The Problem With Jon Stewart - Judd Apatow on George Carlin

Episode Date: May 20, 2022

Jon talks to his longtime friend Judd Apatow about his new documentary, George Carlin’s American Dream. They delve into why Carlin’s groundbreaking comedy feels more relevant than ever, Judd’s obsession with cataloging comedy history, and their formative experiences writing together for Garry Shandling’s The Larry Sanders Show.CREDITSHosted by: Jon StewartFeaturing: Judd ApatowExecutive Produced by Jon Stewart, Brinda Adhikari, James Dixon, Chris McShane, and Richard Plepler.Lead Producer: Sophie EricksonProducers: Caity Gray, Robby SlowikAssoc. Producer: Andrea Betanzos, Zach Silberberg Sound Engineer & Editor: Miguel CarrascalDigital Coordinator: Norma HernandezSupervising Producer: Lorrie BaranekHead Writer: Kris AcimovicElements: Kenneth Hull, Daniella Philipson Talent: Brittany Mehmedovic, Haley Denzak Research: Susan Helvenston, Andy CrystalTheme Music by: Gary Clark Jr.The Problem with Jon Stewart podcast is an Apple TV+ podcast produced by Busboy Productions.https://apple.co/-JonStewart

I'm getting a note here. You got to move back. I guess I'm too close. I'm too, I get more Jewish when I'm closer to the microphone. No, I think we get more Jewish as we get older. Hello, everyone. John Stewart here. We are, we are back in a, in a sense.

Uh, currently we're in production, getting ready for season two of the show. The problem. Uh, but while we're doing that, we're going to try and do some podcasts every now and again, when appropriate, when apropos and apropos similar to, uh, our guest name is actually your, your given name was Judd apropos. People don't realize, uh, Emmy winning writer, producer, director, Judd Apatow is joining us on this special edition podcast because Judd, I want to talk to you about this documentary, this George Carlin's American dream, which

is, is out. People can watch it on, on HBO max. Man, thank you. Thank you for putting this out. Thank you for doing the deep dive into one of the greatest comics and minds of, of any generation and certainly one of my, uh, personal touchstones and heroes. H-how did this even come to pass? Well, thank you for being in it, John.

You provided great insight and you know, you were one of the few people that had a, a closer relationship than most because he was somewhat of a solitary person. It was hard to find people who hung out with him, but I just got a call from HBO before the pandemic and we worked on it throughout the entire pandemic. And I was definitely worried about doing it because I didn't know him personally. And I thought, how am I not going to screw this up because I really don't know the vibe of the guy. I don't know how he behaves.

And it was very scary because you really don't want to screw it up. Right. And I would, I talked to Kelly Carlin, his daughter beforehand, and she basically in, in her own words said, you know, make my dad proud. Don't, don't do something that's bullshit. Right. Don't do the, the classic corny way to do this. Any of those things.

I saw Kelly, uh, just a couple of days ago and she loves it. I think she's really proud of it. She's really proud of the job that you did on it. And I think she feels like you did him right. I'm so happy about that because I think one of the reasons why a lot of these are bad is usually people are alive and they want to look good and they don't want you to talk about their weird stuff. And even with some people who are no longer with us, who I've danced around

doing documentaries about a lot of times the family is like, can you not talk about this thing, this weird relationship he had or, and, and they go away. So it's really important that people like Kelly say, tell the truth. I don't care. You could, you could talk about all of it. And some of it is dark. I mean, he had a cocaine habit and his wife, Brenda, Kelly's mom had an alcohol problem and that house was a war zone for a period of years.

She had a pretty harrowing childhood and they somehow worked through it. And, and, you know, we're able to get sober. I think George probably was on and off for most of his life, but she got sober and, and found her, her strength. And it's an amazing love story at the center of it. And she trusted us to, to talk about that. It's funny because about three weeks before locking, she says, guys, I'm so sorry, but I found a bag of all their letters to each other.

Oh, the letters. Their entire lives. And we didn't have those still really locking. And I was like, how do we, how do we, how do we fit these in? And it's literally like from Ralph's. It's a supermarket bag with letters. And the letters are like, literally the day after they met. Yeah. The letter he wrote her the day after they had sex for the first time.

The day after he asked her to marry him, which was only a few months after they met, but then it turns into the letters, which are, we're broke. Can we borrow money from your parents because we have seven dollars in the bank? It literally said seven dollars. And then it turns into big star stuff. And then apology letters for terrible fights and drug problems. And then at one point there's a letter that he's saying, I'm sorry for how I behaved. I need to stop taking and elicit cocaine, alcohol,

pot, and valium, and add her all. Like that's a lot of things to quit. But then it turns into love letters again. And they found each other again. So, you know, most families would say, let's drop that letter. But Kelly was like, nah, let's let's tell the true story. And she was always the adult in the relationship anyway. I mean, she, she raised George and Brenda very well.

Kelly did. Exactly. That's what happened to a lot of us, right? Like, our families are so wild. Yeah. You know, some people, they fall apart, you know, as a kid. And maybe the rest of their lives, they fall apart and other people become super achievers and they become, you know, the people who try to help fix everything. And she certainly is a great spirit that way. She's really evolved and worked on herself.

And she wrote a beautiful book about being their daughter and did stage shows about it. Right. And at some point we realized, oh, this is, you know, a lot of this is Kelly's story. No question. And the other thing that happened is we were looking for these tapes. We heard that Tony Hendra, who played the manager in Spiral Tap, Yes. who sadly passed away, I believe, from ALS, that he had done all the interviews for the autobiography of George Carlin.

Oh, wow. And we knew that somewhere there was a box of all of the interviews. And we asked, you know, his family, you know, can you find those? But he was very ill at the time. And and finally they did, they made the effort and found found these tapes. It was 23 hours of Tony and George talking and that really made the documentary. So I'd love to thank his family because, you know, at a very, very difficult time, they located these.

And so in a lot of ways, George is narrating his own documentary. I was going to say that, you know, unfortunately, a lot of these projects turn out to be you've ever been to a funeral and the eulogy is delivered by like the rabbi or the priest. And you could tell he knew the person like in a perfunctory way. Yes. Yes. By grandmothers. Exactly.

I hear that Molly loves knitting. That's right. We all know of her love of the grateful dead. So there's kind of a lack of specificity and a lack of connection to it. But like having George narrating it in his incredibly observant and self-reflective and perceptive way, and having Jerry there, obviously, to kind of add in the what I liked about Jerry's role is he kind of comes in and goes like, so they don't have two nickels.

And I say, I got to get this guy on the road to Buffalo. You know, the manager is the greatest. The funniest thing the manager said to me, I showed him the documentary with my brilliant co-director, Michael Bonsiglio. We were on the phone with him and our editor, Joe Beshenkovsky, who's really like the key to all of it. He did the channeling doc with us as well. And we were just saying, what are we getting wrong?

And we were trying to find out if we had made any mistakes. And he said, you know, the thing about George is he loved cocaine. I mean, he said to me all the time, I just love cocaine. But they really kept this in line. Like what was the spirit? What was important to George? What were these eras about? And he explained to us that in some weird way, it almost was like

a way of dealing with ADD or something, you know, like a form of self medicating himself on it. He clearly had running thoughts and was obsessed with words and ideas and would take cocaine and disappear in a room and write jokes and listen to music. And it was never to hang out with people. No, I didn't hear one story of him like with another person. Right. No, I don't think he was. He was a social guy.

I think his company was inside his brain for the most part. And that was what I always found interesting, even being around him a little bit was you had this sense of the duality of a guy who, you know, he'll run off, like you say, Adderall and cocaine and all these different things. But he really was like a traditionalist, like weirdly like the letters to Brenda. He wrote everything down. He worked like nine to five, you know, he'd go into the office and he'd kind of type and bang out his stuff.

And then he would, you know, get, get high or as he called it, punch up time. He said that to you. I mean, you did one of the great interviews with him at the Aspen Comedy Festival. Yeah. And I mean, by the way, so much of that interview was remarkable. I mean, you really did a great interview. I was so excited to talk to him. I mean, it was I was so just honored. It was in the nineties.

I think I was 30 years old, 31 years old. And this guy was was the legend and kudos to the HBO Comedy Festival for doing it in Aspen, where the oxygen is almost non-existent. You get a guy who's had five heart attacks. Where should we honor him? How about the top of a mountain? Let's take him up there, make it really hard for him to breathe. I mean, I remember we were walking up the stairs of of the opera house.

It was at the opera house, the Aspen Opera House. And we're both walking up the stairs and we have to stop, you know, every, every floor to get all the way up to the top where you walk down for the stage. And I'm 30, 31 years old. I can't make it. That was an amazing festival. Just it was an incredible one.

And they used to do those things where they'd gather different shows together and do reunions and things like that. But I'll never forget the joy of getting to hang out with them, not just there, but I went out to Los Angeles and we just spent time together, just getting to know each other prior to that. And he always talked about, and this was when Brenda was still alive and they were still, you know, in that, in that phrase of like finding each other again.

And he always just, he was so grateful for all of it. Yeah. And that's what, you know, it struck me, there was no bitterness in that guy. I didn't, yeah, I didn't feel that. I mean, it was always a searching and he had this energy. I mean, he's a unique guy because he's just from another era too. I mean, he is, you know, he started doing stand up in 1960. So he's doing stand up with like the same clubs as like Lenny Bruce.

Like it's a pretty wild story that Lenny Bruce saw him in a comedy team with Jack Burns and called his agent and said, sign these guys. Yeah, yeah. And it's so funny when you make a documentary because you're basically saying, who was around 62 years ago to tell me about this? Right. And I'm trying to like figure out, you know, are there any interviews with this with Jack Burns, who was in a comedy team with Avery Schreiber.

Right. And he was also the guy in Fridays when Andy Calvin like flipped out and broke a sketch. Right. He was the guy that almost got in a fist fight with Andy Calvin. But I think it was all staged. But but Bob Goldfield was friends with him. And he said, yeah, he never did interviews his whole life. So you go online, there's nothing with Jack Burns. Then I'm at Norm McDonald's Memorial.

And I'm talking to Adam Sandler's manager, Sandy Wernick, a legendary manager. He's 83 years old. And I said, I just did a documentary on George Carlin. And he's like, yeah, I handled Burns and. Oh, my. Burns and Carlin. And I said, you did? He's like, yeah, is there agent? I remember when they broke up, but he just starts telling me all these stories.

I'm like, where the fuck were you like six months ago? When I was trying to figure out what happened. So that's also the heartbreak of documentaries, finding out about things much later, because it is. It's it's never close. The film is never closed. You can never lock picture because the story is always more, more interesting. I always find, too, that guys that knew they were special somehow wrote everything down.

I think they almost knew, like I've got something that people might want to catalog for later. I need to keep all of my notes. And it is it is a similar thing to Gary Schanling, where all the notes were there. If you looked for a bit, he kept the piece of paper where he wrote a place for my stuff and he's got all the riffing on it. And you could see how he wrote comedy because there would just be a piece of paper.

And there was one that said that everything in America is about being seduced and betrayed. It's all seduction and betrayal. Wow, they trick you into thinking this and then they betray you. And it turns into a bit or there's just like a post-it note and it says, it's a big club and you're not in it. And you go, that's the starting point. Yeah. And I'm such a hoarder that, you know, I love that that exists. I could I could look at that stuff all day long.

Are you shocked at how relevant Carlin is today? Like I was telling Kelly, like there's not a thing that goes by that I don't kind of reflect back on on George Carlin with like, like, like the whole bit about your stuff. You're my my, you know, my shit is stuff and your stuff is shit can be applied to almost every conflict and controversy. My ideas are great and yours are shut.

That's that's right. And even now, like with Roe V Wade, one of the only comics that trended was George Carlin. He was the guy who had the bit. And when you think about how many comedians there are, right? And a lot of people have talked about that. I didn't even see another comedians bit. Like George Carlin was everywhere in the last few days. I didn't see one other comic.

No one put up like a there's no Bill Hicks bit. There's, you know, whoever you would think of. And the bit itself is pretty incredible. They cover so much ground because he's basically saying, you know, when you're pre-born, they love you and when you're but as soon as you're born, you know, when you're preschool, you're fucked. Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months. After that, they don't want to know about you.

They don't want to hear from you. Know nothing. No neonatal care, no daycare, no head start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If you're pre-born, you're fine. If you're preschool, you're fucked. And there was another section that I didn't put in the documentary. It was all about when does life begin? And he starts backtracking through like the primordial ooze.

Like, when do we say life begins? I mean, it's an it's an amazing piece. Everything that he covers, it's it's remarkable to me. You know, for a comedian to have even a moment's relevance in the culture is, we're lucky if we can make a living doing this, telling jokes somewhere going on. If you have your moment, that's even rarer. But the idea that somebody is relevant in comedy for 50 fucking years and then after they die,

like, I don't even know what to make of it. Yeah, it's what he's been gone for 14 years and the bits are better. And they go around. I don't think anyone else has bits that go around like this. I mean, you know, we always go, oh, George Carlin's trending, which is incredible. But no one else is trending. Literally, there's no there Richard Pryor doesn't trend. And maybe it's because they don't have the great, you know, video on some of his

best specials about like police brutality. There's not video, but but there's no one else who trends. And he also was someone who was talking about the corporatization of America, of politics and moneyed interest, controlling everything. And that's what we're seeing right now when we see these mega billionaires and Elon Musk just buys Twitter and Bezos buys the Washington Post. And that was the thing that he was always concerned about, which is when they control everything that you learn, you don't know what you what you've lost.

Right. You don't know how much they're controlling every lever of society. And it's interesting, you know, you find there are very few people in this world whose insights make them a target to be claimed by all sides in a debate. You know, I think the only other person I think was Martin Luther King. You know, there's a part now where the right is like Martin Luther King would be a Republican, he believes, you know, and they'll throw a quote out there like,

you know, content of your character. And you're like, yeah, you didn't read the whole fucking speech. Like there's a little bit more in there that you might want to take a look at. But Carl in the same way, you find a lot of guys on the right who will say, George Carlin knew this political correctness is bullshit. He would never do it. But he was more complicated than that. Like this is always more complicated.

And by the way, he also didn't live in this moment. He didn't live in a moment where algorithms control so much of the information that we receive. So he was from an era where you could get arrested for what you said on stage. He was really worried about the government interfering with your ability to express yourself. Right. He never lived to see. That's a great point. An algorithm that feeds you conspiracy theories or feeds you

anti-vax information. Right. So Kelly always says, we don't know what he would have said about this moment. And that's right. And whatever you think it would be, you're wrong. Whatever he was going to say about this, she also said, would blow your mind. No question. But we don't know what it is because at the time,

he definitely was someone who was like, oh, I'm not allowed to say this word. I'm going to say it. Right. I mean, I was watching a bit the other day where he he just listed every offensive word. Ginzo, greaser, greaseball, spick, beiner, oye, tiger, PR, Mick. Like every way that you could hurt every group. And he said it's all intent. They're only words. It's the context that counts.

It's the user. It's the intention behind the words that makes them good or bad. The words are completely neutral. The words are innocent. I get tired of people talking about bad words and bad language. Bullshit. It's the context that makes them good or bad. The context that makes them good or bad.

He thought less words is bad. Less ability to express yourself is bad. And he didn't realize that there's a new year of just people drowning in this information and in toxic speech. And it is much more difficult to figure out where the line is. Because he says that in the documentary, I think a comedian's job is to take people and cross the line and have them glad that they crossed with you.

Right. And that is that last part is the tough one. The last part is the one that separates a contrarian and a provocateur from an artist. Yeah. And that was what I was so gratified to see in the documentary is towards the end when George talked about because look, I think a lot of us as comedians have a bit of an inferiority complex because I think stand up comedy is low art. It's it's generally held in a basement.

It's generally, you know, people are they demand that you at least have two drinks while we work. You must be drunk. You must be drunk. You must buy food. You know, it must be trying to get someone to have sex with you during the performance. During the performance. And yet when he talked about, you know what, man, I'm a comic.

I'm a low art. You know, it's a low form, but I'm also a writer. I'm a writer and an artist. And that I thought was amazing. Yeah. And he was so inspired about the potential of that. I remember I used to see him work on his set just a few times early in my my stand up career. He would go to Igby's in LA sometimes and he would always have the set on little

index cards and he would furiously be going through the index cards and it was all memorization because he wrote it like a one man show. That's right. He was not the I write it on stage guy. It was can I get these words down perfectly? And you could tell it was a memorization nightmare because some of these bits were about firing out hundreds of funny phrases or welly in words. Connecting them and the rhythms and it was it was music.

It was rap in some ways. You know, the set that he performed before we did our interview on his 40th special show was about advertising words. Yeah. And man, he ran for 20. And at that point, he's got to be 60 years old. Like, you know, I can't my phone number, my wife's phone number. Like I have no fucking idea. And he's just running through 20 minutes of like photographic memory.

This is called advertising lullaby, keeping in mind, of course, that the whole purpose of advertising is to lull you to sleep. Quality, value, styles, service, selection, convenience, economy, savings, performance, experience, hospitality, low rates, friendly service, name brands, easy terms, affordable prices, money back guarantee, free installation, free admission, free appraisal, free alterations, free delivery, free estimates, free home trial and free parking. No cash, no problem, no kidding, no fuss, no must, no risk, no obligation,

no red tape, no down payment, no entry fee, no hidden charges, no purchase necessary, no one will call on you, no payments of interest till September. And no one does that anymore. He's an incredible, incredible performer. What made you, you know, you've documented a lot of this. And I know that that you started like as a just as a fan of stand up. I mean, we all sort of started that way.

But you really maintain like almost the historians. You're the John Meacham of our comedy world. Like, why do you continue to do that? Even though you have your own body of work to look back on? Well, I always came at it as a as a fan first, just a lonely kid in his room watching Jeff Altman on the Mike Douglas show. So I just loved it so much. My grandmother was friends with Todie Fields,

who was in our world a little bit. Oh, wow. But also my grandparents talked about her as if she was the coolest person who ever lived. They also had gone to see Lenny Bruce a lot because my grandfather was a jazz producer and they talked about him, you know, like he was John F. Kennedy. And so there was something about comedians in comedy that was respected. They would go, we were at this party and we were hanging out with Bob Newhart. And and wow.

And it made me think, oh, there's something special about this. And also no one was interested in it when I was a kid. Like now people love comedy. There's a Netflix as a joke comedy festival and millions of people are obsessed with it. But when I was a kid, there was no one to talk to about it. Like no one gave a shit at all. And I thought, well, maybe this is the little thing I can be into. That's mine.

I'm not good at football. I'm not good at sports. I don't seem to be doing very well with with women. But I can I can have this thing that no one cares about. And I also had a sense, I think one day it will pay off. I think that that there will be other people. I will this could work as a business. I was aware of it.

And that part of me that interviewed comedians in high school and wanted to know more about it. I love those stories, by the way. There's all these stories for those who don't know. Judd's got these great stories when he's like 14 hanging outside of like Steve Barton's house trying to get him to talk to him. And that was always, you know, my dream, like as a fan to sit with Steve Allen and just ask him questions for an hour and a half. And now as an adult, you know, I just put out the new book,

Sicker in the Head, where I did more interviews and you were in the first book to sit with like for me to sit with Nathan Fielder for two hours and tell me how it works. Why are you doing this? I'd tell me the process brain work. What is going on here? Yeah, I would go with like Rami and Sasha Baron Cohen. And to I mean, I had a great conversation with Lin-Manuel Miranda, because just as a creative person myself, how do you keep going?

How do you not get insecure after success? How do you feel like that's not the best thing you're ever going to do? You know, these are the answers that I want. And for these documentaries, because I'm a hoarder at heart, there's nothing makes me sadder than the idea that there isn't a George Carlin documentary that's as good as the Bob Dylan documentary. Wow, that organizes his life and organizes his work forever, because I do know that most of this stuff is disposable.

And the only way people will rediscover it is if it's organized in a documentary like this. So I want to do it just for my love of these people and my fear that no one will know who they are in five years. What I think is remarkable about that is nobody honors comedy like that. You know, there's just very few. You know, when you say like, it's got to be as good as the Bob Dylan documentary. Like, oh, yeah, music is given a different status in the culture. You know, I've always said the best comedian gets laid less than the worst base

player, like it just has a different status and giving it that treatment and giving it some import was really gratifying, you know, because Carlin was one of the few where, you know, look, I do a lot of topical shit. There's nothing more ephemeral than topical comedy. It's it's the egg salad of the comedy world. Like, yeah, it's good for about two, three days. But after that, like, get it out of the house because it's going to stink it up. But it's it's really nice to see that.

But when you talk to all these different comedians, are you starting to discern patterns of what drives them? Like everybody that I generally respect in in art, whether it be music, comedy, has a similar mindset of how they create and what they're trying to accomplish. Are you finding that in your conversations? I think that, you know, we all notice that people solely find themselves. You know, and it takes a while. And usually people don't find themselves to their 30s or their 40s.

And then you go, wait a second, how did Tom Segura land here? Right. Like people find their greatness. Right. And we see all these people we've known for a very long time. You know, Sebastian or somebody. Right. And then suddenly it just clicks because Bill Burr, Bill Burr, who just keeps peeking and peeking and getting better and better. Right. Puts it all together. And and that's what I'm interested in, which is there's this creative journey

we're all on to figure out what we want to talk about and what's important to us and how to express ourselves and can we find the courage to take the risk? Because every once in a while, people just shit on you. They come at you so hard, they have no respect for the courage it takes to put yourself out there. And so you're always fighting against this vicious attack you might get at any moment for any reason. And yet we soldier on.

We, we, you know, we make the next movie, we make the next. Where are the real heroes here? I've always seen it that way. But, you know, I don't think most people experience worldwide public humiliation. They don't know what it feels like that at any moment you can go online and have like people tell you you're an asshole and you're bad at what you you do. So whether it's musicians or comedians or filmmakers, right? If that's the only thing that we have in terms of our our careers, our artistic

careers, we have to train ourselves to go in spite of it, I'm going to do the next one. But I'm not going to let that live in me to the point where I can't take a risk because all all art is being willing to go. I mean, it's going to leap over the over the cliff to see what this idea does. What does it want me to say? And that's why George Carlin is so impressive, because really impressive. You know, he starts in a comedy team and then he's kind of corny for a while and he's trying to be mainstream on television.

And then he gets pretty successful, but then realizes, I don't think I want to be this guy, so then he he finds himself and he has this incredible success. But then he kind of runs out of gas in the way a band might run out of gas after four or five records like if you rock band sixth record is great. Right. And then the world starts shitting on him and she from Cheech and Chong. I was surprised by that, by the way. I didn't realize that in the eighties and early nineties that he had become

the butt of the joke. Oh, brutal. Like people figured out the impression of him and they were doing a sketch. It was Death of a Salesman with Ricardo Montalvan as Willy Loman, DeForest Kelly as Happy and George Carlin as Biff. And by the way, if you go online and watch it, it's like a 15 minute sketch. Oh, it's it's brutal. It's absolutely brutal.

And I think that it was because he was in that moment like he's five, six records in, he's running out of gas, he's probably on drugs. He's exhausted. Right. And then he's broke because he's got fucking tax problems. Yeah, he's probably on so much drugs that he doesn't pay his taxes for several years. He's blown his moment. He blew his moment.

And so and that is a natural. I mean, it's unfair to a comedian because no one puts out 10 great records in a row. You know, Bob Dylan has those moments where you go, oh, I guess it's over. And then he comes back. Right. And then she says George Carlin's over. He's just talking about peas now. And he gets so mad that he redoubles his efforts.

And then the same thing happens a second time. He runs out of gas again. He has a bunch of heart attacks. He decides he doesn't want to be so stressed out and he makes his act a bunch softer and then Kinnison shows up on the scene. That was amazing. And Carlin decides I'm not going to be the wimpy comedian who's corny next to this guy. Right.

And then for the rest of his career, he decides to out Kinnison. Kinnison. And he goes, he goes hardcore. And it was interesting to me that Carlin was competitive, that he really did have, you know, it sort of it reminded me of, you remember those like, because you know how it gets in comedy clubs like it's it's kind of a brutal hierarchy and you really are trying to blow people off the stage. And it's like, you know, they used to have these in jazz clubs.

They call them cutting contests and guys would come in and just trying, you know, and they'd be there for hours just trying to blow each other out of the improv, you know, in Charlie Parker and all these other guys would have these cutting contests. And that's what it felt like for Carlin, that he was just like, I'm not going to have it. I'm I'm I'm going to I'm going back to the gym. And he puts it, but we didn't do that. We were doing comedy.

I was doing comedy when Kinnison hit the scene. There was no part of me that thought like, I'm going to do this better than me. Right. And if you think about it, Kinnison had one great album. And then it was a lot of diminished returns due to lifestyle, his his problems with substances and Carlin saw Kinnison and then put out like seven albums that were all one greater than the next. Yeah, no, it was phenomenal. It was I think he got to a point where he just said, I've got this other gear.

Why don't I use it? And he and he just clicked it in. And I think, you know, people have the mistaken thought that maybe Carlin was was bitter and angry and his comedy was nihilistic towards the end, but I saw it as heartbreak. I saw it as disappointed. Like I saw it as a guy who looked at the opportunity humans had been given. He reminds me of Vonnegut in so many ways.

But looking at the opportunity humans have been given and seeing their potential for greatness and yet they're they're present of cruelty and of harm. And I think it just it was heartbreaking to him. Well, he talked about the environments like in 1970, right? He was he was he was a very early voice of destroying the planet and pathetic. And he thought this world is so gorgeous. He has a routine about it. He describes how beautiful the world is and that we decided we'd rather live in

malls and think about them in the fucking seventies. He's doing that material like. Incredible, like just so prescient. And he said, you know, underneath the cynic is a disappointed idealist. No question. I always loved when it when it got dark because I thought the joke was, you know, this is a character, I'm going to go as dark as you can ever go.

I'm going to root on the end of humanity. I'm going to laugh as you all die. Right. I mean, that's how far he he took it. But to me, it was always clear that it was a joke stance to say, hey, wake up, fucker, wake up. You I might not have that much time here, but you do. And it was it was very similar to the movie. Don't look up. I mean, at some point, you have to make the movie where everyone dies

at the end, right, to say, are we really going to let all this happen? Are we going to let this world fall apart? And I think a lot of his act was like that. I'm going to take this as far as it can go. And, you know, he had this thing where he would he would say, I'm I'm I'm going to sit back and watch the freak show. Yeah. And in America, you're you got a front row seat to the freak show. That's right.

And it was all about like rooting on for bad things to happen. That's right. But I think he hoped that people would go like, well, maybe I will get a little trick car. Like that's how I always looked at it. And there's a great group in the movie where he's he's doing an interview with Roseanne and Roseanne had a talk show at the time. And she's the one who says, I think it's all lights.

I think like beneath it, you're trying to tell us to do the right thing. Right. He admits that that is what he's doing. But I love that it's Roseanne. Yeah, you're trying to I think it's light. Yeah, she she was great with that stuff. You know, when you do a project like this with Carlin and you do a project like you did with Shandling and you talk to all these comedians, what place do you find?

Are we mistaking cultural power for power? And by the way, isn't that OK if we are? But, you know, the art sometimes is so born of frustration. But are we alleviating that frustration for people which can have some value and confusing them that that's doing something? And is there is there a piece missing from all this that we haven't quite figured out, or is that not within the realm of art, art and music and any of that stuff? I mean, I think about this a lot as a fan of your work, political comedy.

All the people that, you know, you inspired is what is the point of it? And I think about it for myself. Is comedy just a way for us not to deal with real things? Does it allow us actually to shut down in some way? And usually when I think about it and I can get into a depressed place, like, is it just a way to not be real when you have the comedy filter on? But then I think about like a James Brooks movie. I'll think about Terms of Endearment and go, no, art really

does a very special thing and it is it can be about connection. It can be about growth. And when I think about political humor, one thing I always think about is how amazing your show was during the the conventions when Bush was up for re-election. And I remember in a very naive way thinking, how is it possible that Bush got re-elected after what you had done on the Daily Show? Like, no Republican is watching it.

I just thought that you had framed it, the information in such a brilliant way, in a terrifying way, in a hilarious way, that it was the first time I thought, oh, this doesn't change people's minds. Nope. But then, you know, I talked to Samantha Bee for a second in the head and she said to me, Judd, I don't ever think I'm changing anyone's mind. I think the purpose of my show is to tell people that I basically agree with that they're not crazy.

It's a way for me to commune with them about that we're not wrong. But it isn't to do that to change people's minds. But then I always think about the Daily Show. I think a lot about South Park. Right. And to me, as a parent, I see that my kids are intolerance of prejudice. They're furious about it. They grew up on material like that.

And things in the culture that sped up gay marriage. And that's what I have hope. I think, well, maybe we're not changing everyone's mind who is dug in. But for young people who who don't have the the decades of all of that, they're in a different place. And I think that is where things like the Daily Show and South Park and, you know, in a lot of ways, things like modern family changed the culture for the next generation.

So that's where my hope comes from. But there's definitely moments where I think, man, all those jokes about Putin did not prepare us for the fact that he is a murderous nightmare, like all the funny jokes about him on a horse or the shirt off. Maybe made us think it wasn't that dangerous. I think that's that's an excellent point. And I always find that real danger can also it appears sometimes as clownishness, as absurdity, unless you're really dangerous.

Like Hitler wouldn't have worn that mustache if he was a guy who followed norms. You know, most people, you know, he walked out of the house like, I look good. You know, and, you know, it's it's I know it's a rather large leap to go from that to everything that he did. But I think some in some ways you have to be absurd to commit atrocities. Because otherwise your mind wouldn't be able to encompass it. And, you know, do you remember that the great Peter Cook story about? I can't remember what it was, but Peter Cook and Dudley Moore were a comedy team.

And I think they were being interviewed. And the writer was saying, Peter, who do you think are the greatest satirists of all time? You know, and Peter Cook is like, I, you know, I don't know. And the writer was saying, I believe it was the Follies in Germany. In the 1930s, who satirized the Third Reich. And Peter Cook goes, yeah, they really showed Hitler. But I just thought, boy, that's such a great framing of like, yeah, it's.

It's something that adds to the conversation. And like you say, can add to the milieu. But boy, it's really about tenacity. And maybe that's something that the right has learned. Yeah, they don't give a shit about whether or not any of the movies that are in the top ten speak to them. But they'll fuck up your school board pretty good. You know, they guns are blazing.

And I think that's what George Carlin talked a lot about, which is, you know, moneyed interests find the wedge issues to keep everyone fighting so they basically can get all the tax laws and the environmental laws that allow them to make billions and billions of dollars. And so the system is set up where, yeah, one person can own Twitter and everything is greased, you know, Fox News is allowed to say whatever they want. CNN is allowed to say whatever they want.

Everything is kind of entertainment and we're all fighting. But at the same time, no, you know, people don't want to give kids a break on their student loans, but they'll give a trillion dollars to billionaires for their businesses to work well. Right. And all of it has been, you know, weaponized into kind of game theory. And certainly, you know, people can point to the Daily Show and say, well,

you guys pioneered a little of that, and I don't disagree with that. You know, obviously in our minds, we were doing it in a way that had a context and an integrity to it. It wasn't cynical. That was the big mistake that I thought. But do you look at these comedic trees as like tributaries? Like when you were thinking about Shandling and you were working into that, did that create a tributary of sort

of meta universe comedy? You know, Gary was so brilliant at that meta looking at all the tropes of show business and of how shows were put together. And then you look at the George Carlin tributary, which, you know, I would hopefully see myself as a part of. Like, do you view it like coaching trees? Well, there's definitely different schools, right? And we've studied under a bunch of them.

Right. So, you know, we wrote together at the Larry Sanders show when you were also acting on the show. And so, you know, we're trying to help Gary, but we're also students of Gary and we're paying attention to his ethic and and his approach. And we're also, you know, listening to George Carlin as little kids. I think that programmed my head as to how to think, how to look at things, how to examine things, right?

I mean, watching MASH made me go, oh, I should look at things differently. I had a different critical eye. I mean, what was I doing in eight watching like an hour of MASH a day? But I'm literally like eight years old, nine years old. You were studying turn of phrase. Larry Gelbart was the master of turn of phrase and, and, you know, linguistic dancing. He was I always felt like MASH and Larry Gelbart were like the bridge from Preston Sturgis and all those really great things into kind of George Carlin and people

that were using those tools to make social commentary in the way that Sturgis was. You know, it's great. And we all have those people. And so we've studied under a bunch of them. Right. And so if you see Shanling, you might go, oh, well, that led to the office, 30 Rock, Fleabag, like you could see extras. You could see the flow, right? But, but maybe for Gary, he loved Patty Chayefsky and Barry Levinson.

And it was coming from Billy Wilder and the people that he looked up to. Mike Nichols. Right. And, you know, I remember when we were there, it was just such a war zone because Gary was in this lawsuit with his manager. The worst, the worst. Who was, you know, still an executive producer on the show, but Gary had just sued him for a hundred million dollars. Yeah, it was so rough on set.

I mean, it was such a tough environment. And the premise of the season of the season was Gary was aging out and young John Stuart was going to push him off the show. Right. And you're on the show. Then Gary's also dangling the idea that maybe we'll end the Larry Sanders show and make it the John Stuart show. Right. He'd always told me we were going to do it. We're going to make it the John Stuart show and add an H to my name.

And that's how we were. And that's how we were going to keep the characters going. And then he ultimately said he didn't want to do business with his manager, with Brad Gray. He didn't want. He needed it to end, which took that opportunity away from you. And I always wondered how you reflect back on that now, because I feel like when I watch your work after Sanders, that do you feel like it influenced the care or the way you looked at your work, because it also was a nightmare for you.

And at the same time, the season was brilliant and your work was incredible. Like, how do you look at it now? I mean, I loved being out there because first of all, I was such an admirer of Gary and it was kind of hard not to, you know, when the shows that he had done and really his comedy, just the brilliance of his writing. And I was so excited to get out there. So the tough part for me was the gap between the Gary that kind of seduced me into going out there and doing it and writing, because I wasn't

so, you know, I didn't want to be out in California. Wasn't sure about all the things, but I really liked the idea of it. And he, you know, he's a very seductive guy when he's convincing you to go do something and come right on the show and and it was flattering. And then I got out there and he was in the midst of this nightmare. And his his attitude, I felt a little jilted, not by the fact that we weren't going to continue the show because I had

real mixed emotions about that anyway, but that our relationship had changed. I think it was more that that I went from being the object of his desire to a guy he would call over to his house at midnight to rewrite, you know, the act one, and then he would spend the whole time talking to Warren Beatty. And we'd all just be sitting. We'd all just be sitting in the dining room like, are we going to do this? Or, you know, so it was a really complicated time for me.

But not because of wanting to wanting to continue that show. It was more, I felt like I wanted our relationship back. Yeah. And that that was the hard part for me. And it was funny because if you remember Pete and Alex, you know, they were other writers on there and Adam and I would come in and I was always the positive guy.

And they would go like, you know, it's going to get you. And I'm like, nothing's getting me. And I remember coming in one day, like four months, five months into it. And I was just like, I am broken. Well, well, I also felt like as an observer of that. So you were coming off of your talk show, not succeeding. Yours. That's right. It was a syndicated talk show.

Right. The Paramount, the MTV one had gone to Paramount and then the Paramount one got canceled in like nine months. And so it was like it was a funny thing because the show's about talk shows. You're coming on, playing yourself. Right. But in a weird way, it's both a step forward and a big step backwards because now you're like on a writing staff doing some acting. And it also seemed like this is so great that John is doing this. Like this is like, it's like if you went back to college and said,

I need to get a degree in something else. And so I always sense like John is so frustrated here and so great here. But wow, this is the thing no one does. No one goes, I don't know what the fuck to do with my career. I'm going to I'm going to learn something new. I'm going to jump into a new experience. And then when you did the Daily Show and it took off and it cradily was so strong, I always wondered, did anything from the Sanders experience prepare you for that?

Oh, absolutely. You know, it's so funny that that you view the dynamic that way, because it's so not that that wasn't for me part of the I never looked at it as, oh, that's a step back. I think because my ethos was always my dream was to be a working comic and and getting to do that was always such a gift. And the opportunities that came from that were kind of remarkable. But I don't I never thought a talk show was my my dream or my end point.

And so the Sanders I viewed with such excitement because I was going to learn narrative and that's what I learned. And I think the biggest thing I learned from while there are two things was the difference between caricature and character. And that you remember, Gary would, you know, would preach that because it was so easy for us to just sit in the writer's room and go, how am I going to get out of the scene? And, you know, everybody would be like, why doesn't Hank just walk in and say cocksucker? And then we'd all be like, you did it.

You broke the story. You know, and Gary was so smart about narrative and character and how the conflicts and the dynamics had to be produced by how a human would react. Not a two dimensional figure. But I think the greatest thing I learned and I don't mean this as disrespect is how to run a show. Because what I saw was so disappointing and I knew that he was in a tough place.

But it made me realize, you know, if you wanted to accomplish something, there was the thing that I never liked was I always felt like Gary would sometimes use his brilliance to excuse his anger and poor behavior. He gave himself a free pass. I think for bad behavior. And as someone who preached Buddhism and love and connection, it was hard.

If you pitched him a bad joke, he might give you that look like it wasn't like I don't like that joke. It was like, you're a fucking asshole and you're trying to destroy me. You're trying to destroy me and I'm on to you and I might destroy you. And you felt it all in that pause. It might be like in like one second like and it was chilling to observe it because there were certain people. They just were not in sync with Gary.

I always felt like the best thing about my relationship with Gary was when my jokes were bad, they were in the ballpark. So he never gave me that look like what is wrong with you. He used to kill me. I remember writing a scene. Oh, you know what it was? It was the episode that we were doing that was based on an experience I had on the talk show, it was Adolf Hankeler, who was the whole Adolf Hankeler.

And I had written a scene and we were out there working it out and he turned to somebody who was like a grip and he goes, would you do this? Would you? And I was so like humiliated in front of the Wu Tang clan in that moment because I was acting in the scene, I was in the scene, I had written the scene. And in that moment, I was just like, oh, this is just he's just doing this to punish me because he had that weird thing with me. Like, I'm going to make sure that you understand I'm better at this than you.

Well, I think he what you were in the eye of the storm of yes, was I'm working with these people like Rip Torn and and Jeffrey Tambor and tough, tough room. Very tough room. The best actors in the world. And I think to Gary, it was like, John better step up. John can't be a weak link. He's got to be as good as Rip. That's right.

And and I think he thought like, oh, I'm helping him. I'm schooling him. But he also has that thing in the back of his head. Like if John doesn't get there, he's destroying me. I think you're right. And I also think he admired acting because I think it didn't come naturally to him. And so he basically thought of comedy as like, that can't isn't everybody the most brilliant writer.

And, you know, so he gave Rip and Jeffrey a grace and a leeway that for us, we, you know, he would turn to us and be like, I can do what you do much easier than you can do it. So fuck you. Yeah, but at the end of the end of it, it really was the best season. And that's what's kind of fascinating is I'm so glad I get it. Yeah, I mean, your work is incredible. I've watched those episodes again.

Yeah, the storyline of the season is pretty remarkable. And Gary's dream of pulling it off. He did pull it off. He did. That's the weird thing. There are certain people, you know, who can do this in a very kind of measured calm, you know, whatever, Seinfeld and Larry David, making Seinfeld. And they're right across the street from us. And Gary is like, no, the only way to do this is we go to hell and try to climb out.

It's all pain. I always just remember we'd go over to Seinfeld and we're like, how many episodes do you guys do like 26? And you're like, what time do you get out at night? And they're like, five. Yeah. And you're like, wait, what? We're doing, I think, nine episodes and I'm here at three in the morning. It's like Springsteen trying to get the drum

sound, hitting the drum for a month. Completely. But, Judd, I know you've got to run, man, I always have such a pleasure hanging out with you and talking to you. This George Carlin's American Dream on HBO, HBO Max is so good. It's such great work. Thanks for even making it.

Thanks for cataloging comedy as you're also making comedy and doing all those things. It's really remarkable. And if you could tell your children to be slightly less talented because I've, you know, I also have children. I've passed the baton. It's over for me. I'm going in the room and I'm closing the door. That's the triumph of my parenting is that I'm no longer needed.

Thank you for being in the documentary. It really was my pleasure. It was fantastic. You illuminated so much for us. And whenever I hear you speak about comedy, I always think I wish I knew how to talk like that. I don't know how to talk like that. Teleprompter, you just need to, everything's in the prompter. It's all good.

But thank you so much, Judd. And come back and let's, we got so much more to talk about, you know, there's so many great stories from stand up and those other things. It's it's what podcasting is made for. Excellent. I'll be back. All right, man. Thanks, Judd. So that's it, guys.

We will be back. Check out the show when we come back our new season. I don't even know when it starts, but we're going to try and drop some podcast stuff. But the documentary that Judd is talking about, George Carlin's American Dream out on HBO Max now, please check it out. What an incredible comedian and human for more of our content. You know, our first season is out there on the old Apple TV plus link in the episode description. Also, of course, the hotline is always open, man.

Drop your thoughts, comments, questions, deepest fantasies. We don't really care what you put on the hotline. And we'll be throwing it up on another mail bag hotline voice mail writers edition of the problem podcast. Bye bye. The problem, John Stuart podcast is an Apple TV plus podcast and a joint busboy production.