The Digression Sessions - Ep. 135 - Matt Walsh! (@MrMattWalsh)

Episode Date: October 5, 2014

UCB’s Matt Walsh! Follow Us On Twitter! @BetterRobotJosh – Josh Kuderna @MichaelMoran10 – Mike Moran @DigSeshPod – For Podcast Updates! @MrMattWalsh – Matt Walsh Hola DigHeads! On this week’s episode, Josh and guest cohost Mike Finazzo are joined by the legendary improviser and actor, Matt Walsh! Matt is one of the founding members of the Upright Citizens Brigade, has been in a million movies, you've handled his ass pennies, and currently plays Mike McLintock in the HBO series VEEP. Matt was nice enough to down at a coffee shop in Baltimore and discuss VEEP, what it’s like to hang with Baltimore’s mayor and Maryland’s governor, the early days of doing stand up, Dog Bites Man stories, the Chicago Improv Festival, and much more Like what you hear? Subscribe and rate the Digression Sessions on Stitcher and iTunes. And check out our podcast network, Thunder Grunt! Thanks everyone! We love you! Thanks everyone! We love you!

Welcome to the Digression Sessions Podcast. Hey, everybody. I'm Josh Koderna. And I'm Mike Moran. And you're listening to the Digression Sessions Podcast, a Baltimore-based comedy talk show hosted by two young, handsome stand-up comedians slash improvisers. Join us every week as we journey through the world of comedy and the bizarreness of existence as we interview local and non-local comedians, writers, musicians, and anyone else we find creative and interesting. Yes. Who's the guest this week?

Matt Walsh is the guest on this week's program, Michael. Mike's not too happy about it. Mr. Mike Moran, you are not present for this episode. No. The great Matt Walsh, a Veep founding member of the legendary improv theater, the Upright Citizens Brigade. Matt Walsh in all his glory. I'm still feeling the glow of that mustache. I'm happy.

I'm happy for you that you got to do that. I approached Mr. Walsh on the street and got the wheels rolling. You're in Baltimore. Josh closed it. You greased the wheels. I greased the wheels. I hit him up on Twitter. I find somebody to work for.

Well, I go through the motions of finding someone to work for me so we can do the interview. My boss is kind enough to just get me off. Yeah. It was a scheduling. I show up. I'm ready. You're ready. I'm so ready.

You got your mic hand loose yep you know i was stretching my mic hand all night i was uh yeah i was doing mouth warm-ups jaw exercises yeah um and then i get a text from josh saying dude it's tomorrow yeah well it was all and it always been scheduled for a friday. Yeah. Friday at noon at a local coffee shop where we interviewed Pat Noswald. Yes. And Matt was nice enough to do the interview. Wednesday, we confirmed for Friday. Cut to Thursday at 11.50.

I'm at my office job. Mike texts me. Is he there yet? I was like, for what? It's tomorrow. And you go, fuck. Jesus Christ. Yeah. And you go, fuck. Jesus Christ. Yeah, it was a downer.

Because I didn't want to ask off again. Right, right. Yeah, it was a bummer. But Matt Walsh sends his regards. Does he? No, he doesn't. Probably not. Remember who I am.

No, we told him the story. He said that was a bummer. But yeah, he was in town for Veep. You greased the wheels. I have a feeling you have a little surprise for me right now, don't him the story. He said that was a bummer. But yeah, he was in town for Veep. You greased the wheels. I have a feeling you have a little surprise for me right now, don't you? Nope. He's not coming out? No, he's not coming out.

He's not coming out. Sorry, man. Okay. Maybe next time. Oh, really? No, probably not. I think this is a one-time offer. No, I hope...

Here, fingers crossed for season five of Veep. They'll come back. We can make it an annual thing. But it was incredible, man. A very, very nice guy. And coming off of a stellar week of interviewing Patton Oswalt and then an improv hero. I was like, yeah, I'll sit down with you guys. So same deal.

We interviewed him at a coffee shop. We were outside. There was some more ambient noise it's like there's a dude with a buzzsaw going at it like the house across the alley really and screams coming yeah a little bit so you can see here's some ambient screaming um but it was it was great man we uh we talked a little bit of improv we talked uh we talked stand up and then talked about uh doing veep here in town and it was very cool it was nice to spend an hour with one of your heroes that we treated uh mike finazzo filled in for uh mike moran and it became a little bit of the chris farley show of like remember when you did that awesome that

awesome thing that was great right but uh he could not have been cooler so uh that's great so we're very excited to share this episode with you guys, and thank you for listening. If you want to follow Matt on Twitter, he is at MrMattWalsh, and Veep will be coming out sometime, I think, in the winter or the spring. And if you want to follow Mike Moran and I on Twitter, if you're nasty, and I think you are. Oh, they are. I'm Josh Kaderna, and you can follow me at Better Robot Josh on Twitter and Instagram. And I'm Mike Moran.

Follow me at Michael Moran 10. I'm not sure what Instagram is yet, but I'm going to get on that pretty soon. I'm going to take off work on the wrong day and try to figure it out. Show up at Common Ground. And hope a celebrity's there. And then the podcast is at Dig Sh pod for all podcast updates we also have a website digression sessions.com and uh the calendar section has all of our live upcoming dates and speaking of upcoming dates why don't we just go with that we have some live shows this

week and uh another weeks too which is a dumb thing to say uh this week uh this wednesday uh october 8th i will be at the crown in baltimore i think headlining i think if not it's still gonna be a fun show and so everybody should come out to that uh on that thursday i'll be at dc at mad momo's doing stand-up and then on the 11th saturday the 11th i'll be doing improv at the d Arts Center at 10 p.m., so come out to that. Moran? Well, let me think. I have a stand-up date scheduled for Friday, October 17th. God, my voice is all weird right now.

I also... I'm Mike Moran. I also have another stand-up date scheduled for... Wednesday, October 29th. Yes. And that will be tribute stand-up. Yes.

I will be doing... Gallagher. No, Gallagher 2. I'll be doing Gallagher 2. Mitch Hedberg. I'llher 2. Mitch Hedberg. I'll be performing as Mitch Hedberg. Yeah, it's like a Halloween thing where a bunch of comedians are going to dress up

and pay tribute to some of their favorite standards. We're playing some Halloween songs too. Yeah, yeah. So come out to that. The Friday, October 17th show, I'm on that as well. And that's a part of the Altercation Punk Comedy Tour headlined by JT Habersat. show i'm on that as well and that's a part of the altercation punk comedy tour headline by jay t habersat and uh we're gonna have him on the show soon too and he's gonna tell us all about the tour

and kind of his diy style to comedy which is influenced by punk rock never never heard of it never heard in oldies or nothing for this guy that's what he's all about uh so yeah we got a bunch of shows coming up go to digressionsessions.com calendar also check out thundergrunt.com our uh our network here in baltimore which has a ton of great shows and we just did our first live show so check out that it was great and uh yeah we got a bunch of cool uh stuff uh in the works here like i said jt abersat's gonna be on we're gonna have joe de rosa hopefully uh my friend zach plays in this band pianos become the teeth and they just got signed to epitaph records and they have a new T. Habersat's going to be on. We're going to have Joe DeRosa, hopefully. My friend Zach plays in this band. Piano's become The Teeth, and they just got signed to Epitaph Records,

and they have a new album coming out. So a bunch of cool stuff is coming up. So, yeah, let's get into it. Let's talk to Matt Walsh. Well, I'll talk to Matt. I'll sit quietly and listen. And I'll cry a little. No, we're going to get him back on, man.

If we have to go to L.A. and hunt him down, we will get him back. I doubt we gonna if we have to go to la and hunt him down we will get him back i don't we'll have to do that yeah you're right you're right okay all right guys thank you so much thanks everyone let's get into the episode with mr matt walsh bye-bye we love you no this tangled of wires and lattes. Wires and lattes in the morning. Mr. Matt Walsh, how the hell are you? I'm good, thanks. I'm glad to be dialed in to the Baltimore comedy scene.

Thanks for coming out. This has been a pretty crazy week because we interviewed Patton Oswalt out here just two days ago. Oh, you've been hitting everybody on the show. Oh, so he is on the show. Oh, he said he wasn't allowed to play. He said he wasn't allowed. We've got to bleep it out. Well, I didn't say what show I'm on.

Exactly, exactly. So it's still a mystery. We assume it's House of Cards. You guys are both taking dramatic turns. We're both on House of Cards, yeah. He plays Spacey's personal trainer. Right, right. And I'm his dialect coach.

You're really going to give him the what for in that one, I'm sure. Things are going to get dark. Do you ever run into those guys? Because they shoot here in Baltimore as well, right? We share a ton of crew. Like a lot of our grips and sound people and camera department guys work both jobs. But because the seasons overlap, fewer guys can do both. So they're,

I think they run till December. So a lot of the guys that normally are able to do both, but we do see them like their trucks and our trucks. Yeah. We're, uh, and I know a couple of the guys, I know Michael Kelly and he's very nice.

He stays near us at the hotel. And, uh, the woman who plays the chief of staff is very nice. I forget her name, but she's in constant simmer. I know she is very nice. I forget her name. And Constance Zimmer. I know her. She's very cool.

Nice. My buddy Mark Unger does scenes with you. He was on the show the other day. Yeah, so you guys tweeted at each other. Sean, right? Yeah, he plays Sean. He's gotten a comeback every year, so it's kind of fun. And I did his radio.

He used to do a political radio show. Yeah, but they scrapped it. Yeah. But, yeah, he's a guy I knew from Chicago. Really? Yeah. He was a stand-up when I was doing stand-up at a place called The Union, which was kind of the alt-comedy scene in early 90s, I guess.

Mm-hmm. So he's an old friend from way back. Yeah. Mark's a great guy yeah he is he's a really nice guy and funny and his brother runs

a great comedy club here in Baltimore Magoobies really? yeah oh I didn't know that yeah Andrew's the owner of Magoobies Joke House

where is that one? Timonium okay is that one of the few stand up clubs that like pays? one of like the legit clubs like an A club that headliners

come through and all that. That's great. And we love working there, don't we Mike? Yes we do. There's no other club that I'd rather work than the Goobies Joe Couch. Are they listening? We hope so. They're not a sponsor of the show. Aren't they sponsoring? Come on Goobies. I know right? Get it together. This is your fan base. Get it together.

I won't be there October 31st through November 2nd featuring for Steve Hofstetter. I won't be there October 31st through November 2nd featuring for Steve Hofstetter. I won't be there. I will be there. Please come. Yeah, so thanks for coming out. I'm realizing the power of Twitter this week and the power of cool people. Yeah, did I meet you on the street?

No. I think it was Mike. Mike Moran. A different Mike. And I feel so bad. i told him i was like look we're either gonna do it wednesday or friday he's like well i gotta work on friday i said well just make sure you take off he's like all right i will and it was this big to do and he texts me uh on wednesdays like all right my boss gave me off i'm like okay perfect i'm at work yesterday thursday and he got at 11 50 he goes is he there yet it's like mike we're doing it friday he goes ah fuck he's like all right well just um just make sure you get me on the intro for this episode

you can say yeah he's the connection yes we ran into them up on this trip here and they were just coming from some open mic around the corner yeah probably yeah yeah so um so veep's heading into its fourth season so you must be pretty familiar with Baltimore. How long are you guys out here when you're shooting a season? It's usually a fall and leads into January, sometimes February. Wow. But this year I think we'll be wrapped up by the end of the year. So we start in usually September and we usually finish December or February.

And are you out here the entire time? We get breaks. We get like two weeks on. We'll go home for a week to LA. I'll go home for a week and then three weeks on. And generally we get home every three weeks, two weeks. That's pretty good. Yeah, it's easy because I have family.

So you want to get home and see the kids. Right. And is it tough when you go back to like, how's Baltimore? Does it have kind of a negative connotation? Does the city have a negative connotation does the city have a negative connotation outside of baltimore to me or to people to both i guess i think people are curious because i'd never spent time in baltimore so it is one of those cities that's known but uh not beyond people are like what's baltimore like there's a general curiosity

and i've enjoyed it you know yeah you've got to do some pretty cool stuff because i i'm i'm catching up on veep i just finished the first season okay you guys got to do that whole episode at camden yards i don't know if you saw that yeah yeah tommy hunter my wife's future uh second husband she loves him yeah she loves him we met we did a like the charity 5k at camden yards and my wife acted like a little kid seeing Santa Claus for the first time. He's a character, man. Jesus, he's funny. Yeah, he seems like a really funny guy. Yeah, he's a real character, true ball player. He was quite entertaining.

We hung out with him one night and got to meet him and I think Arrieta was with the team at the time. And, of course, Jim Palmer we met. We had dinner with Jim Palmer. Yeah, I listened to your interview on the Chewing It podcast, and apparently Jim Palmer doesn't have the best reputation. The Broken Lizard guys were saying that he's a bit full of himself. He's a bit of a windbag.

That's the word from all the players. They avoid him in the clubhouse because he'll corner you and talk to you about an hour. 1966, I remember. That's the word from all the players. They avoid him in the clubhouse because he'll corner you and talk to you about an hour. Right. 1966, I remember. That's his reputation. Yeah. Yeah, apparently he remembers every single pitch he's ever thrown in his entire life.

Yes. And it's like doing stand-up when somebody comes up to you like, you know what? You could have done better. And it's like, I didn't ask you. Which is perfect if you're a fan or the first time you meet someone. It's perfect because if I meet Jim Palmer, all I want to hear is baseball stories. But after that. you which is perfect for the if you're a fan or the first time you meet someone right because if i meet jim palmer all i want to hear is baseball stories uh-huh but after that yeah i'm a huge orioles fan so like listening to the games especially if he has somebody else to kind

of rein him in a little bit he's so great as like a color guy he's smart yeah but yeah i could see how that would get old if you're in the clubhouse and he's there every other day. Yeah, the kids. He tends to corner the rookies and stuff like that. But I asked him what are the two big changes in baseball he saw, and he said it was the ability of the batters to now hit that inside pitch because their strength and conditioning is better, and also they know how to swing it out, basically. And then the other thing he said is dealing with the split-finger fastball he said that's sort of uh the two biggest changes he's seen which i thought

was interesting are you are you a big baseball fan i'm more of a football guy yeah i'm a chicago bears fan yeah you have the the bear down podcast on podcast go to bear down podcast.com cross promotion lots of plugs plug Plug, plug, plug. Yeah. Yeah, I've been digging the podcast because you guys, it's more like, it's less, I mean, it's all about the Bears, but having like characters on and kind of, you know, improvising basically. Yeah. It's like sports comedy.

Yeah. And I think you called into the last one, you were in a Ebola bubble or something like that. Yeah. With Ron Livingston. Yeah. Horatio Sands. Uh-huh.

I forget who. Who was Horatio? I'm blanking on that. He's always something like really screwed up. Anyways, yeah, he's a regular. This guy, Brad Morris. Yeah, it's fun. Yeah. Do you get to go to any Ravens games while you're out here?

I try to go once a year. We've befriended the governor. Really? Of all people. Because he comes to Southended the governor of all people. Really? O'Malley? Yeah. Really? So we've been in his box a few times. That's awesome. Yeah, it's crazy. I haven't been this year, but I saw a Baltimore

Oriole game already. So I usually see one Oriole game and one Raven game every year. That's awesome. Yeah, it's been fun. So just hobnobbing with the governor? Yeah, I mean... That's pretty nuts. It's just because he probably wants to be on Veep, so he brings us around. Right.

But his assistant, Hannah is her name, she's very nice. She said, anytime you want to come to a game, let us know. So we asked her, and she followed up on it. Interesting. She's been really nice to us, yeah. Is he cool? He was very nice, yeah. Wow.

He really was. That's crazy. He was very nice, yeah. Wow. He really was. That's crazy. He was very nice, yeah. It was crazy. That's how I feel, too, because I'm not that political, and I don't know anyone in Maryland, and then all of a sudden we're watching a game with the governor and the mayor of Baltimore, and it's like, how the hell did we end up here? And it's just because we're on a TV show that's about politics.

Yeah, but also the show is not really favorable to politics, either. No. You guys say the worst stuff. Yeah. but also the show is not really favorable to politics either. No. You guys say the worst stuff. Yeah. And they're like, we love it. But people enjoy it because it's equally offensive. Like conservatives and liberals both appreciate the way we skewer the process of politics in this country. Just everything.

Everybody. Everybody's under the gun. So I think there's no real, I mean, I don't know. I don't think there's any real bent so i think they there's no real i mean i don't know i don't think there's any real bent i think it goes after no no i think it's it's more just uh all these people are horrible yeah they're all sociopaths yeah and at the same time hopefully humanizing them a little bit like i think there's some sympathy for the characters that have to do that right yeah underneath it all it's just yeah they're all insecure and they're all human beings that's all just where it comes from where it's like i just want to be loved overall yeah i would

never want to be a politician that's the worst job in the world do you feel like with the show it seems like you're like in an ideal spot does it ever feel like you've kind of won the creative lottery in terms like you have a show that people like and watch and also people adore it and everybody's great on it and you're the fourth season on hbo like you have total freedom of what you can say and yeah it is uh i think you kind of remind yourself of that every day or as often as you can because it is a rare occurrence to have multiple seasons on a network as as generous as hbo they're very supportive and then to have like critical acclaim and then to have like popular acclaim it never happens so yeah i'm very grateful and but it's like any

human endeavor you're like you have to like oh wait why am i complaining like this is right there are days where i'm like i wish i didn't have to come in so early right a little bit but ultimately in the big picture it's the best right it's the best people the best show the best writers uh we get to you know contribute creatively we can improvise a little bit uh it's great it's really great and it's you know one of the best shows i've ever been on and is this probably the longest running show you've been on besides the ucb show on comedy central upright citizenspright Citizens Brigade, this is. Because UCB only had three seasons. This is my first fourth season of anything.

Did you do a lot of pilots before that? A lot of one and done, we call it. I think I spent ten years doing various shows or pilots. I was on a show called Dog Bites Man. We want to talk about that. We love that show. Zach Galifianakis, 80 Miles. Andrea Savage. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

She's so funny, too. She's so underrated. She's great. I love seeing her pop up in things. Yeah, she works a lot. She's out there. And then I did a show called Players, which was on Spike for a year. That was brief.

And that got messed up because that was like, hey. They moved it around. A lot. Yeah, broke it up. It's like, we're going to play two in a row, two weeks in a year. That was brief. And that got messed up because that was like, hey. They moved it around. A lot. Yeah, broke it up. It's like, we're going to play two in a row, two weeks in a row,

take a six and a half week break and then play all four of them and never talk about it again. Yeah. And we were, yeah, it was a weird channel to be on Spike too.

It wasn't really our audience. But that, you know, to get a show on TV is great. Right. But yeah, so I've done a lot of stuff like that.

It was on Outsourced for a year. Oh, yeah. That sitcom. And then various other things. Were you the boss on that show? Yeah. I was the boss on Outsourced. I remember that.

I remember that. Wow, you watch TV. Yeah. I'm a bit of a nerd. A bit of a nerd. Outsourced was a good show. It just didn't come back. Yeah.

With Dog Bites, man, can you tell us just some of the the crazier stories because you were involved with just like not really pranking but there were actual real real people involved kind of like borat before it was borat right yeah it was actually the guy who created it was a guy named dan mazer who created us uh ollie g with sasha oh okay so he's a he's a bread who came up with Sasha. And so they also created Borat together. And he wanted to do his own show. So his whole premise was just to have a news team

that was from a small network traveling the country. And then we sort of improvised and created our characters. And then we all wrote the bits. And then he would just kind of pick a topic, like the Republican Convention or the – I forget what. We went to spring break for one. So you kind of just pick almost like a 60-minute news segment. This week we're covering the election or we're covering spring break and the problems of spring break.

So that was always the premise. And then it was very difficult because you're kind of, it's difficult when you're being sort of mean to nice people. It's okay when they're deserving to be sort of made fools of. So by the end of it, we all sort of like kind of tried to make ourselves the fools and we tried to write more things that just involved us. And I think towards the end of the show like the ninth or tenth episode whatever i think we hit our rhythm of like okay this is good we're not just going on the street and sort of picking on normal people we're sort of like

we're the idiots and then occasionally outside people would come in and they would just look at us like what's wrong with these people uh-huh so but did a lot of, the one that's craziest is we got to go to the Klu Klux Klan convention in Western Tennessee. And we met the Grand Wizard of the Western Tennessee chapter. Oh my God. And his idea was he thought we were a press group that was going to help him put a new spin on the new Klan. That's what he thought. The new Klan, Klan 2.0. Yeah.

For a new generation. Yeah. And so we went there and it was very scary and people had guns and they weren't supposed to have guns and we had two,

like, former Marines who were posing as sound people who were carrying guns just to protect us. Just the most jacked, like,

gaffers. No, it was a guy and a gal. It was a husband and wife. The guy was kind of big but they weren't totally, like,

Rambo'd out or whatever. Right, right. And then, it was just dicey. It't totally like Rambo'd out or whatever. Right, right. And then it was just dicey. It was just like because we were poking fun. I was sitting in a chair interviewing the Grand Wizard, and they knew we were making fun. And at one point I had to like one of the questions.

You would write questions you knew you were going to ask before you got there. And one of the questions was, is there one black person you like? And I wouldn't let it drop. I said, come on, there's not one black. Nope, don't like any of them. Not one single. Come on, there has to be one. He goes, all right, Sammy Davis Jr.

That's the only one he would give it up for. Well, it's because he's a Jew, and a negative times a negative equals a positive. Yeah. It's a wash in the end. And the other thing I thought was funny is he told me that he just started that no-carb diet and he lost like 25 pounds, which I just thought was coming from a hate monger. That's great. Yeah.

But we had to scurry out because there was a bunch of guys coming out with guns and we just took a lunch break and never came back. See you later. later yeah i love that there's there's one thing i hate more than black people it's carbs you understand and that's why that's why i'm losing weight well to me it was funny because he was like the last person in america to discover that no carb diet they're not really on top of the trends so he was telling me it like this you you got to try this thing it's called a no-carb diet you know i got diabetes so my wife put me on it and and they're also very unhealthy and their children are very unhealthy oh yeah just uh eating the worst foods all the time i'm sure

yeah that's like the grand wizard at home getting bitched at by his wife or something like no you can't have pancakes like all right fine okay yeah that's so funny i just like i just like the idea of he's losing weight to be the new face of the clan like clan monthly reasons yeah it's like i'm never gonna get the big parts with looking like a slob you're gonna be in front of the camera honey you gotta you gotta drop some weight exactly but i think he had diabetes so i think he had health reasons, too. I just got to appeal to that 18 to 35 demographic. Yeah.

I want to be on MySpace, all right? I've got to be hip with the kids. Yeah, we've got to go see that movie with Jennifer Lawrence those kids is talking about. I've got to be relevant. Exactly. But really, he's referring to Silver Linings playbook because it just came to that town. He's still three years behind. Yeah, that was sort of the inside.

I don't have pity for them. I obviously don't detest what they believe in, but they're just ignorant, pathetic, and dangerous people. Yeah. That was my takeaway. Yeah. I think that's a fair assessment. Yeah. It's pretty reasonable. Yeah. That was my takeaway. Yeah. I think that's a fair assessment. Yeah. It's pretty reasonable.

Yeah. I mean, that had to be insane, too, to have people with guns out, and you're like, yeah, let's try to make fun of these people a little bit. Yeah, because they told us there will be no guns. We kind of negotiate. Or we don't do that.

The producers come in, and they basically lie, and they say, oh, no, it's a real documentary show, and we'd love to help you put a new face on the Klan, and they'd say whatever, but they basically lie. And they say, oh, no, it's a real documentary show. And we'd love to help you put a new face on the Klan. And they'd say whatever. But they do negotiate, like, you know, no guns. We can't have guns there and around our talent or whatever.

But they didn't honor that. Wow. I'm sure there's also part of you guys who are like, I can't believe they lied to us. And really, you're lying to them the whole time. Just when you think you trust somebody. I trusted you Klansmen. How dare you? Yeah, but also what is that?

Whoever his publicist is, do they really think the media is going to be kind to the Ku Klux Klan? Really? Do you think they're going to help them in any way? Yeah. No. So was that the most insane thing you did on that show, probably?

Anything else stand out? What other things stand out? I remember doing the, I just enjoyed the spring break episode where we went. Is that where he raps? Zach Galvin? Yeah, Zach has a rap that actually played on a little station there. Oh, wow. Yeah.

That's awesome. What was the name of his rap i can't remember no it was terrible i just remember he had the long riff where he does the talking on the phone and he's just so drawn out yeah and like i think he gets an answering machine at one point it's so funny yeah but it was funny to be in the car and they were actually playing it to the spring breakers on a local radio station. That's great. But I just remember being on the beach and talking to the kids about safe sex and responsible alcohol. And then at the end of it, we had what was called a sausage party

where Miles' character cooked all these brats and stuff, and there was only dudes there that we invited. So we were having a grilled sausage party with all these dudes and so it was like just not trying to never not laugh because we would always zach especially and it would always make me laugh and miles too so you'd have to like turn away so we would be in the middle of like this absurd reality where these like jockey dudes are eating free sausage. And Miles is like, would you like another sausage?

This is a great sausage party. And you would just have to walk away because you'd be cracking up. His character was so great, just the nerdy guy, like fanny pack. He just played right into it so well. He did stand-up. That was one of my other favorite moments when Marty Shonson did stand-up. Yeah, that was a was but yeah it was a lot of time on the road and yeah really fun really fun good crew yeah we love that show andrea and as well um so and then the the ucb show you said that was three seasons yeah that was uh i love

that too sorry i'm just gonna keep just washing your balls the whole the whole time the whole time this has already turned into the Chris Farley show. Yeah. Remember that? It was awesome. Hangover. Remember when you were in UCB? Well, I realized that we moved to New York the year that Derek Jeter started.

Oh. His rookie year was when UCB moved to New York. So it was kind of weird when I was reading up on him yesterday. I was like, I think that's when we landed in New York. Wow. 22 years ago. Are you serious? 96, yeah. Whoa.

Jeter played 22 years. Holy shit. Yeah. It's crazy. 22 years. I know. Wow. Yeah, it's crazy that UCB's been around that long.

Or is that 22? Maybe it's not 22. 96 to now. 18? That would be 18. 18 years.'d be 18 18 years excuse me 18 years ago we'll edit that out yeah well no one will know yeah no one will know my math uh how long and then uh the del close marathon is it going have you been i went not this past year but the year before did you perform no no i was supposed to but the troupe that i was going to perform

with bailed out at the last minute, which was a bummer. But I still went to a bunch of shows, and I went and saw Gravidwater, which I loved. Oh, at the movie theater space? Yeah. I did that one, maybe. You were great. It was so funny. It was...

Cross? David Cross did it? Yeah, David Cross. Oh, God, a bunch of people. Lutz from 30 Rock. I forget his name, but he was so Lutz John Lutz yeah yeah it was uh so the format is it's two people on stage and one person is reading a part from like a play or something right and then there's an improviser has no idea what the other person's saying and

the person reading the play just keeps reading it and it apropos of like nothing whatever you say they still have to go with the play and uh the scene that matt was in a woman comes in and she's like i i talked to marty yesterday and you were just reading like a comic book you go cool marty or bullshit marty and you don't even look up you're still looking in your like comic book or magazine she goes we were at the food market or something like that you go oh bullshit marty and it was so fun like it gave so much insight into your relationship that's a great exercise by the way i love that that show never fails that's that's one of my favorite things to do the guys who stephen ruddy runs that but i love that exercise it's so fun because when you're the i've never done the acting side, but the improvising side, you can just say whatever you want.

You can try to make them laugh. You can just deny every single thing they say. But they have to keep going. They have to keep the scene going. And that's what's really, like if, I was just describing it to Tim Simons from our show because he should do it. He's a very funny improviser. I was like, you know, if you're a shakespeare scene and you come out and you say tybalt has come to the door and you could say fuck you we're not english get the fuck out of

here then that person has to go and continue their english accent and continue their shakespearean scene yeah you just treat them like they're crazy would you knock it off you've been to england once man but it's really yeah yeah exactly and it's really fun yeah i think it's great i think it in lutz's scene he was just sitting in a chair and the other guy was like taxi and he was like oh shit i'm in a car like he had to mind real quick and like roll down the window and all that oh it was great yeah yeah so i only went that i couldn't go last year but it was a lot of fun when i went a lot of really good shows two-man movie was really good with Anthony Kamenick and Neil Casey. That show is so good.

Yeah. Love those guys. They're great. Yeah. And then saw, it was Nick Kroll and Friends, which is a lot of fun because he came out and he's like, I just have a bunch of people coming through and I really don't know what it's going to be. And that's pretty much what it was. It was like Mike Birbiglia showed up and told a story.

Brian Husky came out and did like one-man play kind of thing. It was really cool. Yeah. It was so cool. No, that's a big... We've done that 16 years now. That's a big event. It's huge.

Yeah, we wanted to see you guys because you guys do the original four. Yeah. Do a show, right? Or do ASCAT. We do ASCAT at the beginning and the end of it. Yeah. And how is that? That has to be insane.

It's like lines around the block. Yeah, but it's... People are all about it. It. And how is that? That has to be insane. Like, it's like lines around the block. Just people are all about it. It's crazy. It's a big, I think this year was like seven stages and 72 hours of programming. Yeah. You know, it's like a concert. You get a wristband for $35 and you can see pretty much every show except for certain shows at the premier venues.

Yeah. I highly recommend it if you haven't been fun yeah how crazy is it to go from where you were to be at that level like i hear stories when you guys went to new york you guys were in like uh were you in like an upstairs but like on top of another theater and there's like really rickety stairs and i've heard andy richter talk about he's like it was just borderline dangerous yeah i can't believe we've actually performed in there yeah and now you're selling out like three days in a row and yeah you're killing it all right matt you're killing it now the the funny new york stuff was literally we just basically had like a theater troupe we had a trunk of props

and that was everything and then ian was the banker for our group and he would keep all the money in his wallet and so if we ever had to buy a prop we'd have to go to ian and he would write it down on his notepad and put it back in his wallet and now we have like four theaters we have two in new york and we're opening our second one in la really so it's crazy it's uh a huge meteoric uhcent, but it's fun. No, go ahead. Was there a moment where you realized it kind of changed, where it went from this small thing to where it became more of this,

like, it's such a big brand. When do you think it kind of crossed over to being this pretty iconic thing to this generation of alt-comedy and comedy in general? I guess my first thought on that would be like I guess as soon as people who we trained started breaking like Paul Scheer Rob Hubel or at Helms spent a little time with us or mm-hmm you know Andy Daly Riggle Donald Glover came through like when people Aziz spent some time with us. When those people, Aubrey. Rob Corddry.

Corddry. Hubel. Hubel. When those people started breaking and they would say in an interview, like, oh, yeah, I came out of UCB or go check out a show at UCB. Then it permeated the country. Then it came to all corners of, or at least people who care about comedy. But before that, I think it was just people in L.A. and New York

and maybe Chicago because we came out of Chicago that were aware of the scene that was happening. So I think that helped the crossover. And I don't know, maybe opening on both coasts kind of made it more sort of monumental because then people from New York could have a place to land in L.A. So there was like this feeder system in a way to keep going. And I don't know.

And occasionally like a video will hit like 3 million. Somebody will make a UCB comedy video and then it's like everywhere. So there's things like that that happen. But I don't know what moment made me think like, oh, this is like a huge deal. What do you think of the state of comedy now oh my god that's a terrible question the state of comedy cut that out what is the state of comedy um because especially ucb's been around for you know two decades now and just how it's changed you think that it's I think comedy is definitely bigger now, but do you think it's

better or worse or do you like the direction it's going in? I'm sorry that's the nerdiest, non-funniest question. No, it's a good question actually. And the direction of this podcast. What do you think? I didn't mean to turn this into a Charlie Rose interview. It's okay.

That's okay. People might care about this. Where do your ideas come from? That's a terrible question. That's okay. People might care about this answer. Where do your ideas come from? Oh, that's a terrible question. That's another terrible question. What's funny to you? What is the state of... I think it'd be a fuddy-duddy for anybody to say,

like, oh, the state of comedy is terrible. Like, I feel like every generation has to do things that speak to their peers. So if I don't understand it, it doesn't mean that it's not funny it's just that i'm sort of timed out of what's uh of interest to younger people but the sort of critiques i would give of things that might be trends are like because uh obviously you can do a podcast and like i have a podcast anybody can do a podcast or as evidenced by this podcast yeah but i have one

too like yeah i'm not a great podcaster and i have one and uh or like a youtube channel or you can make videos i think one of the cautionary things is that people don't get time in front of an audience so they don't get chops anymore they they get a youtube channel where they do video diaries and then all of a sudden they're making, and then all of a sudden they're making money, and then all of a sudden they get to make a pilot or something. And meanwhile, they've sort of circumvented the real training, which is like getting in front of an audience, earning their chops, working the boards. And so I think that's one of the things that I would caution people against is like, yes, you can achieve success. And probably much faster if you know how to edit and you know how to write you know how to post things you will probably jump the line but you

also need to have that time in front of people as you guys know you guys do that i feel that way with stand-up sometimes like you see these people that either make a youtube video or you know they are hit on twitter yes definitely twitter but definitely Twitter. But they don't know the performance aspect of it. Yes. It might be great for that break, and it might get you through the door, but how long can you stay in the room? Yeah.

Yeah, I definitely feel that way. Yeah, you can't avoid that skill. You have to have that skill. I was asking Patton about stand-up the other night, my good friend Patton Oswalt. Oh, ours too. And friend of your show. No, friend of the show no friend of the

show pat noswell and he was saying that he always tells people to make sure that they host shows when they start out because that teaches them how to win a room over in the beginning and then how to keep it going after somebody just killed and also how to bring it back if somebody dies and he said that's an invaluable sort of stepping stone or skill that you need to become a consistently funny performer and i think things like that you can only get in you know a real right 3d and 3d experience you can't get on twitter but twitter is a great outlet for stand-ups because it's perfect for jokes i mean if you're a great joke writer so that's a good thing like if you're a great joke writer and you're shy you can just crank out jokes and you'll find a

following like if somebody famous says this guy's hilarious or this gal's hilarious and they pass it on so there are better ways or more ways to be discovered so that's actually quite fortunate for people doing comedy right yeah i definitely understand the hosting thing like i've been doing stand-up almost two years a little more than a year and a half and doing hosting a show is a whole new set of muscles like you can be funny been doing stand-up almost two years a little more than a year and a half and uh doing hosting a show is a whole new set of muscles like you can be funny as a stand-up of being the guy that's like hey we're all having fun right it's like you're hosting a party like have you guys met mike finazzo i love this guy come on mike you know it's also a great experience for like i still think that's the best part of learning stand-up for me was hosting those shows

early on because it lets you uh learn how to dig out of anything it's yeah and it makes everything so much easier later it's when you are in the sweet spot of featuring or you a show has been set up for you you know while headlining it's uh nothing teaches you how to survive better than trying to dig out of a whole of a friday late show and a comedy club hosting or trying to just bring it up to zero. So it's like by the time you are featuring or headlining, it feels like you've been running with weights on and you just took them off. Because you don't have a shield of material protecting you. Do you know what I mean?

You have to really deal with what the room's feeling or what the situation is. Because I do ASCAP occasionally in L.A. what the room's feeling or what's really yeah what the situation is and so because i do ask cat occasionally in la and i usually do it with besser uh which i enjoy because he's really good at busting chops and just taking charge of the room but when he's not there i have to like step up and be the host of the evening and it's a challenge but it's good for me because i've sort of learned to sort of, because I like scene work. I like collaborative stuff. I did stand-up for like a year and a half or two. And I had mixed highs and lows, and I just couldn't take it.

So I wasn't really good at it. Did you host while you did stand-up? Did I host? Yeah, I probably hosted. But I did like Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana. And the first early boom, maybe like early 90s, where anybody who had 15 minutes could make $200 at a Holiday Inn in Indiana. Because everybody was like, oh, stand-up's great. So I kind of coasted on that wave.

But I wasn't really that good. So I got out of it quickly. But I did host and I headlined a couple times way before I was ready and just bit hard. Really? Yeah. Depressingly hard. And you have to be up there for 45 minutes 45 minutes yeah and so you just stuck it out just kind of like the classic kind of like all right

this sucks but i need to get my paycheck i'll be here until 45 minutes and one second yeah and i'm out of here yeah sometimes i quit early and people got mad uh-huh uh but yeah i tried to do my best whenever i could but it was tough and then you're like i'm tired of writing stuff how about improv well i like the commiserating of or there's the i don't know what it is about improv i just like it better uh i'm probably better at it and there's some safety and like you can have a half an idea and then somebody on the back line can come out and like make it beautiful or make it funny and you're like oh i knew i had something but i didn't quite know how to execute it and then lo and behold your scene partner does it yeah so there's like that sort of shared responsibility

uh stand-up is just completely solo and very scary and very difficult there are times that you know i'm driving home three hours from like a one one nighter and I just bombed and I wish I had somebody else in the car to be like, can you believe that shit? And yeah, sometimes I, yeah, that's, uh, the improv team aspect sounds nice just to have other people around you that understand what you're going through. Yeah. Especially when you're doing like a festival out of town or something like it's this group mentality, like, all right, we're going to show Chicago what Baltimore can do, you know, or you're like, we're going to show Chicago what Baltimore can do. Or you're like, we're going to show them what Baltimore can do next year. Yeah.

But no, I love that aspect, too. It's definitely nice to have that community, too. And when you're improvising with other people, it's almost like you're jamming or speaking another language. You know what I mean? It's like that fun thing where you guys know the rules. You can operate within that and communicate in a way where you're not fully communicating what's going on. Yeah. And I love that. There's something about improv about improv too where you sort of stumble into the

jokes yeah and you just sort of have faith if i play it real uh we'll find some funny stuff where a stand-up you have to be like very calculated and know where the jokes are and you have to deliver the jokes and you have to know that you have jokes before you get out there whereas an improv i always said just have faith that like uh we'll find something funny there's enough of us and then we're all pretty funny yeah something's gonna happen yeah um have you ever done this format i think i came up with it which i would like to think that i did all right uh it's mixing uh stand up and improv so we'll have a stand-up go up and do eight to ten minutes or so, just of their normal act. And then we'll use that as an input for like 20 minutes of scenes.

That's ass cat. Is that ass cat? Well, it's like, well, without like monologues, I guess. I guess it's like more just straight up stand-up. Well, we prefer, I prefer not to do stand-up. Yeah. I prefer, usually when we do long form improv, there's a pool of information at the top. It could be a monologue.

It could be an interview with an audience member. It could be you could go to somebody's Facebook page and just sort of like pull facts from that. And that's your information pool. And then from that, you do scenes. But what's challenging about following stand-up is that material is so tightly woven generally that they've sort of maxed out every comedic concept in that material. So if you do something with something that's already been funny, you're not going to be as funny as the person who wrote it. I find that more challenging.

Interesting. We've had fun with it where we kind of take it to the next level, kind of doing the A to C kind of thing. If they're talking about fighting with their girlfriend in one thing, we'll see the day after that fight or something like that. Okay. Bringing back the game of that joke kind of thing. Your show is really cool because I remember one time I did it

and I told a story about, I don't know if I should say this on the thing, but I told a story on stage about opening up for Screech from Saved by the Bell. Got it. Doing a comedy show. And the riff they came up with had nothing really to do with my story, but it was loosely based on Saved by the Bell. And I just thought there was nothing funnier than just taking this very loose idea or concept. It was almost like a third generation cousin of the bit I had.

Yeah. So it's just kind of cool to see that different perspective of it and just to see what how my idea might have triggered something they did and sure yeah so it's been fun to do that because i've seen like like stand-up and improv it's it's hard to mesh the two i think sometimes so and we'll do the show where the stand-up doesn't have a mic either so i think that's fun for the audience so there's not really like a subconscious difference of like the stand-up has a mic and he's louder and then cut to like four or five people trying to yell without microphones and be funny well i would say ask cat's a cousin of that i

don't think we we discourage people from doing material right that would be the difference yeah yeah yeah so didn't mean to say that i stole ask no we took ask cat from other forms too there's no like uh there's nothing new in long form really yeah there is a i'm sorry if uh i i vaguely remember a few years ago somebody sent me the link but how you're saying the interview with the audience member there was the youtube video that went viral of the guy who kind of told this i think matt besser is actually in the in the troops it's the main group about the guy who's told the story about kind of date raping a girl. I wasn't there that night.

It was the creepiest, most uncomfortable thing I've ever seen. I heard about that. Yeah. So I, yeah, I, I think the video cuts off before the group starts,

but I can't imagine how. Yeah. I wasn't there that night. That was during the Dell marathon several years ago and it was terribly bad and i think a misguided person thought it was comedy and then the more he talked it was like no dude that's that's date rape right that's fucked up jesus christ it's just it's and you could tell like everybody in the group is just going from like okay all right this is good and then this is just makes me feel dirty yeah oh that's where

that story ends hey yeah hey so i guess that's part of the you know the chance you take with that show is i i imagine it's like when you have the best improvisers in the world it's like they're gonna find a way that makes it funny but there's always that wild card towards like you are well i feel like i've discovered learned see that coming. Like there are times where we interview the audience and then someone starts to talk about childhood or father, mother things. And you're like, okay, that's enough. You can just kind of smell it coming and you know that'll just bum the room out. Right. So you can also do that.

Like in retrospect, had they seen that coming, they would say, okay, thank you. Let's get another scene suggestion. It's like doing crowd work with an audience. Yeah, because ultimately it is entertainment, and it's not like a radio show where you can fix people, you know, Dr. Drew or something. Right. What are some of the worst improv shows you've done?

Anything else come to mind where it's just like you guys are with a touring company and you're in some terrible town or trying to think the one of the worst shows i ever did was the first one of the first improv shows was at a bar in chicago and bar brav yeah and we just started uh performing as a group and somebody got a night at a bar the guy wanted to make uh there was a guy who owned a bar who wanted to make a comedy night happen. So his theme was called Asshole Night.

That's a great night. And then he was walking around with a toilet seat around his neck, the owner of the bar. And then we were performing basically on an elevated landing, which was the entrance. So you would be doing scenes and then people would walk into the bar through your scene, which was the entrance. So you would be doing scenes, and then people would walk into the bar through your scene to get into the bar.

Wow. It was a nightmare. So that was like one of the worst gigs. Wow. We've done shows, but I also think of like the free reign we had when we did Touring Company with Second City. It was me and Ian and Horatio, and we used to like, we would in michigan or ohio and yeah we would always come up with a black we would go backstage and see whatever equipment they had

and we would say oh we need to use your scissor lift one of those like big and we would just do these prolonged blackouts where raj would like raise me up to the ceiling with no payoff and we would just take way too much time so that was kind of an intentionally bad show yeah it's like and you guys wrote that it needs a scissor lift like yes we do yeah then you have it we do this all the time last we just did it last night i don't know what the problem is i read in uh tina faye's book that uh her and amy poehler and uh rachel dratch when they were doing the touring company they would do the same thing because you were supposed to just do sanctioned

sketches right like it was it was a big no-no to be doing new shit on the road. Yes. But they said that's what made it fun. Like you're getting maybe like 25 bucks for the show or something like that. And you're like, well, let's just mess around. Yeah, that's exactly right. And you were with really funny people. Yeah.

It usually worked out. Sometimes it was self-indulgent, but we usually delivered, you know. Uh-huh. Yeah. Was that huge, getting in the touring company? That was. That was, like, the last time I had to have a real job. When I got hired for the touring company, at the time I was working for my dad.

He had a heavy machinery business in Chicago, like, moving it. And I knew the minute I got that job, I would never go back to, like, a real job. So that was, like, the monumental moment of like that's so cool i can actually get paid to do comedy i'm never gonna go back and i made a point of never going back wow how old were you 26 maybe wow 27 that's huge that's that's the dream is to get yeah get paid to do comedy like i would in my mind i would have toured forever for the rest of my life as long as I was doing comedy. Yeah. So as long as you're getting paid to do something you enjoy. Yes.

And were you making a decent amount of money? You were made enough. They paid you just enough to keep you at slave wages. But you got free meals here. Right. And there'd be a corporate gig once in a while. Yeah. And if you understudied main stage, you got to bump and pay.

Right. A little bit of per diem. You won't die. No. So once in a while. Yeah. If you understudy main stage, you got to bump and pay. Right. A little bit of per diem. You won't die. No. So here's enough money to keep you barely alive and performing. Yeah. Like Chicago, unlike New York and LA, you don't need as much money. And maybe the same with Baltimore.

You can get by with less money. Yeah. Which I think is very good for fostering the arts. Wow. So 26. So then when does UCB come together out of that? UCB started before that. Oh, okay.

We started in the early 90s, me and Besser and Ian, doing shows at a place called The Roxy and a place called Café Voltaire in Horatio and Adam McKay. And then for the next five or six years there would be alternating cast but we all kind of came in and out and then in 96 four of us moved to New York

Wow Was there anybody because you started out with these amazing people like the ground floor essentially was there anybody to where you were like with these amazing people, like the ground floor essentially. Was there anybody to where you were like, that guy's got it. Like there's no way that guy won't be famous. Well, there's a lot of them that didn't end up becoming famous. There was a guy named, I forget who he was at Second City, but I never heard from him again.

But he was one of the first guys, I'm like, oh, that guy's going to be on television in a second. And I never saw him again. But there's people like mckay adam mckay who was just a force and he was just so like witty and smart and fast he kind of knew like oh that guy's different and unique uh so yeah i guess there's a few that like you see and you're like, oh, and teaching when I taught in New York, I would see people like Andy Daly or, you know, Shearer, Hubel, those guys. And you're like, oh, you get it right away. Like, oh, yeah, I don't know if you'll be famous. Like that's different, but you're definitely going to work. You're definitely going to succeed in some way, you know.

Right. Was being like, quoteunquote famous even in your mind as a as a possibility or was it more like let's just keep progressing and i would still like to just get paid to do the things that i enjoy i think in the beginning it was more insular like especially with ucb it was like our little group is going to get a sketch show and we're gonna we're gonna do something different and we're're going to reinvigorate what we think is good sketch. Because we were big fans of Kids in the Hall, or I was, and Python. And we were pretty well schooled in SNL as well.

And so we wanted to do something that had a little different take. So I think it was more like a band mentality, not like we're're gonna get a number one hit necessarily we wanted to be on tv so yeah we wanted fame in that way but or distribution certainly but i think more the onus was a little more uh ambitious pretentious and uh creative right to do something the four of us that nobody else could do. Right, right, right. And then, so where does directing come into that along the way? I directed plays in Chicago, like little. I came out of a group called the Annoyance Theater, which is still around.

And we would do these plays where you would just improvise for like eight weeks and try different characters. And you would match up with other people in the you would get a cast of eight people and every three nights a week you would just get together and start improvising and the director would go oh let's do a scene with that character and that character and lo and behold the sort of storyline would develop and maybe the storyline for the like a love story like oh these it'd be great if these two could fall in love and then then you sort of like rehearse and practice and stumble through what, well, if this is a scene,

then they have to break up at some point and then they have to come together again. Like, then you try those scenes and you basically, and then a lot of them were musical, so you'd get a piano player in there and you'd write songs. And so through that process with a guy named Mick Napier and a guy named Ben Zook, I learned how to direct that style, if you will. Very specific to improv.

And so I've always been attracted to evolving material or capturing improv. And then, I don't know, four or five years ago, I wrote a movie with a buddy of mine, Josh. High Road. High Road. High Road. Love the movie. Thank you very much. Yeah, very good. And we realized that nobody was going to give us $3 million to make it.

$3 million. You know what I mean? Or whatever it cost. It probably was $3 million. Could have made it for $2 million. Yeah. So I was just like, fuck it. Let's just make it ourselves.

And so we took that script and just made it an outline. We just took the poignant moments and the character arcs and the emotional journey of everybody in the story. And then we made it like a 15-page outline. And then we had the script. And I rehearsed the actor. I got great cast because all my friends are fairly successful or fairly talented.

So I got really funny people. And we just spent like a week or two rehearsing, introducing characters, and improvising backstory like things that sort of set the tone of the world and the history of the world so like zach woods is in it and james pumphrey and matt jones and we and they're in a band a fictional band in the movie so we did a lot of scenes of band rehearsal which are never going to be in the movie. And they talked about their albums. They talked about how they met. So when you actually start filming, there's a certain bedrock of like, oh, we know each other. I know how we know each other. So when you're improvising, it's sort of like a shared.

Right. The foundation. Yeah, the foundation is there. And that's what the rehearsal is for. And then on the day, you could pull jokes from the script. Like, okay, try this line. Or you could write new jokes. But essentially, you're improvising the beats of that scene.

And then just from my experience, I always felt that it's not about, in successive takes, creating wackier jokes or crazier jokes. If you have it, like if you nail it in the wide, say you do seven repetitions of that wide the major scene and like that's really funny when we go in for coverage you don't have to give me much more if you want to you can but it's more about like recreating what we nailed in that wide right and i think that's kind of one of the tricks i learned in improv and then i'm just finishing the second one that i wrote with a guy brian husky oh yeah yeah he's great yeah so funny he's another guy just pops up yeah. He's great. He's so funny. He's another guy that just pops up in everything. Yeah, he's great.

You're like, oh, good. I'm glad he's in this. Yeah, he's great. You never see Brian Husky and you're like, damn it. I wish he wasn't in this. No, he's a good friend. And we wrote a little story about a hypnotherapist. Yeah.

So it's basically a portrait of a happy hypnotherapist in LA. And we shot that last summer. And I'm just finishing it now. Oh, very cool. Yeah. And he's a reporter for the Washington Post on Veep, right? Yes, he is. Very good.

He plays Leon West. Yeah. Yeah. He has a nice... It's funny to see him have an edge to him. Yeah. He's the butcher of the beltway. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, that's cool, man. I'm excited to see that. Yeah. God, I forgot what I was going to ask next. Mike, take over.

With jumping in from improv in your troupe and to just acting, how did the relationship with Todd Phillips start? I think truly at an audition. He's got a crush on you. Just admit it. He loves you. Because you popped up in four movies?

Road Trip, Old School, Starsky, Hangover, Scoundrels. Five. Damn. I think it was a slight infatuation or something. I did one audition. He liked me. We went down to Georgia to shoot. I had one scene in road trip and i

improvised a little bit and he likes improv and he loved it and then he just sort of like a like a stray dog he just took me in he said i'm gonna i'm gonna put you in every movie for a while i'm gonna groom you up real nice yeah yeah so he was very uh he's he was awesome to me yeah completely awesome to me it seems like making great comedy movies, you're definitely one of the group of guys to where directors and writers go to when it's like alright we need funny guys

let's get Matt Walsh, let's get Dr. Ken it seems like it's just five or six guys that just pop up in everything either really big parts or even if it's just like just a scene stealing, you know, a few lines. Um,

I think that builds on itself. Like anything, if you're, you know, if you're Brian Cranston and someone sees you in breaking bad, then they're like, I want to work with Brian Cranston. So if you get to be in a funny movie,

if you get to be the doctor in the hangover, then people see that movie and they're making a movie. They're like, I want that work with Bryan Cranston. So if you get to be in a funny movie, if you get to be the doctor in The Hangover, then people see that movie and they're making a movie. They're like, I want that guy who was... Yeah, get the doctor. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's like anything. Once you get in something,

if you break into anything, or if they see your stand-up special, it's like, that's the guy. Or even live, obviously. Yeah, on a local level. I was going to say that works. I'm like, oh yeah, who's that guy that has the bit about the bird or whatever? I want him. They may not know your name. Regardless of the character obviously. Yeah, on a local level. I was going to say that works. I'm like, oh, yeah, who's that guy that has the bit about the bird or whatever?

Like, I want him. They may not know your name. Regardless of the character, even. Yeah. They just like you or they think you're funny and it might not totally fit to what the character is, but they just want to kind of meet you and work with you. Yeah, I think that's a lot of it, too. Just don't be an asshole as well.

Like, if you're a cool person to hang out with, they're going to be more apt to invite you to do stuff. That's a big, big lesson, yes. Yeah. Work seems to breed more work. now sure yeah yeah um and speaking of i wanted to ask you too uh it seemed like the ucb guys got in pretty early on the ground floor of conan was that was that through andy richter yes like that that was always fun to see like if there was like an audience bit or something like that you guys would pop up yeah how cool was that that kept us uh from poverty when we landed in new york i knew andy we all knew andy but i knew i've known andy for many years he's a good friend and he you know became successful and he did conan and when we ended up moving to new york he would come and do ass cat

with us and he introduced us to conan and yeah a lot of the writers were chicago dudes like brian mccann and brian stack and glazer stack yeah so there was a whole like chicago mafia right uh set up at conan and then they would always need day players and that was huge you know if you made like you could make like 800 in a day just to do like a three minute bid or something and that was huge money for us and you you're on national TV. You could live a week on that, you know? Right. Yeah. Right. So it was a wonderful opportunity for us, and that for the first couple years kept us all afloat so we didn't have to have other jobs. That's so cool.

Yeah, it was really a big break for us. Yeah, because you, did you do the Brady Bunch live with Andy? I did the Brady Bunch in Chicago, where it started at the Annoyance, and then I did a couple guest spots in New, where it started at the Annoyance. And then I did a couple guest spots in New York when it was at the Village Gate. And then I spent a summer in LA at the Westwood Playhouse doing it. So I did some runs inside the... But Andy played the dad.

Right. And I played usually characters that came in for the episode. Very cool. Yeah. I wanted to ask you about the chicago improv festival this past year okay uh i saw you guys at like the special show like the saturday night midnight show you were there yeah oh wow yeah i was uh yeah my group performed this past year it's the first time i'd been to chicago it was it was so fun and great city isn't it yeah

it was so cool it was like the fun part too was it was maybe like 52 degrees and everybody's like oh it's warm let's all eat outside yeah i'm like it's a little brisk it's a little brisk shorts but yeah yeah exactly yeah we went to this outside uh taco place in uh wicker park which i thought was an actual park before we got there it's like oh no it's just a part of town okay but yeah it was like hundreds of people just like man break out the sunscreen and then we found out you guys like chicago had like 90 feet of snow or something like that total chicago's very eager to celebrate spring yeah we yes they are we had a couple friends that moved out there and we hooked up with them while we were out there and uh i think it was like negative 50 or something insane

one day and uh my friend's like i was going to work and i got in my car and i just started crying that's how cold it was i just cried it's like oh my god that's always the coldest moment is when you're in your car and it doesn't warm up for like 25 minutes yeah just like sitting in a refrigerator right or a freezer yeah right yeah uh and so you grew up in chicago i came out of chicago yeah so you were used to that? Yeah. Yeah. I'm not as used to it now after living in LA for 10 years. Wow. And Maryland's not too bad.

No. We got some seasons. January, February is a little brutal. Yeah. Not terrible like Chicago, but a little rough. Right. But yeah. Oh, and so the Chicago Improv Festival, the show that you guys did, I think it was like

a midnight thing. Yeah. And I have to ask you, because I went with my friends, and we that you guys did i think it was like a midnight thing yeah and uh i have i have to ask you because i went with my friends we thought you guys were going to do a show did you guys think you were going to do a show no we were asked last minute to do a special show at midnight and so it was like performers only and that type of thing yeah so we could do whatever we want i didn't i didn't even know if people had to pay for it. It was sort of very informal. We paid 20 bucks.

Yeah. And so we just did what we always do, which is like interact with the audience and then improvise with the audience. That's sort of our fourth wall style. Yeah. It was funny because it was like they were probably up there for like an hour, Mike, and just kind of like messing around. They're like, they're going to break into scenes any minute. And then it was like, good night. We're like, oh, okay.

I don't know where that expectation came from. If it was from the program or if it was from. I think you guys probably agreed to do something and then it was sold probably differently. Because it was like a night with UCB or something. It was something like that. But it was still really cool. It was like, holy shit, it's Horatio Sanz. And there was Anthony Atamanek was up there,

and you guys were messing around. So that was good. It was fun, but we were like, oh, man, we wanted to see them improvise. Like traditional, quiet teamwork. So we were all sitting there, and then a guy goes over to the loudspeaker. He's like, they're done.

We're like, no, they're not. He's like, no, it's seriously over. I also think kind of truthfully, we could do that, but it's not that interesting to us sort of in a way like yeah i think there's something cool about engaging the audience and finding themes and patterns with information that people put on stage i mean i'm i guess i'm disappointed if people were bummed out that they didn't yeah they had an expectation i think we all had fun but we were just like oh man we wanted to see them improvise yeah i think horatio sands at one point was on the phone and then he left like okay all right like horatio's like oh you have pot or we can hook up okay i'll see you just thought it was a running bit yeah pay off at some point yeah

exactly like he'll be back and then the other guy over the loudspeaker is like no they're done get out of here like oh okay okay. We will. All right. But yeah, it was still a lot of fun. But I was like, oh, I wanted to see them improvise. Because we saw TJ and Dave the night before. And they were amazing. That's the first time I ever saw them. They're great.

And yeah, Chicago was just cool all around. It's such a supportive town for improv, which is really fun to go from Baltimore, where it's like, we have a pretty good, decent scene. And then after we did our show in Chicago, people are like, thank you. Thank you for coming. Yeah. Thank you for coming. Are you kidding?

Yeah. It's so weird to have after you improvise, people are like, thanks. No, thank you. No, there's a real thriving improv culture in Chicago. It's huge. Yeah. It's huge. Yeah.

Have you been to any shows around here? Have you dipped in anything? In Baltimore? I'm sorry to say I don't see... I haven't seen anything live, whether straight theater or comedy. I apologize. Oh, no, no, no. I was just curious. There's a movie theater in my basement. I live down by Harbor East, so I just see a movie

whenever I have free time. That's a great theater. Yeah, Harbor East is so nice. It looks like a movie set for people. Look like look at all these beautiful people in the night show yeah exactly like walsh is coming around the corner go go go go go yeah yeah and it ends there's just a blue scrim you walk into a wall it's all clouds um yeah no i figure you're probably exhausted too like you're shooting and all that stuff and you're around comedy all the time. Not like, yeah, let me go check out the amateurs, see how that's going. Yeah, I guess, I mean, I try to see stuff when I'm home, but the same thing at home.

Like, I have three kids, so if I have a night off, I'll just chill with the family. Right. So I don't get out as much as I should in L.A. Yeah. But speaking of the three kids, I saw you on Getting Doug with High. Yes. It was so funny. I loved it.

When you got home, was it your wife that was like, why did you do that? No, it was me. Okay. I heard you on, I think it was Doug Loves Movie. Doug Loves Movie after that

where you talked about taking it down. Yes. I had to be redacted. Yes. That's awesome. It's more about having,. I didn't see the original. It had to be redacted. Yes. It's more about having... I don't care about weed. I still smoke pot occasionally. It should be legal.

It would be great for the economy. It would fund schools. It's less harmful than alcohol. I have no hang-ups about weed once all my friends get high. But it was more about like, oh, I'm a dad, and somebody's kids that

were having a play date with are going to see that or what if those kids see it so it was more about like that right anything else which is basically what i said in my little video yeah yeah it's funny yeah now if you go to watch your episode you're like hey sorry yeah well wait till they hear about the anti-clan propaganda on this podcast you talked about. They're not going to want you to be on a play date anytime soon. Wait, I didn't promote the Klan. We made fun of the Klan. Oh, exactly. You never know if they're going to be a fan of the Klan.

Oh, I hope my kids aren't playing with fans of the Klan. I hope they don't play with those kids. We played Ghost all afternoon, Dad. It was so fun. We burned these two sticks that were tied together. was a lot of fun it was so fun uh well thanks for sitting down with us man this was fun this was so cool uh nice to dial into baltimore yeah man i appreciate it uh anything you want to promote at the bear down podcast yes dot com and keep an eye out for a movie called a better you. A Better You. How are the Bears going to do this season?

Bears are going to do... My initial prediction was 9-7, so I'll stick with that. 9-7? I think they'll squeak into the playoffs. How are the Ravens going to do? It's tough. I don't know. I think we'll do alright. Another 2-1. Yeah. The Bengals are looking pretty decent,

but towards the end they always kind of fall apart yeah the playoffs so i'm just hoping we do better than last year we had a bit of a super bowl hangover i think yeah our team was depleted but that's how it goes you know like once you get that ring people can you pay me 30 million dollars no i'm gonna go to the doll flack i'll get all the money too yeah we trade away bolden i was like how do you trade away bolden yeah but we have steve smith now which is he's good he's great so he's pretty scrappy too but bolden he's the man he was a beast yeah he just bounced back from the ray rice stuff too the last two games they've looked really really good yeah that's a huge deal for a team to go through that's like a

national story obviously yeah it just keeps getting worse every week i blame you guys for ray rice i mean you guys created Ray Rice. Yeah, well, me and Mike personally. We're like, hey, Ray, don't take any shit from her, all right? Okay? They don't have cameras in elevators. That's on us, and I apologize. I'm sorry, Matt.

No, that is a huge, that's crazy. Oh, it's completely insane. It was clearly a cover-up. Did you hear about Bill Simmons? That's ridiculous. Did you hear about that? Yeah that yeah they uh suspended him yeah because he said goodell is a liar because espn has contracts with the nfl right so they can't alienate that relationship but that was also after they had the outside the lines which basically talks about how roger goodell is a liar on espn like they made this whole documentary about it they're doing nothing but

covering it and he's been in a negative light this whole time. But that as soon as he actually said the words you're a liar, that's when they got kind of pissy about it. I think I was watching that Brian Gumbel, Real Sports or whatever. And they were kind of saying Brian Gumbel.

Brian. That they think somebody from the outside should be brought in to run the NFL. Like get the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, somebody like that to run that organization. But we'll see if Goodell leaves. Yeah.

And see if they'll run that little mom-and-pop nonprofit, the NFL. Did you know that? Yes, I did know that. Isn't that insane? How do you get away with that? Did you know that I've been reading this book called The King of Sports, which is really good. It's about football in America and how the money has changed.

And when they build those skyboxes, those luxury boxes, all that money goes to the home teams. So if the Bengals come to play the Ravens, they split the stands. The tickets, all the stands go 50-50. Interesting. But all the boxes stay in baltimore all that

money for the boxes that's why they build so many boxes oh interesting that interesting that's good in a way yeah right but it's also like money driven in a way that like oh really like yeah i don't know it's just more apparent like they're not necessarily improving like i knew there was more money there but there's so much more money with those. Oh, yeah. They would prefer to have a whole stadium of those. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, instead of like 40 seats for the rankings.

Right, yeah. Instead of thousands and thousands of people, it's just 19 billionaires watching the game. Like, good show. Good show. Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah. When you realize the amount of money that's in it.

And the Goodell made like $30 million last year or something. I think he made $40, somebody said. $40, yeah. More than like any. Yeah, when you realize the amount of money that's in it. And the Goodell made like $30 million last year. I think he made $40, somebody said. $40, yeah. More than like any... Yeah. It's wild. All right. Actually, I'm sorry.

Before we let you go, I know there's a bunch of local improvisers listening. What advice would you give to a young improviser or maybe somebody that's been in the game a couple years wanting to take their level of play to the next step? Josh wants to know how to become a successful improviser is what he's told. Not just me.

You're never going to make a living doing improv. What? You won't. You can make it on TV or films, but doing improv, you won't be able to make a living. You lose so much money doing it, too, because the best part of improv, too, is almost to hang out afterwards with everybody everybody and that's where you spend money on

beers and pizza yep like some people like how much have you made on improv like may in between like classes and then traveling and all that stuff but i love that stuff i think i've actually heard andy richter say that like he got into it because he wanted to hang out with funny people yeah and it's like yeah that is a great way to meet people it It's so cool. Like-minded, hilarious people. Yeah, it is. And those people will make you better. So that's kind of advice is hang out with people that are funnier than you. Get the UCB book.

I wouldn't disagree with that move because it is a very structured way to approach it. And it gives you exercises to practice and things like that. And then I always just say do do it every night. Meaning, find a way to do it. Put up your own shows. Work with other people. But if you're really hungry to do it, find a way to be doing it every night.

Whether you're practicing it or writing it or performing it. That's a... Get your 10,000 hours. Yeah. Malcolm Gladwell. There you go.

Yeah. And be nice. Be nice to people. Yeah. Don't be a dick. Don't be a dick. Well, this has been great, man. Thank you very much. Thanks for sitting down with us, man. Yeah, don't be a dick. Don't be a dick. Well, this has been great, man. Thank you very much.

Thanks for sitting down with us, man. Thank you for not being a dick, Matt Walsh. Thank you guys for not being dicks as well. Yeah, no problem. Thanks, Matt. Cheers. Thanks. Oh yeah