Patrick and the People - 11/9/24 PATP Presents: Patrick's After School Special w/ Dick Colligan

Episode Date: December 2, 2024

Special Guest: Dick Colligan @DickColligan

get to learn more about him and follow him. What's going on, Dick? How are you today, man? Hey, Patrick. I'm great. I'm great. Thanks. Good. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, man. So tell folks who are not initiated a little bit about Dick Colligan. Sure. Yeah. There's a lot to say. I was your typical kind of Wall Street investment banker for about 10 years. Living in New York City, I started randomly doing stand-up comedy on the side. After, you know, just for fun because there's a comedy club every four feet in New York City.

Yeah, absolutely there is. Yeah, that was in that was in uh around 2018 and then 2020 happened and suddenly the world uh got turned upside down and new york was yeah and new york was like the worst um so i basically you know my job was like hey i was living in, I moved to Florida for like six months. Cause New York was so insane. Yeah.

My job was like, Hey, um, you know, it was all work remote. And then they're like, we're going to go back to the office. And by the way, uh, you know, you have to get a shot if you're going to come work for us. And I was like, all right, well, I'm not doing that. No. Uh, bye-bye wall street. Right. Right. Right. So, so that's why you left the investment banking business.

Pretty much. No, I understand. New York in general was just so nuts and no one knew, you know, when it was going to stop. So, right. And I'd always wanted to, to be in the entertainment world. You know, I wanted to be an actor and I had just gotten a manager and, you know, I just booked a movie role. So I was like, great, I'll just ride off into the sunset and do that. So were you were you doing stand up in Florida already since you'd moved down there? Had you found a place you had to do stand up at that point?

Yeah, that that was also one of the things, one of the reasons that I went down to Florida was because in New York, every club was closed. Yeah. They were closed for two and a half years. Yeah. It was insane. I mean, just thinking about it now. It really is crazy, isn't it?

When you look back at it, especially with the lens of 2024, it seems more insane than ever to think about, isn't it? When you look back at it, especially with the lens of 2024, it seems more insane than ever to think about, doesn't it? But I mean, I think all of us, though, you know, first of all, I think the first six months, everyone was scared to death. Is this a zombie apocalypse? Are we all going to die? What's going to happen here? And then, you know, by that point, we're somewhat institutional here, you know? And, and then, you know, by that point we're somewhat

institutionalized, you know, uh, and then they kept stretching it and, uh, man, it, it was crazy, really. Uh, a lot of people never came back from it, Dick. That's right. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, so I, I did start doing comedy in Florida, um, which was, which was great. I mean, it was one of two, two States, basically maybe three that you could actually do comedy. Right. And, you know, and then I just said, all right, well, I'm just going to do this, you know, full time. You just pushed, you went all in on it.

I'm cranking it. Okay. Yeah, I just burned the ships and went all in and just been cranking it for the last three years. Well, was it a good decision? just been cranking it for the last three years. Well, was it a good decision? I mean, you know, you're in comedy.

You know how it is. I do know how it is, man. You know what? Some days are great and some aren't, right? I mean, honestly, that's just how it works in the business. Now, I know that you recently,'re not too far back we're in a a pretty critically acclaimed film is that right yeah i was in um a movie it's on amazon right now it's called uh the hanging of uh actually it's called tales from the old west it's a double feature okay and um and i play uh the one of the lead characters in that, a guy named William Kane.

And it was great. It was like a dream come true. You know, and I tell people this story a lot because it's interesting. But, like, I wanted to be an actor since I was five years old. Right. I get that. I saw Star Wars and I wanted to be Luke Skywalker when I grew up. Of course you did.

And then at a certain point, I realized that that job had been filled. Yeah. Sadly, it was. So the next thing was like, all right, if I can't do that. Right. Yeah, exactly. So I was like, all right. Well, then, you know, the next thing is just to be an actor.

But, you know, I grew up in, like, you know, upper middle class Connecticut. Nobody was an actor. Everyone like worked on wall street. So that dream kind of went away for like 25 years. And then, um, and then, you know, what happened was 2018. Um, uh, I just, it just kind of came, came back to me, you know, and I basically was like, you know, let's give it a shot. And I'd always loved standup also. So I'm like, you know, let's just, let's just go for it and see what happens. And, um, you know, I didn't really think it would turn into a full-time career necessarily, but that's kind of how these things work. No, that's amazing. Now, uh, how did you end up, you know, obviously stand up and acting while they're relative, they're not the same. And I'm going to guess that something with the tentative title, The Hanging of William Kane's not a comedic performance.

I assume that this is a more dramatic role. Is that fair? Yes, very, very dramatic. I assumed it may be. How did you how did you end up in that film then? Uh, you know, I ended up, I basically got it through a referral, um, from someone and then I auditioned and then I, uh, this is a funny story. I basically, I, I somehow figured out from the emails, when I sent the audition in, the casting director forwarded it to some people, to the producers. Okay. And it was on Google Drive share thing. So I got a notification to the emails that it got forwarded to.

Okay. So I figured, okay, this has to be the producers. Right. So I looked them up. I found their phone numbers and I started calling them. Really? You started even campaigning for your character. Hey, this, this is William Kane. You got to hire this guy. Dick Colligan, man. He's, he's the guy. He's just, he's just the guy to play this role. You know, you gotta,

you just gotta bring them in. Yeah i did that for uh probably about a month and a half until you got the cease and desist i don't even know if it got me the role i have no idea they never told me okay no i would have had to have known if my drip campaign did it you know i didn't really care at that point i'm like i got the job no that's exciting but that's you know so i don't know if it was that i didn't really care at that point i'm like i got the job now that's exciting but that's you know so i don't know if it was that i don't know if it was my dashing good looks right of course yeah who knows but um that was pretty much how it happened yeah i just i went crazy because i i just really really wanted the job you know now and uh that's how it is okay now i know that uh you've been in new york uh were you born there i was uh was born in chicago and then i grew up in connecticut outside new york and then

in new york and so i've been in around new york for like probably 30 30 years so why is it that you you you have no act no new york accent did you weed that out? You worked on that? Well, you know, I do have an accent. If you fuck around with me, we'll start to get serious. Right, right, right. We'll start to be real New York with you if you want.

See, I'm the same way. If I release my southern drawl and I start saying, I want to, it'll come out. You know what I mean? Exactly. No New York accent, really. and i said i want i want to you know it'll come out you know what i mean yeah yeah i'm with you exactly so uh no no new york accent really uh which is good actually for acting because even when i was doing when i was doing this movie you know i'd be off i'd be off uh off the camera or whatever and people like you don't sound like you're you know southern at all and i'm like well

i'm not and not having a real accent means that i can adopt any other that's right no no it's when when you can you know just make it universal it's amazing you know what you can do with it yeah exactly so how did you you know even prepare for a role of this magnitude with that amount of gravity and seriousness about it, how did you approach the character? How did you get into character? You know, it wasn't really that hard because for some reason when I just read the script, even when I just read, you know,

they just give you two pages really to audition. Oh, okay. And when I read that, I was like, I just instantly got who this guy was okay and um i even got the voice i got the demeanor and it was really kind of easy for me to to do that um i did theater in high school and uh you know so it isn't it wasn't like um i mean it's a very different role from who i am right but it wasn't like, I mean, it's a very different role from who I am. Right. But it wasn't too far of a stretch.

Yeah, it wasn't really hard for me to discover who that character was. No, it's not like you're playing a Mexican amputee or something. I mean, yeah, I get it. Yeah. Yeah, that's real acting. That definitely would be. Yeah, I had to learn how to ride a horse for the role. Yeah.

Was that intimidating to you? That was cool. A little bit, yeah. I'd ridden once before in Montana. And then so I could credibly say when I auditioned, yeah, I know how to ride a horse. Yeah, of course. But I brushed up a little bit before the role. And that was cool. I mean, you know it's great i love westerns it's who doesn't the movie uh like i

said it's on amazon tales from the old west um and the movie is a really like classic western you know okay and that's the kind of great thing about that genre is it hasn't really changed you know it's like very much true american values yeah you know um and tales from the old west is that in spades so and you know what i i love it with how it came out and um you know it's it's it's a it's a good one to watch yeah people who love westerns are very committed to westerns you know i mean they really are passionate about it. You know what I'm saying? There's a whole, I learned this after the fact, there's a whole community of people and they will nitpick. Everything.

Every detail from your role, like your costume, your wardrobe. Yeah, what your holster's made of. What did the, you know, all the, you know, what that wasn't in 1882 or whatever. Yeah, they'll get you, won't they? Yeah, you sound like you've done a Western. made of what the you know all the you know what did well that wasn't in 1882 or whatever yeah they they'll they'll get you won't they yeah it's you sound like you've done a western well you know i've done a few roles and uh i get how that is man um so you know you you get into stand-up you start making the rounds what is it that connected with audiences and you what what made it work for you with your audience um i'm pretty like i guess i would say like i i only really go up if i have

something to say yeah you know if i have something that i really want to get across and you know one of the things that I started doing comedy for was, you know, I started in 2018, 2019, New York city was, you know, extremely like, you know, it's very politically correct. It's extremely left. Of course. Yeah. And I'm not, I'm not, you know, I'm not left to center. I'm not really a huge politics person, but I just look at like common sense and the stuff that I was seeing,

even in 2018, 2019, I was like, this is weird because, you know, Trump was in office and every joke, every comedian was just getting up and ripping on Trump. And I'm like, that's funny sometimes, but, you know. You know what?

People would just, that would be their whole act. No, I agree with you because, you know, of course I'm a little bit older and you because, you know, of course, I'm a little bit older. And, you know, my entire life I've watched presidents be, you know, lampooned by comedians, every president that's ever been in office. And that's always been the case. But there was a change.

Everybody knows this to be true. Everybody knows this to be true. And not only did people become singular minded in their focus, but somehow it took a much darker, meaner turn than the comedy we were used to with regard to, you know, political things, you know? Sure. Yeah. And that was really kind of the thing for me was I just started really just going to the opposite of whatever I saw people doing. So like I would, uh, you know, I started doing jokes and I, I joke about both sides because I think, you know, like you should, well, yeah, they're both funny. You know, I heard a line just this week that may have been one of the better lines I've ever heard when it comes to that. Because like yourself, I don't identify with a party. I'm a common sense person, but I was talking to another person and they said, you know what? Left wing, right wing, it's the same bird fucking me. And that's it. I mean, that's that, that's the fact, you know, and I've come to accept that. And once you accept that, life is a lot easier. You know,

I don't have to put a flag up or declare a team. I'm just going to go with what makes sense to me. Right. Exactly. Yeah. I have a joke, uh, this election where, uh, I was like, you know, it's, it's, it's tough. Cause you're, you got, you got the guy who can't talk and because you got the guy who can't talk, and then you got the girl who can't talk even worse. Yeah, right. So I went with C, none of the above.

Yeah. Because I hate multiple choice. So tell me this, you know, jumping into comedy, obviously you had some kind of influences when you were growing up. If you had to cite, you know, one or two comedians you'd say who were pretty influential in your excitement about comedy who would it be the guys who i grew up with um were you know i grew up in the 90s so jerry seinfeld okay um uh jim broar yeah uh dana carvey okay and chris rock were really the ones that i uh, Jim Brewer. Yeah. Uh, Dana Carvey. Okay. And Chris rock were really the ones that I,

that I heard the most. Yeah. You're big, big SNL stars. A lot of them, uh, all great, uh,

comedians in, in their own right. Uh, Chris rock was, was a really, uh, influential comedian for me. Um,

but, but I learned something about him that to me was a little bit fascinating you know I had a lot of people my my comedy name my character is angry Patrick and I ran right no I get silly you know but people would often come up and say hey man were you inspired by Sam Kennison and I know you know i really i really never watched sam like that i mean i've seen sam but i never watched sam you know what i mean it just wasn't me you know uh in my mind at least um and then i was watching chris rock be interviewed and i'll be damned if he didn't say that sam kinnison was his biggest influence. And I was like, I guess indirectly. Yeah,

I did get influenced by Sam Kinison, you know, but Eddie Murphy was the first one, uh, that with the red jumpsuit, uh, it was called delirious. And,

uh, it was just, you couldn't even do the set today. Half of it, you know, but it was at the time. No, trust me.

You couldn't, but it's so groundbreaking. It was so amazing and so filthy. Uh, and, and, you know, I was a teenager, so I was like, this is the coolest shit I've ever seen in my life. I got to do it. You know, I got, I got to be that guy, you know? And, um, so I, I did, I started, uh, I, my first standup I did, I was, um, uh, 18, uh, the comedy club let me come in just to do the open mic, uh, somehow. Uh, and then I walked away for many years from it. I, I, I was successful that night,

but I loaded the deck with all my buddies, you know? So of course I was going to be successful, but, uh, but, but I came back around. Yeah. I went out on top and came back, you know? Yeah. So, uh, of all the places now that you perform do you have a favorite i really like um i really like broadway comedy club in new york that was the first place uh actually grange village comedy club was the first place i really performed but broadway comedy club was kind of the the bigger venue, and I've been back there a lot and I liked them a lot. That's cool. Yeah. That's probably, I'm going to throw you a big one, just a random question. And this is about a 99 billion chance to one. You have no clue because

it's New York. Okay. But I happen to know a guy who moved to New York to become a comedian. Okay. And, uh And he's from Arkansas. He's got like a, I don't know, seven kids. But after having all these kids, he realized that somehow he wanted to play for the other team. And, but he moved to New York to do comedy. And he's been there quite a while. His name is Michael Mumphrey.

Do you, by chance, have you run into him in the comedy club? I don't think so. i think i would recognize that yeah yeah no no it's a great uh great story he's he's been successful he's done very well he's a good kid i say kid i he's he's you know probably in his late 20s now uh maybe even early 30s i don't know but uh okay okay so it's such a funny it's such a funny industry because, you know, like when I got to Wall Street, I thought, okay, it's a meritocracy, right? Like smartest person, best ideas. Right. You know, that's the top.

And in some cases, that's true. But in a lot of cases, it's still political. Sure it is. Comedy, I think, is really probably the number one meritocracy of any industry I've ever run into. Because it's like, if you're good, you're good. Yeah, funny. Yeah, if you're good, you're good. It you know, topic be damned, because, you know, I've worked with some great company, you know, I

worked with Ralphie May. And he's from, yeah, he's from Arkansas, and I performed with him a few times and got to know him, you know. And Ralphie absolutely was beyond the pale when it came to explicit nature of his comedy, you know. But because he was so damn funny, it didn't matter. You know, it's just like, you know, if you're a political comedian, but you're funny enough, it doesn't matter. You know, the topic is irrelevant if you're more funny than offensive. But 51-49 split, if you're 51% funny and 49% offensive, you're good. You're good. Don't flip that. That's right. Don't flip it, you know. But, but yeah. So of all the folks,

it's the only thing that I've, that I've ever done. I've never, I've never gotten any lessons or I've never, you know, I never took a class. I have no training at all in comedy. I just started purely from observation and you know, I made every mistake I think that you can make and it was painful. You know how it is. You go up there and bomb. It's like, you want to jump off a cliff. But to me, it's kind of like a very important art form because it is so honest and it is the last really

refuge of free speech. No, it absolutely is the front line of it. You know, if you look historically, the comedians are always pushing the issues forward and historically they've had the ability and the latitude to do it only in recent years is that been challenged to some degree. but i think now we've we've turned that corner back around thanks to chapelle bill burr you know who came out and really pushed back on you know the whole uh let's shut down offensive comedy stuff but uh and even gaffigan oh yeah yeah yeah yeah no gaffigan is uh he's an amazing performer, honestly. You know, Jim is, I say he does what I call base-level comedy,

and that might sound bad at first, but it's not. The most rudimentary things, I mean, Hot Pockets, Bacon, and Ketchup, and he's got staple bits about it. He takes the very baseline of what is broadly relatable and makes it a lot funnier um and does so cleanly you know i'm not a clean comic i respect it but i'm not you know i'm not todd yeah not only that but he he also uh you know it would be easy for that stuff to be like you know old right because you also in comedy like originality

counts yes of course but it's the same stuff that people have been saying for 25 years absolutely all right it's fine but you know he's able to do that with what you said very you know everyday relatable subjects and it's not old

you know it's not corny and it's not old, you know, it's not corny and it's not, no, he uses, no, he is a clinic on misdirection, uh, and, and pulling the rug out from under you. He's, he's very good with it. Uh, so tell me this of all the, uh, people that you've run into, uh, in, in your, you know, movie roles, your travels, your comedy and everything, you know, who, who made you the most starstruck? Huh? Hmm, man. Um, gosh, well, I haven't, I haven't met. Uh, so,

so I actually, I also, I run a, um, a guitar business. Okay. Interesting. In addition to my, in addition to my comedy work and, uh, my uncle was a really famous guitar maker. Oh. And, um, so basically I took over his business. He died last year. Okay. It's called max guitars, max guitars.com is the website and um we sell to very very heavy hitters guys yeah you know he was he was eddie ben halen's guitar uh builder for about 25 years really wow that's now that's impressive slash uh billy

gibbons derrick trucks i mean any joe perry the names of the name anybody you've ever watched anybody you've ever listened to in the last 35 years he probably rock and roll has one of his guitars okay so now you take over what do you do do you just run the business now oversee the whole thing yeah i run the whole thing um do, I run the whole thing. I mean, are you a guitar player? Do you build them? I play, yeah, I play. I've been playing for 22, three years. I don't build them.

I sell them, market, all that stuff. I run the administration. So let me ask this. Given that, have you ever brought a guitar into your comedy? I would like to i have i have an idea for something yeah um you know you know i always i always look at adam sandler and what he did and i'm like man the bar is so high but there is there's one thing i'd like to do i just haven't i haven't learned the song I need to learn in order to do it. That's really it. I just think, you know, it's so fertile to use music in comedy, uh, because you can mix and mingle things, you know, you could take the guitar of one era and match it up to a different vocalist, you know, and, uh, change things up. You know, if you took a Pearl jam

song, start playing it, but you're singing it like X, Y, Z, you know, you took a pearl jam song start playing it but you're singing it like xyz you know you can really twist things up a little bit um and so i i think i i respect anyone who can play an instrument like that uh fluidly especially uh so kudos to you sounds like you do a lot of different things you're pretty pretty sharp cat if you can do all that stuff i'm guessing i'm never bored man all right no i bet you're not. Now, a couple more questions here. Do you, are you, are you single? Are you married? What's, what's, what's your story there? I'm married to my job. That is good enough. Yeah. I mean, I feel you on that. Yeah. You stay busy. You grind all the time. No, I get that. All right. Okay. Uh, where,

where do you see what, what's the next thing for Dick? I mean, what's, what's the next big step for you, man? Where are you headed? You know, I'd like to, I would like to do some, some bigger like studio blockbuster movies. Yeah. You know, lead roles in that. I wrote a, I wrote a pilot for a tv uh series so i'd like to get that made um you know i'd like to do you know sort of more so you're kind of working towards that film work from clubs yeah looking at film work you know that's right um well the good thing you know and uh keep keep things just in moving in the right direction.

Absolutely. You know, the great thing I think about being a comedian is if you're really a comedian, you're also a writer. And that that lends itself very well to, you know, being able to write screenplays shows things like that um it's always amazing to uh see the different writing styles you know because they play out in your comedy uh but a lot of people probably don't stop and think about most comedians could probably write as well dramatically uh or any other way as they could comedically you know it's just which device they're picking at the time. It's just the way the brain works. Right.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, yeah. Do you ever miss being a banker, an investment banker? Do you miss it ever? When I look at my bank account. That's comedy. That's comedy right there. Yeah. Um, that's comedy. That's comedy right there. That's that. I bet you could do 10 minutes just on that right there, just on the difference. And I do have, I do have about five to six on that. Yeah. I was going to say that transition

and, and what the difference is this life versus this life, you know, has got to be an amazing, uh, contrast that you can demonstrate and has to bring the people to your side because you were the man. Yeah. And now you're one of them, right? More in theory, in the way they perceive it, right? 100%. From prince to pauper, so to speak. You know, jokingly.

Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Now you're completely right. Now that's it. What a great story. And what a great story it'll be, Dick. When, when you, you bounce all the way back up and you're able to go, yep.

Prince to popper to King. You know what I mean? That'll be cool. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I'm going to, maybe I'll hire you as my co-writer. Hey man, I'm a good one. That's a pretty good title you just came up with right there, man. I've been doing a long time, my man. I've been doing a long time. That's a pretty good title you just came up with right there. Man, I've been doing it a long time, my man. I've been doing it a long time. I started writing when I was a kid and started doing comedy many, many years ago. And I was a movie critic and I've been a radio personality for 20 years here in my market.

And so I've done a lot of different things. you know and so I've done a lot of different things plus I spent about you know 25 years in management uh of fairly big companies like Comcast and things like that so I've I've had a pretty diverse background kind of like you you know and uh so but but yeah writing and and that quick marketing mind uh has served me well you know there's a lot of things I can't do I promise you that don't ask me to fix the car I can't do that shit you know i'll try but it's not my forte you know but if you need me to come up with an idea or write something bro we'll make a joke out of something you know or we'll make it dramatic whatever we need to do uh for sure so yeah man whenever you whenever you get to that place holler at a player and i mean i'd love to write with you. It's always fun to collaborate with other creators.

It's always a great time. Totally agree. All right. Now, if people want to find you, Dick, how do they get to you? What's the easiest way to get? Look, I need more Dick Colligan in my life. How do I get it? It's pretty easy, actually.

Okay. I'm very accessible. dickcolligan.com okay d-i-c-k-c-o-l-l-i-g-a-n.com okay or at dick colligan on every social media under the sun okay so yeah pretty easy just type at dick colligan somewhere and you're going to end up where Dick is. Yeah, that's right. All right. Then you could get Dick in bulk. What? I didn't say that. I don't know what I'm talking about. All right, man. Listen, no, we're not. We're going to leave it in. Hey man, listen, I appreciate you so much for coming on and sharing a little bit about yourself.

And I hope that all of our folks will be looking and checking out Dick and watching him grow and succeed. And hopefully you'll come back and be part of it again here. I'd love to. Thanks, Patrick. All right, man. Hey, have a great night. Okay.

Thanks so much. All right. Thank everybody out there. Y'all have a good one. Thanks.