton.
Deported me. Yeah.
Did you hang out with the people that were deported by your president?

Speaker 4 Yes. And I even hung out with a bunch of

Speaker 4 military Marines that were deported during the last administration. Like there's a whole neighborhood with nothing but deportee

Speaker 4 military people, like people from the fought in Korea, people who fought in

Speaker 4 the Gulf War, people who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, but somehow they got deported.

Speaker 3 And then get deported after they do that. That's horrible.

Speaker 4 Well, some of these guys have PTSD, so they never really fixed their papers.

Speaker 4 And some of them

Speaker 4 are not with it, but

Speaker 4 they were not born in America, but they were promised citizenship.

Speaker 3 Sure.

Speaker 4 And some of them they didn't go file. I know one guy that I spoke to, He's 74.

Speaker 4 He got pulled over in Echo Park because there was a shooting in echo park and he was coming out of the grocery store with a gang of milk and the police they they held they pulled everybody to the side in that area and they were checking everybody's ids and he had a he didn't even know he had a he had a deport on site on his id so he went straight to mexico he didn't call the family

Speaker 3 oh man he was 74 yeah 74 and he thinks he's just he's he's done with all that and then they just deported seem like the dangers to there.

Speaker 3 What's your advice for people in the South of Border? Now, with Trump in there, stay away, come in, try to come legally.

Speaker 4 Oh, man, if you're going to be here in America illegally, first of all, don't hang around with no gang members.

Speaker 4 Don't hang around with anybody with a bald head, anybody with a low rider, go to work, and come straight home. Strang at home, tell your kids to don't hang around with bad people.

Speaker 4 Just do your job and just live like a normal citizen. And,

Speaker 4 you know, if you ever, you're going to be driving no driver license, man, I will stop at every red light and look both ways.

Speaker 3 Even the green lights. So just be boring, be boring and be simple.
Be boring and

Speaker 4 they won't deport you.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 2 I mean, ideally, the idea is to get really horrible troublemakers out.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I could see you getting caught in a crossfire of just again.

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Speaker 3 One thing I was kind of interested, I don't know if you want to go on this direction, but at some point you were kind of seduced by gang life or went in a gang and went through all that.

Speaker 3 So what was that? Like, was it hilarious? Oh, when I was a kid,

Speaker 4 I hung out with a bunch of kids that were into break dancing at the time.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 4 we would go to Venice Beach and compete with other kids. But I was never good at

Speaker 4 break dancing, but I was good at shoplifting, you know.

Speaker 3 Me too.

Speaker 4 So I was like in charge of merch. So I was in charge of stealing all the white gloves for people and I would sell them to them.

Speaker 2 I used to carry the cardboard in my break dancing.

Speaker 3 Yeah, man.

Speaker 4 So after break dancing died out and then crack cocaine moved into our neighborhood,

Speaker 3 all my friends got into the same gang, except me.

Speaker 4 And then they were all like 16 years old, 17. And I avoided them forever until I turned 19.
I was 20 years old. I was too old to be the guy, but they still jumped me in.

Speaker 3 Oh,

Speaker 2 you know, shit, it's funny because in this movie, Bus Boys, when we join to be a bus boy, we get jumped in.

Speaker 2 And then one time I quit for an hour and I got to get jumped in again. I'm like, God, I quit for one hour.
And they're like, that's, you know, the rules.

Speaker 3 Spade Zoo in a movie. I thought I found a joke about that when people were leaving California to live somewhere else.

Speaker 4 I said, You're leaving California, you should get jumped out first.

Speaker 2 Yeah, see, Dana, we know all that. I don't know the lingo.

Speaker 3 His movie with Theo Vaughn is you, you guys flee to Mexico or something, right?

Speaker 2 No, we go, we get stuck at the border on the way to Mexico. We try to go to Mexico, we can't get across.
So we work at a little restaurant on the border border America, and

Speaker 2 we want to be waiters. So we get job as bus boys boys first to move up in three days, but it takes years because we're not any good.
But yeah, everyone there is Spanish.

Speaker 2 I mean, most of the cast because we're right.

Speaker 3 We should have had Felipe in that movie, man.

Speaker 2 Oh, we should have actually. I didn't even know

Speaker 3 he's too busy.

Speaker 2 So, you could have turned it down, it would have been great.

Speaker 3 So, wherever you want to go, but I mean, you're in gang stuff, you get to America. I mean, I just like when did you do your first set in America? Where was it?

Speaker 4 Oh, it was um

Speaker 4 it was in 1993 probably

Speaker 4 or 94 at the natural fudge

Speaker 4 theater and um it's on fountain avenue in um silver lake the natural fudge theater

Speaker 3 from the

Speaker 4 from that church that tom cruise goes to oh yeah scientology

Speaker 3 i know it well yeah

Speaker 2 yeah that church that huge building you mean that monstrosity huge monstrosity yeah right across the street from that it's a theater.

Speaker 4 It's called a fountain theater now, but it was called before it was called

Speaker 3 the

Speaker 4 Natural Fudge.

Speaker 3 It was a vegan.

Speaker 4 It was a vegan, vegetarian coffee shop. I have no idea that it was vegan until after I left.
So

Speaker 4 it was an open mic on Monday nights with punk rock music. So they have a two comedians go up and then when the comedians are performing, the punk band is behind them setting up their their band.

Speaker 3 Oh, my God.

Speaker 4 That's right. So, then, like, two bands will perform punk music.
And then, while they're taking their shit down, three more comedians will be performing

Speaker 2 for the punk audience, which is probably not the best.

Speaker 4 Yeah, they love punk, Hollywood Runaways, a lot of kids. I think it was 18 and over.

Speaker 3 It seems like a rowdy. Jamie Kenny did there.
Jamie Kennedy, yeah.

Speaker 4 Great comment. I met Jamie Kennedy there, Alonso Bowden, Brian Holtzman.

Speaker 4 Met a lot of people there.

Speaker 3 Do you remember that first set?

Speaker 3 Do you remember what line killed? Did you have a bit that worked or were you humiliated or what was it like?

Speaker 4 I had a line that killed, but it was,

Speaker 4 oh, I said that,

Speaker 4 it says Romeo and Juliet. If it was shot in my neighborhood, and then I pretended that I pretended Romeo was like a crackhead, like I was shaking, you know, with my elbows.

Speaker 4 I was acting like a crackhead, you know, right, and I was biting my fingers, and I was looking at the floor like a crackhead does, taking rocks to kill the real part.

Speaker 3 And then I would say,

Speaker 4 and I would say, I would yell out, Julia, you,

Speaker 3 where's my body?

Speaker 3 That sounds like it would get a big laugh in a rowdy club. It's high energy.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it got a laugh there from the people that were homeless. And

Speaker 4 then the owner of the place, his name was Johnny Roberts. He had a local access show

Speaker 4 at Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on channel three

Speaker 4 on

Speaker 4 cable, some cable network. It was just a free public access show.
And I didn't know what public access was. I didn't have cable.
He was talking to me, go, kid, that was amazing.

Speaker 4 I want you to be at my show. We tape every

Speaker 4 Wednesday morning.

Speaker 4 It's a big comedy show. I thought I made it, right? I thought it was going to be like one of those.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 But it was local actors.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 I looked at the way other comedians were dressed. And I went to a thrift store and I bought like a

Speaker 4 80s,

Speaker 4 a coat, a jacket. And I was trying to find a tie to wear like an 80s comic, but I couldn't find anything.
And then the guy at the thrift store, he said, I don't have a tie, but try this on.

Speaker 4 And I didn't know what it was.

Speaker 4 I remember it was somebody told me it was called,

Speaker 4 I don't know,

Speaker 3 Bobo or Bobo. Bolo tie.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah,

Speaker 4 it was like a metal thing.

Speaker 4 I look like Fossy Bear if you're Native American.

Speaker 3 It's a good look.

Speaker 2 So, so, but that sounds like a big deal, though. You're on a TV show, so it's not a big deal, but in your head, it's a compliment.
Like, hey, I did a set, they're asking me to come on this show.

Speaker 3 We all did that era. I mean,

Speaker 2 you should have a show called Loco Access.

Speaker 4 Loco Access, yeah.

Speaker 3 It's not bad.

Speaker 4 So I met these guys there, and then they told me to go to another place

Speaker 4 that does comedy on Saturday nights called Waldo's Comedy Station.

Speaker 4 And then I was right on Highland on Highland.

Speaker 4 back then it was called a Hollywood Hotel. So we did comedy there and then i finally made it to the comedy store

Speaker 3 how how many how how much longer oh to do audition for mitzi how'd that go the original room

Speaker 3 back then yeah it was five years later i think it was like 90

Speaker 3 oh or something

Speaker 3 mitzi's still there in her booth this comedy store is huge

Speaker 3 you what happened

Speaker 3 but it's not that many people are going to the comedy store back then not like now in our way not like now oh dead.

Speaker 4 It was a convenience that they used to bring their dogs on stage.

Speaker 4 I mean, you were back then, man, it was like if you, if you wanted to be a comedian, like, if you stuck around those days, you're probably doing well right now.

Speaker 4 Because, um, I remember it was like so many people were getting bumped when I first started off, like, really bumped. Like,

Speaker 4 I remember there was a big showcase, and um a bunch of comedians they were supposed to be seen by mid seashore and she didn't show up so the the showcase was canceled but there were a lot of people who actually made that trip from other parts of the country

Speaker 3 los angeles man i only took one bus and nobody knew what i was doing But the people that are from Jersey, they call their parents.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 then

Speaker 4 the dice man shows up and does five hours on the stage. They didn't even get to go up.

Speaker 3 Dice? Dice? Andrew Dice Clay? Oh. Oh, my God.

Speaker 3 Oh, and put the second around on the reds. Yay.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 And then, like,

Speaker 3 I was waiting.

Speaker 3 I didn't leave right at the time.

Speaker 3 I'll go up.

Speaker 3 After four,

Speaker 4 he does four

Speaker 4 hours.

Speaker 3 Who?

Speaker 3 Eddie Griffin. Oh, Eddie Griffin.

Speaker 2 It's a fucking marathon.

Speaker 3 So it's a nine-hour show. You've seen two comics.
Okay, who's next?

Speaker 4 Yeah, and then at 1.45 in the morning, bro, I go up at 1.45 right before Robert William Abadaya.

Speaker 2 Did you say I only have two and a half hours of material because I'm new?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Three minutes.

Speaker 3 Did you?

Speaker 2 Dude, let's do a side note, Dana, for the people listening. It's not crazy to think, because I was from Arizona.
And if someone said, Mitzi will see you this Monday, I would fly out.

Speaker 3 It's too important

Speaker 2 to have someone in the business see you or Bud Friedman at the improv. So that's a really, really big deal.
I understand why everyone came. And if she casually didn't show up, what a heartbreaker.

Speaker 3 And also, we all got bumped up in San Francisco where I started. You know, they'd say Robin's here, the great Robin Williams.
And I thought I was going to maybe have a 9.30 spot.

Speaker 3 And then Robin would do three hours. Oh, I can't believe it.
Oh,

Speaker 3 someone's like, I said, oh, look,

Speaker 3 a spaceship. Look.
Oh, it's a frisbee. But anyway, he was brilliant.
And he would, I call it levitate the room. He would kill so hard that you're like, fuck, I got to work harder.

Speaker 3 Did you see someone early in that time?

Speaker 3 and went, damn, that guy or woman is at another level. Did you have somebody who kind of blew you away and made you want to get better, right?

Speaker 4 I saw, what's his name? Dane Cook.

Speaker 3 Dane Cook and Dane Cook World when he when he became kind of at his height, doing um Sufi,

Speaker 3 okay,

Speaker 3 whatever it was, Sufi.

Speaker 3 What was it? I don't know the bit, but I don't know the bit. Looks funny, he's flipping you off.

Speaker 4 You know, man, uh,

Speaker 4 I don't know how to do it, but he'll be like, um,

Speaker 4 you know, how people they could they flip you off.

Speaker 3 Oh, I see, they go you, that's right, but that it should be a super fucking color suffi

Speaker 2 oh yeah he think he told us about this day now yeah i think

Speaker 3 right yeah yeah he did that and he would storm around the stage he was super physical hyper confident really clear with his jokes and yeah and he's that highly skilled to follow that you know yeah and um

Speaker 4 i remember people would um have her tattooed women would have it tattooed on their on the back of the butt like a like a tram stamp the southide oh boy oh interesting

Speaker 3 any of those things when did you have women trying to hit on you or what you i know you're happily married now we don't want to go into it but okay some women love funny funny men

Speaker 4 hell yeah man i had a

Speaker 4 i have tattooed my name on their back and not even famous

Speaker 4 you had a young lady you look yeah by the way he looks young i thought you were like 28 or something i had a woman um in las vegas She told me to autograph her arm and she was like 21

Speaker 4 and I was like 40.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I tattooed her.

Speaker 4 I wrote my name floppy on her arm, right?

Speaker 4 She had a little chubby arm, you know, it was against my pen was getting.

Speaker 2 That's hard to do.

Speaker 4 Yeah, so I wrote Felipe on it.

Speaker 4 And then later on, she sent me a photo of her. in a thong with um

Speaker 4 not showing her booze but showing her ass and then her arm and she had tattooed right there Felipe she tattooed over your autograph yeah okay yeah

Speaker 3 that's that's something people do I like that you want to bring her home to mom that's somebody you know hell yeah man especially with her next boyfriend

Speaker 3 so also

Speaker 2 so then you're at least 40 so you're 45

Speaker 3 you look you look 27 now yeah you do look young

Speaker 2 I'm 55 get out of town I just told Dana you look so young I don't know.

Speaker 3 Black don't crack, beige don't age,

Speaker 3 and white ain't right.

Speaker 4 Also, I don't drink, so that helped too.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that, yeah, the blues face, it can really age you, you know.

Speaker 3 Um,

Speaker 3 so, so now, I mean, just because we, we have limited time, you really, you're doing, you're doing the clubs. I just curious, when's the first time it became your job?

Speaker 3 Like, okay, I'm, I'm a stand-up, and that's how I earn money. I just don't need any side hustle.
How long?

Speaker 4 Well,

Speaker 4 I had child support.

Speaker 4 They were coming after me and they were garnishing my paycheck. So I was making half.
So that kind of helped me decide to quit my regular job since I wasn't making no money anymore in my regular job.

Speaker 4 So I just went straight to doing stand-up. And then like in 96,

Speaker 4 They were doing this big stand-up show in San Antonio, Texas. Some guy named Jeff Valdez and the owner of the River Center Comedy Club,

Speaker 4 Kylene and

Speaker 4 Jeff

Speaker 4 Borshaw. I don't know their names, but they produced a show for Showtime called the Latino Laugh Festival, hosted by Daisy Fuentes and Paul Rodriguez.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 4 Because they try to grab all the Latino comedians they can find. And I was one of the younger ones that actually auditioned for the show and got it.

Speaker 4 I met comedians there who didn't know were Latino, like Greg Giraldo and John Mendoza.

Speaker 3 What's Giraldo? I didn't know those guys. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah. I didn't know Grego.
I was very shocked to see John Mendoza because I always thought he was Irish, but I guess he's Puerto Rican and Irish. And he was one of my favorite comics.

Speaker 3 And Paul Rodriguez was the original Latino comic, at least at the improv. You know, he was from the store.

Speaker 4 It was.

Speaker 2 the American Express card. Where did he bring a knife with him?

Speaker 3 Consequent quintly.

Speaker 4 Park videos always talk and sentence it with a big word so they're going to be like,

Speaker 3 Consequently, that's a huge over their head. You can, I think,

Speaker 3 I heard say stuff like that. You can laugh now, but my cousin Julio is stealing your hubcaps.
Yeah, that brought down the house at the improv in 1985.

Speaker 4 Yeah, man, I remember the first time I saw him with a glimpse of television before I wanted to be a comedian.

Speaker 4 My dad was like,

Speaker 4 he would change the channels from CBS, Deuce of Hazard, all the way back to the UHF channel 34.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 he could go left, just go left and boom, he's there, right?

Speaker 3 He's there, boom.

Speaker 4 He'll be a channel 34. He lets you mess with us and he'll turn the knob on to see all the channels so he could see

Speaker 4 everything we're missing.

Speaker 4 So, so what, what, what I look like, um, Leonardo de Caprio in that movie pointing like this: whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait, look, Jesus,

Speaker 4 Mexican on TV.

Speaker 4 And uh, Paul Rodriguez, he was doing his set

Speaker 4 on that show, a.k. Pablo.
He said the bit was,

Speaker 4 he goes, I remember when my family came over from Mexico, it was 17 of us in an inner tube. And we were singing, ain't no stopping us now.

Speaker 3 We're on the move.

Speaker 3 Yeah, he always killed. So, so

Speaker 3 last comic standing, you make your way, you're going through the clubs, you're doing well, and then something happens. It's a big move, big moment, right?

Speaker 4 Winning. Oh, yeah, man.
When I won that comedy standing, it was $250,000.

Speaker 4 And my son's mom fought for child support the next day

Speaker 2 oh they wanted a little slice wet

Speaker 3 baby mama standing

Speaker 3 dude she she's like we won yeah man

Speaker 3 yeah daddy's funny we're gonna get a swimming pool

Speaker 4 finally he's responsible

Speaker 2 Yeah, well, that's a big one to win that. And then Last Comic Standing,

Speaker 2 is that the one I think Todd Glass, you don't remember this, but

Speaker 4 shout out to Peter Ingles, the producer of the Let's Comment Standing and Save by the Bell. He passed away, I think, um, a week ago.

Speaker 2 Oh, okay, well, yeah, shout out to him somehow. And um, also, so you get that now.
What are you? Are you immediately a headliner, or were you already a headliner?

Speaker 4 Yes, uh, as soon as I win, let's come and standing, we go on an 80-city tour all over America.

Speaker 3 Oh, wow, yeah, so that's tough. We're hitting

Speaker 4 Inglewood, Pennsylvania, bro. Places I only hear in the songs.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Traffic reports.

Speaker 3 So you, wait, yeah, how do you do it?

Speaker 2 Do you go with some other

Speaker 2 runners up and you're like the headliner?

Speaker 4 Yeah,

Speaker 4 all the other people that were on the show, I think it was Mike DeStefano, Roy Woods Jr., Mike Kaplan, and

Speaker 4 the other guy who was second place, Tommy Johnnigan. We all went on tour.
We all were doing 20 minutes on stage for 80 cities

Speaker 3 on a tour bus. Was it a bus? Okay, a bus.
Wow. Those guys are good, too.

Speaker 2 Does anyone start getting too good on the trip? Like, or do they rotate you? Are you always?

Speaker 4 No, everybody, it was the order of how we won. So I was the last

Speaker 2 that's tough.

Speaker 3 Literally the last comic standing. Yep.
Did anyone kill before you? And as you're crossing onto the mic to close the show, they just kind of say to you, follow that, motherfucker.

Speaker 3 Did that ever happen? Yes.

Speaker 3 you know what?

Speaker 4 What was saving me from that was there was an intermission.

Speaker 3 Oh, okay. Yeah, so Michael

Speaker 4 Fono, he was murdering. He passed away, also.

Speaker 3 God bless him.

Speaker 4 He had HIV, and

Speaker 4 on the show, he had HIV also. And he was an ex-heroin addict, so he was all messed up.
But he ended up.

Speaker 4 I thought he was my biggest competition because he was likable on stage and his type of comedy is very popular now.

Speaker 4 So he was doing a lot of dark comedy back then. Yeah, that's kind of it's like acceptable now.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 4 he was likable. And I really thought he was going to win.
But this guy was murdering, bro. Like, he will, when we did San Francisco, we did the film.

Speaker 4 I remember him saying, I knew there was a lot of gays in San Francisco, but goddamn, I tripped over a dick on the way in here.

Speaker 3 You know,

Speaker 3 and everybody went crazy. Ah,

Speaker 4 yeah. He was saying stuff like,

Speaker 4 he would say stuff like

Speaker 4 stuff like, oh man, I got into a fight with Guatemalan guy and he said, fuck you. I'm not Guatemalan

Speaker 4 because

Speaker 4 I'm Puerto Rican. Listen, motherfucker, I'm not anthropologist.
I don't know what the fuck he's saying.

Speaker 2 When you go on these tours, so you get $250,000 to win. And do you get a set fee every night as part of your deal to tour? Or is it part of your $250,000? Because you guys should make some money.

Speaker 4 we had um it was 250 000 for the winning the show yeah plus um

Speaker 4 whatever they were giving us to headline was

Speaker 3 3 000 for me some show 3 000 for one show 3 000 and so you're playing pretty big

Speaker 3 you're playing theaters

Speaker 4 places that a normal comic headlining by himself will probably make 52 000 maybe oh yeah some of the places were 3 000 seeders, 4,000 seeders, they're all sold out.

Speaker 2 And you're only getting three, but so they're going to make some money too. Yeah,

Speaker 3 normally you'd make a lot of money. That's another 240,000

Speaker 3 on top of the 250 pre-tax. You're looking just south of 500K.

Speaker 4 Yeah, and also

Speaker 4 I had a development deal with NBC that went nowhere.

Speaker 3 Oh.

Speaker 2 But you get paid up front for that, right? Yeah.

Speaker 2 That's nice.

Speaker 2 It's nicer if they find a show for you. But yeah.

Speaker 2 That's for the people at home, they give you money up front to hold you for a year to maybe find a show for you, something like that.

Speaker 4 Yeah,

Speaker 4 I had a TV deal with a comedian named Dustiny Barra with ABC.

Speaker 4 And they made us money not to work. It's funny.
I never thought that they'll pay you money not to work and pay you money for saying no.

Speaker 3 Yes, they call it a holding deal. They take you off the field.

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Speaker 3 Now, by the way, I some a little birdie told me, a gentleman told me that you had a run-in with um Eddie Murphy. What was that? What was that about?

Speaker 4 Oh, man, I was in a set of you people

Speaker 4 Jonah Hill movie, Jonah Hill.

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 4 and Eddie Murphy, we're like

Speaker 4 in a stripper scene in Hollywood, a bunch of strippers.

Speaker 4 And man, one of those strippers,

Speaker 4 one of those strippers on the movie with an actual stripper, she literally gives somebody a laptop for two grand on a set when nobody was around.

Speaker 3 Horny ass bitch.

Speaker 3 Horny ass bitch. That's a special name.
That's your next name.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 4 Eddie Murphy walks in and he looks right at me. He goes, man, you're a funny motherfucker, man.
And I'm like, oh, man, just shit at myself.

Speaker 3 And I forgot.

Speaker 4 I had one line in the movie and I forgot it when he told me that.

Speaker 2 So, oh, so he knew you. That's great.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and he is.

Speaker 3 Yeah, he's cool.

Speaker 4 And then the next day, Tony Hill comes up to me. Hey, man, wasn't that rad the way Eddie Murphy told you were funny in front of everybody?

Speaker 4 And then, yeah, that was cool.

Speaker 4 And then Andrew Schultz, he mentioned on his podcast that that was cool. And the director of the movie came up to me and said that was cool.

Speaker 4 And then the next day he comes back to do the same scene and he tells me hello only.

Speaker 4 Not everybody, just telling me hello.

Speaker 3 Whoa.

Speaker 4 And then the next day, same thing. Then I'm getting paranoid.
You know, I'm like, okay, man, you're trying to get everybody in this set to hate me now.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm not liking you already because of this.

Speaker 3 Hey, Eddie, could I get a You're a Funny Motherfucker just to start the day?

Speaker 3 You don't have to do it, but if I could get a, hey, you're a funny motherfucker.

Speaker 2 No, you go, tell this guy he's okay, too.

Speaker 4 He has like three people that look like him on the set. I don't know, like,

Speaker 4 you're going to be nice to all of them.

Speaker 3 Really? Because of fear of being shot or something? He's got lookalikes. Yeah, he has like stand-ins and

Speaker 4 when you read the lines to Eddie Murphy, like

Speaker 4 he's reading lines to you. But when it's your turn to get the camera, he leaves.
And then you get a stuntman.

Speaker 2 Oh, you get the other guy.

Speaker 3 Oh, really? That's, that's kind of a movie star move. Catch you all later.

Speaker 3 He gets to do that. So now we're at a point where this is pretty, you've done a lot since 2017, these

Speaker 3 four specials in seven years. The current one on Netflix right now, Raging

Speaker 3 Fool. Fool.

Speaker 3 And by the way, I just want to ask you something stylistically when it started, because I really like the way you move on stage. Like you're,

Speaker 3 you're telling jokes and you're moving forward

Speaker 3 and then you're moving backward. And then you're moving.
A lot of guys go side to side or just stick to the mic. But there's this little kind of physical thing you do almost like a boxer.

Speaker 3 You kind of back up, you come in, you land it, and then

Speaker 3 you do this, move back.

Speaker 3 It's pretty cool to watch. It's a little bit like you're dancing up there.
So when did that come in? Was it just someone pointed it out to you, or you just do it organically? That was nervous before.

Speaker 4 When I was on last common standing, I had a coat with a little tiny tie, and I had a pocket. And I used to always hold on to the pocket and move it like this.
You know, the way Rodney, then you go,

Speaker 3 yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I get no respect, though.
No respect. I was an ugly baby, I tell you.
When I was born, the doctor slapped my mother.

Speaker 3 Hey, we love him. So, so from nervousness, you did that.
And now that you're confident, you just sort of kept it as a as a signature in a way. yeah yeah

Speaker 3 and also

Speaker 4 i try to do it so much because i feel like if i know the joke is funny i start moving fast like i'm like a pitcher giving away his knuckleball yeah yeah we all have our our way david funny when you got a bit in your act that you know it's going to kill or you think it is you give a big wind up it doesn't work you go what the i think you stay quiet um you slow down when david when your punchline is going to come i feel like when you when when the big punchline is going to come maybe maybe with your perfect timing you do your stand-up timing but I noticed that you start to get a little quiet and then there's like a big explosion David will modulate that way and he's never thirsty up there as the people would say no he's

Speaker 4 funny like I remember watching your young comic show when you're doing the special

Speaker 4 you saw you two

Speaker 4 and you had little bullshit seats right here, but you were way over there.

Speaker 3 And you didn't know what the fuck they were were saying. Oh, he was yelling, no war, and I was yelling, no war.
I didn't know what he meant.

Speaker 4 There's so many, like, oh, man, not as the comic, like me, like, there's so many tags left. There's more to the chunk you could have done.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah, I kept going. He tags that shit out.
My favorite one is,

Speaker 4 oh, man,

Speaker 4 uh,

Speaker 4 a woman

Speaker 4 feels a sharp pain in her hand while she's doing dishes

Speaker 4 six miles away.

Speaker 3 Her daughter is giving somebody a hand job a hand job oh my god that was time life books a woman doing the dishes feels a cramp in her hand i feel like you may have been

Speaker 3 that's great that's a great memory

Speaker 3 i mean you're kind of maybe influenced by david in the sense that you have a high ratio of laugh points and punchlines in your stories like boom boom boom consistently you know and david does tell a story but just subtly starts building all the all the punchlines.

Speaker 3 The suspit you're doing.

Speaker 2 If you can have little tent poles in it before you get to like the big ending, it keeps them around. That's the hard part, though.

Speaker 4 Like, I have one of my specials because I remember I saw a woman with a tattoo, and she had a Ouija board tattoo,

Speaker 3 like a Ouija board tattoo, and her face was literally dark.

Speaker 4 And I could just, I was like, oh, man.

Speaker 4 Who am I? What's my name? You got to hold her back. Like, all right, let me find out, baby.

Speaker 3 Let's do the you are

Speaker 3 why does it have to be

Speaker 3 who the you are

Speaker 3 hi hi ma'am let's check this out but uh yeah that was so

Speaker 2 good lord i don't know look at this i'm looking at well you did a lot it's nice to uh meet you finally uh and uh this is great and uh thank you for coming on look at you got so much four specials is a lot i remember um you um when um when um when I I remember like when I was bummed out about oh man, they're not fucking headlining me.

Speaker 4 You know, when you get when you go to the 12 year mark, when you see all your friends making it and you're not headlining.

Speaker 3 Oh yeah.

Speaker 4 Cause I remember you said, David, that you had to leave the Tempe improv and go make it so Dan Muir could headline you.

Speaker 2 Ah, God, the old, because I'm from Tempe. It was even more embarrassing.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Sometimes you just don't, but sometimes, you know, you think you have longer material and it's not as good.

Speaker 2 You know, it's, you think you've got an hour and other people like, I don't think you do. And so,

Speaker 2 or you have to be pretty, you have to be a little harder on your material. So you go, I got a good, because you can do a great hour.

Speaker 2 And the next time you can do your set, and it's like 46 because you didn't get as many laughs. You're like, oh, shit, I don't think I have.
And the waitresses are putting down the checks. Oh.

Speaker 3 And you're like, oh, I got one minute left. Wait a second.

Speaker 3 They're doing math during your closer. Oh, the checks are tough.

Speaker 3 20%.

Speaker 3 Give it to me. I'll do the math.

Speaker 2 Checks go out right toward the end of your act, and then you get like a built-in lull while they try to figure out who's

Speaker 2 the potato skins. That's a hard one.
You got to get past that when you're headlining. You're like, shit, I got to stay alive during this.

Speaker 4 So it's a media before you, you make an opener that's a killer.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. They give you an opener and a middle that kills.
When you do good as a middle, that was my problem. Is I was doing good as a middle going, I could headline.

Speaker 2 And you get, and then I'm following a good middle, which is hard. And also, you've got the checks to deal with.

Speaker 2 And you're like, oh, shit, I don't think I'm ready for that.

Speaker 4 Then you realize you picked up on more checks as a middle hanging up by the bathroom than a headliner.

Speaker 2 Oh, that's true.

Speaker 3 It's kind of hanging.

Speaker 2 You stand by the door when everyone leaves.

Speaker 3 Hey,

Speaker 2 did you like the middle?

Speaker 3 All right.

Speaker 2 Well, thank you, Philippe.

Speaker 3 Well, just for one minute, because he'll be listening to this. We have a mutual friend.
So Larry Bubbles Brown,

Speaker 3 who's the famous San Francisco comedian who I've known for years, really good friends, tours with Felipe offered him a lot of opening spots.

Speaker 3 And he's someone with a, he sort of plays a sad sack character. And after each line, you know,

Speaker 3 I lost my identity or someone stole my identity. Now they can't get laid.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 let me give you your, what's your, how do you do it? How do you do his man?

Speaker 4 Mah.

Speaker 3 Man.

Speaker 4 another one i forgot how he says though um

Speaker 4 i don't know i can't remember his jokes right now

Speaker 4 there's another guy that that that's friends with him he's from minnesota and the other kind of like still he's more darker his name is chuck bartell

Speaker 4 and he's dark opens up for tom papa sometimes oh

Speaker 4 yeah but this guy chuck bartell He has no social media. Like, you can't even find him, but he has very dark humor.
He He has a truck where he says that,

Speaker 4 what did they say?

Speaker 4 I got kicked out of a Chinese restaurant for, oh,

Speaker 4 I forgot my reading glasses. And I went to a Chinese restaurant and they kicked me out for squinting.

Speaker 3 ChuckMartell.com. Check him out.

Speaker 2 Yeah, find him.

Speaker 3 Myrrh! So, anyway,

Speaker 4 I took me

Speaker 4 to

Speaker 4 open up in Hawaii at the Blue Note.

Speaker 4 And the whole time we were there, he had a hernia.

Speaker 3 Well, he still has the hernia. He's afraid to get surgery, right?

Speaker 4 But I'll be with a hooker anytime.

Speaker 2 I got a myrnia.

Speaker 3 All right. Thanks, Philip.
Thanks, Philippe Faye. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 This has been a presentation of Odyssey. Please follow, subscribe, leave a like, a review, all the stuff.
Smash that button, whatever it is, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 Fly on the Wall is executive and produced by Dana Carvey and David Spade, Jenna Weiss-Berman of Odyssey, and Heather Santoro. The show's lead producer is Greg Holtzman.