The Tim Ferriss Show - #552: Aisha Tyler — How to Use Pain, Comedy, and Practice for Creativity (Repost)

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Starting point is 00:02:09 It's become one of the most popular email newsletters in the world with millions of subscribers. And it's super, super simple. It does not clog up your inbox. Every Friday, I send out five bullet points, super short, of the coolest things I've found that week, which sometimes includes apps, books, documentaries, supplements, gadgets, new self-experiments, hacks, tricks, and all sorts of weird stuff that I dig up from around the world. You guys, podcast listeners and book readers, have asked me for something short and action-packed for a very long time. Because after all, the podcast, the books, they can be quite long. And that's why I created Five Bullet Friday.

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Starting point is 00:04:04 apply to your own lives. My guest today is someone I've known for quite a few years now. She's incredible. Aisha Tyler, that is A-I-S-H-A-T-Y-L-E-R on Twitter, Instagram, Vimeo, and beyond. She is an award-winning director, actor, comedian, bestselling author, podcaster, and activist. She does just about everything. And if you've enjoyed my episodes with, for instance, Brandon Stanton, Debbie Millman, or Adam Robinson, among others, you will love this one. Whether you do creative work, want to be too complex to categorize, want to overcome

Starting point is 00:04:38 rejection and be the odds, despite the fears and insecurities we all have, this will have something for you. Ayesha voices super spy Lana Kane on FX's Emmy award-winning animated comedy series Archer, which won four back-to-back television critics' choice awards. She is a regular on the hit CBS show Criminal Minds, now in its 13th season, for which she has also directed. Ayesha continues to host the CW's hit improv show, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, and she's launching a line of bottled cocktails she created, Courage and Stone, in summer of 2018. Take a breath. Sit back. That's not all. Let me get a little bit more in just to give you a taste. And man, this doesn't even capture a small fraction, but here we go. Ayesha was a co-host

Starting point is 00:05:21 for seven seasons of CBS's Emmy-winning daytime show, The Talk, which she departed in September 2017 to focus more on acting and directing. She's also very well-remembered for her character arc on Friends, where she was the first African-American to have a longstanding role on the show. Her feature film debut, the thriller AXIS, all caps A-X-I-S, premiered 2017 and won the Outstanding Achievement in Feature Filmmaking Award at the 2017 Newport Beach Film Festival, and then had a theatrical run at Arclight Hollywood, Landmark NYC, and Drafthouse in my home of Austin, Texas. Alamo Drafthouse, so much fun. A San Francisco native, where I also spent a very, very long time, Aisha graduated from Dartmouth College with a degree in government and environmental policy, which you might not have known. She is an avid gamer and passionate

Starting point is 00:06:08 advocate and occasional adversary of the gaming community. And her voice can be heard in video games like Halo, Reach, Gears of War 3, and Watch Dogs. Ayesha is a bourbon and hard rock fan, a snowboarder, and a sci-fi obsessive. And we cover so much ground in this episode. It's very wide-ranging. She's hilarious. And I really, really, really enjoyed the twists and turns in this particular podcast episode. So without further ado, please enjoy. And you can find more to enjoy at AishaTyler.com, of course. The namesake of AishaTyler.com, Aisha Tyler. Aisha, welcome to the show.

Starting point is 00:06:55 Tim, hello. Thank you. I'm super excited to be here. This is our away. It's a very long home and away for us. It is. It is. This is our away. It's a very long home and away for us. at my place and I had so much fun speaking with you and fielding some fantastic questions, one of which I'm going to bring up and then we'll, we'll backpedal.

Starting point is 00:07:33 Okay. But the question will not be surprising to you, I don't think, and I'm going to ask you to bring it up. But the, uh, the conversation that we had part, contributed to me deciding to take a break from writing books, which had completely burned me out, and in turn, helped birth the show. So thank you for helping to send me on this path, because it's become one of the most gratifying and fascinating things I could possibly imagine doing. So thank you for that. It's so thrilling to hear and really, really gratifying. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing. I think podcasts are wonderful and terrible beasts, but really satisfying. Even when they're punishingly difficult to manage, they're still so satisfying. So I'm really happy. I'm happy that you're

Starting point is 00:08:23 enjoying it. And you have, we're not going to get into this right now, although we can, you have a book titled Self-Inflicted Wounds, subtitled Heartwarming Tales of Epic Humiliation. And can you maybe repeat or even paraphrase the question that you would always ask guests on your show? Oh, absolutely. I mean, the name for that book came from this part of my show, Self-Inflicted Wounds, which is, tell me a story about something that's gone wrong in your life that's your own fault. You can't blame anyone else, not your ex, not the bullies in your school, not the man. You know, you did it to yourself. And it was really a way of initiating a conversation about risk and failure because I feel like people see people who are successful and assume that a part of that success or the reason for that success is that they haven't made any mistakes and they haven't failed, that they've got a charmed life in some way, or they figure some kind of formula out. And, you know, the most successful people are people who

Starting point is 00:09:29 don't just manage risk, but engage in risk and court failure actively. And so I always love to, you know, have people listening see that someone that they admire and that they think is really accomplished has really shit the bed at some point in their lives, maybe multiple times. Because I just think it's instructive. I think people don't start because they're afraid they're going to fail. And there's just no way around. The path to success is through failure. You just can't get around it. So there's so many different directions I could go with this. And I want to go way back as maybe sort of a about your dad's favorite saying or question that he would ask. And I was hoping you could explain this or share this with people who are listening, because I think it's kind of amazing.

Starting point is 00:10:40 Yeah. Well, I was raised, you know, my parents divorced when I was 10. And my father, my parents, you know, I always joke that like, you know, it's only rich people that can afford to fight about custody. You know what I mean? Poor people just do whatever they have to do to like manage. And my parents, neither of them could really afford two kids. And also neither of them could afford to pay child support. So each of them just took one of us. And I was older, so I went with my father. And he was like, which one can wash itself? And then that was the one that he took. I mean, and he, you know, my father is the king of the very terse and pointed motivational speech. So I would leave for school in the morning. And I grew up in San Francisco. And at one point, we lived upstairs in a Victorian. So I'd go down these very steep stairs, and he'd lean over the railing, and he'd go, whose day is it? I'd have to say, it's my day. And then he'd say, what are you going to do? And I'd have to say, grab it by the balls.

Starting point is 00:11:43 And then what are you going to do? And I'd have to say, grab it by the balls. And then what are you going to do? And I'd have to say, and twist and twist. Sorry. But, you know, it's funny because it was like, my dad was just, he was such a great dad. He was a really engaged guy, but, you know, I mean, he was a single father and relatively young. So maybe there were a few boundaries of propriety that he danced along.

Starting point is 00:12:06 But he just encouraged me, you know, he just encouraged me to be aggressive. You know, he was one of those, I think it's very hard for single parents, period. And I think it's very hard for fathers and daughters because, you know, I just think if you're a dad, the world just looks like, you know, a field of broken glass and potholes and molten lava. And then you've got this little kitten and you're just so terrified to put the kitten down. So either they grip very tightly or in my father's case, they throw you up in the air and expect that they've given you the skills to land. And that was definitely his strategy. Now you mentioned the divorce, which I have read was amicable,

Starting point is 00:12:50 and it ended up resulting in you going with your father, and you have one sibling? I have a younger sister, and she stayed with me. Stayed with your mom. Was that hard, or did it not even occur to you to be hard because it just is what it, it was, or was, was that difficult being, and did you have constant contact or what was the dynamic like? You know, it's interesting cause I think it was more the second for me. Like it just was what was happening. And, and I, I don't ever remember, I don't ever remember struggling in any grand way with the way that things were going. And look, maybe that's my nature. I know my parents worked very hard to be loving and available to both of us.

Starting point is 00:13:37 And I had lots of access to my mother. And I talked to her all the time. And I called her for advice. And she got to kind of be the fun mom or the advice mom. She know, she didn't have to discipline me and she could just be the person who was there when I needed like emotional support. I do know that like one of the things that resulted in at least when we were younger was my sister and I, but we weren't super close, but, but I, you know, lots of siblings aren't super close in their kids, whether they're living in the same house or not, they're fighting and they're competitive. But as we got older, I became wildly protective of my sister.

Starting point is 00:14:10 And my relationship with her is so intensely loving and affectionate now. And I don't know, maybe if we lived in the same house driving each other nuts all the time, we wouldn't be as close as we are now. I mean, we spent the formative years of our lives living in different houses, but we like the same stuff and we care about the same things and our connections are really deep. So, you know, I can't, I don't ever remember kind of sitting up at night feeling any kind of agony about the fact that my parents were divorcing. I did watch them try very hard to stay together. Like, I do remember that when they got a divorce, I was like, they really gave it a shot. You know, I can see that they really like, you know, I just, they would break up and they'd get back together and they'd break up and they'd get back together.

Starting point is 00:14:51 And I remember I'd like walking on them, they'd be making out on the couch. I was like, they are really giving this a go. So when they decided it was over, I was like, okay, yeah, I don't, I don't ever, I don't ever remember it being like a point of agony. Just things changed, you know, and maybe as a result, I tolerate change better than I would otherwise, or maybe I even crave change. I don't know. generally look at things through a positive lens like that, where you would frame what other people might try to frame as a very difficult, agonizing experience into something that was, or at least is framed as something positive that you benefited from? Or have you had more of the time a tendency to frame things negatively? That's a really good question. i i think about that a lot because i think that my my attitude or my point of view about things is half biochemistry and and half

Starting point is 00:15:51 uh like child rearing um my father is just like a like a preternaturally optimistic person like it's it's extraordinary i always make this joke that if my father's house was on fire he would like get a stick and marshmallows like he just just cannot be deterred. I've never seen it. You know, he's just never down. And I, and I, and so I think that I inherited that and maybe it's attitudinal. I think I just probably make the chemicals in my brain that kind of keep me typically upbeat. You know what I mean? And, and, and I think it's important because I think a lot of times when people, when people are, are, or if they have a hard time seeing the world positively or if they're struggling with depression, people are like, well, you just need to look at it a different way. But I think that I probably just make more of the chemicals that enable me to be optimistic. I just, you know, I've never really been depressed.

Starting point is 00:16:38 But my father also was just a walk it off dad. He just did not feel sorry for me. And, you know, and I was not allowed to feel sorry for myself. And so when things went wrong, and this is definitely sustained until I was an adult, I just get up and I keep going. And that was because my father was raised, he lost his father when he was very, very young. He's raised by a single mother in Tumbledown, Pittsburgh, with the very few opportunities for a black man at that time. And he just never felt sorry for himself. He was just like, look, I can complain about the situation or

Starting point is 00:17:10 I could just keep moving. And, and I, and I, so I think I've been nurtured in that way as well, which is the world is unfair. Uh, there, you know, it's shot through with assholes. I still have to get up in the morning and make a life for myself. Um, and so it's probably a combination of those two things. Were you, would you say good at following his advice of not only grabbing life by the balls, but twisting, which is a whole new level. Those are two really like, you can gently grab balls. You can't really gently grab and twist balls. Twisting is an elevated form of aggression.

Starting point is 00:17:48 Yeah, I mean, I don't know. It's hard to say, oh, I'm nailing it. That's not how I feel. But I do think that that attitude, just kind of go. And I wrote about a lot about it in my book, like the idea that like my parents raised me to be brave and in some ways maybe too brave, but the result has been like a relentlessness. Um, and in the pursuit of the things that are important to me. And that's not the same as like, I'm winning. I don't really think about things that way, but it's just, if I want to do something that I do it and I don't really worry too much about whether it's going to go my way, not because I expect it to go my way, but because it doesn't matter if it goes my way,

Starting point is 00:18:32 because it's the engagement that's most meaningful to me. It's the effort. I got it. So the engagement, you mean sort of the dogged persistence that you're developing? The engagement in your personal goals. If I want to do something, whatever, I don't know, let's pick something really innocuous. If I want to hike every day for a month or if I want to start meditating, if I don't dial it, it's not as important to me as not looking back and saying to myself, ah, I should have done it. It's the doing for me. That is the reward. And then sometimes things go away and sometimes they don't. But the thing I find most upsetting is, is regret. Yeah. Because that's, that's something I have control over in the sense of like, if you didn't do it, you have nobody to blame but yourself, you know?

Starting point is 00:19:20 Right. You can always attempt, you can't predetermine success yeah you can't predetermine the outcome but you can predetermine the effort because the effort is is the only thing that you own you do you can't own results you can only own you can only own initiative do you recall any you mentioned your dad being a walk it off-off dad. I want to explore that a little bit. Do you remember any, while you were still under his watch or not, early disappointments or self-inflicted wounds and how your dad responded or mistakes? Yeah. Well, this isn't exactly a good example of a disappointment, but it's a perfect example of his attitude. I was going to camp. I was going to camp.

Starting point is 00:20:09 I must have been about eight or nine. No, I'll say nine. And I was going to like, you know, jujitsu camp. And this was still during the free range parenting era where you just got up in the morning and you left at home and you came back later. And that stuff was your responsibility. Did you say eight or nine and then jujitsu camp? Yeah, I was really into martial arts when I was a kid. It's making me think of the movie Hannah where this Eric Banda trains his daughter to be a

Starting point is 00:20:36 super killer. I wish I was that good at jujitsu. Unfortunately, that was not one of my strong areas. But as I pointed out, it wasn't the result that was important. It was just the effort. So I would, I would ride my bike to camp every day and ride at home. And it was a good, you know, it was a good ride. It's like a five mile ride to camp. And I fell one day coming down like a hill, you know, kind of, I don't know if, you know, free, this is like, this was like no helmets. This was a long time ago. I'm very old. Like, you know, no helmets,

Starting point is 00:21:07 just like willy nilly your backpack on and you know, you're not signaling. And, uh, I fell and I hurt my arm very badly. And, uh, like I went, I can't remember, but I contacted my dad and he's like, I'm not going to come get you. I can't leave work. You have to get home on your own. Um, and, and I, so I rode my bike back from camp, you know, like another three, four miles and my arm was broken. It was definitely broken. I'd broken my arm. Um, and I got home and my dad was like, ah, your arm's not broken. I mean, you see, you just need to stop complaining. You know, it's a sore. And the next day I woke up, it was like black and swollen. And I had to like, you know, like lift it off the pillow. And he finally took me to the doctor and it was absolutely like compound fracture. The bone hadn't come through the skin, but it was a multiple

Starting point is 00:21:53 fracture. But I think at the time it felt cruel. But I think my dad's larger attitude was like, no one is coming to save you. You have to save yourself. You have to find a way every single day to save yourself. And as a result, I think that as an adult, I just don't spend a lot of time anguishing over what's been done to me. And I was fine. I did ride my bike home and my arm was broken, but I still got home on my bike. And, you know, then the next day I got a super dope cast. And I think we just raise like these, I mean, I know I sound like everybody's mom, but I just feel like we're just, we're curating young people's experiences so aggressively nowadays that they just don't have any way to discover things about themselves.

Starting point is 00:22:43 They don't develop not just self-sufficiency, but like a curiosity about themselves and their abilities and what they can tolerate and what they can do if left alone, because they're just never left alone. And I was just, I had a lot of time alone when I was a kid and I still really like being alone as an adult. Right. And also it strikes me that if you're so protective of your child and your child's ego that you effectively disallow them to fail or engage with risk, that the delta, the difference between their actual competencies and abilities for

Starting point is 00:23:22 self-preservation and their overinflated sense of their capabilities is actually a huge disservice. Oh, absolutely. And their sense of, like, you need to know what it feels like to fail and then what comes next. Because what comes next is, what did I learn? How can I adjust? How do I pivot? How do I move forward? And just most people don't develop those mental skills. They just, they're crushed by failure and it's, it's just an unavoidable element of life. And, and you know, there's so many people that I know who's out of real, I mean, you know, genuine love parents. Like, I just don't want to see my kid in pain, but like, how are you going to, how do people move through the planet? How do people move

Starting point is 00:24:08 through life without pain? That's a false theory. It can't be done. It just cannot be done. And so people just become incapacitated the first minute they hit any kind of a speed bump in their lives. And they just don't know how, they don't know how to navigate disappointment. Whereas I was just deeply disappointed throughout my childhood. So I know exactly what it feels like. I'm just like a next. I'm like, oh, that didn't go my way. Moving on, you know? Well, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it makes me conjure my mind the image of this, this increasing sort of amplitude of pain consequence over your life from like childhood to adulthood where the consequences grow potentially greater and greater.

Starting point is 00:24:52 Where in the beginning, like when you're a child, you're basically engaging with pain and I shouldn't say pain, but failure in many cases, not all cases, but many cases where you're effectively in one of those like birthday party blow up sumo suits. Do you know what I'm talking about? And it's like, all right, so you can sort of engage with failure that way. And if you get knocked on your ass, there aren't really real consequences. And then you get to high school, college, and it's like, okay, you're out of the sumo suit, but you've got big kind of blow up boxing gloves on and huge piece of head gear. And then you,

Starting point is 00:25:27 then when you get out into some aspects of the real world, it's just a bare knuckle brawl. And so if you haven't had the chance, permanent consequences. Yeah, exactly. So if you haven't had the chance to get wailed in the face with the sumo suit,

Starting point is 00:25:41 you're not going to be ready for the blow up boxing gloves and the head gear. And if you certainly, if you don't get whacked in the face a few sumo suit, you're not going to be ready for the blow-up boxing gloves and the head gear. And certainly, if you don't get whacked in the face a few times doing that, you're just going to be crippled when you get out into the real world and get drop-kicked in the face by someone who doesn't follow the same rules. And crippled in that way that, and I know you've interacted with people like this, in that way where when something bad happens, their whole monologue is like, why me? Like, why did this happen to me? You don't understand what I'm going through. It's like, you're not, you're not special.

Starting point is 00:26:13 Everybody is experiencing the same thing. Everybody, everybody's heart is being broken. Everybody isn't getting the job they want. Everybody isn't going to sleep with the hot person they want. Everybody is experiencing the same failures, the same injuries, but you just don't know how to tolerate them. You are not special. And that's not the same as saying you don't have the potential for being special. There's nothing anybody's doing now that hasn't already been done and that won't be done in the future. And those kinds of personalities drive me's, they're so stuck and boring.

Starting point is 00:26:48 What did, what did you think you were going to be when you grew up, when you were in high school or college? Oh God. In high school, I, it's so interesting cause I was like super academic and I think I would thought I'd be an attorney. I was really, I was like, you know, I was like a big activist and I organized and marched and did all that stuff. And I was, I was like really, you know, the outing club and I rock climbed and all that stuff. So I thought I was going to be like an environmental lawyer, either an environmental lawyer or an environmental engineer. And then I got to, and I wanted, I really wanted to go to a school that was like, like really grounded in like a relationship to nature. So I was applying to like,

Starting point is 00:27:30 you know, Marlboro college and Reed and, and Bard and these schools that were like out in the woods. And I ended up going to Dartmouth, which is, you know, in, in New Hampshire and has this big land grant around it. And, uh, and I thought I would be an environmental engineer. And I think I just took like the first prerequisite math course for engineering. And I was like, yeah, okay. It's not, it's not going to be, it's not free. I always love, I always love science, but, um, I'm just a person of letters, I guess. And I, I didn't have the appetite for it. It wasn't as glamorous as I thought. I think when I took my first engineering, I think I got through the math class, like did fine. Like I applied myself and I got a good grade.

Starting point is 00:28:08 And then I went into my like, you know, an introduction to engineering three. And it was about like building like a fecal matter treatment plant. And I was like, this isn't feeling like hugging trees at all, man. We're just talking about poop all day. I lost my appetite for that really quickly. So then what? Did you just have this great existential angst, or did you sort of shift to something else immediately following that? I was always doing kind of like performing things on the side. Like I, I went to a high school that had a

Starting point is 00:28:45 performing arts kind of like magnet or like a pocket school within the, the, the regular school called the, uh, J. U. D. McAteer school of the arts. So I was kind of doing my regular class work and then doing like improv and stuff and sketch on the side. And then I went to Dartmouth and I was doing some of the same stuff. Like, you know, I was in one of those infernal, you know, Ivy League acapella groups that have been popularized since then by shows like Glee. And so I was always kind of doing that as a hobby because it just never felt like a real job. And I graduated and I was living in San Francisco and I was working for a conservation organization. It was like a killer. It was like I got like my dream job.

Starting point is 00:29:25 It was a group that purchased like blighted urban land and turned it into parks and underserved neighborhoods that didn't have any outdoor space for kids to play. And, you know, it was like the mission was great because it wasn't just kind of conservation for conservation's sake. It was like conservation focused on engaging underserved communities and it was the grooviest.

Starting point is 00:29:44 And I was just miserable. And I just... Why were you miserable? Because I just, I didn't know. It was a really good question. It was like, why, if I have my dream job in the city of my birth, why am I so unhappy? And I just did a lot of soul searching and I realized it was because for the first time in my life, I wasn't doing anything creative. I wasn't performing. And so, um, I, I'm, I'm a problem. I'm a, I'm a problem solver. I'm a matrix builder. I was like, well, how can I solve this problem right now? And, um, I looked at all the ways that I could

Starting point is 00:30:22 get on stage and stand up comedy was the only thing I didn't need to know anyone for, have an agent or a band or connections. I could just do stand-up right away. And so I started studying and watching the precursor to Comedy Central, which was this network called HA, a very short-lived network, and taking notes. And then after a while, just kind of screwed up the courage to go and do an open mic. And then that was, it was just transformational. I was like, Oh, this is what I want to do with my life. Was the thinking immediately on how to turn performance into a career? Or did you, did you expect that you would continue doing your job and doing standup on the side? Was it a career move

Starting point is 00:31:06 from when you first built The Matrix and decided on stand-up? Or was it, you know what, this is going to be great. I'll continue doing this job and I'll scratch my creative performance itch on the weekends with open mics? Yeah, it's so funny because I don't think I even realized that stand-up comedy was a job. You know, I was like a really bookish kid. And I, you know, a lot of guys will have these stories about how they grew up, you know, with like Red Fox, you know, on vinyl that they listened to hundreds of times or, you know, following, you know, Letty Bruce or, you know, these idols or Bill Hicks. I just, I didn't, like, I remember seeing remember seeing live on the sunset strip when I was a kid,

Starting point is 00:31:45 but like, I, I just thought Richard Pryor was an alien. Like I, you know what I mean? Like a magical person who came down to do this thing. It just, the idea that that was like a vocation was just not in my head. So, um, I remember seeing standup at Dartmouth when I was like a sophomore and coming out of a show and being like, like, do you got, like, do people know that this, like, you can go and have this feeling for an hour? Like, this is insanity. Like, I just remember, like, everything hurt from laughing, my face and my stomach. And I just never experienced live comedy before. So it didn't dovetail into, like, a job at first.

Starting point is 00:32:22 It was just something I was going to do for fun. I kept my day job 100%. And I kept it for a long time. I also didn't want to be one of these miserable, sweating stand-ups who were gripping their inky notebook and sleeping on their buddy's couch. I was in a relationship. And I had a job that paid great. And I could make flyers for my shows at work. It was like embezzling, you know, a copy paper, uh, and, and, and push pins as, as, as, as aggressively as I could. So, uh, I, I, I was, I, I was, and I still am of the opinion that like,

Starting point is 00:32:55 you should absolutely keep your day job, uh, which I know is not the most popular. I'm of the same, I'm of the same opinion. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. the way that you approach your art. You know, I would like get up and I'd go to work at like seven and I, you know, six or seven in the morning and I work until four and then I jump in the car and I drive two hours to Sacramento to do a set and I come back at midnight

Starting point is 00:33:31 and I do it all over again. But I could do that and then it was just purely about the experience of performing and not about whether I was getting paid or not. So I did that for a long time before I finally quit my job. Now, for those people

Starting point is 00:33:41 who don't know the geography of Northern California, where I lived for 17 years, and coincidentally, the high school that you went to, is that now the Ruth Asawa School on O'Shaughnessy? It's on O'Shaughnessy. They're at the Twin Peak, kind of like the nexus of O'Shaughnessy. Twin Peak slash Glen Park Canyon. Exactly. So I literally lived for five or six years about a quarter mile from that school. It was right there. It's not a big city, even though I think when you live there, it feels like it.

Starting point is 00:34:17 But it's an intimate place. It's an intimate place. And given the density of San Francisco and the fact that it is, well, I'm not going to go, so I don't know if people would consider it a comedy town, but there's certainly clubs and so on. Oh, it's a comedy town. Yeah. It's a comedy town. So why would you go all the way to Sacramento? Sacramento is not, for those people who don't know the area, it's not like a 10-minute drive away from San Francisco. It's far. It's always had, San Francisco's always had

Starting point is 00:34:46 a reputation for being a comedy town. The big comedy towns in the United States from comedians' perspectives are San Francisco, Chicago, Boston and New York. LA is not, I mean LA is a company town, but it's not a comedy town. And San Francisco

Starting point is 00:35:01 was always one of those places that people saw as a real crucible for kind of original comedy. You know, it was like where the alts comedy movement happened. And, you know, Mark Maron and Janine Garofalo and these kind of alternative comics, Brian Poussain came out of, and it was a comedy town. But when I started doing comedy, it was like the beginning of the contraction of, of the comedy economy. So there was a period of time when there were just hundreds of comedy clubs everywhere and you could make a living doing stand-up. You could kind of go from place to place and you could get a gig and you could get paid. And

Starting point is 00:35:35 I started doing stand-up at the beginning of the end of the comedy bubble. So when I started doing stand-up, the club community was contracting and some of the big clubs in San Francisco were closing. I think at one point there were maybe like five or six active clubs. And then by the time I was working consistently, there were only two. And there was just a lot of competition for stage time. And to get good at comedy, you can't just do it like once a weekend. You need to be on stage like every night. It's, it's, it's like being a high diver. Like, you know what? It's, it's literally like Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours and you're not going to get 10,000 hours of standup hanging out in San Francisco. Like you have to go everywhere and take every single opportunity to be on stage that you can get.

Starting point is 00:36:17 So, um, I would drive to Sacramento. I would drive to Fresno. I would do these terrible, you know, like bar shows and in Menlo Park. And, oh God, I don't even remember some of the places, Cupertino and Martinez. I mean, you would just go anywhere that you could get six minutes on stage. And there were a hundred other people trying to get those same six minutes. So it was really competitive. I mean, the culture, I think, was pretty supportive. Like, comedians were supportive of each other, but it just, there just wasn't enough stage time. So you just do anything and go anywhere to get it.

Starting point is 00:36:50 I want to ask about this comedy contraction. We won't spend too much time on this because I don't want to take us completely off the reservation. But what happened? I mean, it was like Beanie Babies. Like, people were like, really? The beanie babies. It's like, no comedy isn't cool anymore.

Starting point is 00:37:08 And then like all the clubs closed. What was it? Just a macroeconomic downturn. I mean, what happened? I think, I think it was, there were three factors.

Starting point is 00:37:16 One factor was just, there was just a glut. They're just, you know, it, it, it, for a live comedy in,

Starting point is 00:37:23 in some ways in the seventies and eighties was kind of a new thing and it's not like people hadn't been doing stand-up prior to that but the proliferation of stand-up comedians in the in the culture really started happening at that time and uh what that was fueled by i honestly don't know like why were there so many more comics doing stand-up in the 70s and 80s maybe because that was the period where there were these superstar comics, um, that were kind of, you know, I'm trying to think of who would have been really popular besides like Bill Hicks. And, um, I can see that though. Maybe it's analogous to like celebrity, celebrity chefs in the last 15 years. Yeah, exactly. And, and, you know, part of the reason why there are so many more celebrity

Starting point is 00:38:03 chefs is because there started to be celebrity chefs on television. Right. And so if you think about that in terms of comedy, what you, what you see is, oh, that's a job. I can make money at that. Whereas people weren't really encountering live comedy if they didn't go to a live comedy show. Uh, and so you start to see these guys on TV and you think, and honestly, when, when HA, the precursor, um, to Comedy Central started, they needed, like they needed comics and they needed opportunities. They needed clubs. They needed, they needed content. It was a 24 hour network. So there were, there were some good comedians on that station and there were some really shitty ones on that station.

Starting point is 00:38:46 It really bad. And so a lot of people watching probably thought, well, I can do that. I also think about guys like Sam Kinison and Andrzej Cley. There was kind of like a golden era in that time and we were seeing all those people on TV. Then we were seeing a lot of people that were like really subpar.

Starting point is 00:39:04 And a lot of people were thinking, well, if that guy can write, you know, five crappy minutes about an airplane, I can. Then you couple that with this explosion in comedy clubs, which were a relatively new phenomenon. I mean, when Joan Rivers was doing standup, she was doing standup in strip clubs. There were very few comedy clubs

Starting point is 00:39:21 and comedy was kind of a part of a vaudeville approach. So you'd hire a singer and then you'd hire a comic, but there wasn't a, there weren't places dedicated to comedy. So these comedy clubs opened, it was really easy to wait, way to make money because comics, comics weren't that expensive. And, you know, you had a two drink minimum, people would come in, they would get wasted. You'd have huge margins on your booze. So these comedy clubs started proliferating. And then there was just peak clubs. Saturation. Yeah, it became unsustainable. So they started to contract because of market saturation. The

Starting point is 00:39:55 economy started to contract in the 80s and people could watch comedy on TV. The proliferation of comedy on television affected people going out to see it in a club. So there were like kind of those three factors all, all kind of intersecting. And when it happened, it was really aggressive. Like I said, I think there were maybe like five or six comedy clubs in San Francisco when I was in high school. And then by the time I was doing standup in my twenties, there were two. Wow. And so you, you, you would do, and you know, and they were attracting like, you know, like high end, like peak talent. So for example, this club's still there.

Starting point is 00:40:32 It's called the Punchline. I've been there a few times. And, uh, there was the Punchline and there was Cobbs and those are still the, the, the only two clubs. And maybe there's some minor clubs that have sprung up since then, but you know, they would book these big headliners. So the only time you could go up if you were an amateur, like a young comic, was on a Sunday or a Wednesday. And there'd be 20 other guys trying to get on as well.

Starting point is 00:40:54 And it would be wildly competitive. And you wouldn't be getting paid. And then you'd be super anxious because you'd be hoping, okay, I need to go up and I need to destroy because I want this club owner to hire me again. So I can't go up and I can't work out. I can't fail in front of this guy because he won't see this like, you know, when you watch like an Olympic skater during practice and they're falling. I mean, that's what practice is for, You know, practice is for like finding your weak spots

Starting point is 00:41:25 and reinforcing them. But when you're up in front of a comedy club owner and it's been six months that you've been trying to get out of this club and you finally get five minutes, it's got to be a monster five minutes. And so there was just no way to improve. You can't improve.

Starting point is 00:41:41 You can't improve. I was going to say, how do you get in your rough drafts then? I mean, how do you work on the material drive to martina's oh i see i see so you'd right work out the kinks with exactly the crew at the such and such casino and god knows where turlock and then foobars or roostertea feathers or you know, one of these other places. Yeah. And there was this, you know, it's different than being an author or an athlete or even a musician because there's an autonomy to comedy. Absolutely. But you need other people.

Starting point is 00:42:19 You can't do it. You can't just sit around your place practicing. You know what I mean? Like with music, you know, you know, if you're sharp or flat,. You know what I mean? With music, you know if you're sharp or flat, you know if you hit all the notes, you know if the tempo's right. But with comedy, the only way it works is in front of an audience. And so you're very dependent

Starting point is 00:42:33 on stage time. It's everything when you're a young comic is stage time. Do you remember your early content? What was your approach early on? do you remember the first and maybe i mean a different way to approach this you could take it answer it however you like do you remember the first time that you bombed or the what is your first memory that comes

Starting point is 00:42:55 to mind of bombing oh god i bombed so many times it's just it all seeps together into an inky blackness um any comic any comic who tells you they've never bombed is lying. And again, the only way to get funny is to bomb. No one ever gets funnier after they kill. You know, they just walk, I'm like, follow that, bitches, and they drop the mic, you know what I mean? They go off and do shots of their friends.

Starting point is 00:43:17 I mean, you really need to bomb and bomb hard to get funny. I remember doing this one show. Oh, God. So there was an open mic in a laundromat um in like like south market around the police station there so what maybe like you know eighth and mission or something like that for people in san francisco uh i think it was called brainwash i think the the place was called brainwash and they would have this open mic in the back of this laundromat. And comics know, you know, with these open mics, with these local open mics, that typically there are no actual audience members in the audience. It is just a room full of comedians waiting for you to be done so that they can try out their material.

Starting point is 00:43:59 You know, look, all of them looking at their notebooks, not listening, not laughing. And you're just kind of trying to gut it out and pause where you think the laughter might occur if you were in front of actual human beings. And, um, I just did, I did a set where I just, I did not get one laugh. And I remember that one, not even like a, not even like a cursory titter. And I remember just silence, just like, like, like just a wall of silence. And I got off, I was even thinking about it right now. It's so funny to me.

Starting point is 00:44:28 Like I called a friend or I talked to a girlfriend afterwards. I was like, oh my God, like I couldn't even call that a bad set. I don't know what that was, but it was so funny to me that I didn't get a laugh. Like I, it was, it, there was this, there was this like bulletproofness that I got from that set that just made me impervious to anything ever going wrong in my, in my life or career again. And, and every, like, even when I'm talking about now, it's like, there's a huge smile on my face because it was so funny how, how little, how, how little I was able to elicit out of that audience. Um, but, but it made, it made me, it just made me so mentally

Starting point is 00:45:06 strong was that the immediate response that you had i mean or were you in the middle of the set when you're like in the back of your mind thinking wow no one is laughing was there did you go from like pan it was it like the reverse of the five stages of grief or like what or did you just go straight to like yeah motherfuckers this is great like just full acceptance this is gonna make a great story however many years from now on tim ferris's podcast well one thing comedians love is is uh agony i mean it's we dine out on it is definitely like our our stock and trade so uh a comedian very quickly uh transitions from oh my god this is the worst night of my life to, oh, my God, this is going to make a great story. That happens almost instantaneously.

Starting point is 00:45:49 So we have a little bit of – we have some armor in that regard because, you know, you could just – we could wake up like naked and shivering on the side of the road with like no money and no phone and not speak the local language. And you'd be thinking, okay, if I live, this is going to make a killer story. So I think in the moment, I just thought, I had watched a couple other people go up and not do very well either. I was prepared for it not going my way. And I just thought, I'm just, and I think also there's a discipline to comedy that if you're not a comedian, you can't understand, which is that you've got to get up and do your set. There is no... You don't get to tap out. Tapping out is true failure. If you went up and you had a bad set, well, you just need to write new jokes. But if you go up and you give up, that's true failure for a comedian. And there are some really famous examples of this online. I don't know if you know the comedian Bill Burr. So I interviewed Bill Burr about a year and a half ago, and I played the video,

Starting point is 00:46:49 which he had never seen, or he claimed to have never seen. He still has some psychic, he has some trauma. So can you, for people who don't know the story, can you please describe it? Because it's just, it's amazing. Right, it's insane. So he was doing one of those big radio station concerts, like the Jingle Ball or whatever. And I don't remember. It was called the Weenie Roast.

Starting point is 00:47:11 I think it was the Weenie Roast. So it's one of the shows at some local station. K-Rock, 97. K-Rock, K-Rock. One of those shows. And it's like, I don't know. Weezer's too cool of a band. It would be like Nickelback and some other band that sounds like Nickelback

Starting point is 00:47:25 and then an opening band you never heard of anyway. And, but they paid, uh, they, they, I don't know why people still do this, but you know, if you're a comic and someone offers you money, you take it. So they would hire a comic to kind of warm up the crowd, you know, early in the day. And, you know, no one, no one pays to see Nickelback and then wants to sit through 15 minutes of standup, you know, everyone's drunk and they're not and then wants to sit through 15 minutes of stand-up. You know, everyone's drunk and on drugs. They're not even facing forward.

Starting point is 00:47:48 You know what I mean? It's just like the work, like there's nothing, the only thing worse than performing in front of an outdoor audience is performing in front of people who are eating. Yeah, yeah. This is like a tailgate at like 11 a.m. or 1 p.m. or something, yeah.

Starting point is 00:48:08 Everybody's been, you know, everybody like busted out their like, you know, their marijuana brownie recipe for the year. They're all like completely looped, you know, like one of their eyes is completely dilated and the other one is like falling out of their head. Nobody cares about your jokes about your mom and your family. So they could not muster compassion if they tried. So he starts doing stand up and he just immediately starts getting booed. And it's just this tidal wave of disdain. And he knows if he doesn't finish, he will not get paid.

Starting point is 00:48:38 But it's not like silence you can tolerate, right? But people are screaming at him to get off stage. And he makes it very clear to the audience you have to watch it because i'll never be able to do it justice but he makes it very clear to the audience that he is not leaving the stage until he does his 10 minutes that he does not care how they feel about him and he's and he's counting down the minute yeah yeah yeah every minute he's like nine minute you fucking fucks he says something really outrageous like i hope your mother gets cancer in the center of her asshole. Seven minutes! It's just so – it's so – it's just a demonstration of tenacity. you know, he was embarrassed by it, but every comedian understands, you know, this kind of, this kind of blood battle that you sometimes have with an audience where,

Starting point is 00:49:30 you know, you're not, they're not going to scare you and they're not going to drive you away. You're going to deliver the material that you were hired to deliver. You're going to make your money and then you're going to go off and spend it on light beer and chicken wings. But, uh, but no one is, you will not be deterred. And so, um, so I think because you understand that as a comedian very early on in your career, no matter what happens on stage, uh, you know, I, I, I will not be moved. So I just, I had material to do and I did it. And I think, I remember I thinking almost immediately, well, okay, I'm not going to get any laughs. I'm just going to kind of like listen to this set and see what it feels like, see what the words feel like, see what might play in front of actual people.

Starting point is 00:50:08 But it started to get really delicious. And I think if you watch the Bill Burr video, you'll also see that he starts to really enjoy it. It starts to be like this kind of like savory masochism towards the end where he just – he's so powerful in his lack of caring. You know what I mean? Yeah. He's so powerful in his lack of caring. You know what I mean? And you watch it and it is to be studied because he goes from kind of anguish to rage to this kind of delightful detachment by the end of the set. And I've seen some other guys do similar stuff and it's always really fun to watch. So a couple of things that I want to use as teasers for people who should watch this video.

Starting point is 00:50:50 I think it was in Philadelphia. I'm almost 100% positive it was in Philadelphia. Philadelphia, I think. I know either that or Jersey. I think it was Philadelphia because he started ridiculing Rocky and he said, your hero is a fictional person and just tearing into them. And he basically, for half of his set, just decided to abandon his material and just attack these people in the town. Which by the way is a no-no generally. Yeah, which is a no-no generally.

Starting point is 00:51:22 Yeah, like if people hate you, there are these unwritten rules of comedy. And one of them is if some of the people in the audience hate you, like don't turn all of them against you. Yeah. Um, and this is just a sidebar, but don't forget what you were going to say. There's another very famous video, very famous. And it happened at the punchline in San Francisco where, um, there's a, there's a guy playing, he's a good guitar comic and a guy's heckling him. And, uh, it's kind of just combative back and forth, but nothing too extreme. But then the guy gets up and he comes towards the stage, whatever, to defend himself

Starting point is 00:51:51 or the girl he's with, something like that. And the guy just hauls off and hits him in the head with a guitar. Sorry, sorry. Not funny. It's tragic, but Jesus Christ. Everybody live. But what happens is up until that beat, the whole audience has been on the comedian side against this guy.

Starting point is 00:52:10 And it is a hairpin turn from them being like, yeah, shut up. Because the comic's like, hey, people can't enjoy the show because you're talking. Keep it down. And then he hits this guy and the whole audience just turns on him. Just like instantaneous, like Frankenstein's monster mob, just the pitchforks come flying out. And so one of the unwritten rules of comedy is that, you know, you just don't, you want to try to at all costs avoid turning everybody against you, which, so Bill broke a bunch of rules, but he just, he never gave up, you know, which I think it becomes this, you know, it's like the Rudy moment at the end of the movie like man that sucked but you sure stuck in there and he got a standing of well i mean everybody's already standing but he got massive applause from the audience at the end which is just because they're just like what the fuck like it didn't even fit into like any mental

Starting point is 00:53:00 heuristic of comedy that they could expect it was it was straight prison that was straight prison yard dynamics right like nobody you know it's the line from uh out of sight right just like the yard nobody's backing down nobody's backing down and he just you know i think they there was like a thousand of them to one of her probably like ten thousand of them to one of him and he just did not back down you know so he got he got the slowest back clap at the end oh my god so i wasn't gonna go to heckling but why not since we're already here do you have any memorable heckling stories did you recall the first time you got heckled um god yeah i mean again i mean i mean I started doing stand-up like 25 years ago. So at this point,

Starting point is 00:53:46 like all the sets have just kind of blended. And heckling can be lots of different things. It doesn't always have to be like the conventional kind of you suck heckle. One time where this woman, and this kind of dovetails perfectly with the old, like, don't turn the audience against you, where this woman was talking to me she was sitting in the front row and she was talking to me the entire show just loud enough that i could hear her but not really loud enough so the audience could hear her except for the people right around her and it was driving me crazy that's awful it was like a bee in my ear and as a result result, I just seemed insane. You know what I mean? Stopping to yell at this person that no one could hear.

Starting point is 00:54:34 It was a very effective echo because she just completely derailed my show. And I just seemed like a dick because I was like, shut up, lady. But no one could hear what she was saying. I was like, what's wrong? She's a nice lady. I remember that. I really went off the rails last night. And I generally have a rule with hecklers that unless they're really disruptive to the entire room, I just never address them. Because what you do is, again, you've derailed a show for 500 or 1,000 people to deal with one person. And everyone's never going to really understand

Starting point is 00:55:00 what's going on unless that person's so loud that they're, that they're, they've affected everybody else's enjoyment of the night. Um, but, but sometimes the affectionate hecklers are the worst because, because they don't like, you know, typically hecklers just want to be a part of the show. And so,

Starting point is 00:55:15 you know, they say something, you slam them a little bit, they shut up because they, they think they're helping you out. He was the famous line is they'll come up and be like, Hey, like I helped you out.

Starting point is 00:55:22 I'm like, buddy, I came with jokes. I don't need this. Like, I don't, I don't have a box jumper in my act. I showed up ready to go. But when people are affectionate, you can't insult them. And they're the most unmanageable kind of person.

Starting point is 00:55:37 Now, by affectionate, you mean someone who's like, I love you. I love you. I love you. I had this one girl at one show in San Francisco, just so drunk. I'm just cross-eyed. And for the 90 minutes I was on stage, just, I love you. I love you so much. I love you. I had this one girl at one show in San Francisco, just so drunk. I'm just cross-eyed. And for the 90 minutes I was on stage, I was like, I love you. I love you so much. I love you. And I was just like, lady, all you're doing is making me want to hit you in the head with this microphone stand. Your affection is not welcome here. And everybody else is like staring at this woman. But she just is a genuine expression of emotion for this person that is destroying my joy completely. So, you know, I really have a habit of just not talking to hecklers.

Starting point is 00:56:16 What did you do in that case? Did you ignore her? I think that I kept saying like, thank you. That's super sweet. Shut the fuck up. Like, you know, clearly you weren't hugged enough as a child. I mean, I just eventually got mean because it was just like, I couldn't get this woman to stop talking. Um, and, uh, and I think the people around her got embarrassed and they eventually kind of shut her up, which was nice. Um,

Starting point is 00:56:40 and I'm trying to think of any other really good hecklers that, uh, Oh, I had one guy and it's, other really good hecklers that, uh, oh, I had one guy and it's, it's a mental discipline too, because, you know, like, again, like it's your show, you have the microphone, you're in control. You know, I think the audience thinks they're in control, but they're not. I mean, that the Bilber scenario is a perfect example. The person with the microphone has all the power. Uh, and as long as they, as long as it cannot be moved, they will, they will eventually

Starting point is 00:57:02 win. But I had, um, this one guy, it was sitting like really close to the stage. It was like a group of 12 people and they were all like laughing their asses off. And then he was just arms crossed, just look like he just had just eaten a big scoop of fecal matter. And I, it just, I was all, he was all I could see, like, you know what I mean? Like the whole audience had disappeared and it was just like straight vignette on this guy's like sourpuss face. And I couldn't, it was, it was just wrecking my whole night. And, uh, I finally said, if you don't want to be here, just fucking go, man, I'll give you your money back. I cannot look at your face for one more minute. And I meant it. It wasn't even a joke. I was just like,

Starting point is 00:57:40 get out and you are harshing my mellow so hard. And, and, and, uh, and he left and I, I didn't feel bad about it. And then I went on with the show and his girlfriend goes, he had a bad day. I was like, oh. But what was great was nobody else at the table wanted to leave. They were like, you know, good riddance to bad rubbish. And he went on and the rest of the people enjoyed their night. But again, that was me.

Starting point is 00:58:00 That was my, you know, I should have been disciplined enough not to be distracted by, know old sour puss but i just i'm only human you know what i mean right if the grinch is if the grinch is sitting in the front row you know something must be done when you were just getting started how did you get better at comedy and what i mean by that is you're very smart. You, like you mentioned, Matrix capable. Did you do any type of post-game analysis? Did you watch video of yourself? Did you watch video of other comics? How did you hone your craft? Or maybe a better question is what helped the most in honing your craft? Right. That's a good question. It's interesting, I think that there's a definite math to comedy. And then there's also a secondary kind of like ineffability. You know what I mean? And I guess what I mean is like, you can learn how to be a better comic, but you can't learn how to be a comic or even a different way. I really wanted to be an engineer and I could have really suffered and struggled through like the high, like the elevated math that would, I would need to become an engineer, but it would never be effortless for me.

Starting point is 00:59:17 And I think with comedy, there are people who very workmanlike can learn how to do comedy. And then there's some people who are just naturally comedic and they still have to work to be better at it. You know, like you say Bolt still has to train. Even though he was born with, you know, more fast-switch muscles than everybody else, he still has to train to become a champion. So I feel like with comedy, you know, people can be the class clown

Starting point is 00:59:38 or they can be the guys naturally funny. There's still a methodology and there's still a mathematics to becoming a comic. And then at the same time, if they have this ephemeral, ineffable kind of understanding of the math of comedy, they're going to be able to do something magical with those skills. So for me, I don't know that I thought I was a funny kid, but I was an observer. And I was really nerdy and a little bit of a social pariah. So storytelling became a way to make friends, you know what I mean? Like to like ingratiate myself. I would, I, you know, I would kind of like try to talk my way into

Starting point is 01:00:13 situations or if I was in a social situation, talk really fast to try to keep myself engaging, not be rejected. So like that was what I brought to it was like that combination of being an outsider and an observer and then, and then using those skills to try to kind of connect with people. Um, but with, with comedy, like I never took any classes.

Starting point is 01:00:35 I never read any books. You know, there, there's definitely people who can say, Oh, you know, there's a total methodology to comedy. It's,

Starting point is 01:00:40 you know, the rule of threes and, you know, stretching the stretching reality to the point of breaking, but not past it. I mean, there are, you know, some specific, what's the rule of threes and stretching reality to the point of breaking but not past it. There are some specific... What's the rule of threes? The rule of threes is that... Definitely maintain your

Starting point is 01:00:53 train of thought. I probably won't even be able to articulate it properly. It's just that if you're going to do a series of jokes or a series of builds to a punchline, it needs to be three. I get it. Also, if you're going to do any kind of a diversion, if you're going to lead people in one direction and then snap around to a different kind of absurdist result, you can't

Starting point is 01:01:13 do that in two. It has to be, the pace of it has to be three. I see. And then past three, you're starting to, you know, draw things out too long. But two doesn't give people enough of a time to be involved into a false sense of security before you kind of pull the rug out from under them. And as soon as you start explaining the math of comedy, like, none of it makes any sense. You know what I mean? Like, it's those two things.

Starting point is 01:01:41 You know, someone who's really gifted at physics, they know that there are rules, but still they see things that other people can't see. You know what I mean, like it's those two things. You know, someone who's really gifted at physics, they know that there are rules, but still they see things that other people can't see. You know what I mean? They see the world as numbers and data and the rest of us are just like table, chair, water, sex. So I guess the way that I did it was that I'm also really an undisciplined comedian. And what I mean is like, like there's a, there's a documentary about Gary Shandling now right now, which I haven't watched, but, but I'm sure that this is in there because he was very famous for being a really disciplined writer. Like he would get up and he would write every single day. And sometimes it would be pages and pages of material without fail. Other comics, like, hey, let's get a beer and be like, no,

Starting point is 01:02:22 I have to write. And every day he would write like this legal... This is probably true and apocryphal at the same time. On this legal line, he knew about this tiny handwriting. He would just write and write and write and write. I do not do that. I've never worked that way. I just get on stage. I try a bunch of stuff. I keep what works. I know what works. I already know right away what works. I'll run off stage. I'll write down the things that I knew hit. I'll write down the things I know didn't hit. And then I'll go back and try it again, dropping the stuff that wasn't good and putting new stuff in. I record my sets, but I never, I cannot listen to my own voice. So I have hours and hours of material on tape that I just have never listened to. So I don't know why I still engage in that behavior when it's clearly not useful to me.

Starting point is 01:03:07 But I think the more you do it, the more you intuitively understand, oh, this is a rich area. People are connecting with this, this other stuff. There's also something you learn as you move through comedy, which is it's not just important to get a laugh. Like, does this material say something specific and personal about me? Because when you're a baby comic, every joke is meaningful to you because you only have like eight jokes, right? And so even if they're stupid or juvenile

Starting point is 01:03:34 or unsophisticated or valueless or coreless, you'll still do them because that's all you have. And then as you get older, you start to think, okay, like I want to have a body of work here. Does this hang together? Does it have a strong point of view? Does it have an identity? And then those other jokes start to fall away. And then the material really becomes about trying to tell some kind of a story about yourself and the way you perceive the world. And then that's how you shape it. And so sometimes things that are really funny go away,

Starting point is 01:03:59 things that are less funny stay because they're more impactful. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does make sense. Absolutely. I think that's true for musicians. I think it's true for many different artists. Writers too, probably for writers. It's like,

Starting point is 01:04:15 I'm going to find a space that's, that really says something about like my accumulated understanding and knowledge of the world. And it's not just enough to say something like I need to say something that's uniquely mine, you know, and as something you can only do by being prolific because you need to be able to let things go in order to figure out what should stay. Definitely. Yeah, I mean, there's a certain volume to it

Starting point is 01:04:38 or thinking of it almost as a funnel. And, you know, I think and I certainly hope for the sake of our, not to sound like an old man, but I guess that's what I'm turning into, for the sake of our society in general, I would hope just seeing the number of hatchet jobs and the amount of yellow journalism and clickbaiting with pieces that have not been fact-checked and so on, and take down pieces of folks who are otherwise doing actually a lot of good in the world, but people feeling no compunction about running pieces that get a lot of clicks because that's the only metric they're focused on.

Starting point is 01:05:20 At some point, go from, what can i write that will get the most clicks to what can i write that i will be proud of that may or may not and i think you can figure out a way to make it a non-binary decision uh in other words you can figure out something you can be proud of that is simultaneously uh likely to have fought to find some type of sizable audience. And I think in the beginning, there's a temptation, particularly if you have quit your job and you're like, where's my next rent check coming from? How can I appeal to the widest number of people possible?

Starting point is 01:05:59 And that's a very precarious position or mindset to put yourself into if you're hoping to do anything creatively evergreen. Right. And also, it's interesting. When I went to school, we had the honor system, and you were just expected to hold yourself to a high standard because that was what was right. That's what you did. You know what I mean? You were going to be called upon to stand behind your work, and so you tried to work very hard to make sure that you could defend it. I don't think that it's like we're any less ethical than we've ever been. It's just, like you said, our metrics have changed. And I think that people value fame for fame's sake rather than for the foundational reasons that people become famous. And I think that's the problem. And I don't think it just exists

Starting point is 01:06:56 in journalism. I think that people value infamy or they can't distinguish between fame and infamy and you know with a 24-hour news cycle like you know a bright burst is as meaningful as a slow burn and i don't really know i don't i actually don't really know what we do or what what should be done or what should happen to counteract that other than people start to maybe get hip to it and start rejecting, you know, baseless journalism. And, and, you know, it's just, it's just so hard to, I don't know, I find it, I, let me take that back. I find it very easy to distinguish between things that seem like they've been thoroughly vetted and things that are bullshit. But I think that people are working very hard to make it harder for the rest of us to distinguish between the two. So there are, you know, without me sounding like

Starting point is 01:07:44 a crazy person, there are nefarious, youfarious forces at work trying to make it very hard for us to figure out what's real and what's not real. And I think we have to start to raise people who are just more critical thinkers, but it's hard to be a critical thinker when you're just scrolling through your Instagram feed looking at butts and cupcakes all day long. Have you been watching my feed? Are you looking over my shoulder? Are you one of the nefarious forces? I'm following you and I know what you're into. Oh, Jesus.

Starting point is 01:08:14 Oh, God. Oh, God. You know, I have to, I'll admit, there was a day, and you would think supposedly being a tech investor and all this stuff for 10 years that I would figure this out. There was a day when I was scrolling through cupcakes and thongs and I looked up at my profile and I was like, wait a minute. Fortunately, I've systematically dismantled and deliberately tarnished any semblance of any reputation I might have very deliberately so that I feel – I feel the same. So that I don't feel – I'm going to start interviewing you now. This is so interesting.

Starting point is 01:08:59 So that I don't feel I have any Stepford W, Stepford wives polished persona to preserve. Right. It's like, yeah, so good. And that's so interesting to me. And it's different than just being a slob. What you're saying is I refuse to create a box within which I will be kept by others. And I think like that, that comes also from a curiosity about the world. I actually think that people who are trying to remain perfect all the time are fear-driven. That's not a position of strength. People think they're maintaining a position of strength when they're trying to maintain an appearance of perfection, but that is, by its very nature, a posture of fear, which is, I cannot be seen to have imperfections. I cannot be seen to have

Starting point is 01:09:45 flaws. There can be no chinks in my armor. And I'm terrified of being judged. But there is something very liberating, and I think it comes from age as well, and from experience. I don't mean experience like a resume, but just having experiences to realize how little you know, and how the only way to learn is to constantly be skinning your knees, and that that doesn't go away. The older you get, the more you know that you know very little, and that you cannot learn if you are constantly trying to maintain a posture of perfection. Absolutely. That's why I'm a total mess well if you don't if you don't practice skinning your knees just to like really bleed the metaphor for all it's worth um if you don't practice skinning your knees you're not

Starting point is 01:10:34 going to develop the callus for sort of increasingly painful grades of of sandpaper this is really awkwardly uh overextended now but the the point being if you operate from a place of fear and want to please this this nebulous majority more than you want to please yourself and that's not to say that i'm always i've always viewed my entire life and all my decisions as a singular locus of control in the palm of my hand, and I care what no one thinks. That's not true, because that's not how humans have evolved. But if you are deferring to others, your perception of what others want on the small things, then it's going to become harder on the medium things, and then impossible,

Starting point is 01:11:22 and then it's going to become harder and impossible on the big things. And for that reason, I find it very valuable to deliberately expose yourself to different types and levels of discomfort so that you can actually stand up for the important stuff when it matters. Because if you don't practice on the smaller stuff, for instance, if I'm so humiliated by the fact that I like gorgeous female asses, I'm like, oh my God. And I put something up about, I put up this picture. So this is what I do occasionally when I'm like, you know what? I think I'm getting a little fat and happy and complacent. And maybe I have too much FOMO or something like that, I will, I remember at one point I had this, I put up this photo of this gorgeous Latin ass and female.

Starting point is 01:12:13 And it said like nalgophilia. And I had this, in Spanish, this explanation of this fake condition, which was nalgophilia. Anyway, I think it was nalgophilia. Anyway, las nalgas is like ass in Spanish. Anyway, so I put this up on Instagram. So it was Spanish for ass man is what you're saying.

Starting point is 01:12:29 That's right. It's Spanish for like ass man syndrome, right? Or ass man disorder. And I put it up and as to be expected, there is immediate outrage. I mean, there are plenty of people who think it's kind of funny. Plenty of people are like, yeah, high five. And then there are plenty of other people who are just completely outraged. Disgusted with you. Disgusted with this fact that I find attractive women attractive. Yes, outrage is contagious. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:12:54 But I left it up because I like to call my audience, number one. Yes. If you don't want to be here, please, I invite you to unfollow. Yeah, exactly. Right. It's like the sourpuss in the front row. It's like, let me give you, like, you look, you look like you're unhappy, but you're still here. And let me give you, like, let me give you another reason to leave if I'm not your thing, because go find something that's your thing. Their opinion is valuable to you. Like, I think there's a freedom in saying, I don't need everybody to like me.

Starting point is 01:13:28 That's, you know what I mean? I think, I think that like there is something very meaningful in saying like, this is who I am. I'll defend it, but I'm not here to be savaged by you. And honestly, we don't know each other. I don't care what you think anyway, you know? Or maybe that person makes you think more critically about what you did and then you take the big booty picture down i don't know but uh but i think you put it up

Starting point is 01:13:53 purposefully to see what you were going to get back i totally did entertaining and there are now there are other there are cases just so i don't sound like a complete dick uh there are other cases where i put something up without really thinking about it. And I do get feedback and realize, you know what, that's actually a really kind of insensitive thing to put up. And I didn't think it through, take it down. And there are cases when I do that. And people give me, hopefully, constructive feedback that isn't just spitting acid into my face. And I take it down. So I do pay attention. At the same time, I try to keep in mind advice that I was given years ago. I don't remember who gave me this advice, but they said the advice was, it's not about how

Starting point is 01:14:38 many people don't get it. It's about how many people get it. So as long as you have a certain critical mass, whatever that means to you, and there's an article called 1000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly that everybody should read to this effect if you're creative. But as long as you have a critical mass, and it could be a very small number of people who love your stuff, pay it. That's all that matters. That's like a pass fail. As long as you have that pass, you're green. And instead of focusing on the vast majority who hate your shit, it's like, look, there are millions of people who hate like Christopher Nolan stuff. There are millions of people who can't stand Wes Anderson. It's like, look, some people just aren't going to fucking like Wes Anderson. Exactly. Exactly. So this is really interesting also, because I think if you're

Starting point is 01:15:22 an artist specifically, this is a really important conversation to have with yourself, which is like when I first started at standup, you know, this was like kind of the period when like deaf comedy jam was really popular and, you know, and, and for lack of a better way of articulating it, like black comedy had a very specific, like look and feel and style and tempo. And I just wasn't doing that kind of comedy. And I wasn't ever going to be able to do that kind of comedy. It wasn't who I was. It wasn't experientially what I was doing. And I didn't want to lie. And I knew there were comedians who were kind of falling into that stylistic approach to comedy and it was really very false. You know, they, they kind of be one way off stage and then kind

Starting point is 01:15:55 of fall into this character on stage. And there's nothing wrong with trying to connect with an audience, but I just didn't want to copy other people to try to get people to like me. And, you know, for a long time, I really struggled. And then eventually my tribe found me, but I was able to stay, oh, now I sound like a self-help book, but true to who I was because that was the only way forward. The only way forward as an artist is to be truthful. In the end, your work is not going to be interesting or meaningful if you are trying to emulate somebody else or trying to figure out what people want from you or what they like or what's popular. Meaningful art only lasts, it only connects if it's authentic and if it comes from,

Starting point is 01:16:32 you know, your own personal experiences. And until you figure that out, like what that is, it's never going to be interesting. It's never going to be good. And I always tell people it's not, being funny is not really actually the most important part of comedy. Being truthful is. Because if someone sees a good show, they go, that guy was really funny. But when you tell the truth about yourself, people go, oh my God, holy shit. That guy like spoke to me or about me or was so vulnerable in that moment. Like that was amazing.

Starting point is 01:17:02 And that's the difference between good comedy and great comedy. Or between good art and great art or writing or anything. Yeah, it's the truth. That's advice that I've also heard for screenwriting and many other things. I'm so glad you said that and reminded me of that. You have to please yourself. I mean, you just have to

Starting point is 01:17:20 please yourself, period. Because it might not go your way anyway. But the worst thing is creating something to figure out what people want, and then creating some piece of shit, some like crass, glib, solicitous piece of shit, and people don't buy it anyway. Why not make something you love and then people don't buy it?

Starting point is 01:17:35 At least it was something that you loved and you're not embarrassed by it. Right, and you said it may not work out. And if you're in the creative game, at least from what I've seen, particularly in the beginning, most things are not going to work out. Yeah, nothing ever goes your way. Right. So you might as well have one person who's happy about the process. Exactly. That was what I was saying about engagement. At least the experience was satisfying.

Starting point is 01:18:01 And I would also... I feel like I'm talking too much, so I'm going to stop in a second. Stop. I'm talking to myself. But the other thought I might underscore for folks that is kind of practical, tactical, from a competitive standpoint, if you're trying to play someone else's game by

Starting point is 01:18:25 taking on a persona, someone who is actually, for instance, in the Def Comedy Jam example that you gave, right? If somebody is on stage and they are playing their game, that is who they are, you are never going to be able to take on like the cognitive load and the fatigue of pretending to be that type of person and beat someone who is good at that game you're just not going to so not you're so right yeah you're just not going to win so it's like you have you will not ultimately in any field that is competitive which is effectively every field that people get paid for, if you want to be the best, you have to harness your latent abilities or you're fucked.

Starting point is 01:19:16 Like you mentioned on the engineering front, I mean, there's so many places where, for instance, in writing, it's like I could try to be John McPhee, who writes for The New Yorker, or one of these folks, but I can't be those people. I'm not going to be, I'm not going to ever be the wordsmith that, say, Tolstoy was. But do I like teaching? Do I obsessively think about teaching and deconstructing things that are complex. I do. So I can use books as a medium for teaching and thinking of it, think of it that way. Because if I try to be, if I try to out McPhee McPhee,

Starting point is 01:19:52 I'm going to get my face ripped off. And well, you know, this is, we're talking about creativity and creative pursuits, which by the way, almost everything is, even if you're, if you meet people who are the top of their game in accounting, the top of the game, I'm not talking about shady money laundering shit. I'm just saying in accounting, in technology, there's an element, there's certainly an element of creativity. If you're looking at the people who are really at the top and innovating in any way, doing exceptional work, you have done so many different things. Acting, comedy, directing, writing, activism. You've been a host. You've done voiceover. You have engaged in so many different acts of creation.

Starting point is 01:20:51 I want to talk about short films, films, and so on. I want to talk about movies. Because as long-term listeners will know, I've been sort of teasing with the idea, which, by the way, just means procrastinating of writing some short films, and I'm still at step zero, and I'm ashamed of that. No shame. There's no shame. Yeah. So how did you decide to get into film, and why? I mean, film is hard. Why do it? It is tough. Yeah, so that's a really good question. Cause I feel like there's the,

Starting point is 01:21:27 you know, that like really humiliating kind of, you know, clam, uh, about, you know, well, I'm an actor, but what I really want to do is direct. And, and, and it feels very cliched. I feel like it was more organic for me because I, you know, I, I, again, I wasn't someone who kind of, I didn't go to film school. Uh, and I also don't think I had the hubris to think like, oh, I've done this a couple for a couple of years now I can direct. It was, I had written some, I love movies. Like, you know, we were talking about earlier, I was raised by a single dad and, you know, I was one of those kids who like, I'd go, I'd go with my dad to see like Die Hard or

Starting point is 01:22:00 Road Warrior and, you know, way too early in age, like super inappropriate. Um, you know, or like, uh, by the time, you know, way too early in age, like super inappropriate. You know, or like by the time, you know, like when I was in high school, I'd seen The Terminator, like the first Terminator film like 20 or 30 times. Like I just loved movies. I'd go to the theater, I'd buy a matinee ticket and I'd stay in the theater until like eight o'clock at night. And I would just like watch movie after movie after movie. And so it just came out of a, like a real end user's love for film. Like I was just someone who was transported by movies. And then when I, when I left talk soup, um, I had been writing on that show and, and like there was a void and I wrote a script that I was developing with, uh, with a company

Starting point is 01:22:41 and, and I just kept talking about how I thought it should look and how I thought it should feel. And, you know, it was just so much more specific than being a writer. And they were like, you know, you should direct, this is clearly like a movie that you should direct. And I hadn't really thought about it, but I was just so intertwined with the material and what I wanted it to feel like, because I know what movies that I love make me feel like, that I wanted that, I wanted to create that experience for other people. And I just realized I didn't know what directing entailed. I didn't have any idea about what that was going to be like. And I just went away and started trying to learn about directing.

Starting point is 01:23:17 And so I would call people that I knew that were directors. If I was working on something, I would ask to come back to set when I wasn't working so I could hang out and shadow, which is where you just kind of hang around behind a director and watch them work. And I ended up shadowing with some really incredible people. I ended up spending several days on The Wire in its last season. Wow. Yeah. And just got to just be on the other side of a process that can be relatively opaque when you're an actor. You just kind of show up and say your lines and leave. And, um, and then I started making shorts and I, and I guess this is going to sound very glib, but, uh, cause I mean, I'm sure I have resources available to me that lots of people don't, but I do feel, I do believe in it. Like I just believe in personal aggression. Like

Starting point is 01:24:02 I just believe in doing stuff. Is that just believe in personal aggression. Like, I just believe in doing stuff. You said personal aggression? Personal aggression. Like, I just believe that, like, if you want to make a movie, just start making a movie. And I don't mean, like, go get a camera and start shooting it. But what I do mean is, like, be hard on yourself. Like, learn, read, learn, watch, study. Think critically. Ask people questions.

Starting point is 01:24:21 And then make a movie and then let it be shitty. And then make another one and let that one be shitty shitty and keep doing it until you get better at it. Like the first short film I made was, and it's an abomination and will be never see the light of day. I had no idea what I was doing, but that didn't make me not want to be a director. It just made me realize I needed to learn more. And then I, uh, I started to feel like I was more ready and I, I was like, I need to make some stuff. So first thing was I did a Comedy Central special. And I took the money that would have been my salary. And I used it to make a little short music video that opens the comedy special.

Starting point is 01:24:53 It wasn't anything that was mandated by the network. I was like, I want to do something different. So I wrote this song and I performed it. And I made a music video. And that was kind of the first thing I directed. I just used the crew that was already working on the special and shot this video with them. That's really smart. So I would imagine, not to interject, but you piggybacked on something that was in your main line of business, so to speak. Exactly.

Starting point is 01:25:15 And I imagine you saved a lot of costs by doing that, right? Yeah, like the crew was already going to come up the day before and leave the day after to shoot the special. And we'd already rented the cameras and everything like that. But I still had to pay them for the extra work. I took my fee and I used it to pay everybody else. And then because I didn't have any more money after that, I learned how to edit it. I edited it myself and I delivered it to the network because I couldn't afford to pay for additional edit time. And then after that, I thought, okay, I want to do more of this. So then I rented a camera. I rented a can of 5D and I had some friends who were in bands. And again, it sounds fancy, but everybody probably knows somebody who does something. Just because I had some friends who were in a famous band doesn't mean that people out there don't have friends who are in bands.

Starting point is 01:26:07 So I just called some buddies of mine that were in bands and I said, hey, if you let me come on tour with you, I will make you a free music video. Just a piece of fan art. You can use it however you like. I'm not going to charge anybody any money for it. But just I want to make something and I want to make something for you. And so I ended up going on the road with Silver Sun Pickups for a couple of dates and then spending a day with Clutch when they were performing in Anaheim. And then I just gave them,

Starting point is 01:26:32 I just cut music videos and delivered it to them. And so then I just started to have like examples of what I could do. Why music videos instead of something else? It just felt like a way to get more people to see it. I had done that first music video for my Comedy Central special, which was really like a comedic video. But then I was like, oh, I really like working in this space. And a lot of directors come out of music video because you can be kind of radically creative in that space. You don't

Starting point is 01:26:57 need to have any narrative linearity. You can experiment. You can be radical. It could just be like a series of images. And I also thought, well, people who like this band, and I love this band, will want to see something about them. It'll be a great way for people to see something, and then hopefully I can tell a story at the same time. And so I did three of those, and then I did a little action short. Like, I just kind of kept making stuff. You know, every time I did it, I learned something. Every time I did it, I took a bigger risk creatively. How, how long are these shorts? Like three to five minutes, three to five minutes. Can you think of any particular lessons

Starting point is 01:27:34 that you took away from any one of those? Yeah. Like I think a lot of it was just skill building. Like how do you frame up and how do you you make choices? And how do you do coverage? And, you know, and then how do you edit? Like, a lot of it was just really tactical, as you would say, practical tactical. Oh, God, I have my pet phrases. This is also my weakness. I'm going to steal it.

Starting point is 01:28:00 Stealing it from Tim. My pet phrases. Oh, God. And then a lot of it was just caught like just getting confident with my own ability and and my ability to articulate what i wanted uh from other people you know just how do how do the other jobs on a set work who does what what do i need oh god this didn't work you know i didn't work because i didn't have this kind of a person on set like there were you know we I was shooting digitally and then on one show uh on one of my things that I shot like we didn't have um a like a tech on set on set to like to help me make sure that it looked the way that I

Starting point is 01:28:37 wanted it to look like that the levels were set properly so when I got home to edit it like I had some problems but like it wasn't they weren't they weren't catastrophic problems they were just because because I you know I wasn't making Star Wars you know what I mean I was just able to be like well this is what it is and I'm gonna make this and move on and and then um I was getting ready to do I really wanted to do a feature I didn't I had some material I'd written but it was kind of going to be an expensive movie but I was still shadowing so I had a friend who had a show uh called Penny Dreadful who had a show called Penny Dreadful. I let John Logan who created Penny Dreadful.

Starting point is 01:29:07 I met him at Comic-Con. I'd hosted the panel for that show. And he was like, Hey, why don't you, you love the show. You should come visit us in Ireland. And I remember thinking like to myself,

Starting point is 01:29:15 people always say that. And then you always say, yeah, and then you never do it. I was like, I'm going to do it. I'm fucking going to Ireland, man.

Starting point is 01:29:19 That's, I'm going to be cool. I'm going to be a cool kid for once in my life. And, uh, and so I ended up going over and visiting Penny Dreadful and, I'm going to be cool. I'm going to be a cool kid for once in my life. And so I ended up going over and visiting Penny Dreadful, and Vikings shot right up the road, so I got them to let me visit that set. I just hung out at, like, passed out sandwiches and, you know, lifted stuff and asked questions and watched them work. And then while I was over there, I met a bunch of Irish actors,

Starting point is 01:29:43 and one of them, two of them actually, one was an actor, composer, one was a writer, a screenwriter and an actor. And we ended up making a short film together in Ireland at the end of 2014. That was my first narrative short, my first kind of story-driven short. And it was just great. It was just like, I was like, oh, this is like totally who I am. This is what I want to do with my life. Where did you film in Ireland? In Galway, which is a beautiful town. Yeah. Such a great place.

Starting point is 01:30:10 I lived there for a month in 2005. Oh yeah. Amazing. Oh, that's so cool. Incredible arts festival there. It's a really beautiful spot. Yeah, it is. It's like, it's, it's like the art center of, of Ireland, you know, they've got a beautiful film festival in the summer. They've got an arts festival, local theater. And it was just a great experience. And things went wrong and things went right. But we got it in the can in three days. And it was just super cool and personal. And then that same writer who had written that short had a feature he had already written, and he asked me if I wanted to take a look at it.

Starting point is 01:30:48 And it was just a perfect first film, and that's the film that became Axis. Okay, so I want to dig into Axis. music videos during that period are you did you save up for that period noting knowing that you would need to work out of your savings uh are you depending on royalties and other streams to pay your bills how are you covering the necessities of life as you were handing out sandwiches and doing all these various things well it wasn, it wasn't as prolonged of a period as it sounds like. I was on hiatus. So I was working on the talk at the time, and we get a month off every year, so I went in that month. But I think if I was talking to a layperson who didn't work in television,

Starting point is 01:31:42 I would say if what you want is to grow in whatever who didn't work in television, I would say, if what you want is to grow in whatever field you're interested in, just create a space for that. Make that your vacation. It wasn't like I was riding around in a limousine. I just flew over and I hung around for a week and watched people work. And it wasn't any more or less burdensome than taking a vacation. But one thing I was more interested in doing as I got older, and we started with this in the beginning, is like, you said it. And I think we kind of went past it, but it's so interesting to me. I just really wanted more discomfort in my life. I was like, it's just very easy the older you get to be like, you know, get in car, go to work, eat bag lunch, get in car, go to gym, go home, eat food, watch TV,

Starting point is 01:32:32 go to bed. And then you just think like, am I growing? Like, is like any of this interesting? Am I going to, you know what I mean? Like I have one life and I'm just spending it in this like torpor. And so for that, I was going to a place where, I mean, I knew, I knew one guy at Petty Dreadful, but I didn't know anybody at this other show. And I just kind of cold called them and said, you know, can I, can I come visit? And they were super gracious. What, what I'm so curious just to interrupt you yet again. What does that email say? It says, hi, and again,

Starting point is 01:33:12 I understand that maybe this is going to feel a little rarefied. Hi, I'm an American actress. I've worked on these shows. I've been shadowing to direct for a long time. I would be really grateful if I could come and visit your show for a few days and shadow. And I will be as unobtrusive and, and, um, and invisible as I possibly can. Uh, and I'll be here these days. And, um, you know, I understand if you can't accommodate me, but I would really be grateful.

Starting point is 01:33:37 And I think it helped in my particular case because I had tweeted a lot about how much I loved Vikings. So they kind of knew that I was a big fan of the show. And I did some tweeting from set. I kind of paid my way in flacking their show for them. I'm not over-caffeinated, I swear to God. You're making so many important points that I just want to pause and help, well, as much for myself as anyone else, just people to reflect on.

Starting point is 01:34:12 So what you did in terms of tweeting, people might say, well, I don't have a verified account, and nobody's going to pay attention to one tweet in the Twitter feed of 10,000 if it's a popular TV show. But I can tell you from personal experience that you could, for instance, write something for Medium or for fill-in-the-blank outlet that has a high Google, in other words, page rank, And that many of the producers, actors, and so on will have Google alerts or other alerts set that deliver to their inboxes relevant media that mention, say, the show or the actors. And you do not need to be a famous actress or an author or any of those things to do that. All you need to do is work at the highest possible caliber of quality that you can. I mean, I think you also touched on this about the idea that people are more interested in being expeditious than they are in being good. I think that this holds very, very true for this business. A lot of people have made headway because they did something that nobody saw. But when they, when people ask them what they did, the thing they were able to show

Starting point is 01:35:28 was extraordinary. And I don't mean like expensive, extraordinary. I just mean unique and personal and crafted with care. And so if that's something that you wrote, or if it's something that you made, if you made, you know, the number of, I mean, this is not the best example, but it's a good one. 20 years ago, there was this video tape going around Hollywood of these guys in an apartment. And it was a VHS tape. That's how long ago it was. And people were dubbing it and sending and giving to friends. Of these guys in an apartment, these three black guys where the one guy goes up and hits the little intercom and goes, and then the other guy goes, and the third guy goes,

Starting point is 01:36:04 That was a short film that some guy made on like a digital camera. None of them were famous. They were just some guys in New York that ended up being that Budweiser campaign. That's crazy. I had no idea that was the origin. It was a short film and it wasn't, it was a, it was a two and a half minute short film that was just funny. You didn't know who was it. You didn't, we didn't know these guys. No one knew who they were and, and they didn't have any connections. And I think it was just about doing something that felt original and

Starting point is 01:36:32 personal. And I get, it just comes back to like, don't try to figure out what people want. Just do what's interesting and important to you and then keep doing it until you come up with something extraordinary. And that will be your calling card. It may not happen as fast as you want or as aggressively as you want or as expansively as you want. But in the meantime,

Starting point is 01:36:48 you're doing cool shit, which should be your primary goal in any event. When I made Access, honestly, I just wanted to make a movie to show people I could make a movie. I wanted to make the best movie I could. And I was very rigorous in leveraging the resources that I had to the best of my ability. But I don't know that I had a lot of expectation that a lot of people would see it. It's just because I made the best movie I could that it got all of this attention. But I don't think I was going in like, this is going to be a massive hit. I was like, I'm going to make this little movie. And then for the next one, when people say, well, what have you done? I could be like, look at this little thing I made,

Starting point is 01:37:25 you know? So I think you have to always be focused on the results, not the result, on the thing and not the results, because the result is directly tied to the quality of the thing. So it's not about infamy. It's about fame and fame is based on the quality of your work. So just be doing excellent shit all the time. And eventually one of those things will connect with other people. Yeah. Not to sound like a fortune cookie on top of all of that, but the only uncrowded market is great.

Starting point is 01:37:52 There's always a fucking market for great. Exactly. And go ahead. Be radically great. Don't be like, I saw 10 things like this. Let me do the 11th thing. Be brave enough to court failure. That's probably when you're going to do something great. Absolutely. And if you are really in love with something, and I'll give two examples. If you're

Starting point is 01:38:17 really in love with, say, screenplays and film, or if you're really in love and passionate about, maybe is a better word, possessed by technology investing, early stage technology investing, two phenomena, two companies at this point, certainly, that are worth looking at and just investigating the stories of, demonstrate very clearly what you can do if you are just rejected by the establishment or if you want to not operate within the existing power structure. So the two examples are the blacklist. Look up Franklin Leonard and the blacklist. I get that example, absolutely.

Starting point is 01:38:59 And then the second is, and we don't have to get into both of these right now, the second is, just by coincidence, also has the list at the end, but Angel List and Naval Ravikant, and people can look up the, well, The Avenging Angel was the title of his interview in his alumni magazine at Dartmouth, in fact. But I get excited when I hear these types of stories, so they should check them out. Let's come back to Axis. What is Axis, and did you have anybody try to talk you out of doing Axis? That is such a good question. Axis is a thriller about

Starting point is 01:39:44 an expatriate Irish actor living in Los Angeles who has had a lot of success, kind of explosive success in his youth and has really just used all of his resources to just wreck his life. You know, he's a drunk and he's a drug addict and he's terrible at relationships and he's a dick to everybody. Um, and, uh, and, and when we, when we meet him, he's trying to turn his life around. Uh, and, and it, and it's really about a guy who's not a bad person, but he's done, done some bad stuff, which I think almost every human being can relate to. You know, I mean, we all, we all have a little bit of a demon inside of us. And I think this is just a guy who's been, he's, he's, he's been frail in the past, but he's really trying to be a better version of himself. But slowly over the course of an afternoon and the movie takes place in real time as he's driving through Los Angeles, uh, his, his life starts to unravel and it's really about him trying to hold things

Starting point is 01:40:41 together, trying to be a better person, trying to be a better person in his relationships with his family, with people that he works with, just trying to be better. It's really dark. It's very funny. I have been thinking, I'm sure I'll get some letters about this, but I happen to find that addicts are really entertaining people. And I don't mean they're funny, like, like laugh at them. I, I, I find that they, um, that typically people who are, are, are, uh, who have broke, who've broken themselves down are just more honest than people who are trying to be perfect all the time. And so, um, you know, he's just, he's, he's a guy who's self-aware. He's aware of the mistakes he's made. So it's a very

Starting point is 01:41:23 darkly funny movie. Uh, and then it's very twisty. It's a, it mistakes he's made. So it's a very darkly funny movie. And then it's very twisty. It's a thriller. So it's got a lot of secrets. And the most unique aspect of the movie is that the whole thing takes place in real time inside a car as he's driving through Los Angeles. So the lead actor is the only actor on screen and all the other actors are voice actors on the phone with him. How would you describe your experience of being involved with this film? It was so wonderful. You asked if people tried to dissuade me from doing it. And the short answer is in, in Hollywood, the way that people dissuade you from doing stuff is just by not do not helping you just by not engaging with you. You don't even get, no, you just get like silence.

Starting point is 01:42:02 But, but this happened very quickly quickly so i didn't have a traditional kind of like discouraging period of frustration with trying to put this movie together because i read it uh in like september august or september of 2015 and i was kind of at peak engagement at the time in terms of work like i was on four shows and i really only had a little bit of time off in 2016. And I realized if I didn't make the movie in this one single week in, in May of 2016, that I wasn't going to be able to make it at all in that year. And I have to push to the next year. And so then it just became about hitting that target. Like, how can I hit this target? So I never even went like the traditional way of trying to find like people to finance the movie in a studio because they were going to say like, we don't know who this

Starting point is 01:42:47 actor is. Like he's unknown. Can we put somebody famous in this role? Can it be Ryan Gosling? And then can it not be with just him on camera? Can we have other actors in the movie? And then can we, can we make it not in a car? Can we make it, I mean, like, we're just going to, you know, the whole kind of concept of the film was going to unravel. You know, it's very typical in Hollywood where people are so risk averse that they take all of the edge and, and, um, and like singularity out of a project. So very quickly, I realized that I was going to have to probably crowdfund the movie if I wanted to do it my way and on my time, on my timeframe. So, uh, in about, in, in, in, in March of 2016, I had my like first exploratory conversation with like the people around me and with Kickstarter.

Starting point is 01:43:28 I was able to, you know, they have people over there who are kind of like around to like help you kind of figure out how to put a project together. I built the campaign in three weeks. I launched it in April. And one of the rules about crowdfunding and Kickstarter specifically, it's not a hard and fast rule. It's not like a rule that they enforce, but it's just like a rule of thumb that if you raise half of your money in the first week, you'll probably fund fully. So we had raised half of our money in that first week. And then I started hiring people on the film. And we did raise a lot of money for a feature.

Starting point is 01:44:02 It was about $200,000 that we raised. And so that was what we had to make the movie. And so originally, we were going to make it in nine days. But I realized if I made it faster, I'd have more money available to me daily. My daily resource load would be higher. So we cut the schedule from nine days to seven days, which is incredibly aggressive for a feature. Whenever I tell people I made it in seven days, which is incredibly aggressive for a feature. Whenever I tell people I made it in seven days, they ask, well, how is it short? But so we had to be really

Starting point is 01:44:32 aggressive. So everything we know, we ended up doing it in this way that was so terrifying and so breakneck, but so exhilarating, which is that we shot the first 15 pages of the movie in the first day. And then we shot the next 65 pages of the movie. It was actually, you shot about 17 pages in the first day to about 67 pages on day two through seven. And that meant that the actor had to do 67 pages of dialogue a day. For people that don't know, typically on a movie, you do like between three and six pages of dialogue a day. So he was essentially doing the entire movie all the way through every day, locked in a hot car with no air conditioning in, in, in May,

Starting point is 01:45:11 the beginning of June, essentially in Los Angeles. Uh, and it was just so intense, but we shot three cameras. So by day three, we essentially had the entire movie in the can because, you know, we were doing the whole thing all the way through from three angles. So by day three, we essentially had the entire movie in the can because, you know,

Starting point is 01:45:25 we were doing the whole thing all the way through from three angles. So by day two, we had six angles and we had the whole movie on, on, uh, you know, not on wax on the digital version of wax. And so then the next four days were just about kind of creative play. And, and I think that what the result is, is this, I made a movie in a week. It's experimental. It's unusual. It's transporting and strange. And going in, I thought I'll never make a movie this way again. But now I would make a movie that way again because I just didn't have any time to be afraid or feel down.

Starting point is 01:46:02 I mean, there was no time to be anxious. I just had to go. It was really, it was wonderful. It was like one of the seminal experiences of my life. There's definitely some magic in the ether when you have a hyper-aggressive deadline. There's just something that happens to the space-time continuum and

Starting point is 01:46:25 what you can achieve when everything gets compressed that intensely. Certain things just come to the surface. Certain things are thrown into relief, and it's not like you can't make mistakes. But I think you get a clarity sometimes, because you can't dither, right? You can't, you can't, there's, there's no time for paralysis by analysis. I am making this decision. I'm making it definitively. It may be the wrong one, but I'm going to lean all the way into it and we're going to see what happens. And also because we shot the whole movie all the way through, if there were errors, I had the next day to recalibrate in a way that you don't get when you typically make a movie.

Starting point is 01:47:06 For people, again, who don't know, I'm an actor as well. So when I'm on a TV show or I'm doing a movie or whatever, I'll leave at the end of the day and go, Ah, shit, man, I wish I'd done this with that scene. I wish I'd tried this. But every day, the next day, we got to wake up and go, You know what? We have a whole new bite at this apple. We're going to do it a whole different way today.

Starting point is 01:47:30 And so at the end, I really felt like we really fully explored the material, which we wouldn't have been able to do if we had been making a movie in seven days and not doing it with this kind of volume approach that we had. So I'm looking at text in a book that you contributed to. Happens to be this fantastic book. Oh, let me see. Here it is. For those of you who get the What About Bob reference, there's this groundbreaking new book. Oh, yes, here it is. And there's an entire shelf of the therapist's own book, Richard Drivers. In any case, the question to what you would put on a gigantic billboard, metaphorically speaking, to get a message to millions or billions of people, in this case, what you selected was a Jack Canfield quote, everything you want is on the other side of fear. And many of the stories that you've told so far illustrate that certainly what are you afraid of now or what fear are you hoping say in the next year to get on the other side of does anything come to mind that's a good question well

Starting point is 01:48:41 you know it's interesting because like, I think like the one that feels the most obvious is like, I'm afraid I won't get to make another film, but I, I'm not really legitimately afraid of that. Cause I feel like I'm just going to put this next movie together and make it like, you know, like I think now that I've done one, like no help and no assistance from anybody, like the next one's going to be cake. Um, I mean, I had help, I had my team, but I didn't have the kind of traditional Hollywood help where I had like a team of agents kind of, you know, making magic. Like it was really just like a scrappy little group of, of filmmakers, you know, doing this

Starting point is 01:49:12 film with me, the lead actor and screenwriter and, and, uh, and, and my creative executives, it was a small group of people, you know, outside completely outside of the system. Um, but what am I afraid of? God, that's a really good, and then it's not that I'm fearless. It may just be that the things that are interesting to me now don't engender fear the way that they used to. I can also, I can also, I think, tackle this from a different angle, which is what do you currently, what is one of your greatest struggles right now? What do you struggle with? If anything, you know, I, my main struggle is just always like being as effective as I want to be.

Starting point is 01:49:57 You know what I mean? I'm just super ambitious. I, I have like highly developed. I don't mean like I'm good at it. I mean like it's like very far advanced, uh, like workaholism. I have like highly developed, I don't mean like I'm good at it. I mean like it's like very far advanced, uh, like workaholism. I mean like, like I have pathological workaholism. It's, it's like a sickness. And when I tell my, whenever I say I'm a workaholic, people always laugh and I go like, look, like it's a problem. You know, I don't know how to rest. Um, I don't, I don't, it's, it's not that I don't like to play. I do like play, but, um, like, I don't think I have any time to rest and, and I worry that it makes me,

Starting point is 01:50:35 it, it, it could result in me not being an interesting artist because I think you need to play and to daydream and to rest and to experience things, to be able to tell interesting stories. You know, no one wants to hear about wants to hear about your daily trek from your home to your office. It's just not compelling. Well, I remember, I think it was Amanda Palmer who said this. I apologize to whoever said it if I'm misattributing, but Amanda Palmer, creative musician extraordinaire. And she said, I think it was her, who said in order to have...

Starting point is 01:51:04 Is she married to neil gaiman she is yeah all the time okay yeah exactly for those of you you and after me oh yeah yeah i will i will bow at the feet of neil gaiman as a writer uh and everybody should listen to his audio book of the graveyard book uh narrated by him he is also the most soothing voice imaginable but i digress uh what the fuck was i saying uh so amanda palmer has a quote about yes that uh you know if life uh if art imitates life in order to create art you have to have a life right yeah yeah absolutely and and like and i'm paraphrasing that'schered, but it makes the point. You can't, you know, I'm sure there are other theories. There's a very famous French writer. It's not Salskutz. It's somebody anyway about like, have a bourgeois life be fully engaged in your life in order to be an interesting artist. Because, you know, you need to be alive to be able to speak about the human condition. So if you have advanced early onset workaholism, right?

Starting point is 01:52:19 You've really turned this into a default mode. What are you doing anything to, to try and manage that or create more slack in the system for the daydreaming and so on? I mean, it's like, that's my daily practice. That's my,

Starting point is 01:52:41 like, that's my one day at a time. You know, it's like just constantly trying to remind myself to rest. I engage socially a lot more than I used to. And by socially, you mean out in the real world? Yeah, out in the real world. I go out and I try to not just be like... I just had a period of life where I was just up, gym, work, sleep. I just remember one day I was like, I'm going to die. Like, I'm going to I'm going to die of boredom.

Starting point is 01:53:08 I'm bored. I bore myself. You know what I mean? And so, you know, like I I think I try to court danger in a safe way. It's not like I'm jumping out of play with no parachute or bullfighting or, you know, bare knuckle brawling in an alley, you know, filled with needles. But I, but I am trying to just like be, be not always have my head in my computer, but, but look, the reason that people are workaholics, uh, well, there's lots of reasons I'm sure social pressures, but for me, I just get this big, like serotonin releases. It's serotonin. What's the brain? What's the satisfaction drug? I would say dopamine,

Starting point is 01:53:45 perhaps. Dopamine. That's it. Dopamine. Serotonin is sleepy time. Yeah, dopamine. I get a dopamine release when I complete tasks. And I get higher and higher the more that I execute. I find executing in and of itself really enjoyable. So I'm just trying to apply that aggression to leisure. Can I get the same satisfaction from it? If I make a to-do list and one of the things is have fun, will I get the same dopamine release if I had a lot of fun? How can I turn fun into work most effectively? And then be like, I don't know about you guys, but I just fucking crushed my to-do list. You know, I realized that like I, even though I can feel very harried, it's interesting to me to be feeling like a part of being on this planet is like fully engaging and doing everything I can do and everything I'm interested in.

Starting point is 01:54:44 And because I don't want to look back and be like, man, I should have tried that. I'm happy to look back and say, man, I tried that and it went terribly for me. That's a perfectly comfortable space for me to be like, man, I tried that and I completely shit the bed. But what I find very uncomfortable is the idea that I always wanted to do something and I never did it. And so that's what I fear. What I fear is not trying, not experiencing all the hours that you have, how would you or your life be different if you didn't have exercise as an element? Do you think? Well, it's interesting because I really,

Starting point is 01:55:36 I really love working out. But there's a constant battle for me between like being effective, like with work and like, you know, I I'm, I'm the queen of like getting up at like 5am to work out, putting on my workout clothes and then being in front of my computer at four o'clock in the afternoon. And I haven't moved. Like, I mean, that's just like my, it's just a normal day. Like didn't, didn't move, didn't eat, didn't do anything. Just been in front of the computer for like 11 hours. Um, but it just, it's just such a great stress manager. And I also think that there's another

Starting point is 01:56:06 thing there, which is it just, again, puts you back in your body. This thing that's carrying your brain around and making you effective. And I think that with everything, all of the stimuli that we experience nowadays, all the pictures and the images of perfection that are coming in at a much faster and more voluminous pace. It's really easy to fall into an abusive relationship with exercise, either doing it so much that you're hurting yourself or not doing it and then engaging in that inner monologue about how you're worthless and you can't get your shit together. And I don't have either of those things. I just know I'm happier and better when I work out.

Starting point is 01:56:48 But I don't do – I've finally dropped the monologue about like, you know, I'm not a good person if I don't crush a workout. I just try to do it every day because I know I'm better mentally. And I also cheat completely. Like I have my phone. I took a hike today. You know, I have my phone with me and like, I stopped every 10 minutes, like write something down. So, you know, I'm not really like fully, I'm not being in the moment when I'm working out. A lot of times I'm stopping like hundreds of times to make notes and remind myself of stuff

Starting point is 01:57:16 I have to do or put stuff on my calendar. Do you still use a concept two or a rowing machine? I still use my ergometer, my concept two ergometer. I have had it since 2000. It is 18 years old. I've never had to repair it or replace any parts. It's the best, it's the single best piece of equipment that I have. My whole gym now, I have my whole gym in my place. I have a TRX body weight system. I have two kettlebells, a 25 and a 35. I have my ergometer. I have battle ropes that are attached to my dining room table. And I have one big power step that I just use to do pistols and stuff like that. And I get everything done with those five things. That is fantastic. So pistols for blue don't know, those are one-legged squats. And they can be very, very difficult,

Starting point is 01:58:01 depending on how you go about it. A bench or a step can help you cause it could just kind of do like single leg step downs until you build up your, your quad and your glute strength to do pistols. What could you describe for us a recent workout or what a prototypical workout of yours might look like? Um, well, I,

Starting point is 01:58:19 I, I hiked today. That was just like a 90 minute hike, which was just more about like feeling groovy. But, um, right now I'm obsessed with my ergometer. Uh, I like, I kind of go through periods of like not rowing and then periods of rowing really aggressively. And, uh, this is,

Starting point is 01:58:33 this is going to be right up your alley, Tim. I'm ready. It's, this is, this is like center. This is like bullseye for you and your audience. I, I, I started going to a naturopath. So I'd be like supplementing differently. And I started taking glutathione. And I'm rowing like faster now than I did in my 20s. Like I just keep getting personal bests on my rower. It's confusing. I'm a lot older than I was when I was rowing competitively. And I just keep like knocking like 30 seconds and then 45 seconds and then a minute and 10 seconds off my rowing time.

Starting point is 01:59:05 So now I'm just obsessed with hitting personal best every time I row. Okay. Let's dig into this. So the glutathione, how is it – for those who aren't familiar, glutathione is thought of – a simple way to think of it or the way it's often described is as a master antioxidant of sorts. How are you having it administered? Is it being... Sometimes I get, oh, this is so inside baseball. Sometimes I get IVs.

Starting point is 01:59:32 I get IVs if I really like, if I'm wrecked, like if I travel a lot or I went to Coachella. And is that pure, is that just glutathione or are you doing that at the... B vitamins. I can do it at the end of my IV. I'll get like B vitamins and like, you know, just... And a glutathione or are you doing that at the b vitamins i could do at the end of my iv i'll get like b vitamins and like you know and a glutathione push at the end yeah exactly but you can get you can get like fat soluble we can get this like fat soluble glutathione that you just take uh you just like gulp down it tastes like axle grease yeah i yeah i i wait is this the is this what is this company uh lipa Lipospheric. That's the name. Lipospheric glutathione.

Starting point is 02:00:09 Lipospheric glutathione, yeah. Yeah, I remember. I was just fitting it to the glutathione because before the glutathione, I was running slow, and now I'm just like a jackrabbit. So it could be something else, but I'm going to say it's the glutathione. I will warn people in advance. I had some of this lipospheric glutathione at one point, and I gave it to a friend of mine. And I think it might have been, for those who know my buddy Kevin Rose, since I like to mention him, even misattribute things to him just for fun. I think I gave him one, and he said something like, what is this, horse semen?

Starting point is 02:00:39 It does have a weird, has a very weird consistency. It's taro. No, my father calls it axle grease. That's what he's like. Give me this axle grease. Because I gave it to my dad. I was like, I think this would really help you. And you're supposed to take it in liquid, but he's just been eating it on a spoon. He's a better man than I.

Starting point is 02:00:58 Oh, I just like squeegee it out of the little packet. Into your mouth? Yeah, into my mouth. I take it with like about two ounces of kombucha in the morning so I don't have to think about it. Yeah, you're smart. I'm sure you're like this. Or maybe after all of that experimentation on yourself, you just get up and have a bowl of like Frosted Flakes in the morning. But it's like I do that and I have my bowl of supplements so that I have my fish oil and I have my curcumin and then I have my turmeric.

Starting point is 02:01:26 And by the end of the morning, I've supplemented. It's like a banquet. I don't even need to eat. I've taken so many crappy tablets. All right. Just to hit pause again. So is the exercise before breakfast?

Starting point is 02:01:41 Is it the first thing you do? What is your first ideal morning? What's the first 90 minutes, 60 to 90 minutes look like? Espresso shot, glutathione. What time do you wake up? It depends on the day, like, you know, between like six and seven. I used to wake up a lot earlier, but I let one of my shows go, so I don't have to wake up at the crack of dawn every day anymore. So it's like between like, you know, like six and seven o'clock and then i have to work out in the morning or i

Starting point is 02:02:06 won't i won't i won't wake up you have espresso shot glutathione with i always have coffee before i work out like without fail and then the glutathione with the kombucha any particular type of kombucha that's your preferred axle grease mixer i I like Better Booch. And I like, was it Life Aid, I think is one of the other? I love kombucha. I'm very slutty when it comes to kombucha. I'll drink any kombucha. I'm a big kombucha fan. All right.

Starting point is 02:02:36 So then you buckle down to workout. And this is going to sound like I'm just looking for opportunities to plug, which maybe I am. But you described one of your workouts, the concept to mid-distance 5K rows punctuated by short-distance 2K HIIT sprints, high-intensity interval training, or yeah, high-intensity interval training with a 10K long-distance row once or twice a week. Would that be a current workout yeah that's typically my workouts and then i'll do like i'll do like like a set of five five by 25 kettlebells sets like you know like i'll get up one morning and just do 125 kettlebell swings in front of the television and then sometimes i'll do a trx workout uh because i didn't have really a way to simulate pull-ups so that was like that was why i got the tr pull-ups. So that was like, that was why I got the TRX. So I could do, that was like the one thing I didn't have in here was a pull-up bar.

Starting point is 02:03:27 Is the TRX attached to a, to a door? Is it a, it's such like a railing. Like I have like a, like an upstairs railing and it just hangs off of the railing. Got it. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:03:37 And, and that's it. I mean, I tried, I tried to keep it like relatively simple, so that'll do it. Yeah. I don't really train with anybody because I just can't,

Starting point is 02:03:44 I can't, I can manage the hour workout, but I can't manage the, the, the transit between my home and upside. I don't have enough time to do that too. You know what I mean? Like I've got the hour, I don't have two hours. So I just, I don't go to a gym anymore because I just, I just would be, I wouldn't have the time for it. Yeah. The transit time that transit time was what killed me. I have an hour to work out, but I don't have a half hour on either side of that to go to the gym. Do you still watch shows when you row? Totally. What do you watch? Any recent favorites? What are you watching currently?

Starting point is 02:04:16 Just fantastic junk. I mean, some good stuff. I watched Walking Dead, Fear of the Walking Dead. That's always really good workout shows. Right now, I'm watching The Magicians during my workouts. And then when I finish that, what will I watch after that? Sometimes I watch stuff that's on streaming services because I hate to have to – when I'm rowing, I don't want to have to watch commercials. And I can't stop to fast forward because I'm trying to beat my previous row time. Like I'll stream stuff on Hulu like X-Files or Handmaid's Tale. I just watched a show called Deutschland 83 that was pretty great.

Starting point is 02:04:51 It has to be something that I can kind of watch, which is why I'll typically watch something that's not too mentally demanding. So I can't pay attention too closely to plot points. All right. Do you make New Year's resolutions? So I can't pay attention too closely to plot points. Right. Do you make New Year's resolutions? Do you have any routines or rituals around New Year's? We're talking just for people who may be listening to this at another time. We're chatting at the end of March. Like, did you make any this year?

Starting point is 02:05:21 Right. I make the same one every year, which is to rest more. It's the same resolution every year, rest. So how are you going to make any this year? Right. I make the same one every year, which is to rest more. It's the same resolution every year, rest. So how are you going to do that this time? I don't know. I should just give up. I should stop making resolutions, and then I won't have to not accomplish them. I mean, look, maybe a part of success or success at being you, like figuring out being you,

Starting point is 02:05:42 is understanding what your strengths and your weaknesses are. My strength is my aggressive work ethic. it was when I was a young comic, I would be like, oh, I should be writing every day. I should be like this guy. Well, that's just not how I operate. So I think once you accept what your own

Starting point is 02:06:01 methodology... This is why you watch the Terminator 30 times. Yeah. You're like, like this, this is my people, right? Yeah. So I mean, I have definitely, I'm a CD. I'm definitely an obsessive personality. But like, once you accept like, this is my, how, these are my strengths.

Starting point is 02:06:17 This is where I excel. This is how I excel. Rather than try to force yourself into someone else's like workflow, like figure out what yours is. You know, I, as a writer and, and, and you've written lots of books, I've only written two, but with both books, I had this huge lead time. And it wasn't that I was lazy or procrastinating. The book wasn't there yet. And then just one day, the book was there. And then I sat down and I wrote the entire book in a few weeks. But it just needed to gel. It needed to synthesize. And if I had been trying

Starting point is 02:06:43 to sit down and write a little bit every day, it would have just been like this big agglomeration of glop. But just one day, I was like, oh, the book is in me now. The book is in me. And then I got it out. Oh, God, I wish I had that. And because, you know, there's a, there's a, there's a panic that, that ensues when you are seven weeks from your deadline and you had nine months to write a book and got to write the whole thing. But it's just like that for me, certain threads have to connect and that requires like rumination and, and time and, and, you know, I can't, just can't do it any other way. So I don't. I think, I think my strength is eating, every day trying to eat a wheelbarrow full of glass and shit out diamonds or something like that.

Starting point is 02:07:31 Okay, that's a good one. That should be a tattoo. Well, speaking of eating glass, this might be predictable, but I'm okay with predictable. I would like to start to wrap up with a handful of questions. And the first one I'm going to ask is, and you actually give people a heads up on this with the self-inflicted wounds. So, you usually say, at some point, I'm going to ask you about X. But I'm sure you've had time to think about this. So do you have any favorite stories of self-inflicted wounds of your own that you could share?

Starting point is 02:08:16 I mean, obviously, the book is just a collection, not even a comprehensive one, but quite detailed of many, many mistakes that I've made. I'm trying to think of something that's happened recently. It's interesting. I see my mistakes differently now than I did when I was younger. They just feel like an aspect of being human versus some kind of tragic flaw. It just seemed like an unavoidable aspect of being alive. But I'm trying to think if there's one. And then I'm thinking of ones recently that don't feel like that cataclysmic, so they're like lame stories.

Starting point is 02:08:48 Oh, you could pick a classic also, like the greatest hits. Like if you were watching TV 15 years ago and it's like, hits from the 80s. We could take one of those as well. Oh, God. that um oh god uh it's interesting like i was talking about that short film that i made uh that um that was like the one that will never be seen by any human being actually i think it's been destroyed where it was just like i just thought that I could just charm my way through this short. And I had a bunch of friends kind of show up and it was such an odd, it was such an odd idea. It didn't even make any sense. It was about a guy who flashed women. Uh, and, um, he flashed women and I can't remember why he flashed women, but it was something to do with, like, bravery.

Starting point is 02:09:48 It was, like, a metaphor for bravery that this guy would, like, flash women. And also maybe, like, hubris, like, the idea that, like, people were going to be super excited to see this guy's penis, and he would kind of, like, try to use it as currency, and it would never kind of go his way. But it just made no sense. It just ended up being, like, a series of vignettes about a guy like revealing his penis to strangers. I just remember at the end, like literally thinking it's one thing to think like people don't get me. I was like, I don't get myself. I don't know what I'm trying to accomplish here. Um, and it was, it, it, it just never, ever coalesced, but, but it was, it was fine because it was like, I remember kind of enjoying the process of making it and then being really kind of surprised and delighted by what a piece of shit it was, uh, much like that set where nobody laughed. I thought,

Starting point is 02:10:32 well, man, that didn't work at all. Okay. I need to go back and figure out what to do next. Uh, and I think, like, I think every artist, you know, I think Quentin Tarantino has a famous story about his first film being unwatchable, you know? Um, I think, I just think, you know, I think Quentin Tarantino has a famous story about his first film being unwatchable. You know, I think I just think, you know, sometimes if your personality is to be really aggressive and kind of dive in, you're bound, you're bound to make some spectacular failures, you know, and you just have to have a high tolerance for that and not take it personally and keep moving forward. But yeah, I literally was like, I know you guys don't get it. I don't get it.

Starting point is 02:11:06 I don't know what... I can't explain it to you. I have no idea what I was thinking. Thank you for putting yourselves in my hands. It was a terrible mistake on your part. But you're very gracious to have trusted me with your lives. What's the name of the shirt? It was called The Whipper.

Starting point is 02:11:22 Conjures all sorts of images. It makes no sense whatsoever when have you been extremely proud of yourself could be any point in your life can you can you think of a standout point where you're like god damn like good for me fucking a i hate i hate to have it be about this because it sounds like it's super self-promotional but i really am proud of this film and i for a variety of reasons i think because it did it did access it was yeah access because it was such a um i mean i was lucky that i was brought a great script and and i had a really talented actor but we we put this movie together like so quickly um and i knew and i had a vision for it,

Starting point is 02:12:05 but I also was, because we were moving so fast, feeling my way through the dark in some aspect. And I think one of the reasons why it came together the way that it did was because I was, I was both, I both had a vision for the film, but I was open to modulating. And I think that's really important in anything that you're doing,

Starting point is 02:12:22 no matter what field you're in, is that you have to both, we prize vision and kind of rigidity in this culture. But I think that's really important in anything that you're doing, no matter what field you're in, is that you have to both—we prize vision and kind of rigidity in this culture. But I think that being able to pivot and be nimble is way more important than being kind of a rigid visionary. You have to be able to look at data and interpret it and then apply it to your situation, or you're just going to keep banging your head against the wall. So, you know, we made this movie. We got into the very second day of filming. We started really late. We lost our light. We had to kind of pivot that day. I ended up having to throw all that footage away. Um, another day we lost light and had to get back up at five in the morning and kind of shoot dawn for

Starting point is 02:12:58 dust, but we just kept pivoting. We just kept, nothing was catastrophic. Okay. Like, and I think that's something I got from my father. It's like, okay, this isn't working. Okay. So we're going to do this. Okay. That's not working. We're going to do this rather than, oh my God, this is the end of the world. What are we going to do?

Starting point is 02:13:11 And then in post, I had very little money for post and very little time to cut the movie together. And about four weeks in the editor that I had cutting the movie, he was a great guy, really talented, just wasn't connecting with the material. It wasn't, wasn't able to assemble the movie. It was an unusual movie. It's one guy in a car and I had to let him go. And then I had to learn Avid, the Avid system and start cutting the movie myself. Um, but again, I wasn't like, what am I going to do? I don't have an editor. I'm going to die. I just thought, okay, well, like the, the answer here is that I'm going to learn this

Starting point is 02:13:38 skillset and I'm going to keep moving forward. Um, and then, you know, I made this little film. It was, you know, strange and atmospheric and dreamlike and, you know, I made this little film, it was, you know, strange and atmospheric and dreamlike and, you know, it didn't get into Sundance and everybody always wants to get into Sundance, but then it got into eight other festivals and won two awards and got picked up for distribution. And the result has been much better than I ever could have anticipated. Uh, and, and I'm, I'm really proud of it because I mean, mean, I made it for what is typically the catering budget on a regular Hollywood movie. You know what I mean? We made it for just no money and in no time.

Starting point is 02:14:16 And I think it also says something. I think what I'm also proud of is that the movie actually does have a strong point of view and a strong visual personality and a strong style that is my own. When I look at it, I don't think I'm trying to emulate anybody. I feel like this is, this is something that I made. It's my, it's my little lumpy ashtray from shop class. And I, I really love it. Good for you. And there, there's this, I think it's easy to, I'm not saying you, but for humans to look at the people who are showcased on the covers of magazines or on the front pages of popular websites and think, wow, they figured out all the secret sauce, or they have the keys to the kingdom and they're able to show up and just hit home runs every time they step to the plate. And when you look at the origin stories of some of these incredible creations that people are familiar with, whether it's Jaws or the company Alibaba is one example. Jack Ma, the founder, I think he's the richest man in China, or certainly one of the top few at this point.

Starting point is 02:15:35 And he said, I'm paraphrasing, but we had a huge advantage in the beginning, and that was we had no experience, no money, and no plan. And it forces you to really think outside of the box. And even if that project doesn't succeed by outside measures, the confidence that you develop in exploring areas outside of the box can then transfer to future projects. I remember there's this fantastic documentary, I'm going to butcher his name. It's fantastic mostly for the message, not for all of the content, which I hope makes sense. But it's called Jodaworski's Dune, and it's the story of this attempt to make a movie about Dune. And the thing is a complete unmitigated disaster, like complete unmitigated disaster. But the talent that was assembled went on to just do incredible things.

Starting point is 02:16:32 And if that disaster hadn't happened, one could argue that if you had stepped on that butterfly, these other careers wouldn't have blossomed in the way that they did. And you wouldn't have the Geiger design of the alien that people now know as the alien of aliens and so on. So it's, uh, I just love. Yeah, this, no one ever learns from success. I mean, you, you can kind of, you can kind of do a postmortem and say, Oh, this stuff worked. But failure is where, is where you have explosive growth,

Starting point is 02:17:06 where you really have to reconsider all of your assumptions. And it's so much more powerful than success is at making you eventually successful. So be aggressive. Yeah, be aggressive. Be aggressive. A-G-G-R-E-S-S-I-V-E. Totally. Yeah, that's my life philosophy. Be aggressive. Be aggressive. And we want you around for a long time,

Starting point is 02:17:35 so take your catnaps at the very least. That's my goal. And do you have anything you would like to say or ask of the audience, suggestions you'd like to say or ask of the audience suggestions you'd like to make anything at all that you'd like to to say before we wrap up other than watch my movie other than watch your movie exactly um god that's interesting i mean uh i i mean i guess like i like when i when i did my podcast you know like thematically the stuff that we've talked about was always stuff that I talked about, which is like, it doesn't matter what you're, what you want to do. Like, you know, and again, it sounds very greeting card, but like the barriers are, they're imagined, you know what I mean? And, and, and maybe you're gonna

Starting point is 02:18:20 have to start small and maybe you're gonna have to start, uh, close to home, but like the, the greater regret will always be not having started. And, and, uh, this it's, I'm always trying to find a way to be more bold in my life and hopefully share the things that have helped me do that with other people. So it is exciting to be having the conversation with you because I think that's a lot of what you've done is you've kind of, you know, lived these experiences so that the things that you learn could be shared with other people. And it is, you know, just go out and do awesome shit. Get your hands dirty. It's not the rough drafts are not a clean business absolutely not Aisha thank you so much for taking the time

Starting point is 02:19:13 it was a pleasure so much fun and now that I know where you are I will track you down the next time I'm in your neck of the woods yeah barbecue, music, whatever it might be in Austin Tejas come visit and people can visit you. Is the best, best site AishaTyler.com?

Starting point is 02:19:32 Yeah, AishaTyler.com. But you know, who spends time on a website anymore? Just follow me on, follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, all that stuff is just Aisha Tyler, one word. A-I-S-H-A-T-Y-L-E-R. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. And to everyone, I'm sorry, you were going to say something. I don't know when this is going to post, but I post stuff about all the stuff I'm doing.

Starting point is 02:19:55 The movie's out on the 10th of April on Video Nomad, iTunes, all that stuff. And then Archer starts, I think, on the 24th of April and all the others. I don't know, TV, whatever. You can find me online. I don't know when you're going to listen to this, but just come say hi to me on socials. For days and weeks and months and years and millennia to come, hopefully.

Starting point is 02:20:14 We'll see. Cockroaches will be listening to this on their tiny cockroach computers when the rest of us are dead. That's exactly right. Cockroaches, remember us fondly. And for you non-cockroaches, actually, if cockroaches are listening, you're welcome also to check out the show notes

Starting point is 02:20:29 where I will provide links to everything that we've talked about, including Axis. And you can find all of those at tim.blog forward slash podcast along with the show notes for every other episode. And Aisha, thank you so much one more time for being so goddamn entertaining and inspiring at the same time.

Starting point is 02:20:49 It's a rare combo. Thank you. So I really appreciate the time. It's great to talk with you. Thanks, Tim. Of course. And to everybody out there on the interwebs, be safe, maybe.

Starting point is 02:21:02 More important, be aggressive, get out there. If you're dreaming of doing something, creating something someday, just get out a shitty first draft. Because guess what? All the first drafts are really fucking awful. It's very rare that someone just, as I was alluding to, shits out diamonds on a daily basis. It starts with putting something out there into the world. And hopefully, at least it makes a market of one happy and that is you. So I will close there. And thanks to everybody for listening.

Starting point is 02:21:38 Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off. And that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and 2 million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called five bullet Friday, easy to sign up easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums, perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks

Starting point is 02:22:17 and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday, type that into your browser, Tim.blog slash Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time what I would take if I could only take one supplement. The answer is invariably Athletic

Starting point is 02:22:57 Greens. I view it as all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it, in fact, in the four-hour body. This is more than 10 years ago, and I did not get paid to do so. With approximately 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole food-sourced ingredients, you'd be very hard-pressed to find a more nutrient-dense and comprehensive formula on the market. It has multivitamins, multimineral greens complex, probiotics and prebiotics for gut health, an immunity formula, digestive enzymes, adaptogens, and much more. I usually take it once or twice a day just to make sure I've covered my bases if I miss anything I'm not aware of. Of course, I focus on nutrient-dense meals to begin with. That's the basis. But Athletic Greens makes it easy to get a lot of nutrition when whole foods aren't readily available. From travel packets, I always have them in my bag when I'm zipping around.

Starting point is 02:23:45 Right now, Athletic Greens is giving my audience a special offer on top of their all-in-one formula, which is a free vitamin D supplement and five free travel packs with your first subscription purchase. Many of us are deficient in vitamin D. I found that true for myself, which is usually produced in our bodies from sun exposure. So adding a vitamin D supplement to your daily routine is a great option for additional immune support. Support your immunity, gut health, and energy by visiting athleticgreens.com slash Tim. You'll receive up to a year's supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your subscription. Again, that's athleticgreens.com slash Tim.

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