WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1139 - Colin Jost

Episode Date: July 13, 2020

Colin Jost has 15 years of Saturday Night Live under his belt but the time in his life he feels he's still running away from is his upbringing on Staten Island. Colin tells Marc why his Outer Borough roots loom so large in his life and how he's linked with his SNL castmate Pete Davidson by more than just their hometown. Marc and Colin also talk about the stress of hosting the Emmys, the secret gift of Lorne Michaels, and the silver linings Colin and Scarlett Johansson are finding in quarantine. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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To show your true heart is to risk your life. When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears how's it going i'm mark maron this is my podcast wtf welcome to it i uh i i don't know i i guess most of you have been hanging out, right? You've been around, been hanging out around here. For you new people, welcome. This has been going on for a while. We've been talking. We've had an ongoing conversation here, me and whoever's been here since whenever. Some of you have been here for over a decade,

having the ongoing conversation, that's what it is. Everything that I do is just part of an ongoing conversation, sometimes with other people, sometimes with you, sometimes with myself. But I've noticed that with my stand up or with whatever I'm doing here, it's just an ongoing conversation. And so many people have been here through a lot of stuff. And I'm finding that I've been there for a lot of your stuff as well I always kind of knew it but I don't know if I fully it's not appreciate but

it's there's a it's it's a type of empathy I guess where I'll get emails from people that say you know we we went through breakups together or you were there for me. And I understand that. And I'm glad that I was there. But obviously, I wasn't there, you know, right there with you. But I was there with you in your head. But like if I really think about what the sort of weight of that, the gravity of it, that I've been there, like it gets me, gets my heart all, all welled up. How's everything with you guys?

All right. Are you, it's fucking horrendous. Come on. Who are we kidding? It's fucking horrendous. Every day is fucking horrendous. Now that I feel a little,

a smidge better where I can actually set aside time to cry about my sadness and my loss and set aside some other time to take in the news whole-mindedly and feel that fucking weight that fucking grief you just feel like you watch the fucking news sometimes and you feel like somebody is punching you in the goddamn chest the authoritarian fist of garbage just right into your chest i don't know i'm just running running with the fist thing you want to know who's on the show let's do that um colin jost is on the show uh this season will be his 15th year at saturday night live he has a new book out tomorrow july 14th called the very punchable face oh maybe that's maybe that's where i'm i'm hung up on it

on the fist and the punching and the heart clenched like a fist i think if it was another time now we're two months into um lynn died a little over two months into... Lynn died a little over two months ago. And I feel the hole. I feel the void. I feel the pain. I can see... I have to struggle not to perceive the world through the hole in my heart.

That is not a great lens. I have to separate, compartmentalize. I have to deal with the spiritual realm. I have to deal with the spiritual realm. I have to deal with the mystical realm. I have to deal with the practical realm of loss. On any given day, you know, when you listen to the news, it's terrible. Wear your fucking mask, stupid. Seriously.

Seriously. It's like Jesus but on any given day it's really the challenge is compartmentalizing and realize that I've got this sadness the deep sadness

I guess we all have that the deep sadness of like why the fuck am I here who did this to me why was i brought here why then the the next layer which is my girlfriend's dead and then the world doesn't seem to be working out that's pretty much diplomatic this shit the experiment is not working this is some banana republic bullshit then there's the plague level it's hard to separate this shit out and just sit there and be like it's okay on the porch right now but what do i do for relief it's the relief thing i'm not prone to

seek out healthy relief. You know, I'm just not. Or healthy rewards. Just not. You know? And I guess this quarantine is helping me keep shit manageable. You know, outside of the occasional ice cream i guess i've been eating okay but i eat a lot that's all right that's okay acting out like that's fine you know just

shove your mouth full of stuff just keep stuffing stuff into your face hole till you're happy and comfortable and feel sick that's not a healthy way to do it but it's you know depending what you eat right i can't drink can't do no drugs haven't don't wanna haven't even dipped back into the nicotine can't fuck so that's i think that's one of the things that you know you don't hear about in the more, in the sadness of grief. How much you miss somebody, the whole, the love. What about the fucking, man? That's gone too. God damn.

And now like, you know, what am I? I'm the guy fucking just eating ice cream and jerking off again. Full circle. I've landed back. God damn it. And, you know, I guess if it were another time, I've never been through this. But certainly when you break up with somebody after a couple months, you're like, I'm going to go. I got to fuck. but this is different this is much sadder there's no revenge impetus

there's no like which one of her friends you know there's no it's just sad so even if i chose to act out sexually which i which is very difficult during a quarantine i think you know really you know fucking in the age of aids was easier than this because it's like you can protect yourself now not only do you not know but you can't you can't just put a coating on your entire body you just can't do it you can't it's like it's better though it's better right it's better thank god for quarantine or then you know after a few months it'd be like who wants to fuck the sad man i'm emotionally incapable of connecting because I'm so profoundly consumed in grief. But can we just, you know, touch the things?

Can we put the things in the things? Nope. You're on your own, pal. So, in other words, because of the quarantine and because of, you know, a certainmindedness, I can't do much of anything that doesn't involve just me and food. And I'm more terrified than ever of getting this fucking disease. I'm not doing shit. But my friend, Kite Linger, she gave me a hat with a fucking windshield on it i went to whole foods wearing a mask and a like a golf hat with a full windshield

like a beekeeper's outfit fuck it i just ordered some more plastic shields i can't scary man it's just fucking scary and you know what i started to realize too it's like you know i you know i got my problems but there's a lot of people dealing a lot with a lot worse shit than me my friend laurie uh laurie kilmartin lost her mom to the covid and she's been pretty uh aggressively funny about it in a very dark and painful way she'd check out her uh twitter feed going all the way back she basically live tweeted um her mother dying of covid uh which was heavy it's fucking heavy man but you know i've been talking to other people i've been you know i talked to my friend sam lipsight every night who is uh you know a dear talk to my friend Sam Lipside every night, who is, you know, a dear friend.

And he's really been there for me every fucking night. And last night, I don't know, I think something shifted in me because I was able to kind of like get out of myself, listen to him. It was great. I felt good. I got choked up a couple of times just thinking about being a father, all these things that, you know, being the father of a kid in high school. Things I never did. I'm getting a contact emotional high, get a little choked up about the struggles. Nothing tragic, just, you know, I think the common struggles of raising children in any world, but the world now where they can't do anything oh my god so that was nice i'm just

i'm just i'm what i'm doing right now is i'm saying i know a lot of you guys got your fucking plates full and my heart goes out to you we're all trying to get through this and uh we have a president that likes to hurt us more, and there's no clear leadership. The center cannot hold, it does not seem. What strange beast slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? Good question. Somebody answer it. All right, look, enough, enough.

Colin Jost, he's got a book coming out, A Very Punchable Face, a memoir. Comes out tomorrow, July 14th, but you can pre-order it now. And we talk about some interesting, there's an interesting Pete Davidson, Colin Jost connection that is very touching. This is me and Colin coming right up.

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Death is in our air. This year's most anticipated series, FX's Shogun, only on Disney+. We live and we die. We control nothing beyond that. An epic saga based on the global best-selling novel by James Clavel. To show your true heart is to risk your life.

When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. apply. you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative.

It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com. Hey, buddy. Hi. Okay, I get it. You read books. I understand.

I'm very impressed with the books. That that's great what did you actually go back to harvard to do this what the fuck is that yeah to no to shoot this they're all they're all hollow they're just uh they're just for show there's ones you buy in bulk uh-huh right you had a set deck come in and just can you make me look smart on my facetime video you've got a rolling stones poster framed up you know yeah exactly so point being you're cool what's going on man whose house is that that your place yeah i i we're back in the city for like one one day just um to like see if everything's okay like collect mail and all that stuff oh so you guys have been holed up in the country or something yeah out in montauk we've been there

oh we went out just for a weekend like in when we had a break from snl and then that that turned into whatever 120 days or whatever it's been so i've read a lot of the book uh and actually and i and i don't usually but i read it was funny and I enjoyed it. I think I made it a little more than two thirds through. And you do succeed in creating somewhat of a sympathetic character of yourself. A miracle. But what happens at the end? Do you end up with the movie star and good job, right? The ending is more of uh you know probably ending more an existential crisis than anything else but

uh oh really probably but but yeah no that's it's more there's there's sort of weirder episodes toward the end but um actually the biggest laugh i got what do you think the biggest laugh in your book oh my god i don't, I don't remember what's. For all the talk about writing and being funny, you're going to tell me you don't know what the biggest laugh in your book is? No, I'm fascinated to know what you found. When you wrote the book and you're like, that's a good joke. That's going to stay.

I heard different things from different people, like friends, when they read it, what they, what line they liked. So I'm curious. Well, it's for me because like, you know, I like, you know, things that are directly related to experience for, for some reason, but that beat where the cops come in into Chicago, you know, they break in with the full riot gear and you say, uh, I became a scared high school student again and throw my beer on the floor, even though it's perfectly legal for a 30 year old man to drink a beer in a private home.

I laugh twice at that. Oh, thank you. The idea, the idea. Reacting quickly. I'm not holding a beer. When you're 30, when you're 30 and you go back to your full high school anxiety, that's a retrospectively fun thing to do. Oh, yeah. I've been in a car and you see a cop coming up on you like, be cool.

Like, what am I doing? I'm 56. What am I doing? Be cool? Cops. doing? Be cool. Cops. I'm, I'm, I have anxiety about those things where when I'm going in a store and there's like a security guard at the store, I almost make a show of leaving with my, like showing that I'm not shoplifting. You know what I mean? I'm so worried about conflict that they'll say, are you, you know, like that'll be missed mistakenly, you know?

Oh God. That's how afraid I am. Have you ever been in one of those situations where the buzzer goes off and you don't know why? Even though you. Or you did, you bought something and then you suddenly you're like, I swear I bought it. You know. Have you ever stolen things and gotten away with it? No, I don't think I've ever stolen it.

I remember an incident as a kid stealing a dog's leash from a neighbor's house and like stealing it and putting it down a sewer drain. And that's like a really haunting memory in my mind. I was like, why did I do that? I don't know what caused me to do that. And that's still like. Have you figured it out? No, I don't. I haven't.

Do you know the neighbor or the dog or anything? I remember which neighbor which i just remember doing it and then i remember feeling it's like so horrible about myself like why would i do wow you didn't kill the dog no no it wasn't like a good son i watched the good son the other day and i was like oh i'm fine right you're not a monster you i it's it's hard for me to believe that you come from Staten Island for some reason. And I don't know a lot about it other than I lived in New York for a decade or however long I lived there, a couple of 15 years. And I always knew it was over there. And I always knew that there was no reason to go there, really. there's no reason to go there really and i knew i knew about the dump yeah uh and i knew about the mob and i knew about like it was just this weird uh kind of dark place that uh that i knew eddie pepitone came from there yeah but uh other than that i would never like i was surprised to find out even though i know you mentioned it on the show, that you come from there. So it seems to me that you must have gone through some effort to erase as much of that as possible from how people perceive you, like a conscious effort.

Yes, for sure. There was a lot of running away from it. I mean, physically commuting in for high school and also wanting to probably still be on the move a little bit and also adapting you know always wanting to uh i don't know change where i am or change what what's going on you know yeah but how a bit like do you have family members that are you know deep staten island like they talk the talk and oh yeah yeah i mean i i when i i had trouble speaking for a long time in my life and then i when i did learn i actually very thick staten island accent like super yeah what was that you learned how when did you learn how to talk and no there's no there's no medical

explanation for that you just like and you don't have a ton of brothers right you only have one brother i have one younger brother casey so there was no reason for you not to talk you just didn't know there wasn't no and i think it was getting to the point of of probably some real fear um on the part of my family uh which is why i went to like a you know hospital speech therapist but yeah i don't know if there was a medical reason they have not told me. Yeah. My parents would be the parents that would not would bury something that would be that would be traumatic. They would they would rather keep it to themselves and not and not burden me with it in some

way. Oh, really? I've tried. I can't always get a straight answer out of them. Really? So even now, you're a grown person that's worked through some stuff. You've written a book and they're still going to go, you know, go to the grave with the secrets of why they may have buried them for

themselves too. That's the thing you realize later in life. Like they may not have parents sometimes don't tell you things because they've buried it themselves and don't work you know don't figure out how to do it well i mean it was sort of interesting to me that like no one could figure out the name of the hot speech therapist i know everyone was just like it was this beautiful blonde woman and i was like bam first name last name nothing and you really couldn't track her down no and i kept asking and that's what made me almost more suspicious of my mom, that there was some other darker thing I didn't know. I was like, wait, you don't remember this

woman who like saved your son's life and taught him how to speak? You give her a lot of credit. I do. I mean, I still give her a lot of credit like every day. I'm very grateful. Did you try to go to the hospital and ask or do some research in the records? Again, I was too trusting of my mom that I was like, does the hospital? She was like, the hospital doesn't have that. Oh, right. I just thought, oh, I guess they don't. But maybe they don't.

I don't know. Maybe they don't have that kind of thing. I think it would be nice to reach out to her. But I guess, I don't know. Usually people can find you if they want to find you to say like, Hey, I'm here. I remember like when I started SNL, I was talking to Amy Poehler about it and she was like, you got to find this woman. Like this is going to be, she would be so grateful to get to talk to you now, you know? And I was like, I have to. And then I really tried to figure out. And my, truly my parents said my parents said, we don't have any medical records of you before the age of 12.

That seems crazy. Which is also a very evasive statement, don't you think? But isn't your mother a doctor? Yes. Uh-huh. Okay. So I wouldn't trust that information. But it's Staten Island.

So my doctor growing up was just like an uncle. No, I know. Yeah. I grew up with it. Uncle Lou, you know? Yeah. He, so your mom, there were other doctors in the family and you, everything was sort of a social call. It was never a real visit. Yeah. I mean, I kind of just trusted that a, he was a doctor and B that he was an uncle. Your parents seem to have signed off on it. So you went along with it.

Yeah. You don't really know any other way. Oh yeah. Those can, those stories can be, you know, bad or, you know, good. I'm glad it was okay. But did you like when you, so you, did your mom have a practice growing up? Yes. She has a family medicine practice that she's had this whole time. So, you know, she, she had a family medicine practice. My dad was a teacher at Staten Island Tech High School on Staten Island. So between the two of them, like so many people on Staten Island either had my dad as a teacher or my mom as a doctor. Like when you go out to dinner on Staten Island, it's crazy how many more people know them than me.

Yeah. Oh, right. Well, people walk up to her and they're like remember me you fixed you know right that kind of thing it's like when you're a comedian if someone says remember me i saw you at a show in missouri 15 years ago yeah and sometimes you're like oh yeah you audience member i don't it's the same for her she's like how can she remember all of these people well it depends who they are oh yeah the guy who ruined the show i remember that yeah right yeah someone's like remember i yelled that thing at you and yeah yeah oh right now i remember you yeah you're the guy who threw the thing yeah okay great but that's

so funny so she had she probably did remember she probably saw a lot of them as kids and they just kind of remember like that yeah yeah they totally they had she has a lot of She probably saw a lot of them as kids and they just kind of remember like that. Yeah. Yeah. They totally, they had, she has a lot of kids, you know, a lot of kid patients. That's probably why you don't have records is because she probably did most of the doctoring. Yeah. Yeah. I guess so.

Yeah. I mean, again, that's my, that's my assumption. But as you're asking me now today, I start having a lot of more suspicious conspiracy theories, you know. Maybe you're not even their kid. I thought we'd go deep. I wouldn't go. I didn't think we were going to go this deep this quickly. Wow. Maybe that's what's being hidden. They found you.

Maybe one of her patients was like, I don't want this one. And she, your mother agreed to raise it as her own. Yeah. More of a penguin kind of uh right and then raised maybe maybe the speech therapist was more of a circus uh performer that raised me yeah and i didn't realize you know yeah you were the boy that didn't talk you were a traveling act for a little while but i i don't like it is odd to me though that you're able to like if you wanted to could you speak staten island do you speak it when you go back yeah certain phrases like even saying like staten island is like you it's hard to say that no i've never heard anyone even not from staten island stuck called like

staten island where you hear the t's right um it's really funny. Like even like Verrazano bridge, they just now, like this year corrected the spelling. They had misspelled the name of the explorer that they named the bridge after. And it just got, it just got, they just were like, Oh, maybe we should spell his name. Correct. But like when you were growing up, like, so your younger brother, what's he do? Is he, he's in show business, right? He,

he, he's been, uh, working on that show and practical jokers since it started with all those guys who are all from Staten Island. They all went to this, uh, school called Monsignor Farrell high school on Staten Island.

And, my brother went there, my brother's younger, but he went there and, and then they started doing stuff together. And then that show, that show happened. Like I picture that to be more of a Staten Island undertaking.

It's very Staten. I mean, it's like born and bred in Staten Island. Right. So but like I can't like I don't it seems like you've done everything to erase it. I just I'm glad you own up to it in the book. But it still seems like you're some sort of weird magical elf person that you know that that was just passing through staten island you know for some reason uh thanks yeah that's a funny either or magical elf person or native staten islander well it's like yeah like it's like it

all ties into the idea that you're not really your parents child and that somehow you were that you were found and and now look at you you didn't talk for four years four years till you're four years old because you innately knew like i don't these people i can't let on who i really am and then all of a sudden you you you learn how to talk and then you go to harvard and you know you're engaged as scarlett johansson there's no, there's nothing Staten Island about that story. Yeah, no, this is this suddenly this, uh, found, found child theory is really adding up. All the pieces are connected. Yeah. You're, I mean, it's on you to say, to fix everything. You're the, you're the golden one. Are you up for it? I mean, I know the story about the standup and everything that's cute and everything, but you have big responsibilities that just

point in history. Yeah. I just re-watched the Eddie Martin, you know, Golden Child, which I hadn't seen since probably I was whatever, since I was like eight or something. And that is, what a trippy, weird, fun movie that is. It's like such a surreal thing. I haven't watched it. I haven't watched it. I forgot.

There's just like full dragon person in it and shadow figure and all this. I forgot how much, how like spiritual it got. Oh man. I, I, I should, I definitely have to watch it now. So when does the, uh, how does it work? Like, so you, how did you get out just education like that's that's how i got i got out because i i got into this high school this like free catholic high school in the city yeah i commuted in and it that was the only way

i got out like it was always going to be i had to like education was the way to weigh out i think for me and in was a catholic school you how catholic were you brought up uh i always can say now i was raised catholic the way i think a lot of catholics say like i was raised catholic the way you say like i was raised by wolves yeah yeah kind of right right i i don't you know my mom still goes to mass every sunday i went to mass every Sunday through, through the beginning of college, but it was always more like it was never, it was weirdly never super religious for me. It was always reflection and taking that time to kind of think about,

I don't know, almost intention or think about people in your life or things you're grateful for or things you want, you know, you, you want to figure out. Um, and there's something calming about the, uh, the hymns and chants and weirdness of the Catholic church. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, and it's really repressed, which, which I liked, you know, it made sense to me, you know, it was not, no one's in your business. You're not not forced to sing most people are just kind of half singing or not paying attention you know you you can do your own uh journey at a catholic mass it seems like many catholics have done their own journey yeah there's few that follow the exact rules of the prescribed journey yeah yeah and i the thing

i always the thing i remember learning was the idea of conscience and i always like the pure version of conscience is if you have fully examined something in your in your heart and your mind and you really believe this is the right thing to do you're then you can go against what the tenants of your faith are because you've really taken the time to think about that. And I always thought that was such a great loophole in a good way for a religion to say, if you really are looking at yourself and this religion and you don't believe in something, trust your conscience. And that's not a big played up thing in Catholicism. I think it's more modern and recent, but I do think that's a great concept. But yeah, it is. Is there a catch to it that lays the next step and then go apologize?

No. Yeah. I mean, there's a, I don't know if there's a catch, like, but you might go to hell. I don't know if that's a catch, which seems like a pretty big one. Yeah. I think it's like, you can't, they can't force you to hell if you really were pure in your conscience. So you don't know when that was added like that. Like, it seems like a way to sort of move the religion forward. It's a relatively progressive idea. I think so. I bet it was emphasized more in the last 30 years than when it was all in Latin.

Right. But like your parents, I mean, your mom's a doctor. She couldn't have been that nuts with the with the Catholic thing. Oh, she was very I mean, she was pro- Latin. Right. But like your parents, I mean, your mom's a doctor. She couldn't have been that nuts with the, with the Catholic thing. Oh, she was very, I mean, she was pro-choice always.

She was in favor of gay marriage. She was, I mean, it was a, she was a pioneering woman who worked in the fire department when there were no women in the fire department. So she didn't give a shit about a lot of social things, which she liked about it was I think the,

the community of it and the, again, like they're trying to reflecting and trying to be a better person of it. So when you went to the Catholic school, that's when you kind of were able, I don't think people really understand the, the difference, you know,

between Staten Island, you know, and the rest of the world. So for you to sort of go to school in the city, that's like a big fucking deal. It was a completely different world. Like Staten Island is not far from New York geographically, but as you know, and is, is like light years different.

I mean, it's like you go out on the Island. They're like New York. What? You know, it's crazy. Oh, it's like Southern being out on the island. They're like, New York, what? It's crazy. No, it's like being in southern New Jersey or something. It feels like a very different strain. And even among suburbs, it's weird. It's not like other suburbs either.

No, there's a darkness there. There is. When you live on an island that was the largest landfill in the world yeah like this is in a modern era when we were competing against like landfills in china yeah and we were filling this one up faster yeah that's a that's like a different world so it's is it still it's not active anymore right no they closed it i don't know 10 years ago or something so now it's just a mountain it's now a mountain and then every time you home, there's some new theory about what they're going to do with it. Like one was,

we might have Buffalo's come and wander the Hills. You know, you're like, what? Great. Where is it? Who's doing, who's bringing them in?

Do they want to come? I don't think they want to come. Wander the toxic mountain. Not just that, but like, there's all the weird Dutch shit. Like, isn't you kind of gave a brief history in the book of Staten Island to kind of justify your foundation as a true Staten Island person. Like, you know, your family's been there since it was

like, you know, what, there was just a few families and farms or something. Right. Yeah. I mean, my, my, like irish ancestors on stent island from like the 1860s 1870s are buried like under a golf course oh yeah whole of a golf course and you guys all knew that yeah i didn't actually know that till later on and i was like oh shit i should have uh paid my respects i guess i don't know what you golf course yeah yeah i don't know really i don't know how you do that they just plowed over the fucking graveyard or was it were they buried in a trench because of disease this is way before people thought maybe we shouldn't plow over a graveyard i mean okay they're like move the stones and they didn't expect the poltergeist situation. Yeah, why would we keep this Irish graveyard? So you're just, are you all Irish?

No, you're Irish. German and Irish. Where'd the Germans come from? My grandfather was an immigrant who came in, he came as a kid with his parents who spoke only German. They came, I think in 1920, something like that. Oh, okay. And my uncle said they may have been German

and maybe half Jewish German. He wasn't sure. He'd been trying to figure out their heritage. You should get on that show that I did, Finding Your Roots. Call Henry Gates. Yeah, yeah. Scarlett did it and said it was nuts. their heritage but you get on that show that i did finding your roots call henry gates yeah yeah he scarlet did it and said it was like it was nuts like she found out you know yeah right you know her grandfather was in a hall you know in concentration camps and survived all this

crazy and she found all the crazy stuff out it was a real did they was that already on her episode uh yeah i think i think a couple years ago i'm not i haven't i haven't actually watched it she was she told me about it but i haven't seen is she forbidding you to watch it there's things she doesn't know no no no it was i don't think there was anything too too dark that came out i know so you're going to school with the catholic high school and that's like but this is like like this is where you start learning about what books writing yeah and things books writing and and like uh critical thinking you know like questioning things uh was was it but

really the biggest thing was it was like finding your people kind of yeah like i found all these other really funny nerdy uh aspirational kids who almost none of them were from Manhattan there were like three kids in our school that were from Manhattan even though it was in the city yeah and almost everyone came from Queens Brooklyn Jersey Pennsylvania upstate New York like people traveled we all you know it was a long distance to get there because it was free and it was a good education but it was all these kids that wanted to stay in this. No one wanted to go home. Like why would you go home to Staten Island when you could be, you know,

14 and just like have freedom in the city. Yeah. So it was, it was finding your, it was finding like my people who loved it. It was, it was finding kids that even today I still am on text chains with and try to go to dinner with whenever I can and joke about things with. And that was like the beginning of, of really of comedy for me, you know, like seeing just the way you joke around with friends. It was like that first group of friends I found. Right. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause you didn't, did you have, did you have an equivalent of, was it comedians when you started doing comedy or was there a

group of friends before that? I had a couple of funny friends and i definitely had a a little a group of people that i hung out with in high school i don't know when i started to realize the comedy thing i i knew i knew that i was sort of a smart ass and i knew that it got me through life but unlike you i i didn't seem to learn any great lessons in high school or from a temple. Like I knew that Jewish kids seemed to jerk off more than other kids and talk about it, which was, you know, funny. You know, there was a lot of talk about jerking off for some reason. So I always thought that Jews were funnier because they talked about jerking off and i turn out to be correct it turns out to be true i know i know a lot of you non-jew harvard guys have tried to bully in to the comedy racket but don't forget you know we invented it

i don't i don't pretend for a second we i think i think catholic kids probably jerked off the same amount, but never told anyone, like repressed it. I feel like there's such a, I don't know, not symbiote, some sort of very similar but different internalize it and pretend like it's not there. And then it comes out in huge, right. Right. Or they never address it and it tears them apart. Whereas I feel like my friends are able to talk about their anxiety, which is then they seem like anxious people, but they're actually healthier people because because they're communicating about what they're anxiety. Yeah. And that turns out to be, you know, if you can find a job doing that, then you've really, you've really succeeded. Well, I think the Jew anxiety is there's like, there's always this inner pressure of, of not being good enough, uh, in a way, uh, in a, in the way of like, you know, uh, in a practical sense, like, you know, could you be doing more? Why didn't you get an a, why aren't you a doctor?

Whereas I think it seems that Catholics have a similar thing where they're not good enough, but it's a moral thing. Like, you know, you're dirty, right? You can't don't, you know what I mean? What have you done? How are you going to get forgiven for this? Yeah. I mean, what have you done? How are you going to get forgiven for this? Yeah, everything feels like you're looking back at a dead body, like, what happened? How did this happen? And the cycle of drinking and being like, let's do stuff,

and then the next morning feeling like you need to delete numbers. Yeah, you seemed to have – you had a good go of it. Yeah, you had some – it seems like you had a good go with it yeah yeah some it seems like you had quite a few of those experiences yeah all the the cycle of like fun and release because that again it's all related to not get getting out your feelings right in the first place and then you're batting and then you're letting them go and there seems to be a point where somehow i don't know i i just it's i and i you know i'm not going to judge your Harvard experience against anyone else's Harvard experience that I really empathize with and thought like, oh, yeah, I also felt like I was didn't belong there and was not good enough. Well, how did it unfold that you got in there? How does that you know, what was your what was your like?

I mean, I'm not hung up on it and I certainly don't resent it. And it's like an impressive place. But the more people I talk to about it, there is something that gets demystified. But nonetheless, you know, it is something that gets, uh, demystified, but nonetheless, you know, it is Harvard and you knew that as well. So what would you just applied or how did that work? Yeah, I applied early. Um, and it, you know, I was, it was non-binding like when you apply, it was not when I, when I was applying there, it was non-finding. So I applied there because it was, it was like the only school that I was, you know, curious about that didn't say like, if you got in, you had to go because I didn't really know where I wanted to go. I hadn't, you know, I would have been truly so happy at any of the colleges I was applying to. I, and I had no,

uh, I did not in any way think that I would get into Harvard. I also didn't think I would get into a lot of other schools either. Like I thought I would get into some good school. And I really now having gone there, the absolute truth is that the top hundred schools in the country could be the same level school or also maybe better for people than, than Harvard. And it's, and some schools are definitely harder when you're there and some schools are, um, have a more academic rigor, you know, but,

and I was just lucky that I got in there, you know, I really feel grateful that I got in there, but I also at the same time don't think it's anything different than other places. It just feels like it is for some. Well, I think that in the sense of like, I imagine it happens the same with other schools that there are these kind of clicks and clubs and sort of networks of people that go there that seem to kind of, you know, take care of their brothers and sisters who went there as well. You know just in comedy but in whatever i imagine it's the same with medicine or any discipline of people who went to harvard they're they're going to be like oh you're harvard

yeah well yeah come on in you know i'm sure that happens yes oh and it's seeing that sometimes is the worst part of it because you see people be like chummy in that way. And that's like my high school was so the opposite of that. It was all kids that were really like really kids that were humble and grateful to have a good education and again, would have been happy going to lots of places. So the idea that suddenly people that were at Harvard were like, I went to Harvard, you know, and you hear people bring it up in conversation early on in conversations and you're like, Oh God, so why? Like who cares? And it just, it's such a gross, that, that part of it. I had a hard, I have a hard time deciphering between,

you know, it seems like, I don't, I don't know. However, I romanticized Harvard about, you know, about the, in terms of getting don't know. However, I romanticized Harvard about, you know, about in terms of getting a well-rounded liberal arts education that would somehow provide. It seems like you had the brain to kind of glean, you know, moral and life lessons from, you know, early Catholicism or from high school or from whatever. But it seems that at some point Harvard became a place where hyper ambitious young people could sort of facilitate their their ability to network post college. Some people I think there's lots of people that leave there and are, I almost want to say traumatized by it because they don't know. They don't know what the fuck to do with their life.

And then Harvard people. I went to Harvard. with your life and then harvard people i went to harvard yeah i remember i remember conan had a really funny joke in like the graduation speech that like for the rest of your life whenever you do something really dumb people will be like you went to harvard and i do think it's that people think that about their lives or they're like am i doing am i doing enough am i do you know people some people are really um what did you study when you went there? Why did you feel out of place? I think because there was a lot of, I would say, academic intellectual showboating, you know, people wanting you to think they were really smart. And that is just a strange instinct. You know, what saved me, you know, not saved in the sense of I just saved on a like,

morale level, finding a purpose and life level was the lampoon magazine, because I went there. And it was all these kids that were not that they were not showboating in a weird, you know, they were they were almost showboating in a nerdy comedy way. Like, it was like walking into a, you know, a room like a room at the cellar where you're really intimidated, but you can also look around and tell everyone there is really smart. Well, I mean, I appreciated that, that part of the book about the lampoon, because it seemed like, you know, not unlike, you know, my experience with the comedy store or some other thing where you just, you, you, you have a respect and a sort of a fascination and you're humbled by the history of the place, you know, that like, you know, it's a magical place and you respect the magic of it. You know,

just in the way you talk about the building and the, and who was there and what it meant and all that. I still feel that way with like the, the comedy seller in New York and the with like the comedy cellar in New York and the store, the comedy store in LA. I always felt so intimidated there because, you know, it's just intimidating. It's an intimidating place as an outsider.

And, you know, but when you're there, you can just tell there's like something special about that building and about the comedians who are there. Sure, sure. But but the lampoon goes way back yeah it's super way back before like comedy was even funny basically yeah yeah just it used to be like a magazine but there was one kind of funny cartoon or something i don't know well i you know i they gave me an honorary whatever they do you know yeah right right yeah and you know i just felt bad because i went there to you know I was sort of excited to see the whole thing.

And then I get there, I'm like, oh, my God, there's a bunch of kids. And, you know, I don't drink and I don't do anything too crazy. So I think they were disappointed that I didn't kind of play along with whatever little rituals that needed to happen when they gave me the little medal. And I feel like I disappointed them or I let them down. And I was sort of surprised at the whole undertaking, but, but I was happy to be part of it. It's a, it's a cool, like the building there is, is such a weird trippy place, you know, it's like a,

and I think it goes through cycles. The lamp goes through cycles where sometimes it's really a nerdy writerly fun, like a funny place to be and other times it gets you know kind of weird sometimes drug i think there's phases where it gets druggy one time i went back and someone was like you want to do nitrous and just hand it you know yeah i had a floor full of nitrous canisters and i was like this is not what i remember or want it know. Well, yeah, that, yeah. At any point in time, all it takes is one devil to pollute the legacy of a structure for a little while. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, like it's occupied by like a bad force and that then, you know, pollutes the rest of the young

people in it and then they move on generation. Yeah, sure. But but it seemed like that experience really kind of taught you the discipline and gave you the focus to to pursue what it is that you wanted to do. Yeah. And you got used to creative output with a lot of rejection. You know, you got used to submitting pieces and most of them not getting in to the magazine you know like older editors of the paper telling you like this is this is shit like you got right gotta be better um and then feeling slow progress over time um and not and realizing that each each small failure like that is not the end of the world and you're you got to get get better and, and not be bitter about it too, to realize, Oh,

I'm doing something wrong. You might disagree with their opinion, but over time you realize I got to get better at this or else I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to publish it. Well, I see.

I think that that maybe is the key to your success because like you say those things that you're saying and, you know, before you even finish my thoughts, like well fuck those guys so like yeah so that that's that's where i go i don't say like i'll keep trying i'm like who the fuck are you and and then i drop out of school and i try to do something else i also feel a visceral initial fuck those guys oh to this day i always feel it but then again probably the catholic in me internalizes it and it's like oh i did something wrong like what's wrong with me why did i why am i not better why do they not like me you know that that's so interesting because you know it's so interesting that like as a catholic you know even when you have good

parents your inner voice is going to call you a fucking asshole like you it's like you're you're you can't win being a catholic because it sounds like your parents were lovely people but and they they brought you up in the right way and your brain works fine but because of the fucking because of the fucking church you've got the I suck thing. And it didn't come from emotional negligence. It came from organized religion. That, you know, like I'm a faulty vessel who doesn't deserve anything. And your parents were good people.

That's also a good book title. I'm a faulty vessel who doesn't deserve anything. That's what it's going to be. I'm going to make it that. What do you mean? That's the new Testament. That is the new Testament. Yeah. Yeah. The old Testament was more like, fuck those guys. We're going to go. Yeah, there you go. Now we've isolated the difference. Yeah.

But what did you study? I studied, I studied mostly Russian and Russian literature. Like I went again, where did that come from? What was the fascination there? It went, you know, I, I started Like I went again. What the fuck? Where did that come from? What was the fascination there? It went, you know, I started, I went, I went thinking I was going to major in economics. That's what I put down that I was going to major in. Why?

Because I thought I get, because I'm from Staten Island. So I'm like, I got, where do you go? You go to, oh, you want to make money. I go to economics. And I was like, that's what I do. And then I just, again, realized that was not going to be my strength or calling. And I think to go back to your original question of like, why did I get in? I think when I look back, it's probably because of my writing on some level.

Like the writing I did for my news, for like, I wrote all the time. writing I did for my news for like, I wrote all the time. So I bet things like that, whether it was writing plays or, um, newspaper stuff and even like college essay probably was something they saw in it that they liked as much as I can tell a reason. Oh, that's right. You're like a big, uh, you were a product of, uh, the debate team debate team yes i was a speech and debate person oh and that was in high school that was that was in high school yeah so i did that like traveled on but the way a sports team travels but with none of the athleticism every single week we were in a different either school in new york or city for like a national tournament. So you, you travel around and like put on a tie and do speech debate. But that,

that got you some stage chops. Yeah. You got again. Yeah. That guy, you got over sort of the state, the initial stage fright. I don't know how you,

I I'm do you, do you, are you nervous now when you go on stage? No, but it took 30 years. Yeah. I'm still nervous basically before anything. I'm not nervous when i do like

a theater who you know of me like they're all here to see me but like to go on at the fucking cellar or at the store not so much a store anymore but the cellar you know fuck that place that place drives me crazy well some of the most some of my worst sets i think and also the most anxious sets are ones where you're just on a bill like for a charity event or a you know and you you want to be there and do it and then you can't do those where they're eating dinner oh my god and no one's there to see you they're like most people don't even maybe know who you are and i'm like oh god and then you feel like you just can't be you know you're you're like the worst version of yourself you can't get over

you can't get over at those kind of shows no you know that yeah i mean but you know that's one of those things where it seems like the the more uh mature comics just suck it up and be like yeah this is gonna suck but it's for a good cause and don't it but like if you're like me you're just sort of like i just want to connect with the people and then you realize like oh there's no way to to do that here yeah i don't i I was at the fucking Emmys that you guys hosted. And I'm like, oh, my God. How are they doing this? It was when we first came out.

It was kind of like, you know. I can't even fucking get a hit or something where you're a little stunned. You're like a little. First of all, you never see it. There's no rehearsal. You just come out into this whatever 3 000 seat it's huge theater maybe it's 5 000 people right in that theater you come out you've never seen that many people anywhere ever basically yeah and and like i just was watching i was sitting there and i'd i'd never been to the emmys i think i saw you that night

yeah yeah briefly and you know i just watched you two standing out there and I'm like, they look so tiny. How are they going to do this? And you're locked into whatever you got to do and there's no warm up. No, no, like icebreaker. You're just going right into a joke you thought of three weeks ago. And you're like, God, I hope this sort of holds up. The one thing I could never quite figure out in my mind, which is, I guess, one of the reasons why I am where I am, is that like, do you know, you're just sort of like, we just got to play to the camera. This isn't for the people here.

This is for this is for the show to look good. That's a really hard thing, dude. That's a really hard thing, too. for the show to look good. That's a really hard thing to, that's a really hard thing to, you have to have that in your mind a little bit, but it's such a hard thing to follow through with when you're still in front of all those people,

you know, like you, it's a comedian. You, if you don't feel laughter in the room, it's really hard to say, but it's going to translate well to television. Right.

You kind of have to always believe that it's, it should be both theoretically, you know, you want both. Right. And the heart, the hardest part about that was choosing what to do without ever, you know,

you've never played that room. You've never done, we've never done that event before. Yeah. Using your material, like figuring out what can get in the show. And then there's so little that you get, that get to do or that is comedy in the show like it's almost always just passing out these endless awards presentational presentational so it's

really hard to i mean if i if we could have done it again we would have prioritized certain things way more than we did because when you're doing it the first time, it almost feels selfish to do that. I think it's dumb because we're, we're hosting it, but we were hosting, but there were other people from SNL involved. There were other people that we were, you know, obviously are being showcased from different networks as a result of it. There's a whole other system. So it, it felt kind of selfish to say, no,

we got to do this, or we got to having never done it before. Right. I'm not a person that pretends I know how things work if I've never done them. I mean, I barely think I know how things work when I've done them hundreds of times. Yeah. And how, and how, what was the reception of that? It's glorious, glorious. You know, I would say the reception was not great uh you know uh yeah you know i just definitely talked to my therapist about fail managing failures so you know uh but you're it was it was i don't know the weird thing is when we did it going through it there were there were moments

that felt fun and there were moments that felt like survival fun where you're getting through it and you're not like puking into the audience and you're not you know you're saying the words like things like that when you've never done a thing before feel like small victories i just i felt like you know i i mean i was completely you know empathetic as a comic sitting there watching you guys because i met you guys when i was up there at snl you know to interview lauren you and shay said hi to me yeah um and you know i think that's where we really met yeah right yeah i remember that because I remember how big, also for you, such a,

you know, having listened to your show from the beginning, like I know that, you know, right, right, right. Yeah.

Lauren. So I saw you and I was, I also didn't want to, uh, be too in your face because I knew based on everything that you were going into a pretty huge moment for you. I was kind of like trying to send you Zen vibes of, yeah. God, i hope this is a very good yeah and then a moment yeah and then he svengali'd me he just charmed me you know

really indulged me and i walked out thinking like that guy's probably the best guy i've ever met you know he's very very good he wanted his great skills it's really yeah i just walked out i'm like i know i didn't even really want to show i just want now i'm so happy he's just a guy that works at an office oh boy he really fucking did it he also is amazing at instilling confidence in people before like they host or before they that's another amazing it's it's related to what you're talking about but he i've seen him really put people at ease and give them confidence and it seems like it's coming from such a deep well of confidence from him yeah and after he'll turn to me and be like oh god you know like i hope this goes on like he'll he'll really he'll be like, I've had to do. He's like, I've had to have this talk with someone like the host almost every week for 45 years.

You know, yeah, yeah. Because you can't believe everyone who almost everyone who does it for the first time goes through this roller coaster of so excited to host certain ideas they love. By the end of the week, idea they love they start to question and then it's sort of him selling them again on the idea of the show the night before the show right uh and and he and he can do that because he's seen it be pulled off and he's seen people that were so nervous as hosts you know do, do brilliantly at it. Right. You know, he has to, it's amazing how often he still has to do that. Well, he has to get them, you know, it's, it's important for them to listen to him.

That's like, I remember when I did Letterman and Eddie Brill, who used to do warmup and, you know, and he was the segment producer of the standups, you know, for one of my appearances. And he told me, I literally wanted me to rewrite this joke that I'd gotten very used to doing a certain way, you know, to change it for the audience. And I'm like, dude, you're out of your fucking mind. How am I even going to? And he was like, dude, it's going to work.

And I'm like, you don't know. He's like, I do know. And then, like, I did what he told me to do, and it worked fine. But, like, I have to assume that most hosts, when they're in're in a panic you know you just got to listen to Lorne right yeah I mean I think there's some there's probably a balance you know I mean it's not like he's always right but he it's actually frustrating how often he is right you know like I I find it with my you know I'm like I think it should be this way and he'll he'll usually say like all right well think about it and then I'll think about it for a little bit and I'm like god damn it it should be this way. And he'll usually say like, all right, well, think about it.

And then I'll think about it for a little bit. And I'm like, God damn it, he's right. Or I'll try it. And the other person I always know they're right is Kenan. Like if I'm writing a sketch that Kenan's in, I remember early in the day, he'd be like, I'm not sure about this. And I'd be like, well, let's try it.

And he'd be like, okay. And then it didn't work. And then I learned that lesson early on. I was like like keenan knows what the fuck he's talking about and then from then on i'm like yeah we need to fix that it's amazing how like you know the evolution of keenan on that show i mean i know he's been there the longest but he's actually gotten better and better and better i think he's so funny the genius of keenan beyond his his how how many sheer hours he has logged as a as a performer yeah genius of him is that there's been so many waves generations of writers at the show who have all wanted to write for keenan yeah i've loved writing for keenan and so they've all had

distinctive voices and then they've given a whole new voice to Keenan through the years because they grew up either loving him or watching him on the show and knowing he had all these skills. And so he's actually gotten to do some of the best work by, you know, 15 different writers who have come through the show at different periods of his life. So he's had all these artistic cycles that are really cool to see where he gets deep into it with a writer for a while. It's cool. So I did find that you must have spent a good amount of time sort of like the balance in the book. must have spent a good amount of time sort of like, you know, the balance in the book.

I mean, you know, yeah, you went through some shit, but I it seems that, you know, the chapter about your mom and, you know, the 9-11 must have been a very important chapter to sort of get right for you. Yeah, it was a very. You know, you it's such a, I wanted to do justice to her. And, and, and, and not, you know, I didn't want it to be a melodramatic chapter or a, you know, I wanted to try to tell it as plainly as possible, because, because I, the story of it is, is very powerful. And I, I did want to get it right. And it was a very hard chapter to go back to and reread and edit, you know? Yeah. Now your mother was the medical director of the New York. She was the, her title was chief medical officer for the New York city fire department. Yeah. She, for the New York city, for all the New York city.

And she, she did that for, I want to say like 25 years. Um, and what's that, what is that job? That job is you're essentially in charge of the wellbeing of all the firefighters.

So she would go to every five, every four or five alarm fire in the city. She would go to help treat people on the scene. She would work on physical exams for firefighters and help people get back to active duty when they were injured in the line of duty. And she also had, I would guess the hardest part of her job is also alerting and talking and meeting with families when someone dies in the line of duty. Right.

And meeting with, you know, often with their, their spouses and their children and, and being the one that breaks that news. And so, you know, that's a pretty,

that's a pretty rough part of the job. And when the nine 11 happened, you weren't home. No, it was the first day of college. It was my first day back in sophomore year. It was my first day of classes. And they were obviously then canceled. But I had just left New York and gone up to Boston. Yeah, and it was just interesting to me the way you sort of documented the thinking was that, you know, once you realize what was happening, you had to do this math around.

You knew your mother was going to go there to ground zero. Yeah. But you were sort of like, when would she have gotten there? Because you couldn't get hold of anybody. I was in New York when that happened. And my girlfriend at the time had gone to work downtown and I you know I didn't know where she was or what happened yeah it's yeah and you couldn't get through yeah you couldn't get through to anyone couldn't get through to anybody and again like from I think it's a New York thing in general

but especially a Staten Island thing is you're constantly thinking about traffic and how much traffic there is and how you can get you can can never get anywhere. And so I really did have faith. I really thought that there was no way she could get there because how could you, how could you get there that quickly? And so I, that was my, my hope. But of course that wasn't true. And, and and then I hadn't, you know, I didn't, I didn't talk to her for, for a long time. Like, um, I don't know if I even spoke to her for like weeks at what, cause I, cause I didn't know where she was and how to, how to contact her.

I really just heard updates like, um, later that day and then not for a while, like for days really from my dad. But you knew she was okay. I knew she had survived, but I didn't know what, I didn't know what had happened. And then she, she was, you know, she stayed on site there for days. So. But how did you put together, where did you get, you know, these, these kind of like the details of, of her surviving,

basically the both towers collapsing. You know, some I got from her and, and some I also researched because she, she had to give testimony to like the commission after nine 11, because she was, she was really instrumental in getting funding for the fire department ongoing. And John Stewart was someone who was always so proactive and helpful.

And, and she's always so grateful to him because he like really stepped up and, and kept pressure up to get funding for all the, for all the first responders. But she had to do like a full testimony of what happened that day, which I can't imagine for her having to go through that again. Um, and, and relive all those details it must must have been just uh must have been crazy because she literally was there before either tower fell right she was at the bottom of both uh towers when they each fell

yeah it's insane horrifying and she's trying to find her guys and pull guys out. And guys that she had just cleared for active duty and stuff. And guys that she had known for years. It was a miracle that they were on the job that day. And these different firefighters that saved her life in different ways at different moments. And it was really, you know, I, I'm so it's like a miracle, you know, how is she now? You know, she's, she's good. She's good. She's, you know, she's has a lot of, you know,

it's hard in this time because she's still, she has, she's at risk a lot because of lung stuff related, you know, obviously with COVID there's, you know, there's long-term lung issues. And now she's seeing a whole other uptick of people from COVID that were first responders because they're affected by it so much more. And she's been back for a while. She was back in the hospital on Staten Island just picking up shifts because it was so overloaded you know so

it's kind of terrifying when you know she's at risk for for um being pretty messed up by it so you know that that was uh but she's she's she's a very uh low-key unassuming uh heroic person that's really uh i'm constantly impressed by my mom did she know pete's dad yeah yeah she did yeah she you know not like they weren't friends but she she knew him like and and it's funny like i remember her talking about pete's dad in the years after you know and and and about pete you know and before you had anything to do with that before SNL, before I, before I think he was even doing standup or, or,

you know, certainly right before I, I knew him as a standup, but he, um, you know, and she, you know,

I think she, she really like, even from afar, really loves Pete and really loves his mom. and, and I think she, you know, no, she, she has a real bond with, with a lot of the families that are in the fire department and especially families that have lost, lost people in the line of duty because she, you know, she saw them often that day or, and, and I don't know,

I think she just, she's a very empathetic person. I think she really, she cares about the, and she lost so many of her really, really close friends. Like it would truly, it would be like if something happened at the comedy store and almost every comic you work with wasn't there, you know, and, and imagine going forward, imagine going back there or going back to work. And after that, and, uh,

right. That's a really crazy, crazy feeling, but you probably more stage time. Yeah, that's true. That is the, you know,

that's true. I never see, see, you see, you see the bright. I'm an optimist. They're all dead. Everyone says you're an optimist.

No, it was just a, a horrible joke, but, um, but I'm glad she's okay. No, it was just a horrible joke. But I'm glad she's okay. No, no, it's great. And it's crazy to now be on the show with Pete. It's crazy to have two people from Staten Island in general. And connected through that.

I know. And I can't imagine when Lauren started the show, he wanted anyone from Staten Island anywhere near it. But now there are two. But I also didn't know about you that you know like after harvard that you know you became obsessed with stand-up i just didn't i never knew you as a stand-up even though you sent me a poster of a gig we both did i i must have run out of there before you got there was i there yeah you were there yeah you were there because i see it was a time in my life where i would just stay for the whole show because i had time to do it you know and but I didn't talk

to you no no no we didn't meet there I saved it because I was a fan of your show and I saved the poster because I thought it was first of all that was such a fun show to do that meltdown nerd melt yeah meltdown yeah you know you were paid in comic books, which is already. Yeah. And then you were, you know, sometimes there was an artist who do posters. So, you know, I didn't have any cool. No one ever did a poster of any show I was a part of. So I remember saving that. It's probably been eight or 10 years that saved it with me, you, Kumail, Jonah Ray on there. Yeah, yeah.

It was from like, I think my producer my producer said it's from 2011 maybe. Okay. Yeah. That sounds right. But I didn't really realize that you really kind of were, you know, not unlike your time at the Lampoon where you just sort of force yourself to compulsively write in order to get better that you really kind of locked in to doing standup, but you came up, you know, in the Rafifi zone, which was, you know, alt comedy had already taken its first turn into something more mainstream. And, you know, you know, you had a Merman down there and Bobby Tisdale and all those at 80 miles were doing that, you know, with that,

that alternative kind of broke out from the original Luna setting. But for some reason, you know, you were very aware of stylistically and also the requirements as a performer of both alt comedy and club comedy because you kind of were fans of the guys down the cellar as well and you kind of it was interesting to see you write about knowing you were going to have to figure out how to to do both yeah i mean i remember at the time there were comics like there was one comic i remember who who told me who was like an alt who described himself as an alt comic but i don't think

the alt movement was embracing him you know he's like i would never do a show above 14th street like i would never do one like as a principle and i remember thinking first of all does anyone above 14th street want you to be doing a show i'm not sure they do but also what a weird mentality to have like i won't go to these you know it's it's like it's like having the idea i'll only perform in new york and la like unless you go around and see the country and try to succeed in all kinds of rooms like what yeah lauren michaels was not a big fan of whatever was going on below 14th Street. I had a personal experience where he said to me. Is that true?

He literally said, oh, it was a big moment. And then it turned up on Seinfeld. Seinfeld said it to him on Comedians in Cars because that was what he said to me when I met with him. There was an article in The Times about the alt-comedy thing at Luna. And I was mentioned in it. And I remember it was right around the time I met with lauren for snl that meeting that cursed me forever that haunted me so one of the things that lauren said to me when i met with him is like i don't know what you think you're doing down there below 14th street but it doesn't matter yes i now remember

this quote from you yes that's right so this guy but he said to you, he said this guy was like a diehard. You know, I'm not going to ever work as a professional comic. I only do alt shows below 14th Street guy. I think it was more I think it was a dislike for comedy clubs because I think he saw comedy clubs as sort of the establishment. I get that. Yeah, there was. Yeah, there was definitely that was going on. But a lot of them were resentful that they couldn't get work at comedy clubs. And, you know,

there's a lot of reasons for that. Some of them not good, but some of them just because, you know, comedy clubs are privately run by people who book comedy and make decisions about comedy. And maybe they weren't thought to be funny, but they don't want to admit that.

Yeah. But I, and I also, you do realize like, especially early on the people making those decisions, you know, who the fuck are they? They're,

they're wrong. They're wrong all the time. Yeah. Who the fuck are they? For sure. You know, I, I,

a lot of shows early on, I did at the strip, like at the comic strip. And that was like, had not moved into the new generation when I was there, you know, it was still DB Sweetler. Yeah.

Yeah. It was a lot of, and it was great comedians that were, that were still working, but that I didn't know from anything else, nowhere else. So you started doing comedy before you got the gig at SNL? Yeah. But, but really like open mics and bars, like no, nowhere, nowhere good. It sounds like, you know, in the book, your meeting with Lauren was, was pretty easy. It was, it was really scary, but it was easy in a sense that he didn't, I just kind of, he just asked me questions like, where are you? It was honestly, I don't think he cared that much. I think he was more like, where are you from? Like, how you doing? Like, he didn't care. I mean, obviously he cared.

Maybe he didn't care. I mean, obviously he cared. Meaning I think he just, you know, I think that I remember at some point, I think Lauren said that you don't really know, even when someone starts at the show as a writer or cast member, really, you don't like, he doesn't really know them for at least a year or two. Like he doesn't, he's aware they're there. Like that's the most, some people he doesn't, you know, there are people that work there. I remember my friend, Matt Murray worked there for as a writer for like maybe he worked there eight years he said he never met lauren like never met with him you know until he left really lauren

obviously knew of him and yeah was at meetings all the time where he was there but he's like i never had a one-on-one meeting with lorn and so he doesn't meet when you're just a writer getting hired as a staff writer which is the biggest was the biggest thing in my life for him that happens every year so he doesn't meet ever even with every writer you know because right it was that's why it was so much more there was so much more weight on the meeting with uh tina and andrew, who were the head writers then. That's who you met first. That's who I met with first.

And I sensed they were probably the ones making the decision about hiring a first-year writer rather than Lorne digging in and reading everyone's packets. Right, right. So you felt that by the time you got to Lorne, they had decided. Yeah, maybe. Or I thought it could go either way because sometimes lauren meets lots of times lauren meets with people that he doesn't hire you know like he'll he might i know it happened to me yeah so what so you meet with andrew and

tina yeah you sense that they liked what you did but they wanted to make sure you weren't crazy yes yeah and and you later realize how many people are kind of crazy. Like when they, in those interviews, like they have people, you know, people read also weird books about how to interview for jobs. And I think sometimes with strange agendas or like have a real game plan

that is not at all sensitive to the situation. Right. Um, yeah. Like come in giving lots of notes on the show or, you know, things are like, wait, well, you can have these, lots of people at the show have notes and concerns about it all the time, but it's a weird thing in an interview to be like, here's how your company needs to get better. You know? Right. Right. Right. Right. Sometimes maybe in certain industries that works, I don't know, but, uh, it, it, some people have that and it's just, some people are, uh, I don't know, like it, part, part of it's just a,

you're going into a very high stress, weird community there. Yeah. So I think you're trying to show that you're somewhat at ease in a high pressure situation, which that is because you're about to be in a way more the next, you know, whatever the next week you're going to be in front of the host and pitching them ideas,

you know, in front of Lauren and pitching ideas. So if you can't survive an interview, then it's going to be, then it's going to be hard. How did you know you got the job? It's always so unclear when people can find out that they have the job or that they've been fired, it seems. It's never clear. Oh my God. And I've also gone through summers of not knowing if I was fired and, and that whole, like that very murky process too. But being, uh, when I was hired, yeah.

Lauren just sort of said like, I'll see you around at the end of the meeting. But I really didn't know, you know, I didn't think that meant I was, I was like, Oh, am I like see around New York or see around like next year? Maybe try again. Right. then i basically they put me in a they like put me quarantine me in a writer's office like a random writer's office yeah and said like wait here a while you know and i was like okay sure i you know i of course i would how long did you wait to see learn i think i waited like six hours or something you know like right right a long a long time but again for me it was i would have waited for six days i mean happily right you know

and and i met all my people who become my friends in those hours like you i went into one office and it was like the whole lonely island team you know like andy and keith, you know, all they, they had been hired probably three days before, but they, they, I was already like, teach me what, how does this work? Right. And they were so cool. Like they were like cool guys. And I was like, Whoa, what is this? And like seeing Maya Rudolph in the hallway and, and I'm thinking I was just watching you guys on TV. I love you guys. Like you.

Yeah. And also resisting the urge to say, I love you. Right. Cause you want to be play it cool, but you don't know how, cause you're just, you know,

you're figuring. So they stick you in that room and what happens? Sticking in that room. And then like, maybe I'm there alone for half an hour, just kind of looking around the walls and seeing trying to process what's been happening. And then the phone in the office rang like a random writer's phone. And I instinctively thought I should I should pick it up, which is a pretty crazy move.

But I don't know why I was like, this seems like it's a call that I should take. And I answered the phone and it was um two of the producers on the line and they were like guess what you're hired like you're you're gonna be here like you're gonna be a writer and i was like holy shit whoa and then yeah mike shoemaker was on the phone and he was like he's one of the producers and he was like when can you start and i was working at this kind of rinky-dink advert like an animation company and i remember well i should probably give two weeks notice and yeah you know be be fair to my boss so i was like what about i could definitely do it and you know let me give two weeks notice and mike was like how about you start tomorrow and i was was like, I will be here.

Yes. Anytime tomorrow. Fuck that old job. I do not care about it. Why was I so loyal to my old employer? Catholic thing. Catholic thing. And so I came in the next day and then had to submit two sketches the next day, like for writing commercial parodies.

And and with and then immediately started working with all those people I had just met. And it was like, get, it was like going to camp, but then at the end you have to turn in papers or something, you know? And that's, and then it just, that it just started and it hasn't stopped. And it hasn't stopped in that. And that's been kind of my life at times, 90 hours a week. Now, now I try to be there physically less, but that became my full life in every way for at least 10 years. And now I'm trying to be a little more balanced as a human.

How long have you been there at total? 15 years. That's like a long. Yeah. And it, you know, it's different because it got broken up because part of things was like a whole other life and learning curve and which what like what was getting when i started doing weekend update with jay like that right so you were a writer for how long i was a writer for you know something like 10 years uh something and then when did you become head writer or after five

years there or something like that or after somewhere between five and seven years. And then you're still doing standup during this time? More and more standup. Like I, then I, not, not when I was head writer, I, I became hard to do it the same way, but when I was a staff writer, I really miss performing and I would go, you know, it was a, you know, crazy schedule, but I would go four nights a week and do stand up during SNL. So I would go like we had Sunday was our one day off, and I would go and do like three shows. And then Monday after our pitch meeting and a bunch of meetings, I would go do a set Wednesday, having been up all night, writing and turning things in, I would try to do a set of like 11 o'clock or midnight right day right yeah you like I would go to work at noon Tuesday and I would leave work at at 11 p.m Wednesday straight through and then I would still want to go do a set

and Thursday night I would try to sneak in a set Friday and Saturday. It was impossible, but I just, I miss perform. I needed to get better as a performer. I missed it so much. And then on would probably help. I would tour, I would go on the road. I would go MC for people. I would feature for people and any, any, any chance I could go and do six shows in a weekend on the road. It was like, it was fantastic. And it probably sort of paid off in terms of being able to have those chops

when he got the update gig. Yeah. Although you never, I, I still didn't in any way feel ready or prepared because it's such a different animal. Like it's such a, it's such a specific, uh, strange setup. Um, and it felt very different for a while than stand-up now it feels closer to that and i you know che is and and che was like so helpful in trying to get it to feel more like stand-up for us and he's better at it like in a sense if he can he can do a bit now on the show

that that can feel really close to what he would do on stage and that's something right now i feel like i'm working on because you're you're you're sort of uh trying to convince yourself that you can go there and do it in that way and test it well it seems like you know you over time you evolve a dynamic and you evolve a sort of character uh as the update person you know like you know, he does, like I notice when he gets more personal to the point where you're taken out of the conceit, whereas, you know, a lot of times

you are grounding the conceit a bit. Right. Yes, yes. And that's, and I think sometimes that, I think sometimes that can work really well because it's, you know, there is a grounding in the news and then it can also be expanded on. And that's kind of nice give and take, I think, sometimes.

And we try to figure out ways of doing that. You know? Sure. That's it. When you start, you get all this weird advice about it, you know, where people will tell you. Well, it's sort of like the anchor of the show, right? Yeah.

The thing I always thought was interesting, Lauren always talked about how Update, he always imagined that Update was like a second start to the show. Right. You know, and that it was sort of like you got through this first act of a monologue and an opening and some sketches and music. Yeah. And then it was like, all right, let's reset.

And I always kind of like that it's like the second half, you're kind of like, all right, let's reset. And I always kind of like that. It's like you're the second half. You're kind of like, all right, let's get ready for some fun, weird sketches, too. So you're already like halfway to that weirdness. So there's a little more freedom there, I think. And, you know, I was a fan of Upgate watching. Like I grew up on Norm. Yeah. I also just loved jokes that had,

that were not really tied to the news of the day. Like that were just those random fun later in the update jokes that you remember. Those were the ones I still remember forever. I don't remember what the news story was in like, you know, 1993, except for OJ.

But, but I remember like one-off jokes of his or like a weird fascination with frank stallone and uh you know like him taking out a recorder and saying like note to self uh or jokes that were like or so the germans would have you believe or things like that that i'm sure if you haven't seen those updates anyone listening is like that's nonsense and doesn't sound like a joke at all. But those are things I really remember. Well, I mean, that was something, I mean, I think that when I think about it, now that you say that, you know, those kind of, you know, callbacks and themes, you know, those were sort of established a long time ago as part of update, really, you know, Francisco Franco is still dead.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, there are definitely been, you you know character points through sort of repetition and callback that have been part of a lot of people's approach to update you know and I think everybody kind of makes it their own and I guess it sort of must be hard I mean you must have how's it you know do you get how is it received as as it has it sort of landed Is everybody good with it now? I sense certainly more so. I mean, I think it's always evolving. And I don't think you ever know, you know, first of all, you're never going to please everyone.

But you also, we feel better. You know, we feel more excited in doing it. And, you know, we feel happier doing it. It's less of an existential crisis of what is this and more of a challenge. Are you still the head writer too? Me, me and Michael Che and Kent Sablette have our right head writers together. I think we've been doing this. I think we've been head writers like three or four years.

I think we've been Headwriters like three or four years And then before Before that I did it with Seth For two years Something like that And Rob Klein And now like Now that you guys are down

I thought those two The couple of shows you guys did on lockdown I thought they were kind of fun I like that they were They were really homemade feeling, you know, and well, yeah, that, and you can really see the vulnerability of all the performers because they don't have this weird, huge support system. You know, you just, you know, it's just you guys, you know, doing it at home. I don't know if you could do a whole season like that. You, you, you see it both ways. You see the vulnerability and you also saw some nice raw talent moments from people where you're like, oh, that's what they would be doing if they were posting this video on YouTube or what they would be doing.

Well, that's right. I think it's the same thing in my eyes, really. Yeah. But also it shows you the limitations of it. It is you how much production value can really help with. Yeah. You don't want, we don't want all television to look like an audition tape. No, that would be. So hopefully at some point that changes.

So you guys are engaged. You and Scarlett. Yeah, that's right. When does that, when are you going to get married? Uh, well, um, that's a great question. I don't know when.

Does she ask you that? Do you ask her? No, no, no. We were, no, we were, we were, we were supposed to, um, but we, uh, now we don't know when we really can because of, you know, it's, it's a very evolving thing. Um, but I don't know, you know, I, truly, I don't know. Truly, I don't know when. We have at-risk people in our families that... Oh, yeah. Right.

Yeah, right. You can't... Who knows when we really want to get people together for a large gathering. Oh, but you didn't have to cancel anything. Well, there was some. Okay. There was some. There were some canceling things, but it's...

All right. It's, you know... But you guys are hanging in, you're doing okay. Yeah. I mean, the, you know, the, the one nice part about being holed up is, you know, we, in some ways are more into a married life than we would have otherwise ever been. And, and, you know, her daughter Rose and I have spent like tons of time together and that's great. Like that's a thing you never can get. Oh yeah. You know, yeah, this is like, you know, it's, it's like a exponential, like the time you spend in, in lockdown or in this situation you guys are in, it would have taken,

the intimacy would have spread out over three years. These four, three months are equivalent to a year and a half or two years of intimacy time. Yeah, and that's something I think you have to appreciate. Sure, for sure. And that's cool. That part's good. And then, of course know it's that that's cool that that part's good and then of course it's like a crippling anxiety about not knowing when work will happen or what kind of work can happen

and it's fucking on every level like you know on every level or what's gonna or whether the you know the country is going to survive yeah you know the economy the country the yeah it's like it's a lot to manage yeah it's really really fundamental things you think will generally be okay or not yeah okay totally unstable yeah so does lauren call you when you know see how you're doing i i talked to him once this summer like since the show's ended i think i talked to him one this summer, like since the show's ended, I think I talked to him once, you know, he'll usually call like for my birthday and say, you know, have a birthday. But he'll, I saw, I talked to him once just to sort of, he called just, I think just to vaguely talk about next year, like, you know, almost brainstorm, like, can it happen? What's it going to be? You know,

on a practical level for the show like what do you yeah what what do you think but but no one knows it's like even experts now don't know which is the scary part you know like you don't know people are kind of just throwing out random theories about when when work can happen i mean i'm fascinated to see the nba and what what you know whether that works and to what extent and what the pitfalls of that are, because that'll that'll dictate so much for, I think, showbiz, you know. Yeah, they need to figure out a couple of things like an effective treatment, you know, an effective test that gets fairly quick results and then hopefully a vaccine. But you would think some treatments and a test doesn't seem like anyone can do anything without a test that gets results in a half hour. So like everyone can do it day of and then go to work.

Yeah. I mean, but also you need the test to be pretty, pretty accurate or else then you're, you know, and, but I, now I'm always, you know, remember the beginning, everyone kept saying, you don't need masks. That's crazy. You don't need that. And then they're like, actually, you know, remember the beginning, everyone kept saying, you don't need masks. That's crazy. You don't need masks. And then they're like, actually, you know, you really should have masks. And then there's things like where they say, you know, I'm not going to get it from your cat. You can't. Yeah.

Immediately, I was like, I'm going to get it from a cat. Like, I know that, you know. Yeah. I don't know. You've done okay in life. I don't think that it's in the cards for you to get it from a cat. I just don't. Also, we don't have a cat so it would be a real strip if i started really hanging out with strays had to be out there in the garbage with the ferals all right buddy it was good talking to you and the book's funny and there's a lot of stuff we

didn't talk about that's in there and uh i'm i'm glad you're well thank you i really i'm very honored to be on your show i've listened from the beginning and i'm i've uh i i was actually i'm very intimidated talking to you but i also i'm very honored to be here i appreciate you having me on it didn't get any easier throughout the no no it did it actually it was immediately easier i was i i was scared going i didn't know i know. We haven't really talked, so I'm naturally a scared person, so I was worried. But you kind of knew what to expect, right? I knew general things, maybe, but I don't know. Who knows?

It worked out for you, though? It could have started off with some really... Yeah, I really hate you. Some crazy, aggressive... I don't know. I don't know anything about you, crazy aggressive i don't know you know you're i don't know anything about you and i just don't like you yeah i that definitely occurred you know that thought definitely passed my mind well that wasn't the case all right buddy i really appreciate it thank you take care of yourself okay that was me and Colin Jost.

It was a good story, right? Good story. His book, A Very Punchable Face, is out tomorrow, and you can order it right now. And now I'm going to play some guitar. It took me a long time to figure, to get this simple shit right.

And then I ended it badly. But what doesn't end badly? Thank you. Thank you. Boomer lives.