Inside Conan: An Important Hollywood Podcast - Brian Posehn

Episode Date: September 11, 2020

Comedian Brian Posehn (Deadpool, Mr. Show, The Sarah Silverman Program) stops by to talk with writers Mike Sweeney and Jessie Gaskell about blowing his audition to be a writer at Conan, going straight to the couch as a guest on Conan, helping to revive the Deadpool comic book, how getting his first acting job was suprisingly easy, why he wouldn’t want to work on any other sketch show after his amazing experience on Mr. Show, and his new comedy music album Grandpa Metal. Got a question for Inside Conan? Call our voicemail: [phone] and e-mail us at [e-mail] For Conan videos, tour dates and more visit TeamCoco.com

And now it's time for Inside Conan, an important Hollywood podcast. Hi, welcome to Inside Conan, an important Hollywood podcast. I'm Mike Sweeney, writer on Conan, and you are? I'm Jesse Gaskell, another writer on Conan. He's got more than one writer. Exactly. And two of them are doing this podcast instead of working on the show. Yeah, which really, what is that these days anyway?

Oh my God. Yeah. A lot of Zoom calls about whether Trump's going to get reelected. Right. And the heat wave and fires. That's basically what the Zooms are about. What people are putting in their cocktails these days. Right.

How have you been, Sween? I've been good. I've been good. There was a crazy, it was 111 degrees. Yeah. And now we have a squirrel, I think, in the ceiling above my office. Oh my God.

I'm assuming it came in during the heat wave. I have a lot of experience with animals. Right. Within the rafters of your house. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Any animal that's smart enough to sense air conditioning and seek it out, kind of loathe to get rid of them. Or her.

Oh yeah. I have a lot of squirrels too. We have a pecan tree right next door to the house. So it is pecan season. I never get to enjoy any of the pecans, which are like a premium nut. Wait, so the squirrels eat them? Yeah, they eat them all before they can fall. So I never get any. I don't even know what a pecan tree or how a pecan shows up on a tree. Is it already

canned or jarred or they're already um honey roasted no they are just it's like a green seed looking thing but then you have to roast it and make it taste good oh okay does the squirrel prepare it in different ways or i don't know yeah they might be in the tree like the kubler elves making their fudgies. When did this podcast turn out? We talk about wildlife more than, hi, we're here to talk about Conan. But first, a squirrel update. That's what you people want to hear.

Now, we have a great interview today. We do, yeah. We have a great guest, Brian Posain. Yeah, real comedy favorite. I mean, he's been in all of the best shows. Yes. He's starred in Mr. Show, the Sarah Silverman program. Yeah. He's the author of the Deadpool comics.

Human Giant he was a writer on. That's right. Every cool comedy show the last 20 years. Yeah, basically everything with street cred. I love that he's worked in a lot of television shows as a writer and an actor. But then it's also, oh, yes, I also helped reboot this now iconic comic book series. And he also has a heavy metal band, a true Renaissance man. And he's also a really nice guy to talk to. So here's Brian Posehn. Hello and welcome. We're very excited to have Brian Posehn on the show today. Hello, Brian. Hey, how's it going?

Is that a pinball machine behind you? It sure is. Wow, what kind? A Deadpool by Stern. I actually wrote all the stuff that Deadpool yells at you while you play it. Oh, awesome. I got a free game for doing it. That's great. Do you ever go to bars and stand near the game and tell people like, I noticed you kind of chuckled at that last line. I have. Yes. That's fantastic. Yeah. I'm excited

to talk if you are about your experience writing Deadpool, but you know what, since this show is called Inside Conan, we always like to start off just with your relationship, you know, with the Conan show. The big guy? Yeah, the big guy. It can be with the big guy or with the show or... Tell us about your intimate relationship. I feel like I've told him this story, but I've never talked about it on the show. But I auditioned to be a writer there.

Ah. Oh. I did not know that. I came straight from Jon Stewart's, remember when he was a syndicated show? Sure. The Paramount show.

So first he had a show on MTV, right? And then he had a syndicated show. Yes, and then it got syndicated. Okay. And I was hired as a writer. I moved out from LA and still had an LA girlfriend

but was living in New York for a while. Okay. Lived there six months. The show got canceled. Yeah. And I'm on the roof with Dave Attell and a couple other writers while. Okay. Lived there six months. The show got canceled. Yeah. And I'm on the roof with Dave Attell and a couple other writers there. Yeah. And my agent is back in

LA and he calls me and says, hey, man, you got to get over to Conan now. And I thought it was so weird. I was like, you really want me to go audition for a writing job? And I just lost this job. So I was kind of freaking out. And I'm getting high on the roof yeah with a couple other writers sure when you said it was understood and so now i go to this uh you know i actually really want the job and it's marsh mccall is the head writer at the time right and uh And Conan's sitting in there with an acoustic guitar. And it's the first time I've met Conan. And I think he's funny. And I know we have people in common,

but I don't think to tell him that. I'm high. I'm doing a bad job of representing myself. And they look at my writing samples, and my writing samples are there. They're like, oh, you're really funny. And in the room, I was the opposite opposite of funny and it was just super awkward conan played the guitar yeah i was thrown by a couple of different things like it just went awfully and then the only way i

wound up on the conan show was by doing stand-up comedy and being asked to come the guitar playing is intimidating the first it was i was in a hallway i was just doing the warm-up i hadn't submitted yet to be a writer and he just came up behind me and was playing the guitar while we're waiting for the elevator like waiting for the elevator isn't awkward enough now he's like serenading it's such an alpha move i know i honestly like i went through my rolodex of experiences i was like i don't think i've ever awkward enough. Now he's like serenading. It's such an alpha move. I know. I honestly, like I went through my Rolodex of experiences. I was like, I don't think I've ever been in this experience. I didn't know how to react. So you had that experience. So you walked out. And then I went back to LA and the Jon Stewart show had gone away. And then any opportunities

in New York, you know, my manager was like, well, if Conan happens, you can stay there, but otherwise come back. And then right around then was when Mr. Show geared up for like, I think we had already done, those guys had done season one without me. I wasn't a writer, I was an actor on it. But then right around then was when we did season two and I was hired as a writer. Oh, great. That's a great, happy ending. Yeah. I was still able to write comedy. Right. And you didn't have to be worried about being thrown in a room with those two for the writing gigs since you'd already been on the show. And so you worked on Mr. Show for the rest of the run, which must have been great. And then when after that, you first did

stand up on Conan or I think 2000, right? Yeah, that sounds about right. I mean, I've done it. God, I think it feels like at least 20 at this time, but I don't know the exact numbers of how many times I did it, but it felt like every year for a while there and sometimes multiple times in a year. It was always about when I had, you know, material that was always the thing and, or something to promote or, you know, of course I felt like I was one of the people that they would ask, you know, even if I didn't have something to promote. Right, right, right. Sometimes, yeah, there's the clutch people that come through if there's a canceled flight or something.

Oh, would that happen sometimes, like Jesse's saying? Absolutely, yeah. And it wound up being, for me, I grew up with, you know, I'm very old. So I grew up seeing comics on Carson. And I always loved how if you weren't a comic, you didn't know that that was their material. Right. And that was the thing with Conan. I loved being on there because I don't think I even ever did a straight stand-up set. I came on there because I was promoting a TV show. I think I was on another NBC show at the time or whenever you guys were there. And then so I came that way. And so I didn't have to climb the ropes of doing stand-up first and then getting asked to the couch.

I went straight to the couch with Conan and Andy, but did my jokes. But I would have them set me up. I always loved that part of it. It's such a different way of telling your jokes than just straight to the audience. Involving this other person and trying to make it conversational was always a challenge and fun.

You made it seem incredibly natural. I think that's really hard to do. I know. I think a lot of people don't know that, that that's sort of prepared material. Right. Every time I did it, it was whatever my latest stand-up jokes were. Like, every once in a while, there would be something that was made just for the show, but most of it was current bits I was doing that, you know, I'd work out with the producer over the phone the day before. Yeah, and then Conan finds a way to ask, like, so I heard you got a dog. Yes, it was always like that.

You call yourself a nerd. Right, right. Yeah, other people do too, Conan. Here goes another 20 minutes, right. Well, Conan was really the only show I did. I was pretty loyal. Well, I did Fallon once and I did Kimmel, but for different, you know, promoting different things. But Conan was the one that I went back to a million times. So for me, it was always about,

I want to crush. I want to go on there and I want to be, you know, not the highlight of the show, but I want Conan to want me back, really. You know, that's the other thing is if you're a dead fish and you're not giving him anything, you know, he's not going to want you back. Yeah, exactly. So you got to do it every time, you know. But it's funny what you said about the preparedness. Like, I think when people watch actors and they wonder why, well, why is that guy not funny?

Yeah, yeah. Well, that's not what he does. He doesn't write material. Yeah. But when a comic goes on, that's not what he does. He doesn't write material, yeah. But when a comic goes on, it's material. The art of making that conversational, I know a lot of comedians who did stand-up over in the performance area and then transferred to the couch later,

and it's not as smooth as, you know, it's kind of an art form to it, you know? I'm paying you a compliment. It just sort of happened organically for me right the first time i did it i was like oh god how is this gonna work right but you know because you're used to just telling your jokes a certain way but then you have to act because you're sort of presenting them as like oh right i just thought of this off the top of my head and i guess that the fact that i am kind of multifaceted, that I do both

helps, you know, helps in that situation. Right. Yeah. You know, I don't know how I do it, honestly, because I'm scared every time I go out there. You know, in high school, the last thing I wanted to do was public speaking. And then I fell into this job, you know, like, because I also didn't want to do anything else. Right, right. You ran out of options. I've got to talk for a living, damn it. I was looking at being a DJ. I was looking at doing music reviews.

Oh, cool. Those were the things I was into. And then when I started to kind of intern and was around DJs and saw how really not fun that job is, and you don't just sit around playing your favorite music. That's what I pictured. And once I went through that, I was like, well, I don't want to do that. And then I interviewed bands and realized I didn't want to do that either.

I was like, well, I don't want to work for Rolling Stone or Spin. This is terrible. I interviewed Fishbone when I was like 19 or 20 years old. I don't know if you know that band. They're from out of la but they were up in sacramento where i was going to college and i came back to my advisor and went look i don't have an article here oh no i don't know what to do i hate this now i kind of hate that band oh no just write about how much you hate them yeah if you hate music, go into music journalism. Right. But then right around the same time, my school had a stand-up contest in the quad.

So I went and tried stand-up on stage at a bar, a local open mic. Did okay there. Then went and won the money at my school quad. Oh, wow. And went, okay, this is... I finally found something I can do that I don't hate. Wow, that's so rare that someone is just immediately good at standup.

That's not usually what you hear. Yeah, well, my first time on stage, I crushed. And then the second time, I ate it, but I liked it so much the first time that I was like, well. You remembered the crushing feeling. Yes, and then I went back to those jokes first time that I was like, well. You remembered the crushing feeling. Yes. Right.

And then I went back to those jokes because I had completely rewritten, I wrote a whole new set my second time on stage. Right. Which is the wrong thing to do. But I was kind of cocky. Like the first time I was like, well, this is easy. It wasn't. I know.

It's like, oh, I have to do this hundreds of times. Yeah. I think that's another thing. When you start stand-up, you don't even realize, oh, it's going to be an everyday job, actually. Hopefully. Right. And then I remember meeting a San Francisco comic, this woman, Sue Murphy. Oh, yeah.

It was an older comic, and she was really smart. And she was like, well, and you're not funny until you've done it 10 years. And I went, oh, man. I was like a year in. And I was like, no, that's awful. It's going to take nine more years of this before I get funny? Let's shave a few years off of that. But then those 10 years go by fast.

And I don't think there's a solid rule for everybody. She's kind of right. Everyone's different. It does take a while to find yourself on stage, but there's other people. You know, I remember seeing Aziz Ansari. He'd only been doing it like maybe two years, and he'd already found his voice. Like, it just depends on the comic, really, you know. Yeah, no, everyone is different.

You know, you're talking about really being into rock music and everything. Did you ever open for bands? Yes. Well, the stuff later in my career were better than the early times. The early experiences were terrible. I did a full-on metal show in Sacramento. Oh, my God. Where I had barely any room on stage because there was all this equipment behind me.

I also did a jazz fusion show at the same club. That sounds worse than metal. And it was all music nerds. They could not have hated me more. And I used to do a joke about how my roommate played the tuba. And so I'd go into this tuba joke and do the joke and get through it. And I had an okay set. But then afterwards, a tuba guy and do the joke and get through it and had an okay set but then afterwards a tuba guy because of course there's musicians at an allen holds and this guy was so mad at me

that i went after the tuba he's waiting for you in the parking lot yeah you expect people to get hey i didn't like what you said about god or I didn't like what you said about politics. Yeah. Not the tuba. You're going to enrage somebody. Where you're like, shit, I got to drop that tuba joke. There could be more tuba people. Yeah, that's a heavy instrument.

Yeah, I could get seriously hurt. Don't want to piss off the tuba guys. Right. Yeah, when I heard you were really into metal music, I was wondering if you opened for metal bands because that seems like not an ideal gig a tough crowd even at my level it's not that fun yeah you know because i like hanging out with the other bands and i know these bands now right like there's been experiences where uh there's been a band called red fang out of portland right and they were on the same label as me. And we did a thing together.

And it was totally perfect. But then I did this thing with Mastodon, where it was, I don't know, do you know the name at all? I do. Their big band. And it was in Georgia. And it was billed as a co-headline thing. We're friends.

We were doing this thing for, it was actually a benefit for a fanzine out of there you know i go up before them and people were into i'm getting laughs but there were a couple guys who wanted nothing to do with me like and so that's like 20 minutes of just being flipped off and having dudes yelled the name of the band before and i've opened for Slayer, which is even worse. Oh, my God. I did Slayer in Austin, Texas in front of 10,000 people outside. And it was also like on a 90-degree day. There were like pockets of dudes just red-faced, and they hate me so much. They're just, you know, every ounce of them was just into flipping me off and just yelling Slayer at me while I'm talking about my cat or my wife.

It made you yearn for the tuba days. And I was even like, dude, I'm here to watch Slayer. Like, I get it. I don't want to watch my dumb fat ass either. I'd rather be hearing Slayer 2. I get it. So, well, now, you know what else? So you've written for a lot of shows,

but also you've done something that I think is so cool. You've written comic books, and not just comic books. You mentioned it right off the bat. I feel like you kind of helped revive Deadpool. Yeah. Yeah, I'll take it. The timing was kind of perfect, where we came on the book after it wasn't doing well,

and we we rebooted it right and completely started from a new issue one and then completely like retooled the character right and then uh right around that time though the video game came out and the first movie was being so it was kind of this had not that much to do with us but just kind of the character just blew up and the next thing i knew like the year after i started he was like the biggest thing at comic cons i was seeing half the people that were cosplaying were coming as deadpool and it was like wow how did this happen and i won't take credit for it right but but it kind of timed out well and uh we had a great run we wound up being there i was with j Duggan for three and a half years, and he did another-

He was your writing partner. Year and a half without me. Yeah, he was my writing partner. We'd actually met at a comic book store in the 90s at Golden Apple. You met cute. And we've been friends ever since. Yeah, yeah. Been pals ever since.

We wrote a screenplay that never got made, but we turned it into a comic ourselves. It was called The Last Christmas. Santa Claus fighting zombies after the apocalypse. Oh, that's great. Why no studio's never thrown $150 million at us? I have no idea. That's coming.

No, we need a Christmas action movie. And one with zombies. That seems like a natural. That seems like a no-brainer. I know. It's about a no-brainer. here's this comic coming in to write this character. We still had to do what every writer would have to do. We had to jump through hoops and show them what we would do the first year, what the story arc was going to be, where we wanted to take the character,

big things we had planned and that kind of thing. Yeah, you had to kind of prove yourself all over again. So we restarted with a new number one. I forget what issue they were at when we came in, but they called it second volume or third volume and that kind of thing. Oh, okay. But, yeah, so we kind of were given reigns, and we were told, you know, don't fuck it up, but go ahead and do what you want.

You know, here, you know, we trust you to a, but go ahead and do what you want. You know, here, you know, we trust you to a certain extent. It was a scary thing in the beginning because we are fans of comic books, both Jerry and I, and we know how fans can be. And we were like, oh man, if we do the wrong thing with this character,

people are going to hate us. It's like being handed the Bible and saying, write a sequel to this book. Don't screw it up. One of my friends killed Captain America and people wanted him to die. Another buddy of mine turned the Punisher into Frankenstein. And so now cops and military guys hated him because they all love the Punisher. So it's like, don't piss off the fans.

I wanted to ask Brian about how you got into acting. You've done so much acting. And I know you started as a stand-up and you were a comedy writer. How did the acting thing come about? Oh, any actor listening to this is going to hate me. We'll make something up. I still don't find myself to be that skilled in that area. I feel like I'm pretty limited.

I do well in sitcoms because I know punchlines. And I feel like. Right. Yeah. And you're a writer. Yeah. And, you know, I could do certain characters. And, like, I could play a weird guy or a dumb guy or a really smart guy.

And then that's kind of it. That's a wide range. Smart and dumb. Yeah. Those are all the guys. Right. But I fell into it. Like, I did not move to. I moved to L.A smart and dumb. Yeah. Those are all the guys. Right. But I fell into it. Like, I did not move to LA to write.

Right. I moved down here. I got a writing job at MTV. I left my place in San Francisco. I was subletting to a buddy up there. And then with the intention, if the MTV writing gig died, I would go back to San Francisco. But it was 1993, And so comedy was dying.

Well, it was. As a stand-up, you couldn't, if you weren't a headliner, it was going to be hard to make a living. And so me and my pals up there, it was Blaine Kapach and Patton Oswalt. We were all buddies. We all moved down around the same time. Well, I came first. Blaine was subletting my place. And then six months later, he and Patton came down. It was because we all moved down around the same time. Well, I came first. Blaine was subletting my place. And then six months later, he and Patton came down. It was because we all realized the Improv had closed in San Francisco. The Holy City Zoo had closed. Like these places that were legendary and where they survived the 70s and the 80s.

But in the beginning of the 90s, they couldn't do it. And so we kind of panicked. We were like, we're not headliners yet. We got to do something else. But and we were all leaning towards writing. And then that's when, you know, when the comedy kind of pulled the rug out from under us, it was like, well, let's double down. And so I moved to LA permanently. And those guys followed right behind. And we all just started finding writing any writing jobs we could like you know the mtv thing went away and then i wound up like writing a pilot for that band

green jelly that had that hit that little pig little pig like yeah and then a show for a magician and all these weird things that before mr show came to bed or before i went and did john stewart too but right so with acting while i'm down here trying to get the writing thing going, my manager got me a spot at the improv and I go and do a set on Melrose and the casting director comes up to me right after the show and goes, hey, you want to audition tomorrow for Empty Nest? I was like, yeah, I like that show. What do I got to do?

And she's like, come in. It's easy. I was like, yeah, I like that show. What do I got to do? And she's like, come in. It's easy. I came in. She was super friendly and just really like, it was my first time looking at a script or looking inside. She just goes, just read this. I read it. She goes, what are you doing tomorrow?

Oh, my God. Oh, wow. Oh, I don't know. I'm just going to get high and write with my buddies. And she's like, no, no, come here. Wow. You're working tomorrow. And like one day of rehearsal, and then we shot.

Like I wasn't even there like the full five days for Empty Nest. And that was my first sitcom experience. And I get there, and they had me in with all the extras because I was in this crowd scene. But then i had like six lines oh wow and these extras are freaking out because now i'm talking and i'm just like i don't know what i'm doing i just came here from san francisco i just came here to tell fart jokes i don't know what's going on like don't be mad at me were they all grilling you like uh

how'd you get this? They were. Because I didn't know any better, I was hanging with them because that's where my scene was. So I'm just like, well, I'll just sit here in the stands until I have to say my lines. They're like, no, we have a trailer for you. They did. They had a chair and all this other stuff for me. But that was my first experience.

And I was like, wow, acting's easy. Sure. But then, of course, there was auditions that I didn't get and all that, you know, the hard work came after. But my initial just moving here and going, getting on a sitcom was fairly easy. That's great. So were you, after a little bit, were you like, I better take an acting class? I did. Yeah, pretty much within that first year, I took a couple.

I took cold reading because I realized that that wasn't something I was that strong at. Cold reading a script. Yeah, it's a whole different skill. Yeah, but you need to know that for auditioning. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They don't always send you the lines the day before. Right. the lines the day before right but uh you know and then uh most of the stuff i got though was like from people again bringing up marsh like that was uh just shoot me happened because

marsh mccall and rob cohen uh were writers that just shoot me and they knew me and so this part came up where a nerd had to yell at somebody and they're like oh we know a guy who's very nerdy and he's good at yelling let's get brian posse in here and then i came and did one and i wound up doing 35 of that or 35 or 40 of just shoot me oh wow i was a mr show writer already at that point but man and that got me in like miss writing for that show like every writer in town was watching that show even though the rest of america wasn't watching it right right it really paid off really well like we got we got cast together like um me bob and david wound up doing news radio and everybody loves raymond together where because these writers were just like hey look at these three guys like

you know going back to mr show i loved both of them. But to me, Bob was a genius. David's one of the funniest people I've ever been around. But Bob's another level. Bob is the smartest guy in the room, the funniest guy in the room. Bob kind of took me under his wing on that show. And I feel like I learned a lot from him about writing. And I always thought on that show, sure, David got the biggest laughs, but I was like, Bob, man, someday he's going to find something, you know? Oh, both of them are,

every time I see anything from that show, I'm in awe. They were both so brilliant. And doing those sketches live, to me, makes it even more impressive. Right. Yeah, it even more impressive. Right. Yeah, it's just incredible. But then it made it to where I couldn't work on any other sketch show ever. Right.

It ruined it because I was like, there's no way. Well, do I want to go work harder at Saturday Night Live after that? Right. And then for something that I might be less proud of? Right. At Saturday Night Live after that. Right. You know, and then for something that I might be less proud of, you know, not to, you know. Right. But our show got started because Bob had an okay experience at Saturday Night Live, but wanted to do his own thing. Yeah. And then did the Ben Stiller show with David, but then came from Ben Stiller going, that's not what we wanted to do either.

This is what we wanted to do. And it was my same sensibility. So I didn't come out of Mr. Show going, no, I got to do sketch my way now. Right, right, right. I'm forever in the Mr. Show school. Like, because they taught me how to write sketch, I feel like there's no other place I could go with it,

you know, other than continue to write with them, do with Bob and David, and hopefully we get to do more. I've been talking with Bob recently, and, you know, we were just talking about sketch ideas, and we both miss it. Oh, that's great. Yeah. So hopefully that happens again. But writing with anybody else, that kind of comedy, I mean, I can work on a sitcom, I can work on animation with other people, but unless I ran it, but I would still wind up using those guys. I would probably bring those guys to be in sketches. I would try to hire somebody like Paul F. to write it with me. Paul F. Tompkins.

I would still want that sensibility. Yeah, yeah. I would still want those people. Yeah, he's hilarious. I mean, you look at the writers and the performers on that show, and it's just an amazing collection of really funny people. A bunch of misfits that all fell together. Yep, yep. Now it's a comedy classic. It is, especially for comedy writers, like you said. Because that's a fine needle to thread where you're making a show that the greater public

can laugh at, but also is going to be revered by your peers. Right. But when you're making it, you don't know that. But yeah. No. But to a certain extent, I did because I didn't write on the first episode

or the first season. Those guys had written the first four episodes by themselves. So when I came in on the second season, I came in as a fan and came in and going,

this is like our generation's SCTV. Right, right. We may not be as big or as mainstream as SNL, but we're going to be like doing the funniest, smartest stuff out there. You know? Yeah, SCTV. We may not be as big or as mainstream as SNL, but we're going to be like doing the funniest, smartest stuff out there, you know? Yeah, SCTV still holds up. We can't, oh my God, we can't get into SCTV right now. That's a whole nother giant discussion. We should ask Brian though, because you just put out a full music album, Grandpa Metal.

Yes. It's a full comedy metal record. It took seven years to make it almost. Wow. Yeah. But I'll kind of take as long as people will let me. My book took me almost a year to write. The album came out in February. And we were starting production in March on these two videos.

And so one, we finally finished because we did it, you know, social distancing way. We did it uh you know social distancing way we did it on zoom okay that came out grandpa metal came out last month the the single it's really about it's specifically after i go after scott e and all the jokes are like old man jokes but it's really about guys my age that are still into this style of music right but then are stuck in the 80s that won't listen to new music won't listen to new music, won't listen to new versions of heavy metal. They only like Maiden and Metallica and the stuff that we love. In the good old days.

Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah. Kind of this crusty, get off my lawn heavy metal thing. I saw that you do a cover of A-Ha's Take On Me, a metal cover. So I guess that one escaped criticism. Yeah, well, it came from doing karaoke over the years. And whenever I've done karaoke, it's not my favorite thing to do. But when I've done it, I always do it metal style. I'll just yell everything and make everything metal. Easier to hit the high notes that way. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and you're doing a live show soon, right? Yeah.

My first. That's great. My first since this went down. I haven't been on stage since the first week of March. So, yeah. Where is it? How are you doing it? I'm recording it here.

And it's peoplebuyticketsthroughticks.com. My buddy that's opening for me, Johnny Taylor, he's out of Sacramento. He'll do like 15 minutes. But it's September 19th. And then we're going to have a Zoom kind of hangout afterwards where people can try to make it as much like a green room experience as possible. That's a cool idea. Yeah. And if people pay extra, we can chat. There's different levels to it, but it's the first time doing it. That's great. Well, we have to wrap up

and we always like to end by asking for a piece of advice. You have such a varied career so far. If you have any advice to give people who are interested in any of the fields we discussed, blast away. Writer, stand-up, actor, musician.

Well, the best advice I got in stand-up was, you know, be yourself. And then the one that I've repeated to other stand-ups is anything you want to get good at, you have to really commit to it. And it's kind of obvious, but not everybody thinks of it. But I think if you want to write jokes, if you want to act, if you want to do stand-up, whatever, you have to look at it like any other thing you want to get good at. If you want to get good at guitar, you have to nerd out and just spend several years just sitting in your room, you know, figuring that out. And that's not how you get good at comedy, but you've got to figure that out. You've got to figure out how to get better at it. How do

you spend that time just committing to it and getting better and stretching? Yeah. Yeah, and it can be analogous to that. I mean, both the practice thing and also even with comedy, like there's nothing wrong with watching a ton of comedy, you know, reading books, like any sort of nerding out. Well, you don't get better at anything by half-assing.

You get better by committing committing and just trying, actually making the effort. That's the only way you get better at anything. Yeah. Getting to the point where you're learning to be yourself comes from actually having to do it a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The stage time.

Right. Like you can't take a comedy lesson. Right. Hey, how do I be Brian Hussain? Yeah. You got to figure that out. Thank you so much, Brian. Yeah, it's great chatting. This is awesome.

Yeah, nice talking to both of you. Thanks. Yeah, this was really fun. Yes, good luck with the show. September 19th. Say hi to the big guy. Will do. We will.

And that was Brian Posse. Thanks, Brian. The live show that we mentioned, Brian Posehn Live, an evening with Grandpa Metal, is going to be live streaming on Saturday, September 19th, this Saturday at 7 p.m. Pacific.

Yeah, so check that out. Yeah, now you've got plans for Saturday night. And you get to see a live show. It's live, which... I know. When's the last time you saw a live show?

Thank God we're not live. Well, you know what? We're going to live dangerously right now and read a fan question and try to answer that in real time. Here it is. Hi, Mike and Jesse. How do you write comedy? Yikes. Great question.

Where do you get your ideas from? Are either of you more of a, quote, improv writer through spoken word? Or are you the types that write singularly? Just curious about each of your comedy writing processes. Love the podcast. E-hugs from Kevin Barbie. Okay, thanks, Kevin. Wow.

How do you write comedy? I was hoping Kevin would. As a PS go, here's the answer. Thank God. Yeah, I mean, I probably do a combination of these two things. Just within regular conversations, a lot of times something funny will happen. I'll say something really funny that'll make the other person laugh. And then I'll think, yes, exactly. Just like that. And

then I'll think, oh, maybe there's a nugget of an idea there. And how can I flesh that out into a actual live sketch? Or then other times I'll have no inspiration and I'll just have to sit down with a deadline and a list of premises and force myself to squeeze something out. A deadline is incredibly helpful, I find. It's the key to everything. Yes, nothing like the idea of what I like to call getting in trouble. If you don't produce stuff, I've got to come up with something. Yeah, I mean, we're very shame motivated here, I think.

Oh my God, yes. Very creative four minutes before a writer's meeting. But honestly, sometimes I think that that is how you start. You just have to put a pen to paper and then you can edit it and revise it and make it better. But you have to put something down to even have anything to revise. Sure, you have to censor yourself or try to edit your ideas sometimes. But it's funny. Sometimes the idea you think, because they get read out loud in a room of people,

sometimes the idea or pitch you think everyone's going to love gets stony silence. And then the thing you almost erased because you thought you were going to get fired for putting it on paper, everyone loves. Totally. Yeah, that happens all the time. Or sometimes it's total silence to the whole sheet of ideas.

That's always a great, that's a great thing. I love being in a room with people. And obviously, I think on our show, we're all really comfortable with each other. So even if you say something in the room and no one laughs at it, you don't feel like you want to die. I just assume they didn't hear it because of Zoom. That's a good approach. Oh, my God. No, but it's true. We're all comfortable and people just kind of say whatever comes to their minds. And you never know where inspiration is going to come from. I actually zoomed in

a couple of weeks ago when I was in the middle of a hike. Right. In Yosemite. Yeah. And then Jose came up with an idea based on that, which I thought was so fun. Yes. One of our writers. So that made me feel useful that I inspired Jose. And you kind of zoomed in from Yosemite almost as a kind of a joke, like you literally just like to show you could do it, but you were only on for like three or four minutes. Yeah. And it was super productive.

I know. Yeah, it's great. You never know where inspiration is going to come from., it's really nerve-wracking to join a group that already exists and hangs out with each other and get up to that comfort level. But you just kind of lay low a little bit in the beginning, maybe, and sense the temperature, and then you can dive in, hopefully. Yeah, that's the advice I hear a lot from different writers' rooms, is to kind of get the lay of the land first before you have to feel like you have to speak up all the time. Right, right, right.

Thank you very much, Kevin, for that question. Thank you. Thanks, Kevin. And if anyone else has questions for us of the writing or show making variety, you can email us at insideconanpod at gmail.com. You could also leave a voicemail. I love saying the number. So you could say the number. Three,

two, zero nine five, three, zero three. Leave a message. And that's our show. See you next week. We like you.

Inside Conan, an important Hollywood podcast is hosted by Mike Sweeney and me, Jesse Gaskell. Produced by Jen Samples. Engineered and mixed by Will Becton. Supervising producers are Kevin Bartelt and Aaron Blaire. Executive produced by Adam Sachs and Jeff Ross at Team Coco. And Colin Anderson and Chris Bannon at Earwolf. Thanks to Jimmy Vivino for our theme music and interstitials.

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