WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 730 - Eric Andre

Episode Date: August 4, 2016

Eric Andre and Marc did not like each other. An incident from when Eric first started doing comedy in LA kept him from doing WTF for seven years. Marc and Eric talk about their beef and also dive into Eric's background in music, his rejection of another career path, and his desire to destroy all expectations of talk shows with The Eric Andre Show. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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What the fucking ears? What the fucktuckians? What'ssters? What the fucking ears? What the fuck, Tuckians? What's happening? How's everything going? Welcome. Welcome to the show. I'm Mark Maron. This is my podcast, WTF. My guest today, this is actually kind of an old-style WTF. Old school. I'll explain to you why in a little while my guest today is Eric Andre the very funny very ballsy unique Eric Andre and it was it was somewhat of a it was a long

time coming folks this WTF and not because he was hard to get or well quite honestly it's because he didn't want to do it and I didn't want him to do it and quite frankly we had some trouble we had some problems and well again this is this is the way it used to go this is what the original WTFs sounded like a lot of them and it was nice it was it was at once a sign of progress on my part but also a sign of you know continued progress necessary in a way let me let me let me do a couple other things and I'll try to fill you in if you haven't been with us since the beginning Brian Jones the guy who makes the cat mugs, made some new ones. All right. They're available right now. I believe today. Is it today? Yeah. They go on sale at 12 noon Eastern, 9 a.m. Pacific. You can go to brianrjones.com to get your hand thrown ceramic mug by a local artist in Portland.

If you live in Portland, he's a local artist. But these are of his creation originally. Again, if you didn't know, these mugs were made exclusively, the original version of them were made exclusively to give to guests on the show as sort of a little piece of unique swag. And now you can have them. And they are not like the original ones. to give to guests on the show as sort of a little piece of unique swag.

And now you can have them. And they are not like the original ones. They've evolved. There's been several styles because, you know, Brian Jones is an artist. He's got to make his pots and plates and pitchers and things look different. He's got to evolve. So you're looking at some evolved mugs there.

So grab those if you want they usually they sell pretty quickly and they're pretty fancy and they're they're also a fine gift idea if i could say so could i say so i think so also before i forget i'm just i'm going to keep it shallow in terms of uh looking out at the landscape but uh I'll be in Phoenix, Arizona, August 20th for two shows. That's a Saturday at Stand Up Live. And shortly thereafter, I'll be at the Albuquerque Journal Theater, September 3rd for a benefit there for the Endorphin Power Company. It's a rehab sort of halfway house type of facility where they have meetings and do some work. And there's places for people to live that hit the skids of one kind or another.

But you can get the links to those, both of those, for tickets at WTFpod.com slash tour. Yeah, so that's a little business out of the way. I also want to thank everyone for all the nice feedback about the surprising Roseanne interview. Apparently a lot of you forgot about why you loved her. Like I just got this email. Roseanne, episode 729. Mark, I worked a small theater show back in 1992 with Roseanne and Tom. It was chaos between them backstage.

And eventually ended with a tray of fried chicken being thrown down a hallway at Tom and the crew. I've been under the assumption this whole time that she was just one of those showbiz types that just treated people kind of poorly. After listening to your show today, that logic has shifted. Like all of us, she is only human and has endured some heavy, heavy shit. I was young and cocky and presumptuous

and she had every right to throw that chicken. Well, that was the interesting thing. Rosanna has a lot of different manifestations, but at the core of it, she's a sensitive and brilliant comedic entertainer that made out pretty well for herself, and she's got other stuff on her mind. I was just happy we were able to really focus on comedy

and her career and what makes her great. There was also a bit of feedback about my poetic, vitriolic ramble about the nature of Trump supporters in some respects that I thought was very empathetic. Most of the feedback was positive. There were a few of those weird trolling type of emails of people. There's only a couple of people, types of people that do that. And usually neither one of them are telling the truth in any real way. There's the guy that writes the

email, says, yeah, I heard what you said. And I'm completely opposite to what you described, and you're wrong. And then if you go into an exchange with them, they become exactly what you described. Then there's the other one. It's like, hey, I heard what you said, and I used to be a regular listener. Not anymore. There was like two of those, and you know what? Not regular listeners. Look, if you can't handle five minutes of poetic vitriol about something that's happening right now that comes from my heart and my mind, if you can't get through five minutes of that without shutting the show down, we don't need you. I don't need you, and I don't believe you. If you're that sensitive, you know what I mean?

It's interesting how this campaign, though, does shift from at once, one day being terrifying and then the next day being completely hilarious. Obviously, on a deeper level, it indicates something much more grave, but you know what I'm saying. It's exciting some days in a deeper level, it indicates something much more grave. But you know what I'm saying. It's exciting some days in a funny way, and it's exciting some days in a terrifying way. And I guess that's just going to be the way it's going to be. Eric Andre is here. Now, here's the deal.

As some of you who have listened to this show for a long time, a lot of the show at the beginning was me kind of patching it up with people that I either actually offended or that I thought I offended or that people that I needed to make amends with or sort of meet halfway. It was a lot about reparations. And yeah, eventually I ran out of people to have reparations with, but there was a few outstanding. There are some that are probably going to stay outstanding for the rest of my life and i'll just have to resolve that stuff on the inside but uh eric andre i first met him and he reminds me because i didn't remember i guess at the aspen comedy festival where years ago it must have been the last one where i was actually a decent dude when i remember meeting him was after the divorce was sort of like I was just beaten, beaten and broke from a divorce. Cranky, cynical, miserable, full of the fucking rage and hate towards me, towards everything.

Didn't know where everything was going to end up. Was not a good time. And Eric Andre was hosting a show that I did. And, you know, I thought it like I was like maybe and I've had this problem so I mean and I'll own it you know sometimes I've had little problems with younger comics I obviously maybe I I feel threatened or maybe I just am judgy or maybe I'm uh jealous or or or or just annoyed I don't know but there was one night and I remember it where he fucking, you know, he, it's something he did stuck in my craw and I was, and I laid into him on stage and I didn't

stop for a while. And here's the honest to God truth about it. And I don't know that he really knows it. So that went on for years. I mean, cause that happened in like way back, like 2007, 2008. And he was always, you know, he's been around a long time, but he always annoyed me cause I didn't really know what he did. And I just didn't, I just didn't like him. He just was a fucking annoying to me. And he was cocky and it, and it just, he always annoyed me. And then eventually it just kind of lessened. And then it was sort of like, well, he got his show, but I had not really seen the show. And, and I, you know, I felt better about myself and you know whatever and uh i just didn't care anymore

and and and i didn't see any reason for me to be mad at him and then i tried to get him on the show and he wasn't he wouldn't fucking do it but i get it why would he but then part of me was like well fuck him then so there's a lot of emotions tied up with it and then i ran into him at some magazine like book fair thing and i ran into him we looked at each other and i'm like well what where we at we okay he's like i don't know i guess you know it was still not good but it was better it opened up a sort of a line of communication but not quite but then like then you know he's got his new seasons out i said do you want to do it or you want to come on the show let's do it and he's got his new seasons out. I said, do you want to do it? Or you want to come on the show? Let's do it.

And he's like, okay, but you got to watch the show. Like he's basically kind of like, I really want you to watch them. And I watched it and I loved it. There's very few people that can do that shit good. You know, the pranking and the fucking, you know, like just like off the fucking grid punk rock insane shit. But he does it well and his man on the street shit is hilarious and i like the show i got it i thought he he does it differently there's not many people doing that i mean tim and eric and there's been some uh the jackass guys but

there's a way of of pranking and doing things it just kind of blew my mind and uh i respected it and i appreciated his talent but they see we recorded this before he did the rnc and i saw that clip of him that sort of gonzo pranking guy with a mic at the republican national convention when he just kind of stepped in with fucking alex jones he just baffled that you know that guy what is that guy that sort of he's like one of these um sort of radio champions of uh elaborate impotence one of these great sort of you know you know fist wagging kind of like conspiracy theorists that just uh will never get any resolution but but uh but eric just stepped in and just was fucking whack job with him and it just kind of threw him off his groove entirely and just all he could do is sit there and say

like you know we're gonna edit this out we're gonna edit this out it's just interesting when some sort of odd fucking reality you know just comes into the periphery of a complete fucking control freak's life and all they can do is like just sort of close it down we're gonna take care of this we're gonna oh my god real life is happening and i don't understand it and i who is this and what what oh boy i wonder if this is part of the freemasons but uh it was very funny and his new season is very funny and i think we pulled it together i think we we definitely had a good time i'll tell you that i have a respect for pranksters i have a respect yeah and it sort of rides the edge of uh envy at the freedom of it and the

sort of uh complete confident uh uh cojones to uh make a to risk making a fool out of yourself but be able to live there i mean we all do that to a certain degree, comics, but boy, man, some of that shit on this new season of Eric Andre's show of him out on the street, it's so funny because there's always blood involved. There's always a little bit of blood involved. I talked to him a little bit about that, but

you can watch the show. The Eric Andre show is back tomorrow night, August 5th on Adult Swim. And now this is me, and a slightly, not tense, but, you know, he had his, he had, you know, he had his thing. He had his territory. I had mine. And we, you know, we needed to bring it together. So this is me and Eric on.

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Wait, how long have you been here? When did I piss you off? When did we piss each other off? How long ago was that? I'd say like five years ago, maybe. Yeah. So should I tell the story? You want to tell?

I'd like to hear you. I know that I was wrong, but I'd like to hear your side of the story i was hosting a show at the fucking at tiger lily at a fucking italian restaurant at howard gulch at i don't even think it's an italian restaurant this is a vague like it's almost like an airport bar and grill hollywood bar and grill the vaguest restaurant yeah i'm hosting a show I hate hosting hosting is like a miserable position right like work the crowd and set up each comic you can't just do dive into your regular set you got to bring the audience to the show right and it wasn't an easy room ever really there's like three people in the room three like civilians everybody

else is comedians and they're eating dinner they don't even know what the fuck's going on. They just see me. I'm some guy talking into a microphone. Yeah. And I was very stressed. It was a stress ball in those days. I was like, now I like meditate and go to therapy.

You were the new guy in town too, right? I was relatively new in town. And I like, I was like, I fucking hate hosting, but I'll host. And I had,

I never get fucked up on stage, but I had like that night I took a Xanax and drank some wine. Oh, really? Yeah. So I was just like Lucy goose. And I was like, I got to host. I'll just do some crowd work. Yeah.

Bring the people to the show. It's like, I'm not, I wasn't working on my Carnegie Hall special by any stretch of the imagination for three people at 7 p..m show at an italian restaurant and i'm just like riffing and just like weaving in and out of jokes and trying to like you know work the two people in the audience that are confused what's happening yeah and then you got on stage and you fucking ripped me a new asshole like out of no i was like blind you were like what's your name you like whispered in my ear as you're walking like yeah what's your name i was like eric andre and you're like i'm

eric andre like comedy central roast ripping into me and all the comics are like fuck him you got to rip into him next and i'm like hi so i'm like what the fuck did i do why am i getting bullied i'm doing it fucking i I just moved to LA. I'm doing an Italian restaurant for two people trying to host. And this guy, I kept calling you Professor Comedy. You were up there lecturing me. I was actually calling me when you went back up. How was that?

Did you call me Professor Comedy when you went back up? Yeah, I was like, thanks. I was like, I don't remember. I was like, thanks, old man Winters, fucking Professor Comedy, lecturing me and wagging your finger. I was like, I'm not practicing my HBO special. Like, I'm fucking high. Well, sorry about that.

Yeah. And then I ripped on you for wearing patchouli. Yeah. Patchouli. Yeah. That's about as much as I get in, but I'm not like a roast comment. That's not my bag. Me neither.

I'm like, I'm high. I feel good. I'm on Xanax. I didn't even mind that. I wasn't pissed off about that. I was like, you know what? We're all just razzing each other, whatever. I was pissed off because my writing partner came up to me the next day and he was like, hey, did you piss off Marc Maron? I go, oh, no. Yeah, I was pissed off because my writing partner came up to me the next day and he was like hey did you

piss off Marc Maron I go oh no yeah I was just hosting a show and then he goes no it had nothing to do with the show I was at Bar Lubitsch and I overheard him talking to somebody some other comic and he was like you know this Eric Andre guy who the fuck does this guy think he is he fucking

sucks I was like what the fuck did I do? This is fucking crazy. I was like, what do you want from me? So that's when I was pissed off. And I was like, motherfucker, this guy, man. And that went on for a while. Yeah, and then every time I saw you, you'd be like,

come up to talk to me. I was like, you just talk shit about me at some rare shows because I wasn't up to your standard of perfection. No, no, it wasn't that. At the fucking Gower gulch here's what i would bar and grill i know i know like in 6 30 p.m on a tuesday i was being a dick i was being a dick so i can explain it yeah go ahead do you want me to i would love i would love i would love you i would love nothing more but do you feel malice towards me now or are we truly cool or is this gonna work i think you got over i think you were i didn't take it eventually i didn't take it too personally i i think you were dealing with my own problem with your own in hindsight i was like he might

be a man who's dealing with his own problems and i heard how many other people you were were having problems similar problems with you. And then it was when the show started, when WTF started, and you started airing your beefs with Louis and Jon Stewart and all these people. I was like, okay, I'm not alone. This guy seems to have a pattern. A pattern.

A pattern, a behavior pattern. I thought it was over with you. Here's what happened with me. I don't know if it was a particularly good night i didn't love going there but i felt like i had to you know because like i needed this uh stage time and i like doing all rooms and whatever but it was never easy to do that room and my it's like three people i know i know but i'm crazy so like so when i saw you up there having done comedy in san francisco for a couple years i i sort of knew that riff style and i just felt like you know you were over performing for the situation yeah and i thought like well that's a fairly ungracious host just to to just deplete the room of all its energy

by putting too much energy whatever i'm crazy i didn't say you were no you were terrible i'm never i'm never like you know what i want to get into no hosting no no that's my calling i thought i thought what i think at the moment what i felt was that uh you were it was wrong given the backstory that you were uh you know just sort of not caring about the hosting yeah and just fucking blowing out the room and then bringing people i didn't even realize i was i mean that's how you perceived it i'm blowing out the room i was probably nervous and high and i'm like grabbing and i'm new to la and i'm grabbing at straws to make hosting work i don't feel comfortable doing it yeah so my nervous energy is to get loud and like you know because i'm scared and i probably primal fear i probably thought you were like, you know, a cocky fuck you guy.

No. Well. I'm like a cocky, like, Dice Clay kind of guy? No, no, no. Sort of like. Hey, fuck you, man. Not like that, but sort of like, you know, yeah, I'm the shit. I'm the new guy.

This is what comedy looks like now. That's crazy. That's crazy. I know. I wish I had that confidence. That's crazy. That's crazy. I know.

I wish I had that confidence. This is what comedy looks like now. Three people at the fucking Hollywood Bar and Grill at 5 p.m. All right. Well. That's fucking crazy. But I really didn't even mind that. It was the aftermath that you're going around to other comedy shows talking shit about you. It sounded like it was probably the day after.

Maybe the day. Yeah, but I didn't know. So my mind leads me to think that you're going around town telling people that I'm shit. So I'm just like, what the fucking? And there was this culture of there was this snobby, pretentious. The thing that sucks about this hipster generation is this pretentious, eye-rolly, snobby. Snarky shit. Snarky shit. Yeah, I don't like it snarky shit snarky shit that comes with it so there was this just when i when i started out doing comedy i did my first year in boston then

i moved to new york city there was this whole group of comedians and i was like young and naive i was 20 years old when i started i was 21 when i moved to new york and like there i was like oh comedians are so smart and funny it's gonna be a fun group of people to hang out with that i'm a career with i'm 20 you know i was a kid so i was like and then i was so bummed out when i first moved to new york i was like they're so mean and not all of them but like there was enough mean curmudgeon pretentious wet noodle handshake like no eye contact handshake the club guys are the alt guys both both full force full force and the alt guys it was even more of a shock i was like i thought you're supposed to be the counter to this to what you perceive as the jocks you're acting like more of the jocks than the jocks yeah and we were

all nerds in fucking high school we all got beat up like why don't we come together on that why is everybody being a high school clicky dick yeah so it was it was not only that you what it roasted me at the hollywood bar and grill but also that you were talking shit about me at other shows and then i was surrounded by this culture of snobbery and clickiness and eye rolly shit it was just like uh so hard plus i was just going through my own insanity insanity just moving to la so i was just like what the fuck did i do nothing i i apologize and i felt and it bothered me for a long time because like i didn't know really what to do and i and there was one point where i reached out to you to talk and you're like, no.

I mean, you didn't even respond to me. Why would you? I understand. And then I think we had a break in the tension a year or so ago at that comic book place. Yeah. At a book fair, I saw you with some dude. But I just wanted it to be over. Because I knew that it had made an impression.

And I knew that it was just an impression and i knew that i had like it was just me being a dumb old cranky bastard being judgmental and i knew you were good and you were funny and you were doing interesting things but you annoyed me what am i gonna do what that's never happened to you before no but i know if i'm annoyed by a comic i wouldn't go on after him and be like, hey, fuck that last guy, right? Unless he was saying something so offensive. Unless he was like in blackface and like passing out, you know, neo-Nazi literature after the show. And you're right.

I just like you stomach so many horrid comics when you come, especially like you started out in Boston too, right? I did. Yeah, I did actually. There were lunatics in Boston when I started in Boston. Well, let's go back. Let me just finish this. I think what it was, it hit a trigger with me only because having been in San Francisco

and having sort of known Warren Thomas and Greg Proops and probably guys you don't even know, that there was this type of like improvising that you know when it was done really well it's great to watch but I just thought like what is he doing up there yeah it was like that yeah like he's just doing that like ooh look at this

a mic stand I got it on my head right right and there's no substance and there's no writing it's just like it's a trick flailing around and which is fine. I would have probably watched my set and I'd be like, yeah, that was shit. I'm on a Xanax.

I'm drinking wine. I'm hosting a fucking six o'clock show at an Italian restaurant. It wasn't at six o'clock. Or whatever. I'm speaking hyperbolically. I'm embellishing. It wasn't six o'clock.

That's your point. It was at eight. It was at eight or nine. Why did you carry that with you into Bar Lube and other shows? Because I decided that- That I was the devil. Not the devil, but like- You decided that was my whole act.

Yeah, I admit, you know, it wasn't- You saw that like five minutes. I wasn't out to get you. Yeah. yeah i admit you know it wasn't all that like five minutes i wasn't out to get you yeah but like it stuck with me that i i thought there was something um grandstanding and and fucked up about it so it really bothered you that much that yeah because i'm a little crazy i'm less crazy it wouldn't happen today why did you get why did you get a lot better through success or through therapy no not through therapy i think what happened was over time- The success of the show.

Maybe a little. Well, that certainly helped me in a lot of ways. It's going to help. Yeah, but I still get crazy. You seem a lot healthier. But I keep it to myself. And at that time, I don't know where I was with my life or my relationship. I was mad at the situation.

I had my own fears about going on stage. I didn't know why because it was always a struggle. Because I have found that a lot of times with alt audiences they're terrible they're just they're judgmental they don't they don't necessarily know what good comedy is yeah everything feels like an inside joke or something which is i know how to do it but that like it was just that night and something just stuck with me and then like even like um but because sam varela used to work for me you know sam yeah and she loved you and and she would be like i think you're you know you're wrong about him i'm like i don't know just based on that one set i wish you saw me do like a

regular set but i know it's a six o'clock show at an italian restaurant i wish you'd just seen if you saw my set a bunch and you had that attitude that would it wouldn't have been great but it's a little better it's so unfair it was unfair okay it's unfair to judge somebody's set well i'm hosting okay show okay ever just all right you had to host all right you're right but if you're doing your if you're doing your set or not even their set because some people are working on material and it's gonna be awful but if you saw my special yeah if i put out a special and i just had the microphone on top of my head and i was going then fucking by all means you could you could adjust i agree i you know and i you know and i

you know i thought it was unfair i thought it was unfair well yeah you're gonna forgive me or what do we forgive you i was wrong you're gonna forgive me or what? Yeah, I'll forgive you. I was wrong. I like that kind of fucking. You're going to forgive me or what, you fucking asshole? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sorry. I don't want any problems. Are we going to talk for 10 minutes or are you going to be like, just wait a minute. So I'm on a Xanax.

You know I was on a Xanax. Well, it affected me. It was the last straw. It was like the final. It wasn't like that one thing. It was like this culture of. Oh, I was the tipping point? You were the tipping point.

Well, let's go back then. So where'd you grow up? Florida, Boca Raton, Florida. Really? My mom lives in Hollywood. Yeah, that's very close. Yeah, really? Boca?

Boca Raton. Like your whole family's there? Yeah, Boynton, Delray Beach, yeah. But I grew up in Boca. No shit. You have brothers and sisters? Older sister. That's it?

Yeah. And you're like, what's your background? My dad's from Haiti. Really from Haiti? Really from Haiti. My dad's name is Pierre Andre. English is his fourth language. Really?

Yeah. What are the other three? French? Creole, French, Spanish, and English. Can you speak all those? No. He didn't teach me a goddamn thing. Nothing?

No. Why? He's like, you spoke to me in English. I would speak back in English. I was like, you're a fucking asshole. You're supposed to teach a kid languages when they're young. That's when their brains develop. And he's like, I don't know. Did he have a Haitian

accent? My dad has a thick Haitian accent. He's a grope. Oh, you're crazy. Oh, yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah. My dad's from Haitiiti my mom's a jew from new york really like a like a jewish jew like a jewish ashkenazi jew i have a joke where i say my dad looks like arthur ash and my mom looks like howard stern she grew up upper west side yeah like the 40s yeah before there were suburbs and highways so it was like working class families in manhattan and uh she lived in manhattan bronx jersey really and uh yeah so you have

jewish grandparents jewish grandparents who where are they in jersey are they around oh no they're dead i had yeah yeah everybody's dead everyone's dead no mom and dad are like but like uh my grandma died uh when i was 18 and my grandpa died when i was two but like florida's nuts man sucks but it's the worst i hated i grew but like i've grown as again you know around the same time that i started to evolve over our problem and grow as a human i've grown to appreciate florida for how much it sucks in a very specific way yeah there's no place like it anywhere. It's the weirdest fucking place I've ever been in my life. I think culture kind of stops around Atlanta and then just like this like runoff. It's like fucking poison drips down.

I used to say they're either at the end of their life or the end of their rope. It's a fucking, it's a bummer. It's like, yeah, it's either God's waiting room, just elderly it's a bummer it's like yeah it's either god's waiting room just elderly people waiting to die it's just crazy or george zimmerman fucking lunatics and then all the fucking latin people from all over the latin world yeah like you know you go to miami it's like this and then there's fucking red i mean i like cuban people yeah yeah i like that cuban coffee a lot you owe me too but like this weird sort of mixture of like kind of white you know rednecky types it attracts a lot of different lunatics for different yeah for the weather i guess for the weather and then like uh where my mom lives you got german snowbirds

that come down it's a state built on the weather yeah yeah this is too kind of it's also very cheap is it california is expensive florida's cheap so what did you do were you just like you know chomping uh what did they chomping at the bit to get the fuck out of florida get the fuck out of there what were you doing as a kid though were you like play the hollywood gulch the guy where you took his annex and drank some wine and some old bitter some bitter jew just rained on your goddamn hollywood parade it was the last straw well you know what it was also awkward doing that movie we did well we were still mad at each other yeah yeah it felt bad you seemed you seemed i was over it you

were not over it yeah you were still like you seemed like you were trying to extend the olive yeah yeah you wouldn't let me you wouldn't have it more needed to be done i need to humble myself somehow you weren't you weren't having it and that and that that movie is the equivalent of the gower gulch the movie that's the gower gulch of movies yeah it really is i remember talking like i don't even like is, is it out? I don't know. I just. I know no one's taking ownership. No. It's like.

Somebody brings it up. I just like walk through the question. It's like this weird, shameful event we were all part of. It's going to be. It's going to surface. Somebody said I was funny. And then I had one funny beat. I mean, isn't that the best you can do?

Oh, God. I couldn't even. I don't want to talk too much shit. I'm friends with those guys. But like I was trying to figure out, because I watched a couple episodes of the new season, which I like, and I like for specific reasons. I'm actually surprised that you like it. Dude, I have a very open mind.

Because there was this one time at 6 p.m. specifically. My mind closed specifically my mind closed i'd had enough and was closed for business but it wasn't cool no but uh but like what kind of what what were you doing what kind of kid were you were you a skateboard kid were you like a you know kicking getting your ass kicked? Were you a smart kid? I was. A problem? I was, I got good grades. I got straight A's, but I was always acting out in class, very hyper. And like, I would get straight A's for my grades, and then I would get straight F's in conduct, because I was always getting detentions.

Oh, really? Acting out to get girls' attention. Sure. And like, make my friends laugh and class clown and stuff like that like like just like riffing on the desk and stuff riffing on the desk i take the microphone stand to put on my head and do a lot of like san francisco style improv no i just fucking hyper yeah and were you clinically hyper did you need medicine no no none of that shit but were you like but you got straight a so your parents were cool with you but you were still kind of a problem or what yeah i was a problem in middle school and high school

but it just like i would just get in trouble a lot in class but i went to was it was in public school yeah but i wasn't gifted so i was a nerd right so i i and i sucked at sports and i couldn't skateboard or do anything cool i was kind of like awkward and nerdy really uh yeah yeah i looked like steve urkel from like first grade to all through college yeah and like you know once i started passing puberty i'm a jew so my nose was like twice the size of my head and my ears like i look like the cartoons that hitler would draw the you know the nazis would draw like stuff with an afro except with an afro um and the and then i went to uh i went to this really shitty bad racist school in ninth grade that was kind of like that John Singleton movie, Higher Learning, but in real life. Because I was in the pre-IB program.

It's called International Baccalaureate Program. It was like the nerds of the nerds. Yeah. Gifted kids would be in this college prep kind of program. What was your particular gift? Well, I got out of that school. I was in that school for a year. But were you math or were you what?

I was good at math, but I went into an arts high school, a magnet arts program the next year because that school was so bad and I wasn't doing that well and the teachers were miserable and the administration was racist and the kids were racist against each other. It was very segregated. White kids and black kids just hated each other and i got like rocks thrown in my head it was so miserable only there and then in 10th grade i got accepted to this magnets arts high school yeah for cello and upright bass and then it was like night and day it was like fame everybody was like super there were no jocks everyone was super nice no not a lot of racism and I met the first gay person

you know I mean like for the first kids that come out of the closet the earliest yeah there and stuff like that so I really had both ends of the spectrum you've been playing music your whole life I've been playing music my whole life I was playing piano since I was five really yeah I don't play anymore really I have a use and i went to berkeley college of music in boston yeah for upright bass and i have a useless music degree you went to berkeley for the whole time yeah whole time for upright bass and you can play like like jazz bass yeah that's what i learned that's what i studied but you can also play with a bow orco yeah and you can read

music yeah and you just decided to do this other bullshit with your life? Well, when I entered college, But like, were you a prodigy? I wasn't like Charles Mingus or something. I could play, but I wasn't like... Right, right. I always got bored. I would always cheat on different instruments.

I would always, like, I was like, Oh, I'd be really into the drums for two years. And then I'd be like, eh. And then I'd like play tuba in sixth grade. You played tuba? I played tuba, drums. Your parents had to rent you a tuba? Had to rent a tuba.

An old, rusty, fucking sludgy tuba. Where the fuck do you play tuba? Were you in the marching band? I was just in the band band. We didn't march. We just sat around. Yeah. Tuba's fun.

But you always gravitated towards bass. Nah. Yeah, maybe I did. You like the low end. I guess, but now if I could do it again, I'd do trumpet or saxophone or something. I don't know, but I like piano. Piano's the whole range. Drums, there's no pitch.

Yeah, that's right. I wanted to chip away at a little bit of everything. I like guitar, too. I wanted to chip away at a little bit of everything so I could kind of understand. You know what I just got into just yesterday that's what's amazing about the world we live into living i've been buying records again you know just fucking got my mind blown by roland kirk oh holy yeah he's awesome he's circular breathe too there's a circular breathe but the flute album before he added rishan roland kirk to his name oh no i don't know there's like just a

it's all jazz flute oh yeah like he's like's like, yeah, circle of breathing, but he's like, he's mumbling. Yeah, he's like a virtuoso. But like the flute, like I never really took it in. I mean, like I grew up with having to listen to Jethro Tull at different points in my life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I never knew the flute could fucking be such a big dick instrument. Yeah, no, you should listen to Eric Dolphy. That's what someone else said.

Yeah, yeah, Eric Dolphy. He had an album called Out to Lunch. Are you a jazz guy? Yeah, that's what I studied. I was like a big jazz dork. But it's fucking dead, man. It's dead. No, it's not, man.

Don't tell Kamasi Washington that. It's fucking dead, baby. Did you get the Kamasi Washington record? No, I don't know the new guys. I just listen to stuff in the 60s. His first record called Epic is three records. He the new guys. I just listen to stuff in the 60s. His first record called Epic is three records. He means fucking business. I got to listen to it.

You got to look at him to know it. Yeah, okay. It's great. Yeah? Yeah, dude. He's the guy that plays. He was on the Kendrick Lamar record, the big one. Oh, uh-huh.

He did some of the- Yeah, I got to check him out. I'm friends with Thundercat, who helped produce that. Yeah, he's a fucking monster bass player. Yeah, he's a monster bass player. I went to see Kamasi over here at the whatever thing. What's it called? The arena named after a camera, something. Nokia.

It's a Nokia center. Isn't that a camera? Yeah, it is. Sorry, I'm not good at the San Francisco riff thing. Yeah, he's at the camera. Put this microphone on my head. There you go. But Thundercat.

Was that a thing in San Francisco? The riffing? What was it? Give me like a little taste. It was like Robin Williams. There was not a lot of substance. It was just like. No, no, no.

It was just an improv. It was just really just fast paced improv. It was like what created Robin Williams style. And you resented Robin Williams. No, no, no. It was just an improv. It was just really just fast-paced improv. It was like what created Robin Williams style. And you resented Robin Williams. No, no. I didn't resent Robin Williams. What really struck, the core that struck with me was Warren Thomas, who's passed. And there was no way-

Is Warren Thomas, did he die? Yes. Am I thinking he's an older black guy? Yeah. He's not that, he didn't die that old, but he died. From HIV, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

I met him the last week he was alive. Right. I met him, and then they were like, hey, you know that guy you met last week? He died. I was like, what the fuck? But I didn't know him that way. Right. Well, it was like he was one of the inventors.

Him and Steve. And you hated him. No, I loved him. Oh, you did? Yeah, so I thought you were hacking him. Oh, I see. Yeah. So you love Proops and Warren Thomas.

Sure. But you saw me, and you were like. I was like, this guy's just doing them and they were already doing somebody else they were doing steve pearl like i know i know the history i know the history pearl i don't know well no no one knows steve pearl steve pearl steve pearl was this uh this genius uh improvising comic in san francisco in the late 70s at the Holy City Zoo and he was like just this monster stream of consciousness guy and all those other guys, Robin and

They tried to emulate him but they didn't quite You had to have that mind They sort of took it a different place No, I think Proops has that mind I actually met you before the Garagolts, now that I'm thinking about it We met at the Aspen Comedy Festival 2007 Holy shit And you hosted um a an alt thing no i don't even think it was an old thing it was just like uh

oh my god you hosted and the comic that went on right before me was like having a really hard time and then you're like oh i remember and you're like hey you want me he was like having a panic attack and they were like hey you want me to uh do a few minutes and get them back and i was like yeah yeah and you seemed very cordial. Yeah, yeah. I remember. We had a civil. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was totally civil.

Our first meeting was very civil. Yeah. I asked you about the first. I was like, when's the first time you did comedy? And you were like, 83 in Boston. I was like, oh, I went to school in Boston. But it was very civil. Was it 83?

Wow. You're right. I think that's what you said. Holy shit. Yeah. Right. Because who was that guy who went on there? He was all sweating.

Oh, poor. He's a nice guy. I don't want to talk too much shit about him. No, no, no. Which one was it, that guy who went on there? He was all sweating. Oh, poor, he's a nice guy. I don't want to talk too much shit about him. No, no, no. Which one was it, though, so I can remember? He's a very, very successful guy now. What's his name? John Mulaney.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember. Yeah, I felt bad because he was like- He went on and he had like a panic, and I've had panic attacks on television. But it was an altitude thing. It was an altitude thing. Yeah, he had the haptic oxygen mask. Yeah, yeah.

It's horrible. It's horrible. Yeah, yeah. I remember that. See, I liked you then. I didn't remember you. Yeah, you had a dihaptic oxygen mask. It's horrible. It's horrible. Yeah, yeah. I remember that. See, I liked you then. I didn't remember you. Yeah, you're very sweet. But I think you were married then.

Yes, that was the end of it. And I think, because I think I met your wife. Mishna. She was like a foxy, like. Yeah. But like, that was the night I did the storytelling show. And I told that horrible story about the fight we got into. And then she got mad at me. That was the end beginning of the end of my marriage that trip

oh really oh she was fucking livid ah see and then i think i saw you at the garrick gulch days you were going through divorce right because i remember i saw you at ucb and you were like unraveling on stage like you weren't really telling jokes you were just like i know spewing dark yeah poetry yeah that's it for half an hour and then i was like fuck this guy he's not telling jokes where's the microphone put the microphone stand on his head asap no but it was like dark it was dark you were in a dark place yes you're brooding yes bad yeah you're like edgar allen poe on stage i didn't know how to process it oh yeah all i had was the raven but why don't you think therapy you don't think therapy helps?

No, no. I don't think I don't have any problem with therapy. I, you know, I don't have any problem with therapy. I've gone to therapy at different points in my life. Definitely. It helps. But I didn't at the top of the conversation. You're like, no, no therapy didn't help me.

It was. Well, because like, I don't, I don't really attribute it as helping me in that way. Like, I still think like experience and my, like, I know myself well enough to know that i'm not fucking normal i've got problems with relationships i've got emotional problems i know where they come from i know what they come from your your childhood is it like parents stuff is it yeah it has to do with relationship with your dad with your mom yeah both you both. You? Dad more than mom. Mom was good. Dad was very like aloof.

Oh, really? Detached. Absent. Detached, absent, workaholic, psychiatrist. Oh, really? And raised in a very, very chauvinist 1940s Haiti culture where the men do not do the child raising. Right. So his dad was, compared to his father, he child raising right so his dad was compared to his

father he was an angel because his dad was completely absent did they get out of haiti because shit went bad because of devalia yeah papa doc yeah right yeah and they got out under the wire my dad left haiti with 80 bucks in his pocket speaking no english moved to new york city you know in like an apartment with like 50 other haitians right and um was like doing like messenger service shit like no shit you know biking around he put himself through medical school and everything and then yeah and then he met my mom at a rent strike in um uh 1970 71 and they're both living in this apartment building that was shitty and falling apart and um he kept asking my mom he was like oh can you teach me english like i need an english

tutor but he was just like kicking it to my mom and my mom my mom had dated a bunch of african guys in college and she was like i just want to date an american guy there was all this there's like all these i think nigerian guys coming to university of she went to uh school in madison wisconsin oh yeah she's from new york but went to college in wisconsin and she dated and she's like me and my friend davida were the only two white women that would date these african guys and like i dated like five african guys so when i got back to new york i didn't want to die i want to date an american and then my dad kept kicking it to her and then she caved and then they dated for eight ten months and then got married for 25 years then they got divorced when I was like 12 12 yeah oh so they were divorced that's pretty

that's a bad time 12 it's not a good time and he's detached but he's a detached doctor it's a doctor and he's very not good at communicating it's funny he's a psychiatrist because he's not the best with communicating with's funny he's a psychiatrist because he's not the best with communicating with his family that's always why my dad was a doctor he was a surgeon oh really my parents were very self-involved lack boundaries my dad was a little volatile at times like you know i can track all like abusive not really abusive just erratic you have you know bipolar a little bit and uh you know he wasn't around much but when he was did you grow up in boston albuquerque albuquerque new mexico yeah you

get along with mom and dad now yeah you buried the hatchet yeah they're not mean people they're just annoying that's how i'd say my dad my dad dad's not, that's the problem. My dad's not a dick. Yeah. He's just detached. He's removed. And you can't, and if you confront him, he just kind of mumbles his way out of it and changes the subject and half

pays attention. And you're just like, dad, you didn't come to my high school graduation that affected me. You didn't come to soccer practice ever. That affected me. You're a psychiatrist. You should know how that's going to affect your child and that your dad did it to you and you shouldn't do it you shouldn't pass that shittiness on to your kid and he'll just be

like i had to bring home the bacon and i'll get defensive and then and then he'll kind of slowly space out and turn on cnn and then start talking about politics and you're just like, ugh, there's no. So yeah, so you had to carry that, you had to sort of get it for yourself. That's the fucked up thing about it, is like, you're not getting that feedback, you're not getting that support, you're not getting that love. I think for a boy, too. Yeah.

He needs the middle. Well, you're lucky, because my dad was at, he was at my college graduation, he was crying and got lost and he's threatening to jump off a bridge somewhere yeah really yeah it's exciting

like literally my dad came to my college graduation I will give him that he didn't come to my sister's high school or college graduation he didn't come to my

high school graduation but he came to my college graduation and guess who the fucking guest speaker was who Bill Cosby what was the fucking shit and I? Who? Bill Cosby.

What was the fucking shit? And I have an autographed Bill Cosby record. Yeah. Still got that. I was like, should I burn this or should I keep it forever? It was very hard to separate the Bill Cosby we grew up with. And it's no longer a question, but it's fucked up. It's fucked. Woody Allen fucked but yeah allen too do you think woody allen jerked off his kids i it seems like he did something but i you know it's

like again you know i got a bummer man people are fucked everybody's fucked they are fucked and that's a those those two specific ways of being fucked are really fucked. I mean, I'm, I heard that Gandhi, this is fucking crazy. Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi. I know. You know, well, personally,

not a great comic, not a great comic, but I heard that his wife was dying of some disease. And he, for some reason, he talked her out of taking this medicine, I guess for religious reasons or something like that. And she died.

And then he contracted the same disease years later and he took the medicine he told his wife not to take and then he lived and he took a valence albacy even with his wife and he had like uh 14 year old girls like bathe him every morning he was like oh I don't have sex I don't have sex but I will have a group of 14 year old girls like bathe me every morning so sound like you rode the line a little so i feel like even gandhi hey look people not excusing woody allen or bill cosby's fucking sorcery but sure even the most what we perceive to be the most altruistic fucking buddhas yeah flawed still floss morally flawed morally flawed it's a bummer.

So how do you go from fucking bass playing to comedy? When I first got to college, Napster came out and everybody had a CD burner in their laptop and the music industry disintegrated. Right. Right when I got to music school. Right. It just imploded. Right. disintegrated right right when i got to music school right just like imploded right and like geffen and capital records these huge you know not mogul but like huge companies were folding and tower records folded and virgin megastore folded it was like huh so i was like that's not

good and i would see incredible musicians struggle and live in poverty their whole life and then horrible musicians make millions of dollars it didn't seem like there was any rhyme or reason to it but then so you were assessing the business possibility assessing it and and my band i was in a band jazz no it was like frank z. Jazz? No, it was like Frank Zappa, everything kind of music. It was like Beastie Boys, Frank Zappa, how they do like a little bit of everything. You a Zappa fan? Huge Zappa fan. I love Zappa.

It's like a requirement for going to Berklee College of Music that you listen to Zappa. Well, basically, music industry falling apart. And my band was doing, my band was called Blarf. And we're doing shows all around Boston. Yeah. At like All Asia and Cambridge and all these like shitty bars. Right. doing my band was called blarf and we're doing shows all around boston yeah at like all asia and cambridge and all these like shitty bars right and i would always see like open my comedy night open my comedy night flyers for comedy nights and um at the venues i was playing and i was like you

know what i should try i was like 19 20 years old i was like i should fucking try that let me just like i have all these ideas for bits i was just like kind of did it on a whim were you watching comedy at the time did you i was watching not a lot of live comedy but more like who are the people you're watching and you know what i wasn't watching i was influenced more by tv shows than stand-ups like i loved running stimpy and beavis and butthead yeah and mystery science theater 3000 and uh space ghost right um but i also ollie g show and cha Chappelle Show were on TV when I was in college and I fucking loved those guys. Yeah.

And I love Chris Farley. Right. But not stand-up specifically. I love stand-up too. I love stand-up too, but I wasn't as versed in stand-up when I started doing stand-up. Well, you like high concept shit too,

it seems. You like animation and shit. Yeah, I love like Space Ghost. I was obsessed with Space Ghost. Yeah, yeah. How absurd, the absurdity of Space Ghost. So, yeah, I just started doing comedy. As soon as I started doing it, I fell in love with it.

Where'd you go first? I went to, God, Dick's and, was it Dick Remington's? What was the bar? Dick Doherty's. Dick Doherty's and Nick's Comedy Dick Remington's? What was the bar? Dick Doherty's. Dick Doherty's and Nick's Comedy Stop. Nick's Comedy Stop. And Comedy Connection. Yeah.

And there was one out in Dorchester called Emerald Isle. I don't know that one. It was a shitty little bar. It wasn't a comedy club. Emerald Isle. There was a mic? It was an open mic. Yeah.

And, God, what else? All asia which was a bar in cambridge and and was the comedy studio there yet yes comedy studio that was um the first place i ever bombed rick jenkins rick jenkins and he would spit on me when he would talk and he would give me such shit for eating the light even if if I was like 30 seconds over. But I would do, it was the first time I bombed because it was the first time, the first four times I did stand-up comedy, I invited all my friends.

You know what I mean? I was like 20. So I was like, oh, you gotta come. And of course, you're not gonna bomb when like 40 of your friends are there. They're like, yeah! That comedy studio was the first time I didn't invite my friends.

And I went up with the same confidence and swagger and I just fucking ate shit so bad. And I was like, I remember going into like fight or flight response and like every, all the light was like really bright. Like I couldn't see anything. It was like in this void cloud. And I was like,

Holy shit. It was like traumatic. Yeah. And it's like, you know, all alone up there in front of people. It's a fucking, it's like being, you know, it's like when the swimming alone up there in front of people it's a fucking it's like being you know it's like when the swimming instructor throws you in the pool to learn how

to swim when you're a little kid and you drown for those like first 30 seconds you're literally like can't breathe it's like that's what it felt like um and it felt like that for like the next 10 years of doing stand-up i was like just fucking traumatized and terrified but uh i realized that comedy it feels like it it pays off much more than music i knew i wanted to be in entertainment and to perform and i felt like if i got really good at comedy i would get some type of work somehow versus really good at upright bass or jazz i would have been scraping by the rest of my life and playing cocktail gigs and weddings. But did you feel like, even with Blarf, or whatever the band was called,

did you feel that you were creatively servicing yourself? Because it seems to me that you have a, it's not like you're going the easy way. Yeah. I mean, it's not just a business decision. I mean, you had to be, on some level, had some creative shit to work out. Like you wanted to express yourself, I imagine.

Yeah? Yeah, I think so. I feel like a little bit of what performers have, what I have, is like that feeling where you don't really feel like you fit in everywhere, so you want to perform to express yourself so people understand you and love you kind of thing. Right, so you can to perform to express yourself so people understand you and love you right kind of thing you can find yourself yeah because this is my this is my territory here right what i do because florida growing up in florida it was so segregated and racist and anti-semitic and anti-haitian people hated there was this influx of haitians coming in in the 90s

everybody fucking hated haitians and being called a haitian was an insult and i'd be like fuck you i'm haitian and people like oh you're not like the haitian was an insult and I'd be like, fuck you, I'm Haitian. And people would be like, oh, you're not like the Haitians I know. I'd be like, fuck you, you know what I mean? So like- Outsider. Yeah, I felt like, blah, blah, blah.

That's every comedian's plight. I don't want to be like- No, no, but I mean, but it makes sense because I like the idea of that because I don't know if I ever got into it to be an entertainer. I really kind of wanted to find my voice, figure out what the hell-

I think there's that too. I don't think it was so academic like i want to get into entertainment i wasn't like i was just like i i got that urge was inside me i had to do something well what was it where were you working were you making any money doing stand-up were you working jobs no i was broke so that was in college and then i went to to New York the next year and I was doing standup every night and just Where it just open mics. Open mics and just like bringer shows and passing out flyers in the snow for five minutes of comedy. Right.

For like five minutes of unpaid work at Ha and just all the miserable. It's fucking miserable. Yeah. So. But you were in it. You were committed. I was committed and I was just working awful jobs, temping. I worked at a doggy daycare place and got fired immediately.

I got sick all the time and bit by all the dogs. I was fucking miserable and screaming by. And then like I would start booking commercials. And that was like, I could kind of live off that that would be peaks and valleys like i'd look like a fucking you know whatever budweiser commercial and like i'd have money for six months and i'd be doing okay and i'd just be doing stand-up and then i'd run out of money and be miserable again but and what were your parents saying during all this my mom has always been super supportive my dad it took him a while to come around, but now he's fully on board.

Yeah. Even before Eric Andre show, he just saw how stubborn and determined I was. And I remember he wanted me to, when I first moved to New York, he's a doctor. So he's like, you should go to med school. You should go to law school. You should go to med school. You should go to law school. And he was like, you should study for the

LSATs just take the LSATs I'll I'll pay for a tutor for you if you take the LSATs I was like okay and in my 21 year old brain I was like maybe I can be a lawyer and a comedian at the same time and like practice law during the day and go out at night it was like insane So I remember studying for the, studying with this LSAT tutor and for months and then taking the train out to Flatbush at some college out in deep in Brooklyn and about to take the LSAT. And the teacher was like, you know, this is your last chance to go to the bathroom or something like that. Like pick up your pencil and make sure it's sharpened. It was like the last chance i'm about to start the l set and

i looked down at the scantron and i broke my pencil in half and i got out and i walked out i got up walked out and went back on the train and just never took the l set i was like fuck this i am a comedian i was like i'm doing it i was like i had this like very like dramatic moment i was just like i'm not doing anything else except comedy. I don't care if it fucking kills me. I don't care if I'm broke for the rest of my life. I'd rather be broke and happy about what I'm doing. What'd you tell your dad?

I think I told him that. And he was like, well, I'd have to come around. Like, he's like, you're breaking the pencil and making this dramatic exit. Everyone else in the room is like,

what's happening? You stand up and you're like, this is bullshit. This is bullshit's happening yeah i had a really cherry mcguire kind of moment but um so you you kick around new york for a while and wait and you make you do the commercials and stuff but no real break comedically no nothing and i was the worst actor in the world and like when i finally got an agent and started auditioning I was like having a panic attack in every audition and I was just uh well there I saved up a bunch of money not a bunch of money but I saved up enough money from commercial work before i moved to los angeles yeah eight years ago to um invest in what was the eric andre show yeah sizzle reel that i shot in an abandoned

illegally occupied a bodega in bushwick so that was that was brewing then that was like 2008 2009 yeah i was brewing before you went to la right before i went to l like yeah months before i was actually going back and forth between new york and la kind of filming pieces for it and then editing in la and i was in la and i was living off a little bit of commercial money and i totally ran out of money and it took me like a year i had to buy final cut for dummies and teach myself how to edit um because i couldn't afford an editor and the fucking the sizzle reel was just this hodgepodge of footage yeah i had to and then i was going out auditioning and not booking anything to save my life and i sucked at acting and i had to get my ass into acting classes and i was just had

such bad anxiety and so hard on myself that i like had to get my ass in therapy and i started meditating and that got a lot better. But I was scraping. This was eight years ago? This was about, yeah, seven or eight years ago. What is it, 2016? Yeah. Seven years ago.

That's when you moved here permanently? Yeah. And so you're doing that. You learned how to do Final Cut. You got these bits and pieces of what was gonna be the Eric Andre Show pilot-ish thing. Yes, and then i finally got it together and finally got it to adult swim in 2010 and they loved it and then we shot a pilot

in 2011 and then we shot season one 2012 but i literally when i found out the email when i got the email that said that they were going to pick up the show, I had like 200 bucks in my bank account. I was like totally broke. I was like in between unemployment checks. I had like, cause when you fill out unemployment, you have to fill out what you made that week and not like when the check comes in.

So I think I, I like did some temp job thing. Yeah. I don't know. I was just down and out. I was like, and then on top, I was like eating beans.

I can't buy candlelight. Oh really? Where were you living? You know, like a a hobo like cracking open a can with a rock have a little bag on a bag and then and then you just wandered in you put your bag on a stick down at the gower put my bag on stick of my head and i was doing like a fucking riff style but like so when you were here and trying to integrate into LA, where were you living?

You were like literally- I was in a teeny little shithole studio apartment in Hollywood off Santa Monica and Vine. And you didn't have friends? Which is like the anus of Hollywood. I mean, I had comedian friends.

Yeah. But LA is very hard to figure out when you first get here. It's kind of like- Yeah, no, it's the worst. It's a odd city. There's no center to it. There's get here. It's kind of like... Yeah, no, it's the worst. It's a odd city. There's no center to it. There's no center.

It's sprawled out. You can't really... It's not easy to... When did you get the... But you got up to Aspen. Somebody must have seen you do something. Yeah, I... Like you were on the scene.

You must have had some representation or something. Yes. I got the representation through Aspen. Oh, you did? I did an audition for Live at Gotham and the woman that booked the Fresh Faces for... That Last Aspen thing? That was the final Aspen, right?

I think it was. Yeah, yeah. So you're doing stand-up and you could have like... But you didn't tour much necessarily. You weren't out there doing stand-up on the road. It wasn't your job. Not... I have a whole bunch, but it wasn't, not, I have a whole bunch,

but it wasn't like, like the show. Oh, since Eric Andre show, I have more, but like in, in, in like fits and starts,

right. Right. Not like, like Hannibal is out like 300 dates a year. Something insane. Yeah. Yeah. Like I'm not on.

How'd you meet him? We were doing comedy in New York at the same time. Like, I'm not on that. How'd you meet him? We were doing comedy in New York at the same time. We're the same age, and he moved from Chicago. I moved to New York, and then like six months later, he moved from Chicago to New York, and we were just doing the same chicken shit shows all over town. And you guys became friends?

Yeah, and I just loved how he was, how funny he was and like how polar opposite in energy he was for me i would like it was like he'd be the great it'd be such a good odd couple he's also gotten more energy as a performer over time he does but he was super mellow when i was super hyper when uh we met and he was super mellow when we met so um yeah he just seemed like so the conception of the eric andre show of which i watched uh the most recent two episodes from the new season nice is that the one stacy dash yes okay cool and the guy from uh 30 rock yeah yeah yeah jack was it being jack mcbrary jack jack mcbrary yeah but i get the idea of it so the idea of originally was to just sort of

like go balls to the walls and deconstruct the talk show yeah it wasn't that academic i think i just i liked i was obsessed with the mock talk show it's really like a derivative of a derivative because the mock talk shows like jiminy glick space ghost tom green show where we're doing that to johnny carson right we're deconstructing johnny carson i like and jay leto i liked i just loved those shows i just love jiminy glick and holly g show and and and and tom green show the discomfort of it so like i was a derivative of a derivative right um uh like when punk music came out it was like a derivative of rock music but when hardcore music came out it was removed from rock music it was like a derivative of punk music so like it more it came more out of me loving mock talk shows than me there was still like me watching jay leno's monologue and being

like oh my god this is like a fucking wreck yeah train wreck yeah um but uh it came more from my love and appreciation of the mock talk shows and the dysfunction and you wanted to take it further i wanted to take it further yeah and um and just be like the most inept incompetent talk shows how how did tim and eric get involved we were looking for a production company and did you like their shit yeah i loved tim and eric awesome show i thought it was like it was the first live action show on adult swim um they were like forced to do cartoons because it was cartoon network and then when they started doing live action i was like oh my god thank god it's so cathartic to watch. And Tim and Eric were so funny and they had this like absurd silliness that

was like so refreshing. So they were looking to expand their company. And like, um, we were looking for a production company and we're just like, these guys are the perfect fit. They'll have the crew that gets this kind of, they get the timing of it.

They get it. Yeah. Yeah. They're not like hands on EPS on it, but like they're the crew that they have assembled, we share and they are the perfect people for the job. They understand the sensibility. Yeah, because you don't want to crew up with people.

It's such an uphill battle if you're crewing up with people that don't understand the sensibility of such a specific kind of thing. Like it just, it's just, it's tough. Well, I fucking liked it. Thanks, man. I was really worried.

I think that's why I was sending you, trying to send you as much as possible, because I was like, I hope he sees that there's a mind to it. Oh, no. And it's not just me with a microphone stand. I'm like. No, man. I liked him and Eric, too. I can't explain why, but I know they occupy their own universe and that what they're riffing

on is multilayered. What they're riffing on is multi-layered, and there's a lot of different tiers to it in terms of format and just timing and pacing and kind of like goo and things. There's always a lot of things that immediately hit me was uh well the the the violence of the comedy not violent actions but like when something happens on your show it's like yes yeah yeah you're like what the fuck yeah yeah like you know the pacing of it is like you're just waiting for a god yeah yeah i like it i like jarring but i also like the fact that for some reason, most of the time, you have blood coming from something. Mm-hmm.

It's a bloody show. No, but it's just like you're on the street. Even when you don't have a bone sticking out of your leg, there's just a trickle of blood on your head. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It gets a good reaction. I'll tell you that blood helps but it's just like you don't acknowledge it it's not like too much blood there's just blood yeah we're going for and we were going for more of like uh this like dystopian uh theme this

season yeah it's a different differentiate between this season and the other season so like uh yeah we just wanted it more like uh eraser head lynchian oh really the other seasons aren't like that the other seasons have an element of that but um they like last the season before i permed my hair like kat williams and i was more like up and swinging and they had like a kind of a tropical aesthetic yeah on the set so we just wanted the polar opposite this season we want to make it very gray and broken gloomy and broken and then nothing's that permanent yes the impermanence of all things so when it was right and the monologue is there's no real monologue structure yeah there it's just the the bare

essentials of staging yes yeah that that imply any sort of order. There's a monologue, yeah. That's why this season I grew out my nails, and I didn't wear deodorant the whole season, and I didn't go out in the sun. I fucking love the opening bit, that one where you're just being thrown around on a line. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That was fun. Yeah. on a line. Yeah. That was fun. Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know,

and how, but it's one of those situations where do those guests, like, what's her name, Nash? Stacey Dash. Stacey Dash from Fox News. Yes. And Jack, did they have any idea

what they were walking into? No idea. Zero idea what they were walking into. So great. Jack walked, Jack. But they signed releases before they went on?

Yeah, we got the releases before. We've never had a guest. We've had people people we pranked in the street pull a release but we never had a guest pull a release we had one guest we've had two guests walk out we've had only one guest that was like screaming at us and didn't want to didn't want us to air it but they didn't ask for the release back which was weird did you air it oh yeah that was last year that was lauren conrad this year ti walked out but he he walked out but he wasn't like lauren conrad he walked out just he was like you know what i've had enough when he was very polite and we're cool afterwards the rapper yeah yeah yeah he walked out because he's like i've seen enough male nudity for one day he's like i'm at my cap

and we cut it out i was kind of making fun of jesus and i was making fun of pimps and stuff like that uh-huh like so i think he just had he hit his but the segment he had like a polite walkout so we had one polite walkout and we were cool afterwards i was like hey you know i'm just being a fucking nut job he's like yeah it's fine and i could tell he was like all right yeah yeah and then but lauren conrad was like fuck your agent was like fuck yeah you know i drew a swastika on my face during the interview and they were trying to like use that as leverage a little lady was like i my i had family members die in the holocaust i was like i i had family members i was like i'm black and

jewish hannibal's black as night my director is japanese and jewish and my producer's name is joshua cohen we're not exactly the aryan nation don't act like we're a bunch of neo-nazis harassing lauren conrad who's the waspiest person in the fucking world so like but she didn't walk out because of that they were just using that as leverage she walked out because i barfed on the desk and like slurped it back up and she didn't appreciate that but i was also being nuts and i had a chainsaw and i was being nuts all fucking time but uh but the uh i don't want to spoil any of it but it's weird because they're what are they 12 minutes a piece each episode yeah yeah yeah quarter quarter hour yeah it's enough yeah it's a punk song you wanted to be

short you don't want minor threat to play a half an hour song they're not emerson lincoln palmer well that's what i said to my my uh my producer i said you know the the effect of it is it's almost like in a way that that punk aesthetic of really because you do like kind of stick it up you do speak a certain amount of truth to power and there is a sort of anarchy to it but it's almost going further than jackass because jackass seemed like some sort of initially like what kind of boys club bullshit is it but then you realize like oh these guys don't give a fuck yeah and they're just gonna you know go for it yeah that you do that but it's a little angrier there's a little less yeah i think that those guys are the master of physical comedy right those kind of like high high high stakes stunts where they're fucking

with sharks in the ocean and alligators and like. But they're really getting hurt, as I think you are. They're really getting hurt. And it's also about their like party ensemble. Yeah. I think that I've taken elements that I've liked and can actually do

because I don't have the balls that those guys have. Right. I never fuck with a wild animal. Yeah, but you, that fucking thing on the train with the Chinese food. I can fuck with human beings, but I wouldn't fuck with animals. Right. Because I know how to bob and weave with a wild animal like yeah but you that fucking thing on the train with the chinese food i can fuck with human beings but i wouldn't fuck with animals because i know how to bob and weave with a human being i don't know how to bob and weave with a silverback gorilla or an alligator that thing on the train was funny how many like two or three dudes who i just went at you just sort of

like hit you and it was like the hottest day of the summer so it's like boiling and that's here in new york you're like what is this shit this isn't real when it gets hot new york your fucking tolerance for bullshit goes way down and the the sprite guy that was funny and that mcbride i'm surprised he wasn't angry after he was like i didn't know it was a prank show no he was not he was not he was just like and we cut it out in the middle of the interview because we shoot each one of those interviews for like an hour and a half right and we whittle it down to like three minutes right so in the middle he's like oh this is a prank show he didn't burp i added that i embellished that who is that other woman i didn't know her that

was she a singer the uh oh abby lee. Yeah, who is she's a dance mom She's a reality show. Oh god, she she knew nothing I mean she showed up and walked up to my first ad and what so what is this like a cartoon or before she walks? To the stage. She was just in like the hallway. You shoot them here. We should have been Burbank We shoot the street stuff in New York, right? We shoot the studio stuff in LA, right? but We shoot the street stuff in New York. Right. And we shoot the studio stuff in LA. Right. But yeah, I think she's in jail for embezzlement right now. Oh, no. Yeah, she was having like, she was like laundering money.

She was having people from Australia send her like Ziploc bags of like hundreds of thousand dollar bills or something. She's so crazy. It was so funny how she kept trying to manage her charm through it all. Yeah, she was grabbing it's cause like she had some type of media training when shit goes south just smile find your camera and smile at it she was really struggling and the whole the whole presence of hannibal i always like that kind of shit where it's like the guy like you know what is he really doing sometimes he's the most

dysfunctional yeah just standing and looming every once in a while, chiming in. Do what he does? Just let it, yeah. You just riff it, the whole thing? Yeah, he's best when he's just off the cuff riffing. I'll send him the script. I don't know if he's reading it. Right.

He reads the bare minimum, but it's better that way. It's just better if he's just in the moment and just being himself. And that Stacey chick she like that was fucking hilarious that was fun the reaction that she had to the fake the fake picture of obama like where she was like oh what what like she was hot and bothered she didn't have no idea she was gonna see a big old dick she's gonna see the president's dick the president's fake dick what was she like afterwards she was actually really sweet i think like she'd never done anything like that and even though i was like it was really funny saying a bunch of fucked up crazy shit to her i think she

was like she needed oddly charmed yeah like she needed it. Yeah, she's so tight. Yeah. So tight. Yeah. And I could tell she was kind of forgetting all of her Fox News talking points because she was like, there's rats under her feet and she's looking at Obama's dick. Yeah, yeah. It was good. It was good. And that rat handler has to hide in that goddamn under my desk for like 20 minutes. He's just boiling under there with a bunch of rats. So a lot of things happen under the desk.

A lot of shit happens under the desk. Or we'll like, we've even like tickled the guest's taint. We had Jimmy Kimmel on and we tickled his taint under the chair. We had a PA under his chair. What'd he do? He's like, it feels like there's a human under my chair. He played it cool. He played it cool.

But yeah. Did he know the show? He probably knew it better than Stacey Dash and Jack McBrayer. It's interesting. How long are you going to- The comedians knew it better than stacy dash and jack mcbrayer it's interesting how long are you gonna the comedians know it better than right but it's so like how long do you think you can get away with people not knowing i don't know but we had jack black and howie mandel on this year and they both knew the show yeah and we were and it didn't matter we were like we were like how are they gonna how are we gonna do it if they know the show? And we're like, let's just hit them with some of our hardest pranks. Like, let's save our hard stuff for those two guys.

Because, like, no matter how much you know the show, if it starts raining used dental floss, you know, Harry Mandel's a germaphobe. So if we start raining used dental floss down on his head, he's going to have a reaction. Yeah. You know what I mean? So, like, it was okay.

It was actually like, the Howie Mandel interview and the Jack Buck interview were two of the best interviews. We just went so fucking hard and crazy on them. Well, they'll both play. Yeah.

Yeah. That it was fine even when, I mean, you don't want to stack the season with people that know. The ideal guest is somebody that walks in knowing nothing. I just realized

I haven't interviewed Howie Mandel. He's great. I know. Yeah. Interview his ass. Like, I get pitched people now, and I'm like, yeah, let's try that. Let's talk to them. Yeah, yeah.

But then also, I just had Billy Crystal on for the first time. Yeah. Which was, you know. How was that? It was great. You got along with him? Yeah. Who was the most contentious?

Well, nobody's really, I mean, like, years. Gallagher. He walked out. Yeah, but that was. He was your Lauren Conrad I mean, like years. Gallagher. He walked out. Yeah, but that was. He was your Lauren Conrad. Yeah, kind of. But I listened to that too. And it seemed like.

He was. He was like in a frazzled state. He always is. He didn't seem like he was listening to what you were saying. Yeah, I was just trying to guide something. It seemed like you were talking. Yeah. And he already had whatever made up in his mind,

and it seemed like this, like, all he heard was white noise. It was just like static in his brain. Yeah, he had made some decisions. Was that in here? No, that was in a hotel room in Portland. And did you ever reach back out, and you were like, hey, Gallagher. Not really, not really. Did he ever reach out and say, fuck you, man?

Not really. We had him on the Eric Andre show. How'd that go? It's the only interview we've ever filmed that we didn't really use yeah we used two seconds of the footage because he was hard to i think we had 21 interviews and we had to cut one and he was the hardest to shake because it was the same thing like i was talking to him but he wasn't really processing anything i was saying so how do you prank somebody like that or have any type of semblance of anything? The weird thing about him is I'm always pretty respectful unless somebody really is fucking pushing at me.

He deserves his place. He was a big deal. He's a real comic. He did the work. He did like 10 specials. I was willing to do that, but it just got a little away from me, and I didn't respect him that much.

And that was before I was able to respect people, even if I didn't like them. But contentious, it doesn't really get contentious. What happens is sometimes people come in here and they don't know what it is. So they expect questions and I don't, I got nothing. I don't write,

you know, I'm banking on a conversation happening. Right. And if that doesn't happen, then it's sort of like, fuck so it's not contentious it's like key you know to keep at it until something opens where you're kind of like you know they they're engaged and then hold that somehow that's what i'm looking for so it's not usually contentious but sometimes it's a little like what are we doing yeah what do we got why don't you get like a neo-nazi in here somebody like it's because i'm yeah it's primarily a

creative person show like a really creative neo-nazi i guess i could do that like get jim goad or somebody he's not really a neo-nazi but he's definitely on the margin but he's like a wife woman beating but you know white supremacist kind of yeah right, right. Wasn't he in jail for beating his wife like within an inch of her life or something? Jim Goad, the writer? Jim Goad, the writer, yeah. I don't know, again. The Vice magazine contributing.

Yeah, before that he did a thing called Answer Me. There are these three magazines he did. Yeah, he went to jail for like beating his wife within an inch of her life or something horrid. Again, we can't verify that and you don't exactly know. No. But I mean, maybe I would do that. I mean, I wasn't there, but I think like I went down a wormhole of like researching the case

and that's what I came back with. I think like I do better with people that- I'm just talking about everybody. I'm just accusing people of beating their wives just willy-nilly no but i heard jim go does are you all right you got a girlfriend uh no i just uh had a breakup yeah in therapy you're going to therapy going to therapy and that's okay yeah you got medicine no i'll take a xanax on a bad day but not permanently on medicine though weed weed a little bit i hated weed for a long time and i just got back into it yeah i got a weed

card i was like you know and i lived in la for eight years let me let me see what this weed card business is all about it's interesting i'll take like a little puff yeah before bed and take a bath yeah in epsom salt really? And I'll listen to like Willie Nelson or something. No kidding. And then take it, yeah. Is that true? Yeah. You take a bath in Epsom salt?

I take like an Epsom salt bath. Where'd you learn that? I don't know. From CVS. Yeah, you're riffing as strong as you used to be. I got to get this mic on top of my fucking head. What am I, in a bathtub with Eson salt listening to willie nelson music you used to have more speed to them those are my gulch days yeah i'm glad it worked out for you man i like the new show and i like

you and i hope we're okay yes we're okay. All right, thanks, man. That worked out okay? That worked out? You know, I was very, I liked the guy. I mean, usually isn't that the case? When you have these dumb beats with somebody that rubbed you the wrong way, when you finally kind of get around to spend some time, you kind of have fun together and you like the guy. And he's a bright guy.

He's a funny guy. Very talented. Listen to me. What am I? His show's funny. Watch it. It's tomorrow night. Starts August 5th on Adult Swim. Go to WTFpod.com slash tour to check out my upcoming dates. You can go to the merch to get some posters

or t-shirts, whatnot. Yeah. You can do all that. Alright? I'm going gonna play my telecaster Thank you. Boomer lives! You can get anything you need with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get an ice rink on Uber Eats. But iced tea and ice cream? Yes, we can deliver that. Uber Eats. Get almost, almost anything. Order now.

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