The Doug Stanhope Podcast - Ep. #141: LA book signing with Brian Hennigan

Episode Date: May 23, 2016

Order Doug's book "Digging Up Mother: A Love Story" on Amazon , Barnes & Noble  and at DougStanhope.com  Book Soup in store book signing with Doug Stanhope and Brian Hennigan.Recorded May 20, 2016��at Book Soup in Los Angeles, CA with Doug Stanhope (@dougstanhope), and Brian Hennigan (@MrHennigan). Produced and Edited by Ggreg Chaille (@gregchaille).   LINKS:   Opening song, "Bring Me My Shotgun", by Lightnin' Hopkins. Youtube Clip - here Order Doug's book "Digging Up Mother: A Love Story" on Amazon , Barnes & Noble  and at DougStanhope.comDoug's DVD/CDs are all available at DougStanhope.comSupport the show: http://www.Patreon.com/stanhopepodcast

Hey, this is Shaley. This is the audio from the May 20th book signing over at Book Soup on Sunset in Los Angeles, California. Brian Hennigan and Doug sit down and talk about the book, and then they take some questions from the audience. There was no audience mic, so it was impossible to hear them on the playback of the recording. But Doug does a pretty good job repeating the questions before he answers them. And the ones he doesn't, you can pretty much tell what the question is. So here we go. Hello. All right.

I'm Christina. I'm with Book Soup. And we're delighted to be hosting Scott, Stan, Hope, and Conversation with Ken again, discussing Digging Up Mother, A Love Story. So before we get started, if everyone can silence their cell phones, that would be great. The books are at the front register to purchase, so that's right behind you here. And the signing will take place at the back desk, so that's straight through this corridor and then to the left. We have events like this pretty much every night of the week, so we encourage everyone

to sign up for our email list so you get a sense of what's going on in the store. And about tonight's event. So Brian Hennigan is a British novelist, producer, and director. Hennigan's first novel, Patrick Robertson, A Tale of Adventure, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2000. A comedy producer at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Hennigan established a production and management relationship with Doug.

And Doug Sanhope is a veteran of over 25 years of stand-up comedy and tours extensively in North America and overseas. He's won numerous accolades, including being voted the best show of the entire Edinburgh Festival by the British press on his 2002 UK debut, and has recorded over a dozen comedy specials. Please welcome them both. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.

I'll pay for this book that I'm going to use as a coaster. Yeah. And silence your cell phones because it's not nearly quiet enough in here. Thanks very much, Christina. Thank you. And it's great to be here in what is our favorite LA bookstore. Absolutely number one. Yeah.

We never go anywhere else for our books when we're buying them in person. That was Brian's chair breaking. Yeah. This is slightly unusual. Me and Doug have literally never done this since the whole fucking project started. Done what?

Sit down and talk to each other? Yeah We don't often do that really So Let's go back to I don't have notes I'll have drinks Work out perfectly I hope you've all tooled yourself up with alcohol

Have you? There you go Doug Stanhope fans. This is just as awkward for me as it is for you. Not quite as awkward for me since I'm half cut. I think this goes back to February 2009. That's where the first trace I could find in any of my emails or notes about I think this goes back to February 2009. Right.

That's where the first trace I could find in any of my emails or notes about doing a book. Right. And it was his idea. Who? You. It was your idea to write a book. My mother had just died. Uh-huh.

As her corpse is cooling, Brian is seeing dollar signs. Yeah. Obviously, this was in 2009, so the dollar signs. Obviously, this was in 2009, so the dollar signs weren't that big. But yes, naturally, my mind turned to that area because you've lost something. It's only fair you should gain something. And you thought we should write something

while it's still fresh, while the memories are fresh because I don't retain stuff for very long no correct i had a mother what oh trousers so then um and yeah so the first thing i could actually find was we did we did a 2009 we did a timeline of your life right and. And it was there. It had all the notes. And then there was also a contract stroke agreement or whatever it is between you and your subsequent agent, Mark Gerald at UTA. The lit agent. Yeah.

The guy you met in New York and didn't know who he was. So I had to sit down with Brian and do a timeline of my life which most of which i don't remember and i didn't want to write a book but i went with him as far as we'll make a timeline and you can write up a treatment and then hopefully i won't get a book and it was days of days just going through tubs of pictures and crates and trying to find anything to just you know spring memories of where was i when at what time and by the third or fourth day it was getting very contentious and you go well what happened after you moved from paxton and i go i don't really remember exactly we can't have a whole fucking book if i don't remember i like then don't write a fucking book. But we got it done.

Yeah. But yeah, the interesting thing is, by the way, that was his impersonation of me. It's perfect. Flawless. The interesting thing is that we didn't actually send anything to anyone until 2011.

Oh, did you just find this out yeah you sent it out yeah and furthermore actually find some emails that were sent in between them between us no no between me and because you were an agent and the agent all right because market at UT was was was very ambitious and had had real solve aspirations for what Doug would produce and we were just constantly UT was very ambitious and had real aspirations for what Doug would produce. And we were just constantly fucking disappointing him

by producing nothing. I didn't know any of this. This is April the 1st, 2009. April fools. This is Mark. Me writing to Mark fools! Hey, this is Mark. Me writing to Mark. Hey Mark, just checking in. Nothing to show right now,

about which I'm hugely disappointed. But not disheartened, as it's all explicable. Doug did Stern today, and was originally going to talk about Mother's death. I told him not to, so he went out of his way at a recent porn star poker tournament in Miami to have a threesome with Ginger Lin in order to have something

else to talk about. That's very true. But he did allude to Mother's Death and even Howard and his crew said on air that it was a great story. But they actually said... They said don't tell it because we didn't know about the legal ramifications

at that point. Yeah. And we still don't necessarily. What's your other email? Right, so then it cuts to December. I love that this is printed on the back of a script that you wrote that failed. Hey, hey, hey.

It's not failed yet. Okay. So, this is like December 2009. So, what, 10 months later? No, the first one was 2011, you said. No, no, the first one was April 1st, 2009. Oh, okay. So, that's like eight months later. No, the first one was 2011, you said. No, the first one was April 1st, 2009. Oh, okay. So that's like eight months later. Hi, Mark.

I hope this finds you well. I'm writing to let you know that once again we have nothing to report on the book. But that we will be doing nothing but the book for January and February. I.e. Doug has no shows booked and I'm going down there for the first week to but the book for january and february i.e doug has no shows booked and i'm

going down there for the first week to do the book which is playoffs and super bowl i'm not working on a fucking book during playoffs and then i said something like i assure you we'll have something to show you by mid-march which is obviously bollocks. So that was kind of the... Well, you gave them something at some point. Now I want to know your story. Fuck the crowd. I want to know how you've been cheating me all these years. No, we didn't have anything to give them

because we couldn't actually agree on what it was. We had all these notes and then we sent them eventually in 2011. It was the first time we sent them anything. You sent them? Yeah. Because I know after I turned this into a bit, I'm assuming most of you know that eventually I turned this into a seven-minute bit

on my last comedy special, which is all I gave a shit about, was let's make this funny, stand-up funny. And it was shortly after that that all of a sudden, I think he went to him with another idea for a project and he said,

whatever happened to that old project that you fucked me over for years? Yeah. Like he fucking, where's the book about my mother? Where's the book about my mother? We send it to him and he's like, okay.

And so, yeah, it was a while later. So then we had like six publishers all of a sudden out of the blue wanting to do the book that I forgot we even had a treatment for. Yep. And they sell it to Thank You Decapo Press in the house. Decapo Press is here tonight. And so I cashed the check and I signed the deal. And now I go, ah, fuck, now I got to write a book.

And I saw what Brian had submitted from the timeline of my life completely wrong. Yeah, but that could be completely completely wrong but still based on what you said oh yeah no there was factual information it was just in a jumble yeah and i i said this when we did the book signing at barnes and noble if you ever want a comic to tell a joke at the bar afterwards hey that joke you did on stage tell my friend they'll go no fucking i don't do jokes at the bar if you want to make them do it you start telling your friend the same joke poorly and they will jump in and fix it no this is how it goes and that's what i had to do with brian's treatment i'm like all right now i have a good place to start is making all this factually

correct which got me you know got the the the grease the wheels i mean the question i had would be why why was it you thought you didn't have a book in you or you're so like i don't want to do a book because my memory is such shit right for this book specifically like i don't remember enough of my past and i had to go to so many people from my past and ask questions and fact check and well how do you remember this all right let me call them and see how they remember it to make sure it was it was technically as accurate as that many minds can be. So your whole thing was based on, I don't want to do our book or any book because of memory as opposed to the act of writing a book.

Well, stand-up is so much more immediate gratification, and I'm already in the stand-up world where I know if I write a bit, that's worth money tomorrow night because i'm going to get paid and the audience is going to be satisfied with new material i didn't want to sit down and learn a new art form on spec that takes fucking months or years that might suck you could go to open mic night and suck and know it right away and then just abandon the project. And that incidentally, by the way, the way you've articulated it,

it's pretty much an argument I use when people come to us with all sorts of shitty independent projects and they'll say, oh, we've got this and it's going to take this much time and effort and we can only give this much to Doug and we'll say, okay, well, Doug can go to Pooksville, Indiana tonight with a very good stand-up act

and make this much in two hours. Well, I do very good in Pooksville, Indiana tonight with a very good stand-up act and make this much in two hours. Well, I do very good in Pooksville. Yeah. So when it came to the actual... You signed the contract and we had to fucking... You had to write it. Did you do anything before you started writing?

Did you read a lot of comedy books? I put a lot of shit off. I found a lot of reasons not to start writing it. I read a lot of stand-up comics books during it. I bought a bunch of stand-up comics books. I bought Artie Lange's book. I bought Bert Kreischer's book, which was fantastic. And when I'd hit walls, I'd go and I'd read their stuff.

And, you know, okay, this is motivating. This is inspiring. This doesn't feel labored. And I'd go back to it. I smoked a shitload of cigarettes. And I got the book deal right after I had completed six weeks of quitting smoking. And then all of a sudden, oh, they want to talk to you about publishing this book. There's six publishers you have phone conference calls with.

And I go, I'm going to get a book because the one thing I could not do without smoking is write. I got to a place where I could drink and not smoke. I could even talk to people face to face and not smoke, but write a book. I went, all right, it's done. It's a done deal. I had all the confidence in the world going into these phone meetings.

Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. Did any of the, like that feeling of being at an open mic come back? Like, holy shit, I'm about to fucking expose myself. I'm about to, whatever I write is going to be stuck on a stage somewhere in effect. Did you have those type of? No, that's the great thing in writing. Even when you go, oh, this sucks, this sucks, but let's just get it down in chronological order and go back and fix it.

it down in chronological order and go back and fix it in stand-up when you suck everyone sees your first draft your second draft and they they remember it and they have a cell phone camera out and it's on youtube literally my first three months in comedy someone has a clip they just put on youtube of me sucking atrociously with some weird fake half New York, half Massachusetts accent talking out of the corner of my mouth. That's out there. Yeah. You can't just crumple up those papers and throw them out of the typewriter into the trash.

So you talked before, you know, on the podcast and fucking interviews and elsewhere about the whole concept of the the blotto biography uh and so this was kind of one of those even though it wasn't the one you necessarily wanted to write in the first place but like what what did that process involve when you actually sat down and was like oh shit i need to understand what happened where and so on well i i unloaded my mother was a hoarder so she had crates and crates of shit and paperwork and old notebooks and day at a glance kind of things. And I had all that out. I had old pictures, anything that would jog memories.

I had my brother on speed dial. So, yeah, I wrote it out as best I could chronologically as it went and then tried to fill in the meat afterwards. And then when this whole system sucks, let's try it a different way. I didn't have any system. So I sat for like an insane person, literally losing my mind in a cinder block 12 by 12 shed bunker with a table and ashtray and stacks of shit everywhere and try to make, all right, here's piles from different decades.

Okay, here's all the Christmas cards and shit and letters I could find from the 80s or the Vegas years and this. And I made my own kind of thing that reference stacks. I don't think we could lie in the sense that to bring your mother into it, if your mother had not been a hoarder, then... I could not

have written the book if I didn't have all that source reference. And I'm trying to become a little bit less of an atheist, not in a religious way, but in the that i i like to believe in nonsense like my mother looking down on me laughing her balls off see i told you one day you're gonna need all that shit uh and she would have been right because yeah there was if she hadn't kept so much of that stuff old

homework assignments i mean i know i don't know if i put this in the book but i know i didn't use my credit card on 9-11 because she kept all my credit card bills because at that time when i was on the road she would pay my bills for me when i was away and kept all the fucking credit card bills and i found the not the september uh 2001 and i went well i didn't use it on 9-11 used it the next day for gas and cigarettes but not that day so i had some reverence was there anything okay so was there anything that uh let's let's go to a specific example Of someone or something That you knew you needed to find out about

Like, what's her chops The love of your life that made you want to move to Phoenix Oh, yeah There were a lot of people that I hoped Or they hoped we'd never have to talk to one another again in life. And it was always like one question that I need to know for factual for the book. But it's someone I haven't talked to in 15 years. So you have to go through the whole, hey, how you doing?

What have you been up to? Oh, you have kids. Oh, one of them's retarded. Sorry to hear that. Me, I've been doing this. So just to ask one fucking question, you're on the phone for 45 minutes doing all the niceties. And the one that he's getting at was a girl I moved to Phoenix chasing. And we were together for a while.

chasing and we were together for a while and she left me for the lighting guy from cheap trick and went back to being a fucking crackhead and then a junkie and i i knew she was still alive i'd had a couple of uh weird emails from her over the years and she's still and now she's like a 30 year solid junkie rotted out somewhere up in colorado and uh she's got a 30-year solid junkie, rotted out somewhere up in Colorado. And she's got a kid that's in the prison system. And she's got her husband that's dying of cancer with a murder charge in prison that he'll die before he ever gets out. Everything's shitty about her life, I know. I'm debating. Is it worth even putting it in the book just to get a couple of questions answered? Because I don't want to invite this ball of need back into my life.

And I don't think she's going to answer a star 67 call with a block number. She's probably too paranoid. So I go on and I find her Facebook page and there's her default photo of her all bedraggled faces of meth with her

stupid kid in a football uniform like a proud mom. And that's the small picture and I don't know what you call the big picture in the back. That's the banner pic. The banner pic? 815 by 351.

Johnny Depp. And I'm going, all right, I definitely have to call. And then she tells me how she's working pro bono for the attorney, like doing secretarial kind of work just to pay for her kid's retainer that he's representing. She can't afford the lawyer, so she's working for the lawyer to represent her kid and all this shit. And the doctors can't believe that I've been doing heroin 30 some years and I'm still around. And she's kind of fun, but it's the saddest story and the whole time after I got my questions answered I'm waiting to how do I drop in the fact that I'm somehow now

friends with Johnny Depp who you have as your banner photo and I got it in there. This little salt. Big wound, little salt. Was there anything you tried to find out but couldn't? Couldn't find Keith Kingsbury anywhere. I don't know if you've actually read this book, but nothing comes to mind. I remember because I remember the drafts. So Keith Kingsbury, he's

a Kingsbury. Yeah, he's one of my early delinquent friends that would always get arrested, got me arrested just because he would constantly have warrants for his arrest for unpaid tickets and suspended license, but he wouldn't pay him so he'd get pulled over again because he drove like an asshole even though he had warrants and

get busted again and he got put in a paddy wagon one night at the foot of my street thankfully i could walk home and they put him in the paddy wagon and he's like fuck you you cocksucker take off that badge kind of thing your Your mother sucks cocks in hell. I'll kick the shit out of you. And I'm 17 and I've never heard anyone talk to an authority figure like this. And I'm laughing my balls off on the other side of the street, literally on my back laughing. And the cop comes up and he says, you think it's funny you're under arrest

for disturbing the peace? And the cop comes up and he says, you think it's funny you're under arrest for disturbing the peace? And he was, I tried to make sure all the stories that sounded like bullshit had someone that could verify them. And he was the only one that could verify the cookie story, the swingers. If you've read it, if you haven't, you'll get to it. He could, and I couldn't find him anywhere. He might be dead or in prison. Were you trying to lead me somewhere?

No, I wasn't. Was there anyone that you feel that, looking back on the writing of it, you'd made a conscious decision to have mercy on? Rene. Okay. Yeah, for self mercy on? Renee. Okay. Yeah, for self-preservation reasons. Oh. I don't want her calling, giving me... I still...

I wasn't dishonest with her, but the relationship was far more caustic than I... I made it sound a lot rosier, even though it... I didn't make it sound rosy, but I made it sound rosier just for her sake. And have you heard from anyone subsequent to publication? Chris O'Connor, the first delinquent kid when I was 13.

Mild delinquency. You know, throwing eggs at cars and making crap fraps out of shit in the refrigerator and throwing them in bus. You could egg cars or throw snowballs at cars, but they would chase you. And I wasn't a very fast runner. I was fucking Forrest Gump in the braces when it came to running from angry drivers. But we figured out you could throw shit. You'd walk out in broad daylight and throw shit right into the windshield of the bus when it came to the stop and i was about to take off

because the guys get 60 people on there he can't chase you he's just gonna put on the windshield wipers and take it so we just casually throw shit right in his face laugh laugh, saunter off. So Chris O'Connor has just called me, and he's driving next week cross-country to hang out in Bisbee, and that'll be fun because I haven't seen him since I was a kid. Wow. There's other people I'm waiting to hear from that are not going to be so friendly. When the book was like... there was never any fucking publication

date in the sense that the book was like well it's on sale on May the 10th and yeah it went from April to May Decapo has their heads in their ass half the time the guy works out of an hourly rate motel but was there

when the book was finally published did you go shit i'm a published author no i'm doing that right around now okay well how are you finding it because i was with you the event in new york and you seem very gleeful afterwards you seem to seem quite joyous i am but fuck face ben from decapo he called me up once and he goes wow you you were doing i go are we doing okay and he goes haven't you checked the numbers i go what numbers he goes on the amazon sales ranking and i didn't know to do that and i i wish he hadn't told me and it just happened to be the day we put out our mailing list from the website. So it had spiked really high, but it changes hourly.

So I didn't know this is the biggest, best number we're ever going to see. I just keep clicking refresh every hour, watching my self-worth slowly go down the drain from 57 to 170 to 240 to 360. I go, I suck. I was all happy until you told me how to click refresh on Amazon. But it doesn't. I'll feel like a published author when I do the second one. Okay. So the.

Oh, don't worry. You won't be involved. That would be a blessing. In terms of looking at the creative process compared to doing an hour of stand-up, like creating a book, let's say a book is the same as an hour of stand-up. How does that feel now that you've got the opportunity to compare them?

That's a good question. I wasn't expecting that. A good question. I don't know. When you do a book, it's done. You don't... There's that period.

Some comic I was just talking to talked about yeah I just got a I just get a tape this and get rid of it because when when you have a bit when you have an hour let's say of stand-up that's ready to go you think you put it out and there's usually a six-month period before it actually hits the air, where they're editing and all that. And in the meantime, you're cheating, and you keep doing that material, but you're adding new parts to that. And you're like, oh, fuck, I already filmed the other version,

and now I made it better, but it's too late to go back. I like the fact that it's a book now. I'm done with it. I'm sick of writing i like the fact that it's a book now i'm done with it i'm sick of writing it it is what it is fuck off uh that's how we sold it to ben that's for sure yeah yeah i i don't know the grass is always greener when i was writing the book i was saying i should be just on stage fucking off and when when I'm on stage, I'll be thinking, I could be home just sitting in that bunker chain smoking. Okay.

And no one yelling at me or bothering me for a picture. Okay. There's a through line. Obviously, there's a very good through line to this book, which is your relationship with your mother. I mean, what... I had to stick with that, by the way, Obviously, there's a very good through line to this book, which is your relationship with your mother. I mean, I had to stick with that, by the way, because that's what he sold. This is a book about mother.

And I know Decapo wants a book that's going to sell to chicks. They didn't want to sell a book to you guys, my fucking crude killer termite fan base. They know you're going to buy anything anyway they want chicks to buy it so the mother angle worked and it's sold so then at first i i i was you know resentful that i had to stick to this because a lot of the stories drift off into hey here's some a really funny graphic road story it has nothing to do with Mother. So to be off topic, I have to dump that. And I had to keep in mind, that's another book. We can write that book.

Stick with this. But as I went, I realized Mother was around for enough of the dirt and involved in it, at least peripherally, that I can get away with keeping her in the book and by the end when i started finding all this dark shit that i didn't even know about my mother like i'm glad i stuck with this because yeah it did work out to be a good book and one that probably the next book would be worthless if i hadn't already written this one so So I was happy with that. So in terms of your understanding this possibly of both your own life and of hers, this was, to invoke a cliche, a journey. Yeah, it was a pain in the ass, but you can say journey. Yeah.

It was an awful, heart-wrenching pain in the ass. Okay, so how did your evaluation or thought of your mother change over the like this intense period of focus on her i i can't even tell you that because on a daily basis i would i would just roller coaster where i fucking hate you what an asshole you were to wow i should have been a little bit more understanding to well if i was more understanding he would have still been an asshole so she was who she was and i i that's that's for the reader to decide i don't know i don't have i can't keep the same opinion about anything for a full 24-hour period. I wake up angry. I'm yelling at a call center. And then I relax.

And then I'm fearful and regretful. And then I have a few cocktails. And I'm full of courage and ambition. And then I go to bed insulting all my friends. And I wake up rueful again. I said rueful. I've never said that word in my life. Now I'm surrounded by all these books

I think I'm a fucking intellectual but like when I before we started or you started the book the thing about your mother was she just put a we no no no that was the process

2009 process you weren't very helpful during this book. I'll let you know that after one whiskey. I wasn't? No, you weren't very... Not helpful. Supportive. You were the last guy I'd call if I needed a fucking leg up.

Well, I don't mind. I'm not entirely sure about that. I think I could produce the phone records. What's that? I could produce the phone records of when you called. I know I called you a lot, but you weren't the guy that would fill me with false confidence. Oh, no, no. I had to call softer people for that.

No, no, I wouldn't. You weren't full of compliments. Don't worry. I'm not downing you. I'm just letting you know. I know that you're not the guy to call when I'm fragile of emotion and think everything stinks, you'll probably, well, it might stink, but

I'm busy. I'll give you that. Well, again, I'm trying to, you know, do you want us a fucking manager, some fucking twat that just goes, oh, that's great. Anyway, so, that's great. I know. Anyway, so, but I never liked your mother.

He was very open about that. She wasn't very likable around the time he came into my life. I didn't like her much either at that point. She was bitter and manipulative and a wounded animal. Yeah, and a lot of my information about her came from your attitude towards

her. You would always talk to her and talk about her in a kind of, oh, for fuck's sake, way. And therefore one of the things that definitely came out of this was towards the end of writing this book, and I remember you calling me. There was a week where you were very upset, for want of a better word, about the things you'd found in the hoard.

Yeah. Yeah, that's where the last time I'm ever going to call you, but I did, I'm ever going to call you, but I did, was when I found something that actually made me fucking ball, cry. And I think I probably called you a couple of those times

to share an emotional moment. And you talk to me the way you're looking at me now. But can we talk about that emotional moment and the discovery of it? Like, it must have been, it was a bit of a revelation for you to be teary or whatever. Yeah, no, it was terrifying. But the days I spent writing were so long. I'd be 16, 18 hours just referencing paperwork and going back and

writing and I've got to plug this in here and then call someone I don't like and and then just trying to remember was so frustrating where like what the fuck was it and then call someone else yeah that's right that's what it was but how to it would just the process alone was so overwhelming that i was at the brink of tears if i was writing about ernest shackleton who had no connection to me i just the process was debilitating it's physically difficult for me to write i would feel physically exhausted and then to find some dark shit your mother had written in a diary that i hope doug uh i don't even know if doug likes me anymore i'm trying to do my best to make a living now that i'm in la but i don't know if i could ever live up to his expectation and

you're like you're already that threadbare of emotion and then you find some that valentine's day card at the end of the book and you're like oh shit i'm just gonna cry like a five-year-old fucking boy right now and uh why don't i call brian and share this with him. Okay. My brother's asleep. You're on the west coast. You're the only one awake. Want to hear this? No, not particularly. Okay, but let's just

go back. I mean, yeah, that's a very human thing that was, you know, when she revealed herself as a caring mother who wanted to be involved in your life. i mean in terms of the like the story about how she treated patients in the care facility she was working in oh yeah no she was an awful person and she hated every single thing towards the end of her life the last let's say uh 10 years 12 years she hated every fucking thing she hated you she hated that shirt what is it the fucking guy with the mustache does he think that's cool or something just all fucking hate except for me she loved me and she had a right before she moved to la she had a job as a nurse graveyard

shift in a nursing home and she would call me and complain about what fucking cunts these people are this fucking cunt and all she does is complain and yell at me and she recorded she took a mini cassette tape recorder to her job to tape all the shit she got from her patients and sent it to me so I would know the horror of her job. And the whole tape is just her abusing this woman, like, graphically. Like, shit, when you see on, like, Dateline or 60 Minutes babysitter cam of a lady shaking the baby. She's the baby shaker sending the footage to me going, can you imagine the babies I have to put up with? Fuck, that's a bit.

I know. Yes. How dare you fucking, are you periscoping this? I could take that and put it out as a bit. Don't worry. Write that down, someone, baby. How dare you fucking... Are you periscoping this? I could take that and put it out as a bit. Don't worry. Write that down, someone, baby. I would say,

Stop, you're hurting me. I'm not fucking hurting you. Just get in the goddamn toilet. Shut up and stop your complaining. And then she'd coach that in terms of what she had to deal with. And I'd subtly, well, not too subtly, like, Ma, that's really abusive. No, fuck her. She's acting like I'm some kind of.

Well, you are acting. You are like that. That's when I was at that point where I i said just move out to la you're in a you're weird now we're gonna lose you mentally just move out here and uh she she she moved out here but we're gonna turn this over to the audience shortly yeah let's do that but last question how much do you think your mother affected your attitude to women yeah that's one of those bullshit questions i've been getting on this whole fucking tour where people try to find the through line of how something in their life has made them who they

are today yeah uh you know what napalm in vietnam that's the reason i have this scar on my face that makes sense but the fact that uh i eat haagen-dazs because my stepfather fingered me i'm sure there's some reason some way my mother influenced me but it's all conjecture and it's all bullshit and it's for yourself to am i making sense when people say, yeah, well, my dad, he was a hard worker, and he ingrained that in me, but my brother's a lazy slob.

How does your father's DNA make you a hard worker and your brother a lazy fuck? You're just making up some reason. That's another bit, I think. Yeah, it will be. That wasn't a home run right away. Okay, so we're going to turn it over. I'm going to start. First question. He demanded it.

Ben from Decapo. Digging up mother. How did I arrive at such a perfect title for the book? Well, all of my choices were shot down. One that I had that for a minute I thought, that's great. And then I go, this one sucks. Who thought of that?

It was One Funny Mother. And Brian goes, you thought of that. You thought of that. But my title was always and still is Mother... The Long Version of a Suicide Post-it Note. A love story. Because at one point when my mother, before she had to kill herself for health reasons,

she tried for other reasons and one of the times she was drinking herself to death leaving las vegas style here in los angeles we had to go over in the wee hours of the morning and because she had you know drank herself into a ball and was going to drink herself to death and the only suicide note she left was a post-it note that said Doug pain is too much very prolific that woman so I wanted the title to be the long version of a suicide post-it note a love story but both Brian and Ben from Decapo shit canned that but they also shit canned my idea for a decent cover which is now out in the uk where we self-published and a picture came out on twitter and it's roundly

being applauded as a way better fucking cover than the one you cocksuckers made me do all stupid with a shovel oh digging up mothering see i'm digging we're on the nose here it fucking stinks the title of the book is the long version of a suicide post-it note and the cover is the one that you can find on twitter or just move to the uk this book's important enough that you should move over there because i don't have a question but uh to answer the question digging up mother was the one that we could all agree on last minute because i was out of ideas and ben the publisher came up with that and we could all go all right we can we can deal with that title that's pretty good fucking good work thank you ben for all your work yes thank you ben that's where you applaud for the

guy you can't see and he's been on the wagon for eight months. No shit. Let's not bring that. Let's not down the party by bringing up his sobriety. Anyone have questions? You go. What compels me to keep it so factual and autobiographical? The same as in my act i have i have uh stories in my act where i had to change

a name because the guys are professional now and just saying a fake name makes me feel like i'm lying and i or i'll actually stop a bit and go that part's not true but i can't tell you the uh there's a there's a story that somehow has become – I don't know if it – it must be on my Wikipedia page because interviewers bring it up. About being a co-host of The View? No, no, no. About crossing the street in Calgary, Alberta where I was going to a gig with Bingo and I saw a bunch of hoodlum riffraffy kind of guys they were scary looking

as i'm trying to find the gig and i crossed the street to get away from them only to realize that was the cue for my show they were in line for my show and the truth is, I never actually crossed the street. I thought about crossing the street before I realized they are my audience. But it got out that I did. So I just retold the story. But every time I'd retell the story, I never actually crossed the street. I went to and then I figured out, oh, that must be the address. And that little of a lie bothers me to the fucking core so yeah that's why it was important to be as factual as possible uh that guy is leaning over is waving

i thought you were gonna give me shit about speed dial, and I was going to say it's just an expression. Yeah, that's the same brother. And what's not in the book, because it's a fresh wound, he did get divorced from that woman, and the girl that's in the book that was both of our first girlfriend when I was 16, he dated her first, and then I started dating her, the girl Christine with the three kids. He's back together with her and happy as fuck. So many, you know, 35 years later,

he's back together with both of our first girlfriend. Anyone over here? This chap here. Yeah, do better than me. Do I have advice for a writer? I would not even... I don't even call myself a writer. I'm a guy who knows how to use thesaurus.com to the best of its ability. It's shameful that people who are actual writers or were actual writers before an internet age

could come up with this shit on their own. And I spend half my time on thesaurus.com going, what's another word for good? Anyone else? thesaurus.com going what's another word for good anyone else hope that chap at the back uh you can hire johnny depp he johnny depp will write uh forwards are more expensive he does birthday cards he'll do birthday uh personalized uh phone calls with a a jingle that he writes. One of the Hollywood vampires writes it. I don't know if it's Alice or Joe Perry, but they write jingles for like $45. So, yeah, you just go on I'm a washed up whore out celebrity soon dot com. Yeah, Johnny was kind enough to write that.

Here's to Mr. Depp, and thank you for writing that. His intention, and he has a lot of them, was to... I go, hey, if you want to write something for the book, I don't care if it's a blurb or a sentence or anything, and he goes, I'm going to write you the longest sentence that's ever been written. He still talks like Hunter S. Thompson. I'm going to write a sentence that has no

punctuation and no ending. It's just going to be the longest run-on sentence that could be in the Guinness Book of One of the times I visited him, he goes I go I'm downstairs still and I'm locked in. Is anyone going to come by?

He goes, oh, you haven't seen Johnny yet? He's upstairs. Just bust into his bedroom. I go, I don't want to do that. No, no, wake him up. No one's there. Amber's gone. And I busted in, and I woke him up, and he went, oh.

He goes, oh, I was just writing it. And he reaches under the bed, and he shows me this run-on sentence. This is what i got so far and it's long handwritten scrawled it looks like stedman wrote it but he's like me he's a fucking wacko and he so by the end they ben says listen we can't wait for this any longer so i called his assistant i go just give me the fucking thing he has under the bed and we'll close on that. Because at that point, you didn't even believe

Johnny Depp's writing the fucking forward, did you? Not to let... Oh, I did. I put him on the phone with you. What a dick move. I mean, on my part. Can you call my friend? One more question. I need to sell product.

One more question. You had like 10. You give them four. That guy right there. Oh, oh, ahead. How do I write my jokes? I don't really have jokes for stand up. I have shit I yell about.

And then I try to find a fist-fuck angle to get a laugh. I don't have a process. It just, I don't. Go ahead. Nice lady. Nice lady? Yeah. No, no, no, no.

Other nice lady. She was first. All right. Oh, yeah. My dad's in there my dad was a sweetheart he just wasn't funny or interesting enough to get a chapter but i talk about him yeah the guy was the most uh loving happy human being alive and i know everyone says that about their dad uh but my friend said that oh fuck you he was like uh tom bosley from happy days only a little dumber and less aware but always smiling happy to make you pancakes and he was just a sweet guy that was my rock and i knew i could always count on him and that's uh it's in the book that's when he died in 2001 that's where i started to have

problems with my mother being this wayward you know uh groundless dependent almost like uh fuck my dad i could always go home to and now he's dead so i'm an adult and now i got my mother who's basically my child get a fucking job lady, lady. I don't need these problems. Go ahead, other nice lady. My favorite one, a UK journalist in a review described me as a miserablest. And that is one who is only happy when they're miserable. And I go, I'm going to never forget that word.

See, I thought you were going to point out the visionary douchebag. That's the best. But she said realist, so it went with miserablest. But thanks for fixing it. Yeah. Visionary douchebag. Go ahead. I'm sorry for that.

Do you see what he did there? Absolutely. Absolutely. If it came to mind, I would have apologized for it in the book but yeah we did some uh small animal torture when i was at that age and i still feel awful about it nothing horrific but i mean to me it's horrific but yeah putting firecrackers in kivers' mouths, fish mouths, and toad in a microwave once. Yeah, I was a horrible... I had a serial killer period between 11 and 13. Yeah, I was a horrible fucking child.

And I hated putting any of that into the book without a giant disclaimer about how bad I feel about it, because I wouldn't want some young person going, that sounds funny. Let's go do that. Let's go fucking tack. I'm not even going to go into that story. It's not in the book. Go ahead. I, I've never had any reason to forgive her. I knew who she was.

I, at times, didn't like who she was. But, yeah, we went through this shit together. It's like being in a relationship that's sometimes combative. And you know what? Sometimes we're not on the same page but we're in this shit together and i owe her a lot but uh it wasn't that i had to forgive her or come to terms with it there was a lot of me that was happy she was dead when she said it's time to go there's a lot of me that said good good, I don't want this fucking responsibility.

Just hurry up and die. There was a part I was very aware of. There was a part of my head that said, I'm going to get seven good minutes of comedy out of this. There's a lot of human feelings that I hate to say other people feel, but they just don't talk about it. Maybe I am a sociopath and no one feels like this. No one has a parent die and thinks, oh, geez, how much of the inheritance am I going to get? Yeah, you do think about fucking shit that, hey, now I don't have to do that tomorrow. I don't have to go get her from the rest home and bring her out to the park

or whatever your situation is. But there is a greedy part of everyone, and I was aware of it. When my dad died, I was highly aware on one part of my, not that I wasn't grieving on some part, but there's another part that says, oh, I'm going to get a lot of attention for this. part but there's another part that says oh i'm going to get a lot of attention for this i see that in people who claim victimhood of oh i was touched by my uncle and i'm going to come out public with it because that's why i eat haagen-dazs today and you go you are you aware of the fact that your ego is involved with this on some level even though it's a sad thing you're going to get a lot of sympathy

and that's why they get upset when comedians make jokes about it because if everyone else can laugh including other victims well you can't wear that cross of burden anymore don't make jokes because it happened to me what happened to her she's laughing i fucking hate when people say you're using comedy as some kind of crutch no i'm using it as a tool that you don't have yeah and so shut the fuck up i can laugh i can make funny you can't maybe we should close on that because i'm on a roll i gotta go somewhere and sign some books thank you very much come to book soup I'll be back there he'll be back there