WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1222 - Robert Smigel

Episode Date: April 29, 2021

Robert Smigel became best known for having a foul-mouthed dog puppet on his hand, but the truth is he's a defining force in popular comedy for the past 35 years. Robert tells Marc how he was on the path to becoming a dentist until a stand-up comedy competition changed his life. From there it was on to SNL where he forged relationships with people like Conan O'Brien and Adam Sandler, collaborating over the next decade to change the comedy landscape. Robert also explains the origin of Triumph and why he's gone back to puppets with his new show Let's Get Real.  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.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let 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. 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

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Lock the gates! All right, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers? What the fuck buddies? What the fucksters? What the fuckadelics? Robert Smigel is on the show today. Robert Smigel. Comedy genius, Robert Smigel.

Everyone knows him as the guy behind Triumph the Insult Dog. But look, man, this guy has been part of the defining force of comedy on television, certainly, and some movies, for 35 years. You know, he was a writer at SNL, longtime writer at SNL. He was the head writer, the original head writer of the original Conan O'Brien show. That was a big deal in New York, man. That was when I first really sort of got hip to the fact of Smigel, was when he took that show and he hired people I knew. He hired Tom Agnew.

He hired Louis Dino. michael was when he took that show and he hired people i knew he hired tom agna he hired louis dino and that crew that original crew of of conan reyers i mean they did some wild shit this guy could push the envelope and he's fucking hilarious and i always had this sort of like you know fascination with him he's the guy behind tv funhouse he was a writer on that dana carvey show that was so uh we've talked about with a few people that was so crazy he's in a lot of adam sandler's movies big champion of sandler and now he's got this new show on fox called let's be real and it stars a lot of puppets and if i make the cut i'll be in the puppet show also get vaccinated don't uh don't let anyone tell you not to get vaccinated this is not the hill you want to die on of covid

it's not the hill you want to die on or kill somebody of covid look at india look at the possibilities look what we went through if you're not too fucking selfish or malignantly and incorrectly fighting for some weird breach of liberty then just go get the fucking shot what kind of dumb ass world do we live in yeah back in the day you know it was exciting hey we we stopped a fucking disease from killing us and we all fucking did it but now it's sort of like yeah i don't know some people might deserve to die i don't know i don't trust it i don't know seems kind of dicey can't tell me what to do but i can say you're stupid i mean what are some of these fucking people basing their patriotism on it's ridiculous grow the fuck up anyway sammy sammy the cat sammy the red

lord samuel is now at that age where he's about three months, coming up on three months, and he's just fucking destroying everything. I've forgotten what it's like to have a cat at that age just loose in the house. Whatever can be destroyed will be destroyed. Wires will be bitten through. Curtains will be unhemmed. Things will be scratched. Bodies, my arms, my legs, scratched, destroyed. I have to ride it out. I have to ride it out i have to

ride it out with this little fucking terror not take it personally and even buster the old fat man is you know just dealing and playing with him beating him up a little bit but i i think fucking sammy sammy the younger is gonna fucking own this house That seems to be where it's going. So I'll probably be on my way to Florida to deal with the human that birthed me. Just for a few days. I figure once I got through the vaccination tunnel and I'm vaccinated, I'll mask up and I'll go see my mommy.

It's been over a year. I don't see my mommy that often. I don't call her mommy that often, but she's my mommy, I my mudda so i'm gonna go see my mudda my brudda's down there my cousins people staying in my house taking care of things managing the kitten you got to get a team man you got to get a team on that kitten or they're fucking i'm gonna come back and every my entire house will just be destroyed. It'll be like a cartoon, like a Buster Keaton movie. I'll just return and on this mound of rubble

will be a victorious Lord Samuel just sitting there like he didn't do nothing, playing with a feather on top of the house it once was. So I had to bring a team in. Got a kitten management team coming in. I'm a little nervous about traveling, but not so much about traveling. I'm kind of excited. I'm just a little anxious and full of dread.

I know I'll be wearing a mask down there. Hopefully, I'll get some stuff done. Hopefully, I can read my friend Jerry Stahl's new book, which isn't out yet. But I've got the manuscript. I've got to make the time. I don't know where all the time goes, man. But every day, I don't have enough time to get my shit done. Maybe it's just the pace I do it.

I started to realize that too. Maybe that my process just takes longer. Because I don't feel like I'm doing a lot of stuff. I'm done with the bread experiments. I'm done making dough. And I'm now feeling doughyy and that's how it goes. Got some good episodes coming up. I've been talking to people, people coming back around that weird moment where they come to the door with masks. They're like, I'm vaxxed. You vaxxed?

I'm vaxxed. Me too. Take it off. We're free. We're free. You know why we're free? Because we're vaxxed. We're not free because we fought the vax. Because then you're just like a guy who's got to wonder if he'll ever get it. Or just assume that you're not going to die of it. That's what the confidence of that assumption of so many people who are like, no, I'm not going to get the vax. I'll just take the hit. Yeah. Will you? Is it really worth it to push back on medicine that much to where you're willing to dive something just because you think you're healthy? How often do you go to the doctor? How healthy do you think you are? What do you really know about what you're made of is that how you want to find out not breathing in an icu intubated and fucking watching stars before your eyes as you drown in your own fucking mucus is that liberty how are you everybody okay so robert smigel is here

and uh it was it was an honor and a joy and uh it was great to talk to him so uh and again his new show is called um let let's be real and after the interview i i was recruited and i uh i got roped into doing a bit with the puppets here in the garage. Maybe that'll make the cut. Maybe. I don't know. But it's puppets, folks. Big, human-sized puppets doing the satire. Before you listen to me and Robert, I think it's important to tell you that just before, when he came over for a 2.30 interview, we were waiting to hear the Chauvin verdict. And we sat there and we heard it together on the couch. I don't know Robert that well, but we watched and we wept with relief.

And I don't know what it was. It was a very emotional thing. We were just both trying to keep our shit together on the couch after they read that verdict of guilty, guilty, guilty. And it was a powerful moment. I will always remember where I was when the Chauvin verdict was read. On the couch with one of the funniest people in the world trying to control our weeping. That's what happened right before I talked to Robert. But this is me talking to Robert about the whole arc of it.

The arc of it. The arc of Smigel is discussed now. marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let 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.

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. Are we emotionally together enough to do it? You feel all right? I will. You know, it's such a crazy time for me to be doing this on so many levels. On so many levels? Yeah, because I'm just in the middle of this ridiculous program I'm doing. Yeah.

This is not the way I ever pictured doing your show. I pictured it being like calm and focused. Yeah, but I mean, how long have you been out here? Just like five days. Oh. Yeah.

And how is it for you in general? I mean, I just, I'm living like a, you know, a freaky, like I'm 25 again with like two other writers in this house.

Oh. And, you know, I try to talk to my kids on the phone when I can. I've got. Yeah. How many you got now? I have three. You do? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

How. I have the older boy with autism and I got two twin boys. 13. I don't think. Oh, really? Yeah. 13? Yeah, yeah.

Has it been that long since I. Mid-speed. Since I. They were? Yes. A double bar mitz woke up? They've adjusted to mid-speed. Since I, they were? Yes. A double bar mitzvah? A double bar mitzvah. But you're, like, you're hardcore.

So did they do Friday and Saturday? No. Really? They didn't. People do that? I did. You did Friday night too? Oh, they just did Saturday?

Just a Torah and that's it? Knock it out? You know what they did? Because of the quarantine? Yeah. This was pre-vaccine. Nobody was going to come. My wife, Michelle's mom, lives in Arizona, so I had it on a Thursday when the tour is taken out on a Monday and Thursday.

Okay. So I had it on a Thursday because- Afternoon? No, in the morning. Thursday morning. The Talmud specifically says it must happen after Regis and before the view. No, it's got to be Regis. That's how old I am. Didn't he die?

He is a dead man now. Yeah, it's hilarious. I watched a clip of your show. Everybody's dropping like flies. Yeah, all these guys. A now. Yeah, so is Larry. I watched a clip of your show. Everybody's dropping like flies. Yeah, all these guys were in a hundred. Yeah, it's such a tragedy. Yes. So the bar mitzvah was, I wanted my mother-in-law to be able to watch it,

and it was in an Orthodox synagogue, and Orthodox synagogues will not let you use cameras on a Saturday, so that was the only way we could Zoom it. So it's show business. You made some changes to the schedule. Yeah. So you could shoot. Did some last minute things.

You know, a bar mitzvah is never really ready. A bar mitzvah happens when it goes on when it happens. Did you invite him? I didn't invite anybody. I sent everybody like an email saying, here's a link to a Zoom. It's on a Thursday morning.

I totally understand if you're not going to watch this. How'd the kids feel? That seems like a lower pressure gig. I think they liked it. I think they liked

the lower pressure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They could just be really focused on their tour portions and they kind of felt like the pressure was off. And yeah, one of them was like, do we even have to Zoom this?

Can't it just exist in a void and it's just between us? You know we did it. Yeah, exactly. Who's this really important to? But no, then we put it on YouTube. You did? Yeah, because I didn't want to pressure people

to watch it on Thursday morning. It really was, it was lovely. How did they do? Very strange. They did good. They kicked ass. Now, is this your regular, your temple, your rabbi, your people? No.

Well, here's what it was. It was, I live in New Jersey now, and we're all dispersed. My dad- What part of Jersey? I live in Bergen County. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I moved there for my older son

because there was a better school for him oh really for autism yeah new jersey at the time was like my people from morris county they're from uh yeah yeah from uh pompton lakes pompton lakes yeah off the hamburg turnpike i love new jersey i do too i i knew nothing about it but we all condescended we all condescended. Yeah. Oh, God, yeah. I lived in Manhattan until I was like 45 or something. Yeah.

And then I just had to check out New Jersey and I knew nothing. Right. And it's like farmland. Yeah. It's beautiful. It's gorgeous. It's really gorgeous. It's gorgeous. And there's gross stuff.

You know, driving past Elizabeth, New Jersey is always- That's where my grandfather's from. Right. What are you driving over there for? You know where that Budweiser factory is? I'm just going past it on the turnpike, but it always reeks. It's like that powerful a city. Do you know that Budweiser-

Elizabeth Strong. Yes. There's a Budweiser factory right there in Linden that you see from the highway. My grandparents are in this horrible little Jewish cemetery. Oh, wow. Just right in the parking lot of the fucking Budweiser plant. I know. I have grandparents in a cemetery in Queens,

and it's literally like the rat race. It's like, oh, my God, I've got to negotiate between all these people. I guess they like being in a crowd. No, I think that when they built them, they didn't know what was going to come up around it. Yeah, that's true, too. You know, like it was probably a nice little cemetery in New Jersey, and then the Budweiser plant, and then it just becomes this industrial area. But didn't you grow up Orthodox? I didn't.

I grew up, like, conservative. Yeah, me too. Kept a kosher home. Oh, really? We did keep a kosher home. Oh, really? We did keep a kosher home, but the synagogues we would go to were Orthodox because my dad, his father founded what the non-Jews might never have heard of, a shtiebel. Yeah. A shtiebel, a small little synagogue on the Upper West Side.

Yeah. And so we would go there there and i was completely lost because everybody's like the women are behind a curtain and you know the men are like over 90 you know they're all over 90 except for me and my cousin and they're handing me a prayer book and they're turning the pages with their like licking the that was the thing. They lick their finger. There you go. Take stealthy fall. There you go. Enjoy. And then, and there's no, there's no English in the book.

And the rabbi's speech literally was in Yiddish. So then when I was 13, we switched to like a more, you know, my mom was like, we can't. It's got to be with the English and the relatives. What do they say? So we went to- Is that you? Oh, turn that off. I am sorry, man. That's got to be with the English and the relatives. What do they say? Is that you? Oh, turn that off. I am sorry, man. That's all right. I thought it was me.

It's like a million people texting me. Like I said, this is the craziest time for me to do this. Yeah. They're texting you about the business. No, not about the trial. They're texting me about, should the puppet's asshole be perfectly clean bleached or should it have a little bit of a rash poo on the asshole no poo little poo a little bit of poo this has been yeah this is like i'm 25 again that was the stuff i would do when i was 25 and

agonize over every detail so we'll get there just want to, let's move through the Jew stuff. So, because like when I, when I first heard of you, cause I, I like, I was always very impressed with you. I thought I was sort of mildly obsessed when,

when, with the comedy because, you know, back when I was friends with Louie and you guys were doing the Conan thing,

I'd heard. One of the best guests we had. You know, that's true. I was, I was one of the most available guests.

No, no, no. There were many available guests who weren't as funny as you. Well, me and Conan... You ran circles around John Tesh. Oh, thank you, man. Thank you. Well, I think Conan and I

developed a rapport after a while. Absolutely. Where he was sort of like, oh, here we go. Already, it's bad. Yes, yes. But I just remember, like, certain things stuck out to me it was like

one of them was like he was going to be a dentist yes yeah like i'm like really he's like yes dad's like a revolutionary dentist what does that mean you know my dad's contribution to dentistry dwarfs my contribution to god it's not even close that can't be true it is true it's not even close my dad changed the way people think about dentistry really he really did because and he's still around right no no oh no he's not sadly but um but he uh he lived a great long life till he's 91 92 actually because i remember seeing him somewhere at some thing. I don't know why. But like I didn't see you many places. No, I don't see me many places. I'm a recluse.

But yeah, my dad was, well, he was on television a lot too. Like in the 70s, he was like, not only did he help develop this. So tooth bonding. Everybody knows what that is. And it started as a guy invented an acrylic material. Yeah. That looked like a tooth. And the whole idea was that it was just going to replace fillings.

Yeah. Silver fillings. Right. And then my dad developed the idea of like, what about chipped teeth? Yeah. You know? Yeah. It started with chipped teeth.

And then it expanded into just like building out people's smiles without having to wear caps and all that shit. And then that expanded into laminates. And then in the 70s, he was like, then he also became the guy who like- The laminate king? The laminate king, Erwin. I need a laminate. Come to the right place.

Let me see those choppers. I'm Dr. Smigel. My son sticks his hands up a dog's ass. But that's not what we're here for. How are your teeth? I'm here to tell you about teeth. He went on like

That's Incredible. Places, shows like that. Look at this guy's teeth before and after. He would do live demonstrations and show how quickly it could be done on the Mike Douglas show. Really? Yes. So he did guest shots on Mike Douglas?

Yes. With comics? I wonder. Sonny Bono was there. Oh, Sonny. And Daisy Duke. Oh, of course. And he actually had a really funny one-liner about Daisy Duke that I don't know if he had prepped it, but he got a huge laugh.

Yeah? Yeah. What's her name? Catherine Bach. And he said she was showing she had a little, you know, it was such a minor flaw in Catherine Bach. In her teeth. Yeah, she had like an eye tooth that was a little thin.

He said, I could fix it in 20 minutes. And once I've fixed it, nobody's going to look at anything else but that tooth. It's going to be so beautiful. All they're going to notice is your smile. But you were like, I'm going to look at anything else but that tooth. It's going to be so beautiful. Sweet joke. All they're going to notice is your smile. But you were like, I'm going to do it. I'm going to be a dentist.

Yeah, I just, look, I loved being funny. It was all I felt like I was really good at. I mean. Did you do it in high school? I mean, not professionally. Since I was a kid. Like, I started, like, when I was five. When I was five, I realized I could draw really well.

I could draw like Fred Flintstone and then Peanuts. And just having, it was a really, I was very good at it. And for a five-year-old, that's like to have a talent at all was like, wow, I'm just going to do this all day. Yeah. Just the positive reinforcement. Look how excited people get. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I made a Snoopy. Yeah. And I like being funny. this all day yeah just the positive reinforcement look how excited people yeah yeah exactly i made

a snoopy yeah and i like being funny and then it just developed into doing impressions of my classmates and drawing cartoons of my classmates yeah and this was why i was popular basically in in school uh just being funny but i never thought that it was something i couldn't do as a job but did you ever do um like did you ever put together sticks in in high school with another guy no i never because i got all my satisfaction just being an asshole in class i was such a goody two-shoes my sister you know liked to party and was crazy just the two of you yeah it's just the two of us and she was not a good student i was a great student hard working but i would get in trouble for making fun of other kids like that i did make a couple of kids cry and i was like well don't they get it i'm just

having fun it's funny so it wasn't bullying it wasn't bullying it was really it was a person with the inability to process like empathy. I just, I just did not have it. I just thought, but it's so funny what I'm saying. Come on, you can make fun of me. Make fun of my nose or something. Oh, so it was like, there was no way you could picture how it could land wrong. It was weird.

I just feel like. Did you have to learn empathy? I think. No, I did. I mean, I, did you have to learn empathy? I, I think, no, I did. I mean, I think I did.

I think I absolutely had to learn empathy. I think I always had it on some level. Cause at the same time, you know, that kind of, you know, the bully nerd dynamic that sometimes happens when those two become friends. Like there were,

I, I did have empathy because I used to, I was also the kid who like, there was a circle of people who would throw parties. We'd all throw parties and I was the only one

who would invite the unpopular kids. I was like the, literally the only one. I didn't care what my other friends thought. I liked these people that I made fun of.

Yeah. And I would invite them to my parties. So you could have a show. No, it wasn't so that I could make fun of them. I genuinely liked them to my parties so you could have a show no it wasn't so that I could make fun of them I genuinely liked them yeah yeah that's the thing I wasn't like right it wasn't the equivalent of like pushing someone into a locker right to show who was boss I just found them funny I found popular kids funny you didn't have a locker at the house I had a virtual locker no you liked everybody because i really did yeah a funny guy usually

everybody yeah you can move through all the different people yeah because you were funny yeah you know yeah yeah no that's usually the way it goes and and then but then when you bring people together there were the two crowds that didn't quite you know you were the only connective tissue no yeah to some degree i mean other liked these kids, but they didn't feel like, I'm not going to invite them because that'll be uncool and shit. And I just didn't care. I was always anti-hierarchy.

I hated that kind of shit. Yeah? Yeah, I just hated people. You know, I was a hippie kid too. I was, you know, I grew up in the 60s and when I was a little kid. That was always the most appealing to me. How much older than me are you?

I'm 57. What are you? I'm 61. Not that, but you did catch the tail end of it. I caught the tail end. I got to see Vietnam protests outside my- You remember it? Yes. In 1969, moratorium day, I got to march with hippies.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was really exciting. Were your parents activists? My parents were liberal then, and then they kind of- Tightened up? They kind of tightened up. You know what it was more than a money thing? Israel.

It was Israel, exactly. It's always Israel. It's always Israel. The liberals, they want us to stay. They don't care. They just, yeah. I'm not going to- No, no. My parents are wonderful people. But that's usually always what it is. They don't care. They just, yeah. I'm not going to. No, no.

My parents are wonderful people. But that's usually always what it is. It's always Israel. It's a complicated thing. Have you been? Oh, yeah. I've been three times, but not since 1995. It's been years.

Because my mother is like, I got to get back there. I went twice, and I'm like, I'm never going back there. Really? I enjoyed it. No, I enjoyed it, but what am I going to do there? Now I have kids. I want to bring my kids there. But you show them the stuff. Here's the wall.

We could put a note in. Well, now I'd like to go because now I have Israeli friends who live there. Oh, right. People that I met on the Zohan movie that I did. Yes. And then I have people that are like my neighbors in New Jersey who go every year. And I would love to go that way, my neighbors in New Jersey who go every year. And I would love to go that way, not just as a tourist.

Yeah, okay. All right. But could you see yourself living there? I'm pretty adaptable now that there's the internet. Yeah. All I do is stay in my room anyway. But would you like to live there? Because, I mean, that's sort of the idea. I kind of like to live everywhere.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? But I never even think about this stuff. I want to live in Ireland. I don't even know why. There's so many things I want to do, but I have two kids, and I got this autistic child, and I've got to take care of him. What's the age difference?

Their 10-year difference. Wow. Yeah. Because I remember when the autistic child was young and how involved he became with taking care of them and services for them. And how difficult is – how does he function now? I mean, is it high functioning or what? I mean, you know, people don't like the term functioning anymore. I'm sorry.

It's okay. I try to keep up too. I don't like the term functioning anymore. I'm sorry. I don't know. It's okay. I just, I try to keep up too. And it's very complicated and I don't like to complain about it because I think it's important that, you know, there are a lot of people in the autism community that have

voices now that didn't when I started. Yeah. You know, and there was much more of misinformation back then. Yeah. I mean, my son is mostly nonverbal, has a lot of issues. It's taken many years to kind of get him to control his self-injurious behavior and things like that. And but at the same time, I just think it's a great thing that more voices are out there because they weren't out there. I never the only person who was autistic, who ever spoke about it back then was temple

grandin right you know and now there's like a wide variety of people yeah thanks to social media who have access and and i think that's a good thing and the connection that i just i mean in the last 20 years just so many amazing people have like just come in and out of our lives. Oh yeah. People who are just incredible empathy and patience and, you know, gentleness and, you know, with him, people who've been,

you know, who've helped him learn to talk and communicate. He communicates through an augmentative device on an iPad. Yeah. I think the iPad is like, nobody talks about it, but the iPad has made it's, I know it's a big step forward technology wise but the difference it's made to people with autism autistic people who

have uh needed to communicate that way yeah just he used to have to carry around like a 20 pound device oh really yeah yeah it's ridiculous and and so but but yeah just um just having those people in our lives has just been incredibly inspiring and seeing what my wife is capable of yeah it's like living with your hero that's amazing is where is he is he at home well now he lives in a house with other young adults uh young autistic adults like these people are amazing like so he contracted covid oh did he he did because like one night person like they tried so hard to quarantine those people and sequester them in a hotel oh one person got it and brought it in and daniel has trouble sleeping at night so he got it and he was okay so what happened was he had to be isolated

right and we were horrified we weren't allowed to be with him all right who's gonna take all this time to be with him in his room he was like isolated in his room and all these these people who worked at the at the house yeah just were like raising their hands i'll wear the ppe i'll spend hours with him in his room you know it's just what can you what how how else can you feel but just blown away by that yeah and that happened and then he and then he went to the hospital six weeks later he had a he had a delayed immune response and he was sick. And now we were completely horrified. Like, how is he going to handle being in the hospital?

And the same people were willing to go to a hospital with other COVID patients and where they were permitted to have one person there because they understood. The people that work with them all the time? Yeah. Oh, that's beautiful. Yeah. Wow. It's stunning and you know so these are the kind of people that that i've been blessed to be in contact with it's quite a life man in terms of figuring out or or really understanding what's important you know yeah i mean that too that's clearly like obviously the gift of clarity

yeah which you know people like us yeah that's like the most elusive thing in the you know elusive because we keep it away yeah exactly no it's just we fucking just we just stuff our minds with ridiculous aspirations and uh and self-criticism but also like you know you know you like you know the kind of stuff you do comedically or that you know you have done in your life where you're kind of defying expectation you know uh early on yeah in the sense that like i don't know where some of this stuff comes from like you know the crew that you uh accumulated yeah you're certainly in the first season of conan right it's like where the fuck

I don't even understand how that kind of comedy works you know that was a bunch of people who you know Conan and me and Odin Kirk like we were in a box at Saturday Night Live we loved Saturday Night Live so you had a meltdown in dental school

what happened I had I loved Saturday Night Live. Well, how do you get there, though? So you had a meltdown in dental school? What happened? I just sucked in college at science courses. I was a very good student in high school. Science was the only thing I had to work hard at to get A's or A minuses. And then that's what you have to be good at in order to be a dentist. And my dad would be like, why do they have to make you learn all this shit? You're not going to need it. I could train you to do this in like, you know.

That'd be so funny. If you like, you never went to dental school, but your father just taught you sort of an under the table kind of thing. He could have. I'm going to bring my kid in. I taught him. He can do that. Put the final layer on.

Where's his diploma? What are you asking me where his diploma is? I've come up with bonding. What's the matter with you? My son. I'm telling you he knows how to do this. That would have been hilarious. You know, if that had been legal, I would be a dentist right now.

Of course. Because that was the one impediment. So I went to Cornell because, like I said, I got pretty good grades. And that was the only ivy league school i got into so i just like okay i'll go there so you do so you're going for pre-med yeah i'm taking like biology and general chemistry and and fucking d minusing it yeah and like and i'm telling my parents this on the phone and like i'm half in tears and they immediately switch like to absolute pity and empathy like whatever man you don't have to

be a dentist what you can give it up if you want and i'm like no no if it was reverse psychology it worked no i'm gonna keep at it was it were you feeling pressure or just no i never felt pressure i literally i literally did not believe the only thing i ever wanted to do was be funny yeah honestly or be an nba basketball player which was like i mean look at me not gonna happen so so but you knew that you could be funny professionally i didn't that was the only thing i ever enjoyed doing that mattered to me and i was like well if i'm not gonna do that i might as well be a dentist because my dad's an amazing dentist and i'll i'll i'll be in on this uh incredible practice and i'll be good at it because i did i was good with my hands i thought i'd be good at it yeah and um that'll be that but then you'd be like you

know what's your father's name erwin erwin's son yeah i know i didn't care about that father i didn't care about that i didn't care about that i never the one who was on mike douglas no his son that stuff i i worshiped my dad and honestly like like i say i it's like i'm prouder of being his son than any of my pooping or humping or any of the stuff i've done yeah i and i mean that but i just felt like i'm never gonna to. You're never going to. Nowadays, I think people, you can't make as much money, but there's way more opportunity now. In dentistry? No, no, in comedy. Oh, sure. There's just so many more venues.

You could do it right now. I mean, anyone can do it. Yeah, exactly. Make a video and you're in comedy, basically. I don't know if you make a life out of it, but you can can certainly but you can say i i do i make comedy films i did a thing kind of a living yeah yeah it's like being a musician now you know i'm a musician i'm a comedian whatever it kind of you know i hate it and i love it at the same time i'm glad people are expressing themselves yeah but they didn't all do the work the work i know i well i don't know what I did. I went to Chicago. You did the work.

So you dropped out of Cornell? I transferred to NYU for a year. And my parents, this was after two years. And it was like, I just want to take all these courses and get them out of my system and see. So I took an acting class. I took communications at NYU, which is like a complete. It's like radio. I love those people that majored in it, majored in communications.

I know. What does that mean? It's like, don't go to college and do that. Just learn anything that you can only learn in college. But we worked all those different jobs in a TV studio. That's what I would do. Today, you're running the telecine machine. This week, you're going to be the assistant director.

And so there were two weeks that I would look forward to. The one where I was on camera and the one where I got to write the bit. Those were the two weeks. And I realized, like, what the fuck am I doing? Who am I kidding with this communication shit? I know what I want to do, and I'm never going to do it. And then I'm like 21,

and NYU is throwing a stand-up comedy contest. And I'm thinking, okay, I have to commute to NYU. Nobody knows me because they wouldn't let me live in a dorm because I had a Manhattan address. Nobody knows me. So I'm going to write an act and I'm going to enter.

God damn it. I'm going to do this. I'm going to enter and act and I'm going to enter. God damn it. Yeah. I'm going to do this. Yeah. I'm going to enter and I won't be humiliated because I'm literally just- Invisible. It's true. Like I knew people the year I took acting courses, but once I went back into this pathetic, mediocre attempt at pre-med, I just became this sad guy who would just like have trouble getting up out of bed in the morning didn't know anybody so i wrote this act yeah and i invited like my high school and

camp friends like four people jewish camp jewish camp of course that's a whole other digression and and i you know did this ridiculous thing where I was an Orthodox rabbi actually turning the pages and I had a cotton candy beard and I would eat the beard and it was ridiculous and then I it was just nice because I was an Andy Kaufman lover of course so I had this ridiculous thing that started and then I just did topical or I just did humor about living at NYU like right conventional stand-up yeah But I was one of the winners. I was one of the,

they picked three winners. I was definitely third. Yeah. I know I was, because Hugh Fink, you know Hugh Fink. Sure. He pulled his fiddle out and killed it.

He pulled his fiddle out and murdered. And he, I mean, he was a pro. He'd already done it. And then this other kid named Jonathan Weinstein, I think. Yeah.

Who I think is still working comedian. He was better than me. But fortunately there were three slots, and I finished third, and it was the most, it changed my whole life. Because I was like, I've never made strangers laugh. I never thought I could. And you did good?

Well, I just, I'll never forget that moment of being shocked that I was one of the winners and seeing my four friends light up at the table in the distance. It's just frozen in my head. It's the moment that changed my whole life because I had never made a stranger laugh like that. I never even thought to try. And then from then on, I was like, God damn it.

I can fucking do just like any self-centered, narcissistic, creative person. Yeah. They just think I suck. I suck. What? I'm good. Fuck everybody. Yeah. Here we go. Here we go. creative person yeah they just think i suck i suck what i'm good yeah fuck everybody yeah yeah here we go here we go so i then so actually the winners of this contest got to perform at the

comic strip against other schools oh wow so i did that too modified the act a little added something about reagan i did a reagan impression of him trying to keep his boner down while he was fucking nancy and he's just saying show should have programmed it was that kind of thing yeah yeah you know and i'm literally like humping the microstand on stage in front of my parents who are now like robin won a contest with let's go after this after the comic strip they were embarrassed it was no no i won oh you won the comic i won that and i won a spot yeah so richie tinkin's like hey you know what your material's really good i mean it's got to say it's really good you gotta you know just relax a

little how you doing folks that kind of thing you're a little nervous up there but but you're really good the material i'm telling you the material is like uh you're ready to i i right now you're ready to go so you won the whole thing i won the thing and then i got did you do the cotton candy beard i did the cotton candy beard but then when i would do the cotton candy beard at two in the morning yeah the only people that because it's like you're gonna start at two in the morning you know i'm not it's not like i was adam sandler who they put on at like 9 30 right boy yeah yeah yeah no i wasn't like that i just had good material late night spots yeah yeah so i'm like you know now i'm like a new version of pathetic i'm like staying up till one o'clock and living with my parents on the up east side and i'm bringing my little thing of cotton candy to the comic strip and there's like four people there

and sometimes I'd kill and other times it'd be like, do something! Because like people who stay at a comedy club till two in the morning, they don't want to see an Andy Kaufman bit. They just want to be talked to. They're like, what's happening?

Why are you talking to us? Why are we just like, break it down? We stayed here to be part of the act, you asshole. So I did it for a while and by the end end like the last time i ever did the comic strip i was the last act i was on for 40 minutes i killed with four guys and we just talked and i was just riffing yeah and i had a great time and then i was just like i don't know what else to do and i met this guy coincidentally this wonderful chicago sketch performer named tim kazerinsky i remember him he had just been cast on saturday night live yeah this is 1982

dick ebersole had taken over from dumanian i think it was 82 81 yeah and he was shocked that i knew him because i was just an snl nerd kazerinsky how are you yeah like huh you know who i am and then he explains to me that uh you like comedy oh you should go take an improv class in uh chicago you can do it in a summer and that sounded good to me like oh really no commitment i don't have to feel like i'm falling on my face if i'm not good i like the sound of that so i went there and then i met all these people that i what was the class where was it at was a place called the players workshop i never heard of that city oh oh so it's part of it was an offshoot of the second city that was really the first improv school bill murray went there george went went there

oh yeah people like that yeah and um so and it was incredibly nurturing place and half the so it's a school it's a school you take You take classes. They give you very fixed rules about comedy. Like there's three kind of sketches. There's inappropriate behavior. There's one-upsmanship. And it was actually like, it sounds kind of corny, but it gave you confidence because they were kind of simple games to play. It was easy to feel funny.

And a lot of people who were in the class weren't even trying to be funny. They just wanted to learn how to be at work better. Learn how to be confident around other people and be funnier at parties or something.

So it was easy to be like one of the funniest people very quickly. Who was there? Anyone we know? Not in my class, but I got to know Bob Odenkirk

through that place. He must have been very serious back then. No, he was, he was very, he was serious, but he was also universally acknowledged by me and my friends to be the funniest person in Chicago. I was in awe of Bob Odenkirk.

I even told my girlfriend who I ended up marrying, I think maybe I should quit and manage Bob Odenkirk. That's how much, and he's the one guy when I got Saturday Night Live, I was so intimidated. And a lot of people go there and they try to like hire their friends. I'll get you in. And I loved all the people I'd worked with,

but I was so intimidated that I just couldn't bring myself to push for anybody except Bob Odenkirk. Oh, that's interesting. So you take these classes and you're doing it because I've known Bob a long time. Now he's an action star. Yes.

Did you see it? I have not seen it yet. It's good. I'm sure it's good. I'm sure it's good. Bob knows what he's doing. He's so funny. He never does anything bad.

What is that about him? He's just got taste and he's smart and he's also brilliant. He works his ass off. He works his ass off. He works his ass off, which I respect. He doesn't pretend to be too cool for school. Nothing come easy to that guy, really. No, I have so much respect for him because he wasn't intimidated at SNL.

I know he calls himself an asshole, how he behaved there, but he wasn't in awe of the place. And he inspired me to write sillier stuff because I was just trying to emulate what Alan Tom did. How'd you get in there? I got in there through, so I made friends in Chicago

with some people in my class and I got into a comedy group. We formed a comedy group together. What was the name of that? Well, I didn't name the group. Okay, okay. It was called All You Can Eat. And it was done.

The guy who named it was like very Machiavelli. And he was like this way, it's going to be the first name in the Chicago theater guide. Yeah. A L it's going to be the first thing people see. And he was right. Actually. And the show,

I mean, I think the shows were good, but we like were incredibly successful. That's great. We ended up having our own like 150 seat theater that would sell out and we did four shows a week and i didn't have to work like i we split the proceeds anyone we know yes um uh jill tally do you know yeah yeah she's married to tom kenney she does a lot of voices now and um uh a writer mr show too right yes she was on mr show with tom yeah and dave reynolds uh

co-wrote uh finding nemo he's very talented screenwriter now um there were a lot of funny people in there this guy doug dale who um i think is one of the funniest people i know and he was when i did that comedy show when i did that sketch puppet cartoon show on comedy central called tv fun house yeah yeah it was like a child uh a children's uh show hosted by like a gentle guy and all the puppets every week would desert the place and go off on adventures and leave him hanging right and doug dale played that guy. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and he almost got, he was beaten out by John Lovitz. He got that far. In the SNL thing?

Yes, he was beaten out by John Lovitz and then he never, it's amazing how that kind of shit happens. Who pulls you in SNL? Al Franken and Tom Davis were shooting a movie in Chicago. Al's funny. So he's shooting a movie with Tom Davis. The premise is so ridiculous to describe now. They were playing like a Grateful Dead kind of band

because they were deadheads, Al and Tom. He's still, it's like he's so, Al's a total deadhead. Yeah, total deadhead. Yeah. He and Ann Coulter, oddly enough, right? Is that true? I believe Ann Coulter is a deadhead. Oh, that seems wronglter oddly enough right is that true i believe ann coulter is dead oh that seems wrong that makes me upset i know she shouldn't be allowed or maybe

she's a fish maybe it's fish then i could understand i think it's deadhead yeah so anyway al and tom were shooting this movie and they cast my friend dave in a major role in the movie and so al and tom came to our show. Yeah. And they really liked our show. And yeah, that was not, you know. And then we had drinks afterward at a place called Zumdeutschen Eck.

And I was like, this is great. It's validation and that's that. And then two weeks later, remember how TV Guide had that front page of the non-shiny section that was like all the TV news that you could ever have access to? It was just that front page of the non-shiny section that was like all the TV news that you could ever have access to. It was just the front page of the non-shiny part of TV Guide.

Okay. Program section. Yeah. And I'm reading two weeks later, Lorne Michaels is returning to Saturday Night Live. And Al Franken and Tom Davis are going to be his producers. And I just, like, my head exploded. Like, I'm going to get a chance to, I'm going to get a chance.

I'm going to get, there's an opening. Maybe they really like us. Yeah. I couldn't believe it. And sure enough, like three of us got to audition for Lauren. And then Doug made it to the next round. My Howie Mandel impression didn't impress him. Did you do the glove we did i me and doug did howie and peewee doing who's on first oh okay and destroying the bit

with props that was the premise did you blow the plastic rubber glove yes of course i did i that was you know i had to i had the honker for it But then they invited me to interview as a writer. I submitted a separate packet and Jim Downey liked it. And then I got hired. I ended up being the one person from the group who did get hired. As a writer? As a writer. And that's Lauren's first year back.

Lauren's first year back. That infamous year with Anthony Michael Hall and Robert Downey Jr. And is that the year that, did that go well that year? It was a very difficult year because he had all these incredibly talented people, but they weren't necessarily sketch performers. Did they want them, weren't they looking to kill it, the show? No, I think Lorne. Once he got back, it was like. I think Lorne wanted to reinvent it and he was maybe slightly insecure about wanting to be cutting edge and not feeling like he was repeating himself.

So he like went aggressively for like i'm gonna get like robert and robert and michael hall were like 19 and 18 right and then he hired joan cusack who's one of the funniest people on very funny yeah yeah and uh randy quaid was there oh yeah wow that's a wild season and nora dunn and john lovitz and dennis miller who were all more from a sketch background. Well, no, Nora and John were. And then Dennis was the Weekend Update guy. And those were the three who ended up surviving that season. And then everyone else got cleared out?

Everyone else got cleared out. And you survived? I barely survived. And I thought I was going to get fired. Franken on the phone almost told me as much. I was a great. You did great. You did great.

But it's hard and i just hey you know who really might get back is swartz welder god he was funny i'd love to keep talking about how funny he is uh yeah he wrote that sketch yeah and then it ended up, then three people stood up for me. And I'll always owe Dennis Miller, A. Whitney Brown, John Lovitz. They were all invited back. They were all like really tight with Lauren at this point because they'd all done great that first year. And they all advocated for me to come back. They all thought I was a funny writer. And I think that is really the big, I don't know if I would have been a stain on the wall. So what was your relationship with Lauren early on?

I mean, I have to assume that it got very good. It got very good, but it wasn't the first year. Yeah. It wasn't the first year. And I was very, I was so nerdy and so in awe of the place. Like I literally walked in there and I knew this is leo yoshimura yeah the you know they'd introduce me this is leo the uh set designer i hear very funny in the star trek sketch o'donohue wrote where you played sulu this is edie baskin i very much enjoy your

hand tinted bumpers of gilda and the like and they're like okay this guy is not gonna be any fun plus i had like a jufro that i would not get rid of this is like 1985 and i was just i didn't want to break up with my jufro i was attached to it and meanwhile the kids in the hall guys are in there like bruce mccullough and mark mckinney are the other young writers and they've got the buzz on the side. Yeah, all clean cuts, yeah. Yeah, and they're wearing like oversized sweaters, and they're incredibly confident, as they deserve to be. And you're doing the old Franken, like the 70s Franken. I'm just like, hi, I'm just here.

What can I do? How can I please you? And Lauren just thought I was the biggest nerd. I just, I know he did. Yeah. And Lauren just thought I was the biggest nerd. I just, I know he did. And then I sort of had this reverse kind of like, I'm not cool. And I know I'm not cool. And I don't care. Yeah.

I'm just going to be judged on the work. Yeah. And like, so I made no effort to ingratiate myself. And when did it start to like turn around? Like what was the work that made people go like holy shit well like okay so george meyer was a great writer at the time yeah who had joined snl that year and and he had assured me don't worry no matter how you do lauren never fires anyone yeah uh he gives everyone a year it's gonna be you know yeah you're very funny then i got one sketch on on the very first show with madonna and then five weeks in a row of nothing and i was writing like weird shit because like there was a

part of me i was so in awe but at the second but at the same time like letterman was the cool show back then right and my comedy was sort of more about that and i was writing stranger shit and like oh like like stuff that jim downey would like that and lauren would just this is bullshit yeah like i wrote a sketch like a candid camera sketch that was practical jokes on animals yeah live animals so it was like watch this goat react to the moving mailbox. And it's just a goat. And it's like a human would be confused by on the goats just like this. We told this turtle that he was going to meet Burt Reynolds and have lunch with him. But what this turtle doesn't know is that it's a Burt Reynolds impersonator.

Wait till the look on his face when he realizes that that voice is not burt reynolds voice so then the burt reynolds impersonator starts talking and then there's just like a snap zoom on the turtle's head no reaction and to me this is like the funniest thing in the world and jim downey loved it but lauren was just, fuck this fucking nerdy. So then on my fifth show, Tom Hanks, who I was a huge fan of. Nobody really knew him back then. He'd done Splash. Right.

But I love the show Bosom Buddies. Yeah. Everybody jokes about Bosom Buddies. Tom Hanks was so funny on that show. Yeah. I don't know if you've ever seen it. Yeah, yeah. It was like some like it hot sitcom.

Tom Hanks. There's a famous story about a Boston comic who actually got the part. A guy named Mike Donovan. Oh, really? Who got the part in Bosom Buddies or was like up for it. Okay. And he's this guy, Mike Donovan. You know, he talks like this.

He's pretty monotone. He's kind of an odd guy. But the whole story is like he flies out to LA and he's like, I got to dress like a fucking lady? Shit. Sorry. My headphone. That was a headphone knocker off. Yeah.

And that was the end of it. I just lost my headphones. I got to dress. What the fuck is this? Yeah, yeah. What's Nick DiPaolo going to say? Are you fucking kidding me? Exactly.

Not a chance. Exactly. And that was that. You're paying for my return flight, motherfucker. That's right. Exactly. Dress like a lady. That's hysterical.

So you loved Hanks? I loved Hanks. Yeah. And okay, so I wrote a sketch. Yeah. That was, this is something Lauren used to say a lot that was true. It would say, when you're young, you define yourself by what you don't like. You know, and that was actually not a bad point.

You know how in comedy, when you're young, a lot of, at least sketch writers, a lot of sketch writers love to make fun of bad comedy. Right. And I, God knows I did. So, so, Seinfeld was very popular at the time. Yeah.

But there were a lot of comedians who were adopting his mannerism. I remember that bit. Yes. Three comedians backstage. All doing Seinfeld.

Yes. Yeah. That was you? Not deliberately, yes. Right. And the whole point was that it's such

an unnaturalistic way of speaking. Right. Yeah. That's not the kind of thing that I'm going to do. Yeah. The whole point was that it's such an unnaturalistic way of speaking. That's not the kind of thing that I'm going to know. Yeah. I don't know about you, but I want to know. Like, so, and I noticed that other comedians were doing it. It happens all the time.

It depends on the act. Yeah, it happens. I've seen it with other people. Yeah. Like, there was a bunch of Attels for a while. I've seen it with other people. Yeah. Like there was a bunch of hotels for a while. There were a bunch of hotels. And how many kinesins, not necessarily in stand-up, but how many people started saying,

I want to... Like that whole thing became a thing that everybody stole. Do you know where he got that? No. Dude, it's the best story. It's going to blow your mind. Where did he get it? Because I've told this on the air before, but I love telling it to people who...

I have no idea. You will never guess. Because I used to do coke with that fuck. So I remember sitting around, because I was like 22, at the doorman at the comedy store. I'm like, how'd you do it, man? How'd you figure it out?

I'd always ask people that. I've got two great stories like that. He just looks at me and goes, Gene Wilder. Oh. Is it in Willy Wonka? With your... Oh my God. Right? That's just two words and he explained it.

Right? That's amazing. The build. That's amazing. But build. That's amazing. But I give him credit because- Well, it's also a preacher thing. If I had heard that, yes, it's definitely a preacher thing. Here's the other story real quick. But he made it his own. It's not-

I don't consider that a rip off at all. No, no, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the drive shaft. That's amazing. The build. Yes. Like, you know, he noticed that as the device.

Yeah. It's not a rip off at all because how would you ever know? Exactly. Exactly. The other one was I was in the car with jimmy miller and janine garofalo yeah in boston jimmy was like i don't know what he's doing looking for people or whatever and he should be he was already managing janine scoping some people out back exactly i i do dennis for jimmy all so uh well this was the great moment like because i was always that guy is always sweaty and like

what about how did you would you feel tell me what i gotta do you know yeah so i just remember like i'm yelling at jimmy it's like you know i'm just trying to figure it out and your brother figured out how do you figure it out how do you find his voice and just hear from the back seat he's doing belzer i love the two words for each story. Yeah, yeah. Gene Wilder doing Belzer. It's so funny that you say that because when me and Dana Carvey in the office would imitate Dennis, I would always say, hey, Bep. Yeah. What are you doing, Bep? And he's like, Bobby, I don't use Bep.

I don't do Bep. And I guess that was like an unconscious Belzer thing that we were doing. But you guys taught you. Okay. So you tapped into the making fun of the other comics. So Lauren said that when you're younger, you define yourself by things you don't like. So you did. That sketch was a big hit that night.

Yeah. Because of the Seinfeld thing. Yeah. So, yeah. So Tom, I knew Tom would be great at it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And. Oh, that was the fifth show. That was the fifth show.

And it was the big hit of the night. Right. I went home and nerdily had, you know, I would VHS every show. Yeah, yeah. And I literally watched it like five times. I was like- Just killing? I can die.

I made people- Wasn't Leno in it or something? Who was in it? Didn't some comic show up? Leno did it later. Leno did a second version of it. No, it was actually, originally, I wanted Steve Wright to be in it, but we cut him out of it where he's just like stone-faced

trying to have a conversation because Steve was a guest that week. But we ended up it was better for the energy. Who was in it? It was Dana? It was Dana. No, no, no. It wasn't Dana. It was Tom Lovitz and Damon Wayans.

So that fifth show, that locked you in? You feel like that turned it? At least I felt like, you know, personally, I felt like, well, if I get fired, at least I did this in my life. So you were, oh my God, dude, you were there for so long. Well, yeah. I mean, I was there for till 93 till I got the Conan show. Yeah, I ended up doing very well.

Like, the next year is when I really kicked in. Like, I did the Reagan is a genius sketch. Yeah, yeah. The scenes and the Star Trek. That was the best. Get a life thing. That was the best. Thank you.

But, you know, and I wrote these. When I say I did it, I always had people like John Vitti, George Meyer. Yeah. Collaborators or even Downey sometimes but did you go back there I mean yeah so what happened was I I was the type of person I think a pattern I've seen developing like where I'm like I'm never gonna be able to do anything so like I would not leave SNL unless I had another job right and that's when the Conan thing I mean I tried I that was like almost in-house in a way.

Yeah, I mean, and Conan and I wrote this Adam West pilot, Look Well. That was our escape hatch at one point. But so wait, so you, we've neglected, so you pulled Bob in a year.

I pulled Bob in in like 1987. Yeah. And then, you know, and then Conan joined in 88, I think, with Greg Daniels. And then we became all really tight.

Okay. Because I would always gravitate toward the young guys, like it used to be. But you and Bob aren't Harvard. Greg, I think, is Harvard. No, no, no. Greg and Conan are Harvard, but Bob and I are not at all. We're from Chicago. Bob's Chicago.

I consider myself a Chicago professional type of performer and writer. Yeah, no, I didn't do any comedy in college other than this one contest at NYU. But just the weird fraternal brotherhood of the Harvard thing is its own thing. So you guys became, you all wrote together. And how does it work over there? How did you end up? Because I remember I used to judge you for some reason. Because I don't like,

I'm not sure I always understood Sandler. You know what I mean? Right. A lot of people did. And, and like, you know, as time goes on,

you know, I look at things differently, but like at the time, you know, the, the, there was sort of this, I,

you know, cause I always respected you and I, you know, and I respect Adam. I don't want to get any trouble with Adam. like he's totally fine he's done amazing things you know but when i was a more cunty you know cocky guy you had a totally different comedy vibe than adam right exactly and i and i well i remember you're much more grounded i don't know i'm just i'm just an angry asshole and i understand but the thing is is like or i was then it was funny

but you appreciated that that's what i'm finding when i'm talking to thing is is like or i was then it was funny but you appreciated that that's what i'm finding when i'm talking to you is that like it's not you're not judging on you're only judging the comedic you know the funniness yes but i would i mean i was judgmental about other sketches that i thought sucked but i would get into arguments with people like al franken about sandler though oh Yeah, because Sandler would write a piece, and people would assume it was idiotic because he was doing a voice like this. I don't know what you're talking about. Like, he wrote a piece called Canteen Boy,

which was about a guy who was obsessive about his canteen and knew all about, like, you know, he would rattle off facts about snakes and things like this and camping and everybody. It was this incredibly complex scene because all these people would come up to him at parties and like, oh, really, Canteen Boy? They're being totally passive aggressive and feeling superior. And Canteen Boy is just doing his thing, rattling off these absurd facts. But Canteen Boy was aware that he was being fucked with. Yeah.

And he would eventually get snakes to get their revenge on these people. Yeah. And it was so much more psychologically complex than 90% of the stuff being written and i remember saying this to al after a read-through yeah and he was like he would do this tilted head he'd tilt his head like the chuck wagon dog yeah you know yeah you know because so many sketches i like that the the al impression just becomes noises eventually. Oh, my God. All my impressions back then.

Everything I did was like a surreal impression. Dana and Carvey and I would just have so much fun. I mean, my Lauren impression was just Jim Downey would ask me a question. What do you think of Ellen Cleghorn? Sure. How about David Spade? Sure. Sure.

It's that kind of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But anyway, Sandler, he would write sketches, and me and Conan and Greg and Bob would be giggling like five-year-olds in the corner of the read-through room. Yeah. They would play to dead silence. Yeah.

You know, he'd play like a guy. Just because of snobbery? He'd get update bits. Just because of snob? They were being snobby? I just don't think they, I just think he was ahead of his time. I think he was one of the most innovative writers

that I came across at SNL. Uh-huh. Like, if you look at a sketch like The Hurley Boy, have you ever seen that? Yeah, I think so. It's like just a commercial where he's like, let me stay at your house. Let me me watch your kids let me watch your kids it was so you got to watch it i'm not going to do justice to it but then he would just keep talking about you know a message

from the hurley boy yeah you know and he's just saying let me and then they'd cut to farley for god's sake let the boy watch your kids it was completely it wasn't structured like any sketch you'd ever seen yeah and sandler was one of the few people who were reinventing sketch structure back then i swear to god yeah a lot of us were just writing simple kind of like premise escalates kind of shit. And they were smart and funny. Right. But they weren't as inventive. They weren't as fresh.

And also, but he knew he could drive them. Yeah. You know, like. Yes. Well, I mean, he was just so pure. Yeah. He had, he brought so much originality to the show. He didn't fit any mold.

Yeah. He was in his own world. He had all these voices that you never heard done in comedy before. I mean, a couple of them were derivative of like, he did one character that was like Ed Wynn, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like he'd stand up in the middle of an audience and just, excuse me, excuse me, how dare you?

Pat, don't you realize people want to see you do sketches with celebrities? I don't know. Yeah, yeah. We love you, Pat, but we want to help you. It's like just a guy who took, like a fan who took his advice way too seriously. Right, right. Again, it was like a sophisticated idea right cloaked in a nonsensical silly voice yeah yeah well that makes sense like and i also think that i sort of missed

that chunk of snl do you know what i mean like i just sort of like i knew stanway i knew the movies you're like working saturday exactly and i knew like the you know but it was more about like I knew who liked him like I think that I judged him on his fans and I decided that do that and I used to say people hate him because he reminds them of the kind of kid who picked on them in school and I think I I think I dismissed it as infantilized you know in a way yeah no it's it was easy to do and people did it at the show and we had a beef because of it over nothing for you know because i made i did a sketch i did a bid on conan that you know that was me really making fun of his fans it was like this big piece he can you know sensitive he can be sensitive about that stuff and uh i kind of didn't blame

him i think there's a little bit of and i'll tell you why it didn't bother me that he was sensitive, because he's never... He doesn't say anything negative about other people. He thinks it's... He's like, you know, sometimes I'll have a friend that I really like and that friend will do an interview and they'll shit on a movie that they did. Yeah. And Adam's like, what the fuck is he doing that? These people worked on that movie with him. Yeah. You know, they're not big stars like he is.

And what's he getting a laugh off of that for you know why is he taking a shit on these people who worked hard he's always nice to me and and he's said nice things but i don't really know if we're okay i've been waiting all this time for you to ask if someone and you are okay i don't know i don't really know no i know i just enjoy it because it's the mark maron thing yeah well are okay? Yeah, but I thought I got my- Part of the sketch that I want you to do on Thursday has to do with this. Oh, yeah, yeah. I heard about this.

It's up to you. I'm not going to force you. No, no, I'll do it. Why not? But that's one of the outstanding ones. There's a couple of people I know I'm not okay with. It's never coming back. It's not coming around.

Yeah. But with Adam, I see him at the Netflix events, or I saw him at an award show. He's very nice. He's a forgiving guy. He's the best best guy i liked his new special a lot his new special is amazing and i you know i went to college with brill we used to write together oh yeah brill's a great writer and director well that's the thing about that thing it's like it's like it's so hard for me it really has to be sold well to me because i'm not really a surreal guy but like i know that you do it and i know that that adam does it and i've grown to appreciate it and sometimes i really it really kills me but there seems to be part of your brain that's sort of like how fucking where

can we push it how weird can this get and still work i think it's just yeah i think we're just uh i don't know i feel like I'm not as social. I'm one of those writers who's not as socially adept. And so my comedy goes into those kind of stranger places that are more about alienation and looking at people through, you know, a detached kind of way. Right, right. you know, a detached kind of. Right, right. But it seems to me that because of that, like whatever happened,

you know, when you guys got to do Conan, that to me, that first season of Conan just seemed like guys like you who were like, let's just fucking do this. No, it was the greatest job I've ever had or will ever have. Because as I mentioned, I worship David Letterman and the opportunity, the challenge to take over that slot and try to create a show and do everything he didn't do and try to make it original was something.

Like, Conan was originally supposed to have my job. Yeah. You know. As a writer. No, as the producer of the replacement show. Of whatever that was going to be. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But he just didn't have, he wasn't jonesing to be the guy figuring it out. He wanted to perform. Yeah. And he finally was honest with Lorne and he had like had lunch, had dinners with like Drew Carey and Jon Stewart and other people. When Lorne was trying to cast it. Yes. Yeah.

And Conan finally was like, I got to be honest with you. I just, there's a part of me that thinks that I can do it. And whether you think so or not, it just makes me feel like I got to pursue. That's my dream. And this isn't. And Lauren respected that and then came around and gave him a tryout. And then Conan called me because he already knew that it was my dream. To make the show. I wanted to be that guy. I wanted to be, be who's the guy sigourney weaver's dad pat weaver yeah like that's one of my heroes he like reformatted the today show and the tonight show and i i just love the idea of trying to come up with a whole new way to do a late night show and

and you know so it was the most thrilling job and then i we hired a lot of people we didn't know like i didn't know louis or dino stamatopoulos yeah like and that was the most thrilling job. And then we hired a lot of people we didn't know. Like, I didn't know Louie or Dino Stamatopoulos. Yeah, like, and that was the thing. It's like, what a perfect, like, I couldn't, like, Louie, who is, like, right up your alley at that time, totally surreal, totally ballsy in terms of, like, you know, finding this other zone. And then Dino, like, I still don't understand that guy.

Like, I don't, like... Dino is sort of performance still don't understand that guy. Like, I don't... Dino is sort of performance art, his whole thing. I think he... I mean, he's... He's very true to himself, but he loves the persona as well. He reminds me of, like, if you're an SNL nerd,

it seems to me that, like, the Michael O'Donohue school. That's what he aspired to be, like, sort of the dark outsider. Was he at SNL as well? Like he would ride a motorcycle at the time, even though he was a geek when he was a kid. Was he at SNL as well? No. Oh.

No. So where'd you find him? He submitted. He had written for the Ben Stiller show, so I was aware of him. And he actually went to college with my wife in Chicago, so I was aware of him. Yeah. And he actually went to college with my wife in Chicago. So I was aware of him there too. So he was in my radar, but he submitted the best packet I've ever seen. Like where there were like 10 ideas that I would put on the show immediately. Did you?

Every one of them I'm sure got on the show. So. Some of them bombed. Who were the other? Well, that was the thing. But that was the year to bomb. But that was also the great thing is like but it wasn't just it wasn't a bomb of like it was of something falling flat it was a bomb of

like you know what the fuck was that yes noble failures yeah or flailing period i called it the flailing period we were so arrogant because like you know when conan first got the job i was like trying to be happy for him but I was nervous that he couldn't handle it yeah and I was like slightly selfishly like wait this is the my shot is going to be trying to make him work like even though he was one of my best friends this selfish thought came through my head like maybe he can't do any really do it yeah and but then like I called him back like 10 minutes later and said of course i'll be your head writer what am i because i remembered like he's just been a great friend to me like lauren would put me on snl once

in a while doing the the bears thing or some update thing i did and conan like spent hours helping me polish the bit yeah and i was like what am i even fucking hesitating of course i'm gonna just do it yeah yeah and it's like this is gonna be totally worthwhile just to try to help it's a lorn it's a lorn joint well that that was a complicated thing because lauren didn't feel like he was involved enough because conan and i were so tight like he didn't want me lauren didn't want me to do it yeah lauren wanted to get someone from Letterman to work with Conan. Right.

Partly because he didn't want me to leave SNL, but I also think he thought, those guys are so tight, they're just going to do whatever they want. And that kind of is what happened, you know? Yeah. But I mean, he definitely stayed involved, but it was a different gig than it would have been

if he was pairing two people who were not as simpatico. Right. So it was you and Conan and Louie and Dino. Me and Conan at the core, and then we hired Louie and Dino. And Brian. Was it Brian Hart? Or what's that guy? No.

Marsh McCall, Michael Gordon, David Reynolds, Amir Golan. Do you remember that comedian? Of course. Chuck Sklar. Sklar, yeah. Yeah. Tom Agna. Oh, Agna, right. Yeah. Louie C remember that comedian of course chuck sklar sklar yeah yeah tom agna oh agna right yeah louis ck of course yeah and um and we took it so crazily far that like then there became this tension because things would bomb and conan was getting bad reviews

right and there'd be this part of conan that's like I love this. I love this, but I'm not sure it's servicing me as a host as well as it could be. So there was that kind of tension. And we adjusted over time. We had to. By the time I left, I feel like the show had changed a lot and was much more still silly and funny, but not as completely crazy. We would have people interrupt interviews yeah like my friend doug yeah my friend doug who ended up doing tv funhouse he played this character called

doug the neighbor yeah and like conan would literally be talking to gore vidal yeah and there'd be all of a sudden hey cone z how you doing yeah and he'd be like the tim allen neighbor from behind a fence oh i'm sorry everybody i'm everybody. I'm sorry, Mr. Vidal. It's Doug, my neighbor. Who are you talking to today? Gore-va-who? Or hoo-va-who? And, you know, it was that kind of shit.

And then Conan would have to get back into the conversation. Right. So, yeah, yeah. It was not, like, if Conan had been a seasoned, like, guy who'd done a lot of, if he'd been like Jimmy Kimmel was, where Jimmy had been on radio for years. Yeah, had chops. Yeah.

Right. But Conan was finding all of that. So it was literally like a practical joke on Conan to do those kinds of things. And it's not like I was pushing it on him because he's a writer at the core and he loved these ideas. It's like, yeah, let's try it. Yeah.

So it was like sort of this painful realization that like, I'm not ready to do this. I love it. I'm not ready to do it. And it was a painful learning curve. How long were you there? I burned out, man. I was there for like a year and a half.

Were you there when I did Bad Fruit Theater? I think I was. I played, I was dennis hopper and the apocalypse now yes that was louis bit was louis bit and he did the apocalypse now the night of uh coppola when coppola was on the show yes oh that was really exciting yeah yeah we did it just for coppola i just remember working that voice man the hopper voice yeah you were great and then the the whatever i was a rotten pear something, it immediately just fell off its post. Of course, of course.

Like a good rotten pear was supposed to do. It did it exactly on cue. So you burnt out there and then you pulled. You know what happened? I didn't totally, it was like I had just been a newlywed. I got married three months into the show. And I had been such a shitty boyfriend for eight years at Saturday Night Live. This is everything. This is everything. This comes first. three months into the show and I had been such a shitty boyfriend yeah for

eight years at Saturday Night Live yeah everything this is everything this comes first right and then I'm finally married and when you get married it's different it's like that feeling of commitment yeah you know you're terrified of it and then it happens and everything changes and it's like wow and it felt great you want to enjoy it I didn't want to I didn't want to let her down after that. Right. Well, that's nice. And then it became like, oh, this job is harder than that job was.

And I waited until I got another job. And I used that as kind of an excuse. Is that when Groff came in? No. Groff was like, he came in like a year later. So Louis filled in? Who took over? Louis was supposed to do it. And then he backed out because he realized this is not what I want to do with my life.

Yeah. So then Marsh McCall did it for like a year, and then Marsh McCall left to do sitcoms, and then Groff came in. Yeah. And Groff, I think, was probably the best. He was fantastic. Yeah, I started with Groff as a stand-up, and he wrote for my dumb show. I gave him his first writing job for your marriage no no for a short attention span on comedy sast yeah yeah i made

them hire him because they it was so terrible and that was like his first writing job he was a fantastic head writer at conan solid guy you know he's one of those grounded people yes that's why he's grounded that's why he can write sitcoms he's had a much more success writing that kind of shit than i ever have so where'd you when but then the dana carvey thing why should i mean quality sitcom yeah sorry yeah so dana carvey happened 1996 so i went back so i left conan and i had two blissful years with my wife where all i did i had like piled up some money and i didn't have kids at this point so all i did was occasionally submit to snl and do like the lips of oh yeah different characters at conan yeah i did all these voices i always look i always knew when it was you

yeah well it's almost always me you have such a good timing was that your bit yeah me and me and dino dino, let's do... One of my big ideas for the show was like, Conan's going to interview people in the news. I wanted to bring sketch comedy to a late night talk show, kind of like Steve Allen's show was. That's what I picked. And I was like, we'll get people

and they'll dress up as celebrities and Conan will interview them. And then Dino, one day he was just, we were pitching ideas and he said, we should do something with Clutch Cargo. Dino was a Chicago guy and Clutch Cargo was still running in Chicago when I was there in the 80s. So everybody would joke about it.

And then I connected that like, oh, that's way better to interview celebrities that way. Because it's like, first of all, there's no makeup and wigs. But secondly secondly you're playing a practical joke on a photograph right and then i ended up just like riffing as bill clinton and dino said you should just do these voices they don't have to be like 100 perfect just be funny and uh and so i ended up doing most of them you know because i was a decent i called myself an imprecisionist yeah

no they were good and then you had a good build you know yeah oh my god i had that's the most fun i've ever had yeah doing that was doing that more fun than triumph triumphs there's too much pressure with triumph oh really to land the joke a certain way just to just like am i gonna hurt this person's feelings there's that pressure and also triumph is i I don't mean to brag because a lot of people write it with me, but Triumph's hysterical. It is hysterical. And I feel the pressure of keeping it at that level. Right.

Yeah. And I'm sorry if that sounds like cocky or something. But Triumph is a very collaborative thing i have great writers who help me with triumph so i don't i don't feel like who are they oh my god i could list you know lately like david feldman you know that yeah sure yeah he's not he didn't help me at conan but like since then feldman and some of the great conan writers at that era like brian rich who created the masturbating bear he would write great jokes for triumph and they're just many so it's so funny because it's one of those it's one of those bits where it's

like if somebody's just out and driving they're like come up with a one-liner like i should just send that to robert i love the dog i have no i have i'll take anything you know originally triumph was like a practical joke on the dog it was like this dog so limited all he can say is for me to poop on yeah he'll pay a compliment and then he says for me to poop on that's idea that was a bit yeah it was a joke on the dog and then we realized Oh Conan's got a lot of cheesy guests and it would be very satisfying for the audience cuz Conan's so polite yeah to shit on the guests somehow yeah like everybody's been waiting for two acts for something to John Tesh.

Yeah, yeah. And then this dog, it's just like catharsis. Finally, someone points out that you suck. But all this stuff, it seemed like that evolved and some of the stuff that you do now evolved out of these smaller bits that were parts of other things triumph was a definite evolution it came out of so i had this mantra at the show we're not going to do anything letterman does right we're going to make stuff

up we're going to do a show that makes shit up right and we're not going to do any found comedy there's no stage hands that we're going to break the fourth wall with none of that shit and by shit i mean genius yeah but i was like i didn't even let conan do remotes the first year yeah conan's the funniest person who's ever done remotes at this point yeah and so people if i say that you you'd think what a fucking horrible producer you must have been but the idea back then was like we're not gonna do anything letterman does right and by the way it's hard because everything he did everything well he did he no he did everything related to found humor right you know okay did not do like he did not interview a fake bill clinton right he did not like do bad fruit theater right right you know there were a lot of bits like that he and and he did this thing where the westminster dogs this was a classic letterman type thing he had just moved to cbs and he was

experimenting and having fun with the new space and being able to run people in from the street yeah here's rupert g delivering food and yeah so he had the west Westminster champions just run down the aisle. That's all they did. Yeah. And it was really funny because it was so reductive. And, and I was like, we're going to have dogs that, uh,

have actual, that are puppets and have actual talent. And it happened because, so my wife and I had gone, we were newlyweds and we were shopping for a new table at one of these quaint like southern furniture stores and they had a rack yeah of heads of realistic looking animals yeah dogs cats a rabbit a a seal and they were so realistic looking these dog puppets that it cracked me up i'd never seen anything like it yeah the detail mostly you think of rubber puppets that it cracked me up i'd never seen anything like it yeah the detail mostly you

think of rubber puppets you think of like kermit type things yeah this dog i just immediately put a dog's on my hand and started sniffing her ass in the store yeah with the puppet and she had no problem with that because she's married to you yes and she's a freak and that's why we got along so um so then she surprised me on my birthday with like seven of these things yeah and she's a freak and that's why we got along so um so then she surprised me on my birthday with like seven of these things yeah and that's how i got the idea and westminster was like a week later and i so that's how i got the idea these dogs will have talent they'll sing the theme from the bodyguard and we'll throw throw roses at them like they do at westminster yeah and it'll be very staid and it wasn't wasn't, and then it evolved.

Like one year, there was like a magician dog who sewed another dog in half. My favorite, a dog would light its own farts. My favorite dog ever was a dog who impersonated Jack Nicholson. So it was like this plastic dog

and it had the long paw and he just put the paw over his forehead like the hack. The hack comic. I'm Jack Nicholson. You can't handle the truth. Because I made all the dogs talk with Russian accents.

Because when I grew up I had Russian grandparents and somehow I associated dogs. I don't know. Were they funny? My grandparents? Not particularly. They just had a funny accent. And that's where it came from. That's where the triumph.

That's why dogs in my head. Yes. That's where it all came from. Yes. And so it came, the bit itself came out of the desire to do the opposite of what Letterman was doing. Well, what happened with the Dana Carvey show? Because I can never get that opening bit out of my mind of the first show.

That like, it scarred me forever. The Clinton with the nipples. Yeah, it was insane. It was insane. It was literally like a kamikaze mission. Like,

what are you guys doing? Yeah, it was like, you guys had taken to a certain level with Conan but then all of a sudden it's like, what was their edict on that show?

Well, listen. I surrounded myself with my favorite writers and dino and louie by then were like two of the people i love to write with the most yeah i made louie the head writer and dino was there and odin kirk helped out early on and louie had an idea where that was perfectly well it was it was already silly it was like clinton is going to say that he's both the father and the mother to hillary was in a lot of trouble back then with white water and a lot of her her approval rating was very low at the yeah so he was gonna assure the public that he could be both the mother and the father to the country because he had that whole nurture that. Yeah, right. That whole nurturing.

I feel your pain. Right. And then Louie had the idea that Clinton would say to take just to show you my commitment. I have worked with health experts and scientists and I've developed the ability to breastfeed. scientists and i've developed the ability to breastfeed and then he like real whipped out like a prosthetic thing yeah and we had babies yeah we had like two babies on one on each boob yeah and then i mean that probably would have killed the show already but just like louis i don't think we're killing the show enough he He wanted more boots. Can I play, you know, yes and sabotage version? What if, folks, you know I like animals, right?

What if he was breastfeeding kittens and puppies as well? And we gave him eight boots. Like a kitten and a puppy. And everybody was like, like yes you're in charge I guess we're doing it I love positive and reinforcement thank you so so so we did it and um I had no idea here's what I had no idea yeah we were following home improvement they were so cocky about this show yeah we're gonna give you the best slot on the network yeah 9 30 after tim allen it was dana right they're like we got a hit

yeah yeah everybody we thought we were cocky too and so sounds good the bigger the audience the better bring it on yeah it wasn't until like four weeks into the show that I actually watched an episode of Home Improvement. Yeah. And my jaw dropped. Like all I knew about the show was that Tim Allen had once been busted for coke. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that Pamela Anderson was on the show.

So I thought, oh. Yeah. Yeah, this is a raunchy kind of lead in thing. And I was so, listen, just my advice to young producers is to be aware of the show you're following on network television. I didn't know we were following a show. I didn't realize that the reason Home Improvement was a number one show. You didn't realize you were following America?

It was because parents could watch it with their kids and everybody loved the show. Oh, I didn't realize that. It was like American Idol became in the zeros. That's the kind of show it was. I watched it like four weeks in and I was just, oh my God, this is nothing that I would ever watch that's anything like my show. It's a family. Right.

Wholesome show. Right. And you're still dealing with a late night sensibility. No, and we're starting with fucking Bill Clinton and eight boobs. Eight braids, yeah. And I just felt like I had, what have I done to my friend Dana? How could I have not realized this? Yeah.

And there was no coming back from that. The show had minute by minute ratings that went like, like it was like a new record for like, you know, drop off, lift dive. Like did, did,

did it cause a rift between you and Dana? No. I mean, I think it was, uh, stressful for a while. Cause it was, you know,

it's the same thing with Conan. It's like you realize that you have to protect your star. His name's on it. He's the first thing people see. He's carrying the whole thing. And you may have envisioned the show to be this level of crazy, but you've got to scale it back. And that's what happened with both shows.

And I actually think by the time we finished the dana carvey show it was a perfectly fine acceptable smart show but it was just way too late to sway the people at that network let's talk about the new thing because i watched some coming attractions of it and then i had to watch i was hoping the coming attractions were horrible they like had somebody else i don't think they sent me a whole thing. Did they show you the sketch with Matt and Charlie? Did you get to watch that? Yeah, yeah, that's funny. I got that, yeah. But it was so funny because I had to sit through a trailer

for The Masked Singer, which I've never watched, and I don't even understand what's happening. Oh, The Masked Singer? With anything. With anything. Like, I know you and I were, you know, a couple hours ago on my couch, you know, choked up because of the Chauvin, you know. Yes. That justice happened.

Yes. I know that. Yes. But then I watched the Masked Singer. I'm like, what the fuck is happening here? You're just disoriented. Ken Jeong is there. What kind of world do we live in?

Right. Wait a minute. There should be nothing surprising about Ken Jeong being on The Masked Singer. Ken Jeong will take any job. He's a good friend of mine. And a good doctor. Triumph has made relentless fun of him. You know, one of Triumph's jokes was, if you have a Susan B. Anthony coin and a Buffalo

nickel and an original wheat Lincoln penny, what do you have? Enough to pay Ken Jeong for one day's work. He'll take anything. He'll say yes. That's funny. So the new show, it seems like that British show almost.

What was that called? Triumph would say, imagine if spitting image didn't suck. Does Triumph pay a big role on this show? Triumph has nothing to do with this show. He doesn't? No, these are all human puppets. I noticed with the puppets, how many times are you going to use these? They must take a long

time to make. I know. You made a fucking Matt Lauer puppet. How many times am I going to use? He's coming back, but I know. I'm not sure the show is practical. These puppets cost a lot of money. And the Trump puppets, isn't that done? We're going to find ways to use Trump.

Okay. We're definitely going to find ways to use Trump. But you're right. It's like, you know, it's a shitload of money. And then, like, how many times are you going to... So you try to use puppets that will have some shelf life, as it were. Who's the puppets you have? What do you got?

Oh, God. We're just, you know... How many do you got? We made a Ted Cruz. He's got a lot of legs, I think. Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. McConnell and...

Oh, good. Rachel Maddow and Chris Cuomo and Andrew Cuomo. Oh, wow. Yeah, and Chrissy Teigen and OJ. Alpha Cuomo and more Alpha Cuomo and Andrew Cuomo. Oh, wow. Yeah, and Chrissy Teigen and OJ. Alpha Cuomo and more Alpha Cuomo. Yes. Alpha and Alpha. Alpha and Alpha Alpha Cuomo.

Separate sketches for each Cuomo. And Tucker Carlson. Oh, that was a good one. You do the voice? No, I didn't. I mean, I could. That guy's a fucking monster, dude. I work for the Fox Network.

That's interesting. He's great. He's you great man you're gonna take shots at him it's weird i think i'm excited to be able to make fun of fox news on fox right but doesn't everybody separate the two people who get opportunities who are you know uh forward thinking uh interesting comedic shows and writers they have to be like well fox news Fox News is a different, different hallway. You know, it's like, it's not necessarily that. I mean,

they're owned by the same people. I know, but somehow or another, there's this ability to compartmentalize. Right. Yeah, nobody,

nobody's boycotting. 20th was owned by, I mean, the Simpsons. All those shows have made the Murdochs a shitload of money. Yeah,

it's weird how that works, It was finally, 20th was finally sold by Disney. is pushback even possible? But you know what? I worked for GE. I know, I know.

I worked for GE when they were dredging the Hudson River. Yeah. Like one of my most famous sketches was something that wasn't that funny, but it was like a schoolhouse rock parody where I got to make fun of GE. It was like conspiracy theory rock. Oh, right. And it was all about, I made, it was especially, originally it was supposed to be a weird conspiracy theory about Kennedyedy put to music but then i was like fuck it i'm just

gonna make it about everything ge is doing right now and it did did you get pushback uh we got it on the air we with there were like several hurdles we had to get through like make sure the homeless man looks a little nutty yeah and but they let us do it and then so bob wright is the head of the network lauren puts it on at like 12 30 thinking that bob wright goes to sleep after weekend update right and like he gets home late that day and he turns it on and the show never showed it again it was a very rare instance where they took the sketch out of the rerun. Isn't it like the broader question or is it because I mean, I've lived in this reality. We all live in this reality. There's a certain amount of monopolization that goes on in media companies.

But to what end does satire remain effective and not just part of it? You know what I mean? I mean, I'm trying to parse okay so you're saying is satire really possible or is it just another appendage of the fucking monster that that that appropriates everything aren't you immediately appropriated i mean when i did that sketch i literally called out ge on thing that nobody talks. Look what happened. Yes, no, I know.

I know. Well, it'll be interesting to see what you can say. Yeah. They're letting on a lot of shit. We're going to make fun of a lot of conservative people. Yeah. They want us to not be completely that way, but it's not that hard to make fun of Nancy Pelosi. Right.

Sure, sure sure so i have no problem i don't believe in like bean counting and like uh what's that phrase what about ism or like yeah like if people are wrong and there are more people wrong on one side i'm like there's also puppets right it's puppets so you know you make the shaking lady and well i'm gonna try not to make it all about you know this guy's senile and this guy's fat and this guy looks like a turtle i want to get i want to get jokes that actually cut through it's just an interesting question whether or not like everything starts to cancel everything else out and and whether or not anybody is it going to help anybody have a more grounded grasp on reality

like i don't know how it all doesn't just become part of the same fucking noise right sorry buddy it's gonna be great no it's okay that's all right i mean i don't aspire to change people's mind and i'm not talking about your show really i'm just saying like it's it's sort of an interesting intellectual thing to you know to to to figure that out. Like, you know, how do you accommodate the idea that you're on Fox? And when you really did something that pissed GE off, they're like, that's not happening again. That's okay.

I got more funny things. I was a little upset about it. You were? There were other people who were more upset about it. Adam McKay was really upset about it. Well, yeah. You know? Well, he's gone on to make some real, you know.

Oh, no. Well, he's a real activist, you know? Right. And he always put that first, and he actually, like, leaked it to the press. Oh, really? Yeah. And nobody knew at the time, but McKay deliberately leaked it to the press, and it became sort of a source of embarrassment at the time. For GE?

For the network, for Lorne, for everybody. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. Huh. And Adam, I don't think he copped to it. I don't remember how it panned out. But 10 years later, I called Bob Wright personally, and he let me put it on my Best of TV Funhouse DVD.

So enough time had passed. I think NBC had been bought by Comcast at that point. Well, no, because it looks like the Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer bit, that's a funny bit. It definitely has a point. And you figure where the comedy is. And also their puppets. Puppets, they buy you a lot. Puppets.

I think the layer of silliness that they provide makes everything lighter and less threatening. Yeah. Certainly does with Triumph, like I said, because he's low status. But I think it will here, too. Well, this has been fun, buddy. Yes. A lot of fun. I think we covered it.

I was terrified to do it. Were you? I'm always afraid I'm going to hurt someone's feelings, say something stupid. No, that's me. Yeah. If you think of anything, you let us know. I've turned to me and Sandler. I hope he knows

That I love him. Hey, let me call him. Yeah, call him up. Did you see him? Mark wants to know if you're good Yeah Did you hang out with him always you go over there for my favorite human being Practically, that's nice. He's my best friend in show business. I'd have to say that that for dinner? He's like my favorite human being. Oh, that's good. Practically. That's nice. He's my best friend in show business. I'd have to say that. That's great. He's the greatest.

He's just like the closest thing to a brother. But the thing is like there's like 15 people who could say that about him because he's that kind of guy. He makes you feel, you know. Oh, yeah. He really made a difference in my life. He made me like myself more at a time when I was so wrapped up in SNL and I just felt like all I am is the work I've come out with. Right.

I'm nothing but my output. Right. And he kind of connected with me in a way no one else had at that show. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it stuck. It stuck. Since then, I've been an arrogant, cocky prick.

Never. All right, buddy. I'm glad we finally did this. It worked stuck. It's stuck. Since then, I've been an arrogant, cocky prick. Never. All right, buddy. I'm glad we finally did this. It worked out, and we were both crying at the beginning, and we made it through. Yes. God bless the criminal justice system today. Today.

Today. All right, man. Good luck with the show. Thanks, buddy. So there you go. The new show is called let's be real puppet show life-size puppets funny it's on fox that was a fun talk i enjoyed it a great deal he's a sweet guy okay i'll talk to you soon next time i talk to you i might be in florida hopefully that's the plan if i don'll talk to you soon. Next time I talk to you, I might be in Florida.

Hopefully. That's the plan. If I don't talk to you from Florida, something's gone horribly wrong, and you'll hear about that. I'm not sure I will. Boy, this has gotten grim. Let's play some guitar. Thank you. Thank you. Boomer lives and monkey and La Fonda

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