Episode 1682 - Judd Apatow’s Favorite WTF Moments

Lock the gates!

All right, let's do this.

How are you, what the fuckers?

What the fuck, buddies?

What the fuck, Nicks?

What's happening?

I'm Mark Marin.

This is my podcast.

Welcome to it.

Oh my god, it was my birthday.

Saturday was my birthday.

62 years old.

Maybe I'm feeling it.

Maybe I'm feeling it.

I don't know.

Joints are getting a little

achy at times.

Just had a physical,

which you should do.

I guess it's okay.

A couple of things.

First of all, Judd Appetow is here today, but it's a specific type of show.

Judd's been a fan of the show from the very beginning.

He was an earlier listener, an early booster for the show.

You know, he was on the show about one year into doing it for episodes 103 and 104, where he gave us all these tapes that he had made when he was a teenager of him interviewing big comics.

You know, I believe in the dressing room of the comedy club because his mom, I believe, was a hostess there.

So he was doing WTF way earlier.

And when we announced that the show was ending, he texted me this.

I'm quoting here.

Maybe we could do an episode of WTF called Judd Appetow's Favorite WTF Moments, where I play you a clip I have chosen, and then we talk about it.

You know none of the clips in advance.

And that's exactly what we did.

And as many of you know, because of my process,

I don't listen to the shows.

In this episode with Judd, this is going to be the first time I'm hearing a lot of these clips as audio clips.

I was in the room when I did them, but my memories, that's hard to keep all those in.

So I'm actually hearing them for the first time.

It's just the nature of how I do it.

I don't listen to it.

I do it, and then Brendan does his thing, and then it goes out into the world.

Rarely do I listen.

Also, I think I can announce confidently right now that the end date of WTF is now official.

The final episode will be on Monday, October 13th.

And I don't know, it's going to happen right on time for a couple of reasons.

You know, I'm dealing with Charlie, and it's not good.

He's figured out a way to open the door.

How the fuck did that happen?

So now, like, when I think everything's safe, I'm out here in the studio and I hear Buster being destroyed.

And I go, I've got to go in there and be like, how the fuck did you open the door?

I don't know.

He jumps up, grabs hold of the doorknob.

I don't, it's not good.

But it's fortuitous, if that's the correct use of the word, that the show is ending because I can reconfigure this studio, studio, which is an ADU, into kind of like

another kind of office situation, maybe a screening room or where I can watch movies or work or sit down or whatever, but Charlie can live out here.

I can re-home Charlie in my home.

Huh?

Huh?

It's giving me, I don't know if that'll be the final decision, but it's giving me a little reprieve from the anxiety of the Charlie situation.

Folks, I'm back at Dynasty Typewriter in LA for two shows in October, Saturday, October 11th, and Friday, October 17th.

Go to wtfpod.com slash tour for tickets.

The documentary, Are We Good, opens this Friday, October 3rd, in New York and Los Angeles.

I'll be at some of the screenings here in LA this weekend at the Alamo Draft House and the AMC Americana, as well as at the Vancouver Film Festival.

There are special screenings around the country on October 5th and October 8th.

You can go to arewegoodmarin.com to see where it's playing and get tickets.

We're also doing a screening at the Arrow Theater, and I believe Larry Charles is hosting the moderation on that.

The Kickstarter for the graphic novel WTF is a podcast past 200 grand, so that means everyone who pre-ordered through Kickstarter will get a special box brown design WTF trading card featuring me and my original Garage Cats, Boomer, Monkey, and LaFonda.

If it keeps going past $250,000, everyone gets a framed set of four trading cards.

Go to z2comics.com/slash WTF.

All right, so a couple of things happened that I think I should address in my life, not in the world.

Some people saw a video of me at Norm's Guitars, which is a very famous guitar place for very fancy guitars, collectible stuff, and they've just been, is it champing at the bit about what did Mark buy at Norm's?

Well, you should know Mark well enough by now that Mark is not going to spend $50,000 on a collectible guitar.

I was just trying to lighten my load, so I brought Norm a few guitars I didn't really play and an amplifier so to kind of start cleaning out the studio.

And I just wanted to maybe trade it.

I don't need the bread, but I wanted to trade it for one guitar that I would use.

And I needed a telecaster.

So those people that are wondering.

What it is I bought, I bought a 1973 black telecaster that was called, I think it was Player Grade or Play or something.

It wasn't all original in terms of one of the pickups have been replaced, but it's the paint's original and it's got a nice weight to it, like the old 70s tellies.

And it's got an interesting pickup.

Great sound.

I played at the end of this episode.

So that's what I got.

Reasonable.

No $20,000 to $80,000 guitars for me.

The other thing I wanted to mention: when I was talking to Pardo,

we talked a lot about podcasters at the beginning, and someone brought it up that I didn't mention Jackie Cation,

which I should, because Dork Varrest, her podcast has been around forever.

It was there at the beginning.

I did it a couple of times.

She was definitely in the community, and it was just an oversight.

And I think it's a reasonable shout out.

I want to give her some love.

Love Jackie.

Also.

You know, I've been talking a lot for a lot of years.

And lately, sometimes I talk on Instagram and it seems to really get around

lately.

But I also just want to, you know, I just want to tell you, the audience, that I appreciate your emails when I get to them.

And I appreciate the fact that in many cases, I've had a profound impact with this show and with my guests and with what I talk about on people's lives one way or another, helping out or, you know, keeping someone company or helping them reframe something that's been troubling them.

It's something that happens that I would never have anticipated at the beginning of doing this show.

And I appreciate it.

I'm grateful that it has that impact.

I thought I'd share just an email along these lines of like, I really don't know how my voice is going to impact anyone's life or change anybody's approach to life or help them in any way.

And this example, I think, is, it's not exactly the podcast, but I think it speaks a lot.

Hi, Mark, longtime listener, first time caller, just wanted to send you a note of thanks.

My lady and I watched your special recently and you shared how one of your cats' balls was always under the stove.

Obviously, a separate ball from the balls on the cat.

Our beloved black cat cookie had a small blue ball toy.

That's her favorite, which she's had since birth, but it had gone missing.

When your your bit about the stove hit us, Taha immediately ran up to our stove, and sure enough, the ball was there.

Thanks, sir, for improving the cat experience of our household.

See, it's a little thing, but to that cat, what a life-changer.

The cat thought it was gone forever.

His favorite ball.

And now, peace, peace, and excitement is reignited.

See, it's a life changer, this show, and it's not lost on me.

Okay,

Judd Appetow.

Now, look, he's got a new book out called Comedy Nerd, A Lifelong Obsession in Stories and Pictures.

That comes out October 28th.

You can pre-order it now wherever you get books.

And this is

Judd bringing the goods to kind of walk me through the history of my own show.

So, listen, something people keep saying to me about the podcast ending is that I should take a vacation.

Look, I used to take vacations.

I used to love to go to Kauai.

I enjoyed Kauai.

I would go there, you know, once a year, usually.

I haven't been on a vacation.

I can't remember the last vacation I've been on.

I was just talking to somebody about traveling to Tuscany and Umbria.

I do need to take one.

But if you're planning to take a vacation, there's always the question of what to do with your empty house while you're away.

Of course, there's the option to host your place on Airbnb to make some extra cash.

And now it's easier than ever with Airbnb's co-host network.

You get a high-quality local host to take care of your home and your guests.

They manage all the hosting details, send messages and updates, and are available to be on hand when your guests are there, just to help out with anything that might come up.

So your co-host handles the details and you still make some cash while you're enjoying your vacation.

Find a co-host at airbnb.com/slash host.

So, Judd.

Here we are.

We are here, yeah, and I appreciate you coming.

And you have a plan.

I have a plan.

You're dictating this.

You know, I wanted to get on here to push my book, Comedy Nerd.

Books good.

And it's kind of like, we were talking about that it's kind of like the old Marx Brothers scrapbook,

the SNL scrapbook, with all the projects I've worked on.

And I wrote essays.

Uh-huh.

And pictures.

It's a lot of pictures, thousands of pictures.

You're in there.

Everybody's in there.

I am.

What do you got of me in there?

Just you performing.

Oh, good.

And, but I literally put everything in it.

It literally has like my autograph collection.

Oh, yeah.

You can see my autograph from Andy Kaufman and Jack Klugman.

Right.

Oh, that's great.

I used to have an autograph picture of Buddy Hackett that I wrote away for.

That's what I would do.

I would sit and I would write like a hundred letters to just see who would send me an autograph.

And then I would get like Jackie Gleason and Gilda Radner and all these people.

Yeah.

And like a really young hoarder, because my hoarding must have started then.

I have all of it in pristine condition.

And now I feel like I can throw my hoard out because I put it all in the book.

Are you going to throw it out?

Well, I'm going to try to throw a lot of it out because.

What about like the, you know, the, where your papers, put it with your papers.

I always hear about that, like, we have the papers of one of the guys from Peter, Paul, and Mary.

Who looks at the papers?

Well, it's like, I guess colleges have these libraries and they employ employ these

curators, librarians.

It's a librarian job to manage the papers.

I just don't know.

Like, I've got so many fucking things of papers and people are like, well, you know, we should archive that.

I'm like, for what?

Well, it's like the Bob Dylan Museum.

And it's pretty great.

Have you been there?

I haven't been there.

And I'd love to go, but I know that mine would not be good.

What do you mean?

You got all these pictures?

I mean, yeah, sure, you don't have the original tangled up in blue, Eric's.

I don't have that.

But I have like a little piece of paper where like I thought of a dumb joke, like Steve Carell peas with a boner.

And I'm so proud of that little

scrap of paper.

But I hopefully will be able to let go of some of it.

But the proceeds go to

the fires, for victims of the fires.

And so you do all these shows at Largo, too, where that are all benefits for different things.

I know, I realize that.

I'm the only one who literally has never taken a dime from Largo.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, do you need it?

I think it's that.

And like, am I really good enough to ask for the money?

Well, the weird thing is, you are, but obviously, but the good thing about Largo is you can, they like to see you process there.

It's a very odd thing.

Yeah, they like to see you working on stuff.

Yeah, people came to see my hour like again and again, and then they watched the special and they're like, we saw this early on, and it's really good what he did with it.

And that's why when I did the special, there was a bit in there where I'm like, I got to, I don't know if I should do all three beats of this bit because it's going to be exactly the bit that's going to alienate, you know, people.

And it wasn't the bit I cut.

It was really, how far do I want to go with that, the Sarge character, the babysitter guy?

And Lipsight, my buddy's like, you got to do all of that.

You got to go all of them.

Well, when I saw that,

I was excited for you to open up like that.

I'm all for people

really opening up.

It's funny because I've been working on all these documentary projects.

We have one about Mel Brooks,

one about Maria Bamford, one about Norm McDonald's.

And I realized

I do like seeing the deep emotional part of people.

Some of those people wasn't on stage.

Yeah, just

what all of our struggles are.

Maria is full struggle.

Norm, not so much, like the opposite.

Hard to know with some of these people.

You did one of the best interviews with Norm.

Yeah.

I think of all the interviews anyone ever did with Norm, your interview was the best.

Yeah.

That feels like a transition into what we're going to do.

Okay.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, start there.

Well, you've been, you know, a big supporter and listener of the show, you know, on your own.

You know, Noah, you found it and you stuck with it.

And the interesting thing about this, and I've talked about it with Brendan, and people, they asked me about, do I listen to podcasts?

And I'm like, I don't.

And I don't even listen to mine.

So almost all, I would say 99.9% of my recollections of interviews are whatever stuck in my mind because I don't listen to it again.

Unless Brendan sort of like, I worked really, this one took me hours to make him sound like he knew what he's talking about.

And then I'll listen to it, but I don't listen.

Yeah.

So whatever you're about to do,

I'm going to play some clips for you.

That's what we're going to do.

Well, it's going to be, it's going to be interesting because sometimes people, like Brendan, can quote things because he's listened to him over and over again.

And I'm like, I said that.

That was pretty funny.

I mean, I get the idea that

of not listening to things again i remember uh meeting people who wouldn't watch anything owen wilson didn't i know

he doesn't watch any of it yeah adam driver didn't watch i think almost maybe he saw one episode of girls he was forced to at the uh premiere bill hayer didn't want to watch anything reme schumer forced him to sit and watch train wreck and then years later

I think he

finally sat down and watched some of his SNL stuff.

You know, his Really?

His wife at the time said, you really need to see what you've accomplished.

And then he had to make Barry.

Yeah.

And then he, you know, he saw how helpful I'm sure it was to be in charge of your performance and to edit yourself.

And he had to deal with watching himself.

It is helpful, especially with the acting.

But like, also, I don't quite understand how you can just be satisfied with acting, you know, in, you know, as, you know, the process.

Like, there's some part of me that's like, yeah, it was okay you know doing those little bits and pieces and then it all comes together but like how does owen you know not watch any of the stuff to see the work

do you know what i mean like it's not satisfying enough for me just to do the acting well i think some people they just want to

be so uninhibited and the thing that allows them to be uninhibited is that they will never watch it right and i i think that's what oh i think

someone like adam driver uh thinks about it is i i can be 100% present because there's no part of my brain that's like, oh, this might really be embarrassing.

Right.

So I get it.

Like, I realized recently that

I generally don't watch the movies I've worked on again, and then not consciously.

Usually I'll watch the ones I produce.

Like I'll watch Step Brothers every single time.

Yeah.

But the ones I've directed, I don't watch.

But you've spent so much time with them.

Yeah, you get kind of burnt out on them.

Like recently, you know, it's the 20th anniversary of the 40-year-old virgin.

Yeah.

So they showed it at the Academy Museum with a thousand people.

Yeah.

And I hadn't watched it in 20 years.

And I got to watch it like a fan.

Like I didn't remember for real 80% of the jokes.

Really?

And how funny it was.

And I was laughing.

They're putting it in the theater at the end of August, Trainwreck and 40-year-old Virginia.

40-year-old Virgin for their 20th and 10th anniversaries.

But I thought, why don't I watch them?

And I don't know.

It's almost like it's emotionally overwhelming.

It's like bumping into an ex-girlfriend or something.

Yeah, the awkwardness.

But we're going to do it right now.

So I asked to do this.

I said, let me pick some clips as conversation starters.

And maybe it'll be interesting because you haven't heard most of them since.

Yeah, that's true.

Well, maybe we should start with the Barack Obama clip.

Okay.

And then we'll discuss what we make of it now.

Yeah.

The more you do something

and

the more you practice it,

at a certain point it becomes second nature.

And what I've always been impressed about

when I listen to comics talk about comedy is how much of it is a craft, right?

And they're thinking it through, and it's

and they have a sense of when it works and when it doesn't.

And then the longer you do it, the better your instincts are.

Same with president.

Yeah, same with president.

And also,

I guess the last thing is

you lose fear.

That's right.

I was talking to somebody the other day

about

why I actually think

I'm a better president

and would be a better candidate if I were running again than I ever have been.

And it's sort of like an athlete.

You might slow down a little bit.

You might

not jump as high as you used to.

But

I know what I'm doing and I'm fearless.

For real.

You're not pretending to You're not fearless.

Pretending to be fearless.

That's exactly right.

And when you get to that point, freedom.

And also part of that fearlessness is because you've screwed up enough times

that you know that.

It's all happened.

It's all happened.

I've been through this.

Right.

I've screwed up.

I've been in the barrel tumbling down Niagara Falls.

And

I emerged and I lived.

And that's always...

That's such a liberating feeling.

Absolutely.

Right?

It's one of the benefits of age.

It almost compensates for the fact that I can't play basketball anymore.

Well, good.

All right.

Well, thanks.

It was great to talk to you.

There we go.

We're good.

That was fun.

I appreciate it, Mr.

President.

It was great.

All right, man.

Wow.

I don't think I realized how truly present and somewhat vulnerable he was.

Yeah.

In the conversation, because that's what I'm hoping for.

And that's the end of the conversation.

But we were both comfortable, but I could hear it in his voice.

He wasn't

doing the politician him.

And also, like, I'm always amazed at my fearlessness to go ahead and, you know, finish even the president's sentences.

That's a level of narcissism that most people don't have.

Is it narcissism or is it just impatience?

I don't.

you know, because like he took it, you know, when I pop the word in there, he's like, yeah, because sometimes it's really not, it's not self-centeredness.

It's sort of like, I'm like, you know, I just want to keep a pace going.

You know, so it's more in any moment when I do that.

It's generally like either I've heard this before or

let's keep it going.

I don't like dead air that much.

And a president could take 11 minutes to answer each question and then you got four in.

That's right.

And that was like, that was why we crafted that interview the way we did because he has a tendency.

And if you talk about politics with him, you're going to get in the weeds, man.

And we only had an hour and we did have to cover some stuff at the beginning.

But he was very, he's always pretty thoughtful and deliberate.

But there was a vulnerability there that I don't think I remember.

Well, I think that it's nice to hear a president talk about how difficult these decisions are to make, as opposed to a president who will never admit that anything is hard or that he's ever made a mistake.

There's such a madness to the fact that our president never says, I screwed that one up.

Yeah.

And it's almost like a mental health issue.

Well, it's a blame.

He blames someone else.

That's narcissism.

Someone else put Ghalain in the nice prison.

Yeah, yeah.

Or just like, yeah, I didn't know about that.

And, you know, I guess they took care of it.

Yeah, I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know about the case.

I like that he keeps saying,

I don't know why anyone's interested in that.

It's like, like, it's boring.

Well, yeah.

Well, he is the public face of his job, as it turns out,

despite all their doublespeak, is to, you know, to

make the deep state

publicly

charming

like he is a rep he is the deep state and he is a puppet of it yeah and the the real deep state and now it's sort of like deep state is sort of like let's put this guy out there they like him so you know we'll be uh you know sort of national sweethearts what would you have done if donald trump wanted to come on wt we we had an agreement that if when he was president and before now again on the basis of fair play if he would come on with the same terms as Obama, which was we get final cut, they don't get questions, they, you know,

and

that's that, we would do it.

But, you know, we didn't pursue it, but we said if they came to us, we would have to do it.

But, you know, he would have done that and it would have just been what it is.

I mean, it's like he doesn't, you know, he'll just yammer on about whatever.

Did you have sympathy for the people interviewing Trump about how difficult it would be?

Or did you feel like, nah, there's four or five things you could have pushed him a little bit on that it still would have been respectful, but we would have got a clear answer on something about what he might do.

Maybe.

I don't know if you can get a clear answer from that guy.

You know, I think that I don't know what my approach would be, but generally it's to get them grounded in how they got there.

So it would be interesting to kind of get into his childhood and his

development.

And I don't know how willing he is or how he has that framed but I would probably approach it the same way I do other things yeah well there's other people here now a big a big moment in in the history of the show yeah was when you spoke to Louis C.K.

about your friendship right and what am I correct in saying that that

really made the show take off in a lot of ways.

People were very interested in that confrontation.

Well, it seems that

at that time in podcasting, which was a smaller world, that those two episodes, you know, really jumped out in terms of, you know, how I do it and what was done and how we sort of

kind of dealt with something, you know, real and there was a human tension to it.

But I think it did sort of

represent the possibilities of the medium in terms of how I do it at that time.

And I don't think it had been done really.

Where people and especially men looked each other in the eye and got honest about what their

conflicts and disconnections were.

Yeah, and I was, you know, in retrospect, willing to take some hits

because, you know, Louis kind of dictates the interaction generally.

But, you know, all in all,

it was interesting, you know.

I haven't listened to that in a while.

You're about to.

I think you're changing the tone of how television can be made, and I'm very proud of you, and I'm excited for your success.

Thank you, man.

And it's great to see you.

Yeah, you too.

And I'm

glad we had this talk.

Yeah, you know, it's when you know somebody for a long time, it's a very

valuable thing.

Yeah, it's beautiful.

I mean, we were best friends for a long time.

I know.

A long, long time.

I know.

Well, it's hard.

There's times where it's hard to be your friend's friend.

I know, but I don't have them.

It's not like I have new friends.

It's not like I was replaced by anybody.

No.

That would feel worse.

No, I'm still the same guy in a lot of ways.

Well, look, here's, I can give you, and you don't have to put this in the podcast if you don't want to, but what I would say as far as trying to stay friends with somebody that you have a hard time thinking about what they're doing against what you're doing

is focus on them needing a friend.

Yeah.

It takes a good friend to stay with you in hard times.

Yeah.

It takes a good friend to stay with you in good times.

Everybody needs needs support.

Everybody does.

So you're letting me down.

If you see me doing something and you have a hard time coming to terms with it because you're feeling about your own life, what's really happening is you're letting me down as a friend.

You're being a shitty friend by being jealous.

Okay.

So think about the other person.

Think about what they might need.

I could have used you.

I could have used you.

I got divorced.

I got a show canceled.

You know, I had some tough times.

I could have used a friend.

But you didn't have to do that.

During those times that were making those times that were making you jealous, I was struggling.

I was having a hard time.

But even doing the Louis show was really hard.

Trying to keep my family together.

It was hard.

But the thing is, is that in the way our friendship always operated, it was not that I was kept up to date in the day-to-day things.

It wasn't a day-to-day call that we had, but it seemed that most of the time, the thing that made our friendship so deep and so strong was that when we did talk, we made each other feel better.

No, it's true, but you shut me out.

You shut me out because you were having a hard time.

Okay, well, I apologize again.

Well, I apologize to you because then I did it to you probably out of resentment.

Ignored your emails because you ignored my phone calls back when there was no email.

Well, can we get back on track or what?

Yeah, I think we can.

Because I, you know, I mean, you understand me, you know, I mean, not a lot of people do.

And the one thing that, and even when I tell stories about it, you know, it's just that, like,

you always, you know, are able to, even in your weird way, and even if I thought you weren't listening, even when you did pick up what I was saying, that you were able to

give me a great deal of relief

fairly quickly.

And I missed that.

Well, we understand each other's flaws very well because we share some.

Yeah, yeah.

And we've known each other long enough to understand them.

So that's why we're able to look at each other, like tell each other about moments that we don't want to tell anybody else.

Yeah.

And to be able to have the other person go, yeah, I get it, instead of going, oh my God, why did you do that?

Or the only time I did that?

Well,

don't be stupid.

Do this instead or whatever.

That happens.

And the only time I said, oh, my God, was when I realized that that I had missed so much of your life and I felt horrible about it.

You know, it's funny, I did the same thing when you got divorced the first time.

I got mad at you.

Yeah.

And I know now why, because I was married and

I didn't want you to get out.

Yeah.

It's hard.

I mean, because being divorced, it has changed my relationship to a lot of people that are married that I knew before.

It just changes things.

People look at you differently.

I love you, man.

Let's just try to fucking

better friends.

Okay.

Oh, my God.

Yeah,

interesting.

Well,

what's interesting about that is that there is,

especially in our world, because of the nature of what we do and that we're all pretty flawed people, that the community, like there is a shorthand, you know, that there's very few people who I have a day-to-day friendship with, you know.

uh which i do neither of them are comics

but with comics because they because they're your cats okay

You got me.

No,

they're just guys that are in different elements of creative life, Sam Whipside, Jerry Stahl.

But comics, you know, a lot of our communication is very precise, whether it's busting someone's balls or, you know, I get it, you know, and

it's almost unspoken.

You know, and there are some guys that can see right through my shit.

And, you know, I love when people, you know, kind of, you know, take me down to size if I like them and they're funny.

And because of that entry point, you do have sort of an understanding because it used to be a much smaller and rarefied community of weirdos that were all kind of on the spectrum of whatever the fuck is wrong with comics.

And with Louie, the weird thing is that it did really come out because I didn't know how he framed that.

In terms of our friendship, you know, what best friends implies to a lot of people is like you travel together, you're friends with each other's wives or what, whatever.

But with me and Louie, mostly because I was and am still a pretty isolated person, you know, with a small social circle, you know, he would dip in and we'd connect and we'd hammer it out and we'd get some laughs and he'd sort of give me some insight.

He's a pretty philosophical guy and a fairly wise guy because he's an autodidact who is brilliant and he crams his head with trying to understand himself and trying to understand the world.

And he'll sit there and read the the biography of Teddy Roosevelt and glean some life advice from it.

You know, so that was, but he's also very funny, but he also knew, you know, how crazy I was.

So I think, you know,

the idea of best friends, you know, becomes sort of a, you know, a confidant thing, like he said.

And also that the time you do spend together, you know, is

helpful to both of you.

You know, I think that I don't ever remember him really, you know, leaning on me or needing advice.

Sometimes, you know, I'd be on the list of people he would call to say, like, I don't know

what to do or whatever.

But it wasn't just me.

You know what I mean?

But yeah,

we were there at weird pivotal times for each other's lives.

And I think a lot of that stuff holds up.

And then ultimately what happened is, you know, we were not able to sustain the friendship through his trials and tribulations

because I had to speak publicly about it because of those podcasts that we were sort of connected.

And I, you know, I was pressed for a reaction to what he was going through.

And although I felt like I handled it diplomatically and correctly and still making myself available to be his friend, I feel like he felt...

I don't know that he felt betrayed, but I think he felt like

I fucked him somehow.

which if i think if you listen to to how i handled that i i don't think that's true and since then you know he did send me an a rather awkward email saying like you know the the contents of it is unimportant uh really

so as not to start shit but i said you know he said but i'd be willing to talk you know i'd say well yeah that'd be great but i'm not i'm not gonna you know rehash how i handled your situation and he was like well then i i don't think we we can do it then.

I'm like, Okay, I've been okay for a few years now.

So that's fine.

And then it was weird when I'd see him and like there was this, you know, like, uh,

weirdness there.

And then, like, the last time at the cellar, I don't know what changed or why, but you know, I was there and for it was like for some reason at the table, like Santino and Bobby Lee were in town, and Chris Rock was there, and Darren Aronofsky and Louis was there.

And I was sitting at the table, and they, Louie and Chris, and come in, and I'm like, how's this going to?

And, you know, he was perfectly nice and, you know,

making space for me to talk and, you know, friendly, like old, old-time me and him.

You know, but nothing ever happened after that.

But that happens.

I mean, the whole issue of like

your friendships in the world of your job and comedy is always interesting because now we've had those relationships with people for 30, 40 years.

Yeah, I know.

While we're watching everyone go through all sorts of

life changes, marriages, kids, turmoil, diseases.

Yeah.

And it's interesting who you stay connected with, you know, who become your go-tos and people you were so close to.

People just drift off sometimes for just completely natural reasons.

They got four kids.

And

you get that.

Yeah.

And I don't know that I fully understood that when I was younger, you know, because I was sort of self-involved.

But, you know, in grown-upness, you know, I don't get close to a lot of people in a way that

would be an emotional risk to me, unless I can really trust them, which isn't easy.

And I'm not in the loop with a lot of people's lives.

And I had an experience recently with a comic that he had misunderstood something and he just shut me out of his life entirely.

And for a long time, for too long.

And when we finally, you know, coincidentally saw each other publicly, I was like, you know, what, what is going on, dude?

And he's like, you want to do this?

And I'm like, yeah.

And he told me what was up.

And I'm like, that, that is like totally wrong.

It's all, it's all in your head and what it doesn't even make sense and then he was like oh

okay and then but it's too late yeah

you know it's like you know we you know I see him now and and you know we talk and stuff but I you know I did consider him a friend and also this idea of I could have used you and whatever fucking call me man

I mean there's very few times I'm not available despite whatever you think you know what I mean like but this idea that you get something in your head and then you fucking detach and then you're like you weren't there for me I'm like what am I supposed to do if you don't call me or text me or say, let's have lunch?

Jesus Christ, it's not like I'm doing a million things, certainly back then.

Well, that was what Gary Chanling always found most interesting when we were working on the Larry Sanders shows.

He always said that people are so rarely honest and real with each other.

People never.

look each other in the eye and have it out

in a very direct way.

And I think that's what people found so interesting, especially in the early years of this show, was that you were doing that with people and it's just almost unheard of

to do that.

Here's another one of someone you had a conflict with.

I don't think you cleaned it up, though,

with this person.

I put you in the context of the history of comedy.

You were a profound presence on the comedy saying you made 14 one-hour shows.

I know that.

Gallagher.

I know.

I'm not saying you didn't write original material.

I'm just asking where you're coming from.

I was just asking where you're coming from.

That's all.

I respect you as a comedian.

Do you see any lesbian jokes in my 14 one-hour shows?

No.

No.

But what happened?

One night, I told some I heard on the street, and everybody's up in arms over it.

No, no, but why the shift?

Why did you...

It's not a shift.

It's only five jokes.

I do a two-hour, two-and-a-half, sometimes three hours.

I get on at eight, I'm off at 11.

Okay.

Everybody focuses on one thing.

No, no, I focus on all of these things.

I focus on all of them.

I'm the problem.

Do you think when I'm dead, gays will finally have an opportunity in America?

Have I really been holding them down?

No, you don't hold them down.

No, no, no, no, wait a minute.

You don't hold gays down.

Well, then what's the problem with that?

No, I don't have any problem with you.

I'm just saying that you reaffirm prejudice.

Okay, can we tell a Jew joke that they don't want to pay?

Why?

It's not true.

It's not true.

Why do people laugh?

Because it's a stereotype that's been established.

Most people that you laugh at those jokes don't even have a Jew in their life.

You can do any joke.

You can see you can do it.

You can do whatever you want.

You can do whatever you want.

Black comedians only talk about the difference between blacks and whites.

Well, there are some stereotypes.

Look, I am a person that thinks that some stereotypes, some parts of stereotypes are obviously true.

The Jewish ones.

They don't act.

Well, no, but if you're picking on white people,

they don't do it.

Or talking about black community stuff.

And I understand that there are stereotypes that fit.

They only talk about fat.

There's this midget comic that only does midget jokes.

I watched his whole act.

Well, what else is he going to do?

That's his wife.

No, he could be generally funny.

There's a comp.

But he's getting laughs.

But by your context, if he's getting laughs, laughed.

Yeah, change the subject.

We're bored.

Are they if they're still laughing?

No, there's no dynamics.

Most comedians are terrible.

They should listen to me.

Okay, I will hear you out.

And I help them when I can.

What is your problem with most comedians?

Well, like I just said, their show has no dynamics, and it's not a show based on their knowledge of the audience.

It's a show about them.

And comedy is not therapy.

Just because it's a challenge.

Wait a minute.

But if you're talking about a show about them,

if you're saying that a person that talks about themselves on stage is not a comedian, then you're dismissing a great many great comics.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you're...

They didn't do it wrong.

No, they didn't do it wrong.

You walk in a doctor's office and he talks about his problems instead of...

But that's an old joke.

If a comedian talks about himself, and that is funny, if a comedian is a storyteller, see, by your rubric, you're dismissing.

He can't work a state fair.

Who the fuck wants to work a state fair necessarily?

Everybody.

Really?

Yeah.

So in order to work a state fair, you have have to take the Gallagher class.

You have to work faster and more general.

There are families out there, and they're not interested in your long, subtle story.

Okay, that's fine.

That's a state fair circuit.

But the comedy club circuit, the cabaret circuit, can indulge a different.

Why can't you just see it as all being part of show business?

Why are you doing it?

Because there's no show involved.

They're a bunch of slobvenly,

they hunch over, they turn their back on the audience, they take a

style.

Water.

It's show business.

Why are you drawing lines?

Why are you taking the other side of everything I say?

I'm not.

I'm just saying.

You are.

I'm a motive.

Why did you want me to do this interview if you don't think I know anything about what you're asking me?

I'm just telling you.

I'm done.

You're done?

I'm done.

You're just arguing.

It's Howard Stern and

I was just having a conversation.

I have more respect for comedy.

You're trying to be controversial.

I am not.

Yes, you are.

You're just arguing with me.

I have 30 years of experience.

Well, then tell me about comedy.

I just think that show business is show business.

Well, then just why don't you do the interview and tell people your opinion?

We were having a good conversation.

Oh, come on, Gallagher.

All right.

Well,

that didn't.

Come on, maybe it really went well.

I don't know.

I'm certainly not going to chase after him.

Yeah.

Come on, Gallagher.

Well, I haven't heard that in a while.

That was pretty early in the run.

I guess, and it was like coincidental.

It's not like we booked him.

I just knew he was in town.

The best part of that whole experience with him was we were at the hotel and I met him in the lobby.

He's like, I'm going to show you a trick.

And he's like, we're going to get free coffee because there was some sort of thing in the conference room.

He's like, come on.

You know, he's been doing that in all the hotels he's worked in his whole life.

Like, you know, there's a commissary for the employees.

They'll give you free chicken tea.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I, but I have, like, in my mind, thought, like, well, was I indicting him?

And I don't think I was.

I think that was, you know, I was trying that my

argument or, you know, what I was trying to sort of expand on with him was valid.

Was he in trouble for some jokes?

Is that what happened?

There was something else.

Yeah, well, he had, you know, done these like, you know, old street jokes, but he's clearly at the moment where he says, you know, black people talk about white people all the time then you know it's game over because he's dug into something that is not it's a false equivalent you know and it and it's clearly uh

you know racially motivated so like his his idea is like if people laugh at it uh you know what could be wrong And well,

again, you can say whatever you want and you might have an audience for that.

But in the big picture,

it may not be wrong, but it's insensitive and he doesn't give a fuck.

Or worthy of a debate that doesn't have to be where he goes into total meltdown.

Yeah, I mean, it took a minute, but he wasn't, the truth was, is that it could have, if he could have said, like, I understand your point, but this is, you know, this is how I do it, it would have been different.

Yeah.

But

I do not think I was being, I think I was trying to get to the place where we could talk about his career.

And

again, I just interviewed him because I knew he was in town and it happened.

And I had to bend my brain into that place where it's like, you know, this guy was at the store in the 70s.

You know, he's a guy.

He did his own thing.

Everybody knows him.

So he has a place in this.

And I think in the conversation,

you know, about the idea of putting on a show, I mean, that's valuable.

That makes sense.

That is where he comes from.

It's almost a street performer or

pop singer idea because it's more than just having a big closer.

It's having, you know, he's a prop act.

So, you know, you kind of evolve this big show.

But the fact that he sees that as the only viable form of comedy is ridiculous.

When he decides he doesn't like anyone talking about themselves.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And if like if that's any indication of who he was, it'd be impossible to sit through.

Yeah.

Then there's, I mean, I get when some people, you know, have fun with with that, like everyone's opening up too much.

Like, there's certainly

a discussion to be had about the bloodletting that's happening.

I always enjoy anyone open in a vein.

But it doesn't happen.

Like, that was sort of like the

false promise of alt comedy

is that because most of those people did not go on to have big comedy careers, really, that whole scene, because it was indulgent.

And, you know, in San Francisco used to be a little indulgent, but there is a way to to do that.

And I guess, you know, I guess it is sort of, you know, outside of

like, if you really think about people who do that for real and the toll it takes on them and how they have to frame it, it's really only Richard Lewis.

Right.

I mean, who else was really doing that?

Like, you know, like, okay, I go to therapy, whatever, a couple jokes.

But to live in, you know, the mental illness that he had as being the only resource for him to make jokes.

I mean, and and it's sort of specific.

I mean, and I think a lot of people like Richard Lewis, but a lot of people probably don't because of that.

So I think that line of figuring out how to be that indulgent because your point of view is limited to you, which I decided to do, you know,

out of not wanting material to be stolen or to cross streams.

You know, it's challenging because there's always going to be people calling you a navel gazer or you're just doing therapy or whatever.

Because a lot of people would do that, but they do it in character.

Like Woody Allen was in character.

So all the analysis jokes and everything else in terms of true vulnerability around going through life was tempered by that.

Also the personal stuff, I think, seems to hold up better over time.

The Richard Pryor material about his life

really holds up.

And I think some of the other styles of comedies aimed at.

Well, he's like the template because he had this whole like canvas of characters and social position.

you know but once he started up and there's bits and pieces in some of the records leading up to the the massive up you know the two like you know the one where he shot the car which was earlier and then the one where he set himself on fire so of course it's going to hold up because a guy set himself on fire the funniest man in the world set himself on fire smoking crack or free basing always a solid story totally

and uh speaking of which uh there was a comedian who's no longer with us who's on the show named Mike DiStefano,

who had an amazing bunch of stories he told on your show.

And I think he did it at like the moth.

Yeah, that was a big breakthrough for him.

And someone who we all lost way too soon.

So I thought I would play a clip from that episode.

I said, why is she so mad at me?

He goes, well, she just feels like you're moving on with your life and you don't love her anymore.

Like you have this motorcycle.

And

he said, you don't need her anymore like that was a strange thing and i realized how much i did need her like i loved her like she was my best friend and so what i did was i went home and i brought some of my work shirts back to the hospice so uh i bring these shirts these work shirts into her and she was sicilian so i said franny my shirts are a fucking mess i need you to iron them for me she got all you i'm in the hospice you know like what yeah so i went i left i come back 20 minutes later all the shirts are ironed you know she got up and then she's like where's the motorcycle now she's excited about i guess and that guy was right she just wanted to know that that i still needed her like i loved her you know what i mean like people aren't dying they don't know they're dying they're they feel i'm alive dying is an event they pass away at one moment up until that moment they are alive and they want to be loved and they want to give yeah and share you know in that case so so she want now she wants to see that i take her out she wants to sit on it.

I put her on it.

She wants to start it up.

Now she's wearing fucking a paper dress, you know, essentially.

She's got her morphine pole next to her.

And she's sitting on this Harley.

And I'm worried about her burning her freaking leg off.

So I'm, she says,

can you just take me for a little ride around the parking lot?

I'm like, no, I can't.

I'm thinking, get the fuck.

You got a drift IV with?

Yeah.

And then it just hit me.

I'm like, no, you have to.

Yeah.

Like, you're in this moment.

You have to do this motorcycle ride.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, and it's dangerous.

And what if she falls?

And, you know, what if I, one day I'm telling the story.

Yeah, my wife, she almost died of AIDS, but then I've killed her on my Harley.

She fell off and banged her fucking head.

That's how she, you know, that's a fucked up story.

So,

you know, so

that's when I realized, you know, fuck it.

Fuck, of course.

Yeah.

So I'm riding around the hospice parking lot.

And then my friend comes barreling in this man who's a crippled in the wheelchair, laughing.

What are you doing?

I said, I'm riding frannie around franny's like could we just go out on the street a little bit where's the morphine drip she holding it she's holding the pole

mark it was a pole with four wheels on the bottom yeah and we're riding around this hospice you could hear the goddamn wheels jangling and banging yeah it was insane and then i passed the front door and all these nurses are standing out front and they're all crying They're watching.

I said, they're fucking crying.

And I didn't know why they were crying.

I was like, why are they crying?

I didn't get what they were seeing.

I didn't know.

Because I was just in it.

I was living it.

I knew

my wife who had suffered the suffering that she had been through in her life.

She was a prostitute.

She was a fucking heroin addict.

You know, she was beaten by fucking pimps.

This is her past.

And then she ends up with this AIDS and she's dying.

And all she wants is a fucking ride on my motorcycle.

You know, what a gift, you know?

So next thing you know, we're on I-95.

Because women, it's never enough for them.

We're on 95.

She's got, she unhooks the fucking pole and she's holding the morphine bag over her head with a, with her gown on that's flying up in the air.

So you can see her entire fucking naked, bony body with the morphine bag whipping in the wind.

And I'm dry, and we're passing by these guys in their Lamborghinis and shit.

And I'm looking at him like, what the fuck?

How do these people,

what are you doing?

What kind of life are you living?

Look at me.

I'm on top of the world here.

And, you know, that was the last thing thing I did with her, you know, and, you know, I feel so blessed and lucky.

Like, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

I feel like that was, you can't ask for a better moment in memory than that, you know?

So.

Yeah, it's heavy, man.

Yeah, it's beautiful stuff, you know, and it's what we all.

You know, the biggest things that we're afraid of are really can be the most beautiful if you look if you look them right in the fucking eye and you don't flinch because there's something really beautiful behind it.

Hmm.

Hell of a story.

Do you remember doing that interview?

Yeah.

Yeah, I think we were in Florida.

And,

you know,

the range of personal experience, you know, of

sadness, trauma,

you know, losing control of your life.

It's all varied, but the impact is always similar if you connect with it.

But I think what's beautiful about

him, about DiSefano, is that

this is a

hard life, but it's also

a life that could be judged

by

proper culture.

He was a sober guy,

and when he talks about what his wife did and who she was and who he was, you know, this is an easy sort of

humanity to dismiss as degenerate or, you know, like,

what a fucking out-of-control loser or whatever.

But to find the humanity

in those moments for people that have had that type of rough go at it, whether it's jail or drugs or

horrendous abuse, it's very powerful

to humanize things that can be dismissed as

weak-willed or criminal or whatever.

Because the struggle is the same.

And when people transcend

those types of

situations with their humanity,

it's humbling, and it's powerful, and it's a testament to the human spirit, and it transcends whatever judgment you're going to put on it.

What did you think when you first realized that this was going to be a certain portion of the show that it wasn't just funny chats with comics about their road adventures?

Like, you didn't see this coming, I would assume, that people would open up in this way.

No, but like, when it started happening, I realized that it was fundamentally

helping me by forcing me to make the space.

for that kind of empathy and to sort of like naturally like, you know, once I, you know, once you get, if you're with a comic and you're doing the thing and you got that going, that's good.

And you can take some good shots.

And there's certain people whose balls I can bust and they get a kick out of it.

But once you enter this other space,

my need for connection stops.

And then

after that stops,

my empathy builds.

So once that space started opening more, it was like, well, this is the real stuff.

If we can get to, you know, anywhere in this, in this spectrum of

sharing vulnerability and engaging with empathy,

that's the human stuff that is missing, I think, from a lot of people's interactions, like you said.

Don't you think that on some level makes you believe in

the universal intelligence or spirituality or God that somebody like you that was struggling with issues of empathy or self-involvement

and

somehow you're drawn to do a show that has conversations with people that forces you to learn all these lessons and changes you while helping other people.

People are presented with these opportunities and they can take them or not to learn and grow

and get over their

I don't know if it implies universal intelligence because if you're not...

Why you got to find universal intelligence?

Just say that's what it is.

This is your next lesson.

I'm going to teach it to you.

No, I do.

I'm not going to deny that there's universal intelligence, but I'm also not going to deny that humans, either collectively or on an individual level, can push back on that and become monsters.

So, you know, honoring the universal intelligence, or if you want to call it God, you know, honoring God, you know, finding the humility in whatever God you choose is, you know, it requires a vigilance and it requires a connection.

And, you know, if this...

if this exists as universal intelligence, that doesn't guarantee that humanity is going to be decent or that humanity is not going to fuck itself by pushing back on that or or misinterpreting it and using it for evil means.

So this is all in your special.

Different way.

It's suggested in the special.

This might be more in one of the past specials.

But no, I agree with you, but I do think that in a in a culture that is divisive to the point where

it's not even group divisive, it's divisive on an individual level because of the way we take in information, that you know, these

stories that elevate the human experience and the humanity of it and the humility of it, you know, it's like food, dude.

And it's food that is not readily available as much as it used to be.

Okay.

I'm going to put on a clip of something funny of Robin Williams

talking about suicide.

So, but funny.

Yeah, of course.

But very, very, very funny.

But I think one of the best of all of the interviews that you did.

So

before you had the heart problem, I mean,

you don't seem to me someone who's like morbidly fascinated or hung up on death.

No, I mean, that's weird.

I mean, when I was drinking, there was only one time, even for a moment, where I thought, oh, fuck life.

And then I went like,

then even my conscious brain went, did you obviously just say, fuck life?

You know, you have a pretty good life as it is right now.

Have you noticed the two houses?

Yes.

Have you noticed the government?

Yes.

Have you noticed that things are pretty good, even though you may not be working right now?

Yes.

Okay, let's put the suicide over here on discussable.

Let's leave that over here into the discussion area.

We'll talk about that.

First of all, you don't have the balls to do it.

I'm not going to say it out loud.

I mean, have you thought about buying a gun?

No.

What were you going to do?

Like, cut your wrist with a water pick?

Maybe.

So that's erosion.

What are you thinking about that?

So, can I put this over here in the what the fuck category?

Yes, let's put that over here over what the fuck.

Because can I ask you what you're doing right now?

You're sitting naked in a hotel room with a bottle of Jack Daniels?

Yes.

Is this maybe influencing your decision?

Possibly.

Okay, we're going to put that over here and tomorrow morning.

And who's that in the bed there?

I don't know.

Okay, well, don't discuss this with her because she may tweet it.

Okay, this may not be good.

Let's put that over here in the what the fuck category.

We're going to put that over here.

Possibly for therapy if you want to talk about that in therapy.

Or maybe a podcast two years from now.

Do you want to talk about it in the podcast?

No, I feel safe.

You're talking about it in the podcast?

I know.

Who is this?

It's your conscience, asshole.

Oh, okay.

So,

have you ever thought about it since then?

No.

During the surgery, were you thinking about death?

No.

Why?

Because you just were thinking everything's going to be fine.

Was that your mother talking?

Maybe.

She was a Christian scientist who had plastic surgery.

Wow.

Is that a mixed message?

Yeah, that is.

Okay.

We're going to go back to the podcast now because Mark's sitting here.

We're talking now.

It's going to be, I know it would feel like golf commentary, but look, Tiger's back.

Tiger's playing.

Tiger's doing well.

I was hoping that some of the tweets would have golf metaphors like, you know, choke up rather than choke,

or like, you know, I'm going to hold you down and putt from the rough.

No, you didn't say that.

You know, it's all good.

We're back.

Thank you.

That was wonderful.

Thank you.

It's a nice interval.

A nice interval.

Discussions of death.

It's very freeing.

Thank you.

Wow, man.

I haven't heard that since it happened.

So

what's amazing about that is you get his whole life story.

You get his weird improvisational genius.

And you get, you know, a real sort of sense of struggle.

Like, and

it's like no matter what anyone said about that guy, you know, repeating riffs or hackiness or whatever.

I mean, that, that is the genius, you know, in that little piece, you know, because, you know i i could see him doing that on stage and that his innate uh need to find a funny line i mean you know who's that next to you i don't know i mean that where does that

to have that in the moment you know because he was going through it like one of the reasons i did that interview you know

and his death you know in light of that i i think has to be separated for

the the intentions, you know, his struggle with with not wanting to live in the midst of alcoholic self-pity is different than making a choice in relation to a chronic debilitating disease.

Well, he had Lewy body dementia.

Yeah.

And so it wasn't

really about depression.

It was somebody who was

like, yes.

And I think that

however you feel like that about that, that the choice is different than to

have a bad night and

make the mistake of killing yourself.

You know, it's obviously something thought through.

And for reasons that even if you're morally uncomfortable with it, it's understandable.

But the reason I did that interview was interesting because it was really like, you know, you got to love Robin.

And, you know, even with all within our community that sort of each stole jokes or he's hacky or whatever.

When I'd hear young comics, you know, diminish,

his stature, you know, there was always part of me that's like, all right, even my personal feelings aside, you know, I don't follow everything Robin does, but he has done everything that you want to do brilliantly.

Like, you know, he, you know, he was an inspired comic, a singular voice.

He was, you know, the center of

a hit television show that honored his voice.

He had a range that enabled him to do, you know, tons of movies.

Did he win Academy Awards?

For Goodwill Hunting.

Yeah.

So, like, and you're going to sit here and go like, nah, he's a thief and a hack.

It's like, go fuck yourself.

So part of my intention

was to

elevate him with a new generation of comics.

Well, I was watching the documentary about him on HBO literally last night.

The amount of incredibly brilliant jokes is ridiculously high.

Yeah.

You know, I think that he's underrated in a giant way.

That was what drove me.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

That

it was like, who the fuck are you to like take any shots at this guy?

You know, and God knows when I was younger, you know, the joke stealing thing, you know, it has an impact or whatever.

You just send checks.

It's like, but I had a moment with him up at the Throckmorton after he saw me at a show where I saw it happen.

There are guys that just have a certain, and it's not, I'm not being an apologist for it, but

It was funny because he watched the whole show.

I was on stage and he was up in the, you couldn't see him.

He was in a balcony seat.

And anytime a joke would just not do quite well, I'd hear, oh,

he was there for you.

But I also knew on some level he wanted me to bring him in.

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah.

Because that's just the way he was, but I couldn't handle that.

But after the show, we're backstage and he's talking to me and he's doing that bit I used to do about the demon, the tired demon.

You know, like, you know, it used to be like, let's go out and get some booze and pussy and, you know, whatever.

And now it's sort of like, oh, that's an ice cream.

And he started to paraphrase it to me to my face and then kind of run with it make it better right and i'm like that's how it happens yeah you know it's just one next step to where he thought of it and it's it's not necessarily forgivable but i get it you know and it happens and that's just the way it is Well, I

don't think I've been in such a soft spot.

I'm sure he did.

But

I have such a soft spot for him because my first job was working for comic relief.

So when I was 18, I would watch the rehearsals.

I was just a PA.

I just got to watch him from a distance for many years.

Just how kind he was.

Yeah,

how brilliant and

just a special person.

And when he passed, someone said, you know, we all took him for granted because he was such a joy machine for so long, so consistently that people.

didn't appreciate it because it was just he was always there constantly doing doing his thing uh i'll uh switch to music for a moment okay

because i i know how much you love music.

And one of the great interviews you did was with Bruce Springsteen.

And I think one of the reasons why it was so strong was I don't think he is one of your favorites of all time.

He's not your Rolling Stones.

And as a result, you were very loose and real.

And you had a very intimate conversation about depression and fathers.

And I think it's one of the best interviews he's ever done because he was having a riot with you and it was like people discovering each other.

That's right.

I got him engaged, you know, with me,

which was, you know, because he's a guy whose public persona is like, yeah, me and the boy.

You know,

it's very dug in and pretty broad.

Like, you know, he can put on the Bruce show, you know, in conversation.

I think after this podcast, something shifted in him.

I'm not going to take responsibility for it.

But then, you know, comes the one-person show, comes, you know, but before that, before this interview, that was not what was happening.

And again, I'm not taking responsibility for it, but

it probably was the book.

You know, going out on the road and reading pieces, that book that is very sort of in-depth, candid, and really shows his flaws, shows the family that he came from.

You know, it's relentless and kind of brutal.

But

I loved, there's a moment I always talk about from that interview that was just the best

where,

you know, he didn't know me.

You know, the publicist set it up and I'm at his house.

It's Christmas week and we're in Jersey, me and Brendan.

And we're waiting in this separate building that's like a studio and this motorcycles are there, equipment, guitars and stuff.

You know, it's a nice big space.

And we're just waiting.

I got my little Zoom over there.

And I just see him walking down from the big house, you know, little Bruce.

And he's walking down.

He's got his book because I think he's used to like, you know, you want to read some of it.

And I'm like, he has no, yeah, it was a moment he has no idea what he's getting into.

And I just started the way I usually start.

I'm sure it's on there.

I paraphrase myself because I could just listen to what I exactly say.

But I remember he comes in, he sits down, you know, with that Bruce kind of weight.

You know, like, who are you?

You know, like, but it was, so I said, so what's going on at the house?

A lot of craziness, Christmas, cooking, presents.

He's like, correct.

And I'm like, I want to talk to that Bruce.

Whoever that Bruce was.

We got to go there.

You know?

And a year or two later, I found, you know, Ta Wilkenfeld, right?

The bass player, the prodigy, who plays with all these guys.

And apparently she was in conversation.

She was talking to Bruce candidly about doing a press tour for her record.

And

he said, well, when you do interviews, you just tell them what you want to tell them.

You don't have to answer their question.

You take control of it.

You tell them what you want to tell them.

You guide it.

And she goes, oh,

that's good advice.

You know, because my friend Mark Maron interviewed you, and he said he pushed.

You got it out of him.

Yeah.

Well, let's take a little listen.

I mean, you talk a little bit about boundaries in the book, but what you had to do in your mind was sort of build the wall.

Yes,

I built quite a few of them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, just to protect this other part, which leads to this thing, you know, I do stand-up and I've doing it for years.

And there was something I identified with in the book, which was for some reason, and this is me now, and maybe you can help me.

Maybe you already are.

But

I can open up in front of a crowd.

Yeah.

Like, and like and put it all out there.

Well, that's easy to do.

I guess,

if you're that kind of person.

Correct.

Right.

But, like, when I get home or I'm in a relationship, you know, I'm like, what do you want?

What do you, what?

What's happening?

Well, there's certain kinds of people, you know, that only feel at home in a crowd.

Performing for them.

Performing.

You have control.

Number one.

You have tremendous control.

Tremendous control.

Everybody's listening to you.

Isn't that great?

But what about those times, though?

I don't know if you ever did it, but

it seems like that you really kind of had a practical way of addressing fear, know, heading into things.

Like you didn't want it.

I have to assume it was there, but somehow.

Of course.

Right.

But did you ever have those nights where, you know, you, you, you, that one place where you have control, you go up and it's like, listen, I mean, I know you talk about one gig in London.

Yeah, of course.

Well, your desperation has to be greater.

than your fear.

You know, your desperation, your hunger, your desires, your ego, your ambition has to be greater than your fear of complete humiliation.

And so

as long as you have that equation correctly balanced, you're going out there, my friend, no matter what happens.

Because you have to.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, but it's like, it's funny, though, because there was an interesting realization that you had.

And I assume a lot of this stuff in the book, it's you thinking about this stuff.

Like, I have to assume that some of the stuff you write in the book about the past is you now going, like, oh, yeah, well, now that I know this, of course, that's what I was doing.

Of course.

But back then, you're like,

who knows?

Yeah.

I'm just going.

All of this stuff is inside me,

working its magic.

Yeah.

And I'm just following it.

And I'm stumbling out on stage because I have to.

I'm not sure why I have to at the time.

And then I'm just, you know, exploding and letting letting things take their course but those nights where it's like that you didn't get the love you needed out there that's bad

well that means that because that means yeah there ain't no love nowhere

that's why those nights are bad if you've squeezed all the rest out of your out of your daily life and then you're not getting it there

there ain't no love nowhere my friend it's a lonely world when that happens and you went through months like that well sure.

I mean, now most of the time, you know, we're not about the crowds, but where you take, you were out in the exile in a way.

You know, I went through that for years, you know, years and years, you know, in my real life.

Yeah.

You know.

Yes.

But,

you know, I always fell back on my pretend life where I got to pretend I was Bruce Bringstein.

And

I always had that to fall back on for three or four hours a night, you know.

Right, right.

Yeah.

When things get real dark, it's sort of like, let's do the show.

Yeah,

at least that's something that I know where the fuck I am, right?

Yeah, that's just

there.

I know what's going on.

I know what's expected of me.

I have no problem busting my ass to deliver it.

And at the end of the evening, I can go home and put my head to sleep on my pillow in a short moment of peace.

I did it.

I did it.

And then you wake up and hell starts all over again.

Holy fuck.

I'm pretty good at this.

Why are you stopping?

You're going to keep it going after this episode.

But I did go through the list of all the episodes.

Yeah.

You really did get almost everybody.

I know.

And so when I went through it, I thought,

I mean, obviously, I was one of the people who was like, you definitely shouldn't stop doing it.

Just do it less.

But when I went through the names, there is a sense that it is completed.

And also there is an arc to you telling your story through all the people from the comedy store that you interviewed and working through things.

And there does seem to be a sense of the circle has closed.

Yeah, I believe that.

But that Bruce thing was like, you know,

It's kind of amazing because I don't listen to these, but, you know, we were locked in.

He was getting laughs.

He felt comfortable, you know, he was like, you know, he was exploring it in a different way than he did in the book.

And there was another one when I was telling him some story about myself about, you know, never feeling like it's quite enough.

And he's like, of course you don't.

Like, you know, that there was this, you know, he was in.

And

I just did a small part in that movie.

And it was, it was kind of great, you know, because it's a very small part.

And I was kind of like, oh my God, I got nothing to do in this movie.

But he and Landau were in the video village the whole time.

And you're the producer?

No, I'm just an engineer.

A sound engineer.

Yeah.

Wait, so you're acting in spring scenes at the monitor.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

And it was very helpful, I think, for Jeremy Strong to have Landau there because he's so meticulous.

So if he had a check of behavior or something, he could go.

But for me, you know, you know, cut, and I could go out there.

And because I had that experience with him, he's like, yay, you know, and you know, we could sit and talk about guitars and shit.

It's an amazing thing because, you know, out of all these guys,

the thing that becomes

really kind of enlightening is that you do talk to them as people

and they are just people, but they can do this amazing fucking thing.

Like the, you know, it's like magic.

How the fuck do you do?

I still can't answer that.

It's just like us.

You could just go in a room and write Candy's room.

Yeah, but perform it for four hours to sort of hold that space for that many people.

And,

you know, and it's

no matter how you talk about them, it doesn't explain that.

That's the fucking gift.

You can't explain that.

Why is Keith Richards like Keith Richards?

I still watch Keith Richards on stage, you know, old stuff, new stuff with a guitar.

And I'm like, and there's like 30,000 people there.

And they're just like doing it.

How the fuck do you do that?

You know, it's, and it's not the same with comics.

You know, like,

I always think when comics are playing like arenas, they're, they're, they're doing something other than what i think stand-up is

you mean doing arena shows is different than being in a in a club well yeah just doing like you know that kind of like down and dirty you know even even a showroom an arena thing is has different requirements i don't understand why people go to see comedy at arenas really because you have to you know you kind of you have to change your timing you know your decisions are all based on punchlines that are so solid that you have time to wait for them and you know it's just not it's the intimacy is not there.

And I kind of thrive on that.

Yeah, whenever I'm around people

who've achieved like that, I feel like people like him have evolved to a place where the work is a giving gesture.

It's not just the work.

Yeah.

He feels like he's on a...

on a long journey with his audience, filling them in about his life, being an avatar for their experiences.

And at some point, it just becomes this other thing.

And I do think in comedy, in your work, when you share your experiences, you know, with your dad, what's happening with your family, that that's the comedian's version of sharing.

Yeah.

And also the podcast, the evolution of that.

But also like there's something magic about music that, you know, there's no analogue for that in comedy in that

people, you know, spend their life with those songs and those songs grow with them.

And they represent different points in their life.

And sometimes, you know, music that you listen to as a younger person and you listen to it as an older person, it continues to evolve and grow with you.

And that's just fucking magic.

Who the hell knows what that is?

But it's also easier because you do get to play your greatest hits.

So, you know, a comedian every couple of years has to start over.

And how fun would it be if you had your...

Born to run

and you could enjoy this period of your life,

just having the, you know, the result of your entire life's work.

And then just do it and the crowd is just enraptured yeah about it it's with a comedian like i got to write a whole new thing yeah i know i know and and and also with but there there is something to be said about jokes because jokes do last as long as anything else if not longer than music i mean there are jokes that you enjoy telling because you know you know how to do it and they could be old as fuck

like you know if someone asks you what's your favorite old joke you have one and you tell it and it's like wow that thing's got life it's always gonna have life well the old timers used to keep the same act their entire career well so they were able to do it so so maybe we all made a mistake by thinking we needed to keep writing the set uh okay we're gonna switch to uh a lighter a lighter story you know i tend to go heavier yeah uh and this is a clip from the great molly shannon I hopped a plane when I was 12.

We told my dad, me and my friend Ann, we're like, we're going to hop a plane to New York.

And he was like, he dared us.

So we went to the

house.

We were like 12.

Oh, good.

That's what we're doing.

We went to the airport and we had ballet outfits on and we put our hair in buns and we wanted to look really innocent.

And this was, again, when flying was really easy.

You didn't need your ticket to get through.

Apparently, you didn't need an adult either.

And we told my dad, and we were just like, we saw there were two flights.

We were either going to go to San Francisco or New York.

And we thought, oh, let's go to New York.

It's leaving early.

So we went.

We said to the stewardess, we just want to say goodbye to my sister.

Can we go on the plane?

And she was like, sure.

And then she led us on.

And it was a really empty flight because it was out of Cleveland, Ohio.

And we sat back there and then all of a sudden you just hear like

the plane takes off.

We were like,

and we had like little ballet outfits and buns and I was like, hey, I'm Mary Philip Grace Lord's with the muscle.

And she's told me my mother got praised.

Now they are.

And then the stewardess that had given us permission to...

to go say goodbye bye to my sister came by to ask if we wanted snacks or beverages and she was like, can I get you ladies something to eat?

She looked like she was like, oh motherfucker.

You know, so she

so we we wondered if we were gonna get in trouble, but she ended up not telling anyone and then when we landed in New York City she was like bye ladies

have a nice trip

it's such an exciting story but the irresponsibility of all the adults in this story is somehow undermining my appreciation of it.

You were 12 year old girls in fucking ballet outfits, and everybody's sort of like, have a good time.

What world was that?

It was a crazy world.

What did you do in New York?

And now you're going to say, we got drunk and we went to a.

Well, again, because I had a crazy childhood, we called my dad.

We were like, we did it.

And he's like, oh, dad, Molly.

Oh, geez, we'll try to.

So basically, he couldn't see.

Try to what?

He didn't know what to do.

He said, try to see if you could stay, go find a hotel that you could stay in.

Me and Mary, my sister will come meet you.

We'll drive there.

So basically, we were like, all right, we'll try to find a hotel.

But he was kind of excited because he liked crazy stuff.

But basically, we didn't have that much.

We just had our ballet bags and a little bit of cash.

So we went to a diner and we dined in Dash and we stole things.

We were like little con artists.

Wait, did you actually make it to the city?

We made it to the city.

We just asked people.

I was like, how do you get to Rockefeller Center?

Because I'd just seen TV.

And you're still in your ballet outfit.

The ballet outfit?

Yeah.

Really?

Nobody said, are you girls lost?

Nothing like that?

No, nothing.

They went into a bar and they got drank up, ladies.

So we did try to go to hotels and my dad would call and ask, could they just stay there till we get there?

And none of the hotels wanted to be responsible.

Oh my God.

So

he was like, all right, you got to come home.

He was like, but I'm not paying for it.

So try to hop on one on the way back.

So we tried to hop on many planes, but the flights were all so crowded.

So we ended up having to have him pay for it, it and he made us pay for him, pay it all back with our babysitting money.

That was the big punishment.

Yeah, there was no punishment.

No, I know.

I mean, clearly,

was there any sort of like, oh, you survived.

I was just testing you.

He loved that kind of stuff.

Like I said, he was wild.

He used to, in his drinking days, he would, you know, go to bars.

And if somebody didn't let him in, he'd be like, damn it.

You know, he'd go into the bar and knock all the glasses down.

He was like a kind of guy who could maybe get arrested.

Like, it was crazy.

I love the

sort of strange nostalgic excitement you have

for this borderline child abuse.

Yeah, it was complicated.

Oh, now you're going to say that?

Yeah, there's just one story that's complicated.

But he was also a very loving parent.

I think it's complicated.

He was also really supportive and kind of made me feel like I could do anything.

And so in that way, it felt really free and wild.

But then in other ways, I had to learn the rules of like how regular people live.

From other people, right?

Yeah, from other people.

Like professionals.

Like people you pay.

You know what I mean?

I do know what you mean.

I have them in my life.

Wow.

You had a lot of live ones.

In the beginning, you stopped doing them.

Yeah.

But did you enjoy doing the live versions?

Yeah, of course.

You know, because I think I'm even better at it now of like having the freedom of mind to just, you know, be funny and be because I can be pretty quick and I know how to get laughs.

But the live ones are great because it was really about that.

We knew going in that this is going to be an entertaining show and you want to do it.

So you elevate the guests and then kind of carry it along with being funny.

And there were panels during those live ones that were great.

I remember I was never more thrilled than to have Ira Glass and Artie Lang on the same panel.

I thought I had done something miraculous.

Do you ever wish that you did do an official TV talk show?

Sure.

I mean, I did a pilot for one after short attention span theater,

you know, that, you know, before the daily show, which ended up being the show that became that.

But I did a sort of a straight sit-down talk show pilot.

And I remember the guests were Chappelle, very young Chappelle, and Stephen Weber.

You know, we did two episodes.

I think it was, you know, called the Mark Marum Project, but it was straight up, you know, sit and talk.

And

I don't know if I had the chops end, you know, but I certainly do now that they're no longer, you know, viable or going to be in existence much longer.

Well, those formats didn't allow for what you did.

No, it would, none of them did.

You know, even when people talk about long-form people like Dick Cavitt or somebody, I mean, the closest one would be like a Charlie Rose situation, but that's not an audience.

And that, you know, I just assume do this.

But

I think there was a way, it was sort of more like what Letterman did on Netflix, but he had the gravitas of being Letterman.

And do you are you satisfied with the path that revealed itself?

Totally.

You know,

totally, because

we dictated it, you know, me and Brendan.

And there's something about not being beholden to cameras or that timing or the, you know, the sort of...

elevated atmosphere of being on camera and then being on camera in front of an audience that I think that the intimacy that gets created here is something unique.

And it's unique even more so than,

you know, say Terry Gross, who's the best, but she does a different thing.

And even when I recently talked to her a couple of weeks ago,

there was something more candid about her approach with me, but I was never doing that kind of interview.

So once it started to unfold that I was doing something that didn't really exist in any space with some consistency.

I sort of had a pride in it and

accepted it.

Initially

I kind of always thought it was going to diminish my stand-up.

And so it was really kind of like, that's part of my interrupting style was like, no, I'm a comic and I got to be in here.

This is about me.

But that was different.

And now all the podcasts are switching to video.

I mean, when will they all start getting an audience?

Will it all reverse itself?

I don't know how it works, but I have noticed that because of the contraction in mainstream show business and the ability for people to sort of build their own separate show businesses, that you get these bubble audiences.

Some of them are huge and some of them aren't as huge.

But I do you do start to realize, and I'm sure you do as well, that

the quality is it lowers the bar tremendously

what a show looks like.

And sadly, I think people will just adapt to that and not really take into mind just how many talented people and what goes into making a good talk show.

Like, I think they're just dealing with like, this is enough.

What else do we need?

And so that whole sort of

context of what these shows were, which were big, beautiful show business, you know, they just don't give a fuck.

And you're just getting, you know, sort of afternoon radio of some form or another.

But the audience has shifted and they just don't care because everything is disposable and fleeting and segmented.

So, you know, all that show business built has,

you know, been overshadowed by amateurs and people are fine with that.

Well, it is, you know, like kind of,

you know, on one level, there's, you know, a lot of voices are allowed in, but at some point, you need the lunatics who want to really take it to the next level creatively and to not just do the simple version of it.

The thing that we all loved about Letterman or Mark Conan was

they grinded to find ways to do it the way no one had ever done it.

And we're not really seeing that yet, although it could happen where

someone goes, well, what else can you do here?

It's so cheap to do it.

What other kind of

can you do?

I haven't seen much of that at all lately, except for Nathan Fielder, where it's just sort of like, I don't even know what that is, but it's something.

He's going deep in a way where we think we're going deep.

We're not even close.

But using the sort of tools of money and network support to execute a vision that is truly unique is rare.

I do think that

what undermines the possibility of what you're talking about is just laziness and the need to chase content generation.

Yeah, and it's hard.

It's just, it's like really, it's

hard work.

You know, we did 13 episodes of the Ben Siller show back in the, in the day.

And I still stay, that was the hardest six months of my life.

Yeah.

I mean, we would be shooting all day, going to the sound mix at one o'clock in the morning,

trying to write these things.

And it was

as exhausting, like where you had nothing left, but it was fun.

But there's a drive of a collective to try to do something new and great.

Like, I don't don't know if that exists among

at least 80 to 90 percent of what's being generated out there outside the

umbrella of mainstream show business.

So, I don't know.

Well, one

super original voice who had a great show called Lady Dynamite, and you had her on a bunch of times,

was

the great Maria Bamford, who I'm working on a documentary about.

You know, like I had a relationship where a person was, uh,

I was frightened.

I started to get frightened.

Of him.

Of him.

And friends and family said, hey,

wow, what's are you okay?

And stuff like that.

So then,

but in that, you know, the element, you know, of control is like, yeah, I, I think I kept thinking, oh, well,

I want to have, I'm going to fix it, which is a totally could like I'm going to, I'm going to either do the right thing so the person won't have, uh get enraged anymore, which was

a rager?

Yeah, yeah, where I couldn't I couldn't do the right thing.

I couldn't figure out all the things that I needed to do to to to so it wouldn't happen again.

But it would always keep happening.

And then it was like, well

you know what uh

and I I learned to d do I it got better with it where I wouldn't react as much to it and I would just kind of be like, oh, this person is you tried to detach?

Yeah, detach with love, you know, going like a, you know, just repeating back what they said, saying, I hear this is what you're saying.

And, and, but then it is so upsetting over time that it's like, uh,

you know, I gotta let them go because I'm I'm feeling so feeling so bad.

But but also to say that that person is wonderful, like has incredibly wonderful qualities.

And like, and uh, but I felt like I wasn't helping anymore.

Like I was starting to.

And also you felt probably...

It's emotional abuse.

Yeah, yeah.

And you start to lose touch with yourself.

Lose on yourself.

And, and also, I felt like my own possibility of me getting abusive, you know, of me going, wow, wow, wow, you know, and it's like, oh, God, you know, like, I,

yeah, so I, and I think some element of it was.

Like that whole idea of I'm going to help somebody.

Well, that's that's my problem.

I was the guy that would walk into an uncontrollable rage and, you know, not stop until my ex-wife was crying and then i'd feel bad and then i'd apologize but it doesn't go away after a certain point in time it doesn't go away and i from what i i mean i've read a bunch of books on a no maybe you can help me because well yeah my mom is a it works for a domestic violence center and you know domestic violence you know

um

i think

what i've read is that um and my boyfriend at the time he uh his dad had been physically abused

he had seen physical abuse and i I think on some level, equating emotional or physical abuse with intimacy.

Also, they said, you know, so that if I love this person on a subconscious level, this is what's going to go down.

And they can handle my rage,

you know, if they love me.

And then, you know, it's...

Was she physically abusive?

One occasion, one occasion.

And that was it.

No, no, no, it wasn't actually, which is super sad.

You know, I was like, and actually then it it was very classic violence where it was like denied that he did it said oh that wasn't me I was like well oh you know that whole like

gaslighting like oh you're crazy you know like and I was like oh oh okay yeah and okay quietly okay I get it go in the other room no no but I I didn't get that because because you love the person right you know you love the person and you do respect them on a lot of levels but you know again nobody is all bad or all good like that's right lovely, loving, super loving person.

We had a lot of good times, too.

So it's, it's confusing, I think.

The fact that I did that while I was driving is always interesting.

That's the only driving one you did.

No.

There's another one.

There was one with Pepitone.

And there's a couple intros I did in the car.

The intro to Robin, I think, might have been in the car because I did it in real time driving to his house.

But you were talking on another show that the audience that you have for this show,

you know, that in addition to to being entertained, there are a lot of people that, you know, Maria, something like Maria opening up about this might help them look for the help they need to deal with their issues.

And a lot of people dealt with their sobriety as a result of you talking about yours and a lot of people talking about how they

got sober.

I just, well, totally.

I didn't expect that.

And it's always very heartening.

Yeah, a lot of emails about helping people get sober, helping people not kill themselves,

learning about things that they didn't know other people had or experienced.

It's been a huge part of the impact of the show.

But I just fucking love her.

Like, I can't say enough.

She's the funniest.

Totally.

And I say it anytime anyone asks me, who's the funniest comedian?

I'm like, seriously?

Maria Bamford.

There is no one funnier than that.

Go on Spotify and just do a random playlist of Maria Bamford and have your mind blown.

I remember a couple of years ago, I hadn't really seen her in years.

And we were on a co-headlining gig for like I think the Toronto Comedy Festival and you know our venue was like out

away from everything and it was this old weird venue but we were both doing an hour or whatever.

I hadn't seen her in years and I just both both nights I'm like what am I even doing?

What's the point?

Well the funny thing is we're putting together the documentary now.

There's footage of her when she first started.

And the whole thing was fully formed.

Sure.

Just her way of seeing the world.

Yeah.

And it was like outside outside of stand-up in a way.

It kind of bordered on, you know, what you would more classify as

performance art.

But, but she hammered it out in clubs.

She is a stand-up.

And it's just that, you know, the fact that people can dismiss her because like, I don't get it.

You know, she's weird.

It's like, you fucking idiots.

You know, they're like, you know, she's like Jonathan Winters level.

Yeah.

Well, people, you got a lot of play when you said she would be on your

Mount Rushmore of comedians.

Yeah, totally.

Oh, yeah, with Jesse.

Well, the funny thing is about the impact it has on people.

It's a very funny dice story.

Because, you know, despite when anyone thinks of dice, I fucking love him.

Like, because, you know, outside of whatever he's known for, just him talking is the best.

Like, I used to, he would come into the OR.

This is like,

you know, not that long ago, just to

talk about his day.

And he does it.

He definitely has a way of looking at things.

That's funny.

But I'm in the hallway with him.

It's not that long ago.

And he's telling me like, yeah, we're going to do the garden.

I got big things.

Always the big things.

He's talking to me.

Some guy comes up to me.

He goes,

I'm sorry to interrupt you guys.

But Mark, I was going to email you.

And

it's just, I'm happy that I'm running into you in person because I just got to thank you.

You know, you got me through a...

a real dark time.

And

I don't know if I would have gotten through it if you hadn't been there.

And I just really wanted to thank you for that.

And I'm like, yeah, sure.

I'm glad to help out.

And that guy walks away and Dice goes, I never get that.

I get, you're the reason I lost my job.

You're the reason my wife left me.

You're the reason I got kicked out of school.

Well, I used to see Dice when I was a kid.

I was a dishwasher at a comedy club in like 1983, 84.

And he was just doing impressions back then.

Yeah.

He was just doing like Jerry Lewis and John Javalta.

Yeah, yeah.

So I saw the whole evolution of how it turned into that.

But he would kill

doing his impressions.

He's got this very kind of like

alpha Jewish confidence.

He's so funny right now.

Like the act is pretty amazing.

And his Instagram, if you want to say something super weird, just him walking the streets, walking up to people,

really funny.

Are you Mildred?

Joanna?

Or when he's got Lovett walking around with him?

Seems like it takes work.

He's really putting in some time.

Yeah.

Let's do one more.

Okay.

Well, you know, one of the reasons to stop is because you've gotten all of the white whales of

show business.

So I thought I would play one of them,

a person no one gets that you got, which is, you know, the legendary nobody better Albert Brooks.

That's great.

That moment when the mate, the room service comes to the door.

He's like, should I just keep talking?

So we get a meeting with Jack Benny on Tuesday.

He dies that Friday, which nobody knew meeting him.

But we're sitting in his office and I say to him, so Mr.

Benny, I'm doing a record album.

And on this record album, I would love if you would do something because we're doing this old-time radio, and I never got any other word out.

My hero says to me, three days before he dies, radio, radio, that's all I'm remembered for.

I've done everything.

I've done television.

I've done movies.

And I'm going, I don't even know you from radio.

Oh my God.

No, no, I know that.

I know that.

And Harry and I left.

I drove home, Mark, with a profound, maybe one of the most profound lessons of my life, which is you better not hold on to anything.

Because if the king, if the god of comedy, in my mind, doesn't even know three days before he dies how

important he was, if he's still going.

And you know, you and I get it as we get older.

It's happening to me now.

Okay, so you just can't go there.

If you try to hold on to your life, you're going to be really sad.

You can't do it.

It's impossible.

How was that interviewing Albert?

The best.

The funniest thing was

he didn't want to come here.

He didn't want me to go there.

So we're in that hotel down on Santa Monica, that old pretty hotel.

I forget what it's called.

It's almost Victorian looking or kind of deco.

And it was just such a thrill, you know, because he, you know, he's just so fucking funny and such a powerful presence in my mind.

I remember it was, I'd been trying to get him for years.

And there was that moment at

Shan Wings Memorial.

You know, everyone's leaving and he's wearing that golf hat.

And I'm just walking.

I just just feel these two hands on my shoulders.

And he says, let's do it now.

And is that how it happened?

No.

And then took years more.

Two years later.

Yeah, I just was so thrilled

because he's one of those guys where it's so effortlessly funny.

It's so wired into him.

And, you know, he can't help it.

Even if he's not trying, if you love him, it's just the whole thing's going to be the greatest.

Who are the other ones that you didn't get?

You're trying to get Adam Sandler.

Yeah,

but of that generation, you know, I don't know.

Like,

you know, I'm sure there's people I've forgotten.

There were some old-timers that I would have liked to have done.

Mike Nichols would have been good.

That would have been good, yeah.

And like Shecky Green, there was an effort to do that.

But we had an exchange, me and Shecky, and that was kind of brutal.

You try to get Elaine May?

Yeah,

I think I did try to get Elaine May, didn't I?

I don't know.

I don't know.

Is she still around?

She's around.

I wonder why that hasn't happened.

Her daughter is amazing.

Oh, yeah.

No, I was very proud of the fact that I got to guest edit an issue of Vanity Fair.

Yeah.

And they let me pitch articles.

And I said, what about an interview with Nichols and May?

And they did pull it off.

Yeah.

And it was the last interview that they did.

How was that?

And they hadn't done one in like 20, 30 years.

Oh, wow.

It's just a great

article.

Well, the other person that you interviewed and did one of the great interviews with was

Gary Shanling.

I started the box about

11 years ago.

Right.

Just started the box.

And the reason is

twofold.

One is

out of my comfort zone completely.

Never was a kid who got into fights.

And so the idea of really being in a ring where someone's going to start throwing punches.

And then the really main reason, the other one is that you don't have time to think.

So it becomes completely intuitive.

Someone's throwing a punch, you have to counter, or you move, or you

step back, or you move in, or you keep, but you can't think about it.

And when you land a punch, you can't think about it.

Are you getting good at it?

Well, I'm sure getting better than I was.

Yeah.

Which is better than getting worse.

Do you wear headgear?

I do.

I wear headgear that goes from my

head down to my knees.

It's quite a long one.

It's the biggest one they've ever seen.

It's weird because hearing these back again in the moment, I don't realize how you know, close they're

like these are genuine tones.

You know, he's speaking as himself.

There's not, you know, he's not,

there's not public talk.

And it seems to happen a lot.

Because, I mean, you know him.

He was definitely, you know, not, you know, he was all there.

Yeah, he could be guarded in a lot of situations.

Yeah.

But when he opened up, he would really open up.

Yeah, yeah.

And it got pretty good there.

And again, because as much as I love him, you know, I wasn't dug in to Shanley as like one of my guys necessarily.

So when that took that spiritual turn where he got comfortable and started to engage with me or whatever my situation was, it was pretty exciting.

And I know he's like one of the funniest guys ever, but it took me a long time to really get it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well,

it's a unique person who's, you know, who's struggling.

Yeah.

And he's the funniest, but he's also struggling.

And you never know what you're going to get with him.

One day you might get like the gregarious version and another day he might be shut down.

Oh, really?

And so it was just,

he was on a ride.

I feel like Gary being gone really left, for me, like the biggest hole where all the time you're like, ah, man,

you know, we feel his absence.

Yeah.

All the time.

Yeah.

He was so good and so sweet and

wise.

And the struggle that he was on to make himself whole or self-accepting or any of that was so earnest and vigilant.

You know, like, this has got to work.

You know, whatever he landed on spiritually, it's like, it's got to work.

Some of the stories that you told that I remember,

one was you telling the long Sam Kennison

what made you leave town.

Yeah, I did that recently.

Yeah, that's a good one.

I pissed on your bed, Baron.

You had a period where you had a lot of comedy store people on.

You had Jimmy Schubert, who's really painted a picture of what that place was like.

It's so funny.

The first time I did mushrooms was with you.

We had a good day.

That's right.

We had a great day.

And we started doing them.

I remember I'd never done mushrooms before.

And I was like, oh, man, you're going to love these, man.

You'd have lost it.

And Rod's going, all right, man.

And we had planned the whole day.

And I remember we just started getting off going, oh, this is great.

It's great.

And then out of nowhere, out of the blue, Sam shows up.

Kennison pops in like a bus.

pops in like a like he was like a trip coach.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He goes, oh, you guys are doing monsters.

Oh, you're going to love them, man.

He goes, now, and he was just, like, just as he was saying stuff, you were like, time's going to seem to go by real slow.

Oh, my God.

It's going by real slow.

You pull out a joint.

And he goes, great.

He goes, now let's get it.

You just guys are going to get off.

Yeah.

Smoke this joint.

That's going to make everything all right.

All right, man.

But it was like that.

And then, and then, and it was, I mean, I swear, man, we had the best day just laughing.

And then we went worked.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

And then we went, we got to do it.

Yeah, but we did them like two o'clock in the afternoon.

Yeah, by that time, nine o'clock for all the way, we could go down.

I forgot that Sam showed up and was actually, you know, kind and giving.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, you know, man.

I mean, he was, you know,

he definitely understood that world.

Yeah, yeah, but you're right.

I mean, he had his moments of that kind of, you know, behavior.

I mean, it's, you know, I remember the one moment where he pulled out something that looked like a jar this big, like a jelly jar with cocaine in it.

And

he's like, and we're standing in one of the rooms at Crestel.

He's like, you want to bump?

And I'm like, yeah, what do you want me to do?

Where should I do it?

And he said, Put your thumb in between your finger like that.

Yeah.

I learned that from the mob.

I'm like, Okay, I don't even know if I want to know the rest of that story.

Yeah, I mean, it was,

but I remember you would sit around that table.

Oh, yeah.

And me and you were, of all the guys that were up there hanging on.

I mean, we were talking about comedy until all hours of the night.

What do you think about this?

I know.

Sam explained a slow burn.

I mean, were we better people for it?

Probably not.

But I mean, you know, we were, we, but we were interested.

We were willing to learn, man.

Stay up.

And how did you you come over there?

And what do you do for that?

And, you know, that's funny.

That was your agenda.

Mine was like, what does Satan look like?

You know, yeah, yeah.

I thought he was some sort of black magician, some sort of wizard that had secret fucking wisdom.

He was just a douchebag like everybody else.

Just a fucking comic.

Just a flawed fucking human being with fucking problems, just like the rest of us.

I needed to do that for myself.

the comedy store stuff because you know i was a young guy and i was kind of out of my mind and on drugs and once i sort of enmeshed myself with that place and the history, I was haunted by it forever.

That it

profoundly changed the wiring of my brain.

You know, just what it meant, what it represented, the history of the place, all the pictures on the wall, you know, being on Coke and losing my brain there and, you know, integrating the

comedy store into some sort of mythic significance.

And

I really had to talk to all those guys because my relationship with a lot of them was with those pictures on the wall

and also just with the idea of them.

Like I said to you before we started, I had this weird thing with that book about old movie stars.

I didn't like the old movies, but I just look at these faces.

And then realizing that all of comedy came through there, all of modern comedy, it just seemed to be like a great template for me to sort of

have some

answers about that place and about

my place there and about my history.

I've got Mitzi Shore's driver's license,

her last driver's license, because I did Binder's documentary and that was just like laying on the floor in her office.

Oh, you told that story to Letterman.

Yeah, yeah.

I got to show you something.

Hold on.

This might weird you out, but just.

I seem to be alone now.

I don't know why I have this, but I can tell you how I got it.

Okay.

But for some reason, it means a lot to me.

This is the driver's license for...

Oh, my God.

Well, a crime has been committed here.

This is Mitzi Shore's driver's license.

It is, man.

Mark, how did you, I mean,

first of all, why were you rifling through her purse?

Here's the thing, you know, Binder, Mike.

Yep.

Peter Shore kind of, like, I interviewed Binder here, right?

And he was like, I want to talk about the comedy store.

And then i started saying how could you not want to this is that's where you come from and then he started talking about it and then it kind of got into his brain and then peter short reeled him in to make a documentary about the place right right right yeah he reached out to you yes well he i i think i'm actually uh visiting with him tomorrow great

so so he wanted me to be there when he did he did a bunch of footage in mitzi's office and they were going to go through some stuff.

He had permission and he wanted me to be the guy to be in there with him.

And as I was walking out, this driver's license was on the floor.

And I'm like, I think I have to have that.

Wow.

It feels a little weird and a little wrong.

No, no, now with that explanation, it feels just right.

And Sammy Shore.

Just passed.

Yeah.

Did you know him, though?

I must have met him, but by the time I came to California, he was out of that business.

Right.

Yeah.

But yeah, I...

Not out of comedy, but out of the comedy store business.

Right.

Yeah.

You lost the store to Mitzi.

See, like, for me, didn't this give you the chills a little bit?

Yes, absolutely.

First of all, she's very

young looking in that, and I only remember her,

she was stricken

after

this time.

Yeah.

And I don't remember her looking that hardy.

She reminds me of

when I was younger.

Yeah.

Like she had such a, the whole place had such a

hold on my mind when it was so fragile.

And it took years to sort of shake that thing,

the mythic and paranoid thing.

And now it's just like the only place I work in L.A.

And I'm so happy to be comfortable there.

But when you're young, it's also about that they're the gatekeepers of your dream.

And so there's this place, and everyone wants to do the thing you want to do.

Most of them are better because they've just been doing it longer.

And there's this one person that gets to decide if you're allowed to do it.

And I didn't have the version where I was on drugs was the part of it.

But the pressure to go, can I belong here?

Can I earn it?

Can I be better than a lot of these people to climb to the next level?

That pressure.

And then it's also that youthful madness that it might be possible to pull it off.

Yeah.

I don't know if I had that climbing thing or even the competitive thing, but I did know that was kind of lost.

And that for some reason, you know, being part of that world was very specific.

And at the time I was there or when I came back to LA in 2002, like it was just this haunted shithole that nobody wanted to go to.

It got to a point where people were like, why would you go to the comedy?

Like it represented some darkness, which I always knew was there.

And it's necessary for that place to exist.

I told Peter Shore recently, I'm like, you know, you got to be careful with that place because you know as well as I do, it's very susceptible to charismatic leaders.

That a personality can take that place over because she like enabled it.

And I was there during the Canison and Dice period, you know, which happened kind of back to back.

But I just wanted to be, I thought it was an exclusive, amazing community, the coffee store.

With the best folks.

Oh, yeah, man.

Like, you know, it got to the point where I was like so dug in there and like living in her house, the one she owned, and walking down to the club in the morning to make coffee behind the bar and shit.

But like, you know, it would just be that thing where, you know, I'd be living at that place and be like, hey, Joey Gaynor, there he is.

You know, like, who knows Joey Gaynor?

You know,

it was just like, these were the pictures on the wall, and now I was part of it.

Yeah, I can't imagine.

I mean, I can't imagine the addiction part in it also.

My addiction was just,

can I succeed workaholism?

Yeah.

But I was afraid to be high or drunk because I don't think I felt confident enough in what I was doing that I could.

be that vulnerable to be out of my head.

Yeah.

I just, I, I kind of thrived on it because it connected me with this bunch of people that, you know, in retrospect, it's all very dangerous, you know, but this idea that you're, you're, you're at the table, you know, with these wizards who are going to impart something on you, but also very funny and very, it was, it was out of control and weird.

But

I was all about it.

But there's a way to bond with those people because you would do drugs with them.

Sure.

And also you had a secret, you know, to be bouncing around that place as a door guy with Coke in your pocket.

It's the fucking best.

And you also, you had Lorne Michaels on the show, which I always thought was a was a big moment because there were so many episodes where you recounted

meeting with Lorne and not getting weekend updated.

It became so mythic in your mind.

And then when you finally talked to Lorne,

the fact that Lorne remembered it, but also to him,

it's like he's explaining like, here's how show business really works.

You don't get that the decision isn't based on what you think it's based on.

Right.

I came in here.

I waited an hour or so uh tracy morgan was out there waiting with me do you know what day of the week it was where we were in production uh maybe i i wish i remembered that i you know i decided before i got here uh i was smoking a lot of pot at the time but i thought maybe i shouldn't smoke too much uh-huh

And I got here, and Tracy Morgan was there, and his hair looked very shiny.

The hair was in very good shape.

Yes.

And I waited a while, and I was reading a Bruce Wagner book, I remember, and I came in here.

Had he been on stage the night that you performed who Tracy yeah I don't know if he was I mean I know that we went to stand-up New York right I remember yeah anyways I come in here in my recollection there were books over here uh-huh was there it's probably pretty much the same as it is always right Steve Higgins was there I walk in and you said um

uh how was Conan last night did they laugh did they laugh at you It's better when they laugh.

And that was nice.

It was nice.

I wasn't scared.

And

you'd done Conan the Night before, right?

And then I sat down and then

you used a zoo analogy of comedians.

Have you used that before?

Monkeys and all that?

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's a regular thing.

No, it wasn't a regular thing.

It was just my sort of beginning to piece together where comedians stood in Hollywood.

Right.

The lions are scary.

When you go to the zoo, the first

thing you want to see is the lion because the lion is the king of the jungle and

it's regal.

Yeah.

And the second thing you want to see are the bears because they're the strongest and the fastest.

And the third, you want to see the monkeys because they're funny and occasionally one of them jerks off.

Right.

And what I said, I don't think you had added the jerk off line yet.

Uh-huh.

Because I said, as long as they're not throwing their shit at you.

Yeah.

Got nothing.

Yeah.

Got no laugh from you.

Nothing.

Well, I would have gone softer, as you saw.

Yeah, yeah.

Exactly.

And Steve Higgins was like,

this is not going well already.

And did you know Steve before?

Kind of.

I'd met him once or twice.

Like on the scene.

Right.

And then you just looked at me for a little while.

Uh-huh.

And

Steve actually went Lorne.

And you said,

it's important to look in someone's eyes.

You can see a lot in someone's eyes.

And then I was trying to exude some star quality of some kind, which was not successful.

God, you really remember this.

Yeah, I remember it.

And then in my recollection, there was a smaller bowl of candy.

And

yeah, that's the Tootsie Roll one, but it's a Jolly Rancher in my mind.

No, it would have been Tootsie Rolls.

Well, I remember I took one, and at that moment, you shot a look at Steve, and I thought I'd failed the candy test.

Oh, yeah, no, no, there was.

No candy test.

There was no alternative candy.

There was just the one.

There was popcorn probably there.

Right there.

No, I didn't get popcorn.

And that was sort of like

my experience with it.

And then I waited and nothing happened.

And I'd heard a couple of things over the years.

I'm not hung up on that.

No, no, no.

But

where were we in 95?

Was this when

Norm was about, was renegotiating his contract?

But it was interesting because at that time, remember, we were doing alternative comedy

downtown.

And I mean no offense, but you said

one of the first things you said was like, I don't know what you think you're doing down there below 14th Street.

Yeah, right.

But it doesn't matter.

Right.

I was trying to be helpful

and save you a few years.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I appreciate it.

No, I was just being playful.

Yeah, I know.

That was a very revealing and amazing time for me to finally get to talk to Lauren and to put that story to rest, that it was really just

a decision-making process, you know, based on an ensemble.

Well, that was what he told me, and that's fine.

But more what I came out of that with, whether it's his

calculating presentation of himself or not, is that this guy is a guy that works at this building.

I mean, you know, he's a billionaire and he's produced amazing stuff his whole life and he's

a cultural icon and the show is.

But just seeing him at this age,

wandering the same halls since the early 70s or mid-70s, it's kind of crazy because he's a guy who goes to work.

He's a TV producer.

But like I had made him into this mythic almost god who decides people's

future, which he is.

But it's really, it's not in the sense that he's vengeful.

It's just that he's got an eye for fucking talent.

And

he runs the show.

But he is essentially a guy who works at 30 Rock.

Who someone gives him 30 sketches and he goes, these eight.

He has a job.

That's right.

And he's standing there watching it unfold.

And so it was humanizing.

Yeah, you're one of 10,000 decisions he's making.

That's right.

And it was all very humanizing, you know, but after all is said and done,

I know as a grown person, and I've known it for a few years, that I wasn't ready for that job.

There was no fucking way.

I had no control over my talent.

I had no, you know, sense of who I was really as a performer.

And

I was

nowhere near ready for the job.

So Lorne was right again.

He was.

And the way he told me he made the decision was, I thought, diplomatic and it was easy on me.

But you know, because he could have said you weren't ready and I knew that.

And I would have took that.

But the idea that he's sort of like, there's a lot of things that are happening and everything has to, you know, I'm like, that was a nice thing for him to do.

It's a nice gesture.

I'm glad we got to do this.

Yes.

How was it listening to yourself?

It was great, man.

I think I should go back and listen to a few episodes.

Yeah, I'll tell you the good ones.

Yeah, you got there's like a whole bunch more there.

I'll go check them out because I trust your opinion.

There's a whole bunch more.

Maybe we could end

on Mr.

Norm McDonald's.

Oh, please.

Talking about Norm things.

Aren't you still afraid of everything?

I am.

I mean, I try to hide it and deal with it, but on a day-to-day basis, I

know I'm not afraid of everything.

I'm afraid of very few things.

Like what?

Illness?

Death.

Yeah.

How'd you get peace of mind out of of the other shit?

Well, when I was,

when I was very, this is a weird thing that happened to me when I was young.

Yeah.

I don't know if this means anything.

That's right.

I remember it, but it was a moment I had that was,

it wasn't religious or eponaphic or anything, but it transformed me to some degree is that I was always fucking so afraid of everything.

And if I went to a store, I'd have to walk around forever before I could even face a person in the store to buy a pack of gum.

I don't know why the fuck I was like this.

Yeah.

But anyways, when I was nine,

there was a blind, we lived in rural Ontario, and there was a blind friend of my dad's that I had to, he said, take him to the store.

I was like, what the fuck?

Like, I have to take this blind fucker and I'm already shy and shit.

So I'm taking him to the store, and then the fucker wants me to explain everything,

describe everything.

to him.

Yeah.

So I'm like, there's some grass over here and now there's a lamppost.

And this guy's all happy.

What about the lamppost?

I mean, it's just the lamppost.

So it goes on and on.

But something happened to me during, it sounds bizarre, but something happened to me where I was actually, instead of always looking inward, which I think I'd always done before that one time, I was looking outward.

Anyways,

While I was talking to him, I suddenly had a sort of a hysteria.

Like I was laughing.

I started laughing and stuff.

And I don't even know why I'm remembering this, but I started laughing about everything.

And everything seemed like

very, very funny to me.

And then a couple of weeks later, I saw a homeless guy and he was talking about, he was, he was talking, he started talking to me.

Yeah.

And he was talking to me about John D.

Rockefeller.

He's like, I was at John D.

Rockefeller's funeral.

Yeah.

And all this shit.

And I was laughing at him and shit.

And then he started laughing.

And I was like, it's all fucking crazy shit.

Like it's something came to me.

Yeah.

Where I started.

And so now I find everything funny except like fucking real serious.

Like Like, I'm no fear of going on stage or anything about death and shit.

Right.

And so, uh, but the other thing, I, but the problem with laughing is I will get

it will build to a hysteria sometimes that I have to

crank a couple of benzos to

kind of panic attack.

Really?

Yeah, I can get panic.

You can laugh yourself into an anxiety attack?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, I start laughing and then it gets out of control, like

hysterical.

It's

and I still have extreme sensitivity to

things.

Like I can

not not to norm not to life things,

but to like

literature or art or something like that.

I have incredible sensitivity.

I kind of have to stay away from it.

Like what's an example?

Like a painting or a yeah, fucking paintings.

Like I don't know anything about art.

Nothing at all.

Really?

But I have had fucking experiences that have

been so hard on me.

Like one time I was in New York and somebody dragged me to a fucking art museum, which I hate art.

Yeah.

And I was looking at this picture, this girl,

and I was like falling in love with her.

She was so fucking beautiful, this fucking girl in this fucking picture.

Yeah.

And then a guide was telling me the fucking thing was written, you know, drawn in the 16th century.

Obviously, this lady was dead, long dead.

And here I am fucking in love with her.

Yeah.

And so I'm like, ah, fuck it.

It was like so hard on me for so many days.

So I try not to.

It sounds crazy, right?

Not really, but I can be very.

It sounds like that's a very good painting.

It was an incredible painting.

Well, thank you for having me.

And thanks for doing the show.

I enjoyed the show.

For I was 16 years.

I enjoyed it.

I was always thrilled that you were a fan of the show, and we've had conversations, and your input and excitement about interviews was always

something that propelled me in times of doubt.

Oh, I appreciate that.

It's my favorite type of thing.

And let me tell you, the biggest tribute I have for you, my tribute to you, is that this show is so amazing that I didn't do a podcast.

I kind of knew you were on the fence for a while.

I knew it couldn't be topped.

Well, you did it when you were a kid.

I did it when I was 15.

I tried to invent it.

A very early version.

Thanks, buddy.

Yeah, that was fun.

There you go.

A lot of stuff.

Hope you enjoyed that.

You can pre-order Judd's book, Comedy Nerd, a Lifelong Obsession in Stories and Pictures.

It comes out October 28th.

Hang out for a minute, folks.

Hey, you guys, if you want all those old episodes Judd was playing for me, you can get a subscription to the full WTF Archives, which gets you every WTF episode ad-free, including the first five years, which are not available in the free feed right now, as well as every bonus episode we ever did.

There are about 300 of those.

Go to supercast.com and put WTF in the search bar, or go to WTFpod.com and click on WTF Plus.

And a reminder before we go, this podcast is hosted by ACAST.

And here's that new telecaster on that beautiful telecaster, BridgePickup.

Boomer lifts, monkey lafonda, cat angels everywhere.