The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Judd Apatow

Episode Date: November 15, 2019

Judd Apatow, Ricky Velez and Estee Adoram

You're listening to The Comedy Cellar, here on Sirius XM Channel 99. I'm here as always with my partner, Mrs. Dan Natterman, our producer, Periel Aschenbrand. Good job. Good, so good. This is a big day here. First of all, we have our famous booker, the most feared woman in comedy, Estee Adoram is here. And an actress. And actress.

With a growing IMDB page. We have Ricky Velez, who has a nightly show on Comedy Central. He's from Queens. He may be regularly seen at the Comedy Cellar, and he's a pretty new dad. So I bond with him on that. And kind of the, not kind of, the guest of honor, Mr. Judd Apatow.

Judd Apatow is the director of The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Funny People, and Trainwreck, and an upcoming film starring Pete Davidson, the aforementioned Ricky Velez, and Bill Burr. He is the producer of Gary Goldman's HBO special, The Great Depression, Superbad, Girls, Anchorman, and Crashing. He is a stand-up comedian who had a Netflix special last year, and he has a new book coming out called It's Gary Shanling's Book,

which is kind of a companion to the four hour documentary, correct? That is true. Yes. Welcome Judd Apatow. Thank you. Yeah. There was a lot of stuff in the documentary. People were taking pictures of the screen because we would show his journals and all

of these interesting ideas about writing and spirituality. And it felt like I should put that somewhere so people could just have it. And I also felt like if I don't put it in a book, people are going to put it in the garbage. And I'm a hoarder, and I always feel bad when people throw things out. And I thought, wouldn't it be sad if all this stuff just disappeared into a storage facility and was gone forever? Is part of being a hoarder, you think, being very sentimental about things?

I think it's probably a mental illness in some way because I feel it about everything. I feel it when I'm eating at a restaurant. Sometimes when I order, I feel bad about everything I didn't order. Like it's not just stuff. That's not sentimental. How would you contrast your hoarding with, say,

Gilbert Godfrey, who has piles of hotel room soap under his bed. That's another level. That goes pretty far because he's like melting soaps into larger soaps. And I always

say about my stuff, because I collect everything, it's not hoarding if your shit is awesome. What else do you hoard? I have an autograph collection. You know, I keep mementos. Yeah, that does seem like a different than Gilbert, who I think it's an issue of he's trying to save money on shampoo.

Like if I have a great picture with Dan Natterman, I'll save it. Oh, that is hoarding. I won't toss it. I will keep my Dan Natterman photo. Well, imagine any photo you have with me would be like on Instagram or would be digital. That's true. I have 200,000 photos on Instagram. And, you know, once my daughter, when she was like 10, she asked me to autograph DVDs of all my movies and she put them up on eBay.

And no one bid on any of them. And she learned the lack of interest in daddy in one painful moment. Why was she hustling you, though? She can't just ask you for a lounge judge. She has to go find a way. You said something interesting last night. I saw you said at the Underground

how your daughter, people come up to you in the street and go, oh my God, I love you, you're the greatest, you're the greatest. And then afterwards, your daughter's like, oh my God, you're the, like, completely does not think you're cool. Yeah, I don't think anybody's kids think they're cool.

I saw Springsteen doing an interview the other day on CBS and he just said his kids are so not into anything that he's ever done. I don't think anyone's kids like it because they're around it their whole life and they're just over it. I don't think anyone in my family watched my stand-up special.

Not one of them. Maude makes a point of never seeing funny people. She is in funny people and her running gag is that she's never seen it. And sometimes when we're watching TV she's like, hey, you want to watch 90 Day Fiancé? And I'll go, yeah, let's watch it. And I'll just put on funny people and then

she always leaves the room. If your kids don't think you're cool, then imagine Noam's kids when they get older. I'm not cool. My wife doesn't think anything I do is worth anything. I mean, I guess you just don't respect the person who takes out your trash. I don't know what it is,

but there's nothing I can do that impresses my wife at all. Keeps you on your toes. Keeps you on your game. At what age do our kids stop thinking we're cool? Because when they're little like they think we're the greatest thing in the world so there's got to be a devastating switch at some point oh yeah yeah at like 12 right the whole thing just flips it's right when they find out santa's not real they find out you've just been lying to them for years it I can't imagine that. Do your kids still find you cool?

Yeah, I think my kids actually do find daddy cool right now. I'm waiting for it to end, yeah. Especially my middle son. He really thinks daddy's the coolest. My son adores me. I'm going to be devastated if that. My son will just blurt out at dinner out of nowhere, when I grow up, I want to be just like daddy.

Wow. You can't even imagine how that makes somebody feel. I mean, it's the best. Well, he'll stop saying it, but he'll still do it.

Hopefully. Exactly. He'll tell you to screw off, but then still open up a comedy club. Hopefully, it'll be better than daddy. So,

Judd, there's something that, I think it's related, there's something that you had said one time that I always thought was a real insight into your personality which was that when you used to watch snl because you thought that you might never get another chance to see these episodes pre-vcr days whatever it was that you would actually transcribe the entire episode i'm have that right well sections of it. I would tape it with an audio recorder

because we didn't understand when things would re-air back then. So if Saturday Night Live was on, you didn't know when the Steve Martin episode would be on again or ever. It was a very random, mysterious thing, and there was no way to ask anybody. There was no internet.

Were you going to write a letter to NBC and go, when does the Steve Martin episode re-air? So I used to tape them with a tape recorder. And sometimes I would write out what the sketch was, I think, because I was just trying to figure out why it was good. Like, why is Bill Murray talking about his Oscar predictions so funny? And how old were you at this time? I mean, I guess I probably was like 10. That's astounding to me. Yeah, that's different.

I mean, that just shows a level of involvement and love for this stuff that probably defines everything that's come after. I mean, you never stop working. You have a book, then a documentary, then another documentary, and then you're doing stand-up, then you're doing a movie,

and you have kids, and you have a family. I don't understand. I just want to sit home and do nothing. It's probably the equivalent of you noodling on the guitar. Like, you will never stop doing that. No. And it's fun, and it's endlessly fascinating. So to me, it's like that.

It's not work. None of it is work. Yeah, but no, weren't you saying just the other night that, you know, without the booty to motivate you? That's why he plays the guitar? What I said was, well, that was a big move. What I said was that, like, I'd been at work all day, and then I had to play that night. I'd been at work already since 2 in the afternoon. I'm like, you know what?

I'm just going to blow off the gig tonight. I'm going home. And I said, in the old days, if there was even the possibility of having sex, I would have stuck it out, just on the off chance. I said, when that's off the table, just playing the gig at that level of exhaustion just wasn't worth it for me.

It's like low T. I don't know what it is. But it changes everything. I like having low T. It's kept me out of trouble. It does keep you out of trouble. You want the low T, get it lower. I take medication to lower the T.

Well, Ricky's a young married guy. Do you think you got what it takes to go to the distance like Judd does in a showbiz marriage? Well, she's not in showbiz. So I think that also makes it easier. But yeah, I would say that's why I married her. Because I thought we have a chance. So I think that also makes it easier. But yeah, I would say that's why I married her, because I thought we have a chance. Fair enough.

But you're such a young, handsome guy, and you're succeeding now. Yeah, but I actually, that was one thing when I started comedy that I promised myself I would never do. I never slept with any of the audience members, and I also never slept with waitresses. I thought it was just bad business and not smart. And staying away from it has been nothing but good for me and i've seen it ruin a lot of other people oh but you missed a lot i did but at the same time there's something fun to being like ah have a great night go home like i just don't do it springsteen wrote songs about sleeping with waitresses you know sandy the waitress i've been seeing in london anyway

in the mic sd in the mic chris was talking about my relationship oh oh being in it he swore off that he never uh tried to have sex with any of the waitresses who said this chris de stefano yeah but that's only because he comes with a girl. He comes ready just in case. We're going to jump into issues and stuff, but let's first of all talk about Judd's book and then talk about

Judd's movie with Pete. Okay. And Dan Natterman. What? Small role. Dan, is it a small role that still exists? It's still in the cut, Dan.

It's still in the cut. It would be hard to cut that out, I would think, because isn't it like, don't you cut back between me and Burr and me? Yes, you're part of something that cannot be removed. Now, this is a tremendous... I told you that.

Like your spots at the cellar. This is a tremendous labor of love. Yes. The book you're talking about. And, well, tell us about that. What was it about him that meant so much to you? Well,

the whole relationship with Gary is almost cosmic in nature. I met him when I was 15 or 16 years old. I interviewed him for my high school radio station. I was doing interviews with comedians because I just wanted to meet them, and this was before the internet and podcasts, and there was no way to even learn what comedians do or how they think, so i would just call them up and pretend it was a real

radio station and hunt them down to talk to them you have a book of these interviews right sick in the head and sick in the head is uh you know has all of those uh still available and uh so i met gary then and then i met him again when i was 20 or 21 when i was doing stand-up and i wrote jokes for him for the grammys and then he hired me on the Larry Sanders show he asked me to direct the Larry Sanders show he gave me every big break but in addition to that he started talking to me about Buddhism and his spiritual beliefs so you know he really was uh an important figure in just all of my development as a person and I felt like I learned a lot from him directly but I also learned from watching the mistakes he made I saw the torture he was in uh in his life with just the way he approached his work and what kind of mistakes I think that he was always very highly sensitive

his bar for the the work was really high but he also didn't seem to have an understanding of emotionally what people were giving to him to help him succeed. You know, there's a lot of people when they do creative work, you can feel that their belief is if this isn't great, I will die. And it's just connected to some wound or their self-esteem. And it makes the whole process really high stakes and painful because if you give gary a script and it's mediocre it's not just like oh we got to fix this it's like you're trying to destroy me and there's something broken there right and i think he liked me because i was able to talk about these issues directly with him and was just a force for how do we do

this work in a healthy way and not be insane you know how do we punch us up and not be miserable and terrified and and i think you know you've you know you see the people at the club there are people who work from that broken place and there are people try to work from a a healthy place and so i learned everything from him and when he died someone had to go through his stuff there weren't a lot of super close intimates. And suddenly I'm just going through boxes in his house. And I thought, well, there's a great documentary here. And also people need to see this.

His journals are very inspiring because he's not just trashing people and complaining. He's actually talking himself off the ledge. Most of his journals are just him saying, breathe, let go, drop the story, love more, give more. And clearly he's so neurotic that he needs to have a voice say that to him. But I just got inspired. I thought, oh, he was an even better guy than I thought after reading 30 years of diaries.

And that's pretty rare were you intimate um in a friendship kind of way like you have dinners so you were oh absolutely for for decades and in some ways i i since i met him when i was so young and he didn't have kids i thought i wonder if gary feels fatherly to me and after he died people said that that was the case and i also thought that his mom was so neurotic with him. You know, after his brother died when he was a kid. But cystic fibrosis? Yeah. When he was 10, the brother was 13. And I think she really engulfed him and smothered him after that. And when his brother died, the parents kind of sent him to the grandparents

and didn't really ever talk about it for the first few weeks. And then for the rest of his childhood, it really wasn't something that they engaged in discussing. And sometimes I thought Gary's nice to me and other people because he's trying to prove that the way he wishes parents treated him was possible. Does that make sense? Sure. Like, he was trying to treat me the way he wished his mom treated him, unconsciously.

Like, you could be nice, and you could be giving, and you could, you know, not expect so much. This is all, by the way, outside of working on the show. You know, when you worked on the show, you know, you were jumping into the frying pan.

But when he wasn't doing the show, know you were jumping into a the frying pan but when he wasn't doing the show he was a very kind giving person what you're saying rings true to me because i notice kind of two types of people that i've met some people who just carry on the mistakes of whatever happened to them the cycle and other people who react very strongly against whatever it was and then they try to very much to do the opposite. So you're describing him as someone who tried to do the opposite. Like my father always talked about how his mother,

as he knew my grandmother, would always lie to him. He never knew what was true. So he never lied to me. It was very important to him, even about things he probably should have lied to me about. Sure. It becomes an obsession. And I think for Gary, that might have been honesty

because people weren't honest about it when his brother died. And I couldn't quite get this story exactly right, but people seem to indicate that when his brother died, they didn't even really tell him. He had to figure it out that he was just sent to his grandparents

and no one sat him down for a while. And also presence, the idea of being honest and present and speaking the truth and love without strings attached. So he became obsessed with it. And you could look at the Larry Sanders show as creating a character that's the worst part of yourself and mocking it like here's the part of gary that's an egomaniac that wants to succeed above everything above relationships and i don't like this part of me so i'm going to personify it and then say isn't this stupid that was part of the genius of the show right to in a certain way be able to portray herself like that. Yeah, and he always used to say,

I'm not exactly like Larry Sanders because Larry Sanders couldn't write the Larry Sanders show. Right, exactly. He wouldn't have that way to observe himself. But Gary certainly was split. I mean, he definitely was like this sweet giving person and then this incredibly paralyzed neurotic person at times. So this is going to maybe sound corny, but I'm thinking it, that he's really,

I mean, he'll never know how lucky he was to have a friend like you, someone whose work product is worthy of the world finding out about it. And probably there's many people like that and we never find out about it but he has someone who loved him as much as you and you're putting a lot of time and risking money and all this stuff to get it out there and he's very very his family everybody's very very lucky that you're that they had you but one one thing about my relationship

with gary was uh i think that we did that for each other when he was around. You know, there were a lot of opportunities to honor Gary, to talk about Gary. In the years when he stopped working, I always just talked about how so much of modern comedy came from things that Gary did. And he was always there for me. If I had a movie, he would read the first draft. He would read the later draft. He'd come to the table read he'd watch the early cuts and he would pitch me jokes and fixes very aggressively not

like half-assed he'd really uh think about it was he blunt with you if he didn't like he was and you appreciated that or that that can be awkward sometimes right well i mean gary had a funny way about him because he'd be very direct but he'd'd be like, John, you know what to do. You know what, right? You know what the problem is, right? Like when we did The 40-Year-Old Virgin, I always tell this story, but he's like, you got to show him having sex. You got to show it at the end.

Like you can't do this movie. And he said, and you got to show that it's about that his sex is better than his friend's sex because he's in love. And everyone else has all these crazy relationships, but he's in love. So you have to show that his sex is better because it's about love. And I'm like, Gary, I can't show the sex. I can't show it. He's like, you got to show it. You got to figure it out.

And he would leave messages on my machine like, did you figure it out? Did you figure it out? You got to show it it and i found it in his notes it's in the book i found the piece of paper where he wrote this to himself like to remind himself to tell me like it's about love and then one day carell thought of it he's like maybe i just like suddenly sing a song and that's how we thought of it because gary wouldn't stop criticizing us so he was that kind of friend. So you're touching on another, it's a little jumping around,

but it's something I've thought about before, which is that on your way up, you have elders and people are much more successful than you are. And they find it easy to tell you you're a schmuck or that you're doing something wrong. Then when you get to be the Judd Apatow that you are today, almost everybody's below you on that scale.

And that's got to distort the amount of truth, or at least you have to worry about distorting the amount of truth that comes your way in terms of what people tell you about how the script is, how the jokes are, whatever it is. Do you deal with that? Do you think about that? My wife always talks about that. She's just like, be careful. You don't have yes men around you. You need people to be honest with you.

I just finished this movie with Pete Davidson and Ricky. And Adam. He's all over that. I'll show it to Eric Roth who wrote Forrest Gump and I'll show James

Brooks. I still seek out those people who are willing to watch. Ron Howard came to the last movie and gave me very thoughtful notes. So you still need to try to find those top dogs, right? You can't really get it from the people. You can, but you have to create an environment where when you show Natterman, he's going to tell you the truth. Yeah, but I could never tell you.

I would have difficulty doing so, but I'll tell you one... If it's bad, it's hard to tell people. I think if it's in the middle and there are fixes, but when someone shows you something and it's just bad and it's unfixable, you almost have to say, you nailed it. Because you can't really break someone's heart.

I had one little note from Rabiglia one time after I saw the trial run of his show. Yeah. And I spent like six hours rehearsing like, how am I going to say this? And then I finally said it

to him, he goes, yeah, yeah, my manager's told me the same thing. Like it was nothing. That's the one thing about stand-up

is we don't have that problem in the stand-up context because the audience is more than happy to tell you what they think of you. And you know, you go up

and with all that you've done and this and that, but if the joke's not funny, they're not going to give you a freebie. Maybe a little bit extra they'll of you. Yes. And you go up, and with all that you've done and this and that, but if the joke's not funny, they're not going to give you a freebie. Maybe a little bit extra they'll give you because you're you, but not that much. For three minutes. Yeah.

Like last night, I got such huge applause on the last show at the Cellar I did last night. And then I just, you know, I don't want the first joke to do that well because I kind of can't keep up the level of the excitement. And I'm also trying new jokes. I almost have to let the first one be a six to kind of reset the room.

And the hosts, as a joke, like to give me the greatest intro. Like Groucho Marx just walked into the club to make me dig out from the expectation that they've created. Before we move away from the book, are we on? We're filming this? So I don't know if you see the book. But this, I had the same reaction when I saw this that I did to seeing the Gary Shandling documentary. And I think I said it to you at the time. It's like, it is so clear it's a labor of love.

This is a beautiful, beautiful, I mean, it's really, it's a labor of love this is a beautiful beautiful i mean it's really it's a beautiful book so you know anybody who's interested in that sort of thing is going to find this if you're interested in comedy or art yeah or spirituality you don't really need to know gary to get a lot out of it because all the lessons i learned from gary are in the book and that's why i put it together because there's a great quote i always mention where gary, in the book, it's just in his journal one day, for no reason he wrote, maybe your comedy is a gift to be given to people to help them through this impossible life

with you expecting nothing in return. And there's a lot of that type of philosophy, which I think if you were a young comic, it would change your life if you really soaked in the things that he learned. You're telling Dan that about 30 years too late. I don't know about expecting nothing in return.

That's where you lost me. You'd be so happy now because you've gotten nothing in return. Who really expects nothing in return? Emotionally. Like your ego. Doing it to give, not just to get jacked up on your self-love. But the ego is, to me, the biggest thing.

With comedians, yes. I think, you know. Yes, I'm sorry. Just talk closer to the mic. You don't want to sound. We all want to make money if we can. Yes, that's true. But what's even more important, the last thing, if we had a choice between being rich and not respected or just making a living and being super respected, most of us, I think, would choose the choose the latter yes i think it's the ego that that is there's healthy ego i mean you can

have self-esteem do your work have the audience appreciate it and and not be servicing your ego all the time and i think we all know the people that seem solid right and the people that seem solid, right? And the people that seem on edge and unable to ever feed their ego enough. Like there's no amount of appreciation I can get that will make me like myself. I have a set point of appreciation where if the audience is laughing too much, I feel uneasy.

Like this is too much power. I have an idea, Dan. Let's play a game. I'll start. I'll say a person who seems solid and then you say a person who seems not solid. Go ahead. Ray Romano seems very solid to me.

Go ahead. You mean in terms of what... It's the end of friendship game. All right. And there's clips here from the actual... There's graphics here from the actual diaries. He has nice handwriting. Did you know these journals existed?

You know, he told me that he had kept journals, but I had never looked at any of them. And he was... 30 years of journals, right? Yeah, so it starts when he's not funny. That's what's most interesting is at the very beginning, it's about him trying to get into the comedy store, and it's him journaling about Mitzi telling him he's

not funny and letters home to his parents going, Mitzi doesn't like me. And then he has this near-death experience where he gets hit by a car and he says that he leaves his body and he hears a voice say do you want to continue leading gary shanling's life and he said from that point on he he gave up being a sitcom writer and he decided to go after his dream with with much more energy but he also knew that there was something after this life that there's more going on so throughout his life he had a weird lack of fear of death because he really believed that he had seen it and I and I said to him I go but isn't that like a

dream isn't that just something that happens when you're unconscious. Why don't you just let it slide, Judd? Yeah, I know. Because I needed to know. I said, maybe you're just... You can't just have yes men around here. Exactly. Is it the anesthesia or something? And he said, I really know. I can't explain it to you.

I know the difference between what you're talking about and what I went through. I mean, it's such a blessing to have that, you know, even if it's not true. Yeah. There's not much to be gained by trying to piss on it, Judd, and say it.

I needed to fact check it. I needed to do my, you know, Penn Jillette bullshit test. Although I tend to agree with you. I think it's just how the mind, you know, the mind releases endorphins or something. Yeah, of course. So didn't Mitzi tell him, and this is like my worst nightmare as of course. So didn't Mitzi tell him,

and this is like my worst nightmare as a club owner, didn't Mitzi tell him, I mean, Gary, I think you used to stick to writing rather than performing. Yes, and then what he did is he went and he just performed at all these little weird crappy clubs in the valley. And for a year, he just didn't go back.

And then he came back strong. And then she let him in. It always occurs to me that I think this is true, that the comedians somehow think that the club owner has some kind of insight. Agenda. No, insight. What the hell does Mitzi know about whether he belongs in front of the camera or behind the camera?

More than anyone else, more than anyone in the audience would know. Lucian did the same thing remember yeah i mean i i don't i would never i would never no yeah some i mean some of the bookers think their job is to groom no and you know mitzi i think probably had incredible taste but also gave some famously terrible advice that people still laugh about you know she'll tell someone like you should have a puppet or you know like You always hear those stories. But at the same time, if you look at all the people she's supported, it's an enormous amount of the greats.

Yeah, here too, the greats come through. And I just think that because they're the greats, most of them were unstoppable forces yes and if i had been been here if esty hadn't been here if my father hadn't been here um i mean eddie murphy was going to rise to the top it was no great genius i mean probably you know no great genius at the comics strip to notice that eddie murphy was one of the most talented people ever to walk the earth right yeah but there were years like at the comedy store where it was just booked very badly you know and then suddenly you know but you know why that

happens is because they start they start believing their own insight into comedy or they want to yes they want to teach rather they just have bad taste just someone's got bad like Adam who books it now he does that's really good taste and suddenly the place is packed because it just... Yeah, Adam's really great. But you just listen to the audience mostly. I really don't think there's... What the difference between you and your average club owner is,

is you don't give a fuck about, or at least you didn't, about stand-up. You tripped and fell into this. You were a music guy. Yeah. But he's also an owner that you see in the club, which is very rare. Well, he likes to talk politics. The truth is, Noam is not

that into stand-up. But Esty is. Well, Esty may be. The taste to say this is the lineups is the whole club. But the point is, Noam's ego does not rest on his knowledge of stand-up. But let me say, it's not that.

You're right about what just, stand-up is not like my thing, but that's not what's going on because there's been more than once that I've seen a comedian that I didn't care for, but I noticed they're killing. And I'm like,

well, you know, who am I? You know, like they're killing. And so we, I say book them. But that's not how this, I don't believe that that's how the cellar works. I think you have a gatekeeper who has fantastic taste because this country is filled with terrible comics who could kill at the cellar, and they don't work at the cellar.

I never come in here and go, that comedian is terrible, but I guess they're booking him or her because they're killing. Those people aren't in the club i don't know behind your back esty is protecting you what do you think i see because i seems to me when somebody's a hack uh they don't usually do that well no and that's wrong you haven't been on the road at the cellar i'm talking about no no i understand that at the cellar yeah at the cellar well what do you think i see? I don't know. I just get the instinct and I listen and I watch the audience

and the content of whatever they're talking about. And if I'm not embarrassed, they're good. It is taste. It is taste. I don't want to pretend that I know more than anybody else.

I don't. But I've been doing it for so long that I have an instinct about it now. Ricky, you were about to say something. I think at the cellar as well. I mean, there's a lineup. You're in between two people usually most of the time. So if you can't survive in that, you don't last. I mean, it's not an easy lineup to sit in.

Well, but I don't agree that – There's some people that are really hard to follow there's just go on no people say that about certain people and some people it's um true like like a greer and then kid would tell we say i don't want to follow lenny because Lenny is killing now or stuff like that. And I said, just rise to the occasion. And they all do because they've got it. They've got it to begin with. And so. You know who's hard to follow?

Mulaney. Yeah. You know, there's certain people that are hard to follow because, you know, they're brilliant and they're so self-assured but they have such a mastery of the craft that they can reveal everything that's wrong with you when you're on after them and I always feel like Mulaney's the one where you just go this is like

it's like Perlman coming on and then you come on with your fiddle you're trying to like sound kind of fun but really someone just showed you how it's done. But Mulaney displayed the same type of growth. He wasn't like sound kind of fun but really someone just showed you how it's done but melanie displayed the same type of a growth yes he wasn't like that when he started oh i'm sure you know and so all of them lenny if you listen to lenny now the difference between lenny two years ago and

today this yes something happens you know and and uh But Esty will tell you that when my father was alive and he was involved in every single decision and detail, his attitude was basically the same as what I'm describing now. He used to say that you could be, you could not speak the language

and you could tell who the best comedians working were just by the electricity in the room. Oh, yeah. But I also think when the quality is high, when you talk about like a hacky person wouldn't do well in the room, I think that's part of why the hacky person

wouldn't do well in the room because the intelligence of the other comedian sets a bar and then if suddenly you go on and you're doing kind of goofy old jokes from the 70s, you would be revealed. And you know, when we start with somebody that are doing good and let's see what happens, if they're not good, they're going to fall off.

Yes. They're going to fall off. They're not going to keep growing and they're going to just be swallowed by the others. Yes. So Pete Davidson, actually, so I saw a show. I was an early adopter

of a very few comedians of Sean Patton remember I I rammed Sean Patton down his throat I love him now and now

and then but he struggled at first yeah the same thing with you Ricky when you first came do you remember yeah

it wasn't it wasn't the same Ricky that you have now yeah I was young you're still young but you have Ricky that you have now. Yeah. I was young. You are still young, but you have the talent. You have the intelligence to break through.

So then I went to a Caroline show one time on a Sunday night, and it was very slow, and there were two comedians there, Pete Davidson and Gary Veeder, both who I'd never seen before. And both of them, I came back and said, I saw these two guys, and there's only 11 people there, so I'm not sure if I'm able to judge what I'm seeing but both of them seem to have something and we had them both start coming to the club and sure enough Pete Davidson turned out to be the latest I don't know what what do you call them protege or people that you're backing what is that word for it

you're like the latest collaborator but you but you do seem to look at like you saw amy or you see like who the person of tomorrow is and then try to do something with them correct yeah i mean it's people that just as a fan i like but a lot of times it's just people who i think have a story you know amy schumer had a great story to tell pete has a great story to tell and so it's both things you know i i feel like the audience will connect with them the way i am but also there's something really deep and meaningful about what we're trying to do with this movie you you seem to genuinely like them though yes it's not just the story and the interesting whatever. You seem to like them.

Yeah, it's like falling in love with somebody. You see someone. I mean, Amy Schumer, I just heard her on Howard Stern. I don't even know if I had seen her stand up at the time I called her. I just heard her telling stories about what it was like having a dad with MS. And she was so sweet, but also really darkly funny. And in my head, I just thought I would watch this movie. And I was more interested in her it's just kind of like the spirit of her than having seen her like kill doing stand-up and

pete is is the same way i remember hearing pete just talk about his life and his father on pete holmes podcast and that's probably more meaningful than everything else just how he expresses himself about his his life so people people who may not know uh pete's dad was a fireman and died at 9 11 when pete was how old 10 7 7 years old so this obviously that's probably like the one of the worst ages to lose your father absolutely you're a little bit older you're kind of more full-grown a little bit younger a little more resilient maybe in that way but seven years old is really and he had just moved uh to a new school that week you know all of it was very hard and pete's been very honest about it you know he's

so uh you know willing to be vulnerable in discussing it. So the movie is fictional, but it's inspired by the feelings he's had about losing a dad who was a hero. And when's this movie coming out? It's going to come out in June. And Marissa Tomei's in it. Ricky plays his best friend in it and is really hilarious and great. And Bill Burr is in the film.

Steve Buscemi. I bet you Ricky looks like, I like i mean handsome i said this one time when i saw you on stage how handsome you looked on tv and you're like no no when you see a real movie star you can see the difference you remember that conversation you have yeah but i bet you he looks super drop dead handsome in this no they shaved my head i look nuts i look like a criminal at all times during this movie a handsome criminal so we shot all summer in Staten Island and we had a lot of real firefighters starring in the movie

and super cool we just started showing the movie to people I'm editing now seeing what people think about it what do you mean like test audiences? we show the movie like 4 or 5 times we take notes and we record the crowd and we see where the laughs are and we ask them you know what are you tracking are you because there's what you think you're

saying to them but sometimes the audience goes i didn't pick up on any of that like what you think it's about and so you you have a conversation with the audience and you adjust the movie to make sure they get it i I remember James Brooks once saying, you know, if the audience doesn't love it, you failed. So you're in a collaboration with them at this stage. I agree with that. People would, when I had the band, I said, how was this?

They said, pretty good. I'm like, oh, that's, and it had to be fantastic. Like they had to be afraid to get up and go to the bathroom because they didn't know what they would miss. Yes. And people would actually say,

we didn't want to leave. We didn't want to go to the bathroom because they didn't know what they would miss Yes, and people would actually say well, we didn't want to leave we didn't want to go to the bathroom I said, oh, that's anything less than that. I felt we had no future and I think that's Basically true. It has to be that good Otherwise it eventually Peters out, you know, you can't sustain it Jedi I do want to talk about my role a little bit in the movie Well, I'm interested but by the way The only time I've ever worked as an actor is when I get a call,

not because I auditioned for something. It's always from me. And it's typically from Judd. One time was from Chris Rock. I was in top five. Yes. But I've never auditioned my way into a part. Why not?

How come your fantastic work on Crashing hasn't led to a wave of auditions? Well, I don't know. I mean, typically when you cast, you don't... How much of your casting process is auditions versus people you just want i mean it typically when you cast you don't and how much of your casting process is auditions versus people you just want i mean we did a ricky came in and auditioned everybody came in and auditioned you did not audition sd did not audition i just had faith um well but ricky had a bigger part but we see did you have it in mind or or yes yes but we

still made him audition and read a lot of people for his part you know pete felt like you know ricky was the right person and i hadn't seen ricky acts and so i brought in you know 30 other people to read for it and ricky was the right person for it how much of the part is but i've heard tell that once that basically they know who they want and unless you just blow the audition just sky high you're not going to get the the part they already know who they want and unless you just blow the audition just sky high you're not going to get the the part they already know who they want is there truth to that or is it i don't think so i think people do come in and lose the part all the time there are people you think like oh like for knocked up i read at least 100 women for the katherine heigl part and knocked up and there were so many

people who came in where we thought oh she's gonna's going to nail this. This is the best idea. And then her and Seth would have no chemistry at all. And it just... So what you're trying to say is it's me. I'm saying, Dan, I'm trying to say that you are magic. You are magic. And I am the only one who seems to have noticed. I noticed. But...

Every week, you came up with that part especially for me? No, Universal called and said, write Dan Aderman in. Like Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross. Well, I think like any other part, it's no different than wanting to make a movie with Pete, honestly.

It's just, I think you're funny. I think you're an interesting person. And in trying to show what life is like at the Comedy Cellar, I thought, well, this is the kind of person you encounter at the Comedy Cellar who's really funny and interesting, and it's funny to have someone that kind of doesn't like Pete, which I also thought was interesting,

that just quietly you're rooting against him, which gives you something fun to do. And then you were great in everything, and I thought that every time we used you, you really popped. And I like that the series ends on you. Like, the last moment where people are, like, talking and crashing is you trashing Pete. It was beautiful that the series ended on me,

although I would have preferred it didn't end, because I want to squeeze out that extra season. Yes, yes. The residuals, the sweet HBO residuals. All right, so we have Dan made a list. Now, you know, Judd is a very issues-oriented guy. Well, can I ask him one more thing? Of course, go ahead.

Judd's a guy who's basically risen to the top of his profession in the comedy world. I mean, it's not too much higher you could go. I mean, I suppose you could, but it would be difficult. Are you now... What's left to conquer? What hills are left to climb? What mountains?

I don't really think of it in those terms. I just think of it as... Can I think of another story and then can I figure out how to tell it well? So what's the next story that I would be passionate about? It isn't really about anything but that. You know, stand-up is a mountain to climb always. So if you do stand-up, you're never where you want to be.

I don't think anyone feels like they've done their best work. And so that's what I like about it, which is that every night it could go great or be a disaster. And then with a movie, you always think you have a better movie in you. But it's not really about getting to another level. I'd like to do a Broadway show at some point. That's one thing I've never attempted. I took a year and tried to write a play, and I literally did not write one word. I just sat in an apartment thinking

and literally got paralyzed and wrote nothing. So I'd like to get over that. What if somebody wanted to take one of your existing hit movies? He's a 40 year old virgin. He can't get it done. Like the producers. Well that would be

not crazy. They're doing it all the time. They do it with Groundhog Day. It's possible. They're doing it all the time. They do it with Groundhog Day. It's possible. In my head, it's so terrible that I never believe it could be good. But people have pulled those things off. The producers was good, right? I didn't see it. What?

The producers? Yeah. The play. The show. It can be done. I think it's hard, but it could be done. All right. the show it can be done I mean I think it's hard but it could be done alright so there's no upside in this goes back to what I was talking about before

like Judd is Judd is opinionated on everything and I'm opinionated on everything and we I don't know if we disagree about that much but the things that we disagree about are the things we tend to talk about because we agree about Go Unspoken

but I'm very reluctant to debate anything with Judd on the air because what's the upside? Win an argument and piss off Judd or lose an argument? I'd like you to be as aggressive as you can be right now, though. Perrielle brought up the Harvey Weinstein comic.

Why don't you ask? Oh, I listened to that debate. Well, we had a fight on the last show a little bit well you cut some of it out let harvey into the club that's what that was what the fight was about no that wasn't what the fight well that was one one question that was asked the other question was is what's the appropriate response of a comedian that goes on stage and sees harvey weinstein in the audience And I said that I really support Kelly, who I don't know. Somebody needs to run down the story a little bit. Well, go ahead.

No, I don't know the story that well. I'll run down the story. He was at, I don't know why Harvey Weinstein's going to open mic nights. He wasn't. Val told me that that's not what happened. Apparently there was a comedy show going on in like the corner of a restaurant

and he was there for some other thing so he wasn't there to see the actual show that's what Val said and I don't know if that's accurate or not sounds right sounds like a tough gig the restaurant gig where half the place doesn't know a show is going

on but it was like a small yeah I mean it was like a small... There's a lot of bar shows in the city. Yeah, I mean, it was like a small stand-up show. Like, it wasn't, like, some big thing. And Kelly Bachman saw him in the audience, and she is a rape survivor, and she actually has done a comedy show comprised of all women who have been raped. And she called him out?

And she called him out. And she said, oh, I didn't realize that comics needed to bring mace and rape whistles on stage now. And I said that I thought that was really fucking brave. And I gave her a lot of credit

for doing that. And then I got in trouble. But no, you kind of said that if Harvey Weinstein came into the Comedy Cellar, you would tell comedians not to give him a hard time. You know, he was here before. Yeah. Before he had the trouble.

But would you do that now? Look, I feel like, I came up at a time when the Nazis were marching in skokie and the liberal people felt like that was the right thing to allow them to do in a sense of a very kind of objective idea that that the in the overall the best way to succeed as a society is to buy into these fictions of rights and and and presumptions of innocence and whatever it is and have a little forbearance and just um just not permit ourselves to indulge these righteous emotions i don't i don't and i think i was pretty clear on the show i don't doubt for one minute how she felt or

whatever so like if i'm at a dinner table and my wife finds out that i've been cheating or have a second family she can get up and with the same honesty of emotion just scream and yell at me in front of the whole restaurant but she probably shouldn't she probably let's let's take this outside or you know it's almost like well people think what people think like god is on their side so like so there was some horrible story about some people who were protesting or like outing somebody who maybe was a soldier who's being buried and they were they found out that he was gay and this anti-gay rights movie came to the funeral and remember this i don't remember the details it's just that's the most horrible thing you could imagine but from their point of view like no no we are right about this. And though in this particular incident,

maybe you could convince me that, but what I'm saying is that when you start allowing for these exceptions, people are going to find them by the thousands. Right, that's what you said that I think resonated with me. It's like, well, where's the line? And who decides when that is?

As it turns out, he wasn't there for the show. He was just maybe minding his own business eating dinner. Well, nevertheless, I mean, I'm still on the fence as to whether or not he should be roaming around. Well, let's presume. This is interesting. I don't think he should be roaming around. I said I'm on the fence as to whether.

I don't know. I mean, I'm really conflicted about it. I don't. So let's presume, just for the sake of argument, that he was just there having dinner. Yeah. Are we now saying

that anybody should be able to come up to this man and just call him out and scream and yell at him? Well, you are allowed to do that. No, but we think that that's... Like, I would disapprove of that. Well, you do disapprove of that.

Right, I would say if Ahmadinejad came to the olive tree, I would let him have his dinner. Well, that was how we got to Hitler. Yeah, but you know, that's the thing. It was. I mean, now we're... Oh, come on, honey.

Hey, Judd, we might not have to say anything. No, we didn't get to Hitler that way. No, that's not what she meant. No, that is. We were talking. I said, so would you let Hitler in then also? See, I think what it is is that you seem to think that there are rules that apply to everybody and you want like certain like rules to to uh that we all would honor i i if i was you i i would look at it differently which

is if i own a club it's my space and I decide and I'm allowed to make mistakes and so sometimes you'll say I know stuff about all the comedians that's bad so if I'm against this comedian but I know something no one knows about that comedian which makes perfect sense but at the same time

you have the right if Harvey Weinstein wants to come to the club to just go go fuck yourself you rapist piece of shit and that's fine I don't think that it applies to every situation or that you even have to be right in every situation and that even if you're wrong that's just how the world works like for instance if I was at a restaurant and Harvey was there I don't think I would be the person going you know screw you you rapist that wouldn't be what I would do. But I also feel like if Harvey wants to go to a restaurant, it should be assumed there's a very good chance that will happen, and that's fine.

It's almost like the free market. It's almost like our democracy. If you are out in the world, you will get reactions, and business owners ultimately decide how they want to manage it. So there are certain people who have gotten in trouble, and a business will decide, you know, we don't want to have Matt Lauer work here anymore. Or they could have said, you know what, we don't think it's that bad, and he can apologize, and we'll move on and unfortunately or fortunately in our society a lot of times businesses are making moral decisions and sometimes those moral decisions are based on their economic needs yeah of the moment i don't think it's clean the way you want it to be clean

you're of course right about the business thing i don't know what the law is but um you know basically i think you're right i'm more advocating a social norm because social norms are much more important I think than the laws and just kind of like how we decide to behave so for instance there was this guy at Harvard Sullivan who was like head of the dorm and he got and they and they had him removed because he was he had been on he was a defense attorney who had been engaged by Harvey Weinstein at one point. So I feel like this is just a, it's metastasizing.

Any kind of feeling then becomes validation for any kind of overt reaction. But that's still a business decision in a way. I feel like it's Harvard, which is a business really, deciding if they stand for anything. They decide like, do we kick that guy out because he was a defense attorney doing his job? Or do we say to our students, no, he's allowed to take that job. He didn't do anything immoral. I mean, if he did something immoral in his representation you might say he shouldn't be here i think there's a real issue with having people who've lied for trump and know they lied for trump working at harvard as professors when we know sean spicer knew that the crowd sizes were just blatant lies and propaganda that's a different example first of all i'm not i'm not talking about the businesses i'm talking about just kind of what we should think. The social norms is really what it is.

But no one's in charge of social norms. Those are personal choices. But let me give you an example. So it comes to mind, I just saw a recent, the PolitiFact one year, I think every year they have a lie of the year. And their lie of the year one year was when Obama said, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your doctor if you like your plan and keep your yeah that was a big one yeah and

apparently and i'm not trying to bash obama's apparently he he said this knowingly so as soon as they okay now you're gonna fire sean spicer he lied about the crime size lying i say okay well you know what i don't want to bomb him them. And people say, this is ridiculous. Like, you can't, and everybody might be justified, and I'm just saying that that cure is much worse than the disease. We're not giving up that much

if we allow our institutions to take care of things, if we comport ourselves in accordance with the presumptions that we believe are true, even if it's very hard to swallow. There are times, after all, when we're sure someone was guilty, and they turn out not to be.

There was a guy who was accused of being a Nazi war criminal in the 90s, I think. With Damianuk, you're talking about? Yeah, yeah. I was just watching, by the way, on Netflix. It was in the 80s. On Netflix, there's a documentary on that called The Devil Next Door, which you probably would enjoy, about John Damianuk, the guy from Ohio. Yeah, they said he was Ivan the Terrible.

They said he was Ivan the Terrible. Turned out not to be. Although he probably was doing some shady shit, but he wasn't Ivan the Terrible. He wasn't Ivan the Terrible. So, and everybody was sure of it, right? And it's just safer, and I think it's a nicer way to live.

She's making a personal decision to stand up, and I don't think that you can have rules that apply. So sometimes your philosophy seems to be much more permissive because you don't want to violate anyone. But you shouldn't let Harvey come into the Comedy Cellar. Like if you let him come in and eat here, it would be really messed up. Because it's not like we don't know what that is. I mean, you could say he hasn't been found guilty, but there is a certain point when you have like 60 accusers

and there's audio of him doing it and there are documentaries about it that you have enough information as a club owner to go, I'm in charge of who's allowed to walk in here. I mean, isn't that like what you say? Like we have the right to refuse service to go, I'm in charge of who's allowed to walk in here. I mean, isn't that like what you say? Like we have the right to refuse service to anyone, but it's ultimately up to you. You know, I apply this also,

like we were talking the other day about all the NBA players not speaking up about China, right? So like we're in this world where like everybody is co-opted in some way. And it's kind of like Harvard. What are they making the decision for? Are they making it to look moral? Are they making it to not get in trouble with their board or with students?

And everyone kind of seems to be full of shit these days in terms of what their standards are. And I know that's what bothers you the most. I'm bothered that there's not one NBA player who will say there's a million Muslims in prison camps in China. So they'll fight for Colin Kaepernick and his right to do what he does. But not one of them will risk anything to go. There's a million people. Some people think millions in basically concentration camps in China. And that's what's happening in our world.

Like everyone is personally deciding, will I stand up for anything? Do I care? But I think that's also part of what we were talking about. It's like, so, and I mean, I think you did say that you would not let Weinstein in, but it's like, where's the line then? Because there are other people.

But to help you with your point against me, I cowardly said I wouldn't let him in because I would be afraid of the disruption in the place. He'd be bad. It would be bad for my business for having him to come in. What if the crowd cheered for him? Would you personally not want him? Of course I would personally not want him.

Would you let him in because the crowd doesn't care? I would. I would. In a certain universe, I would swallow it. And let's go back to Ahmadinejad or somebody, you know, or somebody. Assad comes here. Assad. Wants a laugh.

Yeah, yeah. Would you let Assad in? Honestly. He wants a guest spot. In the proper universe, I would suck it up because I feel that that's the way we should, that it's kind of like paying my dues for a better society. I think on the whole, those small, difficult outrages that we feel are a much better alternative to where we're heading in general as a society. And I don't know how to separate the kind of direction we're hurtling in

from these threshold examples. I think that... It's an extreme example I think the the issue of our time is that we're losing a margin for error in everything and the things we can discuss and the people we can talk to and the people we can interview any ideas we can kick around and the opinions we might take in in the personal behavior that we might have engaged in many, many years ago and we're ashamed of and wanted to come clean about. And everything is just judging, judging, judging, judging, judging.

I think my issue is that you don't realize that things are getting way better. That yes, there are things that, you know, go too far in this adjustment, but i'll give you an example i uh have a show uh had a show at hbo and they changed the rule and they said half of your directors need to be women or diverse hires this is for diversity hires for crashing but it's for all their shows and at first you're like oh but i got these guys they're so good i Now I can't use all the guys I want to use. But then after doing the show for three years, you realize this show is way better. I found so many people I would not have hired.

And if they do it across HBO and it's across the business, well, we've given tons of people opportunities. We have made the work richer because it's not all the same white dude you know with his you know uh point of view it's still capitalism no one forced them to do it just as corporations they've decided that they would prefer to do this and the audience for the most part wants it but what does that have to do with what um yeah because it's like there's another point of view which is just like but you should just hire the best person right and so for all these things, you could go, well, we don't want Harvey Weinstein's in the world. I was asked to be at the New Yorker Festival, and I said I wouldn't go because Steve Bannon was there. Because I'm like, I don't have to share space with him.

I mean, to me, he's a racist, bad figure. And I don't want to honor him to be on a list of people with me. And some people were mad about that they're like yes we should all know what he thinks like no fuck him if he's if he's a bad guy you don't get to hang out in the same space i get to hang out with and a lot of people mulaney among them said no we're not going to do that and they got rid of him and i think some people the new yorker were not happy about it because they felt like, no, this is an exchange of ideas, which I understand. But it's, we all have to decide personally, you know, what that line is.

And I think ultimately the world is getting better. Like I went to this Ronan Farrow book event the other night. And the amount of women who stood up and said,vey weinstein attacked me i fought him off and then i lost like 90 of my work over the next 10 years was astounding like the look in their eyes the shock that their entire world collapsed when this guy just started shit talking them and not hiring them so i go yeah fuck that guy he destroyed people he doesn't deserve to be in your club. And you're allowed to make that choice and go, I've got enough information just for my space. Like in my life, I can decide who I want in my space. You get to decide that. So this is very interesting.

I don't know if you know your own strength in a way. So the Steve Bannon thing, I remember that. Steve Bannon was going to be on the show. And I think they hadn't warned people in advance. I think maybe you told me that. But, you know, it's a festival. It's not like we're on the we're all about to dig in with all the good and bad people in politics. Like it's mainly like entertainers. of that incident and many other incidents means that if Steve Bannon wanted to come on my podcast, and I would love to talk to Steve Bannon, find out the Trump stories, find out what he's about, call him to task on things. I mean, this guy's a player in our democracy.

I'm not gonna, you know, wouldn't wanna talk to him. I'd be afraid to have him on because there's no margin for error. Like the implication of all the people getting up from the restaurants and calling them out and backing off the shows has made it hard for me to make the decision to speak to this guy on a radio show and i think that's a heavy price to pay for these absolutely people have a right to make these decisions and every business has a right to make it i'm what i'm trying to do is is to have everybody zoom out and understand that it's not just about that incident it adds up to something and let's not pretend it doesn't add up but that's

but the proper place is on a pod but but you know the new's not there for the good of the world. It's a way for them to promote the magazine and make money. Yes, but my feeling is you can, sure, talk to Steve Bannon or don't talk to Steve Bannon. But if I have a podcast, I don't have to talk to Steve Bannon. And Steve Bannon doesn't have a right to be on your show. No. Bannon and Steve Bannon doesn't have a right to be on your show no and and so if you have an interview with him and you challenge him and you ask good questions I don't think anyone would care if you kissed his ass the whole time and was you know soft on him they can judge me for that

exactly and I think that's mainly how the world works I don't feel like I'm not seeing this the New Yorker had another festival well they had it that year and the next year it was successful like nothing bad happened to the new yorker let me give you a real example so um uh mark halperin yes now this is the mark he's uh now mark halperin um is a is a real bad story this but this is the story as I know it when he was working at ABC he was such a harassing women including things like having them sit on his lap going up behind them and pressing his erect penis into them and just reprehensible stuff but apparently he at some point there there was never a complaint to HR or anything.

This was just going on. And he got a hold of himself, and he decided he had a problem. And he went to therapy. The incident stopped. And 12 years later, he was at ABC. It came out, and he was was fired and he's been canceled. And this is a very tough thing for me to figure out because, OK, he did these terrible things, much worse than some of the other things. And this is really very close to the to the worst end of all these stories.

On the other hand, he stopped on his own. He didn't stop like most people do because they got caught. He seeks therapy and he stopped doing it. Now, 12 years later, he's trying to support his family and he's a talented political writer and he wants to write a book. And he starts interviewing people about how to stop Trump. And David Axelrod and a bunch of people sat for interviews with him and they were all forced to apologize for even speaking to this man. And then Judith Regan asked us if we'd have him on our podcast. And of course I want to talk to him. I want to talk about the personal stuff.

I want to talk about the political stuff. And I, uncharacteristically, I chickened out and I didn't feel good about myself. And like, what do we think? And this is the margin for error. Yes, he did something really bad, but the way we're living now, if I were to want to talk to him,

people will insist it's because I don't think it's that bad or that I'm somehow sympathetic to it or I might do it myself or I'm creating an unsafe work environment. And you know what they'll say? Oh, you made the place unsafe for your female employees by allowing him to come in and sit for the— I mean, this is all what really goes on. And I can't separate that out.

And I will go on record as saying, of course I should be able to talk to Mark Halperin. Of course I should be able to talk to him. I actually agree. I agree with you. I think you should be different situation than the New Yorker celebration with this guy who just preaches propaganda and hate and corruption and collusion. Like he's a bad voice in our world that's actually affecting us on a daily basis. Well, I vote Remnick. Remnick?

Yeah, because he should have. I don't know the story, but since everybody seemed to be blindsided by this, that seemed to be poor planning. Like, you know, so, yeah, if he's going to have somebody as radioactive as Steve Bannon on, he better make sure that everybody's OK with that. But I admired his instinct, which was Steve. We don't get it's like the Israelis used to be criticized to say we'll negotiate for with for a two-state solution but we're not talking to the PLO it's like you know no you don't get to choose who the other side is you engage the other side that exists I would never tell people don't go to the New Yorker festival because Steve Bannon is there my

position was I'm not gonna go because Steve can I ask you you're on stage it's 10 p.m. show at the Village Underground killing annihilating the crowd is eating out of the palm of your hands Camille Cosby walks in yeah well not Camille Cosby you looked you just finished your bit about Cosby yes in fact interestingly enough you look to the right

guess who's sitting there Harvey Weinstein yes he's sitting there in the front row. He's got the balls on this guy. He's got the nerve. He's sitting in the front row. Is he clapping? Howling!

Loves me. Loves me. He loves the Cosby bit. Probably enough he loves the Cosby. But now you see Harvey. Now what do you do? Well, here's the thing. I want to be in Shakespeare in Love Part 2.

So it's going to be hard for me to stand up. I would go at him on stage if he was sitting in the crowd. I would think I would hopefully do it more elegantly than happened that night at the open mic. But I think that... I don't even understand why it's a

conversation why a comic wouldn't address something that was going on in the room. That's what I said too. It's very odd to me that this is even a conversation. I don't understand why the comics only because ricky or well because one reason one reason is is because you might make it so awkward that it kind of fucks up the show for everybody else that i mean theoretically supposedly half the restaurant didn't know the show was happening i don't know precisely what was going on with that but i'm saying as a general matter it might be like say cosby's in the back of the room you know and and and everybody's now weirded out and the whole show now becomes about that and the audience that was paying to

get in and is completely innocent and all this might have a worse experience i that that might be one of that that's that's that's the that That's the difference between a comic that knows how to turn something on and doesn't. That's a comic bombing or not. That's not about – I mean – But if you don't feel you're able to definitely handle the situation. Here's an example. I don't know if it's a great example, but here's an example. Artie Fuqua came in with a crazy suit on one day, and I remember watching the show,

and every single comic got up there and opened with a roast on like just going after it and it killed the whole show everybody talked about it walking out there like oh you guys killed him on the suit it was hilarious but it's just like that's what we do his suit is benign it's exterior what we're addressing here

is an issue that most people have a conflict with and if you are getting at somebody in the audience is an issue that most people have a conflict with. And if you are getting at somebody in the audience for whatever lifestyle they have or whatever, it's a different pain. Yeah, I understand that. And it's not the comedian's job to straighten that person out.

Well, that's the art of it. I mean, if I was at the club and let's say Harvey is there and I knew Dave Attell was about to get up, I'd run into the room and fight someone for their seat. Like I

feel like there are people that could turn that into a moment where it isn't just a screaming diatribe that you can be funny and creative. But you know, it that into a moment where it isn't just a screaming diatribe. You can be funny and creative. But, you know, it's rare that you're at a comedy club and a violent criminal is in a club. Yeah, it was tough. It was not like a premeditated thing. It was a really difficult, genuinely difficult situation.

That's triggering, I mean. If OJ's in the room, do you say something, Natterman? Well, yeah, that's a good... How about Louis Farrakhan? If I felt I could deftly handle the situation without making the show so weird and just that it would really kind of ruin things, I mean, I probably would.

Louis Farrakhan said that Judaism is a gutter religion and we're devils, all the horrible things. Now, Louis Farrakhan said that Judy is a gutter religion and we're devils, all the horrible things. Now, Louis Farrakhan comes to the comedy show and some comedian there just starts ripping him a new asshole.

I would say, nobody hates him more than I do. I would say, don't do that. That's what I would say. I would love to talk to Louis Farrakhan in the audience. Talk to him is fine.

Well, what is ripping? I mean, there's ripping which is without comedy. We're still in a the audience. I think, and I think there is a... Talk to him is fine. Well, what is ripping? I mean, there's ripping which is without comedy. We're still in a comedy club. I would make it lighthearted and talk about his bow tie. I would talk about how uncomfortable he is watching the Jew. You would tease him. But you would do, but I'm saying, but there's, okay, and I agree with that.

Also, because it's a little ballsy to walk into a comedy club. What's interesting about the Weinstein thing is he might have not known he was walking into a comedy club. You walk in, sit in the front row, you're kind of asking for it. And that is part of the equation, I understand. But would you kind of become the cheerleader to have the entire audience ridicule this man? They kind of did this to Pence at Hamilton, didn't they? I don't think that's what happened at the show.

I don't think that's what happened, though. We can all agree that we don't want to ruin the show for everybody else. Maybe the audience wants the show ruined. I mean, if you're at Hamilton and Mike Pence walks in and you're in the middle of a scene, I mean, that's just how our world works. You got to see a weird moment in history. I don't feel like people

will be like, oh, I couldn't enjoy Dan Natterman because Attell yelled at Farrakhan. I think that you're happy that something happened. That would be awesome. If I had to go to Hamilton, I would like to have been there on the night that got ruined by Pence. And I honestly believe, especially the lineups here,

I don't think there would be able to be a show with Harvey Weinstein in the room and all the comics go home feeling good about themselves. How could you not address it? In the way of not saying something. Has there ever been anything like this at the cellar uh not since donald trump jr got in a fight here and banged somebody over the head with a bottle but wasn't he defending a comic wasn't no no i don't know the story what year was this actually the fight was between two Orient members. And yes, one was making a racial slur about the Hispanics or something.

And Donald was defending him. And that's why they got into it. And Donald took a bottle and bashed someone over the head with it? No, he got hit. He got hit. The other guy hit him in the back of his head, opened his head. You know,

the only celebrity that I can recall looking in the audience was Burton Cummings from the Guess Who? But he's a very uncontroversial figure. I saw David Tell be very cruel

to the drummer for the band Train one night. I didn't love Megan Kelly. I'm sorry. I never liked her. And she came in and she sat at the table and she was kind and I met her in that way of like

personal. She was very kind. How about Ann Coulter's been in the audience. Can we stick to Megyn Kelly for a second? This is actually a pretty good example about like how this all spins out of control. So Megyn Kelly made that comment about like when we were kids we used to be able to dress up as Diana Ross

and got fired. And everybody was outraged. And just, you know, I'm so much more impressed by the few people who defend than everybody who piles on. But everybody piled on Megyn Kelly. And it was so dishonest.

By the way, we're agreeing on a lot today. I completely agree. i know an enormous amount of people who were unaware of how wrong that was there's a difference between people who are dressed up like the kkk and someone's in blackface and people who thought they could you know dress up like diana ross well and clearly it was okay to dress up like that that's because jimmy kimball did it and and i mean the list of Or people didn't understand why it would be inappropriate. They were not, they were ignorant to the effect that it has on other people or the meaning of it to some people.

But what's interesting is that I was kind of doing a little bit of a deep dive one time. That the people who they dressed up as, like I think Kimmel dressed up as Oprah and Fred Armisen dressed up as like i think kimball dressed up as oprah and fred armisen just dressed up as obama there never seemed to be any offense taken even from the black people who were being dressed up as like i don't it seems like diana ross it's not there's no specific example with diana ross but there were specific celebrities who people dressed up Even the term blackface is already to put a conclusion on it. Because blackface really means the mocking of black people. Which is not the same thing as what Fred Armisen did, darkening his skin to look like Obama. What about the movie Soul Man? Yeah.

Well, there was also the movie Tropic Thunder. What about the movie Watermelon Man? Do you remember that? No. With Godfrey Cambridge? About a white man who one day woke up and he was black? And it was a very political movie. It was a black man pretending to be white for the first act.

And then he was his real color for the rest. You never heard of that movie? Yeah, I heard of it. I never saw it. So the thing with Megyn Kelly is that since then, Justin Trudeau has been reelected and the governor of Virginia's been reelected,

who's actually dressed up as Klansman, you know? And we realized, oh, it was just, they hated Megyn Kelly. So she was a lightning rod. And this, I can't separate these things out

from all these incidents we're talking about. It's just like this collective. One big pile of garbage. But isn't that different, like Megyn Kelly coming to the cellar that night than Harvey Weinstein? I mean, and again, I just think it's...

The owners call what they're comfortable with. Like whatever any... Like if a restaurateur is like, I don't want Donald Trump Jr. here or I don't want Bernie Sanders here. I mean, people have generally the right to do that. Do you know that if Megyn Kelly had come in right during that time,

when she was really on the hot seat and I had said to the comedians, please don't make fun of Megyn Kelly and that got to the press, that would be used as evidence that I was a racist. It would have been very dangerous for me to have been known right in that week to have said, listen,

I think she's being treated unfairly here. There's no margin for error. Again, it's like everybody, it would have been, especially since I was the guy who put Louis on, there was one person at the Huffington Post that was researching a story, and the headline of the story was to be,

Noam Dwarman is the worst person in the world. But isn't the issue that... This is really true. But Noam But isn't the issue that because you don't want to make a mistake that you will let everybody in? Yes. And I'm just saying, I think it's okay for you to make those decisions for your establishment. It is. I don't judge anybody for the decisions they make. I really don't.

As long as you let the Jews in, Noam, I'm fine. I'm just advocating for a certain social norm of forbearance for everybody just to take a breath. It's not the end of the world to see somebody who affects them. And Harvard Weinstein is like the Hitler example, which makes it so difficult. But you know what? So was nobody seemed to have that sympathy for

the old Holocaust survivors in Skokie, Illinois who were going to have that sympathy for the old Holocaust survivors in Skokie, Illinois, who were going to have to witness the Nazis marching down their street. Well, I didn't think they should have been able to do that either. You didn't think, but liberals at that time said, deal with it. You know, that was the ACLU enlightened view was to tell these actual Holocaust survivors, hey, it's America. Deal with it. So what I'm saying is not crazy the issue is that some of those gatherings are set up in such a way that violence may happen i think you know in those days people felt like well they're just going to go down the street

there's not too many of them but now you know like in charlesville, they're not organized properly or safely, and the decision about letting people gather like that is also about what is the potential for something really awful happening. But they have to let them gather. I mean, the ACLU, I think, still would agree with Mel on that. Yes, I think they do.

Yeah, so what are the other issues? Dan, you dropped a bomb with that one. I wanted to know what... Judd's probably got a few more minutes. Judd likes... We're probably over an hour already. Go ahead. We are. I did want to know who Judd likes in 2020. Obviously, he's a Democrat.

I have not chosen a candidate at this point. I'm still open to the possibilities. Do you have any particular ones to whom you are leaning at this time? I can't say that I do. I don't think I know enough. I think that I need to get more on my game. I do understand a lot of the issues that people are debating about health care and what's going too far left and who do we just need to win

and when is the moment to fight for certain things. I mean, for me generally, I feel like, you know, the world is going off a cliff and we're all debating how we feel about that. And you might say that's due to climate problems or health insurance problems, but there's a lot of things that require bigger swings. And so, you know, Trump's big swing was the tax cut. Let's

spend all this money on the tax cut. But you could have spent all that money on the environment. You could have spent all that money on relieving college debt, or you could have spent it, you know, on something that supported people in a different way. And so I think I'm grappling with that because I do feel like we are probably past the point where we can fix the environment, at least with current technology. And I do get nervous about candidates who are not deeply concerned that the world is already getting hotter and on fire and flooding and if that if you're not obsessed with that as a candidate and you're just the person that gets in because we don't want a crazy guy like trump i that that makes me nervous for my children and potential grandchildren so i would i would i would volunteer and go knock on doors for for bloomberg i would actually go and vote for Bloomberg. And by the way, I think he's very environmentally conscious.

Yes, and he's also for gun safety. And I don't vote, but I would actually go to the polls for Bloomberg. I would have my heart with Mayor Pete and Joe Biden for winning. And with Warren or Sanders, I would really, I would just probably not even, I don't know what I would do. It would be so discouraging. Well, I'm going to lean on you to vote if Warren or Sanders are the nominee. I'm going to be very hard on you if you do not vote.

So, by the way, I think it's very soon someone's going to say, so I want to say it first, we need to take Elizabeth Warren figuratively, not literally. You know, they say that about Trump. I mean, she's, but the thing about the environment that kills me, and of course I have kids mean, she's but the thing about the environment that kills me. And of course, I have kids and this is a serious issue, right?

Let's presume that 12 years is the window. There's only one thing right now that will work is nuclear energy. It's the only thing we have today. So to me, and I haven't heard anybody been able to explain to me where I'm wrong the only logical thing right now even with the risks would be to build as many nuclear power plants as we can right now until such time that the renewables and the alternative forms of energy can lift us to that burden because we're playing with the end of time here. Yes. I was reading today about Germany. They're up to like 35% of renewables for their electric use,

but they haven't even begun to crack like transport and manufacturing and whatever. Like countries that have no natural resources like Japan and Israel, smart people, scientific communities are not able to crack this. There's no reason to think we're going to crack this in 12 years. But today we have the nuclear technology. We have Teslas. All the electricity from the nuclear power plants can charge electric cars. I mean, it's the answer.

So I wonder, are the Democrats serious? Because they don't really say what I'm saying. Number one. And number two, they're not blasting India and China, who we all know, even if America shuts down, the momentum of their ever increasing, despite being members of the Paris Accords, they're increasing their emissions. And that alone is going to bring us to the tipping point even without america at all so there is this as always on both sides and all parties but on this issue it's on the left this unseriousness about the way they like do they really it the only way to explain is they don't really think it's only 12 years like if you thought your child was going to die in 12 years and they were you had one like

research going on to save them and there is one thing today that will save them. It's like not even a question. Well, OK, give me the thing now that'll save them. And then if whatever I need 12 years from now to keep them alive, that's what I'll you know, when it's ready, I'll take it. But you don't hear any Democrats saying that. And I don't see what I'm saying wrong. Well, this is what's wrong with us as a species, I think, which is we just we're not long term thinkers.

People just think in terms of the next 10 or 20 years. And it really is up to our children to say, you know, you guys are about to destroy everything. And we demand whatever that is because our world is not going to be there, at least in the same form for us. But most people don't. I mean, you know, it's a little bit like gun safety. People slowly get used to 20,000 people a year dying, 30,000 people a year, 40,000 people dying a year. And then it's just locked in like, oh, we're just not going to do anything. And I think that's what's going to happen with the environment.

Oh, we lost Miami, but we haven't lost the other cities. And then you lose, oh, we lost New Orleans. And then we just adjust to the world being on fire a little bit and then maybe somehow something changes or what the reality of people's lives are becomes a horror show for a lot of the world. Like there's a lot of drought in Africa right now. They're saying that they're heading into like a really dangerous period for tens of millions of people.

And the world doesn't flip out. You know, it's kind of like the school shootings. We'll just have our kids practice not getting shot. Yeah, we'll just do some drills and teach them how to run away. Like that's the human race in a nutshell. I think that's right. They're selling bulletproof backpacks now. That's the craziest thing.

And I think that's going to be what happens with the environment. And that's why they don't go, wait a second, should we build nuclear power plants or what can we do? We just kind of ease into it because for today, the government can keep the economy going by not messing with anything in a large way yeah i agree with you on that um wouldn't be ironic if

global warming was a big boon to the solar energy industry well that's what a lot of people say i mean it's funny that our president thinks you know that wind power doesn't work because if it's not windy, your TV will shut off. I mean, we are living with a president who is as ignorant. And the hatred of science. Makes sense to me. I meant until it gets hot enough, the solar powers won't really, like, until it gets hot enough, then the panels will really come online. Okay, exit question for anybody? I don't want to talk about it.

She wants to talk about the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht. I just think it's important to acknowledge. That's all. You don't want to talk about it. She wants to talk about the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht. I just think it's important to acknowledge. That's all. You don't have to talk about it. All right. Anything else on your mind, Judge? I only wanted to talk about Kristallnacht. But you know what's sad is that kids don't even know about the Holocaust.

And if you say what is Auschwitz to kids, they literally don't know what the word is. And now that all of the survivors are going to soon not be alive it is a very dangerous thing and it is why it ramps back up because i don't think young people have the terror that we had as kids about not letting it happen well i think as long as the jews know well i don't know i mean it is the jews don't don't really address it the way it should be addressed. It should be... Well, that's why I get back to China. There's a million people in prison camps in China. If the Jews here aren't furious about that, then what does it mean?

Like if Jews don't stand up and go, wait a second, what's happening in your concentration camps? But people don't because they just don't want to be bothered. They don't want to get in trouble. They don't want to lose money or whatever. So even the Jewish people, God bless them. Have you ever seen a rabbi on television talk about prison camps in China? Never. I've never seen it.

But that rabbi certainly knows about Auschwitz, and therefore just the knowledge of it doesn't seem to, the idea that if we know about it, it won knowledge of it doesn't seem to the idea that if we know about it it won't happen again doesn't hold water to me. If we know about it it's probably more likely to happen again

because people will be inspired by it. Hitler was inspired by the Armenian genocide. Listen, there is a limit to there is a limit to the sincere empathy

that we have as people and sympathy for other people and maybe the way we're so complacent about the million people, I don't know if they're being exterminated, but I'm sure many of them are dying in those concentration camps in China. Maybe we should be less judgmental of how the world was so casual

about the Jews being taken into concentration camps. We're not handling it with much more concern than they did for us. Well, I'm sure people, human nature is exactly the same. That's right. Whatever is happening now, they are, oh, with the Kurds, you know,

there's a few days where like they're worried about the Kurds and suddenly like it's not interesting enough to talk about every day, but I'm sure right now there are atrocities happening against the Kurds

and people just drift off because there's a new season of 90 Day Fiancé. Yeah, I think if it's not either you or your people or your country most people don't really care and then you know this is getting back to the shandling book you know whether you're a buddhist or not you know we are all in this together where whether we want to admit it or not and when we're not when we tune out to other people's pain and other people's communities

that's when we die off i mean like we only survive making sacrifices together for the environment for the people in prison camps and when we're in competition and tribal it all caves in all right we're gonna end yeah so i'll tell you one thing yasha monk you know yasha monk is right for the um he's your kind of guy. He's a pretty liberal writer for the Atlantic. Very, very smart. He says something really interesting. He came to the Altree.

It was some stories about all these people who enlisted in the Army in the Civil War, whatever it was. And I asked him, do you think you would have – do you have to do that right this second? Do you think you would have the physical bravery to go and fight in a war like voluntarily sign up to go for war i mean to me i would just never and he said he said no i wouldn't think i would have it he says but history teaches us that that kind of bravery is much much more common than to bravery to stand up for what you believe in against your peers. And that really stayed with me that actually in times of war, like it's camaraderie, everybody gets together and we're going to go fight this together. But like the lone person in the Soviet Union or in the Jordan McCarthy era, who was going to stand up and say the opposite

is apparently a much rarer kind of bravery that's why it's terrifying when trump was like let's unmask the whistleblower because he's trying to say if you are that person we will always find you and destroy you yeah i don't know why they're still looking for the whistleblower we have that like it reminds me of like if my wife catches me cheating yeah wait honey you don't know The whistleblower was out to get them. What the fuck does that mean? Okay, honey, you're right. I apologize. I think people go to war because

in many instances, if you don't go to war, especially in World War II when everybody went, for the rest of your life, you're a coward. No. I think people go to war because there's nothing else they can do. We gotta wrap it up. We're going to Little Shop of Hor No. I think people go to war because there's nothing else they can do. We got to wrap it up. We're going to Little Shop of Horrors. I'm sorry.

Wait. First of all, the book, when is it coming out? The book is coming out, I think, in a couple of days. And you can preorder it on any of the massive sites. And this is a book to cherish for a lifetime. This is not something you get on Kindle. It's not available on Kindle.

It's like an art book. It's got beautiful photographs. Beautiful artwork. And it will change your life. It will change your life. And the Pete Davidson movie coming out. June,

mid-June. Mid-June. And the Great Depression. Add to his, to just credit historian historian I like that oh that's nice

comedy historian thank you that's true comedian director writer producer Robert Carroll

comedy very good okay goodnight everybody thanks guys