0:09

Hello and welcome to Good One, a podcast

0:11

about jokes. I'm your host, Jesse David

0:14

Fox. This week's guest is Paul

0:16

F. Tompkins. I can't believe this moment has come.

0:18

You got to understand when when you host a comedy

0:20

podcast until you have Paul on, it's

0:22

hard to feel legitimate. It only took

0:25

six years of trying to get our schedules to line

0:27

up, but we have been legitimized. And

0:30

I was not going to waste it. It's partly Paul

0:32

is the consummate guest, the Martin

0:34

Short of podcasting, no matter what the format,

0:36

Paul F. Tompkins brings it. But also,

0:39

I always wanted to have Paul on this podcast

0:41

because I think he's one of the great stand

0:43

ups. He's easily one of the greatest stand ups

0:46

I've ever seen live. He's just so versatile.

0:48

You know, he can do longer stories,

0:50

you can do sort of silly act outs,

0:52

he does voices, he can do pathos.

0:54

And my favorite is he has this ability to seem to go with nothing

0:57

and just monologue extemporaneously until

0:59

he finds it. And because of

1:01

how good he is, I have been wondering why

1:03

I hadn't seen him on stand up lineups in a

1:05

really long time. After

1:07

years of being

1:08

a staple of the LA scene, he just seemingly

1:10

kind of stopped doing stand up ever

1:13

since his 2015 Comedy Central special

1:15

Crying and Driving. It's

1:17

been so long that I legitimately worried younger podcast

1:19

fans might not even know he's such a freaking good

1:22

stand up.

1:23

So

1:24

here we go, a lengthy celebration of

1:26

Paul Tompkins, the comedian, I really

1:29

wanted to capture the full breadth of his career

1:31

as a performer. We talked about his sillier,

1:34

more character based early stand up that

1:36

seemed to be an extension of his work on Mr.

1:38

Show, and also his pivot to storytelling

1:41

with his 2012 Comedy Central special Laboring

1:43

Under Delusion, which is one of the great specials

1:46

in recent memory. We also talked

1:48

about his theatrical late 90s one

1:50

person show Driven to Drink, which he did for

1:53

HBO, which is still up there now.

1:57

We

1:57

also touched on his theatrical late 90s.

1:59

90's one person show driven to drink which he

2:02

did for HBO.

2:03

Also we talked about his time away from stand

2:05

up when he focused on improv. And

2:07

lastly we talked about his variety show, Varietopia,

2:10

which he does every month or so at

2:12

the lodge room in LA. I think it really covers

2:14

so much of what went into his act and

2:16

its evolution over time. So we're going

2:18

to start with one of his most famous jokes. It's

2:20

called Peanut Brittle. It's off Paul's 2007 album Impersonal. This

2:25

joke

2:25

is really funny to me. I can't

2:27

wait for you to hear it. So without any further

2:30

ado, here is Paul F. Tompkins.

2:37

Not long ago I was in a novelty

2:39

store because I am a fan

2:42

of hilarity. And

2:47

I noticed they're

2:48

still making the gag

2:51

peanut brittle. You

2:53

know, it looks like a can of peanut brittle.

2:56

And then you open it up and then

2:57

snakes fly out. What

3:00

a great prank. I

3:03

think the best time to get someone with this

3:05

gag was the 1800's. You

3:10

know, like before entertainment was invented. When

3:14

people just sat around and stared at an open

3:16

fire. What

3:20

I noticed was they have

3:23

updated the packaging on the can

3:26

to make it look more modern. Because

3:29

that was the problem. But

3:34

some enterprising head of a novelty

3:36

company called his

3:38

top man in, gentlemen this

3:41

is unacceptable. No

3:44

one would be fooled by this outdated

3:46

looking can of peanut brittle.

3:48

I want

3:50

five modern fonts on my desk by

3:52

five o'clock. Five by five. Yes

3:55

I know it's a Saturday. They

4:00

did it. They got that

4:02

shit done. Because

4:04

now, if you were to come up to me and say,

4:07

hey Paul, would you care for some canned

4:10

peanut brittle? I

4:16

would of course say, oh, canned

4:18

peanut brittle. The most common

4:20

snack in all the world. I'd

4:23

love some. I

4:25

think I like it so much because I'm just so used

4:28

to eating it, you know, just peanut

4:30

brittle out of the can. I

4:34

mean, you should see my home. You can barely open

4:36

the door because all the empty

4:39

peanut brittle cans lying all over the place.

4:44

Here's my routine. Every week, when

4:46

I go to the market, I head straight to the

4:48

brittle aisle,

4:49

look to see they have peanut. Do

4:52

they have a case in cans? They do,

4:54

perfect. I load up my car and

4:57

then I just start popping those cans open

4:59

and eating the brittle inside. Love

5:01

canned peanut brittle, love it.

5:02

I love it because you can get

5:05

it anywhere. You just see it all

5:07

over the place. You

5:09

can buy it at the gas station. You can buy it

5:12

at a greeting card shop. You can buy it by

5:14

the side of the highway. There's just peanut

5:16

brittle in cans all over the place. So

5:19

yes, when you say to me, Paul, would

5:21

you like some canned peanut brittle? I have

5:23

no reason to be suspicious. Whoa, why

5:25

did I just say that? I owe

5:28

you an apology. Here you are, nice

5:30

enough to offer me some canned peanut

5:32

brittle, a snack we've established is very common.

5:35

And

5:35

I bring suspicion

5:38

into it. Shame on me. So

5:41

if your offer still stands, yes,

5:44

I would love to enjoy some

5:46

canned peanut brittle, a snack

5:48

so common it might as well be

5:50

water for how much you find

5:52

it laying around on God's green

5:55

earth. No, no, no, I

5:57

will open up the can.

5:58

You have...

6:00

I have done enough. Oh,

6:04

to twist off, very give me, oh

6:06

my God. Oh.

6:10

Oh. Oh, let me catch

6:13

my breath for a second. Oh,

6:16

oh, my heart is beating like a jackrabbit. Oh. Did

6:22

you see what just happened? Oh.

6:31

You were nice enough to offer me some camping. Now,

6:35

I don't know where you got this particular

6:38

cat. One

6:42

of a thousand stores in

6:44

the area, I'm sure. As

6:49

I was getting ready to enjoy, my

6:54

umpteenth helping a day of the sugary

6:57

treat.

7:01

Instead of being greeted by the familiar

7:04

scent, I've

7:09

canned peanut brittle.

7:13

What should happen? My

7:15

two venomous cobras jumped out of the can.

7:23

One of them tried to hook my eyeball with a fang

7:26

as he gained his freedom. I'm

7:31

sorry, what did you just say? Still

7:34

a little, my ears, blood in my ears,

7:38

from the horror. Metal

7:43

springs encased in vinyl. So,

7:48

I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm

7:52

sorry, I'm sorry. I'm

7:56

sorry, I'm sorry. Sir,

8:00

you have fooled me twice. Yeah,

8:09

I really acted it up. So

8:13

I'm here with Paul Tompkins. Thank you so much for joining me.

8:15

It's absolutely my pleasure. Thank you. This

8:17

is a long time coming and I'm so glad that it finally

8:20

worked out.

8:21

And I'm sorry that you've been the victim of my poor emailing

8:23

skills for such a long time. Honestly,

8:26

the benefit of you being on so many podcasts is I've

8:28

know from a podcast you're on that sometimes

8:30

you don't respond to email. So

8:33

I'm like,

8:33

unless he says, Hey, I

8:36

don't want to do this. I think I can keep on,

8:38

I can keep on following up. Right. So

8:40

that's absolutely true. Yeah. And

8:43

it worked.

8:44

Yeah. And it worked. So peanut brittle. Yeah,

8:47

that's right. The year was now the year. So

8:49

the version people know is from 2007, but he also

8:52

did at your Comedy Central presents in 2003. So

8:54

I ask you, when was the initial version

8:56

of when did you first have this spark of?

9:00

I assume you said, I

9:02

would say probably like 2002 or so. Oh,

9:05

wow. Because I had just started

9:07

doing in 2002,

9:08

I started doing my variety show. And

9:15

so that occasioned me to go

9:17

to Hollywood Toy and Costume

9:19

on a regular basis to get

9:22

wigs and props and things like that. And that was

9:24

where I saw the, the,

9:27

the peanut brittle with the snakes, um, with

9:30

the updated packaging. And it really,

9:32

it really tickled me. Like

9:34

first of all, I was surprised that was still a thing. So

9:37

I hadn't seen this as I was a child and

9:39

that they had made it look

9:41

more modern was so I couldn't believe

9:44

it. It's like, well, I

9:46

mean, I don't know. I guess I never thought I

9:48

never thought that this

9:50

was a gag for anyone

9:53

over the age of Yeah.

9:56

Yeah. You know, so why would it matter?

9:58

But, um, yeah, I was really. I was

10:00

impressed. I was impressed that they did it. So you see

10:02

it, and then are you just like,

10:05

oh my, like the abuses are singing to

10:07

you? Like in that right moment, do you know this

10:09

has the goods? Does it have the feeling of there's

10:12

comedy here? Like what is that? Yeah, it does.

10:14

I mean, I think that is how it happens for

10:17

me and how it happens for a lot of comics.

10:19

I'm not one of those guys who, you

10:22

know, I'm gonna sit down and write for an hour every day.

10:24

Like I just, I can't imagine that, that

10:29

process, if I don't already have something that I wanna,

10:32

you know, muse about or whatever, I can't imagine

10:35

sitting down and going like, okay, look

10:37

around, carpet, windows, what's funny

10:39

about them? So you'll like, you see Prenup

10:42

Riddle, you already noticed the sort of

10:44

parts that are funny to you, which is one, this still exists,

10:46

two, they've updated the package. Yeah. And

10:48

then it just sort of, you're just thinking about in your head as you're going about

10:50

your day, is that sort of the process? Yeah,

10:53

exactly. I start to, it's

10:55

a thing that happens without

10:59

realizing it, that your mind just

11:01

kind of,

11:03

my mind just kind of goes away and I

11:05

start playing out the scene in my

11:07

head, you know.

11:09

And then I realized, hopefully

11:11

I realized like, oh, this is a bit, I

11:14

should make note of this and, you know, put it together.

11:17

So then, yeah, so what is the process when you say writing

11:19

for you, at least at that point? Yeah. Now it's probably

11:22

different. It's pretty much the same. It's like, I

11:24

will, I have

11:27

an idea, I'll put down bullet

11:29

points on a piece of paper or on

11:31

a tablet, and then I will go up

11:33

on stage

11:35

and

11:38

work off of that loose sort of skeleton

11:40

and then put the meat and the muscle and skin

11:43

on. Sometimes if I have

11:45

a phrase that comes, whole cloth that I really

11:47

enjoy, I will write that out verbatim, but

11:50

usually it's just like, I'll go in front of an audience

11:52

and see what happens. I have my little guideposts,

11:54

you know. These are the things

11:56

that, these are the beats that I want to hit.

11:59

and the the thing

12:02

that's always funny and frustrating to me is

12:06

How much I think I'm gonna get

12:09

out of it

12:09

versus how much I actually get out of it Yeah,

12:12

and going on stage and thinking like I'll

12:14

just I'll be able to roll with this for a while

12:16

and then like if they're not

12:19

You know my first few sort of joke beats if

12:21

they get sort of a mild reaction. I'm like

12:23

I gotta really I gotta

12:26

keep talking about this and I don't have anything

12:28

more to say so I have to make it up Yeah, you're like

12:30

oh, I thought by the third one there could be so on board

12:32

that we're just gonna be playing Yeah, yeah, ideally

12:34

what happens is if I have if I get a

12:37

if I get a Good

12:41

response on a beat That

12:44

get that gives me the time to keep

12:47

thinking. Yeah, and you

12:49

know it also, it's

12:51

sort of When

12:53

the audience laughs it reminds me

12:56

of what was funny about this and

12:58

then I feel we're on the same page you know

13:00

that the audience they grant the premise and

13:04

Then I feel more confident

13:06

in where I'm going with it and the riffing and stuff like

13:08

that Even if my my first immediate

13:10

thing doesn't get a response. I'm like, okay,

13:12

but we're we both

13:14

we both agree Yeah, what is funny

13:16

about this idea? So I can

13:18

I can just keep talking and

13:21

find some good stuff Yeah, yeah, you're in the same

13:23

space. You just matter of like what is the thing to get

13:25

exactly? Yeah cross the threshold Yeah,

13:27

do you have?

13:29

any memory of sort of What probably

13:31

the beats were when you first first thought of doing this

13:33

and what you would go on stage with and sort of? What

13:36

you were what you were able to find out what

13:38

the audience is. Yeah, I think it was pretty much

13:41

The same I think the original beats were

13:44

and my material at that point

13:47

was much more conceptual and

13:50

so the

13:51

The writing was more writing

13:53

II, you know for lack of a better term. It was

13:56

much more structured but

13:59

I think I

13:59

went out with the idea of, you

14:02

know,

14:03

they updated the packaging on this

14:06

very simple joke. Why

14:10

did they do this?

14:12

What purpose does it serve? Because

14:14

who would be, you

14:16

know, anyone who's old enough to notice

14:18

the packaging, they

14:20

would not be fooled by this anyway.

14:24

Because there's things like brands, you know what

14:26

I mean? Like if you just come up with this weird

14:28

looking can, peanut

14:30

brittle, peanuts, salted nuts, whatever

14:33

it is, you're like, where

14:34

did this come from? It

14:37

looks janky as hell. I'm not gonna

14:39

eat what's ever in that can.

14:42

And

14:44

then I think the acting out

14:46

thing was a big,

14:47

a big part of my stand up then. That

14:50

was the kind of thing that I really enjoyed was doing

14:52

like almost little scenes and

14:55

fleshing them out in that way. And

14:58

I think that honestly, it probably,

15:02

like the first or second

15:04

time I did that bit, it probably all came together.

15:07

And then I was able to refine it to

15:09

the form that eventually I recorded. Do you

15:11

have a sense of

15:13

what is sort of most interest, the

15:15

most interesting thing about this or novel about it, is

15:17

like the entire thing is spoken ironically.

15:19

Like literally every single sentence you say is opposite.

15:22

It is like six minutes, however long

15:24

it is, of just sarcasm. That's all it is. Cause

15:28

that's bold. You

15:31

know, I guess it is. At the time I

15:33

did not think of that, but

15:35

it is like, it's a long bit to be hammering

15:38

home the same idea. But then, you

15:40

know, it gets,

15:41

that's what

15:43

is so fascinating to me about comedy is that

15:45

could just as easily absolutely fail

15:47

as work. Cause there's a

15:49

version of this joke, I was thinking like,

15:51

there's a version that's like, you can do this as a Seinfeld joke,

15:54

which is like, who are these people that still get

15:56

fooled by it? That's also like a little bit more cynical.

15:58

Like even though they're, both sort of a sarcastic

16:01

kind of a take but I was like oh wow like Jerry Seinfeld

16:03

could do this or John Mulaney could do it.

16:06

Absolutely but it's not it's not

16:08

as much it's not I feel like it's not as much

16:10

fun yeah you know like and

16:12

to me the the real the joy

16:15

of that bit for me what I love when I

16:17

what I love performing about it

16:19

is it leads up to the person

16:22

being fooled by it and I I

16:24

I looked forward to doing

16:27

that I I enjoyed

16:29

it so much I enjoyed being

16:32

the boss who finds the outdated can

16:34

unacceptable I loved doing

16:36

all those characters and

16:39

and just

16:41

the

16:42

really dragging it out of all

16:44

the places you would not find this

16:47

fake peanut brittle and

16:48

all the places you don't find real peanut brittle

16:51

and all that I

16:53

you know it's it's more

16:55

it's a more fun way to make fun of it

16:57

than just dissecting it in a mathematical

16:59

way which I think like a lot of observational

17:02

comedy

17:04

can it can often leave me cold if

17:06

it becomes I mean it's also it's

17:08

a it's an occupational hazard when

17:11

you sort of see that when you can see the process and

17:15

when it becomes too mathematical

17:17

for me it I don't

17:20

like it like I really enjoy I

17:22

really enjoy surprise in comedy

17:24

I enjoy when somebody has a take

17:27

that I didn't expect or they just talk

17:29

about something that I didn't expect them to talk about

17:31

and when it's

17:34

I don't like it when it's so removed

17:36

that it feels like a lecture

17:38

almost yeah you know even though you

17:41

know that stuff is funny and I'm not

17:43

saying it's not funny to me but it's it's not

17:45

as joyous today you know like it's more

17:47

like I can I can listen to it and say that's

17:49

funny yeah you know but I'm not laughing necessarily

17:53

yeah I mean it's interesting because it allows you this joke

17:55

ends up being you have to be a positive person the entire

17:57

like so positive throughout the joke even though you're making

17:59

Right, right, right. The other

18:02

thing that I was like, there

18:04

is, though it is a

18:06

sort of faux exasperation, there is a sort of anangreness

18:08

to it. And this

18:10

was a time in your life where

18:13

you've talked about your angrier person. Did

18:15

you figure out, how can I be angry in my jokes,

18:17

but have no one even think that I might be an angry person?

18:19

Yes, because in a way I did,

18:21

I think, because I

18:24

tapped into an anger

18:26

over,

18:30

the stupidest things that was very

18:32

funny to me, to be outraged by this

18:35

kind of thing, was it was like

18:37

a character that I played well, that I really enjoyed

18:39

playing, just being totally

18:42

exasperated. And, you

18:44

know, like the potato famine bit that

18:46

I did about,

18:48

you know, again, it's like then acting it

18:50

out. You know, it's like, this is absurd

18:52

that these people were such picky eaters, you know, and

18:55

like that willfully, also willfully missing the

18:57

point and not getting it. And,

19:00

you know, that sort of stuff really tickled

19:03

me, you know, and I really enjoyed playing

19:05

it. And, but it was also a way

19:07

to,

19:09

you know, I realize now to keep a distance between

19:12

me, it

19:14

was a safeguard against vulnerability, you

19:16

know, that it's like, look, I'm just being goofy

19:19

up here, I'm just being silly. And it

19:22

would be a long time before I was trusting

19:24

enough of myself and the audience to get

19:27

more personal with things.

19:29

Also, the other thing I was wondering, it's like when you see

19:32

canned peanut brittle, do you go like, this

19:34

is a real Paul F. Tompkins topic. Like,

19:36

this is a bygone

19:39

era, whatever, like. I

19:41

mean, not at first, no. I

19:43

don't necessarily register like, oh, this is

19:45

right up my alley, but,

19:47

but

19:49

yeah, I guess I never thought of it in that way. I never thought

19:51

of it as this fits my brand. Yeah,

19:54

yeah, yeah. This is exactly the type of thing I'm

19:56

talking about. The Paul F. Tompkins style

19:58

comedy joke from the one.

19:59

special. It's like this

20:02

the flat penny

20:04

type joke. Absolutely. The thing

20:07

that I love and hate about

20:09

theme parks is the the

20:12

smashed penny machine. Classic

20:17

theme park souvenir smashed

20:19

penny. You

20:22

get like whatever special

20:24

thing from the park on their little imprint.

20:27

You get sometimes get like a name you can personalize

20:29

it. They will not so much anymore because of course

20:31

you're gonna put curse words on there and why would you? If

20:35

you're willing to deface legal tender I think you're probably

20:37

willing to put curses on it.

20:43

Smashed penny. Like

20:47

last time I saw one it

20:49

cost only 51 cents

20:53

to get the smashed penny. That's all. It seems

20:56

like a deal right? 51 cents?

20:58

It's a very low price for all the fun

21:01

that a smashed penny will give you. A

21:03

mere 51 cents.

21:06

Look I don't mind providing

21:09

my own penny. I get it. I

21:14

was gonna get rid of pennies anyway. I might as

21:16

well smash them. I

21:19

hate pennies. I love smashing things.

21:25

But 51 cents? Are

21:27

you telling me penny smashing

21:30

technology is so cost

21:32

prohibitive? You gotta soak

21:34

me for four bits? Come on.

21:41

How about make it two cents? One

21:43

penny gets smashed, the other one gets thrown away. And

21:52

then what do you do with it? Once you... Well

21:55

now you have it. Now what?

21:59

Hooray!

22:02

I got it! Smash

22:05

Betty! This

22:07

is good for

22:10

me to have. Oh, Smash

22:13

Betty, we are gonna

22:15

have some crazy times, you and me. First,

22:19

I'm gonna go home and put you on the dresser for three weeks.

22:23

Mm, yeah. That's

22:26

right. Then

22:28

I will move you to your new home, an old

22:31

shoe box full

22:33

of ticket stubs and keys that don't fit

22:35

anything anymore.

22:36

Then

22:42

it's off to a larger cardboard box, and

22:46

that'll be it. So

22:50

long, Smash Betty. I'll

22:52

see you next time I move. And

22:59

it's also just sort of like... Flatpenny gets into genuine

23:02

anger, I think. That they cost so much. Well,

23:05

that's the thing. There is

23:07

the now knowing who you've become

23:09

since. It's like as you've challenged

23:11

your anger to, I think, more righteous causes. There

23:14

is a righteousness somewhere in this, even though

23:16

it is for about peanut butter. Absolutely. This is what

23:18

I would allow myself.

23:21

I want to go into specific parts of the joke,

23:23

which in my mind has about seven sections.

23:27

Movements, I call them. Yeah, yeah. So there's the intro

23:29

to what the prank is. There's the acting out the

23:31

design of the new packaging, how

23:33

normal it is for you to be offered peanut brittle, the

23:36

sorry for mentioning suspicion section, the

23:39

opening of the can, recapping what happened, and

23:41

then learning it was a prank. So

23:44

it's

23:46

already funny. It's so funny to hear it broken

23:48

down like that. I hope

23:50

it's typed out if you want to see it. Oh,

23:53

my God. So,

23:56

introing the prank. So the rest of

23:58

the bit is acting out.

23:59

What did you feel like people needed to know for you to be

24:02

able to

24:03

just go with it? Right? There had to be a certain amount of setting

24:06

up on top. Yeah.

24:07

It really is a, uh, uh,

24:10

an assumption on my part, like, okay,

24:12

everybody knows what this is, right? Just

24:14

in case. Here's what

24:17

happens. And I knew that I

24:19

guess I must have just trusted

24:22

that even if somebody had not seen this in

24:24

person, they'd seen some

24:26

iteration of it on TV or even an actual ad,

24:30

like in a comic book or something like that,

24:32

that there was not anybody who was

24:35

really going, I have no

24:37

idea what this is. Um, so I, I've, I thought

24:39

that very

24:42

succinct explanation was like,

24:45

you, you know what this is and it has to be like tossed

24:47

off because you don't want them to, you need

24:49

to be like, Oh man. I remember seeing a comedian,

24:52

it

24:53

was years ago in Philadelphia. I worked with

24:55

this guy. I was the host on the show and the

24:57

headliner was this horrible.

25:00

He was such a condescending prick and

25:02

he was so, I don't

25:05

know why he, he was, he took an instant disliking

25:07

to me. And so he would,

25:09

he would try to like, you know, after

25:12

shows at the bar, he would try to

25:15

insult me. And I think he was trying

25:17

to insult me with

25:19

sort of, um, plausible deniability. Like,

25:24

I think he wanted me to get upset, take the bait

25:26

and then say, Oh no, I didn't, I didn't mean it like that. And

25:29

then as I, since I wasn't taking the bait, he

25:31

got more and more direct,

25:33

um, and more and more insulting

25:35

to me. But I remember him on stage

25:38

saying, um,

25:40

I installed a dimmer switch in my home. Do you all know what a

25:42

dimmer switch is? It was like, are you,

25:45

this is Philadelphia. It's not

25:47

Amish country. Like we know what Amish

25:49

people know what a dimmer switch is. It's

25:52

also, I, you were from context clues in the name.

25:54

You could probably figure out what it is. Yeah. The next sentence

25:56

would probably then talking about whatever it is and it

25:58

has dimmer switch.

25:59

Okay, switch that didn't but he didn't I

26:02

mean he's I can't believe he didn't explain it But

26:05

he did check in with the audience to see if they knew

26:07

what it was Yeah, it seems like

26:09

he I mean to do what you just do you

26:11

do in the joke which is like Yeah, you know what dim switch is

26:13

and they were like, yeah, but yeah, and then you just like

26:15

do The

26:18

sort of business of foe explaining yeah, I

26:20

can't I wish I could remember what the rest of that bit was all I can

26:22

remember Is that horrible question? So,

26:26

um the first sort of joke part, I mean

26:28

the most like straight-up joke part of it is uh

26:31

The best time someone with this gag was the

26:35

1800s before entertainment was invented,

26:37

right?

26:38

Remember that what why do you like that? It's

26:40

great I mean then you sort of like then the

26:43

the next tag which is when people sat around and just

26:45

stared at open fire

26:49

Right So

26:53

I haven't done it a long time and I forget about some of these

26:56

little these little sides

27:00

Yeah that

27:02

that I can I can I can assume

27:04

was

27:09

One of the things that was added on like the more

27:11

I did it and

27:16

It's like Bringing

27:18

a little bell in my head like I sort

27:21

of remember I Sort

27:24

of remember not getting the phrasing

27:26

of that idea quite right and then

27:29

finally

27:30

Getting it, you know, like I probably I think

27:33

I remember going on too long with that

27:35

and then pulling it back You know as

27:37

I probably did with a lot of these these

27:40

little sections Because

27:42

you I mean that's part of the trial and error

27:44

of Standup is like if they're

27:46

laughing I'm gonna keep doing this until

27:49

they stop laughing and then I'll know what to take

27:51

out yeah, you know and

27:53

there is a You

27:56

know, of course with stand-up there's a lot of kill

27:58

your darlings moments where it's like This

28:00

is only funny to me and nobody ever

28:02

laughs at it. And you have to really,

28:04

you have to really show

28:07

restraint and it has to absolutely

28:10

tickle you to

28:13

the point where I know nobody's gonna laugh at this,

28:15

but I'm gonna keep it in any way. I will say

28:17

now that you brought up the point, which is true of

28:20

any comedian I can think of, I think

28:22

you are the best at that.

28:26

Of having lines that are probably only funny

28:28

to you or small but

28:30

that you know or have been proven

28:32

since, that is the line when people repeat

28:34

the joke. They're like, they'll say that little phrase.

28:37

Right,

28:38

hopefully. But I'm saying now

28:40

that we've seen it, I know this joke, I've Googled

28:42

what people say about this joke on Reddit. Like

28:44

those little phrase and throughout you have

28:47

those that you're like, some audience is just like,

28:49

these are words, but some audiences,

28:51

they will just say, it's like they can just repeat it back to themselves.

28:54

I think it's also, it's a repetition

28:56

thing that if you listen to a bit over and over

28:58

again, watch a bit over and over again, you will

29:00

discover a thing that you didn't catch

29:02

the first time. But doing it in front of an

29:04

audience, recording it,

29:07

not everybody's gonna catch every single little

29:10

piece of whimsy that I put into it the

29:13

first time. But I can't remember

29:15

the bit, but I know there's a line

29:17

in a bit

29:18

that I would do every time and to the point where I had to

29:21

acknowledge nobody ever laughs at that, but I'm never

29:23

taking it out. And I was just like,

29:25

I can't not put it in there. It's

29:28

too enjoyable to me.

29:29

So the big difference between

29:32

the 2003 version, 2007 version is actually

29:34

pretty similar except for, especially in this

29:36

section, the only difference is

29:40

when you say, and I know this, they're all still making gag

29:42

peanut brittle, you laugh, you don't laugh

29:44

in the 2003 version, you laugh yourself.

29:47

And that's the big difference between 2003, 2007, is

29:50

you laugh throughout the entire performance of this

29:52

joke. And I don't say this to criticize you. No,

29:55

no, no, I will criticize myself. I'm a terrible after

29:57

on stage.

30:00

I hope people know that I'm

30:02

never doing it on purpose.

30:06

Like what will happen a lot is if

30:08

I laugh on stage, it's because the audience

30:11

laughed and it reminded me

30:13

of the absurdity of what I'm talking about or

30:15

the humor of whatever I'm talking about. And

30:18

I

30:19

think that I just did it enough.

30:22

I did the bit enough. It was still

30:24

pretty fresh in 2003. And

30:27

honestly, I was probably

30:29

recorded in 2002, that's special. And

30:33

it was still like,

30:35

it was still very silly to me. And

30:38

then as it went on,

30:41

I think what probably happened was

30:46

I had to make myself stop laughing because

30:49

I needed to do

30:51

the drama of the act outs and

30:54

it needed to be, I needed to

30:56

act like it was, inherit

30:58

the wind. It had to be that level

31:01

of mock

31:02

drama to make it

31:04

really funny. That's interesting, because when you do laugh, it is at

31:07

the most basic setting up parts of

31:09

it. But I think it's important, I

31:11

think it is,

31:13

I

31:15

think it's one of the things that I think people think

31:17

of you when I think of your comedy, especially in the year since. It's

31:19

like,

31:20

as much as like Paul Tompkins as a guest

31:22

on a podcast is you talking. It's like you laughing

31:25

before you enter. That's true.

31:27

And I think that is,

31:30

in previous generations of comedians, very,

31:32

very frowned upon. It's like one of the many Oh, absolutely.

31:35

Invented in the 80s that I think

31:37

is antithetical to actually the creation

31:39

of comedy. Even in podcasting, people didn't

31:41

laugh. I remember the early days of doing comedy bang

31:43

bang. And if someone was playing a character

31:47

and it was just Scott and the first

31:50

guest talking, people would not laugh

31:52

unless they absolutely could not help themselves.

31:55

And I'm glad to hear more people

31:58

laughing because it's fun.

31:59

and it's silly and it's a throwaway thing. And

32:02

it's not precious. And

32:05

I also think that's a weigh

32:07

in for audiences

32:08

and it makes it

32:11

feel less sterile and

32:14

recorded and in a lab somewhere.

32:16

It's like, oh,

32:18

these people are all in the room together and they're having fun.

32:23

That's the kind of stuff that I,

32:26

that's the kind of vibe that I enjoyed

32:28

when I was a kid and

32:30

looking at talk shows and things like that

32:32

in the days when I'm

32:35

old enough to remember Johnny Carson

32:39

and

32:40

everybody would stay throughout the whole show.

32:42

And I loved the spontaneous

32:45

things that could happen and the way that people,

32:48

especially if they seem to know each other and

32:50

they would needle each other or

32:52

they would

32:55

laugh at each other's stories and stuff like that. I

32:57

mean, I didn't realize everybody was

32:59

drunk off their asses when

33:01

they appeared on television. But

33:05

I really love that and I enjoy

33:08

hearing it when I listen to a podcast.

33:10

It's a thing, because it's like,

33:13

I'm of an age where I only knew

33:15

the Carol Burnett Show as

33:17

the thing that SNL didn't do.

33:19

We're not gonna laugh like the Carol Burnett Show. And

33:22

I think, and then going into

33:24

the 80s, there was sort of like a certain sort of club comedy

33:26

mindset, we're not having fun here. We're here to crush

33:28

this audience, whatever. And I do think

33:33

your comedy and sort of your cohort and then through

33:35

podcasting, I think it is actually

33:37

what people prefer. They want the community to

33:39

be having fun. I think so. And enjoy

33:41

their own comedy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I

33:43

really think so. And it's never, again,

33:47

when you hear me laughing, it's always genuine. I'm

33:49

not, I'm not,

33:52

if somebody, I'm

33:54

an easy laugher and if somebody makes me laugh

33:56

in front of a microphone or off mic.

35:59

Well, it's a section two. Well,

36:04

it picks up the pace. So

36:07

the new design

36:11

was a lot of the impetus. So when

36:13

you have characters, and characters were a lot of

36:15

what motivated you to do this bit, are

36:19

you thinking about who this person is ahead of time?

36:21

Is it how deliberate are you when you're putting characters in

36:23

your stand up? I mean, it's very deliberate.

36:26

And the process is first

36:31

thinking about a concept of there was

36:33

a meeting about this. And then it's like, oh,

36:35

OK. Well, then let's do the meeting, because that'll be

36:37

funny. And

36:39

because it

36:41

was discussed at some point. I mean, that's

36:43

a fact. That is an absolute fact

36:45

is that at some point, at least two

36:47

people had a conversation about

36:50

what the label looked like on the fake

36:52

can of Peanut Pertil. And

36:57

putting the high

36:59

stakes of business into it is

37:02

very funny to me. And the idea that there's

37:04

one guy that everybody has to answer

37:06

to who the reputation of the company

37:09

is on the line. And

37:12

making people work on the weekends. That

37:16

story goes, I know it's sadder. It's my microphone.

37:19

Yeah. Yeah. That to

37:21

me is the real heart of the

37:23

bit to me, is

37:28

the pretending to be the different people and the different

37:30

situations. We'll be right back with more

37:32

Paul of Tompkins.

37:38

Hello, Jesse here. I want to take

37:40

a brief moment to let you know that I wrote a book.

37:43

And it is coming out on November 7. Yay.

37:47

Yay.

37:48

It's called Comedy Book, How Comedy

37:50

Conquered Culture and the Magic That Makes It Work. It

37:53

was inspired by all the interviews I've done

37:55

for a good one these last six plus years, as

37:57

well as a decade plus of watching. studying

38:00

comedy. This book is me

38:02

making the case for comedy as an art form that can

38:05

be analyzed and thought deeply about. I

38:07

talked about a lot of comedies that's been made

38:09

the last 30-40 years. And

38:13

if you like this show, I really think you'll dig it.

38:15

I put a lot of time in my brain and myself

38:18

into this book, and it

38:20

would mean so much to me for you to read it.

38:22

So you can pre-order a comedy book, How Comedy Conquered

38:25

Culture and the Magic That Makes It Work, wherever

38:27

you buy books, but we will include a link

38:29

in the show

38:29

notes so you don't have to wildly

38:32

google. So thank you for your time.

38:34

I really appreciate it.

38:41

Wolves and dogs are pretty closely related.

38:44

They actually share 99.9% of

38:48

their genetics.

38:48

But

38:51

even when they're just a few months old, even

38:53

when they're raised by human scientists, wolves

38:56

are pretty different from dogs.

38:58

They start biting you in the ears

39:00

when you're biting down if you don't sit

39:02

up fast enough. And you hear this wonderful

39:04

noise, this little and

39:06

then they chomp you in the ear and you're like, oh!

39:09

And when they grow up, these differences

39:11

get even bigger. Dogs

39:14

are our friends. Wolves are

39:16

hunters.

39:17

If I had a sore

39:19

shoulder, I wouldn't go in with the adult

39:21

wolves, even if I'd raised them, because

39:24

it could trigger

39:24

their hunting behavior. This

39:27

week on Unexplainable, how did we get the

39:29

nice friendly dogs we know and love

39:31

today

39:32

from wolves?

39:34

Follow Unexplainable wherever you listen for new

39:36

episodes every Wednesday.

39:44

And we're back with Paula Tompkins.

39:46

Section three,

39:48

canned peanut brittle.

39:51

Again, there's a version of again,

39:54

the joke where you're like, what's the deal

39:56

with this prank? Who is this fooling? Like there's

39:59

that sort of faux exasperation.

39:59

But instead you play out

40:02

just

40:04

infinite versions of you how normal

40:06

peanut brittle is. And I think the key to this entire

40:09

joke is one small thing, which is

40:13

you go, say, hey Paul,

40:15

would you care for some canned peanut

40:17

brittle? It's elegant. I

40:20

wrote it

40:22

out. Well, that's flattering

40:24

of you. You

40:27

have to set up the juxtaposition.

40:29

Because you're in character, you can't be

40:31

like, so it's weird that it's peanut brittle. It's weird that

40:33

it can't.

40:35

How deliberate are you with a thing like that?

40:38

Oh, of course that's very deliberate. And

40:40

it is that it's a snack that you've only ever seen

40:43

a box. So

40:45

if it's in a can, it doesn't make... Obviously

40:48

it's fake. And

40:50

I enjoy

40:54

the delivery of that line very

40:56

much

40:59

because of what

41:00

follows.

41:03

And yeah,

41:07

it's

41:09

deliberate that that's

41:12

all I have to say.

41:14

I don't have to say this never comes in a can. I don't have

41:16

to say why isn't it in a box. I just say

41:18

canned peanut brittle and everybody knows what I mean. And

41:23

to me,

41:25

that's the gateway to the fun

41:27

we're about to have.

41:29

Yeah, because if they laugh at that, then we're

41:31

all on the same page with this juxtaposition. Then

41:33

they're going to laugh at all the places that you can get

41:36

canned peanut brittle and

41:37

church, the gas station, whatever. One

41:40

of the small changes between 2003 and 2004 is in 2003 you go, oh, canned peanut

41:45

brittle,

41:47

the most common... Oh no, in 2003 you go, oh,

41:50

canned peanut brittle, my favorite common

41:52

snack I eat all the time. But

41:54

in 2007 you go, oh, canned peanut brittle, the

41:57

most common snack in all the world, which is...

41:59

A classic. I

42:03

actually like the first one better. I

42:05

actually like the first one better.

42:07

Why? Because it

42:10

leads better into the absurdity

42:13

of saying, it

42:16

might as well be water

42:19

for as much as it's around and

42:21

something about God's green earth and

42:23

all that. So I think

42:26

it's better

42:27

to say, the most common snack that I eat all the time

42:29

before getting into all

42:32

the time. The many ways that I'm saying how

42:34

ubiquitous it is. Yeah, that's

42:36

fair. It's also the other one is also gets a bigger

42:38

laugh

42:41

because

42:44

it's a big exaggeration. I think it's also you have

42:46

a way of you really perform when you do hyperbole.

42:49

I think the other example is

42:52

the Daniel Day Lewis. Years and years go

42:54

by

42:54

and then one day I get a phone call.

42:57

I get a phone call from Paul Thomas Anderson

42:59

and he says, Hey, I'm doing this new movie.

43:02

It's called There Will Be Blood. I want to put you in

43:04

it. It is three lines

43:08

opposite Daniel Day Lewis. Now

43:15

I have matured sufficiently in the intervening

43:18

years that I am more

43:21

excited than terrified at the

43:23

prospect of this happening. It is like 70 30. Right.

43:28

I think I can do this.

43:30

Get there to the set getting

43:32

costume and all that stuff. On this whole time. He

43:35

said this is very it's all very exciting. So I was like, I can do this now. I can

43:37

do this now.

43:39

Now I meet Daniel Day

43:41

Lewis. He's just sitting in a chair on the

43:43

set. Now I had been told that

43:46

Daniel Day Lewis was kind of an intense person

43:49

and he's really he's really

43:51

not. He's really not. He's really the

43:54

most intense person that

43:57

has ever existed on the planet.

43:59

of Earth. He's

44:04

not doing anything. He's just sitting

44:06

in a chair and I am terrified of

44:08

him as if a jungle cat

44:10

has wandered onto the cell. Like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,

44:13

whoa, what do we do? What do we do? Are

44:16

we supposed to move around a lot or stay perfectly still? What

44:19

are the rules of Daniel Day-Lewis?

44:26

You know, I think that's why it is

44:28

a bigger laugh, but I do agree that, like, well,

44:31

actually, the joke is about how common it is. It's not about

44:33

the world. So that next section is just,

44:35

like,

44:37

all added in those four years of just,

44:39

like,

44:39

seemingly, I assume, just you just do it until-

44:42

Just piling it on, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.

44:44

Like, with each performance, I would add a new thing

44:48

until it got, like,

44:50

okay, this is dain-u,

44:53

you know? It's like we've gotten to the point where anything

44:56

more would be too much. This

44:58

is the perfect amount. Are you recording and

45:00

listening back and being like, did it-

45:03

Yeah, yeah.

45:06

What I would do was-

45:09

I'm trying to remember. I think I had, like,

45:11

a little, you know, cassette

45:14

recorder back in the day. Oh, yeah.

45:16

And then, eventually, my phone. But

45:19

I would record long sets

45:22

and then listen back to

45:24

pair them down. I would not transcribe

45:27

them, but I would make note of the stuff

45:29

that I wanted to keep in and make that

45:31

the bullet. So it's like, make sure you hit these

45:33

things. Make sure you say this phrase like

45:35

this.

45:37

And then, pair it down and add things

45:39

in as I went along. And

45:44

it's the worst part of the process for me. I hate it. I

45:46

hate listening back to the stuff. I hate listening to myself,

45:49

trying to find, you know, a

45:51

way in a bit. It's

45:54

really, it's frustrating. It's annoying.

45:58

I despise it.

45:59

It unfortunately keeps me from

46:02

putting stuff together faster. Um,

46:05

but right now I'm, you know, I'm doing my variety shows

46:07

again. And that's where I get

46:09

to do.

46:10

And somebody,

46:12

somebody asked me recently, like, Oh

46:15

wait, so you do new, where do you try out

46:17

material? And I say, well, I do this Friday show

46:19

and I open my show with a

46:21

monologue. And they're

46:22

like, that's where you try out the material.

46:24

And I was like, Oh yeah,

46:27

I guess that is weird. Yeah. I was talking

46:29

to a comedian about it and we were both like,

46:31

how does he do a full, so for those who haven't seen

46:34

you, you just do a little song and

46:36

you come out and he did like 25 minutes of full

46:39

new material. Yeah.

46:41

And then, and then I don't

46:43

think any comedian would not an American. No, it's

46:45

a bad idea. And it came

46:48

out of, it came out of back when I

46:50

was doing more sets.

46:52

Uh,

46:53

I would, it was a guarantee that

46:55

this is, this show is going to be all new every time you see

46:58

it. Yeah. So I'm not going to do any established material.

47:00

I'm doing that other places and then gradually

47:02

I stopped doing the material other places and then I

47:04

was just trying out the material there. Um,

47:07

and then I would, uh, from those sets,

47:10

I would put together like a rough hour and then

47:12

try that out somewhere. So I'm getting ready

47:14

to do that again soon, which means

47:17

I have to go back and I have to listen to the sets,

47:20

which I'm not looking forward to doing. And of course now

47:22

the sets are, there's no, there's

47:23

no cap on the set. It's as long as I, I, I,

47:26

it's not as long as I want it to be. It's

47:28

as long as it is, you know, and that could be 15 minutes.

47:32

It could be 25

47:34

minutes, you know, hopefully not longer than that.

47:36

I mean, that's a big, I think I watched most of them this week.

47:39

They're all, they're all between 15, 25 minutes, but there

47:41

are some, they're 25 minutes and I

47:43

was like,

47:44

it is, it's impressive. They're very

47:46

good for a person. Yes.

47:49

I mean, I mean, that's, that is, that is

47:51

how long I've been doing this. Plus the

47:54

goodwill of the audience that knows what they're

47:56

in for. So people know that's

47:58

the deal. I don't know how they.

47:59

Okay. I don't

48:02

know how they know it, but I guess to me it's like, it's

48:05

almost like a late

48:06

night monologue where it's like

48:08

with the, with the exception of Jay Leno,

48:11

nobody's running these jokes anywhere beforehand.

48:13

They are trusting, Hey, we're all professionals.

48:16

We've been doing this for a long time. We

48:19

gotta be reasonably certain

48:21

that these jokes are going to make people laugh. Yeah.

48:23

And again, like going back to Carson,

48:26

famously some of the jokes would not do

48:28

well, you know? And that would stay in

48:31

where he's like, Oh, okay. That, that joke

48:33

ate shit, you know? Um,

48:35

and it's the same for me. It's like, there's a lot

48:37

of, there's a lot of things not getting laughs as much

48:39

as there are things getting laughs. And

48:42

I, I leave that all in

48:44

and you know, the videos are up,

48:46

the archive is up for people to watch. And you

48:48

know, when you see those, when you watch

48:50

those videos, it's like, that is, to

48:53

me is the

48:55

big wild card of a show that has

48:57

not been done before and will not be

49:00

done again. The rest

49:02

of it, the music,

49:03

all of the, all the rest of the stuff that we're only doing that

49:05

one time, the,

49:07

the opening set is the biggest wild

49:09

card and everything else. I'm like, no, people are

49:11

going to laugh at this. You know, because it's variety

49:13

show. It feels like you're more jokes,

49:16

like it's a variety of jokes from both good and

49:18

bad. I'm taking that and that's going

49:20

to become

49:21

part of the promo materials.

49:23

But that's because you're like late night shows

49:25

that the way they, the reason they get away

49:27

with it, it's like, well, this is just part of the, this is

49:29

the only time we're doing it. And then we're going to do another thing. Yes, exactly.

49:32

Exactly.

49:32

So even though, I mean, you

49:35

could say that I have more time to work

49:37

on it and I could workshop the jokes,

49:40

but it's like, I'm not really doing jokes per

49:42

se. And it's, it's stories

49:44

and it's, it's bigger ideas

49:46

and the idea and with the aim towards

49:49

eventually collecting this story, and with the

49:51

aim towards eventually collecting

49:53

this into a coherent hour of material.

49:56

So coherent, like three hours of material.

49:59

I wouldn't say coherent either. There's

50:02

themes. We'll get to that part. We're still in the past.

50:04

We can't get to too much of the piece. It's true.

50:06

So section, oh well,

50:09

I wanna say, do you have a favorite of your little

50:11

riffs to capture how much

50:13

you love peanut brittle and you're eating all the time?

50:18

There's the, barely can open

50:20

the door. When

50:23

you, this is a, you go

50:25

to the market, I

50:27

head straight to the brittle aisle. That

50:30

might be my favorite. The idea

50:32

that there's so many varieties

50:35

of brittle. What

50:38

are there? There's peanut brittle, maybe almond brittle, I

50:40

guess? I mean, now, sure. I'm sure they brittle

50:42

all the nuts, but that, at that time.

50:45

You said it was such confidence.

50:48

I'm sure they brittle all the nuts. Well, it's also to use

50:51

the brittle aisle is.

50:52

Search for peanut. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

50:56

So good, so good. It

50:59

was, when you say that, it's like, oh yeah, I forgot

51:01

how good these comedians can

51:03

be.

51:06

So moving on to section

51:09

four, which is sorry for being suspicious.

51:11

This to me is,

51:13

this is you. This is like the. 100%, yes. This

51:17

is a such a true

51:19

distillation of me

51:21

and my sense of humor and

51:24

what tickles me the most is

51:27

this

51:28

section of this bit right here, for

51:30

sure. What is, I assume, what it is,

51:34

it's like you are able to sort of good improv with yourself

51:36

if you are listening to every word. Right,

51:39

yeah, it is.

51:42

The things that are in this section

51:45

that really delight me are the, you

51:53

know, almost perverse formality of

51:55

it. Yeah.

51:57

Which is so funny to me of people.

51:59

being absurdly

52:02

polite with each other, any

52:05

kind of manners kind of thing.

52:09

It's one of the things that makes Downton Abbey so

52:11

funny to me

52:12

is that the

52:14

plot will be like someone is offended

52:16

by an action

52:19

that someone took. And

52:22

that's a storyline. That's sometimes

52:24

the A story in an episode of Downton Abbey.

52:26

And it's so funny to me. And that

52:29

there was a time when people really gave a

52:31

shit about stuff like that is

52:33

hilarious to me. It's the being

52:36

flustered,

52:39

being put upon the self-recrimination

52:41

of it, all

52:44

of that and just the high drama

52:46

of

52:47

the performance is

52:50

I enjoyed doing it. I

52:53

never got tired of doing it.

52:54

I never got tired of doing it. There is in it,

52:57

in the section which is so you, there's a

53:00

throwaway essentially thing you do, which is like you

53:03

hear you are so nice to offer

53:05

me some canned peanut brittle, a snack we've all established

53:07

is very common.

53:10

I went back for it one more time. That

53:13

did not need to be in there at all.

53:15

But it is that little under your

53:17

breath thing. That's one of the things that is a move. Absolutely.

53:21

I love it. I just needed to say it out loud. There's not really

53:24

a question. Isn't that good? Isn't

53:26

that funny? That is me. That's completely unnecessary.

53:28

In fact, it's slowing things down

53:31

a little bit at a point where they're built, it's

53:33

building to the crescendo. And I'm still like,

53:36

I gotta put this in here. What's

53:38

that sort of,

53:39

that formality of a person who's

53:41

like, it's like a lawyer apology.

53:44

It would be rude of me not to mention

53:47

that we've already established this. I know that

53:49

you know that this is a very common

53:51

snack and I would not insult you. I

53:53

cannot insult you by not acknowledging

53:56

that you know, that I know that you know.

53:58

Yeah, and it's this character.

53:59

that you've slipped into. You didn't tell,

54:02

like,

54:02

because there's

54:03

one character you clearly play, and then somewhere along

54:05

the way, you're now also this person. Absolutely,

54:08

yeah. And it's like, well, when did this character

54:10

establish that it was very common? Yeah. Yeah.

54:13

Yeah. Ha ha ha ha ha

54:15

ha. Ha ha ha

54:17

ha ha. So this, so

54:19

this guy is talking to someone who

54:21

he's been talking to since I

54:24

started being sarcastic about how common it was. Yeah.

54:27

A third person enters. Yeah. And

54:30

presents

54:30

it. Yeah. Exactly, yeah. It

54:32

was an active part throughout. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

54:35

So then you have to open the can, finally.

54:37

Yeah. Four minutes into a joke. Yes. Where

54:40

the entire joke is,

54:42

you notice this thing, they do a new logo, I opened

54:44

the can, but it's six minutes. So how did you,

54:46

you know, as you said, you had to really play it specifically,

54:48

and I think it's, a lot of this is,

54:51

it has to be really grounded, this part.

54:55

Is that how you thought of it? Like, how did you think of the acting?

54:58

I

54:59

mean, I certainly didn't think of it as, it has to be really grounded.

55:03

I wrote down, it's cartoonishly

55:05

normal. Cartoonishly, yeah. I think that's

55:07

how I thought of it. To me, it

55:09

all hinges on, I'll open the can, you have done

55:11

enough. Yes. And, you know,

55:15

the guy being so ashamed of himself

55:19

for even doubting

55:22

that

55:24

this was a genuine offer of

55:27

a delicious treat,

55:28

is so funny to me. And

55:31

then it's

55:32

like, well, of course, the whole

55:34

gag is the person has to open the can themselves.

55:37

Yeah.

55:38

And like the, you

55:41

know, the other person is never gonna offer,

55:43

like, would you like me to open the can for you? I'd

55:46

shoot at you.

55:48

Which of course, in real life, yes,

55:50

if you were offering someone a treat, you

55:52

would open the thing and say, here, take one. But

55:56

the idea of, you know, someone

55:58

saying, You know you

56:01

have already been so generous with me. I'll

56:03

do the the labor of opening this can

56:05

is very funny to me okay,

56:08

so This is the part.

56:10

This is this is part that kills

56:14

Like where just every word you

56:16

say? It's a laugh where you just recap

56:21

When you recap opening up the

56:23

perception, it's just occurring to

56:25

me now like the idea of somebody actually

56:28

being fooled because

56:31

the only the only joke is

56:34

Yeah, this wasn't what you thought it was gonna be

56:37

and this thing surprised you it's surprised That's

56:39

it. Yeah, you didn't expect this to happen. Of course. Why would

56:41

you and now it's happened. It's

56:43

over. Yeah It's

56:48

been so long Since I since

56:50

I came up with this and the idea that somebody

56:53

actually that would go to the legs of someone

56:56

Alarmed and concerned.

56:59

Yes

57:00

And then immediately concert for the other person

57:02

Someone you something messed up happened

57:04

with your pita brittle. Yeah some versions of the joke

57:06

you do I haven't been tricked you have yeah

57:10

Yeah, the you don't do in the 2007 version, but a later

57:12

version and an earlier version you go You got

57:14

a bad batch from India. Yeah,

57:16

because of I assume the cobra. Yeah, it's where cobras

57:18

are yeah

57:19

They

57:22

jumped over crates of

57:24

canned pita brittle that a snake got into

57:26

and

57:27

then jumped out So

57:30

there's a few parts. I mean there's the

57:33

one it works with it's the same guy as before. Mm-hmm

57:36

Oh, yes, it's this formal person. Absolutely

57:38

who you

57:39

have to be someone feel bad that like Oh,

57:42

this is this is the only sucker in earth the most

57:44

earnest man. Absolutely. So that works

57:46

and then

57:48

two venomous cobras

57:50

Jumped out of the can one of them tried to hook

57:52

my eyeball with a thing Now

57:55

this is where I could be wrong It

57:59

is it In my memory,

58:01

it's two

58:03

snakes spring out.

58:04

In the prank? In the prank.

58:07

In my, again, I don't know if I've

58:09

ever seen it or if it's just a thing,

58:11

but yes. Guess what, if you

58:13

do a bit about it, you will see it a lot because people

58:15

will give it to you as a birthday gift for many

58:17

years. But I

58:19

feel like I remember

58:22

having to stuff two of

58:24

them back inside the can. But

58:27

I'm sure there's single snake variations.

58:30

Yeah, but I feel like that would be...

58:32

And they pass the savings on to you.

58:36

The... Um... Of

58:38

the phrases, and this is sort of, this

58:40

is the section where you're like, now it's the phrasing sections

58:43

where you just...

58:45

Everyone's having fun, now I'm gonna knock you out with these

58:47

beautiful turns of phrases. Two venomous

58:49

cobras jumped out of a can. One tried

58:52

to hook my eyeball with a fang as he gained

58:54

his freedom. It's

58:56

beautiful.

58:56

Because

59:01

now this guy respects the cobra.

59:04

Oh yeah, he can't only be against the cobra. He's deferential

59:06

to the cobra as well. It's not the cobra's fault. Cobra

59:08

didn't want to be in that can. All

59:11

he's trying to do is get out. And

59:14

maybe he thinks I'm the person who put him in the can

59:16

and he doesn't know, he's just a dumb snake. Yeah.

59:19

He can't be blamed. Is that a real

59:21

scorpion in the frog situation? Absolutely.

59:26

So, you then learn it's a prank.

59:29

I'm

59:33

sorry, what did you say? So

59:36

now it's like a one-sided phone call. Oh, it's pure

59:37

Bob Newhart at this point. Yeah.

59:41

Absolutely. And I would be remiss if I

59:43

did not cite Bob

59:45

Newhart as an influence because my parents

59:47

had his records when I was a kid.

59:51

I remember vividly listening

59:53

to them in 1998. I got them digitally. Hadn't

59:57

heard them since I was a kid. Yeah. And as I

59:59

was packing up my phone.

59:59

apartment to move.

1:00:03

And it was a long process of like,

1:00:06

honestly, like getting rid of shit like

1:00:08

canned peanut brittle, you know, that that was

1:00:11

like just junk that I'd accumulated over the

1:00:13

years.

1:00:14

And listening on an iPod,

1:00:17

listening to the button down mind

1:00:19

of Bob Newhart and

1:00:20

marveling at how well it all held up.

1:00:23

So funny. And

1:00:25

just like, especially at that point

1:00:27

in my career to be listening

1:00:29

to what he was doing, like this one man

1:00:32

sketch performance, you know, and

1:00:34

I loved it so much. And definitely

1:00:38

without

1:00:42

consciously thinking of Bob Newhart,

1:00:44

this is a Bob Newhart. It becomes a Bob Newhart

1:00:47

bit. Because truly it could be him

1:00:49

talking to the customer service of the Peter

1:00:51

Bredell store. Absolutely. Absolutely.

1:00:55

I don't want to complain. I mean, you

1:00:57

know, it's that guy, the character

1:00:59

you're playing is Bob. 100%. It's sort of like overly, yeah,

1:01:04

like it's a person who's making this phone call. Yeah, yeah,

1:01:06

yeah. Because

1:01:07

like overly formal because he's like, because

1:01:09

Bob knew the bits that Bob Newhart would do were

1:01:12

either the, he

1:01:14

was the idiot talking to the, the

1:01:17

normal person. Yeah.

1:01:19

Or he was the normal person talking to the

1:01:21

idiot and explaining like,

1:01:23

you know, Abe, you have these crazy ideas, you know,

1:01:25

that kind of thing. And it was, he

1:01:28

was so funny. Yeah.

1:01:32

I think like that Bob Newhart thing and

1:01:34

why this feels so, I

1:01:36

was like, this also reminds me of like, who's on first. Like, it's like a piece.

1:01:39

You don't see, and even

1:01:41

how the way you end it, end it, you go like, you

1:01:43

go like, I really did. You go, yeah, I really

1:01:46

acted up. Like, you're just like, that's the end of this piece. Even

1:01:48

when you introduced your 2003,

1:01:50

it's

1:01:51

such a fun, you basically go, it's such

1:01:53

an odd introduction. This

1:01:56

next one is a favorite of mine and

1:01:58

I would like to dedicate it to the memory of Bob Newhart.

1:01:59

of actor George Clooney in

1:02:02

case he is dead by the time this airs. I

1:02:05

just want to be on the safe side. I like him,

1:02:08

but just in case I don't know when this is gonna air. Oh,

1:02:11

that was from the

1:02:13

TV taping. Yes. From the

1:02:15

TV taping, right? Yes. Yeah,

1:02:26

yeah. I have the sense memory of

1:02:29

the audience being just puzzled. Like

1:02:32

what is why is he doing

1:02:34

this? Yeah. And then no reason.

1:02:36

Absolutely no reason. I was

1:02:38

trying. I was like. And then I forgot about it. Yeah, yeah.

1:02:44

So, um, I remember that being

1:02:46

very, it was so funny to me at the time.

1:02:49

Like, why would you, the absurdity

1:02:51

of taking the time to do that?

1:02:54

Why? Then not paying

1:02:57

it off. Oh my God. So the,

1:03:00

the, uh,

1:03:02

I'd be remiss if I didn't ask. So Metal Springs in case

1:03:05

in vinyl. Remember

1:03:07

that day you just had that phrase in your hand.

1:03:09

You're like,

1:03:10

I have to describe what these things are.

1:03:13

And again, it's one side phone call. He, you're

1:03:15

repeating. He essentially said, no, actually

1:03:17

they're metal, metal

1:03:20

springs in case in vinyl. And

1:03:22

this guy can't believe it. Like I have to repeat

1:03:24

that myself to make sense of it. Yeah.

1:03:26

Metal Springs in case in vinyl. Um,

1:03:29

I mean that, that just happened on stage.

1:03:31

Yeah. You know, that happened as, as I was dragging

1:03:34

that part out. Um,

1:03:37

you know, I'm sure there is a shorter version

1:03:39

that exists somewhere. There's there's, I'm

1:03:41

sure there's a middle length

1:03:44

version of this that exists somewhere. Um,

1:03:46

cause how long was the original version?

1:03:48

The on 2007, it was the 2007 version

1:03:50

is like six minutes long. Right. And I think the

1:03:53

one on the half hour is probably like four

1:03:56

minutes long. Sure.

1:03:58

Like you really, the, The part

1:04:00

that grows the most is the part

1:04:02

where you're just talking about how common peanut butter is. That,

1:04:06

you had a minute of that. A minute.

1:04:10

God. What

1:04:14

can I say, gang? And

1:04:16

then, sir, you have fooled me

1:04:18

twice. Beautiful. What

1:04:20

did you, also jokes

1:04:23

don't usually have endings, because this is, I guess it

1:04:25

was a closer, but even that's not like, because

1:04:27

the big laugh line,

1:04:29

like if you're gonna close on the funniest part, I don't

1:04:31

think it's, sir, you've fooled me twice. It's like, such a threat.

1:04:33

But it's a goodbye. Right. It

1:04:36

is a goodbye. There are certain, I don't know if this

1:04:38

is true for everybody, but it became

1:04:41

true for me

1:04:43

that there were certain things, there were certain

1:04:45

bits where, and I

1:04:47

think it's even true of the hours that I've done,

1:04:49

where it's like the last line is

1:04:52

not necessarily the uproarious, undeniably,

1:04:56

but to me, it is a satisfying button.

1:05:00

And it still serves that purpose. So,

1:05:03

the funnest

1:05:03

thing, when

1:05:06

you know what your closer is, you know what your closing bit

1:05:09

is, and it's a thing that builds, builds, builds, builds,

1:05:11

builds, it's so much fun to perform. It's

1:05:13

so much fun to ride it with

1:05:15

the audience and

1:05:17

that they have this sense of like,

1:05:20

oh, we're building to the gershanda. It's like fireworks.

1:05:23

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like,

1:05:25

oh, this must be it. Yeah, yeah. It's

1:05:28

that feeling. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

1:05:30

And to bring it home with

1:05:32

a little quiet thing is

1:05:38

so satisfying to me and

1:05:41

feeling like I've

1:05:43

earned it with the audience that you guys

1:05:45

know I'm funny, and we've had a lot of laughs.

1:05:47

And so, I'm gonna end it with this

1:05:50

thing that's not necessarily

1:05:52

the funniest line, but it does

1:05:55

somehow perfectly

1:05:58

bring this to a close. I

1:06:00

enjoy that so much. Yeah, and so it's the end

1:06:03

of this guy's, we're now invested in this guy,

1:06:05

right? If you ended on Middle Springs

1:06:07

in Case in Vinyl, laugh. Yeah.

1:06:09

And be like, what happened? Is he now, like,

1:06:12

is he okay with that? Right. Has

1:06:15

their friendship ended? Yeah. So

1:06:21

the album, this joke appears on, is called

1:06:23

Impersonal, which is your first album recorded 21

1:06:26

years, I believe, into Stand Up. Yeah.

1:06:28

Which compared to how it works now is

1:06:31

unbelievable. Oh, yeah, honestly.

1:06:33

It was, I mean, at the time that I came

1:06:36

up,

1:06:37

to record an album, like people

1:06:40

weren't necessarily doing that on their

1:06:42

own. You know, it was, this was

1:06:44

when, I think

1:06:46

the technology was, you

1:06:49

know, like that kind of recording technology was, it

1:06:52

was more and more in the hands of people, of

1:06:56

like prosumer kind of stuff. So

1:06:59

you didn't have to like

1:07:00

get signed to a label or something,

1:07:02

you know?

1:07:04

But I also,

1:07:07

this is when I really started to get good

1:07:10

at comedy, you know? And at

1:07:13

this point,

1:07:14

I think I was already moving into

1:07:17

more story oriented,

1:07:19

story oriented material.

1:07:22

And that's why the name of it is Impersonal, because it's

1:07:24

like, I don't, there's nothing on this album

1:07:27

that is any,

1:07:29

I'm never real for a second, you know?

1:07:32

It's interesting because it's almost negative

1:07:35

now. Like it's almost like, because Impersonal

1:07:37

now would seem like

1:07:38

an insult, I guess. I think Impersonal

1:07:41

has a negative connotation that it

1:07:43

doesn't necessarily always need

1:07:45

to have, you know? It's

1:07:47

just a descriptor really, in

1:07:50

terms of this material.

1:07:53

And it also seemed like a funny name

1:07:55

for an album to me. Yeah.

1:07:58

Deb, where are you?

1:08:01

Did like you know because this is probably material

1:08:03

that you had around where yeah is

1:08:05

is the title reflect any sort of frustration or? Insecurity

1:08:08

of like because around this time also a lot of people

1:08:11

were becoming very personal. Yeah. Yeah.

1:08:13

Yeah that like 2007 is like Louise

1:08:16

on the rise whatever so this

1:08:18

idea that you know, we don't always will be He'll

1:08:23

always be first in our hearts and he was always so

1:08:25

honest Oh He

1:08:28

gets real yeah, anyway, but

1:08:30

that was in there. Did you feel

1:08:32

a

1:08:33

See change or did you feel like clearly

1:08:35

you notice one in yourself? We were like absolutely

1:08:37

is the the title it refers to

1:08:40

is really for me and I

1:08:43

guess for the idea of my Continuing

1:08:46

comedy career. Yeah, it is a demarcation,

1:08:49

you know of like I'm I'm done

1:08:51

with this kind of stuff

1:08:54

for the most part and It is

1:08:56

an evolution over the next couple

1:08:58

of hours of You

1:09:01

know kind of one foot in one foot out,

1:09:03

but this one is definitely on one

1:09:05

side of the line This is just silly. Yeah,

1:09:08

you know, I'm not gonna talk about I'm not really gonna even

1:09:10

talk as myself You know much

1:09:12

less about myself. It is I'm doing

1:09:14

a sort of character of myself just

1:09:17

to set up these

1:09:18

Ideas, you know silly ideas. Yeah

1:09:21

You know you mentioned the sort of transition

1:09:24

and now in retrospect it's it

1:09:26

there was a few things that happened in your life

1:09:28

that then seemed to Extremely directly

1:09:30

impact how your company evolved and I want to sort

1:09:32

of talk about those to sort of set the stage Oh where

1:09:34

you went so see me the first thing was

1:09:37

in 2003 you go to therapy

1:09:39

for the first time. Mm-hmm

1:09:40

now I Don't

1:09:43

want to talk about therapy any more than you want to

1:09:45

hear me talk about I

1:09:51

will keep this very brief. I Hate

1:09:53

when people are too open about

1:09:56

their therapy and it's not that therapy is a shameful

1:09:58

thing.

1:09:59

It's that it's It's private. It's

1:10:01

private. I don't like when people

1:10:03

just go on and are like, eh, my shrink says,

1:10:06

eh. I don't

1:10:09

think your shrink is trying to get messages

1:10:12

to me through you. Okay?

1:10:15

Also,

1:10:19

next time, listen a little closer, because you're

1:10:22

still a monster.

1:10:29

I made myself go to therapy. I was terrified

1:10:32

to go to therapy. I'd never been before. I didn't know what

1:10:34

to expect. And I was not raised in

1:10:36

a culture that

1:10:38

encouraged the acknowledgement

1:10:40

of problems, much less the addressing

1:10:42

of them. The culture in which I was raised

1:10:44

was more like,

1:10:46

you think there's something wrong with you? Oh,

1:10:48

I think there's something wrong with you. So

1:10:54

I screwed up my courage, went to therapy, and very

1:10:56

quickly realized, oh, this is a good thing.

1:11:00

This is just about figuring things out. Why

1:11:02

do you do the things that you do? How

1:11:05

can you stop making the same mistakes that

1:11:07

you always make? It was great. I did not

1:11:09

turn out to be a secret sociopath or whatever

1:11:11

it was I was afraid of. It's

1:11:14

a very useful tool. So if you're having problems,

1:11:17

I recommend giving therapy a try. It

1:11:19

is nothing to be ashamed of. It's a very practical

1:11:22

thing to do. And listen, it's

1:11:24

good. It's not all about blaming

1:11:26

your parents for stuff. There's

1:11:29

enough of that, though, that you feel like you're getting your money's worth.

1:11:35

But it really seemed to impact how you approach

1:11:37

stand-up. Can you talk about the influence? Yeah,

1:11:40

I think like a lot of people, a lot of people

1:11:43

in comedy, I had the fear of,

1:11:46

okay,

1:11:47

I thought my fear was,

1:11:50

if I become happier,

1:11:52

I'm not going to be funny anymore. But

1:11:55

really, I was just afraid of therapy because I

1:11:58

was afraid of like, what if I find out? terrible

1:12:00

things about myself. What if I find out I'm a monster?

1:12:04

What if I have a recovered memory?

1:12:07

Whatever.

1:12:08

It's really just the

1:12:10

fear of the unknown. It's

1:12:13

the fear of finding out stuff about yourself

1:12:16

that is not pleasant

1:12:18

or is sad. It's not like,

1:12:21

oh my god, I'm going to be Hannibal Lecter. It's like,

1:12:25

it's somehow knowing in

1:12:27

the back of your mind, I'm going to have to talk about stuff I don't

1:12:29

want to talk about. That's going to be uncomfortable.

1:12:32

And that really is what it is. And then what you don't

1:12:35

realize until you start doing it is it's

1:12:38

such a release to

1:12:40

get these things out of your brain

1:12:43

that you're carrying around in your

1:12:45

heart and soul for so long. And

1:12:47

then to be talking to someone who can help

1:12:49

you make sense of this stuff and

1:12:52

man, it

1:12:53

was just

1:12:55

what

1:12:57

a tremendous thing that was for me. It

1:12:59

was such a relief and it was such a help.

1:13:02

It was such an aid. It was such a tool to have. And

1:13:04

then

1:13:05

finding out that it has no

1:13:07

bearing on whether I'm funny or not. It has no bearing

1:13:09

on, you know, I'm still a person in this world. I'm

1:13:12

still going to have pain. I'm still going to have sadness.

1:13:15

I'm still going to have frustration. There

1:13:18

are certain things I'm going to be able to deal with better in my

1:13:20

life. I'm not going to be healed.

1:13:23

I'm not going to be all fixed. It's

1:13:25

like a regular joke that my wife and I

1:13:27

would have after therapy.

1:13:29

It's so funny

1:13:31

to ask somebody about a therapy session, how did it go?

1:13:35

And so a joke that we have

1:13:37

is, all done. I'm fixed. Yeah,

1:13:40

it worked. We

1:13:42

figured it out. We got the answer. Yeah, finally

1:13:44

cracked it and I'm all done. And

1:13:48

I went to

1:13:49

talk therapy for 10 years straight.

1:13:53

And then at some point

1:13:55

towards the end there, I got on antidepressants,

1:13:58

which another thing that was really interesting.

1:13:59

very scary to me, but I

1:14:02

had a friend, a

1:14:04

really good friend of mine who,

1:14:07

you know, was ahead

1:14:09

of me with therapy, with medication, and

1:14:12

who just broke it down in such a common

1:14:14

sense way of like,

1:14:17

because I think she was going to

1:14:19

go off medication at one point and

1:14:21

said, you know, it's a little scary, but I'm

1:14:23

feeling in a good place. And if it, if I

1:14:25

need to go back on them, then I will. And I was like,

1:14:28

that's so simple. It's so simple.

1:14:31

It's medicine. You know what I mean?

1:14:33

And

1:14:34

that really

1:14:35

helped me, you know, and now I'm at a point where I

1:14:38

could probably stand to go back to talk therapy again.

1:14:40

You know, I really like the medication

1:14:42

really helps, but it is good to have, you

1:14:45

know, somebody whose job it is to understand

1:14:48

these things, to understand feelings and

1:14:50

everything. And the reason, the only reason I stopped was I

1:14:52

felt like I kind of hit a wall. I was talking about

1:14:54

the same things over and over again, and it wasn't, I

1:14:57

wasn't able to move forward.

1:15:00

And now I'm at a different point in my life. And I

1:15:02

feel like

1:15:03

I, I would like to go

1:15:06

back and talk about

1:15:08

stuff from where I am now. Yeah. So

1:15:10

you, I mean, you talked about the, the relief, realize

1:15:13

the relief of knowing the relief

1:15:15

of talking. Yeah.

1:15:17

So, you

1:15:18

know, the, where you go next is you, you, you

1:15:21

become a storyteller seemingly overnight,

1:15:23

but like you just, because your last album wasn't really

1:15:25

this hands up, but really, and then you're

1:15:27

this rock and torch, something big, long stories.

1:15:31

Were you afraid of telling stories before that? Cause it's interesting.

1:15:33

Cause you did the, cause you did the one man show.

1:15:36

Yeah. But it's like, it was

1:15:38

a very sideways. Yes.

1:15:40

It's a vet. That's that is a very theatrical

1:15:42

thing. And what's so

1:15:45

funny about that

1:15:46

show is and

1:15:49

if I did it again, I would do it,

1:15:50

I would do it differently, but at

1:15:53

the time it was myself and three other comedians

1:15:55

that got these deals with HBO independent

1:15:58

productions. This is back when.

1:16:00

Man, show business

1:16:02

money was insane back

1:16:04

then.

1:16:06

Like there were things called holding deals, which

1:16:08

was

1:16:10

we noticed that people seem

1:16:13

to think that you might be something.

1:16:17

We don't know what to do with you, but

1:16:19

just in case, we're gonna give you a bunch

1:16:21

of money to just not go anywhere else.

1:16:24

That buys us some time to figure out if there's something to be done

1:16:26

with you or not. And that is impossible

1:16:29

to imagine today, that they would be like, we're just spending

1:16:31

money for no reason. No,

1:16:33

you go make a show and bring it to us. That's,

1:16:36

you wanna talk about money? You spend the money, you

1:16:38

make a show,

1:16:40

and then we'll decide whether or not we like it. Yeah, yeah,

1:16:42

yeah. So we had these deals.

1:16:47

Let me see if I can remember everybody. Greg

1:16:49

Barron, of course. Sarah,

1:16:53

I'm

1:16:55

trying to remember her last name, Sarah Stanley.

1:16:58

She was like, someone is there. No,

1:17:01

she was doing quite fine. And

1:17:03

Jason, oh yeah,

1:17:05

who's last name, I

1:17:07

can't remember. Goodbye, Yellow Brick Joke

1:17:09

was the name of the special.

1:17:11

And I think he subsequently got out of comedy. I

1:17:13

think Sarah did too, I think she became a musician.

1:17:16

But this was 1998 that we did these specials. And

1:17:22

the

1:17:22

idea was HBO independent

1:17:25

productions had such success with Ray

1:17:27

Romano,

1:17:28

who did an

1:17:31

hour of comedy that was essentially

1:17:33

the blueprint for everybody loves Raymond.

1:17:36

And they were like, oh, let's just do

1:17:38

this again. We have a formula. And

1:17:41

so I, for

1:17:44

whatever reason, I was like, well, I think

1:17:46

I also didn't have the material to do it. I

1:17:49

wanted to make it like a proper one-man show.

1:17:52

No one wanted me to do that. No

1:17:56

one wanted a theatrical play. They

1:17:58

wanted an hour of standup.

1:17:59

That would be a blueprint for a TV show.

1:18:03

And, you know, so I did it. It didn't

1:18:05

go anywhere. There was also the

1:18:07

stunt in it of drinking four pints of Guinness

1:18:10

in a

1:18:11

half hour. Was it an

1:18:13

hour? Half hour, half hour, half

1:18:16

hour. Idiocy.

1:18:21

And I had to do two recordings the same night. So

1:18:25

it was Greg Baron and I did the same evening.

1:18:27

So I did mine. Then Greg did

1:18:30

his. Then there was a break. Then Greg

1:18:32

did his. And then I did mine again. This is so I could

1:18:34

sober up between shows. And

1:18:36

so between shows, I drank gallons

1:18:38

of water. And so by the end

1:18:40

of the second show,

1:18:43

my stomach was like hard as a rock. I'm

1:18:45

so full of liquid and a

1:18:49

drop of beer came out of my nose. I

1:18:51

drank, I drank eight pints of Guinness. And,

1:18:55

uh, so I, yeah.

1:18:58

So in that it was sort

1:19:00

of, there was a hint of what

1:19:03

I was going to end up doing, but it was way

1:19:05

much more structured and theatrical and rehearsed

1:19:08

and, you know. And in many ways that structure

1:19:10

probably made it seem

1:19:11

like, well, I'm not doing stories, I'm doing this play. There's

1:19:14

this script I'm performing. This isn't me. It's

1:19:16

the guy who's in this play because the bartender

1:19:18

is not playing an actor. Yeah.

1:19:20

And that's what I, and that's what I wanted. And

1:19:23

I think that was absolutely a sort of defense

1:19:25

mechanism. It was on the one hand, it was the highfalutin

1:19:28

idea of I'm not just going to do, uh, uh, you

1:19:31

know, a half-assed

1:19:33

one man show where it's just my stand up, given

1:19:35

a narrative structure. And

1:19:38

then it's like, well, why not? I

1:19:40

should have done that. Um,

1:19:43

I have such mixed feelings about that, about

1:19:46

that half hour. Like on the

1:19:48

one hand, it's like, that's where I was at the time. That's

1:19:50

what I did at the time. On

1:19:53

the other hand, it is so theatrical.

1:19:55

I don't, I don't ever want to rewatch

1:19:58

it. Um.

1:19:59

I am both proud of

1:20:02

and ashamed of it in equal measure, you

1:20:04

know.

1:20:05

But I remember one person trying to, I got

1:20:08

into an argument with a guy at a bar after a gig

1:20:10

who was a fan and he was

1:20:14

a little bit drunk

1:20:16

and he was kind of trying to get me to admit,

1:20:19

like he wanted to hear me say like, yeah,

1:20:21

that sucks and I'm embarrassed by it. And I wouldn't

1:20:23

do it. And he was getting increasingly

1:20:25

more angry at me because I wasn't

1:20:28

drunk. And I was like,

1:20:29

no, dude, I'm not, that's not going to happen. You know,

1:20:32

and he ended up like, I think it ended

1:20:34

with him saying, fuck you and him walking away from me.

1:20:40

And I think that happened at the bottle tree

1:20:42

cafe in Alabama. It either

1:20:46

happened there, it happened

1:20:48

in Burlington, Vermont.

1:20:50

Was it around? What era was, did

1:20:52

your stand up, because your stand up was not like that. So

1:20:54

then he's like, Oh, was it in the era where you're

1:20:56

not doing stories yet? So it's still, I think it's

1:20:58

in the era era where I am doing stories. And I think it's

1:21:00

around the time when I was doing a thing called the Tompkins 300,

1:21:03

which was if people on my space

1:21:06

formed a group,

1:21:08

um, that said, you know, I want to see Paul F.

1:21:10

Tompkins in my town, if they got to 300

1:21:13

members, uh, that all were

1:21:15

serious about seeing a show,

1:21:17

then I would come do a show there. And it worked really

1:21:19

well for like a year. For like a year, I did shows

1:21:22

that way, um, with only maybe

1:21:25

one real disappointment, which was the Dallas show

1:21:27

where not that many people showed up.

1:21:30

And other than that, people

1:21:32

really came out and it was fun. Was the

1:21:34

talking therapy directly to, I can

1:21:37

talk on stage and do stories on stage. Like how

1:21:39

did you get over it? I think that, I think that gave

1:21:41

me the courage. I think that gave me the courage to try

1:21:43

it. Yeah. And then once people responded

1:21:46

to it,

1:21:46

uh,

1:21:48

I realized I could do it, you know, and I, because

1:21:50

I really enjoyed that. It's like doing observational

1:21:53

comedy. It's when you tell a story from

1:21:55

your own life.

1:21:56

I realized I could tell a story for my own life and

1:21:58

tap into.

1:21:59

to the emotional aspects of it,

1:22:02

which was the way in for the audience. So they

1:22:04

didn't have to necessarily have the exact

1:22:07

same experience as I did,

1:22:09

but, and laboring under delusions

1:22:11

is the example of that for me, where it's

1:22:14

like, I'm telling some very unrelatable

1:22:16

stories.

1:22:17

So I go into this house, and I met

1:22:19

by an assistant to the production, the assistant says,

1:22:21

hey, come on in, did you have a chance to look at the script?

1:22:24

And I said, no, I haven't. And the assistant

1:22:27

says, oh. And I say, why

1:22:29

did you make that noise at me? And

1:22:32

the assistant says, well,

1:22:34

it's kind of a big script, and you're responsible

1:22:37

for about a dozen, two to three line

1:22:39

parts that are scattered throughout this very big script.

1:22:41

And if you miss any of the roles

1:22:44

that you're supposed to read, which is very easy to do, because

1:22:46

they are kind of hard to find in there, you

1:22:49

would be bringing the entire reading

1:22:51

to a halt.

1:22:53

Let's

1:22:55

take a look at that script then. So

1:22:59

the assistant hands me the script, which is the

1:23:01

size of the phone book. And

1:23:04

I have to comb through this phone book

1:23:06

size script and find all the parts

1:23:08

that I am to read. And it's tricky, because

1:23:10

I don't know if you've seen the movie Magnolia, but

1:23:12

the plot is, everyone in the phone book

1:23:15

starts talking to each other.

1:23:28

So I have the script, and I

1:23:30

have the list of the characters that I am to play and the

1:23:32

pages upon which they appear.

1:23:35

So I am the first to arrive, I'm sitting at this table,

1:23:37

and I am frantically flipping

1:23:39

pages and circling

1:23:41

the names of the characters that I am to play. So I don't miss

1:23:43

any flipping and circling, flipping and circling. Famous

1:23:46

people start to show up and sit at

1:23:48

the table. And I think to myself, do not look

1:23:50

at those famous people. They

1:23:53

will distract you from your flipping and circling.

1:23:56

So flipping, circling, flipping, circling. Finally,

1:23:58

there is one seat left.

1:23:59

at the table right next to me,

1:24:02

and in the seat sits Tom Cruise.

1:24:07

And I say, do not look at Tom

1:24:09

Cruise under any circumstances. Get

1:24:13

back to your flips and circles. Well,

1:24:18

I don't have a chance to ignore Tom Cruise because

1:24:20

Tom Cruise taps me on the shoulder and

1:24:22

says, hi, I'm Tom.

1:24:31

Hi, the most famous person in the world.

1:24:43

I'm Paul. Tom,

1:24:46

did you say? I heard it's good

1:24:49

to repeat people's names when you first

1:24:51

meet them, so you won't forget Tom. Not

1:24:54

Dom Cruise.

1:24:59

But

1:25:00

the emotion of it is something that everybody, everyone's

1:25:02

been embarrassed, everyone's been scared, everyone's

1:25:04

been whatever. And then

1:25:07

I could talk about whatever I wanted, and the audience would not feel

1:25:09

shut out. It would not feel

1:25:11

like I could do it anywhere. And

1:25:13

the only place it was ever an issue was Australia,

1:25:16

where,

1:25:17

you know, there's a thing called tall poppy syndrome

1:25:21

where you are

1:25:23

not allowed to, you know,

1:25:27

talk about yourself in what is considered

1:25:29

a self aggrandizing way, in

1:25:32

a way that suggests that you are better than other people or that

1:25:34

you live in a more rarefied air than

1:25:36

other people. And the idea

1:25:39

is that the tall poppy gets its head cut off. But

1:25:41

I remember there was one review, it was like, it was a fan,

1:25:44

it was not like a paper or anything, but

1:25:46

it was like someone who was reviewing all the shows. And this

1:25:48

is why you don't search your own name.

1:25:51

And referred

1:25:53

to it as needlessly boastful. This

1:25:58

is a... This is a show

1:26:00

where I am routinely humiliated

1:26:03

again and again and again. The show about

1:26:05

being yelled at at work. Yes.

1:26:08

But because I mentioned a couple famous people... One

1:26:10

of the people that yells at you is... ...heaslessly boasts Tom

1:26:12

Cruise. Yes, exactly.

1:26:15

But I think, to American

1:26:17

ears, that joke is

1:26:19

about like, you're at work. Like, this

1:26:21

is like... Yeah, this is work. Yeah,

1:26:23

yeah, yeah. It's a joke about being ill-prepared

1:26:25

for your job. Yeah.

1:26:27

And you are getting... Attention

1:26:29

is being shown on you by

1:26:31

someone who everyone else is paying attention

1:26:33

to. Essentially saying, look at this fool

1:26:36

and you're the fool. Yeah.

1:26:38

Yeah, it's high school. It should be high

1:26:40

school. Exactly. A person who knows what it feels like, man.

1:26:42

Absolutely. Yeah.

1:26:45

So then the next of the

1:26:47

sort of breakthroughs was... So

1:26:49

this is around 2007. I think the first

1:26:52

time you appear on a thing that is considered a

1:26:54

podcast is around 2007. But then 2009,

1:26:56

as we said, was Comedy Bank Bank started as

1:26:59

Comedy Death Ray, sort of the rise of podcasting.

1:27:03

And you've talked about how growing up you've always

1:27:05

wanted to be a guest on a talk show. You said, like, I

1:27:07

don't want to be on SNL, I want to be the host

1:27:10

of SNL. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And

1:27:12

you sort of have done that. You've created...

1:27:15

The... You... It's like essentially

1:27:18

like Steve Martin or Martin Short. You have created what

1:27:20

a podcast guest can be.

1:27:23

Right. Does it feel like that? Like, do you feel

1:27:25

like you notice it? I mean, I...

1:27:27

It's very flattering that

1:27:30

people compliment me on

1:27:33

that. And I really...

1:27:36

It does mean a lot to me. It means

1:27:38

a lot to me that a lot of people ask me to be their first

1:27:40

guest on a podcast and, you know...

1:27:44

And I... I

1:27:46

try to be... I guess it means a lot to me because

1:27:49

I try to be a good guest, you know? I try to... What does that

1:27:51

mean to you? I think it means you...

1:27:54

You're not above whatever show

1:27:56

you're doing. You engage with the premise

1:27:59

of it. in good faith

1:28:01

and with enthusiasm, you know, like

1:28:03

that's why otherwise don't say yes, you

1:28:06

know, um

1:28:08

and it's the only time I I

1:28:13

Regreted doing that was the Adam Corolla

1:28:15

show

1:28:17

Because I was not a listener to that show in his

1:28:20

early days. Yeah, and I was there a promote something.

1:28:22

Yeah, and I

1:28:25

didn't realize that the show was

1:28:28

Adam just goes and goes and you are there

1:28:30

to support him

1:28:33

Like he'll take care of the comedy you

1:28:35

chime in occasionally, but it's never gonna

1:28:38

be The spotlight is never gonna be

1:28:40

shown on you. Really? I was listening a

1:28:42

Preparing is like I'm gonna listen to your first few appearances

1:28:45

on comedy bang bang comedy Jeffery because it's for fun because

1:28:47

I listened to when they came out and it's fun Yeah,

1:28:49

it was fun and slower everyone

1:28:51

talks much lower. Oh really especially

1:28:53

Scott Scott. Yeah, I figured it out yet Yeah, yeah.

1:28:55

Yeah, it's a very funny. There's a very

1:28:58

funny moment. We're dad a Dax Shepard as a

1:29:00

guest Oh, but but and Dax

1:29:02

Scott starts talking at Scott their podcast That's

1:29:04

got tax like the hell he's

1:29:07

like with this. Are you playing a character you go there?

1:29:09

Are you playing a character right now? He

1:29:11

said that Scott

1:29:14

On like almost right away like What

1:29:18

is this he's just so amazed that Scott had this energy

1:29:20

I Was

1:29:25

listening back to the those first few appearances

1:29:28

and I think it's the first time we did Andrew Lloyd Webber

1:29:30

Mm-hmm and

1:29:31

one moment just call Scott Scott trick scratch

1:29:33

Rick. Mm-hmm and It

1:29:35

was like the it's hard to just it truly

1:29:38

felt like a Breakthrough

1:29:41

for everything 100% when you said that yeah, he

1:29:45

Something lit up in his brain. You can tell

1:29:47

and you like this

1:29:49

This doesn't think that it didn't make sense before and it doesn't make sense

1:29:52

after but like this in the world

1:29:53

It wanted that feel that way to you. Do you have a moment

1:29:55

and you're like there's something to this map that is like things

1:29:58

like that are

1:29:59

absolutely where you find the character

1:30:02

where it's like

1:30:04

It informs everything then it's like

1:30:06

oh this guy considers

1:30:08

himself too fancy to use

1:30:12

Nicknames and if there's any

1:30:15

name that seems like it could be a nickname.

1:30:17

He's going to Assume,

1:30:20

it's elongated to whatever

1:30:22

so

1:30:24

Then sometimes the trick was figuring

1:30:26

out. Okay. Well if it's Making

1:30:29

every name more formal than it is so if it doesn't

1:30:31

have a nickname He has to make

1:30:33

a longer version of it so that

1:30:35

everyone else is calling that person the nickname, but he's

1:30:37

not And I remember the

1:30:39

it's like it's based on the last

1:30:42

letter

1:30:43

It's like okay. So if pat is Patrick

1:30:45

Scott is Scott trick I remember

1:30:47

the the one with it was

1:30:50

Adam Scott so it's like well

1:30:52

Adam I Guess

1:30:54

would be Samuel. Mm-hmm. So he's a damn

1:30:57

you'll Mm-hmm Which

1:30:59

is like sometimes they don't really it's like a real reach,

1:31:01

but it's like it's that's what it is That's what the guy

1:31:04

is you've now you know like

1:31:06

you know you two characters understand it forever But you've now

1:31:08

become a prolific character creator through

1:31:10

podcasting

1:31:12

Well, how do you create a character when

1:31:14

you're doing podcast like when what how

1:31:17

they start? You know, you know forever they were basically

1:31:19

impressions that like went to where they were Yeah,

1:31:21

there was the moment where like I want to try to phase

1:31:23

to do characters and then you've done

1:31:25

that now for I

1:31:27

Can't it's hard to remember when that the

1:31:29

grand switch of Paul Tompkins on oh,

1:31:32

yeah, probably like I want to say Boy,

1:31:36

I mean I started doing bang-bang

1:31:38

in 2009. Yeah, and my

1:31:40

first few appearances were over the phone Yeah,

1:31:44

when Scott was still doing it out of the radio

1:31:46

station and I was in New York and then

1:31:50

Did impressions that I I did impressions

1:31:52

that I knew I could do already that came out of doing

1:31:55

best week ever And impressions

1:31:57

is very loose because it was it was

1:31:59

caricature

1:31:59

is essentially of various people and

1:32:02

then started looking for more voices that

1:32:05

I could do when I started my own podcast

1:32:07

and then probably

1:32:10

like I

1:32:12

don't know 2015-2013

1:32:16

something like that. I think the first one

1:32:18

I did was maybe Was

1:32:20

it JW still water? So

1:32:23

guys we are just about wrapping it

1:32:25

up. We are What? Why? Why?

1:32:27

Why? Why? We could do this for hours. I

1:32:29

know we could sit around dick around for hours,

1:32:31

but you know what? It's my anniversary.

1:32:34

It's

1:32:36

What? I

1:32:42

knew I heard a siren. Hey y'all

1:32:44

hear him sirens. We did. I heard

1:32:47

a crown go. JW still water That's

1:32:50

right the vigilante hero of

1:32:52

color back Canada, Florida the person we've met

1:32:54

once I

1:32:56

met you. Yeah, that's right. You look familiar.

1:32:59

You look familiar You

1:33:02

don't you don't and you don't

1:33:04

it's a half wizard. Well, what about Mike? It's a half way Yeah,

1:33:06

Mike the janitor, right? Although mr. Still

1:33:08

what how do you do pleasure to see you again? Hope

1:33:11

the crime fighting is going well Yeah,

1:33:13

well you keep it to yourself Super

1:33:16

villain that's all behind

1:33:18

me. I've been beaten with a bat now. I have crazy guts.

1:33:21

Well good. I'm glad you deserve

1:33:23

it Hey, JW.

1:33:26

What's up? What's your crime going on? You heard a crime

1:33:28

going we heard a siren as well I was listening to

1:33:30

my bear cat scanner. Mm-hmm.

1:33:32

I thought I heard a crime go, huh? Then I heard some sirens

1:33:34

Sure, I was like, oh, that's a tip-off in my

1:33:36

fan boat. I like a shot Here

1:33:38

I am at the ear wolf studios. Mm-hmm. I

1:33:41

can't remember But but the idea

1:33:43

of like yeah, I'm tired of doing

1:33:47

these people that are tied to the real world

1:33:49

and I I

1:33:51

It's it felt like a limiting

1:33:53

thing to me

1:33:54

And so if

1:33:55

I make up a person out of whole cloth then

1:33:57

I I'm not confined to

1:34:00

that.

1:34:00

There's no, there's

1:34:03

no anchor to the real world. I can just, it

1:34:05

can just be whatever it wants. And,

1:34:08

you know, it was also my way of

1:34:10

learning improv, you know, without actually

1:34:13

going to take classes was knowing

1:34:16

the basic tenets and then improvising

1:34:19

with people who were great improvisers, you know,

1:34:21

who knew what they were doing and just

1:34:23

trying to absorb as much of that

1:34:26

by osmosis as I could. And

1:34:29

also knowing that I was

1:34:31

going to fail. And, and

1:34:34

honestly, the biggest lesson for me was being

1:34:36

okay with that failure, because I've

1:34:39

always had a perfectionist

1:34:41

streak, a control

1:34:43

problem. And,

1:34:46

you know, it would bum me out when

1:34:48

things that I

1:34:50

wanted to do, things that I would put on

1:34:52

stage in a show didn't work.

1:34:55

When there are a lot of moving parts and a thing did not

1:34:57

get pulled off properly.

1:35:00

It made me mad. It made

1:35:02

me mad to have to

1:35:04

rely on other people in that way. It made

1:35:06

me mad that I wasn't able to communicate the thing that I

1:35:09

wanted to communicate adequately enough.

1:35:11

It made me mad that I only had one shot at it and

1:35:13

I couldn't do it again. And it didn't work

1:35:15

the way I wanted it to work. And so then

1:35:17

doing characters and doing improv,

1:35:20

that was the whole, that was built into

1:35:23

it. It's like sometimes it's not going to work and you have

1:35:25

to be okay with it and you have to move on to the next thing.

1:35:27

You have to move on in the moment. Not only

1:35:29

do you have to move on in the moment, after it's done,

1:35:32

you have to shake it off and take

1:35:34

what you can from

1:35:36

it as a learning experience and apply that

1:35:39

to the next time you do it. And that

1:35:41

was, that was how I learned improv.

1:35:44

And it also had a profound

1:35:47

impact on my life. It

1:35:49

made me more okay

1:35:50

with things not being the way that I

1:35:52

wanted them to be. It made me more

1:35:54

okay with trying something and

1:35:56

not being good at it, trying something and failing

1:35:59

and saying

1:35:59

like, hey, I'm coming at this with

1:36:02

the right intentions. If it doesn't work, it's not because

1:36:04

I'm a bad person. It's not because

1:36:07

I can't have anything the way I want it. It's just that

1:36:10

this is life. Life is more about

1:36:13

trying things and not succeeding than it is

1:36:15

about succeeding. And I

1:36:18

needed to be okay with that. And honestly,

1:36:21

I think some of the bigger disappointments that

1:36:23

I've had in my life since I started doing

1:36:25

improv

1:36:27

would have been more devastating to me

1:36:29

had I not

1:36:31

learned those lessons. Wow.

1:36:35

And so when you're approaching characters,

1:36:37

are you just ultimately like, does

1:36:39

it allow you a freedom of how you think

1:36:41

of what a character is? Yeah, absolutely. And

1:36:44

the freedom to, especially on something, because they usually

1:36:47

start on comedy bang bang,

1:36:50

the idea that I have to take what is thrown at me.

1:36:53

And if I do have a

1:36:55

kind of vision for the character to say

1:36:59

no in a,

1:37:01

in what has to be a fun and artful

1:37:03

way,

1:37:04

I have to offer something else that gets back to

1:37:07

lessons learned from a writer's room that

1:37:09

if you're going to shoot down an idea that somebody has, you

1:37:12

can't just say no, you have to say, what

1:37:15

about this? Ideally, you say,

1:37:17

if things are working really well, ideally,

1:37:19

somebody offers an idea. You

1:37:22

think that's not quite it. What if we take that

1:37:24

and we build on it or we take that and twist it? So

1:37:27

it's not just saying I reject your idea

1:37:29

out of hand. It's not good. You're

1:37:32

saying, okay,

1:37:33

what if we do this for that idea and

1:37:36

make it better or enhance it

1:37:38

or whatever?

1:37:39

And so if

1:37:42

Scott Ackerman is going to say,

1:37:45

you know, like,

1:37:47

yeah, the way you look, you're you're you

1:37:49

look to be like you're 80 years old.

1:37:52

If I don't want the character to be literally 80

1:37:54

years old, I have to say, I'm not,

1:37:57

I'm 35, but I look terrible. You know, like

1:37:59

something like that. So it has to be, you

1:38:02

can't just say no, it has to be a heightening, it has to be

1:38:04

something. You have to offer a fun alternative.

1:38:06

Yeah.

1:38:07

Was there a moment or is that a moment where you

1:38:09

were like, there's something to this medium that makes sense for

1:38:11

you that you, you know, cause as you said, like you didn't

1:38:13

make sense in your try to late night, late

1:38:15

night seems like it'd be natural. And you're on this

1:38:18

thing and you like essentially invented what natural

1:38:20

looks like. Well, I was learning multiple things

1:38:22

at the same time. I was learning how to do improv.

1:38:24

I was learning how to do, you

1:38:26

know, character, work,

1:38:30

you know, with other people.

1:38:33

And it was really exciting and it was exciting

1:38:36

even to fail at things and

1:38:38

to, to,

1:38:40

to realize, oh, I know what I did wrong

1:38:42

and I can fix that later. It was

1:38:45

like, I I've

1:38:47

only ever been a good student at things that I cared

1:38:50

about and to

1:38:52

observe, you

1:38:53

know, all these people that were better than

1:38:55

me at this thing and what they did. And

1:38:58

I would take stuff away from what

1:39:01

they did. Like I would think about a choice that somebody made

1:39:04

and break it down later and say,

1:39:06

Oh, that was really smart. I see why they did that.

1:39:08

And I see,

1:39:11

how that heightened things,

1:39:13

how that led to more fun, how that

1:39:15

opened the door to, can you think of an example?

1:39:18

Not, I wish I could. Yeah. The, the,

1:39:20

the,

1:39:21

the person that flashes in my mind is

1:39:24

Craig Kekowski. And it's

1:39:27

something that I didn't even witness, but was told about

1:39:30

that he was, he

1:39:32

was in a scene

1:39:33

with two other guys

1:39:35

and they're all sitting, you

1:39:38

know, on stage together on chairs and

1:39:41

Craig's in the middle and these two guys are arguing

1:39:43

with each other over him about

1:39:45

whatever they're arguing about.

1:39:47

And then there's a,

1:39:49

you know, they go on for a bit

1:39:52

and then there's a beat. And then Craig says,

1:39:55

my parents are never going to pay the ransom. Are they? Completely

1:39:59

unconnected to. what they were talking about, but also

1:40:01

it was not, he

1:40:04

wasn't breaking the scene, he

1:40:06

wasn't negating anything that was happening, he

1:40:09

was, and so simply

1:40:12

introducing a new huge idea

1:40:14

into this,

1:40:16

and it was, like that stuck

1:40:18

with me. I think about

1:40:20

that a lot. I think about that a lot. Because

1:40:23

it is like, you have to really know what you're doing to

1:40:26

do something like that,

1:40:28

to be able to further

1:40:31

something with such a huge heightening, and

1:40:36

you're not winking at the audience, you're not taking

1:40:38

anything away from what's already happened,

1:40:43

and you're also kind of

1:40:45

giving this gift to the other people in the scene.

1:40:47

It's like, this is now part of their characters. I

1:40:51

just think stuff like that is brilliant to me, and it's

1:40:53

like, that's where I'm striving to

1:40:55

get to, to

1:40:57

that kind of level.

1:40:59

So the third thing that seemed

1:41:01

to really change things was your parents

1:41:04

died sort of in this period after it. Your

1:41:06

mother died first, then a few years later, your father died. And

1:41:08

I

1:41:10

can't summarize, it's a pretty complicated

1:41:12

relationship, but can you talk about sort of, what

1:41:15

was their relationship to your comedy and your funniness,

1:41:18

and then how did it impact you to have them

1:41:20

pass away in that way?

1:41:22

When a parent dies,

1:41:25

much less both parents, when one parent dies,

1:41:28

it changes the landscape of your universe

1:41:31

utterly.

1:41:32

And it's almost like I don't wanna

1:41:34

get into the

1:41:38

nuts and bolts of it with people a lot because

1:41:41

it's sort of like a spoiler alert,

1:41:43

you know what I mean? Because look,

1:41:46

most of us, unless you have absolutely

1:41:49

shitty parents, which

1:41:52

a number of people do, it's

1:41:56

extremely scary to think about. And

1:41:58

my parents were always older, so it's... It's a thing that I thought

1:42:00

about a lot, but

1:42:02

thinking about it when it actually happens are two different

1:42:04

things. There, nothing can prepare you for

1:42:06

it.

1:42:07

And you know, my mother died after

1:42:10

a long illness. My father died very suddenly

1:42:12

and both of them

1:42:14

are terrible, you know?

1:42:18

But I, my relationship with them

1:42:20

was one of wanting approval

1:42:23

and not getting it. It's as simple as that.

1:42:26

And they were the people that

1:42:28

they were. They were very much of their time. They tried

1:42:30

the best they could. You know what I mean? They did

1:42:32

the best they could with the tools that they had. And

1:42:35

another thing about your parents dying is your

1:42:37

relationship with them does not end. It is ongoing

1:42:40

and you turn things over in your mind and you look

1:42:43

at them with fresh

1:42:44

eyes every few years,

1:42:46

you know, as you go through stages of life, you

1:42:48

know, you think about where they were. And as

1:42:52

you are the recipient

1:42:54

of the good things of the time in which you live, you

1:42:56

realize that they,

1:42:58

they did not have the opportunities for

1:43:01

just thought that you do,

1:43:03

you know, the way, the way they look

1:43:05

at the world is different. The way they looked

1:43:07

at the world is way, is way different than the

1:43:09

way you look at the world. And

1:43:13

you know, so I am

1:43:14

on any given day, I am very

1:43:17

forgiving of them and very resentful of them,

1:43:19

you know, and,

1:43:21

you know, that just goes on

1:43:23

and on as I, as I continue

1:43:25

to age, you know. So

1:43:28

that is where my desire to

1:43:31

become funny came from. And

1:43:33

you know, again, getting back to the idea of therapy

1:43:35

and,

1:43:37

you know, am I going to be as funny?

1:43:40

You know, if I'm therippized,

1:43:41

well, yeah, I still am. But

1:43:44

would I have gotten into comedy had

1:43:47

my relationship with my parents been different? I don't

1:43:49

know. I don't know. There's some people

1:43:51

who have great relationships with their parents who are some of

1:43:53

the funniest people that I know, like professionally funny,

1:43:56

not just, you know,

1:43:58

like funny, not.

1:43:59

need to do comedy. Yeah. Yeah.

1:44:02

Yeah. Yeah. Who knows where it comes from?

1:44:04

And you know, I, I,

1:44:07

it's, it's, it's, it's too simple

1:44:10

to say

1:44:12

my desire to be, uh, approved

1:44:15

of made me a comedian. Yeah.

1:44:17

That's what it feels like. Yeah.

1:44:18

But maybe I would have done it anyway. You know, maybe

1:44:21

if my parents have laughed at every thing I said, I still,

1:44:23

I would have said, Hey, I'm funny. I should do this. You

1:44:25

know, like I love the approval.

1:44:27

Yeah, exactly. This is great. It's fun. I

1:44:29

mean, that's the thing is that for whatever reason

1:44:32

you get into stand up, whatever, whatever

1:44:35

pain you feel may have driven you into

1:44:37

it. Once you get into it,

1:44:38

it's like, Oh, this is fun. Yeah. It's not

1:44:41

a pain factory. It's not like, it's

1:44:44

not about angst. It's not about like,

1:44:48

you know, whatever your demons are. It's like,

1:44:50

this is a fun thing to do. What's

1:44:52

more fun? You get up in front of an audience, you make people

1:44:54

laugh. You have a shared experience. Like it's

1:44:57

a ball, you know? But I

1:44:59

mean, part, I mean, part of the thing why I brought up these

1:45:01

sort of three things that happened is that it felt like after

1:45:04

partly because of these partly through these

1:45:06

that on the other side, your relationship

1:45:08

to the audience changed

1:45:10

drastically. Yeah. And especially around the idea

1:45:13

of needing to validate you needing to approve.

1:45:15

And can you talk about what that change

1:45:18

meant and, and how your

1:45:20

comedy changed as a result of that?

1:45:22

The change was, I think

1:45:24

in simplest terms was, I

1:45:27

will let you in if you will let me in. And

1:45:31

the shared experience to me

1:45:33

was the, was the, that

1:45:35

was the high to chase. And because

1:45:37

there's nothing like it, there's nothing like

1:45:40

when you hear a laughter of recognition about

1:45:43

a heavy thing, it

1:45:45

is,

1:45:46

it's so cathartic when people would come

1:45:49

up to me after a show, especially when I was doing material

1:45:51

about my mother's death. And they

1:45:53

would say, Hey, that my mother died recently. And that really

1:45:56

helped me. You know, it's like, I'm not

1:45:58

looking for that, but when it happens, it's.

1:45:59

It's like,

1:46:01

it's very humbling,

1:46:04

which I didn't understand when people would say things

1:46:07

like that. And now I get it. It

1:46:09

is like,

1:46:10

it is,

1:46:13

for someone to say that to you is an extraordinary

1:46:16

gift. And

1:46:18

that's not something that you take lightly when

1:46:21

somebody says, a thing that you said

1:46:23

helped me. That's huge, you

1:46:25

know? Because of course I've had that

1:46:27

experience with other things, you know? Of course

1:46:29

I've had, I've had a song

1:46:33

or a stand up or a movie

1:46:35

or whatever has been cathartic

1:46:37

for me. So that's not lost on me.

1:46:40

That's no small thing when somebody says that to me. And

1:46:42

it is very humbling. And it's like, all I

1:46:44

can say is,

1:46:46

you know, thank you for telling me that. And I'm glad

1:46:48

that if I could in any way,

1:46:50

you know, ease your grief or

1:46:53

give you a tiny moment away

1:46:56

from it.

1:46:57

I am hugely grateful

1:46:59

to have done that. Yeah. I mean, part of

1:47:01

it is it seemed like you shifted away from

1:47:04

the,

1:47:06

you know, you started doing Common in the 80s, which was like the

1:47:08

stand up time, which is like,

1:47:10

you went over an audience, then

1:47:13

destroy this audience. Your relationship is

1:47:16

transactional or whatever. And

1:47:18

then it felt like... Well, that's what it felt

1:47:20

like at the time. Yeah.

1:47:23

See, I would go to Common Death Range

1:47:25

in 2009, 2010, and it

1:47:27

seemed to shift to a direction