Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.

Hello, Alex.

I'm okay, Joe. Good to see you, buddy. What's going on? I'm so happy to be here, buddy. Thanks, man.

I'm happy to have you here.

I was excited to see you. We know each other a long time. I was excited to come to Austin, of course.

We were just talking about how Zoukeeper was 14 years ago. That's shocking. How?

I know.

I hate that. Time just fucking flies by, man.

It's terrible. It's terrible. That was a fun time, though. Kj was so excited.

That was very fun. That was very I remember.

You and KJ was sussy, right? Yeah. That's how you guys-I've known Kevin for 30 something years.

I've known him forever.

It's funny because even your stand-up, I watched your stand-up the other night. You guys You guys remind me of each other. There's something, you take your time on stage, you set it up, you say your shit, and you live in it. It's not the same, but you can tell you guys are buddies. There's something about it Everybody feels like, I would hang out with that guy. It's cool. But did you and KJ start stand-up together?

Well, we didn't start together exactly. I started in Boston. He started in New York. But I met him when I was, I guess, two years in, about two years in.

Where? Where did you guys meet?

In New York.

At the Strip or something?

I think we met at Eastside.

Eastside? I don't think I did. That's downtown?

No. Eastside Comedy Club was on Long Island.

Oh, yeah. I used to go.

That was in like Huntington. Huntington. Yeah. That was a great club. That was Richie Manoveni's place.

That's right. That's Manervini. Now, that's a funny bastard.

Yeah, he's a funny dude.

One of the first comedy clubs I watched, I think I saw Carol Leifer at the East Side Comedy Club. My sister lived in Huntington. She said, Do you want to go see? It wasn't my first, but it was like first couple. She said, Do you want to see a comedian? There's a club around here. I said, Yeah, and I sat in the back. I think I might have been 15 or something, 16. I saw Carol Leifer kill for an hour, I think. I was That club was rocking.

Yeah, it's gone, though, right? Are there good clubs along the island now? What's that?

Well, jeez, man. I don't know what's happening.

There was always governors. Governors was great. That always existed. Yes.

I remember there was a few bars that were comedy clubs that I used to do there. I just don't remember the names right now. But back in the day when I was young, I would go out to the island. Governors, I don't think I got on there much. Maybe a couple of times when I was young. That was a rocking club. Oh, yeah. Steve Stevo. Do you remember Stevo? No.

I know Stevo, the Jackass guy.

Jackass guy. No, there was another guy, Stevo. It was a funny comic. John Mulrooney, you remember Mulrooney? Sure. I remember he was huge out there.

He used to be a cop, right?

I think so. I remember Mulrooney was by far him and Kevin Meany were the two guys you didn't want to go after. I remember Mulrooney would just destroy a room. He was so loose and would dominate the room, and then they bring you up and you were like, Oh, goodness gracious.

I saw Kevin Meany once at Catch a Rising Star in Cambridge, and it was insanity. He was at his peak, absolute peak. I wasn't even thinking about doing comedy then. I was just a comedy fan. I went with a friend of mine from high school. I think we were both 18. We went and we saw him just fucking destroy for an hour to the point where I got out of there. It was like I had an ab workout. I was in pain. Yes. I was like, Jesus Christ.

Yes, I know.

He was so in the groove. Everything he did was funny.

Man, and I've never in my life killed as hard as Kevin Meany. I mean, there's nobody you can kill. I remember me and Rock would be on the side at Catch a Rising Star watching me, me and he do whatever he did. And you were just like, Yeah, I don't think I can get laughs that loud. It fucking blew out the room every time.

He was on fire. It was on fire. But it was weird. It's like it didn't sustain. Like, he later in his career, for whatever reason, it just... Whatever he had for those few years Like in the '80s, in the early '90s, it didn't keep going for some strange reason. He kept doing stand-up, but something was missing. I don't know what it was.

I know he killed on The Tonight Show with Carson. I'm sure he went and destroyed and did all. I don't know what he wanted. I don't know what the next thing he wanted. I just remember. Maybe didn't he do a TV show, Uncle Buck?

Yeah, but that was not that good. That was the John Candy movie that they turned into a television show. I think there was always the thing that he was in the closet, and then he came out of the closet, and then it was right before he died.

I'll tell you, I did a Boston Club Comedy Connection when I was 17. I ate it. I I came off stage. I mean, I bombed and my dad was there watching. It was a terrible feeling. Even the emcee who I don't remember when I came off stage after eating it, I'm walking. You know that awful feeling of walking through the crowd and they were looking at you like, Jesus, dude. And then the fucking emcee stopped me. He goes, Adam, Adam. I turn around with your head spinning and shit. I look at the guy, he goes, Class Clown? I go, I nod my head like, yes, He goes, Maybe stick with that place. Laughing. I go, Okay. I fucking walked off. And then I went into the dressing room because I wanted to hide. Meanie, You're a funny kid. I said some nice shit to me. I always remembered, Oh, that can't be me. He's a fucking good dude, man. He was lifting me up.

Yeah, some encouragement from a real comedian when you're just starting out can go a long way. Yeah, man. Because in the beginning, it's so shaky. You don't know if it's going to work out. What am I doing?

Oh, you go home at night, head spinning.

What am I doing to myself? Why am I doing this?

Yes, it's fucking insane. It truly is the sickest feeling. Then there's the days or nights you go on stage and your shit, you're not doing good, you're eating it, but you have a confidence and you're like, I'm pretty good at this, even though I'm fucking eating it. I feel pretty good right now.

You feel like, I'm going to figure this out. Exactly.

I'm going to figure it out.

Yeah. Your movies kept my family sane through the beginning of the pandemic. We went on an Adam Sandler run. We watched basically every... The only one we didn't watch is Little Nicki. For whatever reason, we never got to that one because we watched other ones. I watched the Zoe. I might have just seen the Zohan 20 times. Wow. I fucking love that movie.

Thank you. Yeah.

Such a funny movie. Why didn't you ever do a second one?

That's fucking always talked about it. I mean- Dude.

It's a no-brainer. It would be a little tough sell now.

Right now, We'd have to wait a minute.

Put that one on the shelf for a little bit.

We had to put that one on the shelf a bunch of times when we were about to do it because shit would go on. We'd be like, maybe it's a tough time to do it right now. And then we did it. The intention was good to try to say, let's try to get some peace out there. And then another part of it is I'll never fucking be in that shape again. I don't think I could ever do that. You're going to hire a trainer. I know, but I I can't stick with it, buddy. You are doing great. How the fuck are you eating so good and hitting it so hard? I'm like, you know what? I used to fucking take working out so serious when I was in maybe up to 25, 26, and now I can't fucking do it. I play hoop, then I eat. And every time I'm eating, I'm going, what are you doing, man? You don't need to do this. I can't stop. Just got a little bit of thickness all over.

Yeah, it's something that just You have to stay on the horse. You can't back off at all, especially as you get older. You back off at all. You just start, what is this? You start feeling this thing.

Oh my God. I know I have a new... What is this? What's this? I know, buddy. You fucking walk in now and I go, Jesus, that'd be fun to look like that. I always fucking wanted to be... I had no shit. When I was 18 to 23, I hit it so hard. I never looked like you. I never was Jack.

You look good during the Zohan.

Pretty good.

Really good.

Pretty fucking good for me. That was as good as I can get. I naturally had a little something going on when I was real, like the college years, but now it's fucking rough. My kids go, what? My daughter, one daughter, Sadie's always saying, Dad, get the training from the Zohan. Why would you ever give that up? Why did you stop? I was like, It's a lot of work. Yeah, but didn't you like the way you felt? Yeah, you should do that. Get that feeling back and stuff like that. But I I just can't jump in there.

Well, she sounds like a good coach.

She's good. Yeah, she's saying the right stuff.

She's right.

Everything she said, I have a thought. I don't promise her. I go, Let me think about that. That's a good idea.

The whole thing is just not overdoing it in the beginning. Start and slow where it's maintainable and then slowly build up. That's the key.

So you give yourself new goals?

Well, I never stop. But I mean, when you get started. Yeah. The thing is people try to go too hard. Like, oh, my God, I'm out of shape. I'm going to run fucking 10 miles, and I'm going to lift weights. Then you're too tired. Then you're so fucking sore in the morning. Like, I can't keep this up. The whole key is just give your body enough where It's pushing it, but it's not exhausted. You're not breaking your body down. You're just strengthening it slowly. You got to get sick the same way, or you got to get better the same way you got sick. You got sick over time. Over time, eating food and fucking up. And then you got to get better that way. Over time, slowly start to morph your body back into a good condition.

That's good.

I like that. Everybody tries to go too hard. They try to go too crazy. You get excited. They do something unsustainable.

You get excited to get it going again.

And then- You get injured, you break yourself down, you hurt your knees, you hurt your back. It's too much.

Tear or something.

Yeah. The key is just not do too much. Just do enough and just cut back on you. Say, I'm going to only have two cheat days a week. Two days a week, I'm going to eat whatever the fuck I want. Five days a week, I'm going to eat clean. And then break it down to six days a week, I'm going to eat clean. One day a week, I'm going to fuck off. If you could go one day a week just fucking off, you can get a lot done.

That's amazing. The fuck off day is from start to finish. You can do whatever the hell you want.

Do whatever the fuck you want. One day.

And then the other days, the good days, do you eat a breakfast and all that shit? Yeah, sure. I skip breakfast lately. That's my new move the last year.

Like intermittent fasting?

I guess so. But I'm supposed to fucking lock in on eight hours or six hours. And I always say I do one to nine, say. Then around fucking ten, I go, Let me have some grapes. And then I go, I think I'm not supposed to have grapes. And then I go, I have a few grapes. And then it opens up to some other shit.

Grapes aren't the problem.

The grapes lead to some bad shit.

Grapes lead to waffles.

Fucking skinny cow. That's the new thing. Skinny cow. Ice cream, sandwiches in the house started a little problem for me.

What are skinny cow?

They're supposed to be a little better for you because the calories aren't awful. I think it's like 130. So I go, 130. Usually they're fucking like, 330. So then I eat two of them. I got still under that 330. Then I go, if I have a third, it's still in the threes, so I need a third. And then I fucking go, I got to stop, man.

If you really want to be serious about taking, just hire somebody. You got money.

I got the best guy, the guy who did me for the Zohan, and I I love him. It's just I see him and I love him so much that I go, Let's keep this a friendship. I don't want to. I play so much basketball, though. That keeps me okay. I don't want to take my shirt off, but I don't- How often you play? Maybe four or five a week where I get out there and run for a run. That's great. That's pretty good.

That's very good. That's a key if you could do something that you really enjoy doing. If you do something that keeps you active that you enjoy. That makes it so much easier because you're playing a game. So you're getting fit, but you're in the middle of a game that you really like.

You don't hate that at all. That is the best. I think that's the only thing I got that... You You fight. That's fucking fun, right?

Martial arts are fun. Yeah.

Martial arts are fun. Kj always fought. I never even thought. One time, KJ, we left a hotel, and I think he just came from fighting with one of the guys who teaching him some shit, and he was so riled up from it. He put me in some fucking crazy hole out of nowhere. We were going to dinner. All of a sudden, he came at me. I was like, holy shit. And he fucking grabbed me, twisted me around, had me in some weird hole. I said, okay, he's just letting me know he can destroy me. But I remember just going, yeah, that's fucking something I should get into, man. But I just can't. I'm not flexible at all. You're very flexible. Yeah. That helps.

Well, I started stretching before I hit puberty. That's the big thing. Or during puberty, really. So it's like while your body's thickening, you're stretching. Keeping it loose. That makes a giant difference.

By the way, KJ, being flexible is very odd. He can put the hands. Yeah. He's fucking weirdly.

He's a very athletic guy. He just eats like a fucking army.

He does get excited. Sometimes when we were young, I'd say, Tell me your McDonald's order. And he'd be like, Okay, three quarter banners, three big man. Whatever the fuck it was. He goes hard. His McDonald order is insane.

Kevin go hard. But also when he was on a podcast, told me he fasted once for... How many days he fast for?

Yes, 60 something-er.

Yeah, something. Insane amount of... It was like 40 days or something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mania.

Something insane. And then I think he ate a sandwich and it really hurt.

I'm sure. You're so much probably like, what the fuck is going on?

Oh my God. He's a madman with that fasting.

Yeah, well, he's an intense dude. He's just intense with eating, too. But if you ever watch him hit the mitts, ever watch him hit the pats, he can fucking strike. Yes, I know. It's shocking. The people that don't know him, you see him crack mitts and you're like, Jesus Christ.

Holy shit. He is Yeah. He's fucking legit. And he can roll around good, too.

When he was getting ready for Here comes the Boom.

Yeah.

When he was training with Mark De La Grotte, I was like, God damn, dude. He was cracking those pads.

I know. He did let me know in that one Same thing he did to me. You know who did that to me, too? Farley. Farley, we were in the hallway at Saturday Night Live, out of nowhere. Oh, no, we were at a fucking hotel, and he came at me real fast, grabbed me, put me in some shit, pulled hard. I felt every part of my body crack. Then Farley laughed. Just like with Kevin, they looked at you like, I could fuck you up if I wanted to.

Farley was a big dude, too.

He was a big boy. He was like, maybe 5'8, He was like 5'8 wide, too.

He was wide. Yeah.

Fucking athlete, though. Moved nice.

When he moved around on stage, when he moved around on SNL, he was fucking... That was part of the thing, he was so explosive. Oh, yeah, man. Part of the funny in him was this fucking insane. He had this explosion inside of him. They could get out. I only met him once. You did meet him? Yeah, I met him on the set of news radio, and he was in the middle, the throes of addiction. So he was gray He was very wet cardboard. It was weird. It was weird being around him. He just looked sweating. He was like, Hey, how are you doing? I was like, Hey, what's up?

Was he there to see Phil?

He was there to see Andy Dick. Me and Andy Dick were hanging out, and I think they were both off the rails. They were having fun. They were having a good time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fucking, that sucks. I hate it. Well, he was...

Yeah, that's horrible.

That was a good time of life, though, that news radio shit.

Oh, yeah. That was a lot of fun.

It was Spade and Phil?

No, Spade wasn't on Matt Spade was on that other show, Just shoot me.

He was on Just shoot, but I thought he did a couple of things.

He did. Yeah, he definitely did. But a lot of people did. Yeah, a lot of people did.

Was that your first big thing to lock into?

Yeah, that was the first big thing. I did a small sitcom that nobody watched before that called Hardball.

Hardball? What was it about?

It was a baseball show on Fox. Yeah, I think I remember that. No one liked it. Five or six episodes.

What were you on that?

I was a baseball player.

You played baseball?

I did in high school. Oh, A little bit until I started doing martial arts. Then I gave up all sports.

Got you. That's cool, man. I want me to tell you my martial arts, it's not that big of a deal, but I grew up in Manchester, New Hampshire, and a lot of guys were tough, fought and shit, fights would happen. And then I had the idea. I drove by downtown, I saw this guy. I can't remember his name, Mick Something. And I fucking saw a kickboxer. And I was like, Let me take kickboxer just in case I can fuck somebody up because that'd be fun to have that secret weapon of kickboxing and all of a sudden be able to kick someone in the face. That'd be great. And so I talked my buddy into it. Well, maybe he talked me into it. But I think, anyways, we both go and fucking 15 guys in there from school already doing it, already advanced. And I was like, all this did was make me realize these guys can kick the shit out of me. I thought guys I could take. I was going, oh, fuck, that guy can crush me, too. I had no idea. But I'm never flexible. So I think I quit after four or five sessions.

Flexibility is something that everybody can gain. It's just you just have to go through the process. Flexibility is not something like There's certain amount of explosiveness and athleticism that some people just don't possess. It didn't take a long time to get there. But flexibility is something that you just have to work at. I've seen very inflexible people become flexible. Yeah? Yeah.

Just by doing it every day?

Doing it every day and just sticking to a routine. You just got to force yourself past the pain.

I'm just nervous. My hamstrings are going to pop this so fucking tight.

You know what you get? You ever see one of those things where it's like a strap and you put your foot into it? Yes. Pull back. Those things are great.

Yeah, I know. I just take a yoga class. Yeah, I know.

Go to hot yoga. That's a cheat code. No, that's a good one. It gets real hot in there. You get a lot looser.

Yeah, that's good. My My wife's good at that shit. My daughters do it. It hurts my lower back and my hamstrings so much that I end up just going, all right, I get up and do a fake water break and just stare at them.

So how was working on this special? I saw you in Vegas. I saw you stand up in Vegas. I know you did. It was very funny, man. Thank you, man. Very funny. I really enjoyed it.

I appreciate it, man. I had a great time making this special. I have a great time on the road. I can't believe it. I fucking quit doing stand up for 20 years or something.

What made you want to get back?

I think I was doing Grownups and Rock and Spade and Schneider and KJ were always talking about, Next weekend, I'm going to Niagara Falls, and I'd be like, These guys are all fucking having fun on the road. And then I think Apatow was doing Carnegie Hall, He was hosting something, and he said, You want to do some stand-up again? And I just go, Yeah, let me do that. And I did it just to make sure that I fucking put together 15 minutes or something. That got me back into it.

And did you just piece it together by doing small sets? Or how did you write it out?

I think maybe I did a couple of improbs or something that Maybe I went to the improv a couple of times, but mostly from doing Letterman. I used to do Letterman and do two segments. So I'd fucking sit down with my buddies, write jokes, and just go out there with jokes and trusted that, yeah, that's a good joke. And I think I started doing that with stand-up, too. Just going, this is pretty good. Let me just do it.

And then when did you start booking gigs?

Same shit. I called the guy, this This great guy whose daughter was going to school with mine. He would talk about booking acts and shit. I said, I was thinking of doing stand-up again. You want to book me some shows? And then he just booked a 10-city tour for me. And I said, all right, I better fucking put an hour together for that.

Wow. So how did you put the hour together? Did you go to the Improv?

Did you go to the store?

Where'd you go?

A couple of times at the store, Improv. I would drive out of town, the valley, maybe.

Like the Ha Ha?

That That shit. Yes. Yes. Anybody. Flappers. Exactly. Flappers. Flappers is a good spot to try shit out.

Yeah.

Yeah. I just did a bunch of... Maybe I went down to that Comedy Magic Club. Is that still rough? Yes, I did. I did. For sure. Hermosa Beach.

That's a great club.

Yes, exactly. Except I remember growing up, I would always see Lena and Joe. Is it Joe? Is it Brogan? What was it?

Jimmy Brogan? Jimmy Brogan. Yeah, the Booker. Yeah.

But he did Did stand up as well. He did stand up and they were so clean, and they would fucking violate. I always felt self-conscious in that place for how filthy I was. I was like, These people don't want to see this.

Well, the Comedy Magic Club is the cleanest club in the country. That right? Yeah.

Jimmy Miller used to book it. Did he? I think so. Okay. Yeah. Appetel used to always go there.

Yeah, that's a great little club.

That's a good club. I forced myself to get a good out. Now I got, I mean, When I was on the road the last tour, I have so much shit that steps on other shit, so I can't really do it all. Because I already said this, so this joke doesn't make any sense now. But I was fucking doing two-hour shows, and it wasn't that big of a deal. Can you believe that? Because I remember struggling to do an hour of my whole stand-up life. I'd be like, My God, the crowd's so bored with me now. I can't come up with new moves. But now, got enough shit. Keep them rocking.

How long have you been steady doing stand-up again now?

I think seven years.

Wow. Must feel good, though, right? It's nice, man. To get back into a real flow, a real headliner flow again. A hundred %, yes. You go, Yeah, I missed this.

I did miss it. I didn't even know I missed it. It's the most fun. Absolutely. You fucking were loose. You set yourself up to do a live fucking special. I don't think I could handle that, man. My head be spinning way too much, man.

I had to over to prepare.

Yeah, but you didn't have any pauses. You were just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. How long were you doing that set?

Well, because I have my own club that helps a lot, right? So I was doing two shows a night, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I was doing six hours of stand-up a week, which is a lot. And then I was doing podcasts and all the other UFC stuff that I do. It's a lot of work. That got to be too much. So then I knocked it down to three sets a week, three headliner sets a week. And then I would do a bunch of short sets. Bottom of the Barrel show that I told you that my friend Brian Simpson host. That show's the best. It's like a premise factory because you have this whiskey barrel on stage. It's filled with notes from the crowd. It's all just different ridiculous ideas for premises. And you reach your hand in, you pull one out, and it's just frogs are gay, whatever it is. And you just start ranting about it, and you try to come up with bits. Every now and then, you get one or two every set that you write it down. You're like, This could be something. That's amazing. And a couple of them made it onto the special.

That's incredible.

Because it's a premise factory.

Absolutely.

So I had a lot of them. I was getting ready to do a special. I was going to do one in August of 2020, but then obviously in March, everything shut down, and I didn't do stand-up for eight months. And then I thought about it, and I was like, You know what? I just feel I feel like just working on my material now. I just feel like just working on stand-up and not even thinking about the special.

Yeah, that's a great feeling.

I was just enjoying working at the club, owning the club. Then there's so many good guys at the club. It was just such a fucking hot spot. There's so many people. There's Shane Gillis and Mark Norman and Ari Shafir and fucking Brian Simpson and Tony Hinchcliff. It's just like every night, it was just murderers' row, and we were all just cooking together. That's big. And then when Netflix said they want to do a live special with me. At first I was like, Fuck that. I don't want to do that. And I said no. I told my manager, I was like, No. I called her on the phone. I was like, What? I don't want to do that. And then I was driving home like, Why are you scared to do that, you fucking pussy? And I was like, as I was driving home, I was thinking it. And then when I got home, I called her back, I go, Don't say no yet. I go, Let me think about it.

Yeah, I've had those feelings.

And then the next day, I said, All right, I'm going to do it. And she's like, Are you sure? I go, Yeah, I'm going to do it because I'm scared of it.

That's ballsy, man.

I was fucking terrified of it.

Of course. I'm I'm scared thinking about doing it. I would never fucking do it. But you killed it. You killed it. You were loose. You were rolling. You crushed.

Well, I did that set in order for three weeks straight. Right. So I had it locked in for three weeks. I didn't do any, which I always fuck around. There was no fucking around. No deviation for three weeks.

You were steady.

Exactly. I also wrote all the bits out by hand. I wrote them all out, even the ones I already knew. I wrote them all out. I wrote all the transitions out. I listened I watched videos. That's big. I beat myself into the ground. I overprepared. When I got up there, there was no, What is next? What is next? There was no thought about- You didn't have a beat sheet somewhere just in case you got lost?

No. That's Fucking balls. I would never be able to do that.

But I wanted to treat it like a regular show. If I had a regular show, I wouldn't have a cheat sheet.

I never did when I was young, but now I need fucking a word. I need to look somewhere and see the word.

What do you put, like index cards on the stage?

I go on a monitor.

I just look down and go.

It says just one word, popcorn, and then I'm ready. Because my head goes to space. I get spacy as I got older. When I was young, I was prepared and I did my shit. But I think it helps me relax a little bit just knowing that if I'm lost, I look down and see a word and go, Yeah, do that next.

Bill Maher brings one of them conductor fucking things on stage. They Where you put the news, the music, rather. Yeah. He has that, and he just has his ideas written out on that. So you could just look down on it.

I get addicted to that a little too much. Sometimes, in Largo, in LA, I go up there. Flanny runs that place, and he lets me go on and try shit out. And I have a music stand, and I'll be at work all day working on movies. And then 10 minutes left to go. I go, Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me fucking... I got a couple of guys in the office who help write jokes with me. And I go, Let me try this, this, and this. And I just put the sheet down, go on stage, try shit out. Try a new shit out, nothing better than a new joke.

Yeah, it's very exciting.

That's the best if it's working. Usually does work, too.

Well, I'm excited. I'm told you're enthusiastic about it. And if you really have thought about it and prepared for it, it's like a new thing for you. So it's this exciting new toy. Yeah.

You can't wait to get to that or open with it or whatever the fuck it is.

When you When you do movies, do you just come up with a premise first? When you decide to do a film, if you decided to do Happy Gilmore, how do you make your movies? How do you start?

That was just lucky premise I'm Billy Madison. I remember. I thought, Oh, this could be great. A guy who, a grown up who does elementary school again. And that's a great idea of I get to be goopy, get to bully these little kids, then all of a sudden connect with these kids and have fun growing up again. But part of my head was like, well, Rodney did back to school already. So everyone's going to say, I just ripped off back to school. Rodney went back to college. How the fuck do we do it a step away from that? And I called my buddy Herla He, who I went to college with, and he writes all the movies with me. Or he's just a great funny man, and I've written almost everything with him. And If he goes, oh, that's good, then we usually go from there and we try to fill it out after that. Same thing with Happy Gilmore, Wedding Singer, Bobby Boucher, all that shit. We were just like, came up with a couple of lines of what we thought as an interesting idea, and then see if we can fill it out.

It's so funny because your films get loved by the public and hated by critics. It's so hilarious. You are the lead. What Whatever the Rotten Tomato's critic score is for your films means zero. It means nothing. It's only the audience is what counts.

That's all we thought about.

Because your films are all so fun and so silly, and in my opinion, So underappreciated. Thank you, man. Because this is one of the things I thought about during COVID. We watched it every night. We watched every film that you made while everything was locked down. Amazing.

I love that. Thank you. Yeah, my fucking I don't know, man. We locked out. We worked our asses off like you're working your ass off now. This took it very serious.

But you caught a silly groove. I don't think anybody else has that silly groove like you do. You caught that groove with so many movies, man. Yeah.

When I first started, Jim Carrey was crushing Stiller, Mike Myers, A lot of goofy movies were getting made, and I certainly fucking love doing them. I love being on set, making those movies. I love fucking editing that shit, thinking about kids laughing. I always love that. Thinking of college kids throwing a tape in, sitting down, watching together. That was on our mind when we did it.

When you first started out, did you want to be a comic? Did you want to be a stand-up comic, or did you always think that you wanted to do films?

I think I wanted to get into the movies. I was fucking nuts, cocky as shit in my own weird way. I think a big thing that happened to me was I told my friends in high school I was going to be fucking big. And I didn't- So you had to? I had to do it. I told the boys, I was like, I'm going to be fucking great. And then when I would check in with them, I remember being on pay phones, calling after even eating it as Catch A Rising Star. I call them up, Fucking did good tonight. Probably, Yeah. I go, Yeah. I said, What did you say? I said, This Joe fucking killed. Meanwhile, I fucking ate it every time.

So you're faking it until you made it.

But I dug a hole for myself. I'm doing great. Robin Williams said I was fantastic. Robin Williams, I remember one night saw me eat it. I was just like, Oh, man, I ate it in front of Robin Williams. But I changed the story of like, Yeah, he liked that shit.

There's something that could be very valuable about being delusional and being young.

Yes, very delusional. So stupid, I did this thing once.

Do you know Owen Smith? Who the hell is he? Hilarious. Hilarious comedian in LA. He had this... He's one of the best comics alive, but he spends a lot of time writing and doing shows, unfortunately. I'm sure I know. Unfortunately, unfortunately, which I think he should be headlining arenas. He was just at my club a few months back. I saw him. He was fucking... He's a monster. The point is, Owen had this show that he was doing for a while where you'd find your oldest notebooks and sit down with him and go over your oldest jokes. It was so bad. It was like a 1991 jokebook. I keep them all. We were reading it and I was like, It's so bad. I had him I have these built-in heckler lines that I wrote that were terrible. This guy was saying this to me.

That's so funny.

If I had to go back there and give myself advice, I would say, You got to quit. You're terrible at this. Oh, my God. Don't do this.

What What are you doing? You sound atrocious.

You're not going to make it. You don't have it.

Same thing.

There's no way.

But I fucking thought I was fucking phenomenal. But I would look at the crowd not laughing, going, Are these guys fucking nuts? They don't see how great this shit is. It's almost like I was with my fucking giant Afro, and my father would be at the table and he'd be like, You need a haircut? I'd be like, What are you talking about, man? He'd be like, You think you look good? I'd be like, I look great. He'd be like, You don't. Just so you know, you don't look great. I'd be like, You are so off on that thing.

It's funny. Delusional thinking can sometimes carry you. Once you develop some skill, that delusional is like a little guardian. It keeps you protected while you actually develop talent.

And that goes away because I'm more nervous now. Well, I had that fucking fear as a comedian. My head would spin. Colin Quinn, he had a club, the Paper Moon, in in the... It was the Paper Moon around when you were growing up? No. It was like the Boston Comedy Club.

Like a small place like that?

I think Paper Moon became the Boston Comedy Club. Oh, the same club? Yes, I think it was downstairs.

Oh, no shit.

So fucking Colin liked me. He used to get me on stage. I was going to college around there. And I all day long would be practicing on the elevator in my dorm. I'd be going, saying the shit. Right when Colin would bring me up, my fucking head would in. I'd forget where I was, not making sense. I would say two jokes, and then I'd be like, Oh, my God, I don't know what's coming next. I had that going for a while, but I still would go home at night and go, Fucking, I'm going to be so fucking good at this. I don't know what it was. Psycho.

It's youthful delusion. It's also your central lobe is not fully formed yet. You don't even understand the world. You're a little meat puppet. Oh, my God. But that's how you make it. That's how you make it everything. You're delusional. If you really believe in yourself, that counts for a lot. Up to a point. Because there's people that still believe in themselves. They've been doing open mics for 20 years. Nobody's stepped in to say, Hey, This is never going to happen. You have to have a spark. There's got to be a little something in there, and then you could build that little something into something special.

That's right. Same thing in sports, guys, who keep going and keep trying out and keep doing something. But some people break through. It's interesting, man. I definitely had an amazing time as a youngster. I had a couple of people that I locked in with. We were buddies. We all had that same thing of like, I'm good, I'm good, even though it wasn't that good yet.

Yeah. I came up with Greg Fitzsimmons. Greg and I, we're both confused and wondering if we're ever going to make it. And just We do a lot of road gigs together, and we were hoping. The whole idea was only just to one day, you'd be a professional. That was the goal. Not really have any a career career, but just one day to make a living telling jokes. That was the dream. Yeah. You couldn't even imagine. I would see guys that were actual pros when I had a bunch of day jobs, doing construction. Oh, you did. Driving limos. Oh, you did? Oh, yeah, I did everything. Oh, got you. And so then I would do these nighttime and I'd meet the real pros, the guys who just made a living doing comedy. I'm like, what must that be like?

Yes, they saunter in at nine o'clock at night.

Oh, my God. Yeah, they've been playing golf all day and laughing. The Kevin Noxes and all those guys. Yeah. I was just like, They were heroes. Of course. You actually made it. Fucking badass. Outside of the system completely. All you do is tell jokes, and people love you, and they come to see you.

And the same jokes. A lot of the guys, they were just like, That's my act.

I ain't fucking right in it. Oh, in Boston? Yeah. They never did television. Those guys had- Yeah, right. And people wanted to go see those same jokes again, which is crazy. Yes. Like Steve Sweeney? Did you ever see Sweeney when he was in his prime?

Absolute best, biggest destruction, too.

Oh, my God. Steve Sweeney in his prime would light up a room and with Boston accent and Boston material, you couldn't follow him. No. He was a monster.

I think he went on the very first night. I went on at Stitches. Sure. Sure. That was the first place my brother brought me to Stitches. He was going to be you. He got me one of those five-minute open mics.

That was the first place I ever did, too. Stitches?

Yeah.

Wow, man.

How did you do? I got a couple of chuckles.

You did. It was enough to where I was like, maybe. How old are you? 21? 21, yeah. I was like, maybe. Maybe something there. The second time, I got some laughs. That's incredible. Second time, I was less nervous. I had a little tape that I brought with me and I recorded it.

Oh, man. How did that humiliation of the silence on the recorder? It was terrible.

But it also made me realize what was wrong. Because I was studying it the way I study martial arts. You would watch films of fights, and then I would go, Oh, there was a little bit of a timing problem there. I could have done this. I could have done that. With my second time, I did stand up. I had the humiliation of listening to the first cassette. So I listened, and I was like, Let me tighten this up, and maybe this could be a little better.

Oh, my God. Right a little more there.

But I got some laughs the second time, which was crazy. I was like, Wow, I might be able to do this.

Shit, man. Both had stitches?

Yeah. And then I think I bombed the third time, and that was the first real bomb. And also the punch in the face.

Fucking shit. Yes.

But every time I bombed, I feel like it taught me something, and then I would get better.

Fucking, I ate it Last year, last summer, I went up to the comic strip and fucking ate it for 10 straight minutes. I'm like, Oh, shit. I forgot about that. I forgot about that punch in the face. That is a roughie.

I ran into you at the airport, and you were telling me you just did some fucking horrific corporate event.

I ate it there, too. I mean, if I listened to the tape, I'd say, You are okay. But, oh, it's humiliating. Yeah.

You had just gotten done with it. When I ran in.

I was shell shocked. I remember seeing you and your wife. Yeah, I had that fucking glazed look.

Those corporate gigs are so Ron White just ate at one recently. He goes, I don't know why the fuck I agreed to do that. I know. I've never done it. He goes, I said no, and they said more, and I said no, and then they came up with a number. I was like, All right.

Holy shit, buddy. Same fucking story for me. Those are deaf. I don't think I- Those things are deaf because the people that are there, they're working with all people, so they're all tight. Yeah, they got shit going on. Yeah.

They're not really thinking about the comedy show. They're thinking about this is a social environment with all the people. They're working their way up the corporate ladder, and they're concentrating on all their shit. They're So they can't laugh at anything inappropriate. That's true, yeah. I saw a mic over there laughing at all those sexist jokes. Mike's a real piece of shit.

That's true, man. That's good. I swear to God, I felt bad for them. I was like, Jesus, they paid me so I fucking feel terrible. I didn't kill for it, but it happened.

Yeah, Hinchcliff just did one recently, too. He said the same thing. I'm like, That's why I don't do those. It's not do comedy where people come to see comedy, and that's it. Don't get hired for a birthday party. Get the fuck out of here with that.

The only fucking reason I did it was Paul McCartney did it the year before. They go, Well, they don't do this much. I went, Paul McCartney? Well, fuck. I'm doing that shit.

Yeah, but Paul McCartney can just play his song. I I know, man. The songs are great. They're classics.

He's not going to miss.

He's not going to miss. He's just going to play. If they don't respond, that's on them.

Yeah, it's like, Are you fucking nuts?

You just did Ban on the Run. What the fuck is wrong with you people?

I know, man. That's good.

Yeah. Musicians, they can always just get into their song. They don't need your response.

They can close their eyes. They don't need nothing. They don't look around.

They don't need you.

We're fucking looking out at everybody. That fucking dude's not loving it. God damn it.

We rely so much other people's response.

But the moments I don't, those are the ones I was saying to you, Joe, and I've eaten it before, but still felt I did good because I fucking remained confident and believing in my shit still. But the ones where I look out, I see them hating me, and I go, Yeah, why am I here, man? That's a bad feeling.

It's a terrible feeling. I say bombing on stage is like, Sucking a thousand dicks in front of your mother. The problem is, it's probably worse than that because somewhere out there, there's probably a guy who wouldn't mind sucking a thousand dicks in front of his mom. He'd be like, Look at me, mom. You, bitch. You made me. 99, let's go.

My mother would 100% at the end said, You could have done it better. You could have sucked him hard. Why did you stop on that one man? He wanted to explode in your face, and you stopped. I feel bad. You should call him and tell him you'll suck his dick. But I'm with you, buddy. Yeah, stand up. Standup's the best.

It's a crazy thing, and then no one could teach you how to do it either. You have to figure it out yourself because your way of doing it is different than my way of doing it. My way is different than Kevin's way. Kevin Dylan's way is different than fucking Seinfeld's way. Everybody's got a different way of doing it. Absolutely. And nobody could teach you how to do it. You can learn some things from watching other people. You can learn some things from-Oh, man. Yeah.

How about when somebody fucking great watches you and says, Hey, you know what you could say here? And gives you a great line. You're like, Oh, my God.

Thank you.

No, that's huge. That's what a feeling. You just made my okay thing into a fucking one I'm excited to do.

Oh, yeah. There's been a couple of bits that I've Yeah, that got a tag from a friend. It just pops it up.

You're like, How did I ever do it without that fucking light?

Yeah. Sometimes like a fresh eye. That's one of the things that I always admired about how Chris Rock used to do it because Chris Rock would go on stage. He work his stuff out, and then you have a bunch of guys that you would hire to sit in the back of the room and workshop with them.

I do similar stuff. Very smart. I have these young guys who are fucking way funnier at writing than me. Only because I'm fucking tired. I'm tired. I walk into the office and I'm like, I thought of this funny thing last night. Maybe something there. I'll say it to them and they'll go, Oh, yeah. And they'll fucking write something interesting. And we come up with something together eventually.

Well, you're used to collaborating you do films, right?

Yes, I always do that. Always got a bunch of guys that help me out throughout the whole movie.

That's such a good process. Yes. Because one mind is great, but a bunch of minds together in different perspectives People are going to see things from an angle that you're not going to see.

Yes, that's exciting. Same shit. Same shit. Somebody comes up with a great thing to do in a scene or a line, or maybe you can be doing this at the same time. Actually, whatever the fuck it is. I mean, me and her When we write these things, we think a lot what it's going to look like, what's going on in these scenes, and what the jokes are, that shit. But on the day, you're definitely having a couple of buddies around making it better.

So the way to go. Well, you always have a very tight ship, too. Like doing a zookeeper with you and talking with Kevin, you work with the same people pretty much every film, which is really huge. Yeah, that's good. Because you have a very family environment. It's always family. Everybody's fun. Everybody likes working together. No one's an asshole. It's an easy gig in that sense. You know you're going to come to work with people. Walking comfortable. Yeah. Everybody's having fun.

Kevin got that going. You got that going?

Yeah, you have to have that. That's gigantic.

You got a lot of great stand-up friends, all right? When you do The Road, you just bring your guys with you. How How many of you go up on stage when you take gigs on The Road?

If I do a gig, I bring usually one guy who's a beginner and then two guys who are headliners.

How much time does everybody do?

It depends. When I do the live special, I brought this kid, Ari Maddie, who's hilarious. Ari did 10 minutes. Well, he did 15 minutes the first night, but on the live night, he did 10 minutes. So 10 minutes to warm the crowd up. And then he brings on Ron White. Ron White murdered for 15. And then he brings on Tony. Tony murders for 15. And then I go on after that.

You're fucking tough to do that to yourself. Put on big heavy hitters because that can get you in a hole sometimes, too.

People are crushing so hard. Yeah, but long as you're having fun, it doesn't because the audience is having a good time. Yes. My philosophy is I don't want bad comedians to go on in front of me. I want people to kill. Yes. So that when I go on stage, everyone's having a great time. They don't ever feel like, Oh, they made out that one guy for 20 minutes. Oh my God, when was he going to get off stage? Because there's some comedians that like to do that. They like to bring in terrible acts so they look like a hero. No, that's bad.

It's bad for the audience. It's bad for your own brain. You're getting lazy doing it.

You're getting lazy. It's a soft way to approach it. When I do shows at the club, sometimes I'm going on stage an hour and a half into the show. Yeah, same here, man. And it's like Brian Simpson, Shane Gillis, Mark Norman. It's like killer after killer going up, and then I'm going up late. So it's like running with weights on. You got You're going to come out of the gate hot.

Dude, when I first came back to stand up, I was bringing all my buddies with me, and they were killing soul. It was good crowds, so everybody would stay up. Everyone's like, I know. I was going to do 15. Let me do 25. And so by the time I got up there, I was following six or seven guys murdering, and it was fucking two hours in. And then I was supposed to do an hour A hour and a half of that. I'd be like, Shit, I got to figure this out, man. I'm not kidding.

I mean, I'll cut my- That's too much. That's too much. You wear the audience out. Yeah. I feel like when a show gets over two hours, two and a half hours, it's like, I don't want to see a three-hour movie. No. If I'm going to watch a three-hour movie, I'm going to be at home, okay? Where I could pause, if I have to take a leak, go have some popcorn. For three hours sitting in some auditorium somewhere watching a show. That's a lot. It's got to be a banger of a show where you're so engaged, where you walk out, you're like, wow.

How about that feeling when you know, holy shit, this arena, I'm losing them for about five minutes. Let me fucking get them back. When you see people who started the show off with like, yeah, and then they're tuned out going, what is happening right now?

People only have a certain amount of attention span. That's why I admire bands that still... I saw Guns & Roses Greece, and they do three hours.

New shit? No, all the classics.

All the classics. Welcome to the Jungle, Sweet Child of mine.

Can't fuck with them.

But they fucking go hard for three hours. Those guys are 100 years old. They're still killing it.

And he's singing three hours. Ripping it for three hours?

Yes. Same with the Stones. I saw the Stones a couple of years ago at Coda, the Circuit of the Americas here in town, and it was insane. Mick Jaggers, a thousand years old. Yeah, He's still fucking moving. He's still fucking dancing and all that energy.

Yes. It's funny. They do like Stones do two a week or something. Yeah. That's a really funny shit because when we go on the road, it's like five or six.

That's the way to do it, though, when you're 80. Yes. You need recovery. Yes. Also, Mick Jagger works out every single day. He has two trailers filled with gym equipment. Wow. Two of the trailers when they travel with the Stones is just Mick Jagger's gym equipment.

What a fucking stud. A light little body. That guy looks like he weighs 120 or something.

Looks like 120. He's ripped still. Eighty years old. Got a six-pack.

Got the main arms ready.

Yeah, fucking ready to go and still has his pipes. Still can sing. Yeah. Keith Richard could still play. It was incredible. Watching them live, I couldn't even believe they were there. It was one of those things where I felt like I was on drugs. I was like, Am I really seeing the Rolling Stones? Are they actually there? I could throw a rock and I could hit Mick Jagger with a rock. He's right there. Oh, my goodness.

I know. Then how exciting when Keith and Ron look at each other and laugh. They laugh together. Fuck, that was incredible.

They're still enjoying it. When we were kids, there were no old rock stars.

Right. Yeah, that's right. Right?

Yeah. They didn't...

Elvis felt... He was already dead. He died in the '70s, right?

So he was already dead. Wow, man. And so when we were kids, we thought of rock stars as Van Halen, young wild people on stage jumping around. That's a young man's gang. No one ever anticipated 80-year-old rock stars singing rock and roll in their 80s.

No doubt. By the way, I heard David Lee on your show.

Yeah, he's been on a couple of times. Man, I mean, that band, to me, when I was in high school, I think I was in ninth grade the first time I fucking heard them.

I was into Sabbath. My brother got me into Sabbath, and then I heard I was walking up to a fucking party. I was like one of my first house keg parties. And Van Halen was blaring over somebody's Pioneer system. And it was fucking like, ain't talking about love, but some shit I remember just going, what? This is the greatest shit I've ever heard.

Oh, yeah. They were the Kings in the '80s, dude. They were the Kings. When I was in high school, everybody knew how to make that Van Halen logo on your notebook.

Yeah, the notebook. It was either VH, Queen, ACDZ, Zeppelin, ACDZ.

Yeah, they were the Kings. They They were the Kings. But we never thought they'd be still doing it.

No, that's right. And then you'd see Van Halen the last few years live, and you'd fucking be still as excited. It still looks smooth as shit. I saw How would David Lee Roth, maybe four or five years ago? He's such a character, man.

He doesn't have a phone. He doesn't even keep money on him. I went to dinner with him, and he has a lady that drops him off with me. She's like his handler. And she says, I have her number. She has my number. She's like, call me if everything goes wrong. You're hanging out with David Lee Roth, having dinner with him.

I love him talking about fighting with you because you love him throwing those crazy roundhouse kicks.

Oh, yeah. He was a real martial artist. Yeah. He used to train with Benny Orquides. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. He used to do those things on stage. We'd do a jumping split kick in the middle of the air.Unbelievable. Look at him. Yeah. He was a real athlete, man.

Yeah, absolutely. He's a stud. Fucking sweet dick on him right there. But they-Look at that guy.

Look at that picture where he got his pants hanging down.

Yeah, just enough to show a little hip phone. What is it?

Showing some dick root. He's a character, man. Still to this day, he's out to lunch, man.

He'll say some interesting shit. He's smart, he knows his shit. Whatever he's into, he's deep into it.

That guy moved to Japan to train Kendo, which is a sword-fighting art. Right, right, right. Just him and his dog lived in an apartment in Japan for like, years. Just training Kendo.

I fucking... Anytime you heard that they weren't getting along, you were just like, They what? Fucking any nation.

You know how that goes, though.

Any time it would four fucking people too much, it's going to go wrong.

Yeah, especially those egos and the bands and then girlfriends don't like That guy. Right, right. Yeah, that shit happens. It's like, Valerie, Bertonelli, apparently didn't get along with David Lee Roth.

Okay. Yeah, that's going to be painful.

That's how it goes. It's hard for bands to stay together. I think that's way harder.

I remember you, too, would always be in interviews, talk about how cool it is that they're still a rock band together. Yeah. The four of them loving each other.

If you can get a band that enjoys each other's company, that's a fucking tremendous asset. Because so many bands, I was just reading today that Pete Townsend doesn't talk to the rest of the guys in the Who. He doesn't talk to Roger Daltry. They don't talk to each other. How?

That's funny, man. I just saw them. I just saw the Who had a benefit, and they fucking destroyed. It was Daltry's benefit, and he brought the Who on there. And I think the drummer was maybe Ringo's Kid, or it's either Ringo's Kid or John Bonham's Anyways, it was great. But Pete and Roger were funny as shit, ragging on each other and saying quick little insults. And it was like massive laughs like a comedian. But then they'd fucking have those hits that just take your whole body over, and it was great.

Yeah, I don't know where they stand now or why they stand that way, but I was just reading an article this morning.

Oh, yeah?

That they don't talk to each other.

It makes sense. I remember hearing Sabbath on tour with fucking all show up in different planes. I don't know if any of it's true, but you're like, fucking, Tony Yoli and Ozzie don't fucking hang out the whole time.

Well, there's always a problem in a band where the lead singer becomes the number one guy, and everybody else is secondary.

Yeah, that's going to make you piss.

The band's called Van Halen, but the main guy is David Lee Roth. That's the guy everybody wants. Ain't talking about love. Man, badass. Yeah. Oh, my God. Hot for teacher. He was the man. I could see how egos and feathers would get ruffled, and then the girlfriend on the side be like, The band's named Van Halen. It's not named Lee Roth.

Yeah, definitely. Fuck that guy. Fuck that guy, and then you got to stand behind it. He's got all the groupies. Yeah, No, but they had some... Him and Eddie both had the different people who were talking about who's the greatest. It'd be like David Lee, Roth was just the smoothest and funniest and fucking-One of the greatest frontman of all time.

Fuck it.

For sure. He was like a stand-up. Just dominated the crowd. I think there was some tape going around with member or something, just like, That's okay, man, because after the show, I'm going to fuck your girlfriend. I don't know. Maybe that was David Lee Roth or somebody else. But as a kid, you were like, Oh, my God. Fucking what? That was the coolest shit ever. But then I remember Eddie Van Halen, when JMP came out the video and seeing him smile and throw down that fucking lead, and he was just like, Is that the coolest fuck on the planet? With overalls. No shirt. I went with a fucking no shirt overalls move one time. Really? Didn't go over. On stage? Didn't get the respect. Not as a stand-up, thought I was going to get more respect. When I was on stage at a battle of the bands, I used to sing and play guitar in a band. I think my mom tie-died my overalls and shit, and I was like, I'm going to do it. I'm going. I showed up and people were making too much eye contact with me, not wanting to look down at the fucking overalls.

It's a bold choice.

It was one I couldn't make now.

One of the funniest choices is what If you look back at the metal days, you look back at all the guys who dressed up like gay bikers. Right. From Judith priest. It's Rob Halford, tricked everybody and it's dressed in like a gay biker. Yeah. Because he was gay. I love it. Yes. So he's like, leather pants and the fucking leather biker helmet on and a vest with no shirt on underneath. And all these guys started dressing like that. Yes. And they didn't even understand that they had been tricked into dressing like a gay biker.

Yeah, I love that, man. That's a great one. He was so cool. I saw them at fucking Radio City with Iron Maiden. Really? That was a biggie. Wow. I was up in the balcony screaming, I want to dress like you. No, that was It was good. Yeah, look at him, man.

Yeah, the boy. Yeah. I mean, come on, dude.

Fucking the Hellian. They were nasty. They were nasty. That's the tough-looking guy.

You got another thing coming. Yeah, it was a biggie. Look at him there with his fucking crazy outfit. It's just so funny all the different styles of bands that existed.

Oh, man. I had fucking pleather pants. I wore fake leather pants for a bit. I didn't know my body wasn't great. So I was like, You throw that shit on, you look like a rock star. Then I'd fucking see the pictures that my mom took of me after I looked at me like, How the fuck did you let me out wearing that shit? It never fit just right. I never had the body for it. I would walk into a clothing store growing up. There was a place. You know Sarah Silverman, the comedian? Sure.

Yeah, I know Sarah.

She grew up in the same town as me, and her parents had a store called Junior Deb, I believe. It was downtown. They sold Levi jeans and all that shit. I remember just going, Okay, I'm going to get some cool ass Levi's, go to school, look like a badass. I remember when I saw a three-way mirror, I was like, These aren't fitting me like I thought. I don't look as cool as my Levi's as I thought I was.

You had an idea of your image.

I saw other people wearing that shit going, All right, I'm going to dress like that guy. But it didn't reflect the same when I had it on.

Again, youthful delusion. Delusion, yeah. Did you want to be in a band before you wanted to be a comic?

I wanted that for sure.

What music did you guys sing?

We did a lot of Aerosmith, a lot of Van Halen, a lot of Sabbath, Zeppelin.

Aerosmith just canceled their tour. I know. I guess Steve and Tyler, he had that neck injury where he fell and broke one of the bones in his neck. Yeah. And apparently he just can't sing.

He can't open his mouth to sing.

Well, they were planning on doing a thing with the Black Crows. Oh, wow. Yeah. And they just, for whatever reason, decided to put the tour out and get going. And then he started and he was like, I can't do it anymore.

That is painful. Yeah. Because the guy's whole life was that. And by the way, did you like Harold Smith growing up? Loved them. They were the bad boys that every tune was nasty. Oh, yeah. That shit was the nastiest.

Push that microphone up to your face.

Sorry, bro. No worries. My band played literally 10 Harro Smith tunes. We'd always fucking play cool ones. Not the massive hits, but the whatever, the Mama Kins and Walking the Dog and cool shit like that.

Well, we both grew up in New England, and they were the Kings. They were the Kings of New England. They were the Kings. Yes. They were the fucking band. W-a-a-f. Look at that. Yeah, A-A-F. Fuck, yeah. Joe Perry. Yeah. Bcn.

Yeah, BCN, A-A-F. What was that alternative?

Steven Tyler. He was the fucking man.

Could hit every fucking... How about the fact that I read something that... Yeah, he's a cool bastard. I met him, and they're all great guys. Joe Perry.

He's a great guy, too.

Fucking best. That's a New England accent, too, on Joe Perry.

Oh, yeah.

It's funny to hear the boys talk. I think somebody lived in New Hampshire. Maybe Steven Tyler lived in New Hampshire because that's where I grew up, and they owned New Hampshire.

Well, they were the Kings of Boston. They were fucking gigantic. I remember the controversy when they did that song with Run DMC when they did Walk This Way. What the fuck? I know. Everybody was like, What's going on?

That don't make no sense. I know.

Meanwhile, that's a fucking great song.

I was listening to it now. My fucking Arrowsmith came back like they became the Kings again.

Exactly. That was their big comeback song. They're fated for a while. Then Walk This Way came along. That was great. Young people started getting into them again.

Absolutely.

It's funny how bands, they get generational, right? Even though they're great, that's the people that listened in the '70s. Fuck those people. Now we listen to this. And all it takes is one thing. And then people start going through the catalog. I'm like, Jesus Christ. Hold on shit. This guy's really incredible.

I was doing... Fuck, who the fuck was I listening? I play a lot of the old shit for my kids. And then all of a sudden you just go, wow, they had so many...

Bangers. Bangers, yeah. Yeah, especially the young drug-taking days, the wild Eric Smith days.

The first three albums shit. Like Zeppelin, too.

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's a different world. Every comic wants to be a rock star, and I think most rock stars want to be comics.

Yeah, there's some of that, too.

There's something about the freedom of comedy that they appreciate. You don't have a band. You don't need anybody. All you need is a microphone. You don't have sound guys. You don't have anybody.

Can you believe that? Yeah. That's my biggest mistake is I fucking use music in my act, so I got to... My piano player, Dan Bouhla, he's the best. I love having him being together on the road, looking back, and we laugh together. That's the greatest part. But back in the day when I just had a mic and didn't have to show up with shit, that really makes it like-Oh, it's amazing.

Yeah. When I would do these big places like the TD Garden, one of the things that would strike me is like, We're just showing up. There's no trucks. It's just a stage. Me and three of my buddies, and that's it. 16,000 people. But bands play here, and they have fucking trucks and shit. I know. All these people have to break down the stage. They're there all the fucking pyrotechnics and all the crazy shit these guys have.

Right. I know. We're cool. We did good. It chose the right career.

For us.For us? For us? Yeah.

Until you watch a rock band, you go, They're kicking our ass, man.

It's definitely something different. Rock is like a drug. There's something about going to see a band that's really good. It's like the music hits your body.

Yeah, it overwhelms you.

Yeah, like a drug.

Yeah, for sure. The right tune fucks you up. I agree. Who were some of your first concerts as a kid in Boston?

First concert I saw was Jay Guile's band. You did? Yeah.

With Peter Wolf and fucking... That's as cool as it gets.

Yeah, back in the centerfold days.

That's almost... Arrowsmith and Jay Giles can battle for the Kings of man. Oh, yeah. He was a man. He was a man.

Jay Giles was the fucking man when I was in high school. See him? I saw George Dural Good. There you go. Johnny Winter. Yeah, I saw a bunch of bands.

Where did you see them in- I don't remember.

I wish I could remember.

I used to go Wister- But then I got a job. Sure.

Wuster Coliseum. Centrum, yeah. Yeah. Is that what it was, the Centrum?

Yeah, I think so.

Then I got a job when I was 19. I worked at Great Woods.

You did? Yeah. Fuck, and I played there. What a feeling that was. Because we saw so many shows growing up.

I saw a lot of comics there, too. I saw some comics there when I got paid Yeah. In some comics there, I paid to see them. I saw Kinison there. I paid to see Kinison. You did?

That's cool, man.

Yeah. I saw Cosby there. I saw Rodney there when I was working. Rodney was backstage naked with a bathrobe on.

Yeah, that's a big Rodney.

That was the Rodney days, the bathrobe days.

Okay, baby. Yeah.

He would go on stage with a bathrobe just to make him feel comfortable. Yeah. He just was completely naked with a bathrobe on. Just murdering.

The best.

I mean, murder. And this was before I'd even thought about doing standup. I was 19.

Fuck, man. But I got to see- You saw, Kinison. Was he... Kinison always dressed badass. Like a Rockstar.

Yeah.

He fucking had the big long leather coat on and a beret. Yeah.

That was just after I'd heard about Kenison, too. I had heard about Kenison from a girl that I was working with. I was working at, besides doing security guard work, I was working at the Boston Athletic Club in South Boston. Wow, yeah. That's still there, right? Yeah, I think so.

I think they got a fucking basketball court there.

Yeah, they got basketball. There was a lot of racabal there. I met Bobby Orr there. You did? That's cool. I had to help Bobby Orr because Bobby Orr had had fucking 150 knee surgeries. His knees were destroyed, and you'd have to help him get on the VersaClimber machine. Oh, my goodness. Because Bobby's knees didn't bend. Bobby's knees bended this much. He had 12 inches of movement in his knees. And so you'd have to help him get on the VersaClimber machine. Wow. He'd be one of the greatest athletes of all time. You watch him play racabal, and you just fall over. They put it all out there. Also, the knee surgeries back then were archaic. They were so primitive. They just use staples and fucking screws.

They didn't know what they were doing. A certain age, you see different scars on guys.

Oh, that's Bobby's knees. His knees were destroyed.

That sucks, man. Man, what a hero. What a stud. I always loved him.

He had 20 knee surgeries. Fucking insane.

Was that your team, the Bruins?

I didn't really watch sports.

Oh, yeah, you didn't?

No. Once I got into martial arts, I really didn't care about any sports.

That's pretty cool, man, that you didn't because I know that's the biggest sport town.

Oh, it was a huge sport town. Everybody called me a pussy because I didn't know anything about football, basketball, baseball. I didn't care.

That's pretty good that you had your own thought process going. I would join right in with trying to make the other kids like me, dropping something.

Well, when I was 15, I just became obsessed with martial arts. That's great. I didn't care about anything else. I literally didn't care about anything else. I'd watch basketball. I'd be like, This is nonsense. Who cares if that ball goes in that hole?

Fucking cool, man.

That doesn't mean anything to me.

My dad always told me to do that shit. He'd be like, Do martial arts, do martial arts. Like I said, I went to this guy. I was like, I wish I knew his name. I did that. Then I think a little earlier in life, I tried it out. My body, man, I wasn't meant for it.

It's not for everybody. No. That's good, though. That's like everything in life. There's things that are not for you. You just got to find the thing that is for you.

Yeah, I found a few, and that's all I do. Hoop, comedy, that's it.

Perfect.

That's all you need for a happy life. Yeah, I guess so.

So this girl I used to work with, she was like a volleyball player, and she was really hilarious. She was working at the front desk, and she was like, Oh, my God, I saw this guy. This was 1986. This is when Kinison had his HBO special, and she told me about it. She's like, There's this guy, and his name is Sam Kinison, and She know that bit he did about homosexual necrophiliacs paying money to spend a few hours undisturbed with the freshest male corps? You remember that bit? I got it. She told me about this bit. We're hanging out in the parking lot of the Athletic Club, and this girl is lying down on her stomach on the ground, and she's like, Oh, oh. You mean life keeps fucking in the ass even after you're dead? It never ends. I was laughing so hard. I remember this girl Special, just her doing Kinison's bit made me go to the video store to get a VHS of Kinison Special. Because the first time I saw it, it came out on video. Then I watched it, I was like, Oh, my God. That was the first seed in my head where I was Okay, this is comedy, too?

Because I didn't know that was comedy. I thought comedy was something I really liked, but it was so different than me. It was nothing that I would ever do. It was just different. It was like, I didn't see myself that way, but I saw that guy. I'm like, That guy's a fucking animal. Yeah, you were tough as shit. This is a different comedy. That was the first seeds in my head that I had of doing comedy.

Yeah, that's amazing.

Then I got to see him live at Greatwoods. But I saw Bon Jovi there. Fuck, I I quit the night Neil Young was there, and they had a riot.

Really? Yeah. In New England, huh?

Well, the lawn, you know how mansfield, the Great woods has that lawn out there? It was cold out, and people were starting fires on the lawn. So they were starting these little bonfires, and we had to break up the fires. And then brawl started breaking out. I always knew that this job was like, What do you get paid? Like 20 bucks an hour? I'm not going to fight somebody for 20 bucks an hour. This is crazy. So I always carried a hoodie with me. And so I had my security shirt. And then as soon as shit would go south, I put the hoodie on like, I'm out of here. That's what I did. That night, I quit. Oh, yeah. I quit the night.

That's funny, man. Yeah. Fuck. Yeah. It's 20 bucks to get in a full on brawl.

Yeah, there was brawls breaking out left and right. The first night I was there, I watched one of the security guys beat this guy with a walkie-talkie. And I was like, Jesus, what did I sign up for? It was a crazy job because some guy had stole one of the golf carts, and there was this dude named Alley Cat, who was the head of security there. And Alley Cat tackled this guy, and he's beating him in the head with the walkie-talkie. Wow, man. And I was like, whoa, okay, what did I sign up for?

Did you get in fights after you learn your shit? No. No, that's cool.

No, no. I avoided them all. That's amazing. I'm not interested in fights. I would like fights where they were planned.

Meeting a guy in a fucking- No.

You mean in a fucking- No, like tournaments and stuff. Yeah, that's cool. Kickboxing matches. I do a lot of those. But those to me made sense. Like, fighting on the street. It's like, no. People have guns. People have knives. This is fucking stupid. Sure. I was always nervous. I never felt like you get in a fight with someone, someone hits you in the back of the head with a bat. Also, if you fight someone, that's never the end. They're going to go get their cousins. They're going to get their brother. They're going to try to find when you're alone. That's true. You don't want that problem in your life. Just move on.

Oh, it's so easy to take whatever they're throwing at you that's supposed to start the fight just being going, Yeah, okay. That makes sense. You're right. I am a piece of shit. I'm going to get out of here now.

Well, it all means nothing. It only means something to you if you believe them. Yes. If someone says you're a pussy, you're like, Okay. What does that mean? This doesn't mean anything. You're just saying words. Until you try to hit me, this is nonsense. It's like, Oh, you have a bad opinion of me? Oh, that's okay. I don't really care. Also, I was tired all the time because I was training six, seven days a week. I was like, I don't want to be involved in this stupid shit.

Right. Yeah. I already worked out today. I can't fight you.

Also, I was very aware of the consequences of violence. By the time I was 21 years old, I'd probably seen 40 or 50 people get knocked unconscious. Right.

At least. What a terrible sight that is.

Probably a lot more than that. I see so many people snore. It's just on the ground, twitching and snoring. I've seen so much of that. I grew up with that. To me, I was like, I don't want none of that in my life. I don't want to have anything to do with this, especially outside of fighting. Concrete floors and shit.

Head hit in the ground.

Kj worked with a guy in Long Island when KJ was a bouncer. This guy killed a guy. He punched a guy, the guy fell, hit his head and died. Now the guy has to jail. Now you're working as a bouncer, just like I was working as a security guard in Great Woods. You could have gotten a fight, hit someone. Now you're in jail. And you're like, For what?

Holy shit. That's so cool. You worked at Great Woods, though. That's like, what a destination to go to and see so many great fucking bands. It's funny. You said, Kinison. I used to be on MTV when I was young, and we'd go to Daytona Beach.

You were on remote control, right?

I was on remote That's right. Quin got me on there. Yes. And it was the best. But we went to a spring break, Daytona Beach, and Kinison was at the height. It was the first guy I saw at an arena. Kinison and some other bad boys. Some guys, I forget their names, but they all- Probably Carla Bow. Yeah, Carla Bow, right? And a couple of other guys. They all got a really funny, tough, baskets.

The Outlaws of Common.

That's it. That's what it was. I saw Kinison destroy. It was like, I saw Rodney at a theater in Florida where it felt like, fucking, holy shit, this is a rock show because it was bam, bam, bam. Yeah.

Rodney. Rapid fire, like a machine gun.

The best Rodney would crush for eight minutes and then go, I know a lot of fucking jokes, baby, and they go, you know? That was so cool, man. But Kinison, too, just took over. I saw him in the moment. It was amazing.

Yeah, I got to see Kinison decline, too. I got to see the decline because I saw him a couple of times live. And the last time I saw him live, it was in New Hampshire, and there was not that many people there. I drove to this theater with this girl that I was dating. I was probably 20 at the time. Again, it was before I did comedy. And he was just... It was already like boos and heavy, and it wasn't as good.

Because he peaked in '86.

I feel like the Kinison from '86 is probably one of the greatest comedians that ever lived, if not the best. He was a monster. He was a monster. But the guy was doing blow and drinking and hanging out with rock stars and just partying. His brother wrote about it. Do you ever read his brother's book? Uh-uh. Brother Sam? His brother Bill. I heard about it. It's a great book. It's a great book. If you're a fan of stand-up, I tell anybody, go buy that book because it's a great book. Bill that you could see the drop off in Sam's material because he just stopped writing. He wasn't hungry anymore. He had made it because there's this hunger inside of him to make it as a comedian, and that's what led him to be outrageous and do all those jokes about the starving kids in Africa and all these different jokes he did that were just so outrageous in that preacher's voice and that fucking powerful delivery. But then when he made it, man, he got real fat and just Just drinking every night. Started wearing the bandana. The bandana days, the Rockstar days. It just dropped off.

It wasn't the same. It was like a caricature of.

That's funny. It just happens. It happens when you're drinking or doing whatever the fuck it was. I got A lot of coke.

Yeah, sure. I think that's the one that really.

That makes you not think straight. You're definitely all over the place. You can't stay steady with a thought. But I remember I met him a couple of times. Pauly, sure, was very tight with him. I knew Pauly, and I hung out with Kenison a couple of times, but I saw him at the improv. The last time I saw him, he was so sweet. He was so nice to me. And he remembered that we hung a little bit. I was a young fucking dummy, and he was nice to me. And he had that glazed, had a few too many in the eyes. But he was just When he walked into the fucking improv that night, every comedian was like, Well, holy shit. There he is, the fucking man. It was cool.

He changed comedy. He really did because there was no comedy like that before Kennethson came around. He was a different comedy. It was like, all of a sudden, comedy was like, you could yell.

Oh, my God. That was the biggest.

He was just a force. He was just like... And the preacher's voice, that thing that he had, where he had that charisma of being this tent revival preacher.

Yes. When he would talk quiet. Then all of a sudden, blast.

Oh, my God. And he was a legend at the store. The store goes through these eras, right? When I got to the store, it was '94. The Kinison era had ended. He died, and then there was this big drop off. The store was vacant when I got there in '94. It was weird. The shows would be half empty.

Yeah, they were having problems for a bit.

But they all had these stories. All the guys like Harris, Pete, and the guys that were still around, they all have these stories about when Kinneison was there. He would perform at midnight, and around 11:30, all these rock stars would start showing up and movie stars. They would all go there to see Kinneison. So he had the midnight spot.

Fucking cool.

And they would all go. I remember thinking, imagine people come into the comedy store just to see you. That must be so insane.

That's fucking cool as fuck.

It was the coolest because it was all just word of mouth. This is like 84-ish. Before he popped, everybody just knew about him.

Rock, rock. I remember Chris was in Vegas, and I went to see him with Nicholson and Jim Brooks. We were sitting there and fucking Nicholson was laughing his ass off. I had that thought you just had. I was just going, fucking Rock is so cool. That people fucking fly an hour. Like, Where is he? Let me go see him. They sit back and laugh. And I fucking just going, Shit, Rock, you really are fucking stud, man.

Oh, yeah. The Bring the Pain days, Bigger and Blacker and Bring the Pain, two of the greatest specials of all time.

Flawless.

Flawless.

Yeah, he's a badass. I talked to Rock yesterday just for 10 minutes or something, and we got really excited about stand up again. I go, You're right. And he goes, I He can't stop. When he was doing his tour, he was like, I need a break, blah, blah, blah. He just did a fucking year on the road or some shit. Then he's right back to like, Got some ideas.

Yeah, I think that's a good way to do it. Take a little break and just refresh your mind so you're not running stale. Because he did a live special, too.

His live special was, Fuck, I loved it.

It was also the build-up because of getting slapped by Will Smith and all that crazy shit. I think that was the best thing that ever happened to him because then it became wild again. His standard was outrageous. It was like the rock of old.

That night was like watching a fucking Super Bowl. You were just like, What? It's a live event? Holy fuck. What the fuck? And then he was a badass, and I think he had some white shit on and he looked cool as fuck, and he were waiting for him to talk about it, and then he got to it, and he got fucking excited.

Well, he didn't talk about it for a while on stage. He would tell people, If you think I'm going to talk about it, I'm not. Yeah. He wanted to be ready, and he wanted to really think about what he was going to say and how to say.

That's because of where we are in life, where anything you say is fucking on the internet the next day. So he's like, I got to be careful and not blow this shit up. I say it right.

Also, they would ruin the bits. People would just tell the bits, and it wasn't even ready yet.

Yeah, exactly.

Because if you have a life-changing event, like getting slapped at the Oscars in this most preposterous scenario, the whole thing was preposterous. I I think for him, it was also a wake-up call like, Hey, these motherfuckers don't really care about me.

In that moment, yeah.

They didn't protect me. Nobody stopped it. He went back and sat down, and then he got an award afterwards. He got a standing ovation. What the fuck is going on here?

The whole thing was fucking weird.

Yeah, because you always want to be that guy who's hosting the Oscars and who's starring in the big movies. And that's what everybody wanted. Everybody wanted to be the big movie star. But then you realize, well, these people are fuckers. What did you do? How did you set this up? How come nobody tackled him?

That was a fucking weird moment. Oh, the weirdest.

It was like a guy just showing his ass. You just pulled your pants down, showed the world your ass. Why did you do that? He probably wakes up in the middle of the night going, Why did I do that?

That whole thing was sucks.

It was beyond. It was almost like a guy who doesn't know how normal people act, thinking This is what you're supposed to do. Go smack that guy.

It just went to a place that he couldn't get out of and started it.

And still there. He's still there. In everybody's mind, when you see Will Smith Oh, he slapped Chris Rock. That's like, not I Am legend, not Muhammad Ali, not insanely good movies. The guy's an incredible actor. Absolutely. He's been in so many banger movies. He's a fucking blockbuster movie star. When people see him, they go, Oh, he slapped Chris Rock. Fuck that guy.

Fucking sucks. God damn it. Terrible. It sucks, man. It follows you around. It sucks. But my man Rock and the Kinnison and the kinnesons and that shit when you spread it. That happens once every fucking eight years or something where somebody becomes this shit.

Yeah. Every now and then someone pops through and it elevates all of us. Yes. Everybody that gets to see it, they go, Oh, my God, I want to be better. I want to write more. When I used to see Chris at the store, whenever Chris would come in and he would do a set, I'd watch and I'd be like, Oh, my God. I remember one time I was fucking in the back of the room and this comic stood in front while I was watching Chris. He's like, Dude, I got to get on your podcast. I'm like, You got to get the fuck away from me. I'm watching Chris Rock. Why are you watching Chris Rock? He's one of the greats and he's on stage right now and you're talking to me. Holy shit. Get the fuck out of here.

That's so funny, man.

That guy has never been on my podcast this day. I'm like, Get out of here.

You're in a moment. Get the fuck out of here. There it is. Rock never wasted a fucking minute on stage. Always trying to shit out. Always either notebook or just trying to member or whatever. Never fucking got tense with the crowd. Just like, They're not liking this, but I'm liking it, so I'm going to keep going.

Well, he would do this thing where he would go on stage and he would just have raw premises. And he was so comfortable with total silence. Where it wasn't going well. And then he would catch fire and then start killing.

Yeah, man.

And then they're like, Oh, it is Chris Rock. And then it would go right back. He was using them as a sounding board. And he would tell them, I'm practicing. I remember one time he went on, somebody fucking killed. And he went on, and the first thing he said, Hold on, relax. It ain't going to be that funny. They told him it's not going to be that funny.

Calm down. Exactly.

I'm working on some shit, but that's That's how you develop a monster hour. You have to start off with building a structure and get a foundation.

Yeah, even your first night of the tour, by the last night, you're going, Now, that's my act now. The friends who saw you the first two nights, you're like, Fuck, I wish you would have seen me fucking. A couple of weeks later, I figured out that bit.

Yeah, you don't want anybody to see you when you're doing a workout set. Like, Get the fuck out of here. Oh, man. This is a workout set. This could be terrible.

This could end badly. Especially when a buddy sees you eating it like that. What a feeling. Yeah.

There's no dismount here. It's interesting how those guys, a guy like Rock or Kinison or Louis or anybody who's just really killing it. It elevates everybody around you. Everybody gets a little better because of that because you get inspired.

I fucking agree. I think Rock was on stage and just killed one time. I remember John Stewart, who was probably 24 at the time. I think I was 18 or 20 or whatever are his differences. John Stewart goes, I quit. I don't want to. He was just like, God damn, that's good, man.

Well, that's what Eric Clapton said when he saw Jimmy Hendrix. Yeah. He saw Jimi Hendrix. He's like, What am I doing?

What the fuck am I doing? Why are they even doing this? You feel like a phony after you see you got great shit.

Yeah. Well, especially a guy like Hendrix that comes along and he's doing something completely different than everybody else. Everybody else is playing guitar. They're all great. And then all of a sudden, this guy comes on.

Oh, my goodness. I know. Oh, that was a nasty one.

When I worked with Phil Hartman, he told me a story. When he was 18 years old, he worked at the Whisky. And his job was, they had those stage monitors, and sometimes the stage monitors, the artist would accidentally kick them and they would go into the crowd. So his job was this because they were... You ever been to the Whisky? Yeah, sure. Small stage, not that big. When he'd have to stand there to be prepared to catch the speaker, and Hendrix was right there. Where you are to me, Hendrix was. He was 18 years old. He's like, Dude, it was insane.

That's so funny, man.

Phil could play a little guitar, too. But he was watching. He's like, I'm watching literally the greatest guitarist of all time, and he's three feet away from me.

That's fucking cool, man. Insane. Then Phil did all the album covers and shit. Remember he used to do the album?

I have one of them out here. One of them framed. Oh, man. One of his album covers. He did a bunch. He was a great artist. He was a very interesting guy. Oh, yeah. He knew a lot of shit. He could do so many different things. He studied. He made me feel like such a fraud because he would study his lines and he would have little post-it tabs, little different colored ones for different scenes. And he have notes and all these different things. And he would prepare for me. He'd be preparing the mirror. Yes.

I was like, God. No, he was the pro for sure.

Such a pro with everything. I know, man. When we were doing the show, he was getting his pilot's license. Every day in between scenes, he would be reading these pilot's manuals. Yeah, he was It's like so real man. He was just so dedicated to something. Yeah.

I lived in the same apartment building when I was on SNL as Phil. Oh, wow. I'd see it and we'd go up on the elevators together and talk about shit. Of course, he was older, so you were just excited that be talking to you. Yeah. He was a cool motherfucker.

I remember the first day on the set of news radio, I couldn't even believe he was really there. Yes. I was looking over across the table doing the table read. I'm like, How did I get on this fucking show? I had zero acting. I did this-How did you get it? The craziest story. The whole thing's crazy. I did MTV Half-Hour Comedy Hour, right? We do whatever, five, seven minutes.

Who was the host? Joyner?

Yeah, Mario Joyner. I did MTV Half-Hour Comedy Hour, I got a development deal out of nowhere for MTV. Wow, that's big. Mtv was offering me a development deal, and then my manager started saying it was very little money. It was like 500 bucks, and they were going to lock me up for three years. It was crazy low money. It was so stupid.

But you would join.

But I was thinking about doing it. You want me? Let's do it. I was thinking about doing it because this is after remote control, and they'd made Dennis Leary famous. They had decided they were going to lock people up to deals now because Leary got famous off that, and then he took off and then went away from MTV. I see. They had decided that they were going to lock up talent. If I did this pilot, if the pilot got picked up, I would have been there. My manager said, I have an idea. He decided to send my MTV tape out to all these studios and say, This guy's about to sign a development deal for MTV, locked up, but he's still available. Then I started getting all these... People would call my apartment. I was at home like, Hello? They're like, Hi, this is from Universal. We want to get you on a plane right now to Los Angeles. I was like, What? I called my manager. I called Susie, and I was like, Hey, dude, these fucking people are calling my apartment. He goes, Don't answer your phone. He goes, Go to the pool hall, don't answer the phone.

He goes, Just leave it all to me. Within three weeks, I had this crazy deal for $150,000, which is the most money I'd ever even heard of in my life. All of a sudden, I was in Hollywood, out of nowhere. Then I was on a sitcom. Who was it doing?

Like, CBS?

It was with Disney. Oh, wow. Which was crazy because I was filthy. All of a sudden, I have a deal with Disney, and I'm on this Fox sitcom. For that much money. I had to get acting lessons. I took a few acting lessons. I hated it. I was like, This is gross. But I knew how to just pretend. I'm like, I pretend on stage. I'll just pretend. Like, sitcom acting is pretty easy. All of a sudden, I'm on this sitcom, it gets canceled, and I'm like, I was thinking about moving back to New York, but I was like, I hated LA. I hated being around actors. You couldn't joke around with They were all so sensitive. Everyone was on pills. They were all on antidepressants. I was like, Get me out of here. I can't deal with it. I want to go back to comics. I was ready to move back to New York, but I had got this fucking apartment. I thought that the sitcom was going to go. I got a lease on this beautiful apartment in North Hollywood. I had a loft and a pool table. I thought I was balling. I was making like 20 grand a week.

I was like, This is amazing.

That's fucking big.

I was crazy. I was like, I'm rich. I got this apartment. I'm like, Well, I have this apartment. I can't just leave the apartment. What the fuck do I do? And so then I got another development deal. I'd on two auditions in my entire life. One of them was Hardball, got that show. The other one was news radio, I got that show. That's fucking crazy. It made no sense. It made no sense. And all of a sudden, I'm sitting there and I'm sitting across from Phil Hartman. I'm like, This is crazy.

That's a biggie.

I had full imposter syndrome.

That show fucking kept going for a while. News radio was big.

No, it wasn't. It wasn't?

I thought it was... Isn't that Brillstein Gray?

Yeah, it wasn't big until it was canceled. Oh, I see. Then it went into syndication.

How many years did it? Five years. That's pretty good.

Yeah, but it became- Syndication.

I got you.

Really big in syndication. I see. I think we did five years. We did like 98 shows, which is- Who else was on?

I forget all of a sudden.

Maura Tierney. She was great. Dave Foley, amazing. Andy Dick. That's how I met Farley through Andy. Then Candy Alexander, she was awesome. Vicky Lewis, he was awesome. Steven Root, amazing. It was a great cast. I felt like a fraud. God. I was like, all these people have background in theater and background in films, movies, and TV shows.

I was like, this is a dirty community. Phil made everybody feel that way. Everybody was like, Well, he's the next level.

Oh, he was the next level. He was so good. Him and Steven Root was so good, too. He was the only one that wasn't even himself. Everybody else was just being aversion. Well, Steven Root, he was a different human. He was a sweet, normal guy, and then he would play Jimmy James, and he would just fall into this character. Yes. He had a character just like when he was in office space. Yeah, unbelievable. Yeah.

He's worship, too.

Bizarre being on that show because I was 26, 27 when I was on the show and I was sitting. Making big money. Wow. But it was also confusing. I felt like such an imposter. I was like, someone's going to figure out that I don't belong here.

That's funny. Then I'm going to have to go get a job. That's nice, though. That's a good person to be feeling like that. I think I was a cocky fuck who was like, Yeah, baby. They I figured it out. I'm here. But I literally didn't get shit growing up. I audition for shit and never got... Nobody liked me. Really? Every audition, they were just like... I would talk to my agent after and be nervously asking what they say. Then they'd have to be, Did you read the science before? I'd be like, What do you mean? That's what they said. Of course, I read the sides. They were like, I thought you didn't know it that way. I go, What? I thought I knew it real well. They didn't like it. They would use words to be gentle with me, but just say, You're not ready yet.

Well, it's funny how you have confidence when you're young and you really do think that you're ready. I remember thinking that at open mic nights. You'd see someone on stage and they were bomb like, God, I wish I could go up there. That was terrible. How would a bomb do? Yeah, of course. Yes.

Or watching another actor and you go... When you were young and you see someone your age on a show, you'd be like, What's with the what? I could fucking crush that shit. Then you realize, looking back, oh, that guy was pretty fucking good.

Yeah. Well, news radio was fortunate because I got to play a more retarded version of myself. It was basically in a lot of conspiracy theories and delusional. It was like a version of me. The writers are very smart.

Did they know that? They were writing it that way. I see.

They figured me out after a while and started writing stuff in. That's I would talk to them about fucking UFO projects. Top secret shit. And then they put all that stuff in the script. That's cool. Because I was into stupid things. I was fascinating.

You got into that shit really young.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I was-Alone? In your head or you had somebody who brought it up to you and you started going with that?

Well, with Conspiracies, a friend of mine who was in a band gave me a book once on the road, and it was a book called Best Evidence by this guy, David Lipton. It's all about the He's like, You got to read this. The government killed Kennedy. I was like, What?

I remember reading this book going, What the fuck?

I read this book. It was just really funny. I went on stage after I read it and bombed. I apologize to the club owner. I was like, Look, man, I'm funnier than that. I read this fucking book. My mind wasn't right. They're like, Don't read it tomorrow. I got to promise I'm not going to read it tomorrow. Tomorrow night, I killed. I killed the next night because I put the book down. I said, You got to be That's funny, dude. I didn't bomb terrible, but it was flat. It wasn't good. I was in a weird headspace. I was like, Jesus Christ, they killed the President.

I was like, This is nuts. That's funny, man. Wow. It fucked you up.

It fucked me up. Then it got me down this conspiracy spiral. I started questioning things. I was like, what else don't I know? I started reading about all kinds of different things that I didn't know.

That's fucking amazing.

I read this book called The Strange Death of Vince Foster. It's all of a Vince Foster, a guy who worked with Clinton, who got murdered in a very... They said it was a suicide. He had the gun in his hand. There was less blood at the crime scene than was missing from his body. It seemed like his body had been transported to the crime scene. Wow. Yeah.

Jesus Christ.

Those things will fuck you up.

Fascinating.

If you get involved in reading books like that and your head gets filled with that shit.

You know, Quinn was like that, too. Quinn read a lot of shit, and he would tell me to read stuff. I remember he knew a lot about crazy mass murderers and shit, and I would start going, What happened? And he would tell me these things. I remember telling my dad some of the shit Quinn told me about. I don't remember who, but I'd be like, And then this guy, blah, blah, blah, and Ted Bundy, and this and that. My father started getting like, Is my son a fucking nerd? Why Why is he talking so much about murder?

Joey Diaz gave me this book called murder Machine once. It's about Roy DeMayo. You know Roy DeMayo? I'm not sure. He was a serial killer who worked for the mob. He would kill people. They He had a bar downstairs, and they had an apartment upstairs. He would kill people and then caught them up in the bathtub upstairs and just killed a bunch of fucking people. It's a horrific book. I remember reading that going, Jesus, fuck. Just knowing that there's people out there in the world. Oh, it's terrifying.

Oh, my God.

And you just get in the wrong fucking place at the wrong time.

The wrong guy shows up at your house. Oh, boy. Oh, boy.

It was just like, those things are terrible to read before you go on stage, though.

Fuck, your up. That's so funny that you ate it because of that book.

Oh, yeah. I've eaten it a couple of times because I did the wrong thing before I went on stage. One time I had a gig in New Jersey, and it was a college, and it was a weird place to get to. It was back in the day before Navigation. They would give you the directions over the phone. You get fucked up. Go to the 405, get off this exit. So they give me the directions. And I get there. I leave early because they tell me it's really hard to get to. I get there about a half hour early. But it was hard to get. I was like, Jesus Christ, this place is hard to find. And I was working with JB Smooth. And JB was supposed to open, and I was supposed to close. And they said, JB is not here yet, so why don't you just relax in the rec room and sit down and we'll tell you when the show is going to start. So I sit down and I'm watching this documentary on the Malibu Fires. And it's all these people, people lost their family, lost their house. Houses are burnt. This little kid walking around, looking for his dog, Rusty, where are you, Rusty?

Oh, fuck you. Yelling for their dog. His dog's dead, right? And there was this fireman who was just weeping and crying because the people in this community lost his house. And then they come in the green room and they go, Look, J. B. Is not here yet, so we're going to have you open up. Hopefully, when you get off stage, he's going to go out. I'm like, Okay. I'm crying. I was a little crying watching this thing about these people losing everything in these fires. It was horrific. I went on stage, just ate shit. That's terrible. Then finally, JB shows up, and he showed up, and he went on after me and murdered. He was loose and happy and relaxed.

He came in the right mood, didn't watch that shit.

He's a killer anyway. He's very funny anyway. I remember thinking, God, you can't I knew that. I was with my girlfriend at the time, and she was so disappointed of me.

Like, what was wrong with you? What was wrong with you? She's seen you kill before.

Yeah, she knew I was funny. It's funny, man. What was wrong with you? I got to watch that fucking thing.

I have similar... It's not from watching something or I have moments where I'm driving to a club and I'm in this fucking mood where I'm going, oh, my God, I am going to fucking destroy it. And I have such a... Like the last two hours have been in the right mood. Maybe some fucking song comes on. I'm like, Fuck, that fucked me up a little bit, that song. And then I walk in, then I'm in this fucking weird mood. I'm a little down. I get on stage. All of a sudden, I let the crowd own me. I'm like, what the fuck happened? I was so ready to kill tonight, and I fucking turned into a song.

Yeah, you're in the car. Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone.

That's a good one. Oh, no.

Yeah, man. Suzanne, the plans they made, put an in.

Why am I here?

You get sad. You can't get sad before you go on stage. You got to protect your mind.

My wife helps me out sometimes when she sees my head spinning before I go up. She goes, They're here to see you.

They're here to see you. That's good.

They like you. You don't have to worry so much. I'll be like, Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, They're here for the good time. They're not testing you. Go have some fun with them. I go, Yeah, no, no, no. You're right. You're right. And then I go, Fuck. Let me go on happy because the times I go on fucked up and be like, This guy's going to like me or am I going to have to fight? I have fucked up.

That's why, to me, one of the things I've realized early on is take people on the road with you. Because in the early days when I was headlining, they would have a local middle act and a local opener. Sometimes it'd be fun. That's right. Sometimes it'd be terrible. Sometimes a guy would be a douchebag.

Yeah. Why are you fucking closing?

Exactly. They would step on your material. They'd see your set first night, and then they cover the same subjects. Holy shit. They'd have to argue with them. Why are you doing? Hey, man, you're doing one of my fucking bits. No, man, I've been doing that bit. Fuck you. There was a lot of sabotage going on. It just wasn't fun because then you'd be stuck in this town. You didn't know anybody there. You just watching TV, go to the movies by yourself.

In the condo, yeah.

Yeah. It's depressing. I realized if you go on the road with funny people, you're going to have fun. It's good for them because they get a gig. I just have to pay the opening act and I'd have to pay for their air fare. I would make less money me, but I would have more fun. I was like, more fun is more important than anything. Absolutely. It's more important for the show, too.

You go up in the right frame always.

I know that the comics in front of me are going to be really good. It's going to be a good show. I want the audience to have fun, but I want to have fun, too. So then it was a party. Then I'd be on the road with Joey Diaz, and we'd be having a party everywhere we go.

He's funny.

We'd be just having fun, and it became family. It was like wherever we were, it didn't matter if we were in Ohio or New Jersey. It was us.

We were laughing. Daytime is fun. Have dinner together, then go fucking do your shit, then stay up all night. Yeah, I know.

But Joey was such a wild card. This is back in the Joey, the cocaine days.

This is Coco, Joey, Coco.

Yeah. So I I brought a second opening act in case Joey didn't show up.

Wow. Yeah, that makes some sense.

Because I didn't want to tell him he couldn't do the gigs. Hey, you're not reliable, because I loved him. I'm like, The times that he's there are so magic. I want to make sure that he knows he's always got a gig.

What a fucking funny one.

I'd book him, and then sometimes I'd book him and we do Friday and Saturday. Then I'd call him on Sunday. I go, Hey, the show's seven o'clock. I'm going back home. What are you talking about? You know I don't do Sundays. What are you talking about? You don't do Sundays. I told you, Joe Rogan. I don't do Sundays.

You never told me you don't do Sundays. You're springing that on me, man. We have a show in an hour.

I told you. Having a third opening act or a second opening act would be perfect.

You'd say you got to do longer. What would be like?

I'd bring Ari. If it was me and Ari Shafir is like, Okay, Ari does 25 minutes, and then I'll do an hour and 15 or whatever, and we got a great show. If Joey shows up, Okay, ground. Now we got a three-man show.

Perfect.

I love that. I scheduled it just so we'd always have some a fail safe.

It's fucking way more fun. When I won't go out with the gang, good Lord, we have a good time there. Yeah, you're having fun. It's fucking… And you write shit because you want to make them laugh. Exactly. Instead of doing the same fucking shit over and over. You're just like, Hey, I'm going to try some new shit out tonight. And then your buddies come out and watch you and it's exciting.

And you watch them and you got a tag for them and you're having a good time.

You steal their shit.

You're having a good time. Everyone's having a good time, which to me was way more important making X amount of $1,000 more. I'd rather give them that money and then we all have fun. That to me, was the best way.

When I was real young, I started at 17 and I had a car. I used to get booked a lot because I would drive the good guys. But I've noticed that it was always three of us, me and the two other fucking guys who were good, and they would have the best time together. They fucking think I suck, but it was fine. I was just getting to be with the guys who were 25. I was 17, 18. They were 25 shooting the shit, getting into trouble, but going on stage and destroying. Then you'd see them fucking hanging in the hotels and shit and always having the best night. I'd be like, Yeah, that seems like the way. I was on my own still. They would be like, That fucking Adam guy, he'll take us home. But I didn't think he was that funny. But fucking learn from seeing these superstar guys on the road.

Fucking have fun. Isn't it funny how sometimes those guys always think of you as that guy?

The relationships are the same. Exactly. They're still like, Hey, what's up? I know you fucking went on.

I remember when you sucked.

Yes, exactly. Which is why you have to get out of your hometown. You talk back to them. I still let them own me, these guys. I'm like, All right, you did see me suck. You're right.

Well, that's why you have to get out of your town because they always remember you as an open micer. Hell, yeah. I didn't get any headlining gigs in Boston.

Where did you play? You played Stitches?

Stitches, Nicks Commy Stop, Connection. Connection.

What a room.

It was a great room. Fucking incredible. The little one was the best. That tight, low ceiling.

Yeah, low ceiling. That's the one I-150 seats. Yeah, it was packed.

Stuffed in there. Bumper to bumper.

It was packed. It was amazing. It was a fucking time. Played against Sam's, was that?

Oh, yeah. I did play it against Sam's. That place was great.

What was the one that was a Chinese restaurant?

Kowloon, Saugas.

In Saugas?

Saugas, yeah. When the Ding Ho was the beginning. Ding Ho. Yeah. I wasn't there for that one.

Oh, I think that's the one I did.

That place went under a few years before I started. When I came around, I had missed the heyday of Boston Com. It was like '84. I came around in 88. That's when I started. Got you. They would always talk about the Ding Ho, and there was all these killers like Lenny Clark, all these guys from the ding ho.

Didn't fuck with Lenny Clark. A lot of Tony B. Tony B. Some of these guys, you just couldn't You just would watch them go, How the fuck can I kill like that?

Well, those guys had, as you said, they had the same act for 15 years. That act was hammered down like a Samurai sword. It was so tight. Like Don Gavin, so tight. You'd see his act like, Jesus Christ, this guy would murder.

Fucking Tommy Sledge. Do you remember? He pretended to be a private eye. I backed off. I moved on. But he was funny as shit. Something Some of those guys, some of those ladies, man, they murdered.

Did you ever see that documentary When Stand Up, stood Out?

No.

Franz Solomita made this great documentary about the heyday of Boston Comedy called When Stand Up, stood Out. It was all about the transition between these guys being these local comics that were as good as anyone in the world. Then Stephen Wright becomes famous. Then Stephen Wright gets on The Tonight Show. He becomes this Was it Letterman or The Night Show that he first did? I forget what it was, but he becomes huge. Then now everyone's scrambling like, What did we do? We didn't have an act that translated outside of Boston.

Yeah, that's true. Back then, it was Very Boston.

Very, very local.

Steven Wright, definitely in my high school, holy shit, everybody knew every... It was like Rodney. He was like right after Rodney.

You would repeat his jokes.

You couldn't believe it. Everyone was like, He's fucking so smart.

I used to work a fire hydrant factory. You couldn't park anywhere near the place.

Yeah, unbelievable. I think I tried to write like him in the beginning. I think I, as a stand-up, did 10 different guys. I didn't know who I wanted. I didn't know what was right. I was doing Bobcat shit. I'd do a character. I didn't know what the fuck. But Stephen Wright, me and my buddy, we'd try to write in that vein of a little weird and make you think, and what a cool joke. I don't fucking know.

But I also remember all those guys got popped by the IRS because they were-Standups? Yeah, they all got popped because none of them were paying taxes. They were all getting paid cash. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so they all got in trouble. I remember working at Nick's Comedy Stop. They offered you could get paid in cash or in coke.

Yeah, yeah. I remember those days.

That's how wild those days were. And so these guys were just animals. They were all getting paid cash. They were drinking and partying every night, and they were headlining. And There was one time during the heyday where Nicks Comedy Stop had three rooms running simultaneously. That's right. And they'd have two shows a night in each room. So these guys would do six sets. And they were making bank. And they all had a deal. The way Nick's had them set up where they were Nicks comics exclusives. So they would just work for Nicks. But they gave you so much work. You didn't want to branch out.

They booked the road, too, right?

They had a few road gigs.

I remember Bill Downs was-Oh, yeah. Do you remember? Connection. He used to book me on the road, too.

I worked for a private investigator when I was starting out, when I was an open micer. And this private investigator was Bill Downs' cousin. I didn't find out about until after I started working for him. And to this day, one of the funniest guys I've ever met in my life just never did stand up. His name was Dick Dolan. Dave Dolan, rather. He called himself Dynamite Dickless Dave Dolan.

Dickless Dave.

He was fucking hilarious. I have a phone that he He died a couple of years back, but I have a phone that I saved, and I'll never get rid of because it's got a voicemail on that phone from him where he called me up. It was like, I did a gig in Boston, and I hung out with him. I was like, Hey, Joe. He was just a Boston character. Just a hilarious dude. And he was cousins with Bill Downs.

Funny, man. Which is just small- Bill Downs. What a guy. That guy used to book me all the time. Even when I would do bad, he'd be like, I heard it didn't go that good. I'd be like, In my head, I'm like, Okay, it's over. Big guy. He'd call you Big guy. Hey, Big guy. Hey, Big guy.

I heard it didn't go that good, Big guy.

Yeah, right. Yes, I know. But then he fucking gave me another gig. Oh, yeah. In Quincy, there was some place in Quincy. I forget the name of that. The Naughty Pine.

Did you ever work for Dick Daherty?

I don't think so.

You never did Dick Daherty's Comedy Huts? I don't think so. Dick Daherty, who was the godfather. He called himself the godfather of Boston Comedy. Oh, okay. He had a bunch of terrible games in the room.

Was that '88 on?

Yeah, '88 on.

I fucking was in the scene in Boston more from '84 to '88.

Okay, so you were in the heyday. You got there right- I got there.

It was huge. I wasn't great. But then, buddy, all of a sudden, I got on Saturday Night Live, I don't know, 89 or something. And those same guys would come see me. All of a sudden, I got big in the colleges, and I was doing these fucking giant shows. Back then, it was unbelievable. You know, 2,000, 3,000, 5,000 seats. And the guys that I used to eat it in front of would come do the gigs with me, and they'd watch me, and they'd They're like, That fucking loser is killing me. The fuck did that have?

It's again, the thing when they see you in the beginning, they never respect you. They remember you sucking. Yeah, they were right. They were right back then. It was unbelievable. 2000, 3000, 2000, 2000, 2000, 2000, It's hard for people to accept that you grew.

Yeah.

Which is weird.

That's true. It's like some fucking pro athletes. It's like Jordan fucking wasn't the man for a while. Right.

He got cut from his high school team, right?

Exactly. That shit's going to happen in every profession that you just got to get, figure out what you're... You just got to practice.

Did you always want to be on SNL or was it something that came up?

No. I didn't even know it. It wasn't the thought. I wanted to be a movie star. I was cocky and telling my friends in college, I'm not going to be a fucking movie star. They'd be like, Why? Why would you be a movie star? Look at you. You got fucking... I'd be like, you don't get it, man. I'm fucking... And I thought I was good looking, too. I thought I was good looking. Now I go, How the fuck did I think? I know I'm normal looking, but I thought there was something fucking attractive about me that people are going to be like, That's a fucking stud right there. Then I think I was doing stand-up. Dennis Miller said good shit about me to SNL people. Then Sandy Wernicke was my manager, and he knew all them, and they got me an audition. Then I did it, and then they hired me, asked me to be a writer. I remember saying to Herley, who knew more about SNL. I didn't watch SNL that much. I was lost. They were like, It's really good. Dana Carvie is incredible. I go, Yeah, he's great. I was like, But I want to get in the movies.

They were like, and my buddies were like, You should do SNL if there's that choice.

You were thinking about not doing it?

Well, I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure. I was like, Let's see. I'm not a writer, so why am I going to become a writer? It doesn't make any sense. I'm not even that fucking good at that.

What was the audition like?

What did you have to do? I did stand up in Chicago Improv. It was me, Rock, Dana Gould, and a couple of other guys. And I did decent. And the SNL people thought I wrote some funny shit. Lauren thought I wrote some funny shit. Robert Smigal thought I had some shit, and then I got on. Wow. And Spade was on. How old were you? I was 23. Whoa. Yes, that was big.

That's nuts.

That's as cool as it gets.

What was that feeling like?

All of a sudden, it became like you were in a rock band because Farley got on and Rock and Spade, and we would walk down the street, and Schneider, and Norm, and we all were Tim Meadows. We were just always together. So this is a crazy band confidence. If anyone talked shit about the show, We were at a restaurant like, It wasn't that good this Saturday. We were just like, Shut the fuck up, man. We were fucking ready because there were so many of us. But then when you were alone and somebody says, I saw you, you're like, Huh? Yeah. There's something cool about having a bunch of guys with you.

Oh, yeah. It's confidence. Yeah, you got a team. Yeah. 23. What was it like when it was popping? Because you were on a great era of SNL, too. Look at that fucking cast. Yes. Harvin, Tim Met. Look at that fucking cast.

Oh, fucking.

Look at how young Spade looks in Rock. Oh, my God. Out, Franken. Jesus Christ. Look at that cast.

That's when he was in the cast that year. Neelen, everybody loved. Everybody loved. And Ellen, Cleghorn, I knew from the comic strip. And Melanie and Julia, all cool. Very tight, but we all love Neelen. Every comedian loves Neelen. Everybody liked the way he dropped jokes in and fucking smooth as hell.

Isn't it crazy looking at yourself back then?

I fucking don't know what I was thinking. Spade sent me a fucking skit we did like Six months ago, and I was like, This is the first time this ever happened, Spade. I don't fucking remember that one ounce. I didn't even know what that thing was about. I don't remember what it was, but I go, I didn't remember saying any of those words. I didn't know what the jokes were. I didn't know what the fucking ending was. He's like, You don't? I said, I don't fucking remember that when you did. He goes, I did, but it was weird. That's how I know I've been doing this so fucking long as this shit. I know I've been doing this shit long when somebody comes up to me, a big famous motherfucker, and we go, Hey, man. I go, Hey, nice Nice to meet you. He's like, Nice to meet you. We met. I'm like, I fucking didn't remember meeting you. What the fuck happened?

Well, your brain gets overwhelmed with people. You know that number, Dunbar's number? Do you know what that is? No. Dunbar's number is a principle that you can only keep 150 people in your head at any given time. Then there's some people that you can keep in a distance, like acquaintances. But there's a tight group of a small number. Then as it branches out, it gets to 150. Everything after that is very sketchy. Wow. When you're famous, you're constantly meeting people, which is very unusual for human beings. That's right. Also very unusual that they know you, but you don't know them. There's this weird thing. When you go, nice to meet you, we met. Oh, I I got. Sorry. It's not like I don't like you. It's not like I don't care. I'm not mean.

I got hit with a bunch of them today. It's just my brain.

I got hit with a bunch of them today. Yeah. Your brain's overwhelmed with people. There's no room. You don't have room. It's like, remember the old phones where you can only keep 100 contacts? You only That's all the phone. It had one fucking little tiny hard drive. Once you got over a certain... Nobody keeps 100 people on your phone. That's funny. That's all it could take. That's how your brain is. Your brain doesn't have room for all these people. So it's not even your fault. It's like your brain is not designed to be famous. No one's brain is designed.

Never thought of it like that. That's what it is. That's great.

And then when you've done so many things, like as many things as you have, it's just normal that you're going to forget. When When the pandemic was going on, my kids found out about news radio. They didn't know about it because I don't talk about- You don't talk about your shit. They're not impressed by me. My kids diss me all the time. They're always crack at jokes with me. It's fun. It's fun. We talk a lot of shit, but it's fun. But they watched me on news radio, and I watched one of the scenes. I was like, I don't even remember this at all.

Oh, you had that, too. Oh, yeah.

I didn't remember it at all.

Don't remember being there. Don't remember that room.

Remember not. Occasionally, I remember four or five episodes. Oh, yeah, I remember that one. That was a fun episode.

That's funny, man.

Yeah, but it's weird. Your brain just doesn't have any room for it. It's almost like it's a lie. I didn't do that.

This is a lie. Oh, my God. This is AI. By the way, not one time have I ever looked back at that shit from 30 years ago and go, Whoa, was I good? I'm always like, Jeez, what the fuck were you doing? What a fucking horrible performance there.

Well, I think that's probably a good sign. That's a sign of a person who's not egocentric. Where you have a good sense of who you are.

Yeah, I hope so.

The people that think everything they did is amazing. You ever go over someone's house and they want you to watch something that they've done? Don't make me do this.

Oh, that's a toughie.

Don't make me do this. Hey, got to watch my reel. No.

No, that's a roughie.

Don't make me watch this.

Yeah, you can say, You don't want this. Don't do this, man. Don't do this. This is for the best.

Also, I'll start chitten on you. If you play that, I'm going to start chitten on you. That's funny, man. It's got to be a bizarre feeling to be 23 years old and be on an iconic television show.

Oh, man, I was fucking never more excited to call home and talk to my New Hampshire buddies and be like, I mean, remember all that shit I said that was going to happen? It's fucking happening. I don't have to bullshit right now. It's really going. Then when I would get on the show, say one line, whatever, it was just like my parents, my family, my friends, just like, That was so That was incredible. I would play the bus boy or the delivery guy. It's just say half a line, and it was like, holy shit, you did it. You're on TV, man. My first TV show was Showtime at the Apollo. I did that. That was my first thing I ever did. And they fucking sent a limo to pick us up. I lived in Chelsea. How old were you then? I think I was 18 or 19. I think it was 18. That's crazy. Went on, and it was the second episode ever of Showtime at the Apollo. The first was Rock, and Rock cursed so much that they didn't use his shit. I was the first comedian to be on it. Fucking, I forget.

Shit, the host was a great guy. He's in the movie. Is this it? Yes, that's Melba Moore. Adam Sandler. Oh, my God. Yes. This one, Goofy guy. Terrified. Hey, Melba Moore. I want an honor to be here, folks. Me. Look at that face. Fucking young dumb. Because you people are so special. So I take a cab to come here, right? I don't know what's happening there. We're driving along and he kills a dog.

How painful is this to watch? He needs a dog. It hurts.

It hurts. Yeah, hit mute. No, I fucking... I can't say I was very good back then, but I had some fucking confidence.

What When was the first movie you did?

First movie I did was pretty awesome. I, 22, moved out to LA. Did stand up at the Improv. It was probably my third time ever. I get off stage. Two or three nice youngsters, director, writers, came up to me, Hey, that was good. You want to be in a movie? I said, Yeah, for sure. They were like, Okay, we're going to make a movie. We're doing a movie on a boat. I said, Okay, when? When? Next week we leave. Okay, great. I said, Do I have a big part? They go, Well, you're the star. I go, Okay, cool. I go home, I tell Judd, I was with all my buddies, and Judd comes over and goes, What happened? I said, They said, I can start. They go, What? He goes, Do they have a script? I go, Oh, I don't know. I didn't even know there were scripts. I knew nothing about it. Then I just fucking went on a boat for six days and shot this movie. At the time, it was called the Unsinkable Shecky Moskowitz, but now it's called Babes of and I was 22. Wow.

You were the star of the movie?

I was Shecky. I don't know how it happened. Milton Burwell was in it. I had a scene with him, so I got to tell my parents, I'm doing great.

What was Milton Burwell like?

Very nice.

I heard he shows everybody his cock.

It was accidentally seen if I remember that big hog of his fell out of his shorts.

He had a monster hog. He had a very great dick. Apparently, he would show everybody his hog.

Imagine that, now getting to show your dick and being there. There he is. Look at you. Yes. By the way, I was in shape then. Yeah, that's Adam.

Look at that.

Yeah, that's me. Skinny. I would get shut down by a girl there. That's when I was fucking Young and happy.

22 years old.

Twenty-two. Wow. Thanks for showing that. It's good without volume. I don't know what happened, man. It's painful to see your young voice. Whenever my kids see that shit, they're like, Why Why did you talk like that? I go, I don't know. I was in acting class at school, and I did a scene. I thought it did great. Then they opened it up to the class to say shit. One kid goes, Why is he talking like that? In my head, I'm like, What the fuck is this guy talking about it? Why did you use that dumb voice? I was like, What fucking dumb voice? But then I watched the shit back and go, Oh, that kid was right, man. Fucking pathetic.

What was the first big movie you did?

I was in Bobcat. Goldthwait made a movie called Shakes the Clown.

I remember that movie. That was a great fucking movie.

That was exciting. Yeah, that was good.

That was the alcohol clown movie.

Exactly. Bobcat was funny as shit in it. He made me and Blake Clark, we were his best friends. That was it. That was the big time. Wow. Loved it.

Shakes the Clown. That movie doesn't get enough love.

That was big. A lot of people liked it. It wasn't a massive hit, but it was cool as shit.

Yeah, it was cool. It was a crazy movie. It was like Bobcat stretching his wings. Is this after Police Academy?

I think he did Police Academy first, right? Yeah. Wow, man, you got every fucking thing ready to go. Julie Brown.

Down, down, Julie Brown.

Yeah. Wow, man. Yes, there's Bob on the ground, or I think it is Bobcat.

Wow. Yeah.

Florence Henderson was in it. There he is. Yeah, he knew what he was doing, Bobcat. He knew how to direct. I didn't even know what he was talking about back then. He's like, I'm directing.

I was like- Well, he directed the first episodes of the Chapelle show. He did? Yeah. I was in New York, and I was walking down the street, and I was doing Caroline's for the weekend. I was just walking down the street, and I ran into Bobcat. I go, Hey, man, what are you doing? He goes, Oh, I'm here with Dave Chapelle. We're doing this show. I ran into Dave, and Dave had a fake mustache on. I go, Dave, what are you doing? He goes, Oh, hey, Joe. You want to be on my TV show? I was like, Okay. What do I got? I go, I only got an hour. He goes, We're handing out medals for the best New York boobs. He gives me this box of medals, and me and him just walk around with this box of medals. This is like 2001-ish, something like that. Look at Dave. Wow.

So funny.

I mean, you could never do this today.

You got the best New York boos. Yeah, that'd be, wow, look at you. Yeah. Fucking A. Wow. That's so funny.

It was just completely random.

Shit. He's just like Dave Chapelle there, too. He wasn't coming up with a guy. He was very sure who he was. Yeah. He's got his arm on her boos.

You go to jail for that today. You go to jail for that today. Yeah. It was just Bobcat was directing it.

That's so funny.

Yeah, just complete random run in to Bobcat in the middle of nowhere.

That's cool, yes. He was older than us where he was like, he knew his shit.

Well, he was a guy that... Bobcat had that crazy act early on. And then he decided he didn't want to do it anymore. Yes. Then we just do standup and people are like, Hey, where's Bobcat?

Yeah, right. Fuck you. Yeah, he fucking had. He stayed strong with quitting it.

Yeah, he had to stay strong with quitting it.

He did a show with me about a year ago. He came out a couple of times, I think, and fucking murdered.

He's a funny guy. He was always a very funny standup. But he was trapped in that character that he did, that screaming, crazy, pull your hair out character. It's like there's guys that have characters like Emo Phillips.

He had that creep. Wow, yeah. I love them.

Yeah, but you can't do that when you're 80.

Yes, I know. But I was trying to do that. That's what I'm saying. When I was young and I wasn't doing well, I was like, I started doing a guy who was drunk on stage. I started doing a guy who was very nervous. I don't know. I was going for that shit, too.

Just trying to find it.

I didn't know what. I'm trying to be comfortable on stage. That's what you had going on your live show. I was like, oh, shit. Comfortable, fucking not terrified. You sat in moments. Not easy to do.

I was in the zone. You were in the zone.

How about the fact that you got in the zone when there are times when you walk on that stage in these pressure moments, you just go, I'm here. I'm talking, but I'm not here right now. My mouth is moving. I don't know what the fuck is going on. You didn't have that, though.

Well, I had been through a bunch of those before, so I knew never to let that happen when I was out there in the live show. That's also why I was scared of doing it. So I just really be overprepared.

It's big.

I made sure that when I got out there, I just said to myself, Everything that I'm talking about, I want to be only thinking about that subject. I'm not going to let my mind deviate or go, Oh, my God, this is going good. Don't fuck this up. Don't fuck up this segue. Don't fuck this up. That's funny. You can't think like that. I felt like when I'm at my best, I'm only thinking about the thing I'm talking about. And then you lock the audience in. I think stand up is a form of hypnosis. Yes. Do you think so, too?

Absolutely. Yeah, I get exactly what you're saying.

You lock them in to the way you're... When I'm seeing a guy kill on stage, I'm locked in to the way they're thinking. I'm letting them think for me. I'm just like, Think for me. Right. They're like, This is so funny. It's a form of hypnosis. I said, The only way that that's going to really work is I have to just be completely dialed in. I wrote out all my bits, I listened to recordings, I watched videos. I prepared for five hours the day of the show. Just watching video. I went to the gym. In the gym, I'm listening to my set. Listen to your own shit, yeah. I'm just like, I want to be just dialed in.

I get like that.

100% dialed in.

Oh, that's a fucking great feeling when you go, I know all my shit, man, because sometimes I'll do a tour, then I'll break down for two weeks because I can't be gone too long. Then I go, Oh, shit. I got a gig again Friday. Then I listen to the shit, and then I start going, Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Fuck, fuck.

You forget tags.

Oh, God. But then that two-week break on a tour, and then you go back out, man, you're psyched to say that shit again. Oh, yeah. And you come up with other shit to say.

Yeah, But you do have to go over the material. Your brain doesn't remember anymore. No. Your stuff just goes away.

What about you with having shit that steps? The hardest part of doing an hour is fucking having the 10 minutes up front not hurt the fucking next time. It's just so crazy.

I got a lot of stuff. But it's been six years since my last special. Like I said, I was thinking about doing a special in August of 2020. Then the country shut down, and then I didn't do stand up for eight months. Then when I did do stand up I remember I had to listen to old recordings. Luckily, I record everything. That's good. I have all my recordings on my phone, so I listen to stuff, and then I had to write things out. But I remember the first set that I did, I did the Houston Improv, and I hadn't done stand It had been forever. I remember when I was on stage, I was like, This is weird. I had never in my whole career... I got knee surgery, and from my knee surgery, I took two weeks off. That was the most I had ever taken off ever. I think one other time, I took a month off for some reason. I forget why. But that was weird, too. But that was when I was in the middle of a bunch of other stuff. I was just working so much. I didn't have any time.

And then I remember, Don't do that again because it feels awkward to get back. But eight months was crazy. It was just such a It's a bizarre feeling.

Yeah, you forget how to do it.

Yeah, but it's even just two weeks. Take two weeks and go back on stage again. You feel weird. What am I doing?

It's all new shit to your brain again.

It's also the experience of doing it is weird. You know how to do it, but it doesn't feel comfortable.

What a fucking odd feeling when you think about going on stage and just going, yeah, I'm basically telling all you people, just watch me for an hour. Just watch me. It's worth your I know you drove. You got babysitter. Yeah, here we go.

Yeah, you bought tickets in advance.

You planned your day out. What a psycho of a human being to just go, Let me fucking come look at this.

Yeah, you have to be out of your fucking mind. Or just really You'd be so prepared.

Yeah, man. You'd be so prepared. My special, this one, I did probably two and a half hours of shit and had to... Josh, Saffty, and we all had to pick the the shit we thought was the right shit. But I did have so much shit. By the time I did the special, I just came off the road. So I just had- Where did you record it? A place in Glendale. A little theater. Oh, cool. I'm sorry to interrupt. Can I hit it? Can I pee for one?

Yeah, we can wrap this up. We've done 2 hours and 40 minutes. We did? Yeah. We've been in that long? Yeah, we've been in that long. It's fucking insane. This is the set up.

Look at this. That's my This is my first Netflix.

I like the back drop. That was cool. The back drop, too. It's just normal. Yeah, that's cool. It's like, did you set it up like that or is that just what it looked like back there?

That was it. That was that theater. I forgot the name of that theater. It's a cool theater.

So it's left the way it looks.

Perfect. Yeah, that actually, that day was Paul Thomas-Anderson, the great guy and a great director. He shot that shit.

How many people are there in the crowd?

That one there, that's that first special I did, like five, six years ago. Some are big ass joints, big arena things. Some are 200, 300. But the new one? The new one was only, I don't know, 200?

200 people? 250.

Oh, wow. It was real small.

Nice. That's a great way to do it, too, because the people that are in the audience, there's 200 people. People at home, it's going to be like you're there instead of being in an arena where you feel disconnected. You can laugh with the jokes, but you don't feel like you're there.

That's exactly what So Josh Safty, he directed it. He wanted it to feel like you're getting to hang out with me. It's like just shit goes on throughout the show that wasn't supposed to happen. And that's that. It shows me before a show, during the show, and after the show. And man, we had fun. It is a great fucking vibe, that place. That was not a comedy club. It was just a little theater that they do. These people bought a theater. They put on a little plays there and shit. Then Josh liked it, and they made it feel like a stand-up.

That's awesome. And when is it out? What day?

The 27th. August 27th. Okay.

It's a couple of weeks from now.

Yeah. All right, man. I can grat you on yours. I can grat you on everything, bud.

Thanks. Congratulations to you, too.

My piss ended the whole thing. I appreciate. No, it's all good. All right, right on, man.

It's amazing you hung in this long. A lot of people, an hour and a half in, they start clamping up.

That's good, man. I just mentally said, I got to get past that pissing, man. Well, thank you, brother.

I appreciate you. Thanks for being here, too.

Good to see you, Joe. Congrats.

Thank you. Keep up all the good work.

You, too. Have a good family, too. Thank you.

All right. Bye, everybody.