WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Norm Macdonald from 2011

Episode Date: September 14, 2021

From October 2011, Marc's revelatory conversation with Norm Macdonald about life, comedy, gambling, death and Rodney. Norm died on September 14, 2021 at age 61. 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.

So, uh, Norm Macdonald in the garage, nervous. How the hell could you be nervous? I mean, do you always get nervous? Uh, I get somewhat nervous about, uh, things sometimes. Sure. Yeah. Like everybody, right? But I mean, you've done so much, it doesn't go away.

Uh, it hasn't with me i mean i don't get uh um god now i'm stumbling and it's all right man you know i'll open like this i think i have a weird memory of you that you probably wouldn't remember i think i was in i think i was in your hotel room the the when you were watching i showed up in your hotel room when you were watching. I showed up at your hotel room when you had just done your first Letterman with Caroline Ray. Yeah. Yeah, and I think that I actually watched you not watch your first Letterman on television. Is that possible?

I'm thinking. Well, I would know I would not watch it. That's for sure. It was like 1989. Is that about right? Yeah, I think. 88, 89? Probably about that.

Yeah, that's funny because I know Caroline and I remember you. And I remember Caroline. All my memories are so vague. Right. Well, it was weird because I barely knew Caroline. We were sort of hanging around with this group of comics. And I had a car. And she goes, let's go to the hotel. My friend Norm just did Letterman tonight.

So we go over there and that was the first time I ever met you. And I don't know how much you even played the States. I didn't know any comedians from the States. That was my problem. Right. And so I go up to this room. I meet you and you're about to go on Letterman. And I'm standing there with Caroline and you are on your bed face down with your hands hiding your eyes for the entire time

does that sound like a real thing no that would be me uh i can't uh well you know how it is when you know uh how bad you are and uh you know what i mean did you know i mean well i know that's how we perceive ourselves i don't know if it's really true you did well right well we have we can probably probably know more than another person. No, we don't. About ourselves? I don't know. No, but I mean, are you not able to watch yourself now?

No, it's pretty hard. Because I really like comedy. I love comedy like I guess all comedians do or whatever. But you always think you're better than when you see yourself yeah yeah yeah in the moment it feels like you've won and then you watch it and you're like oh why am I doing that with my eyebrow

no it's like when you hear your fucking voice especially me because I don't think I sound weird but then people come up to me and go hey I can do an impression of you and I fucking sounds like a retard he's like, ah, ah, ah.

And I go, fuck, man, is that what I sound like? So it's funny when you have a weird voice because a lot of times, I don't give a fuck why people laugh. But I've always been very material dependent in my stand-up. I got to work like a motherfucker to get laughs.

But people go like oh you can just talk with your weird voice i'm like no i can't you just maybe you think that shit but i remember when i do like because when i first came to l.a and i do auditions and then i would have the best material of the 10 guys yeah i would get the most laughs yeah but i would never get hired yeah and then i realized why it's because they want the fuckers that can uh uh get laughs without material i can't do that that's what you need for a sitcom right if you're if you're right you know have a sitcom going and a guy has some good jokes well you can hire him as the writer yeah you want the big fucking guy charismatic guy yeah no material at all that seems to have an emotional range. Exactly, exactly.

When I did my first comedy festival thing, that Montreal thing. What year was that? Fuck, I don't know. Like 87? Yeah, I don't know dates, but it was around there. How long had you been doing comedy at that point?

Six months. Really? Yeah, but it was Canada, so we got a home court thing. In American years, that's four years? No, no, I'm saying because the Montreal Comedy but it was Canada, so we got a home court thing. So that was like in American years, that's four years? No, no, I'm saying because the Montreal Comedy Festival was in Canada, we had a quota to fill. I would never have gotten on it if I was in the States.

So I got my five minutes just at rote. That's the way I used to do comedy. I'd memorize every fucking word. And so I had it all figured out and shit, right? And so then I go there, I meet Sinbad, right? So I didn't know who Sinbad was, and he goes, and he's completely relaxed. I'm all thinking about my...

Some sort of one-piece outfit. He did. His hair matched his shirt, and they were both orange. Yeah, yeah. So then he said, he was just so relaxed, and he said, hey, let's go. I got to get some socks. So we go to this fucking store right when we first go into the store

there's no one there it's a small store so there's no one there the lady's in the back yeah so the lady takes a minute to come out yeah and he's like where's that lady you know and nobody here you know and i'm like yeah and so he goes out he gets his fucking socks. Nothing happens, right? So then that night at the gala, I do my carefully constructed material. Sinbad comes out. He goes, what the fuck is going on? He doesn't swear. He goes, what's going on with these stores with socks? I'm like, holy shit.

And then he's like, you go in the store and they don't, no one there. And then people are agreeing with him. I'm like what none of it made any sense except that he destroyed and i didn't uh that's when i realized that uh that i was missing a whole bunch of stuff because i guess at first you think you're good and stuff like that no you are good but and i think that the fact is really if you were to look at it in another way that if people are able to do an impersonation of you that means you have a defined style whereas like i guarantee you there's not a lot of people that can do sin bad though you did just do a pretty good one i was trying to do it

as unracist as possible but uh but no i think like uh i don't know that much stuff. But I think that with stand-ups, a lot of people, it's hard for a person that creates material is usually a kind of a sensitive, shy kind of person, at least in my experience. With you? With the people that I've known. In your experience with yourself? Yeah, I was always crazy shy and stuff like that. And also very self-conscious of looking like an idiot.

So I couldn't go on stage and run around and dance. So when I see guys that can do it, like when I see John Cleese, like this brilliant mind, and then he can do crazy returns. Act like an idiot. Yeah, that's amazing. And also, of course, prior, you know? It's so weird because I'm the exact same way, and I don't think I've talked to anybody on this show that has that same thing where i am envious

of a lot of comics that people would dismiss you know only because it's sort of like well how do they not feel like they're be afraid they're gonna look like a dick like as soon as i've ever done anything physical if i even think about it for a second i'm like i'm an asshole and and they don't laugh i know yeah like just recently i was on fallon and somehow did an impulse i saw you the dane cook was very funny never done that yeah it just came out of nowhere i didn't second guess it and it fucking worked but if i would have said like for the five minutes i was sitting there like i'm gonna do this dane cook thing maybe it's because you were embodying dane cook right in that in an yeah that i actually had the confidence of Dane Clayton. Yeah, right, right. Maybe that's why, right? Yeah.

But yeah, I was always astonished. And I'm also like you, I'm envious of people that, because I used to be frozen on stage, right? I still don't take the mic out of the stand. So you did comedy six months and you were at the Montreal. What is it? The Canadian scene is so different, because I talked to Russell Peters recently,

and there's this weird work ethic that if you're one of the guys up there you're gonna work and you're gonna work for one guy yeah you're gonna work yeah it was a great place to start because first of all there's no industry in Canada there's no movies or television isn't there a little and doesn't it I think there might be now but when I was doing it there was none because it's horrible if you stay there long enough and you don't leave, that you will be given a television show of some kind. Right. For a certain amount of time. It's awful. They're awful.

You know, Canadian, everything about Canada sucks. Really? Well, in terms of art. Of entertainment? Yeah. Like all the entertainers leave and most of them don't want to go. Most of them are mad because they weren't recognizing Canada. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They had to come to the States. Most of them are mad because they weren't recognized in Canada. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They had to come to the States. But so we didn't, anyways, we didn't have movies or TV to do. Yeah. And so we just did stand-up and we thought that's all there was, which was fun, like just being stand-ups and going around the country doing stand-up.

And then when I got to LA, I suddenly, I was like, holy fuck, is everybody's handsome? Like I didn't, because we weren't handsome. We were just fucking old ghosts. Well, comics weren't supposed to be handsome. Louis C.K. once said that to me, like furious at some point when, I think when Jay Moore first started doing comedy, like right when Jay Moore showed up on the scene, and this is not meant to piss off Jay Moore in any way.

You know, Louis was aggravated because he's like, it wasn't for them. He's good looking. You know, I just want to do Letterman before I'm fat and bald no it is very true handsome i used to really have problems with handsome people uh like friends you know yeah it would bother me so much i watched friends and then i saw i said fuck these are the funniest super handsome people ever i'll give that to them you know i mean who are your guys it's probably harder if you're so fucking handsome well yeah because people expect you to have your shit together so i think that's the hardest sell for handsome people it's like my life is fucked up it's like

look at you how is that possible you fuck really is your life bad you've got all your hair asshole hard to be a sympathetic character when you're really attractive yes it is yeah when you started out though who are your guys like who were the guys you hung out with? Are they still around? Do you still keep in touch with them? In Canada, they're like the guys that were big. You know, most people, Canada's like, it's the same with every fucking goddamn city I go to.

Everybody's like, this is the fucking best comedy city and all that horse shit. And I remember I'd be on the road, wherever the fuck you were, you know, you'd be in Dallas or something, we'd go or something go oh man these are the funniest guys ever wait till you and there's all there's always the one mythic guy yeah yeah go fucking kenny that guy the funniest guy ever but he's a heroin addict if he wakes up he's hilarious and then he would shamble in on saturday night say something about aids or something you go what, what the fuck? He doesn't seem that funny. I guess he's funny if you know him.

Oh, that's hilarious. The local hero that could never get out. Exactly. And then like, you know, whenever they're past that prime of whatever made them popular in that small scene, then they finally go, I think I'm going to do it.

I'm going to go to LA. And then these broken men, it's like, no, he used to be the guy. But he wasn't really the guy. I met Rodney Dangerfield because I had, do you remember the book? I think it was The Last Laugh or something about Lenny? Yeah.

There was a secondary guy, I wish I could remember his name, Joe something. There was a character in that book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wait, wait. Fuck. Ansys. Joe Ansys. Joe Ansys. Yeah.

So I read that book. It was like the Bible. The Lenny Bruce biography by Albert Goldman. By Goldman. Yeah. And so Ansys was the funny guy right that never went on stage that's right the brilliant funny guy right and they all you know i but and i met him you did dangerfield you did dangerfield came and did saturday night live

and uh joe ansys was with him i was like joe ansys yeah and then i waited about two hours for him to say anything funny and i was like i don't know maybe just fucking got drugs for them or something or maybe it just took longer back then you know maybe it wasn't so about laugh efficiency well yeah and maybe also he was stuck in that time maybe lenny bruce like if he were right here now would not be very funny but you know i think that book i think goldman probably exploited that because like in my mind behind every genius there's some dude going that fucker stole my shit yes you know and and usually there's a reason well then why didn't you get on stage it's like i don't do that yeah shut up and also the authors don't know shit yeah like you know every time they do a

fucking article they come to you i'm sure they've done articles on you and then you you try to tell them yeah like what's the real story yeah and they still fucking write what they want like what they had already seen it they take it out of context they frame it the way they want it have you had a lot of experience with that a little bit like uh people i've uh there was a time when i was on saturday night live everyone hated it you know when you were doing update yeah they hated far they hated sandler and farley you mean critics critics yeah so uh it was pretty everybody was oh it's dead saturday night dead and all that shit and so uh they came and the guy had an agenda obviously and um but he was very unfair like sandler was very very funny

and nobody's funny it was funnier than farley and uh then he presented it as if these guys were always doing shtick and everyone was looking away embarrassed and everything like that and i remember him laughing yeah so he it was very frustrating did you fucking and they made farley i never forget it was on cover of new york time new york magazine and they had farley do a photo shoot where he had a television on his head yeah and it was it was kind of funny but farley's doing a big like a crazy physical thing with this big tv on his head and then they put it on the cover and they said, is comedy dead? And how did he respond to that? He wanted to go beat up the guy.

And Lauren said, oh, really? You can't beat up people. You can't beat up the reporter? Yeah, yeah. But he was really that angry? Yeah, he was more angry because they, not for him, but because they attacked Sandler, actually. He was very protective. Well, that whole crew, you were part of that crew. They seemed tighter than most SNL crews, like Farley attacked Sandler, actually. He was very protective. Well, that whole crew, you were part of that crew.

They seemed tighter than most SNL crews, like Farley, Sandler, Spade, you. You guys seemed like a real kind of rat pack of comedic talent. Well, we were pretty tight because, except for Farley, we were all stand-ups. So we didn't know how the fuck to act or anything. Was Chris there, too, or no? Chris. Rock or Rock? Rock was there, too, yeah. kind of where we didn't know how the fuck to act or anything and like before us chris there too or no chris rock or rock was there too yeah so you're all sitting around going i don't know how to do a character yeah we didn't know anything so all we knew is how to directly talk into the camera right i mean that's the only good thing we were good at and uh but uh the rest of it was was was real

tough and so i wouldn't you know i would plead with people not to put me in sketches, you know? Because sometimes I would think of a good idea and write the sketch and knew I could do it. But I was... But anyways, the point is, like before us, there was this great cast. And even now, there's this great cast of actors, which probably should be what Saturday Night Live is,

not stand-ups. Yeah. As a matter of fact, I think all acting should probably preclude stand-ups for the's a matter of fact i think all acting should probably preclude stand-ups for the most part but now you know this so they're they know how to talk to each other like that me and spade and so far whether we didn't i just can't remember i can't imagine the the cynicism approaching a sketch exactly with you guys no that's what we'd mostly do is we'd spend the first uh half of the night writing

the sketch and the second half of the night crumpling it up saying how shit it was because this is another thing that i noticed coming from stand-up into because i was um never had any desire to be anything other than a stand-up everything else would just accidentally happen from the stand-up you know but some for accidentally happen from a stand-up, you know? But for some reason, in Hollywood, they go, I guess because of Bill Cosby or Roseanne Barr

or some people who've had success in stand-up, they go, well, he can do other stuff. He can act with Bill to show around him. He can do anything. Which is not an experiment.

Give him some children. Throw them in a living room. Not an experiment. That's a word. Well, was that part of Lorne's thing? Wasn't that the season where he's like,

let's use stand-ups? It's sort of like that scene't that the season where he's like, let's use stand-ups? It's sort of like that scene in The Right Stuff where he's like, I want test pilots. I want stand-up comedians. And what was the struggle? How often did you deal with Lorne around that stuff? Well, the great thing about Lorne is you could do anything you wanted. He would tell you wise things, know like wisdom or whatever he's like a little buddha guy right yeah did it ever make sense or not to me you'd always walk away going

what the fuck to other people it did like i remember one time he wanted me like this was actually uh with the weekend update they wanted me to do weekend update um with a lady yeah like two of us and i was like that sounds like shit i don't want to fucking that sounds like shit like i'm like if there's a lady and a dude like what are we making fun of local news what the fuck is that he's like no no he's like well you'll be he had some crazy he goes like i think he liked me because i didn't understand what he was talking about and he goes like uh he goes you'll be a fred astaire and she'll be ginger you'll like you know give her the sex comedy and she'll give you the sex and i was like the dancers

what i didn't know what he was fucking talking about so anyways i go i don't want to fucking do it with a lady let franken do it yeah so uh franken was gonna do it yeah it was frank and me or somebody else so uh i didn't care that much about it so because I could just do stand up but anyways what happened was

it was funny like Steve Martin walked in because he was hosting and Lauren to embarrass me went let's see what Steve thinks about it and Steve Martin

doesn't give a fuck about anything so but he goes Norm wants to do what the lady thinks and he does this

big long spiel and Steve Martin's completely uninterested. Been dragged into something he wanted no part of. But luckily, he fucking just said out of the blue, he goes, he goes, oh, fuck. He goes, I did this award show with some broad, and they paired me up with her, and she fucked everything up. Like, I guess they stuck him with something.

So then Lauren goes, oh, there's some support from an unexpected place. And that's how you got the solo update? Yeah, Steve Martin, because he was such a hero to Lauren. You had a bad experience with an awards show, and you get to run the solo on the update? Yeah, it was awesome. That was a fucking good moment. But I would have been in big trouble with a lady. But then later, they did it with a lady and a dude.

Because he kept saying, oh, remember, because I i know saturday night live you know like all of us right yeah and he was like remember i remember jane and jane and dan and i was like that was shit like i remember jane you ignorant slut right but i also remember all the rest of the fucking shit like he had a hat on and pretend to be from the like they played characters yeah and i i was not interested in that because dennis kind of changed it to dennis miller where where you do jokes you do jokes and you're not doing a parody of a fucking did now what was the reaction to you when you first took update because i remember and it was you definitely made it your own because you're one of those guys as you're sort of uh establishing here that you can only do what you do yeah i can't do well i

can't yeah the big problem i guess with me with update is i'm not politically aware of at all so i was like well i can't uh be political right you know i can't i don't know how to do it but it was interesting though because you're updating the way you do comedy there it rides that line of like uh you're you're almost like the the thing that makes it so cutting and shocking is it's so fucking plainly said that this is what bullshit is. Oh, that's nice. No, but it's a good thing. Yeah, well, it was my plan. I mean, no.

Just to cut through the bullshit. Yeah, I thought, because I don't like cleverness that much. Like, I always was, again. What's an example of that? Like, sexual innuendo rather than sexual, like, you know what I mean? I don't like that my mother can giggle at some joke on Will and grace and then i can say to her no no you know what that means right he's talking about fucking the other guy in the ass and then she's like oh no i'm like it's the same fucking thing why can't you just fucking why can't they just say he's gonna fuck him in the ass

yeah and you get the same isn't it something cowardly about like cloaking it or something like i don't know psychological shit but it must be some level of uh dissociating yourself slightly from what you actually mean from the truth like that like innuendo protects you from seeing the reality and enables you to laugh at it yeah yeah but why need a good god in these days why would you need innuendo yeah no to me i'm shocked that anyone thinks you could be shocked by anything yeah i i find that now the only thing that's shocking is when someone tells the fucking truth. And then people are like, what just happened? That guy can't come back. Like an update, I was always saying, I always thought, I said the perfect joke would be if the punchline and the setup were almost identical.

And then I was saying, can we ever get a joke like that? That would be the coolest. And then we actually did get one joke that was pretty close that not perfect but it was uh lyle lovett is um lyle lovett and uh and uh julie roberts are getting a divorce and uh you know people close to the couple say the reason is because uh he's lyle lovett and she's julie roberts so it was pretty close you know the setup and the punchline were pretty close to each other i was happy with that that was the grail yeah that was the grail i don't know if we've completely got it when that that youtube thing that was going

around i think it was were you at a where was that where you did the the old jokes at the roast oh yeah it was a roast yeah yeah what what was the what was your agenda behind that um i mean what were you thinking because it got very popular and everyone thought it was so fucking you know it was like they put it was like genius they put it wasn't no no no it wasn't that it wasn't genius but i just want to know why you did it well the real reason it was because it was a roast for bob saga right who's a friend of mine yeah and i don't, I guess I don't like roasts. Yeah. But, I mean,

I shouldn't say that. I guess I admire, I don't really admire roasts. It's a certain style. It's a certain style. I've come to accept things. Yeah. But,

Saget said, can you come and roast me? And Saget's like a really nice guy. And I said, fuck, I don't know, man. He goes,

come on, I don't know why he kept pushing it. So I'm like, it was the night before. And so this guy, Sandy Gallen, who produces these roasts and stuff. Yeah. Or Joel Gallen. Yeah.

I don't know his name. I only did one and that was all I could take. Yeah, it's tough. And so he said, I said, I don't know how to do this stuff. He goes, just be shocking. And so luckily when he said shocking, I thought, oh, well well if I do the opposite you know it's like I said I've heard people go I got it I go well what the fuck is to get yeah like it's a grade three arithmetic yeah it's not

simple it's not a so your choice was just to be like I'm gonna do these old beautiful jokes yeah just to counteract all the bullshit of the roast there was jokes that my dad had when i was a kid my dad uh when i was starting comedy he gave me a book it was very touching he gave me a book of that he had of uh jokes you say to people at their retirement parties oh really to help me with my stand-up it was very touching it was close to like one of those 101 jokes kind of thing so so that's where i got the jokes and a lot of them were like so antiquated like they were like there was one where i said to gilbert godfrey like you're you remind me of a typewriter because your head is under wood or your neck is under wood it was just so silly

and they were all hilarious everyone was laughing their ass off no they weren't yeah like when you're standing up there yeah first of all you can't you know how when you're And they were all hilarious. Everyone was laughing their ass off. No, they weren't. Like when you're standing up there. Yeah. First of all, you can't, you know how when you're on stage, you can't see the whole audience. You can just see those. Well, where did you do it? Because when I did it, there must have been 2,000 fucking people. A lot of people.

In this Hilton ballroom. It was horrendous. Yeah, it takes forever. Yeah. But because of the, you know, all I could see was the angry eyes of alan thick at the first table just like being angry it was kind of shocking to me because i was like it what you know what was weird about that is that people fucking thought i was literally thought i was crazy yes like i was like i understand uh if you didn't like it i might not even like it i don't know if i would even like that kind of

shit you know i could go that's self-indulgent bullshit. But to actually fucking think I'm like serious, you know? Yeah. I mean, God damn. Yeah, I like that. Well, people love to do that. I mean, did you watch the Charlie Sheen one? Yes, yes.

I'll tell you what I love. Sorry. Well, what do you like? I mean, because like a lot of people were saying that that was just, there's no line whatsoever and that, you and that it is something other than just being funny, and that it's gotten kind of just brutal and painful to watch. Right, well, yeah,

because when we get interviewed as comics, people always go like, is there any line? And we go, no, but there's lines, of course. There's fucking lines. Yeah. You're a human being, hopefully. But I remember they were talking about,

William Shatner Rose already told me this that william shatner's fucking wife had just drowned in a pool yeah three months earlier and they had to get all the comments together and go look no jokes about his wife drowning and they were all like ah fuck yeah what are we gonna do now and i was like would it even occur to you to fucking do that joke guy's still wearing a black ribbon and his clothing is torn i love patrice on that though i because i love patrice yeah he's great and he did it i never saw a guy that did the roast so good he because he didn't do all that well i mean that line is interesting because it's really a personal line i mean when you're a comic you know when you've crossed the line i mean i mean that's really the line is It's like, what can you get away with? Well, I guess the line's up to you as to whether you want to.

When I was on SNL, you start to read an update. You start to read newspaper articles and forget that they're people, you know? Right. And I had a hellish thing with this private citizen. I never did a joke again about a private citizen after that. But someone had been hit on the Brooklyn Bridge and the story was funny because their liver

was over here and then their spinal column was over here. It was all spread across the bridge. What was the joke? The joke was he's recuperating

in the hospital and he's fine. But it was so absurd because he'd been spared. Anyways, then I get a phone call and I go, fuck, that was a real person's... Friend or father. Yeah, just phone me and I'm like, I don't know. You know, their fucking husband got torn apart

on the Brooklyn Bridge and then they turned on the TV. I'm like, hey. Yeah. Hey, let's go in. They turn on the tv to get to get their mind off of things i know so so you know you you understand after a while and even with politicians like they're still human beings yeah barely but yeah they're they're the worst kind of fucking people in the world that's all of them uh the well well i'm glad to hear you say

that because uh everybody thinks you're all leftist uh the well well i agree i'm glad to hear you say that because uh everybody thinks you're all leftist and everything well i mean you know i i definitely land on the lefty side of things on you know ideological terms but i found that from doing political talk radio just you know being you know carrying water for any of them you just got to realize the quality of people you're dealing with you're dealing with fucking corporate whores who are operated by business interests so you know really it's going to come down to you know however you view politics the question is do you give a shit about poor people and uh and and are we being taken advantage of right now if people want to frame that as you know obama's a communist and

draining us of our livelihood well that's your particular delusion and that's fine i mean right but but it i just got disillusioned with all of it because they're these are not quality people i mean i did a joke about uh michelle bachman on real time i saw them yeah and i was getting flack from this you know you know a very small portion of the right you know that they were like he's got he's a misogynist i'm like she's a fucking pig she's a fucking politician how do you can you name me two politicians that command any respect whatsoever? Why do we respect these people?

These people are car salesmen. They're idiots. They're more disingenuous than anybody as performers. And they basically figured out a way to bait and placate morons into voting against their self-interest. That's an amazing skill. But is it respectable? I don't know. Do you respect a

guy that sells you you know horse shit and the guys of a health supplement i agree with you i mean i think politicians are more are are terrible i i have much i mean people uh attack evangelists and but at least evangelists offer something right well they they they after the immediate relief of someone's uh you know pain and aggravation with another line of bullshit but but nonetheless i mean they're pretty evil too well i mean you know with politics it's like yeah i i don't like to get into it that much anymore let's not get into this shit man okay buddy because it's good i can see people not laughing now no i mean but you know laughter but you know i i know that you've gotten into a little

bit of flack around it, but you're- Flack around what? Around politics. What do you mean? Well, just that, you know, you've said things that people have reacted to, but you're not like a political comic, you know? I'm not political. I've said, I've only said things on purpose to provoke people.

Right. Once in a while. Once in a while. You like doing that, though. Once in a while. in a while you like doing that though once in a while yeah yeah but uh i've never uh but i'm but i but i've never um because i don't know enough and because i and because i don't respect uh political uh humor when it's nothing but gossip yeah and mostly comics and people like us you know people who are obviously first amendment warriors to a certain degree we like living the way we want to

live so it's really just going to come down to money. It's like, you know, how do I keep my money? I mean, that's the biggest political question that most righties ask themselves. It's like, I'd like to keep as much as my money as possible. And if that's in a minority opinion, how do we get this majority of poor people to get me to keep my money and believe that they're doing the right thing? Yeah. It's a tough fucking thing. to keep my money and believe that they're doing the right thing yeah it's a tough thing because if every apparently i read this if all the money in the world was equally divided among

everybody everybody would be dead poor yeah you know there's like there's these moments where like i i don't talk about as much as i used to but then there's like there's moments where you're like there's a moment that i could i was on a radio show the other day and this was an interesting thing because it's it's about professionalism you know i don't you know i don't do political talk radio you know i've got my political views and uh and and they're fairly general you know i'm not trying to support you know any politician but you know i i have the the way i think about things but there are politicians that represent the opposite of the what i think so i'm on this talk show with a guy it's a fox affiliate but you know i'm there to plug my comedy and talk about my podcast and be funny with this dude who's

a talk show host he's a radio professional he runs an entertainment show for the most part but he's been dying to talk to ran paul about the bridge situation because i'm in louisville kentucky he's the fucking senator they got bridges falling down and he's been trying to get this guy on the show and the guy just he calls in when i'm there you know so like now i've got like if i was doing political talk radio i mean it would have been like you know what the fuck are you thinking you know you and your libertarian bullshit and yeah how are we going to pay for this like i would have jumped in and done that but there was this moment where it's like i just done a segment with this radio professional he was like god it's great to talk to a guy who knows how to be on radio we're having a

good time hold on the senator's on the phone i gotta sit there and go oh do i do this dude yeah would it be worth it to sabotage it for some lefty uh uh you know credible you know credibility yeah and then i i realized like dude you know he's a radio guy you're a comedian you're having a good conversation he's trying to talk to this guy about a local problem just shut the fuck up and and and let him do his job and then when you come back you know get back to what you were talking about and i chose to do that but i yeah but i did walk out saying like you pussy you had such an opportunity there you know i was on politically incorrect a couple times yeah and uh fuck man

you know you have to have an opinion about every goddamn thing on that show so or you can just do a little homework and write some jokes yeah but there's something i remember at the break like scott carter going enough with the jokes but uh i'll never forget it like we're fucking but i'm very unlearned and so before the show uh scott came in who's the the producer yeah he's been on the show yeah so he said what do you think about china and taiwan and seriously i i don't only i only know those words you know so i was like i don't know anything like can i have another subject so anyways then we get out because he goes because because bill believes this i mean anyways when we get out the fucking we're introducing the guy beside me the smart guy right he wrote a book on china and taiwan right so fucking bill

marr he starts with me he goes like what was it the china and taiwan i i go i don't know i'm fucking ass this guy what do i do i'm a nightclub comic what like that's what made me laugh with that show everyone's opinions equal right you know right like a a nightclub comic and an expert or and then another thing i find i always found funny about that show is the comedians try to be very serious and then the serious guys are trying to get jokes yeah yeah yeah so it's like yeah it's not it's not always our bet our shot i do i do like bill no bill's great at what he does like uh he's he's a he started out a straight up joke dude and he knows his shit you know and it's uh it's pretty amazing you know what's funny about him i don't know if i should say this or not but i mean he's probably aware of it when he does his

monologue you notice when he does his monologue he does a johnny carson no yeah oh no definitely he definitely models himself i i think and i think he's that's been his style for a long time he definitely takes the posture but i find it very funny because you know he's got the posture and the timing and everything and he's like and then she came in his face you know but it's a crazy words come out hey carson would have loved to have done that yeah he probably would have so when you grew up i mean what was it what what was the story in in terms of you say your dad gave you a joke book but were you guys you got along with your folks and everything oh yeah yeah yeah yeah when i was very young i was very very, very, very shy

and very afraid of everything. I mean, people say they're shy when they're kids, but I was like, it was a pathology. Aren't you still afraid of everything? I am. I mean, I try to hide it and deal with it, but on a day-to-day basis, I get mustered. No, I'm not afraid of everything.

I'm afraid of very few things. Like what? Illness, death. Yeah, yeah. How did you get peace of mind out of the other shit well when i was i um when i was very i this is a weird thing that happened to me when i was young yeah i don't know if this means anything let's try it i remember it but it was a moment i had that was uh it wasn't religious or epinephic or anything, but it transformed me to some degree is that I was always fucking so afraid of everything.

And if I went to a store, I'd have to walk around forever before I could even face a person in the store to buy a pack of gum. I don't know why the fuck I was like this. But anyways, when I was nine, we lived in rural Ontario, and there was a blind friend of my dad's yeah that i had to he said take him to the store and i was like what the fuck like i have to take this blind fucker and i'm already shy and shit so i'm taking him to the store and then the fucker wants me to explain everything describe everything to him yeah so i'm like there's some grass over here and now there's a

lamppost and this guy's all happy oh what about the lamppost i mean it's just a lamppost yeah so it goes on and on but some thing happened to me during this sounds bizarre but something happened to me where i was actually instead of always looking inward which i think i'd always done before that one time i was looking outward at that word. Anyways, while I was talking to him, I suddenly had a sort of hysteria. Like I was laughing. I started laughing and stuff. And I don't even know why I'm remembering this, but I started laughing about everything. And everything seemed like very, very funny to me.

And then a couple weeks later, I saw a homeless guy and he was talking about, he started funny to me. And then a couple weeks later, I saw a homeless guy and he was talking about, he started talking to me and he was talking to me about John D. Rockefeller. He's like, I was at John D. Rockefeller's funeral and all this shit.

And I was laughing at him and shit. And then he started laughing and I was like, it's all fucking crazy shit. Like something came to me where I started and so now I find everything funny except like fucking real serious like i'm no fear of going on stage and i have a death and shit right so uh

but the other thing i but the problem with laughing is i i will get uh it will build to a hysteria sometimes that i have to uh crank a couple of benzos to uh oh yeah and a panic attack really yeah i can get you can laugh yourself into an anxiety attack absolutely yeah i start laughing and it gets out of control like hysterical it's um and i still have extreme sensitivity to um to things like i can uh not not to nor not to life things yeah but to to like literature or art or something like that i have incredible sensitivity i kind of have to stay away from it like what's an example like a painting or yeah fucking paintings like i don't know anything about art nothing at all really but

i have had fucking experiences that have been so hard on me. Like one time I was in New York and somebody dragged me to a fucking art museum which I hate art. Yeah. And I was looking at this picture of this girl

and I was like falling in love with her. She was so fucking beautiful this fucking girl in this fucking picture. Yeah. And then a guy was telling me

the fucking thing was written you know drawn in the 16th century. Obviously this lady was dead, long dead. And here I am fucking in love with her. Yeah. And so I'm like, ah, fuck it.

It was like so hard on me for so many days. So I try not to. It sounds crazy, right? Not really. But I can be very. It sounds like that's a very good painting. It was an incredible painting. But like, you know, it would make me me cry i didn't cry at my dad's

funeral though like real life stuff seems so prosaic to me that it never really touches me so you have a sensitivity towards well i mean that's what art's supposed to do on some level i guess for people like me that can't access uh feelings or something it gets me well yeah i mean i get that with uh yeah i can get that with television commercials sometimes if i'm not protecting myself oh you mean like where they really can manipulate yeah well you jerk me around but like i remember there was i can be manipulated without and know i'm being manipulated yeah like some movies i'll just let it go yeah but like you know if my girlfriend's afraid afraid of something or need some help i'm like i don't know what to yeah this is crazy i mean maybe you should call a friend i

can't maybe it's because we're we live in fantasy lives i guess i remember a kid when i was in a grade school we read old yeller and the dog gets then they got to put the dog down right that's a motherfucker yeah and this kid jeff was just like you know sobbing uncontrollably as he read out loud and they had to take him to the nurse because he couldn't pull it together oh my god i so that's they call it stendhal syndrome is it oh so there's a name for it well there was apparently there was this guy i guess named stendhal or something some 16th century guy but he had an art museum that was so beautiful i don't know if it's anecdotal but uh he's at an art museum where people would come in and have nervous

breakdowns from the beauty of the art but that can go either way with you can be laughter or sadness yes it's mostly laughter the sadness doesn't throw me into anxiety uh the laughter what's the feeling though like you like at a joke are you with friends or something and you just can't you can't get it out of your head how funny it is and then you get anxious because you can't stop laughing yeah i guess it's that like i laugh a lot like that's fucking great as a comic yeah i tell you i've never trusted people that don't laugh like i've worked on shows and you know shit sitcoms and stuff like that where the motherfucker doesn't laugh yeah he's the head writer yeah i'm like you're not laughing at nothing yeah and i don't know math to him yeah it's math it's like haiku or some shit and like the but the best guys i've met are the guys that are able to laugh and fucking you know

so what with the uh so when you grew up what'd your folks do uh well my dad we were like real poor and stuff uh but later my dad became like a teacher so he had a little bit of money yeah we lived like on a rural with animals farm it was a dead farm yeah it was my father's father's farm but that by this point i'd become dead but it was interesting because everyone was old where i lived except me and my brothers so i i was with old men all the time yeah but i like them a lot yeah i really like them do you still like old people love them i love super old people because it's like it it helps you with perspective you know what i mean yeah yeah like there's a fucking

thing there's a thing like i love country songs and shit but there's a this myth about the old guy that never forgot about the girl and he's drinking and yeah that's not true like when you meet old people you know i mean you go hey you're heartbroken They go, oh, what? You know, they don't care. I don't even remember her. Yeah, it's all like comedy to them. They go, yeah, there was. I shit this morning. Everything's good.

Exactly, right. They have incredible perspective. And then I was thinking, if you can only get that perspective instantly, just pretend you're a fucking old man and forget it instantly. Well, it's so funny that so many young people dismiss old people as burdens or, you know, no one dies in the house anymore.

Everybody's put out to pasture somewhere. And like, I have to fight sometimes when I see really old people, I, I, my immediate, I get this visceral kind of like, Oh God, are they okay? Oh, that they might die. That they might die or that like, you know, like I'm going to be that, like if I'm lucky, I get to be the guy that might make it across the street you know that that's a big payoff and like it fucking throws my mortality in my in my head i understand that yeah but i don't like what i mean i'm not saying i like infirm people are being a deathbed no right no no i know what you mean but like if you like when

you talk to old people that uh they've lived through things they have a perspective and a wisdom from actually living life. You don't learn a lot from an old agoraphobic. I remember, what's his name? Rodney Dangerfield said a great thing to me. He came to do a Saturday Night Live. Remind me to show you this picture I have of him. Of Rodney?

Yeah. And I never met Rodney. So he came to do a Saturday Night Live. Well, there's two things that are very funny. One is when we were booking Rodney, like Lauren said, oh, Rodney's going to be in town. Put him on update.

You'd always do that. Yeah. We'd have to somehow force this person on update and we wouldn't know what to do with him. But you had respect for him? Oh, I loved Rodney.

Yeah, I loved Rodney. So Jim Downey, who was a great writer and a Harvard, a true intellectual and stuff. And he, so he's like, how are we going to do rodney and then so he had an idea where i would go rodney you know you've been in the business now uh 50 years and uh how's it going he goes i got no respect no respect at all you know they do a couple jokes like i can't believe that what about your certainly

your children i respect for you because i don have respect well what about your bartender you know what I mean and he'd say I have my bartender yeah yeah yeah he said double he brought out a guy that looked like me I can't believe this

your own bartender so that was my we pitch it to Rodney daddy pitches to Rodney over the phone and Rodney goes he goes what the fuck

are you talking about he goes let me talk to Norm so then he gets out with me he goes who is this fucking guy he goes doesn't he fuck are you talking about? He goes, let me talk to Norm. So then he gets on with me. He goes, who is this fucking guy? He goes, doesn't he know my whole thing is no respect? This fucking cocksucker thinks I, you know. So then I told down.

He said, yeah, like Rodney just thinks of a writer as a guy you paid five bucks to in the back. Right. But anyways, Rodney came to the show. And we had dress rehearsal and then the show. So he's like, why do we have to fucking do dress rehearsal? He goes, I can't do Rodney. Why do we have to do dress rehearsal? I know my fucking jokes.

I go, I don't know, Rodney. You just have to do it. And he goes, ah, fuck, it's shit. He goes, I tell you, kid, it's all weight. He goes, fuck it. He goes, movies are shit. All you do is fucking sit in a trailer and wait. It's fucking TV is shit.

He goes, it's all shit. He goes, always remember this and he like looks me in the eye right he goes stand up man stand up's the only thing yeah then there's like a two minute pause you go stand up's fucking shit so i'm just alone in a room with him so i shake his hand he's negated the entire world oh the, the funniest thing was Josh. Josh was with us. Yeah. Was an intern at Saturday Night Live. So I guess I have a bit of cruelty sometimes in me.

But Josh would always tell this joke to me, and I got him to tell this joke to everybody because I thought it was funny. Yeah. And he'd say, Josh, this is how he talks. He's right here. Yeah. He he'd say, Josh, this is how he talks. He's right here. Yeah. He would go,

there's two gay guys and one of the gay guys goes, the other gay guy, I have a new game for you. Hide and seek. I'll hide. You try to find me and if you find me,

you get to fuck my ass. I'll be behind the couch. That's this retarded joke, isn't it and just said make him tell everyone yeah so that i mean do you remember i made you tell rodney yeah so i thought it was the greatest moment fucking rodney we're stuck stuck in this real narrow hallways yeah that's how rodney you know is standing there all curmudgeon he's like twitching yeah moving moving around rocking that's like oh you gotta hear this joke and so then uh josh stumbles through the joke and then rodney looks at him he goes i tell you kid i'm not much for jokes i love again most for most of our jokes in the history of ever well yeah i remember the weird thing about rodney like i you know i never really

met him but i was, you didn't? No. How'd you not meet him? Well, I mean, like, because I wasn't an established comic, you know, really, and like, I worked the door at the store and he came on once, and I used to see him around a bit, but like, what broke my heart was this weird, they did this roast of him, like, or a tribute at the Aspen Comedy Festival. Yeah.

And then the dudes that they got on, it was like Paul Rodriguez, I think Saget was there, and there were like three or four other guys. And I had this weird moment where I realized that, you know, he was sort of a marginal character within his own generation of comics. Right. He was so, you know, depressed and miserable. Truly, apparently.

Yeah, right. And like, I just had this moment where I realized, oh my God, he's like a lone wolf. Like he's got, like his peers aren't even, like they couldn't get anyone else to fly in and and show some love of that right right like the older guys right we're the dudes of his generation then he started to realize you never see him on the roast or anything that he must have been this this lone fucking wolf out there just with his own misery yeah and that thing carl laboe said was uh that's the best thing i ever heard was uh

you know i had laboe in here and rodney you know took a liking to kennison you know and laboe was sam's best friend and uh i remember rodney used to call kennison when this before he was on medication because i think the last decade of his life he was medicated and i think he had some peace but uh but apparently he like kennison had been up for two days and you know was doing the kennison thing and i just sitting there and uh and rodney walked in and said oh look at little nero yeah rodney's fucking he just seen it all he just seen it all i remember like i'm always amazed the guy it's not i don't know if it's admirable or not, but, uh, cause I quit drugs when I was 10 or some fucking thing. I got scared immediately.

You know what I mean? This guy, what drug did you do? I'm exaggerating, but when I was very, very young, I got very frightened very quickly. And,

uh, but I'm always like, Holy, when it goes old guys, I go, Jesus Christ. Yeah. Like how many,

you, you went through all those, uh, Coke, uh, where you think you're going to die and you're still doing it. It was always amazing with him. Yeah. Like how many, you went through all those coke where you think you're going to die and shit and you're still doing it?

Yeah. It was always amazing. With him, yeah. He had a hell of a constitution to put himself through that. I remember Saget told me one time, fucking remember

when he had a heart attack and a brain fucking aneurysm at the same time or something. He was in the hospital. Yeah. And he just left, you know.

Pulled the thing out. Yeah, he just fucking went to the comic club. So Saget said he walked in, it was and he just left you know pulled the thing out went to the comic club so saget said he walked in this with two days earlier he had been in this major operation and he said uh he saw he saw um rodney with two like uh hookers you know and rodney was waiting for ron jeremy to show up it was two days after the and he's like 70 so then saget said to him, he said, Rodney, he goes,

how are you doing? And he said, Rodney said to him, how am I doing? He goes, I'm with two whores. I'm waiting for a guy who can suck his own dick.

How are you doing? What a fucking classic, man. I know, man. One of a fucking kind. Like when I think of, because everybody always asks you who the best comics are and everything I think of, because everybody always asks you who the best comics are and everything,

and of course your mind always goes to Pryor and those guys. But you always forget about Rodney. Well, yeah, I remember when I was a kid, I was reading the My Favorite Jokes section of the Parade magazine. It used to come in the Sunday supplement, and they used to have this last page

which was just comedians' jokes. And I remember reading his, and I still remember you know uh you know some of those jokes uh what was it like the one that i never for some reason sticks out my mind he's like i get no respect i woke up this morning yeah i got out of bed i put my hand on the bathroom door the knob fell off i picked up yeah i put on the faucet the faucet handle fell off i gotta tell you i was afraid to go to the bathroom you know yeah i mean you know where it's gonna go but reading that stuff and realizing that people actually wrote those jokes and like

for a guy like that does he wrote him right yeah yeah yeah well i think that like he probably i think that he had a you know people that give him jokes right i mean i what a vessel it's like you know when these guys get famous then every joke is attributed yeah like groucho marx i'm sure fucking yeah that happens all the time though did you have that feeling or yogi bear like every retarded thing everyone ever says they just say it was yogi bear well there used to be something that bothered me about this idea that even there's a blind side to even very intelligent people when they watch you know stewart or bill maher or anybody on tv dennis miller they're like you know like it's amazing all his jokes how does

he write all his jokes it's like he doesn't his jokes? It's like, he doesn't. Of course not. You know, there was some part of me when the writer's strike hit where I'm like, I felt like now they're going to know. The cat's out of the bag. Who's going to write their own jokes now? I don't know what that is. That would be interesting to just have the guys write their own stuff. Well, I think a lot of them can. And I don't begrudge anyone to have writers because I think when you get to a level, like, I mean, you obviously, when you did Update, people wrote jokes for

you. Of course. But if you're a guy that's got that defined a voice, I mean, it's a gift. And if people can actually write for you, then it's like a beautiful thing. It's pretty kind of easy to write for someone. Like, I noticed in sitcoms, which I have no fucking idea. I don't even like them, but I worked on them. Well, you were on one.

Well, you did one for three seasons, right? You had to run, what was it called again? Norm Show. So it went down with your name on it. Yeah, that's the bad thing. But no, I didn't know anything. I didn't know why I was being honest. I didn't know what the fuck I was doing.

Well, did you? The only thing I said is, well, Seinfeld has a sitcom. I think I can act as good as Jerry Seinfeld. That's how you got it? He had the biggest sitcom in the world yeah and i go because i never thought you know i mean i can't act but i you know i i surrounded myself with actors and it was okay but uh but man when i started writing sitcoms because when you come from stand-up yeah where the fucking joke has to be good yeah i started

writing i wrote on rosanne and i remember i'd look at the script, I'd go, holy fucking, the whole thing's going to bomb. Everybody's going to be booing. Because the jokes were so bad. The jokes were so shit. Because, you know, a stand-up, it's so fucking hard to get a joke together. And they're going, nah, nah, it'll work. And then, of course, it works

because they lather up the audience. And they love those characters. And they love the characters. And that's also the thing about people that can create a sitcom, they create characters and everything like that. Yeah. Then you can go on and write.

It's very easy to write characters that are already written. I think sitcoms are all about the relationships between the characters. People gravitate towards the emotional dynamic of an ensemble, and it's got nothing to do with jokes at this point. Like you watch The Honeymooners, they got no jokes at all. No, you just love those people. A couple of fat jokes, but other than that. You just want to see Art carney and jack leeson yeah but i remember on my show i go can we think up some fucking situations like it's supposed to be a situation yeah yeah and the situation

you're coming up with is i'm dating a girl that's his fucking that's the funniest situation because you know i said i remember fucking reading like you could read a thing of the honeymooners and fucking be smiling you go uh ralph thinks he's a millionaire fuck this is gonna be funny but then it's like uh then it's like uh you know uh on friends it's like jennifer thinks she might have feelings for matt yeah that's what the fuck is funny about that yeah so uh okay so what happened the sports show that did that that hit you pretty hard? No, no. I'm sorry. I tried to structure a question in a sensitive way.

It didn't hit me hard at all. It didn't? No. What? Because I never expect success. You don't? No, never. But you can always go back to stand-up. Well, that's my luck.

But you were out of that. Did you stop for a while doing stand-up? No, I always did. I mean, I did less of it, but I would always, you know, because especially when you're doing shit that you don't like, it's good to go on the road.

Because you have complete control of that thing. Yeah, and you can be funny. Yeah. It's all on your terms, and you live or die by what... Because it is a very odd experience to be saying to be being not funny in front of a crowd that is laughing hard at your fucking not funny shit you know which is sitcom you feel that holy fuck man it's like you're in a fucking nightmare you're

like what is going on here like that didn't fucking that wasn't funny and they just wait till you stop talking yeah and then they laugh because they're participants these fucking audiences they're doing their part they're doing their part right and you know that's what i loved about saturday night live is they could fucking things could bomb like really only saturday night live and the early letterman uh you could see people fucking bomb oh yeah no laughs and there's no other place on tv every other place everyone every joke works it's it's amazing moment even when you watch old dick cavett shows like and that was a popular show and you're watching if you watch him now the audience almost does nothing like you know he'll get a joke off and he's like nothing and you're like oh my

god because people didn't have the same expectations that they do now these fucking people who run the uh who run run TV made it like this. Right. That, you know, there's something about, you can be funny without there being a ridiculous moronic joke every fucking 30 seconds. Right. You know, people can accept people just being people for a minute. Sure.

There's that horrible fear. Well, I wish talk shows would, maybe you can do it or something. But the, you know, Carson, you'd never see the audience. No, you'd never see the audience no you never see the audience now you and you listen to the audiences oh yeah they're out touching the audience i mean that was the first thing that i noticed about jay and i've never done a show and i got no beef with him i just don't want you to show but all of a sudden he's out there touching people and i'm like what's he doing that's bizarre is this a zoo it's funny because letterman and leno do that and

really the guy who letterman doesn't touch him. Well, but I mean, they're there. They're like, he's- Yeah, but that's a theater. It feels like a real thing. It is, but it's not completely separate like on Late Night. Right. Where they're up in a little pen?

Yeah, exactly. The old Conan show? Exactly. Where's the audience? They're up there in the pen. Right, right. Six feet up and they're just sitting back there in a box. And just talking about it now i

think probably the guy who uh changed it and did it the best was uh fucking arsenio he was the real guy that could i guarantee you that's the only time this is being said in this country right now no but he you know leno is like so uncomfortable slapping people's hands yeah you know what i mean uh uh this guy was the genius at doing the monologue that were i don't even remember jokes i think he just do topics yeah he would just talk he would say anything he was not about saving us a moment yeah but the audience i mean the audience in that show was so uh into the so part of the show you know so now what happened with the sports show oh i don't know it was just uh it was on comedy central and i you know i watched it it was funny and i'm not a sports guy yeah but you're funny it was

that's nice mark yeah it was it was it was because i think it was i don't know i don't really give a fuck but it was you really don't give a fuck i don't give a fuck about too much okay but uh the the it's funny because people think i should like when i got fired i still get asked but snl thank thanks for not asking me about it i don't know why now i just brought it up but when i got fired from snl people still ask me like oh fuck don't you hate that guy i go oh fucking what no he was he didn't think i was funny i get it i understand and also there's so much politics involved in that bullshit i got actually a weird question and i don't know if you can answer it for me but i'm obsessed with it and i discuss it with people that have been on snl but but you come into it specifically there before you got fired

there was a point there where you were negotiating and you might not go back to the show correct no there wasn't ever a point where you were sort of like you know not deciding whether or not you were going to renew your contract no me no no why well no because they brought me in you know like i met with lauren i did the whole i jumped what yeah i jumped through all the hoops really i was i was the you were the guy but what i but like what i understood later i just i i didn't get it obviously and it went nowhere you were good right but i like someone came up to me, a fucking writer, who I don't remember his name, but he was on the beat back then.

I can't remember his name. But after I went through all that, he came up to me and said, yeah, they were just trying to pressure Norm. Oh, no, that's not true. Oh, good. Because I told Lauren at one point I'd do it forever. I said, what if I was like Walter Cronkite? I won't ask for much money. I'll do it until'll do it till i'm 65 and he's like watch yeah but uh no that couldn't have been it

but it could have been it was probably they were getting ready to uh to get rid of me because they always pretended it was don allmeyer but i think it was i don't think that's true you just think it was in-house i think it was everybody everybody because because uh there was a particular thing where we had a lot of autonomy on update well this was and they tried to tie it to oj and everything else yeah they did that and and what do you think well so you just think it was a business decision i think well i think it was uh that we had a lot of autonomy on update which didn't make the other people feel very happy it's was like the news division in network. Don't touch my news division. It was like that.

And we had Jim Downey. It was me and Jim, and Jim was very, Lauren was a little, like, you know, rightfully respective of Jim and we had to let Jim on his own. So anyways, I think the whole show was tired of me not taking marching orders. Oh, anyways, I think the whole show was tired of me not taking marching orders. Oh, really?

I think so. Like, Lauren would, Lauren hints at things. Like, he would go like, I don't know if you really, because I do Michael Jackson

jokes or something. He goes, I don't really know if you want Michael Jackson to, you want a lawsuit by Michael Jackson. Oh,

he's suggesting. And then I go, that's cool. I'm like a retard. I'm just answering his question. I go, that'd be fucking cool. Michael Jackson's suing me and i'm in court with him and he's like i would never get his stuff till later and then i go oh yeah so he would say basically in in a slightly uh passive aggressive way maybe you shouldn't do that he would and i'm

such a retard that passive aggression does not work on me i need aggression what. Well, it's that innuendo thing you have a problem with. Can't you just say, don't do that? I seriously, I keep missing it. Yeah. And I wish the guy would just go, don't do it, and then I wouldn't do it. You know what I mean? But he suggests things, and I go, okay, fuck it. That's hilarious.

So are you working on something now? I mostly do stand-up. I mean, there's always like- You're not hosting the poker thing anymore retarded thing oh the poker no i do i don't know poker is illegal now so i'm not sure it's illegal it's yeah they shut down all the sites so so so how are you doing with that thing oh the gambling thing oh fuck man yeah gambling is a i don't know you know i kind of uh like i went broke like a few times when i actually had lots of money gambling three times gambling with gambling yeah and i mean broke dead broke like uh and um so would you call yourself a degenerate gambler well i don't degenerate as a negative connot, I don't, degenerate has a epithetic negative connotation.

connotation, yeah. But certainly compulsive. Yeah. And, but, I don't know what it was. I'm not a psychiatrist, but I do know this. When I would go broke,

because they say gamblers want to lose and stuff, which always seemed odd to me. But I will say the three times that I went broke

for a lot of money, I had a very freeing feeling. I would go to the coffee shop and have a coffee and have nothing. A lot of me is trying to get the fuck as ascetic as I can in my life. Oh, really? So it was a Zen thing? This was like you would recommend, if you wrote a book on Zen, it would be like, go out, make a bunch of stupid bets,

lose everything, and enjoy. Yeah. Zen and the art of being a retard. But not because it would bring me peace of mind or anything, but because every... I bought a house for the first time ever. Yeah. And it was like, I was wallowing myself into a fucking mausoleum or something. Yeah.

All of a sudden I'm like. When you had money. Fuck. Yeah. I'm like, I don't want to be here. Yeah. I don't want to, I don't want a bunch of stuff to have to fucking, mostly because I'm lazy. Yes.

I don't want to have a fucking footstool because then I have to clean it. Right. Right. I feel the same way. Well, it's exhausting because there's no end to you. You become tethered to it and you worry about it. You got a house. It's like, who's going to fix that light?

Right. Do I got to call a guy? Do I got to hire a guy to call the guy? And I'm sure, you know, and I know guys because we're not rich, but we know rich guys. Yeah. That have fucking massive houses and shit. And you go fuck it seems like a nightmare well then you know what i realized i just realized it two days ago i can't

i got a two-bedroom house here and if you notice when he went to pee that second bedroom just got a bed and my girlfriend shitting it all over the floor and and and the fact that there's nothing in there every day it's like a curse i walk by that room i'm like i don't know what to do with that room like you know like i'm worried um i think that my entire house i got i found a little termite damage it looked like 50 years old i'm like is there even wood underneath this stucco or is there just sort of like brittle i don't know what's anyways are you do you rent no i own this fucking place i think if you rent you can move i think that's of course of course but i you know i bought yeah i bought a house like i bought this thing everybody told me to buy right i bought it it was built in 1924 and you're like

but that's nice is it i don't know like the floor is not insulated it's a fucking oven in there when it's hot and when it's cold i feel like i'm living in a refrigerator i just had a rat die under my house for three days and but that's the kind of person i am like the rat's sitting under their dead i know there's a dead thing under there but i don't want to fucking crawl under there and get this dead thing so i'm like I'll ride it out how long could it take for it to completely decompose I can live in this shitty smell and then then eventually I call my gardener and I'm like do you know a guy they say oh I'll do it and I'm like oh my god you know for 50 bucks he climbs under there he pulls his fucking rat out and I'm like it takes

60 I don't like I'm a sport here's 10 dollars more for taking 20 minutes to do something I'm like, it takes 60. I don't know. I'm a sport. Here's $10 more for taking 20 minutes to do something I'm too much of a pussy to do. But what I realized two days ago was that if you're making $20 million a year, to pay a guy $100,000 to watch your cars is nothing. To pay a guy $60,000 a year to cook every fucking meal for you and spoon feed it, which they'll do for $60,000, is meaningless. So I think it's really about that like but i don't have a mind that works like

that i want to be part i want to do it all myself yeah i'll hire a mexican guy to go under my house sure but i'll feel bad about it i gave him some water you know but but if you have enough money to not give a shit and just pay people to wipe your ass for you that you've earned it i guess that's your big payoff but for you i don't know that you could live with that no i i that wouldn't be fun for me what was the biggest bet you ever made oh god almighty um i don't know i i one time i mean the most i lost in one night where because three times i've lost everything that i've ever had how do you do that i mean not not immor but I mean like, how do you physically do it? Well, yeah. I mean like, you know, you, you, like you make one more, like what is the process of

that? What's the evolution? It's funny because it's a, um, the only time I ever went to a psychiatrist, he said like, I was like, cause it was for gambling. I was like, how the fuck do I get out of this? And he's like, Oh, you gamble to avoid life. You know? And I'm like, because it was for gambling. I was like, how the fuck do I get out of this? And he's like, oh, you gamble to avoid life. And I'm like, but my thing was, well, isn't that why you do everything in life is to fucking avoid this? You know what I mean? It's too painful.

Yeah, why do you? So I said, but it's painful to think about because now it would be nice to have the money but um you just lose it by uh by it's just like any escape i guess because i was never a drug or alcohol guy but like when i watch a game and i have a bunch of money on it then i can understand what's going on nothing's ambivalent or anything about it you know and there's stakes there's stakes you know exactly the rules yeah you're completely involved and you're completely escaped from your life yeah of the real yeah the real the real fear you know I'd rather fear losing money in a football game then

ruminate all fucking night about my upcoming... Show. Illness. Oh, that, yeah. No, not my show. No. My biggest problem is ruminating about death. If I could get over that somehow.

You do that regularly? I try to. I read fucking books about it and shit. Have you read that Becker book? Denial of Death. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's my favorite book in the world. Oh, it is?

Yeah, I have both. I have all his books. I'm getting his newsletter, and he's dead. He's dead. The Becker Foundation. It's helped me a little bit. Yeah. Well, the whole idea of that is the transferencing,

to feel part of something bigger than yourself to define your life, and you can do with that what you want. I mean, it's better if it's God than gambling, think in some god is the best yeah so i mean i i i that's what i'm trying to get to is god well let's go let's get let's get let's get to god piecemeal so like you still haven't walked me through losing everything well um how you do it yeah because like i mean because like you know you've got a house you you had a lot of money saved up and and and then so you make one bet, and then you realize you're about to lose everything. Do you make phone calls to people saying, like, I just need a little more? Well, you kind of at the end of it, you know it's happening.

I guess it's like I've never had substance abuse problems, but I guess it's like people that know they're going to hit bottom and kind of want it. Because it's exhausting to be obsessed with something right so you are I guess trying to do it trying to finish it off right finally right here if you have 450,000 in the bank yeah fuck it and then you lose 400,000 go fuck it I don't want the fucking have 50 000 right to remind me that i don't want money to remind me that i have more money so that's how you do it so that's how you do it and you did that three times

three times in my life yeah and and how long have you been off it um i've been off it like probably five years or so yeah and you're trying to get to some spirituality in your life? I'm trying to because the only real joy I get, other than I love watching comedy, but anything deeper than that is I read a lot of literature and stuff. I'm not educated like I never had any schooling, and I don't read nonfiction much, but I read lots of literature. Like who?

Tolstoy. Oh, yeah, yeah. And Faulkner. But faith keeps coming up. And I'm like, these motherfuckers are smart. I mean, you know, I was like, Pryor's this fucking most deep, profound guy I ever fucking heard from my limited

perspective. And then all of a sudden I'm reading books. I'm like, holy fuck, this guy knows everything. I was reading Tolstoy. I was like, fuck, one word, one sentence, this guy. And so, but then I was like, why are all these guys, it all comes down to faith. You know, it seems to every fucking great novel i read it seems like faith is the the only salvation yeah so but i don't know how to get it yeah yeah like i don't know how to just suddenly

believe or surrender yeah i don't know how to do that i'm not i'm too i don't know i'm too stupid or proud or pretend i'm smart or whatever afraid probably afraid yeah just it's yeah it's a surrender it's hard it's it's like this equation that your brain has to do where you realize that you have very little control over anything that that moment where you realize like you know just about all of it is out of my control yeah and there's only two things you can do in that moment, which is either I'm fucked or it's okay. And how you support it's okay is with some kind of faith. I guess, yeah. Because I've come to it a long time ago that I have no control over anything.

But I've been struggling with faith. I'll just throw myself into religion sometimes. But the problems with that is uh then you get into churches and stuff and then you get into men and stuff like that you know what i mean and then you go oh it's very easy to fall into the trap of going like religion's bad i mean i mean god's bad because this fucking priest fucked a kid which is retarded you know what i mean why does that make god bad right any fucking sense it just means the people that represent him yeah yeah yeah questionable so um you know so then if you go into any church obviously it's led by fallible men and you

can't believe in them so you got to kind of come you know come to it yourself somehow but i really i don't have the answer of how you do that or anything where are you at with it now i don't know the only thing i've ever explored or anything. Where are you at with it now? I don't know. The only thing I've ever explored is Christianity. And that kind of... I liked it. Yeah. But it's just extremely hard to keep believing. It's really fucking hard.

Yeah. You know, because it's the hardest thing to believe, and I think I'm not deep enough. I don't know if that's true. I think that you know just by nature of the fact that you're a comedian in that part of the way you understand things is by cutting through bullshit you know with jokes i mean especially you i mean you cut through bullshit i mean you know you call bullshit on just about anything you know very concisely

and in a very funny way that when you're sitting here trying to sort of like you stay uh in in a place of faith into the you know the you know the sort of the jesus thing and the you know the and whatever you're choosing to hang that faith on there's going to be part of you that thinks like that's just bullshit there is yeah especially when it's specific like that but then i don't want to be a fucking idiot that goes like you know sometimes you meet people they're like i'm spiritual you're like what they're like i have my own thing yeah like you why do you work at burger king you figured out a fucking whole thing by yourself yeah well they've got their own thing that enables them to work at burger king without hanging themselves that's a pretty powerful yeah i don't want to i'm not gonna certainly if i'm not going to accept christianity i'm not going to accept some fucking 17 year old

girl's fucking idea well maybe you should just get a job at burger king maybe the humility of that will will shed a little light it's like because it's exactly the same feeling i think you probably had when uh when you had to deal with the blind guy. That there's something outside of you. There's bigger struggles that are had by many people. And they seem to survive. I've actually thought about working with blind people. Because I look back on that time.

And it really was the first time you really look outside yourself. It's pretty incredible. The things that you observe even as a writer or anything i think it would be incredibly important well i think that's important for like a spiritual thing too is to not think about yourself first yeah i think most spiritual people ego exactly right yeah and but i think a lot of people go that's the way to find it is to look inside yourself but i think you're right i think it's not it's to look outside it's the way to find it is to look inside yourself. But I think you're right. I think it's not. It's to look outside.

It's to try to get past your ego. Yeah. To get that thing hammered down to almost nothing to where you actually think about the better of somebody else over yourself. Yeah. And that's right. Holy fuck. I would never be able to do that. Right.

Well, that's very contrary to like there's this other whole movement now, the positive thinking people. All you got to do is throw that switch man everything's okay hey don't be negative i fucking can't deal with that shit but you got but you can see in acting or in comedy that that works i know like the person that goes hey man i'm cool everything's gonna be good and it is. Yeah. Yeah. That's like, it's horrendous. But is it really?

I mean, just because you're denying your flaws and, you know, everything else. I mean, you can sort of fake it till you make it. Or there's a lot of slogans, act as if, whatever it is. But still, it's like, you know, they say that eventually this will just kick in in earnest. Yeah. Until one day you're like, it's not kicking in. Yeah. And this is fucked up. And you guys misled me. And fuck all of you. Right. right the truth is it's dark and horrible and we die alone fuck you

guys yeah the yeah the the what is it called if what act as if act as if i guess i understand what that would mean yeah sure but act as if yeah but all these books and all these things you know the bowel cancer hasn't read the book you know what i mean they don't read anything fucking cancers yeah i i whenever someone like people start talking about organs i fucking check out i mean i can handle a lot of dark shit you know i can fulfill my head with stuff but when people start saying like i had kidney failure i'm like oh god oh no nothing that's why those fucking the scariest movies all of this to me were the like the Cronenberg movies because it was always the inside

biological I was thinking about the fly recently like or that moment where he's like he's climbing up the wall and he's like

pretty weird huh you're like oh god and then when he breaks apart and there's a giant fly inside of him can we turn this around somehow to end this thing

it's like my act when I do my act yeah i never think of a fucking ending yeah i just trickle off just fucking me too just unravel i guess this is uh it's we good you done that's terrible you guys feel okay with what happened here every week i go why didn't i think of something do you do that thing where you look it's like okay i've done an hour and 15 and i don't know that uh you know how it's structured really matters i'm done that's what i'm like and then i know people are kind of silent like what's the big matter with him well i'm glad you're doing okay man and i really oh yeah well i'm glad you are man this is awesome this is so sorry it's so hot it's so cool it is hot but it's

cool you got this thing uh that's your own and you don't have to um listen to uh yeah no one can really tell me what to do except bad mark i talked to bob costas you know and he does you're not a sports fan but you know like him he's all right he's great but he does baseball these fucking baseball guys know everything and it was after i got fired and shit and he said oh fuck he goes i know how it is he goes i got people who might hear these producers telling me. I'm like, you do? Like, he calls baseball games. Even he's got fucking guys like, say this, you know. Really? Yeah, he says people are saying it in his ears.

And he's like, it's always nonsense shit, you know. Yeah. So it's nice that you have a place where a guy doesn't go, hey, ask him this. No, I'm very grateful that it's working out and I love doing it. But I do have a guy within me that says, I got the other shoe's going to drop, dude. Oh, well, that's the thing. But something is going to happen.

Thanks, Norm. That's the bad part. All right, let's leave it there. Okay. Love you, buddy. Love you too, man.