Inside Late Night with Mark Malkoff - Michael Ian Black

Episode Date: June 11, 2024

Michael Ian Black joins Mark to discuss nearly becoming host of CBS’s The Late Late Show, being in MTV’s The State, his awkward Letterman appearances, thoughts on Conan losing The Tonight Show, and his writing on Substack.  Presented by LateNighter.com Subscribe to Michael Ian Black’s Substack Follow Michael Ian Black on X Follow Michael Ian Black on Instagram Please subscribe, rate, and leave a review. For more episodes go to LateNighter.com/podcasts

Before we begin, please subscribe to Inside Late Night and on Apple Podcasts, rate it and leave a review. It greatly helps me in getting the word out about the show. Thanks in advance. Shocking how bad the reviews were. We thought, you know, we thought we were going to cancel that day. We were like, oh, my God. Like, I had no idea the thing we were making was so horrible. Hi, I am Mark Malkoff.

Welcome to Inside Late Night, presented by Late. nighter.com. Today's guest is comedian, actor, writer, Michael Ian Black. We discuss him nearly becoming host of CBS's The Late Late Show, being a performer writer in MTV Sketch Group, The State, his awkward letterman appearances and current writing on substat. And now, it's time to go inside Late Night. Michael Ian Black, thanks for talking with us. pleasure. I don't know if you're going to remember this, but a couple of the guests already I've talked about this the first time I met them. We're going back to October of 1994. I had just moved to New York to go to NYU, and it's the fall of 94, and we're in the green room of Saturday

night live. John Travolta is hosting. Musical guest is Seal, and you and Tom Lennon are there. I am there. You were guests of Janine Garofalo. Gene would come in every so often to say hello. Remember Jeremy Piven was there in the green room, Lisa Loeb. Do you have any recollection of this? No. Yeah, you were like 22 or 23. I remember going to SNL. I remember being, I'm still friends with Janine, but I don't remember any of the specific shows I was at. Like, you'd think I'd remember. Do you remember any of the ones that you were at? I mean, this was the green room. It overlooks the studio. you're on the ninth floor.

Do you remember who hosted when you did go? No, no memory. This is mostly what I remember about going to SNL. I only went a few times, but at one of them, I went to the after party. At the time I was working on the state, which was a sketch comedy show on MTV. So what I remember about going to SNL isn't that much, not because I was in any way inebriated, but because I'm an old gentleman right now. and I don't have a working memory.

But what I do remember is an after-party that I went to. I have no memory of the host, no memory of anything, other than at one of the tables at the after-party was seated the girl that I had a crush on from my work, the state on MTV. The new producer's assistant who had just started working there was at this VIP table sitting with... Michael Stipe and Fomka Jansen and like Stephen Dorff.

And I'm I'm almost insulted because I'm the one who has a television show and I'm not seated with Michael Stipe and Fomke Jansen and Stephen Dorr. But this random girl who's the producer's assistant that I have a crush on is. So we ended up getting married. That's my way. Is that true? Yeah. Yeah. That is true. That was when Sarah Jessica Parker hosted Saturday Night Live and REM were the musical guest. Wait, how do you know that? Why? Because I was there for part of it. And I remember Stephen Dorf being there and definitely Michael Stepp would have been there because he was the musical guest. Oh yeah, Michael Moore was at the taping. When we met at SNL, you were very nice. You were with Tom Lennon and I'm like this 18 year old star struck.

kid about an office or so over is Lauren Michael's office. And that's where the really famous people are. So I remember who was in there is Bruce Willis, Christian Slater, Neil Young, John Cusack. So it was very star studded. And as a kid, just so wide-eyed. But I remember asking you advice for comedy. And I said, I had just got into NYU. And your advice was, quote, drop out. Yeah. That's what I did. That's probably what I told. you. I did. You told me that you did and stuff. I'm like, I'm not Michael Ian Black, but you did tell me to drop

out, which I consider for about two seconds because I'm my parents. But I love that that was your advice. And then Jeremy Piven was like, try always, always just be funny all the time. A hundred percent, always be fun. And it took me like a couple

a minute to realize he was messing with me. But you guys were very entertaining. I don't know him, but that's such a big thing to say to an 18 year old. You guys were all laughing. I thought it was pretty funny. You understood that he was being funny. After like a minute or so, I just so young and impressionable. Of course. But this is so interesting to me because this was October and then in January, the state premiered. So you weren't there. It wasn't that long since you, um, you premiered and guys, I don't know if you know this or not. You probably, I mean,

now you do, but you guys were pretty much bigger than life to people that were my age back then and to to walk in and see you guys, and you hadn't been really, I don't want to say famous for that long, but to go to a place like SNL at the time, and I think I can speak for the group. Overall, your group was an anti-SNL, what they were doing currently on the show. I mean, you were very influenced by Belushi and the old cast, we'll talk, but to be there at SNL where it was basically you guys did not like the show to be there and stuff, was that strange? at all for you? No, it was cool. Like, even though I thought, even though what you described is exactly right, like so much of what the state was doing was directly oppositional to it, like, at the time

SNL in the early 90s was all about just like cramming catchphrases down your throat, the sketches, I thought like we're all 12 to 18 minutes long. The humor was very sort of frat house. Like, it just wasn't good. it was bad. It was actively bad. But we all had a reverence for the show because we all knew its importance and its legacy and it's the sort of cultural institution that it became. So yeah, we were, I was personally like really excited to be there. I really liked seeing it even though I didn't really like the product that they were creating in that moment. At that moment, when we were there. They had a really tough season before. I mean, I've said this before, but Robert Smigel had left and so did Jack Handy, the Turner's Christine Zander. They're really

top writers. I mean, they were some of the best. So they had a tough year after that. And then when we were there, that was the year after and it was early in the season. And they had a tough, you know, Steve Martin, the cold open was good. That was the premiere and they had one other funny piece. But overall, it was tough. And the second show was tough. And I remember asking you, because they were having a really tough season, what you thought of the show. And you kind of, like, looked around and paused and said, I think the show is pretty good. Got a kick out of that.

Just being diplomatic, you never know who's around and stuff. But I'm like, he's lying through his teeth. Yeah. Yeah, they were bad. They were just bad. It was tough. It was definitely from a writing. standpoint, the cast and the writers just weren't working together very well.

And I mean, it turned around not that long after that when Tina Faye joined and Will Ferrell joined. Yeah, that was like the season after that Will, yeah, Will Ferrell came aboard. Yeah. Mike Myers, I can't remember if he was before that or after that. I guess he was before. Myers left that season, though, the one where we met at Travolta, he had left. That was October.

and then he left, I believe, in January, which would have been 95 in the middle of the season. I remember they hired Janine and they hired Mark McKinney from kids in the hall. And it was like, oh, like this could turn into something cool, but they didn't use them at all. Like they didn't use June. They didn't use Mark. Chris Elliott. It was a really lorick heightliner. It was definitely a strange, strange time.

Speaking of kids in the hall, I got such a kick out of the fact that people come up to you on the street and they, they've, they think that you were in kids in the hall. They never say, are you Mark McKinney, are you Bruce? But people are convinced sometimes that you were in kids in the hall? I get recognized for being in that show far more than I get recognized for being in anything that I was actually in. Do you, are you at the point now where you just say thank you very much or do you correct them? Oh, it doesn't matter what they think I'm in.

I tell them thank you. I get mad TV. You're in Mad TV. Yes, thank you. You're on S&L. Yes. Thank you so much. Thank you. I was recognized for being a local newscaster. And I was like, yep, that's me. Thank you so much. Thanks for watching. And he followed up with a question about some local news issue, which I didn't know about. And I had to say something like, yeah, that's a tough one. Yeah. Yeah, that's a tough one. We're really going to be covering that one. Yep. So funny. You know, we talked to about SNL, the early days, you know, you have Michael O'Donohue and some really strong people over there, that Belushi, I would never think that John Belushi would be an influence to you, but the way that you explained it makes perfect sense. It was because the way that the cast and Belushi was portrayed

on SNL as a character, you know, he was out of control. They've, you know, drug references and stuff versus what he might be in real life, where the two, you know, what was true? What wasn't true? That was, that was very influential to you. And you took that and you used it, correct? Yeah, I was always very interested in the kind of myth-making that S&L was engaged in. And it seemed like that felt new to me when they, I mean, what did I know? I was, what, five when the show premiered, but it was a new thought to me that people on TV could talk about themselves. as if, and talk about their real lies with real being in quotes, like, we don't know what's real and what's not real, but there was clearly something true in what Belushi was talking about when he would address the audience as himself or the other cast members would talk about him. And I always found the dichotomy between the public persona and the private person really fascinating, what was true, what wasn't true. And so when we started doing the state, I was really pushing for us to do that.

I was just basically trying to rip that off. And so I created a character called the on-air personality, me or the character of me, talking about my fictional life. And then those evolved into group pieces called High Were the State, which was the group, the state, just talking to camera as, you know, in quotes ourselves. So like one of the things we did was a thing called the Sleep with the State contest where we talked to Cameron and we're like, hey, you know, we're starting this contest called Sleep at the State contest. And the way you win is you enter. That's it. All entries, all entrance win. And like that's sort of like a funny sort of real take on what it was like being like famous in your early 20s. Like we really did go out and try to like our fans. Like, that was a real thing that we did. I mean, everyone knew who you guys were and stuff.

I mean, everybody already who we were. The cast initially was not for your idea of doing the, playing yourself as a character, correct it. You had to kind of have a compromise. They hated it. The rest of the state didn't want to do anything like that because they felt like our sort of comedic inspirations were much more Monty Python than, let's say, SNL.

Two years previously, you're doing traumatic work. This is March of 92. You're in Hartford at the Longworth Theater. You're doing the day the Bronx died. It was the premiere with Michael Henry Brown. Was that the direction you thought you were going to be going? And then two years later, you're thrust into this new world of comedy? First of all, kudos to you.

I'm amazed that you discovered that. second of all, yes, that's exactly what I thought I was going to be doing. I thought I was just going to be bopping around from regional theater, regional theater my entire career. It never occurred to me that I would be doing comedy, let alone sketch comedy, as a job. Like, that just wasn't on my radar, even though I was doing sketch comedy in college with the state. But it just didn't seem like, I mean, we wanted to. We wanted to take it professional. We wanted to have our own show, but like, how does somebody, how do you do that? How do you even do that? Was Mo Willems still doing sketch comedy when you got there, or was it that, did you just

miss him? No, he, so the reason our group even started was because Mo Willems, the children's book, author and illustrator, had started a sketch comedy troupe the previous year at NYU called the Sterile Yak, and to maintain their college funding, speaking of, they had to basically welcome new members into their group, which they didn't want to do because they'd, you know, establish this group. So one of the members was like, all right, I'll spin off and start a new group, which is what became the new group, which is what became the state. It's amazing to think about, I've read some, the oral history and just how everything within

the groups, how everything just organically came about. It wasn't completely clear right away. I mean, David Wayne was on the, like, be considered, like, the main stage sketch group, and he's like, oh, wow, I'm going to go to the lower tier one because they're so good. And the way it worked out, but back then,

were you a fan of Letterman. I know you went on Dave's show twice. You obviously were on Ed for years produced by pants, but was Letterman at all? Oh, yeah. I mean, Letterman was one of my primary comedic influences. Yeah, I mean, so funny. What was it like?

You went on his show twice. Terrible. Why? So I was on twice. I had a bad experience both times I was on the show for different reasons. The first, and a lot of it had to do with my own, just like being freaked out that I was on Letterman. The first time I remember, I'm waiting there. You know, and unlike a lot of the other hosts, like Dave famously doesn't say hello.

He doesn't interact with you in any way, shape, form. Like, you just, the first time you meet him is when you walk out on that stage. And I was so hyped because I loved the early Letterman shows. And I, and I liked the current Letterman show when I was on it. And so it was the only time in my life that I can remember being starstruck. And I was, I got so sort of hyper focused when they called my name. It was like, I got tunnel vision. Everything just collapsed. My vision collapsed. So all I could see was basically Dave's sort of like over orange grinning face as I'm like, you know, getting larger as I'm approaching it.

I have no sense of where the audience is. I have no sense of where the band is. I'm like totally disoriented. And like I'm unprepared. Like I don't have good jokes. Like I don't have anything. And it's just like a talk show appearance. And all I wanted was.

to like have that go well. And it just didn't. And then the second time, I was like, all right, well, I learned my lesson from last time. Like, I have to be much more prepared than I was. So I'd been telling this story in my stand-up act about going to a strip club with Megan McCain and she hired a dancer, one of the dancers, to give me what she was calling the upside down. and it is exactly as it's described, she comes over and she positions yourself upside down in such a way that your face is situated next to a part of her body that maybe you don't want to be situated next to. So I had cleared this story with the producer on Letterman. I'm like, I'm going to tell this story. They're like, okay, great. Justin Bieber is on before me. He runs long.

letterman said something to him that caused Dave to think he had offended Bieber. Dave was like, I think, sort of weirded out that he had said whatever he had said to Bieber and wasn't really paying attention to me when I was on the show, which, okay. And then I told the story, it got a lot of laughs. I was like, oh, it went really well. Then I got a call afterwards from my buddy, Rob Burnett, who runs World Wide Pants. and produced Ed and wrote Ed saying my story had offended Dave and the producers and they were going to cut it or I don't know what they were going to do, like cut my appearance way down.

And I was so mortified and just like humiliated because I was like, I cleared the story. Like I know Dave's like, like Dave's whole thing is like he's sort of a prude about sex. And I was like, I was, I was like, I'm going to play into that and have it be a funny story. But apparently I had offended everybody on staff by telling this story. It was horrible. I felt so bad. Dave did send you a handwritten note, though, right? He did when Ed ended.

I think he, I mean, I think he said one to everybody in the cast, as he should, because he was the executive producer of Ed, because it was made with worldwide pants. And he just sent me a short note thanking me for being on the show. saying something complimentary, but it felt very pro forma. That didn't prevent me from keeping the letter, which I have. But yeah, I mean, it was, it was, it was very nice for him to do, but and unnecessary, and I appreciated it, but it didn't feel kind of pro forma. I haven't been able to find the clip. I'm sure it's somewhere obvious online, but in 93, in in December, when you were about to go on the following one for the state, he did the John

Stewart Show MTV to promote. And it's kind of this legendary thing that I've never seen. You all destroyed John Stewart's set, correct? Yes, we did destroy John Stewart's set, which sounds bad until you realize it was either like his last show. It was some sort of concluding episode where they weren't going to need the set anymore. We didn't just randomly come on and destroy the set, although that is something we might have done. He knew we were going to do it.

And we did it. When you were auditioning, you were one of the finalists for the late, late show. Did Rob Burnett, was he one of the people that thought you would be good and put you in the running? Or how did that work? Yeah, Rob Burnett, who, as we already mentioned, was running Ed, was in charge, ran worldwide pants, and therefore was also running the spot that went after Letterman, which at the time was occupied by Craig Kilbourne. When he left, they were looking for another host. put my name forward. I did an initial night or two nights hosting. Then they brought me back among the finalists to do a week, a week's worth of shows. So it basically came down to me and Craig Ferguson. And I'm waiting to hear. At this point, I'm just waiting to hear who gets the job. Still.

I hope it's me. You never know. You never know. This is the thing. So it was definitely down to you, too. You also had in the final four, D.L. Hugley, yeah. Damien Fahey. Here's the deal where some people might know, some people don't.

And I know you talked about it a little on Twitter, but not as specific as I'm going to do now. Peter LaSalle was not thrilled with Rob Burnett for a bunch of years because after Tom Snyder left, Peter really was pushing John Stewart. He wanted John Stewart to take that slot. This is Peter's version. I haven't asked Rob. I've talked to Rob, you know, I knew him. I had a day job on Letterman. According to Peter, Rob was pushing Craig Kilbourne and got Kilbourne hired over Stewart. And Peter, he was very upset about it and it became somewhat personal. So when Rob wants you to get the gig, I don't know if that affected Peter choosing Ferguson, if you would have done that any way.

But at the time, and you didn't know this at the time, that was definitely, there was some politics stuff going on that you weren't aware of, correct? I wasn't aware of it. No. I mean, I had read The Late Shift by Bill Carter multiple times before I ever had the opportunity to audition for this. I knew a lot about talk shows, and I knew who Peter LaSalle was. He was Carson's guy for decades, and Letterman had a very tight relationship with LaSalle. LaSalle had been the guy

that had shepherded Letterman from NBC to CBS, and there was a peculiar relationship between Letterman and Leno. Letterman and Leno obviously had a difficult relationship, and the way they approached getting the job was very different. Leno was, you know, for lack of a better analogy, a puppy, just like running around, wagging his tail, begging for scraps, and Letterman was like much more aloof about it. He was like, I obviously want this job. Like, like taking over the Tonight Show would mean everything to me, but I don't want to make it look like I'm campaigning in a way that will be off-putting both to me.

me and to the network. So he was much more aloof about it. And obviously, Lano ended up getting the job. So I had that information when I was working with LaSalle at the Late Late Show. And I was like adopting the Letterman approach to the job. You know, I was just like, I want this, but it's not in my personality to be begging for scraps for it. And so I sort of thought LaSalle would understand that, and he didn't. He didn't understand what I was doing, and consequently, I think he thought that I didn't really want the job. But then when you couple that with his own personal animus with Rob Burnett and the fact that LaSalle was in L.A. with Les Moons, and Burnett was in New York, you know, they just, he just had kind of home field advantage.

And he got his way. Also, I had sort of got sandbagged in a way that I didn't really understand what's happening to me in the moment where I got rushed into sort of a last meeting, last minute meeting with Les Moonvez. You were given 10 minutes, something like that, not a lot of time. You're like, oh, yeah, we're just going to meet with less. Yeah, something like that. And I didn't understand at all that that meeting was like going to be determinative.

I didn't understand. Like, I don't know, like, nobody prepared me for that meeting. It was just like, Les wants to say hi. I was like, okay, great. So I went in, sat down, talked to Les. We had a somewhat uncomfortable conversation, and then that was that. And then apparently afterwards, he said, how am I going to give this guy the show? He can't even look at me in the eye. And maybe that's true. I don't know. I mean, I know it was a sort of awkward conversation. What I was hoping and what I was, I thought was true, was the work will speak for itself. Because I felt like I had done a week's worth of solid. chose and the last one in particular was like really strong you did extremely well do you think peter at all with that moon vest meeting was um did that deliberately to not give you a lot of time and

stuff just um yeah hoping that the craig because Craig is very much you know high energy and charmed less moon vest but do you you think Peter um that was calculated I think so. I think it was set up for me to fail. Nobody prepared me for it. Peter, like, nobody was like, hey, Michael, this is a really important meeting. But I should have known. Like, how stupid am I? I mean, Peter told you at one point that you had the job? Is that correct? Or pretty much had the job? So after the last show, which was on a Friday, he said, he like shook my hand and smiled and basically said, he said, like, very cryptically, stay near your phone on Monday. He was basically saying, like, you've got the job, was my understanding of it.

But then what I didn't understand was like right after that, he was lobbying against me. I'm so sorry. And, you know, normally just, you know, you were, I think, 33 and Ferguson was 42 and at 1235. They tried it normally go younger. It would have made a lot more sense. But I know Dave gave Peter the final say of what was going to happen. And yeah, I'm sorry you had that experience because I know it went really well. That's okay.

And the truth is like, I liked what Ferguson did. I thought Ferguson did like a really original fun show. And I would have done an original fun show too. Like, you know, I can't say they made a bad choice. I think he did like really cool stuff. I had us. And in fact, like the way the philosophy, my philosophy of that show would have, have been nicely, I think, ended up dovetailing with kind of what Ferguson ended up doing.

Like, Ferguson ended up being really silly and kind of absurd and having surreal elements. And I would have ended up doing that as well. Obviously, our voices are very different. But, yeah, I mean, I thought he did a great job. You went on Ferguson's show something like nine times. What was that like going on with him? Was that awkward at all or not? The very first time, maybe even the first couple times, it was a little bit awkward.

but he was always really kind and like I didn't have I didn't harbor any ill will towards him and I always liked going on his show because he was very natural and improvisational yeah he was very natural he had the Jack Parthen go in

very just good off the cuff yeah and and I think he he really liked guests who could do that with him so yeah it was fun it was always fun to be on yeah you were booked an awful lot you did Colbert show three times

Seth Myers three times. I got such a kick out of this. When you had one of your books, you asked Colbert. I used to work for him at the report. Nice man. You asked him for a book blurb. And basically, is this what he said? He said, you write it, I'll sign it, whatever you want me to say. Yeah. The blurb on my first book from Stephen Colbert is something like, and the reason I haven't memorized is because I wrote it. Michael Ian Black proves that even the most idiotic among us can occasionally create works of genius, Stephen Colbert. You know, you mentioned you just, you have a knowledge, a great knowledge of late night. I thought it was really interesting that you, probably other public figures, had this take,

but you're really the only one back in 2010 to make a point that, you know, everyone was rallying around Conan O'Brien, you know, he, Leno was coming back to take a show after 10. months. And the amount of younger people, especially, that this is injustice. And you wrote a piece on your blog, which I don't think you ever imagine that this thing was going to blow up, the New York Times was going to do this big story. But basically, what was your take on Conan? I mean, it's sort of hard to remember. I don't remember the piece that you're talking about. Basically, you said, how did a Harvard-educated multimillionaire late-night talk show host magically trans morgify into a guy who got laid off at the local car plant. The overreaction to his departure

has been kind of astounding. And the deeper reason that you think people were upset is because he became to represent the aggravated, injured, wrongly terminated. And there was a sense in the country that giant corporations are ruining everything even late night shows. We see Conan is a victim because we feel like us. He wasn't given a fair shot. And then you said if you have the energy to protest Conan's departure in Burbank, shouldn't you maybe think about spending some time chanting outside GM or Goldman Sachs or even Congress? This is the cause you want to get involved with. Speaking of Conan, looking back on that, what were your thoughts or do you not have any recollection? It was a long time ago. I mean, now that you read that, I'm like, hey,

that's pretty well written. Smart tape, Mike. You're a great writer. You have the substack. We're going to talk about later and stuff. Now, you're an amazing writer. I did think the overreaction was weird, like that Conan suddenly became this cause-selead when nobody was even watching the show. So two things can be true at once. First of all, Leno had no business retaking the Tonight Show. That is absolutely true. Like, that was the idea of him. I said as much. I talked to him about it. And that can be true. What can also be true is that Conan was not doing a good job on the Tonight Show and that people weren't watching. Both of those things can be true. That being said, the transition from the 1230 to the 1130 slot is not an easy one to make. Nobody makes that jump or that transition without growing pains because everybody understands that the nature of the show itself has to change. And Conan was not given enough time to make that adjustment. It generally takes, in my observations, about 18 months for hosts to kind of

of find their footing on that stage. And I don't care who you're talking about. It just takes that long. It takes them that long to sort of identify their strengths, to identify kind of what the audience is responding to and not responding to. Like, how does the monologue work? How do the the desk pieces work? How are my skills? And it's an interviewer. Like, all that stuff, it just takes time in Conan, despite the fact he had been on the 1230 slot for however many long, however long he had been before he got the 1130. He didn't have enough time to develop that 1130 show. So NBC handled it horribly. Leno handled it horribly. Conan handled it well, but I thought the overreaction to Conan's firing was just ridiculous.

Looking back the way that you phrased it, there was no one else I know a public figure and entertainment that pointed that out. It was, you know, it's kind of an obvious take that somebody would have, but then, um, oh no, I'm a lot of the obvious. I'm very good at the obvious. Yes, you are. It was very good. What was it like opening up for Dennis Miller at NYU in 1990? You guys got paid like a thousand dollars according to Mr. David Wayne. That could be true. So this was the first like professional job our sketch group ever got. I mean, we were still in college. We were college comedy group. Dennis Miller was hired to perform for the students, and we were hired to open for him. Incredibly exciting. Miller at that point hadn't moved sort of openly to the right.

He wasn't particularly like a political voice, even though he hosted Weekend Update. I don't think we had any like particular opinions about him one way or the other. We probably thought, yeah, he's funny, whatever. But what was most exciting to us was that we also got a free meal. And it wasn't just that we got a meal. It was that each one of us, all 11 members, got to pick our own individual order of Chinese food. So we had 11 orders of Chinese food for free that we were given before the show. That to me, maybe more than any other thing I have ever experienced in show business, made me feel like I've made it. I remember when we met another time on Spin City with Michael J. Fox

had come. I was an intern and you were on. You were telling me because you had just got in Viva variety. It was going on and you were really happy. They're paying well. And you told me, and I don't know if this was accurate, my recollection is that you told me that when you were on the

state for most of the run, you were getting paid $500 a week or show, which you said at the time was basically PA money, production assistant money. Is that correct? I thought it was less. Maybe it was less, but you were telling me you were getting basically paid the equivalent to a production assistant, and you're an actor on MTV and you're writing?

It wasn't just that we were act. I mean, so the state, it was 11 of us. That's a lot of people. But what you're getting for that money is the entire writing staff, the entire acting staff. You know, you're getting directors. You're getting the post-production, most of the post-production staff as well, because a lot of our guys did the editing on the sketches. And we were taking home like, yeah, I feel like it was around 400, but maybe it was

$500 a week. And it was crazy. I mean, it was just an absurdly low amount of money. But yeah, so I don't know what I was making on Viva Variety. Maybe it was $1,500 a week or something, but it probably felt like a fortune. You know, this is just me being naive, but when we met when I was 18 and I was, would see you guys around. I thought you were all millionaires just because you were on an hit MTV show.

And it just, I couldn't have been more wrong. It's just, I, the public will, I don't think got that. We just see you guys being these big stars on MTV. Do you remember when you were on Spin City? Because you played the sculptor and you came up with this sculpture that was basically, it was, it was a middle finger, a giant middle finger. And I guess City Hall was supposed to be displayed there. They were horrified.

but the producers of the show, for some reason, didn't clear it with ABC. So they had this $10,000 sculpture with a middle finger, and they couldn't show it when it aired. Do you remember that? So I absolutely remember doing Spin City, of course. I think it was the first network job I ever, oh, second network job I ever got. What was your first network job? NYPD Blue, the first season of NYPD Blue. though I had one scene in the final episode.

So now you're at Chelsea Pierce, and it's your second, and you're given a good role. What stands out? Well, what stood out to me mostly was the fact that I had told everybody that I was going to be on Spin City, and then I wasn't on Spin City, and that was very embarrassing. And you're the one who gives me this information for the first time ever, that the reason the part got cut was because they couldn't clear the statue. I thought I'd just done a bad job. I thought they were like, oh, this bucks.

No, no. And then they had this $10,000 middle finger and they sold it. And this is completely for real to Al Goldstein. And Al Goldstein came, they invited him to a tape in. He showed up and bought the middle finger because that's kind of what he was known for. But no, they were very wary back then. I remember there was a Spin City episode where Michael Fox, Mike Fox, was supposed to smoke. mistakenly, he was with a Native American tribal chief and didn't know he was

inhaling marijuana, he thought it was just tobacco and that he couldn't clear a drug test and ABC said, absolutely not. We're not doing pot. So it was pee a piety. So they didn't make it drink and then it's piety. So, but no, you did a fantastic job and it was just one of those things where they just couldn't, didn't even think to make a call to ABC or network standards and practices. And, uh, yeah. So that's. that, but you got paid network, television and stuff back then. So you were in the initial pitch. You and David Wayne together when you pitched some assistant development person at MTV for the group. You must have been 21. What was that like to be in the room and you're pitching

this show? Because back then, sketch comedy just did not get on cable like that from unknowns. Well, so the initial pitch to MTV, we went in, we met with this woman named by Lee. Cats. It might not have been Eileen the first time. It may have been her second Sarah. I don't remember who we pitched to, but we didn't know what we were doing. But in fairness, they didn't know what they were doing either. Like MTV had just started airing original programming. They had a mandate that we're going to move into original programming. Because Viacom is notoriously cheap, they hired essentially a team. of 25-year-old network executives to develop their on-air development slate headed by Doug Herzog, who may have been 30, maybe in his early 30s, I don't know. None of them, I don't think, had any real background in programming. They were music people, or they were interested in music during MTV. And so when we came into pitch, sketch comedy, I think they were receptive to the idea of sketch comedy, but not receptive to the idea of us doing

sketch comedy. The feedback we got at the time was, you're not all camera ready. I love the fact, though, that David Wynne was absolutely relentless, and then you just on your own did these demos for the John Stewart host of this show. It wasn't that many episodes. 13, I think. You, what is it? You write it? You watch it. You wrote it. You watch it. Yeah, so you do these. And again, there's very little budget. And you're in, an end. them as actors, you're doing the crew and everything you're doing yourselves. And that kind of gets you in the door. And is at that point that you do that three-night showcase and William Morris sees you? Is that the order of things? It was called Malt, I think. Was that? Yeah, the order of that.

So we did a live New York showcase three nights. And I don't even know what the purpose of it was. All I know is you got signed by Morris, according to David Wayne, which... I think that was the purpose was to show William Morris that we were like a viable commercial entity. And yeah, and they signed us. Was that Dixon? That was James Dixon. Dixon represents now Colbert. He represents Jimmy Kimmel.

I don't know if he's still with Carson Daly, but he's a major, major player. And there aren't a lot of agents that I think currently right now that people, and he's more of a manager, maybe, but people look back at him and call him a legend people within the agency that you had this guy really, really smart, obviously John Stewart as well as a client for a couple decades. So he was your guy, good guy to get. And we did sketches about him. Tom Lennon wrote sketches about him that are on the day. There's one call, I guess it was called James Dixon Power Agent, I think was the first one. There was like one. It was like James Dixon Power Jedi. I don't remember. We did a bunch of them.

Yeah, baby doll. That's so funny. So then you get, you get picked up and you guys out of the gate. The audience loves you, the critics. Conan O'Brien said this, and I think it's pretty true that people overall do not like things that are new. They say they want something new, but the critics were so brutal. And they changed their minds after like a year. But when you're getting that feedback from the press and they're just, I mean, I think somebody gave you negative two stars in New York. Post was brutal. That's right. What was that like when you were getting that feedback? You knew that it wasn't coming from the viewers. It was just basically these critics. Was that difficult at all or not really? Well, the viewers hadn't really seen it yet. We didn't know that the viewers were enjoying it

because the reviews all came out the day the show premiered. And it was devastating. I mean, it was just like shocking how bad the reviews were. We thought we were going to cancel that day. We were like, oh, my God. Like, I had no idea the thing we were making was so horrible. The Daily News said so terrible it deserves to be studied. It's a historic mess.

E.W. Entertainment Weekly significantly less than sporadically funny. C-minus. I do want to point out, though, some of these people after a year, it was very much Tom Shales did not like early Conan in within a year or so. Complete opposite. So it hasn't even premiered, and you're feeling a little bit defeated, the group. Oh, yeah, it was horrible. It was absolutely horrible. I mean, I'll never forget that morning, just like seeing paper after paper come in and, you know, when people still read newspapers and reading, it's like one atrocious review after another. I don't think there were any positive reviews. And now it's so funny, people would not, that are fans of the group and you guys would never think that that would be the case, because those sketches, the critics, some of the critics are all beloved. I mean, people still quote them. The viewers, I mean, I just remember being in high school and people just quote in everywhere and stuff. And then you guys are just the darlings of MTV. I mean, it seems the way. I know internally it was not, it wasn't maybe the easiest thing to deal with at times. But MTV at some point, they were going to

offer you dozens and dozens of more episodes. But before that, you announced that you thought that the group announced that it would be better if you went to a network that might get you closer to taking on Saturday Night Live. Because I knew that at least some of the group members were said, we're going to take on SNL, we're going to take them down. Is that pretty much what happened? Yes and no. We did get the opportunity to jump to network. ABC wanted us. We were like, great. were like, they were going to put us on against SNL. Would it make sense? It did make sense, and it made sense for ABC.

It made sense for us. And then the deal blew up for reasons that I don't fully understand to this day. And so CBS was like, oh, we'll take you, which absolutely did not make sense in any way, shape, or form. But at that point, like, we were kind of burnt out on MTV and each other, even though the show had only been on for three years and changed to that point, we had also spent the previous four years working together. So, you know, we had seven, eight years under our belts of like seeing each other every single day. That's brutal. That's why bands break up. That's

why either sketch groups of like, you know, Python kids in the hall, even, I can't even imagine that many members that you all coexisting like that. Yeah, it was really hard. So when CBS came along, It was sort of like, it sort of felt like an injection of fresh blood into our arms. And we're like, okay, let's do this. This is like a new fun challenge. And yes, MTV said, don't go. We'll give you like X amount more episodes. And we'll pay you.

And they said that they'll actually, they'll give you a decent wage, they said. Yeah, I don't, I don't remember if money was even ever discussed. I mean, I think it was clear there was going to be some raise, but it wouldn't have compared to network money. But regardless, it wasn't really. about money. It was just like, this is our dream. Like, let's take this shot. And then we did one special on CBS, which was the lowest rated show on network television that week. And then they dumped us. I want to mention two things. One, zero promotion that I know of from CBS and getting the

word out by publicist. I remember watching in my dorm room at NYU on Washington Square East, that special, that Friday at the Halloween special and just laughing. and laugh, and I couldn't stop. It was the state's 43rd annual All-Star Halloween special. This is October 27th, 1995, the New York Post, originally bad review when you started gives four stars. I mean, they said, that was then. This is, wow.

My recollection is they didn't really promote it. Is that fair to say? I don't know. I don't remember promotions one way or the other. I just know that it was such a bad fit for that network. I mean, you know, like Murder Shiro was like the biggest hit on that. network at the time, and our musical guest was Sonic Youth. Those two things don't necessarily go together very well. Did they tell you, though, that they were going to give you a New Year special

and put you up against Saturday Night Live the following year in 96? That's what I read. I don't know if that's true. They told us we were going to do a New Year special, yes. The Halloween special was supposed to be like the first of, I think, three specials. And then, you know, if those went well, we would get a series, but they, they killed us after the first, uh, special. It was so good. I, I mean, I know that people, um, it's online and people love it. David Wayne sat on his website that you were all at a William Morris party and according to variety, they wrote that some of you guys pulled your pants down at Morris party. Was that true? Almost certainly true. I don't remember it, but that is almost certainly correct. It would be hard for that not to be true. I used to try to

get in and it was almost impossible to get in to see Stella at, you know, Fez, they below, it was the time cafe and below was Fez. You guys would get the most amazing, first of all, people would come just to try to see the three of you, you and David Wayne and Michael Shoeilater, and you guys are in suits hosting with three mics hosting this show. And it's like, I mean, everyone basically before they got famous, including like the Upper Citizens Brigade with Amy Polar, their performing, you have Marin, everyone from Louis C.K. to Sarah. to Gaffa and Dimitri Martin. It was an amazing experience.

What was that like for you? And did you realize that it was like Hamilton, hard to get it in for the people that liked your work? No, I had no idea until you, literally had no idea until you just said that. I couldn't get in. I got in maybe once or twice, but we would try all the time. And the reservations would be go like that. Oh, that's so funny.

I had no idea that it was a hard ticket. I really didn't. Oh, my every, yeah, I mean, when I got, I think I only, got to go twice and it was a big it was a big big deal to be there oh wow no i mean in our minds we were just putting on i mean it was always crap it was always full like definitely um but in our minds like we were just putting on like a little shot comedy show every week i mean we so we yeah we were hosting this show for years uh called stella and we did have everybody like every comedian that was in new york if they wanted to they would they would come by some people

didn't want to. Like Davidel famously wouldn't come perform because he felt like it was a quote unquote alternative room and he wouldn't do well, et cetera, et cetera. But we had we had everybody come in, everybody except for Davidel. Who are some of the biggest people that played? Would you say just in your minds, just like now of looking back? Looking back, I remember Stephen Colbert did a really funny piece with Paul Dinello. Ben Stiller did a piece. Janine was on like every week. She was great. Yeah. I remember. John Stewart was there. Mitch Hedberg performed there. Trying to think if Chappelle ever did. I don't think Chappelle ever showed up. I wish there was videotape of that show. I really.

It's everybody. I mean, just anybody who was in comedy at that time. Yeah, most of them were famous. I really wish that existed. I just remember, I think it was David Wayne with his VHS tapes selling, going around and people paying, I don't know, $10, $12 cash for the videotapes, because you guys would do these amazing videos and there was nowhere else, I guess, for you guys to really sell it. And they were so in demand. But that was, yeah, I guess the extent to your merch. But yeah, that was one of my favorite things. It was such a treat to get on. How long did it take you to find your voice as a stand-up comic because you were already famous and already well known. And normally, you know, to go to the clubs and just and start out, you just kind of put yourself on tour. How long did it take you,

do you think, till you felt good and felt comfortable with your act? A long time. Like you said, like when I finally started doing proper stand-up, I had been well known for, I don't know, eight, 10 years. But I had had a lot of experience hosting Stella, for example, which is sort of stand-up and then also just performing comedy for years as well. So I wasn't coming in as like a newbie, but at the same time, like, it's a very different skill set to stand up on a stage and speak into a microphone more or less as yourself than it is to perform sketch comedy or to do like a three-man thing with Stella where we're just basically playing the goofiest versions of ourselves. It took a long time to figure it out. And I'm still figuring it out. I mean, I'm,

I don't know. Your stuff is so funny. I just can't believe. early on that you would be brave enough to do Montreal without being really established with stand up to go to the festival where everybody's there and you put yourself there, which I thought was really brave. Because I didn't care. I was like, that's great. I mean, no, that's what I think that that's with a lot of people's success. They just, you know, that a lot of the best people, they can get there. It's hard to get there, I think, for a lot of people just to not care like that. but um i mean i wasn't like going to montreal like i wasn't expecting to get anything out of it i just wanted to go because i thought it would be fun you said it didn't go well at all correct for most

of it no it didn't well yeah but i i think it's great though that your stand-up and you're able to transition and do specials and things um one of the most entertaining things and i forgot about it i was just doing research was you and mark mary and your twitter back and forth i mean And that was not professional wrestling. There was definitely some, a little bit of truth with you guys going back and forth back in, I think it was 2013. I mean, I just was, oh, it just was so funny. But there was some truth to it, correct? Yeah.

Well, Mark is one of the guys who was at Stella every week. He'd upset people sometimes over there. Oh, he upsets people now. Yes. But the thing with Mark was he was always, like, so resentful of everybody. in the state because he felt like we hadn't earned it. And moreover, he was very dogmatic about how comedy should be approached and the way it should be approached in his mind was the way he did it and basically no other way. And so there was always tension between like members of

the state and Marin. And so yeah, we had this sort of frenemy thing going for a long time. And when we argued on Twitter, it was in jest, and yes, it was totally serious as well. When you were writing those tweets, are you witty enough? And I'm guessing so that you can just go back and forth like that. Or do you have to take like a minute or two for each tweet to compose the writing? Because it's, the writing is so brilliant, both of you back and forth. Or was it just, you can write something like that and just hit send versus you writing everything out and taking like a minute or two to construct something funny? I don't remember, but I'm sure if I spent more than 25 seconds writing something, that would have been a long time.

Oh, it was so entertaining going back and forth with you guys. And I know you ended up doing his IFC show, which is fun. Your substack. I mean, you are a machine with writing these essays. I mean, just so prolific. You've been doing this for how long? I mean, it's great. I love your substack. And everyone should check it out. A year and change. I guess I've been doing it. I try to write most days. I also try not to put any pressure on myself. So, yeah, I mean, I write about 800 to 1,000 words a day on whatever's on my mind. Thank you. I'm glad you enjoy it. Do you have somebody, I don't know if it's your wife or anybody, look over it before you hit publish? No, and I wrote an essay about that, too, because I know, like, my pieces are often riddled with spelling and grammatical errors and dropped words and sometimes, like, entire paragraphs that don't belong.

And I've tried to become a little bit more disciplined about proofreading, but I'm not always successful. No, I mean, a part of it is like they're not meant to be professional or publishable in the sense that they're like complete works. I mean, I'm writing them every day. So they're going to be at times half baked. And I'm okay with that. If the readership is, I use it as a way to, I use it as a writing exercise. I mean, I feel most productive during the day when I I have to say, I mean, you draw from your own life, politics. I remember you've had a thing about Jerry Seinfeld with Unfrosted, very, very entertaining, but especially when you open your life up with, I love with you and your wife going on that road trip or the state with the tour. And there's a lot

of great stuff for it. By the way, how was that going on tour after so many years with all of them? I mean, not everyone was there, but the vast majority. What was that experience like? So the showbiz strike gave the state an opportunity to go on tour. It's something, you know, we always talk about doing stuff together, but because there's so many of us, it's just very, very difficult. So when the strike happened and we knew we were all going to be unemployed for a while, it seemed like a perfect time to get the group together. We were able to get eight out of the 11 of us.

We went on the road, and it was awesome. It was really, really awesome. It was awesome because, one, there were still people who showed up, which was great and not necessarily, like, I didn't take that for granted at all. The fact that 30 years on, 12, 1,500 people want to show up in some city and watch us perform our dumb sketches wearing unitards, like, great, like, that's really sweet. But what was more important to me about that, because our history is so long and because we have so few opportunities to do anything together, and because, like, the history of the group is complicated the way any creative group is going to have a complicated history. It was important to me to just do that show with those people the correct way, meaning the correct, like, emotional way, like to be supportive of each other, to like

be kind and gentle and encouraging, as opposed to the way we might have done it when we were in our 20s, which would have been to, like, yell at each other and bicker and fight and blame each other for shit. Like, it was just like a lovely way to be mature adults touring the country. It was great. What was that like when you were out and people, I'm guessing it would have been like a concert. People are kind of like doing the sketches. As you go along, I'm guessing people are shouting out lines. Every now and again, that would happen. But, um, no, I mean, the audiences were awesome. One of our, I don't know, Hallmarks is the right word, but one of the ways we operate is we're very much like DIY and have been since we started. I mean, we were a college comedy

group. So because of that, there's a kind of looseness to what we do and there's an informality to what we do. So if somebody shouted something from the audience, like nobody in the group would have any problem shouting something back, you know, breaking the fourth wall and just breaking character and just fucking around with the audience, like, that would have been totally acceptable and fine. And in fact, that happened. So, like, that wasn't, it was never a problem. I love the fact that you ever able to do that. And the work still holds up. You have a website, michaelianblack.com. And then you also have michaelianblack.org where people can see the number of books that you have written is astounding. I mean, kids' books alone, just the

that you've been able to do comedic and non-comedic. Yeah, are you working on anything now, I'm guessing so. What was the question? Oh, are you working on a book now, I'm guessing so. Oh, uh, no. Relax. Hang out in Savannah with your, with your wife, enjoy. I mean, I should be writing a book.

Instead, I'm writing a thousand words a day for my substack, which makes no sense. That's fantastic writing exercise, though. I mean, I think that would benefit anybody. I do think it's making me a better writer, which is, in a weird way, all I care about. Like, I'm interested in becoming a good writer. Like, that's the main thing that I sort of care about these days. Yeah, no, it's fantastic. I write street plays.

I've not been writing a book, although I want to. Really, what I want to do is write a novel, but I've never done it. I don't have any great ideas, and I'm afraid. Well, I just love the fact that you're doing it, and you're still doing stand-up. I saw you're going to be in Chicago at some point. in the next month or two doing stand-up unless that's not true. I don't know.

But you're still doing stand-up. My last question, if you could take one credit off your IMDB, what would it be? Probably Spy TV, which was a prank show I hosted for one season when I was doing Ed. And this was another.

So they asked me if I wanted to do this, show, Spy TV. On NBC, I was on NBC. They were like, we'll pay you $100,000. I was like, yes. Like, that's the most money I had ever received to do anything. So I went out to L.A. It was sort of this high concept prank show. And then Rob Burnett and John Beckerman, who are the creators of Ed, call me all pissed off that I had taken this job and without consulting them. And I was, I was totally flummoxed. I was like, what do you mean? Like, I had to consult you? Like, what does this have to do with you? Like, they offered me a hundred thousand dollars. You're not paying me anywhere near that. Like, of course I'm going to take the job.

They felt like it was cheapening their brand because I was doing this prank show. And I was just like, fuck. Like, the last thing I wanted to do was cause injury to those guys. And then on top of that, when Spy TV came out. Oh, and also, like, the kind of things they were doing, like on spy TV are things that I just don't like. They would like license prank show material from like these Japanese prank shows where they would like try to get people heart attacks. They would open up a hotel room and fire like a like a rocket propelled grenade like through the hotel room, just like insane shit where people are like, what the fuck?

And it was like it was that like just as a viewer would have made me uncomfortable. But I was sort of endorsing it because I was hosting it because I was hosting. it. And then when that show came out, the TV critic, Matt Roush, had this thing in TV guide called Rouch's Rants. I'll never forget this. I was in Las Vegas. I don't know why I had the TV guide. Somebody must have told me about this. So I bought the TV guide, opened up Roush's rants. His whole column was devoted to like, what a bad actor I am. It was like, I'm a bad actor and Ed, and now I'm being a bad host for this terrible prank show called Spy TV. And I was so upset. I was being called out by name by like this important TV critic. Like it was so,

it hurt me so bad. And then to cap it off, I was poolside and I literally, literally walked into a concrete column at the pool, like walked face first into the concrete column as I was reading that. And I and I heard my face and then I was like, perfect. That was a perfect conclusion to my experience with Roush's rants. So, Matt, that's, yeah, I never would have occurred to me that Rob and John would have been. I thought they would have liked the visibility just to be on a network. Oh, you're so sad. You're so mad at me. I mean, I, looking back on it, like, I kind, I still think they're in the wrong in the sense that, like, I didn't owe them that call, but I understand from their point of view, they're like, they have this really special show that they care about. And one of their

actors is going off and doing this cheesy, stupid, fucking show. Um, I can understand why they may have been concerned about that or upset about that. They got over it. Yeah. At the same time, I'm 27 years old or 28 years old. And like, I've never been offered this much money. Like, take the money and run. Of course. Before we go, your substack, I know that you have a tier that's paid. What is that compared to the other, uh, substackers? Is that just people? nothing. You get nothing to support in you. It's to support me. I don't ask people to pay except I just wrote my first annual appeal letter basically saying, well, this is the only time you will hear from me this year asking you to upgrade your subscription. But, you know, if you value what I do.

And so the reason I, one of the reasons I write so much is because I want to provide a service that's worth paying for. So if somebody values what I do, then, yeah, I hope you will consider upgrading your subscription. Because, you know, I'm obviously not doing substack for the money. It's never going to provide a lot of money. But a little bit of money would be nice if you like what I do. Yeah, no, money is good, especially here in Savannah and you have a wife. And your kids are both in college now? My kids are both in college. My son's about to graduate this week. Michael Ian Black, thank you for doing this. How did this go for you? I just, you've got back to me right away. Sure, I'll do it.

for a performance review, Mark, because I'll give you one. I'll take it. I thought you did extremely well, much better prepared than probably any other interview I've ever given. Thank you so much. No, I really, you were so kind to me when I was starting out when I moved here and stuff, and I'll never forget that the kindness, because I'm not going to mention names. There's one or two of people in the state at the time, and I'm sure they're very nice now that we're not, maybe the friendliest people sometimes to people like me and stuff. But you, were great. Tom Lennon was nice, but you were the best. Well, one of the things I learned early on during the period of the state was I had to make a deliberate effort to be nice to people

because one, I'm shy and I get very self-conscious when people approach me. And I think a lot of times early on people interpreted that as rudeness. I wasn't trying to be rude. I was just very shy. And I learned early on, like, you just have to be kind. You like, you have to kind of go out of your way to be kind when you're in the public eye because, not because, not so much because like you're worried like people are going to talk about you, but because it takes a lot to approach somebody, I think, that you know from TV or whatever and offer them like your kindness and a compliment. That's usually how it goes, those interactions. You just, it to them as a human to, like, reciprocate and just be nice. Like, just as a human, human to

human. I wish everyone was like that, but you certainly were. And I'm grateful. Thank you for doing this. And it was a pleasure. I wish you all the best. And I will continue to enjoy your substack and all of that. But I'm grateful. You too, Mark. Good luck. It is. You're really good at it. I hope you have a lot of success with it. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. you sir this was fun my pleasure thanks for listening please subscribe so you never miss an episode on apple podcast please rate it and leave a review be sure to go to late-nighter dot com for all your late-night tv news and you can find my podcast at late-nighter dot com forward slash podcasts have a wonderful week and i'll see you next tuesday

I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be able to be. I'm going to be. We're going to be able to be.

I'm going to be. I'm going to be able to be. I'm going to be. Thank you. I'm going to be able to be. Thank you.