The most surprising thing about all these bomb threats against synagogues and mosques is that Trump voters actually know how to work a phone. It's 3 a.m. Friday, March 3rd, 2017. On today's show, comedian Lewis Black and from the late show with Stephen Colbert, comedy writer and performer Brian Stack, we got a lot of show so let's get right to it. Welcome to the broadcast. I'm David Feldman, DavidFeldmanShow.com. I just don't understand why our Attorney General, Alabama's Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, needs to recuse himself from that Russian investigation. I mean, when has Alabama's Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III ever so much has offered even a hint of bias or prejudice? He doesn't need to recuse himself. He has an open mind and by that I mean it's exposed to the air. Meanwhile, George W. Bush's ethics advisor shocked Washington when he called on Sessions to resign. This was shocking because nobody could believe that President George W. Bush had someone advising him on ethics. George W. Bush appeared on the Today Show Monday and said, quote, America needs a free and open press to hold people like me accountable. No, George. We need an extradition treaty with the Netherlands to put you on trial at the Hague for war crimes. That holds people like you accountable. Well, America's Cretan in Chief delivered a televised address before a joint session of Congress Tuesday night. Things got incredibly ugly, incredibly fast when whoever was directing switched to a three shot of Donald Trump, Paul Ryan and Mike Pence. I don't know if you watch the speech. Paul Ryan looked like Eddie Munster forgot to shave one of his turds. Trump, Mike Pence and Paul Ryan wore blue ties. They picked the color blue to show solidarity with all the oxygen-deprived Americans who voted for them. Trump read off a teleprompter because a bad case of laryngitis made it impossible for Putin to dictate wirelessly into Trump's left ear. Beltway pundits gave the orange-faced, knuckle-dragging barbarians speech. Good grades. That's because Trump somehow resisted the urge to hurl his own feces into the crowd. Trump got positive reviews for that speech because he has succeeded in setting the bar lower than Betsy DeVos's SAT scores. The Goleman chief received several standing ovations, but that was primarily due to the Koch brothers making it way too painful for GOP lawmakers to remain seated on their asses for too long, which is odd. You'd think people like the Koch brothers being in the oil business would be no strangers to lube. During Tuesday's nationally televised speech, the world's worst human being in recorded history promised to lower taxes and, at the same time, increase military spending by $50 billion. If those numbers don't make sense, it's because Trump just poached that price-waterhouse guy from the Oscars. Then Trump came out strongly in favor of family leave. Donald, why don't we start with your family? Leave. During his speech, the moldy hobbit with orange hair strapped to his head said in a few days he would unveil a new plan to destroy ISIS. Nobody's seen the plan, but I'm pretty sure Trump's plan to destroy ISIS is making Donald Trump its president. ISIS is a hateful organization determined to destroy families, ruining the lives of children with no sense of decency or love of freedom. Their sole motivation is to create terror. Wait, did I say ISIS? I meant ICE. ICE. You know, the immigration guys, I often confuse ICE with ISIS. ICE, those are the glorified Walmart readers rounding up children because they're too afraid to take on MS-13, right? Okay. Meanwhile, defending ICE, our chop suey brained leader, Donald Trump, said America must enforce all our laws when it comes to dealing with foreigners. Let's start with the emoluments clause in the Constitution and all those foreigners staying at your Legionnaires' disease infested hotels. In his speech, Trump blamed police deaths on undocumented immigrants. Wait, police are dying because of undocumented immigrants. Oh, so the NRA is run by undocumented immigrants because that's who's killing our police, the National Rifle Association. Hmm. Well, Wayne LaPierre, that sounds like a Canadian name, he must be here illegally. Then our Neanderthal and chief announced plans to build his wall. Hey, Donald, instead of spending $40 billion on a wall, wouldn't it just be a lot cheaper for you to just insist it's already been built and it's working and we're safe? Trump concluded by saying America must put an end to division and then Education Secretary Betsy DeVos shouted, end to division? No problem. Welcome back. This is an amazing one. Lewis Black and Brian Stack. I thought of separating these two into two separate episodes, but, you know, I remember something Dennis Miller once said, if you have something sitting on your shelf, that's fantastic. Go with it. Use it all because you may, you may fly into a mountain and never get to use all of it. So, you know, I was going to run Lewis and then Brian Stack on Tuesday, but I was getting nervous and I thought, what happens if I fly into a mountain before Tuesday's show? My last thought would be, you know, why didn't I put Lewis and Brian together in the same episode? I just can't have one of these episodes sitting on my shelf all weekend. So, I have them both on because I was getting nervous and I just wanted to put both of these interviews out into the universe just in case something happens. It actually has a nice flow. So, I'm going to run Brian Stack, I'm going to run Brian Stack first because Lewis Black and I, we really went to town and running Brian first and then Lewis, there's a natural current having Brian go first. This is just a great episode. I'm so proud of it. As you know, I'm calling it Black and Stack. I've always wanted to have an episode entitled Black and Stack. Unfortunately, Jack Black and Robert Stack are unavailable, so we'll just have to make do with Lewis Black and Brian Stack. I hope I don't fawn too much, but I can't help it. This is a great show, I promise you. The feedback from the Bob Saget episode, by the way, has been incredible. He's so fast you might want to take a listen to that and I hope he comes back real soon.  Coming up, Lewis Black and Brian Stack. Black and Stack. Not to be confused with Black and Stack, a movie that got me through my divorce. The David Feldman radio program is made possible by listeners like you.  Oh, wow. Wow, Brian Stack is a writer and actor. You know him from Conan O'Brien. I think he was there at the creation. He's currently on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. He joins us from New York City. Hello, Mr. Stack. Hey, David, thanks for having me. By the way, just a quick correction, I started at Conan in 97 a few years after it started, but I was there for like 18 years and it was a great place to be, but I got there, started there a few years in. So that's how it's going to be? Look, I'm really nervous interviewing you. This means a lot to me, okay? Yeah, I know I'm a very intimidating presence. You are! And to correct me right out of the gate, just... Sorry, I just didn't want to take credit for those early days when Louis C.K. and Dino and those guys were getting all those bits started. No, I would be honored to have been there from the very beginning. But I mean, why do you have to fixate on a four-year mistake? Nobody's going to look it up. I mean... You're right. I'm sorry. That was rude. Now I feel inadequate and I didn't check my facts. So I have to be honest with you. I am intimidated talking to you.  Yeah, this is the God's honest truth. I'm very...  You know, any pep... People will do that and it's fun.   You know who you are? And this is not... This is the truth.  You're one of those comedy writers. You go, God, I wish I was Brian Stack. Do you know that? I can't tell you how much that means to me coming from you and like just to hear that, I'm just incredibly grateful to hear you say that. That means a lot to me. And I certainly, when I was coming up, you know, watching people like Chris Elliott, you know, in little bits on late night or whatever, you know, just the idea of getting to do even a silly bit, even if nobody knows your name, you know, it was kind of a weird dream of mine and never expected to be able to do it. So I'm very grateful to have gotten to do it and it means a lot that you've liked it. Thanks, man. I cannot tell you the number of times that I think about who the funniest people in the world are and how I'm never going to be as funny as Brian Stack. If I had like one tenth of Brian McCann's ability, I would just be so happy if I could be you and know that I'm as funny as Brian Kiley or Brian Dennehy. I'm sorry. I loved working with McCann for so many years. I knew Brian even in Chicago before. It's funny how many people I knew in Chicago originally, including Brian. But that really does mean a lot. Thanks, David. No, I was watching and just most of my listeners are familiar with comedy and they know who you are. But last night I watched the Conan tribute to you, the compilation when you died and that remember you fell out of a plane and the immemorial that they prepare. No, they did when you left. They did a retrospective. I laughed involuntarily by myself and I kept saying, I want to be him. I wish I could be as funny as you. Do you have a master's degree in psychology? Somebody told me that you actually have a master's. I did get a master's, but it was utterly useless. Unless you went on for the PhD, it was what they call, even the title doesn't even mean anything, it was communication arts with a psychology. It was basically psychology as it relates to media and stuff like that. And I went off to University of Wisconsin, Madison right after college partly because I didn't know what I was going to do in life. But that's where I started doing improv.  Could you be a psychologist? I mean, if you have a master's in psychology, couldn't you have a couch and Kleenex? Well, I guess it's like one of those things where it wasn't officially psychology even though there was psychology was kind of, it was strongly related to psychology and how media affects people's thoughts and attitudes and stuff like that. But I knew as soon as I got there, I was like, what am I doing here? But luckily, I loved Madison so much and I loved University of Wisconsin. And that is where I started doing improv and on stage in front of people. So I'll always have a lot of affection for those two years I spent there. A psychology degree in how the media controls my daughter studied with Ralph Nader's sister, Laura Nader at Berkeley. And she teaches a famous course about control, how society controls your thoughts. Did this touch upon Bernays at all? You know, I don't remember getting into Bernays much at the time. It's been so long, but we did talk a lot about Chomsky and manufacturing content, but also things like how the media can desensitize children possibly to violence, you know, through just exposure to violent images and things like that. You think that's good. I've been to your house and your kids at two were playing Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty. You think that kids should be exposed to as much violence as possible, right? Absolutely. That's why it's so funny, too, because so much of the comedy I've done is so dark. And I often think about that line in High Fidelity where John Q6 talked about, you know, people talk about kids being exposed to violent images all the time. What about thousands upon thousands of songs about heartbreak, but just what does that do into us? And it's funny, too, because, you know, I think one of the things, one of the reasons a lot of dark stuff comes up in comedy I love and comedy I do. And I know you're the same way, because I remember some of the jokes. You wrote so many hilariously unusable jokes along with usable jokes when we worked together on The Emmys with Conan. I remember I was in tears reading the jokes that you deliberately threw in that we couldn't do. And so I know we both share the kind of same dark. It's our way of processing all the stuff we don't want to deal with in real life, you know.  So let's put it into the comedy.  I lasted, I think, because of the jokes that never make it to the show. You had a soapy choice. I still to this day quote to people as one of the jokes that's just made for comedy writer room. What was it? Oh, it was, I'm almost reluctant to even say, but I think I could be wrong in paraphrasing, but it was something like, as I look out over this sea of faces, I just want to say, take the girl. I'm sorry, that's what I think when I watch soapy choice. It was something like that. It was just one of those jokes where I was just like, oh my God, you know, when you're in those rooms and you're a lot of times the stuff that, especially late at night, it makes you laugh at the stuff that's the most inappropriate, unsuitable, dark stuff.  And if you want to make comedy writers laugh, you have to push it real low. Because I think we're all so, I think it's the inappropriate stuff that makes, the things that you can't possibly do that often makes people laugh the most. It's interesting that you mentioned that. And I'm going to ask you the same question about this experience that I had. My seminal moment with comedy was watching Monty Python with my father. You probably remember this. John Cleese played a demented boxer who was trained by rubbing gravel in his hair. Oh Ken, clean air system. Yeah. Oh man, you got a great memory. I don't even, this is like the most important moment in my comedic development. I don't even remember the name. And he gets into a boxing ring with an old lady. That's the fight. And I'm trained and my father and I are trained that the old lady is going to beat the crap out of him. And he proceeds to pummel the old lady. And my father and I started laughing like hysterically. And I've never forgotten that that was when I realized what real comedy was. Do you have a moment like that with my father where you were watching? Because I know he was funny. Well those early Python shows were hugely formative for me too, like in terms of warping my brain as to, like I still remember those very first episodes, you know on Sunday nights they would show it on PBS. And yeah, those were so huge in terms of influencing what I find funny. And to this day, like John Cleese was on our show this year. And I was like reluctant to even go down and meet him. But a bunch of the writers wanted to go down and meet him. So I was like, okay, I'll go. But it was like, you're always a little scared about meeting your, because he's like a comedy, one of the comedy Beatles to me like with you. But he was very gracious and very nice. And I think he was very tired, but he still, you know, talk to us. And but it's very strange to meet people like that that you're to this day, I'm still so awestruck by, you know, you're pretty great. Well, you're not pretty great. You're pretty and great. You're amazing at improv. Oh, thank you.  I it's hard to imagine sharing a stage with him or trying to do something, communicate with him. But but I know Stephen to this day or even Conan, you know, I think it's those people you admire when you're growing up, when you're a kid that remain the most intimidating because like like Conan said, the most nervous he ever was, this was your thing. Anyway, he said the most nervous I ever was interviewing a guest was when I interviewed Peter Falk. Even though most of our audience wouldn't even necessarily know who Peter Falk was, but he was Colombo. He was the biggest TV star when Conan was a kid. Yeah. So he was nervous meeting him or he was nervous meeting Ted Williams. You know, I interviewed Peter Falk and he was nervous around me. He refused to make eye contact with me. Wow. I was making a joke. Did you actually talk to him? Oh, I'm sorry. That's the difference between you and me.  You're incredibly nice guy. And one of the reasons that I always love is when nice guys have like a dark sense of humor like that's reason I love Andy Daly, too.   So no, no, I was just basically saying about like, oh, yeah, people like Cleese and stuff like it. I think it's hard to it to this day. I still get awestruck around like when Andrea Martin was on Conan, you know, it's people like SCTV and, you know, when Martin Short was on or Steve Martin, you know, people like I liked when I was a kid that still to this day kind of or music heroes of mine like Conan. Is it fair to say that Andrea Martin may be like the greatest? Is that a fair? She's one of those people that among performers who've worked with her or really have had any experience with her. She I think is one of those comedy Beatles for them. I think a lot of people, sadly, are under familiar with her. But she's the people who know her have always considered her one of those money in the bank performers. If you bring her in on anything, she's going to knock it out of the park. You know, she's just She's still winning Tony's. She's still winning Tony's.  And she couldn't have been more sweet and gracious. She was, I think, I think they're still a part of them. Her that she's like, Oh, you, she was a little surprised that I even, you know, came in to say hello, because I think she's not used to being idolized like that these days.  And he was maybe the second or third guest. And I think a lot of our audience didn't even know he was a had a comedy background. And I was like, he's he's another guy that for me will be in the pantheon, you know, and always will be this generation, the new generation coming up just doesn't have context. Or is it has that always been the case? It's a good question. I think I think it's maybe somewhat just generational, where you discover your own new people.  But you know, that came out 20 years ago, which is still kind of blows my mind. Right. But that was one of those watershed shows for people a little younger than me. Those guys were like my age. So I think of them as guys who like Jay Johnson and Paul Tompkins and those guys is being around the same age as me and people that I love their work. But they were kind of my generation. And but but it's nice. I think everybody I love, like, I love when I meet one of our interns or something who knows about Python or knows about Billy Wilder or, you know, it has a sense of history for comedy. Because some people just want to see the new Comedy Central show, which is fine. People should watch the new stuff. But I love when you when you meet people that are genuinely love looking back and finding the good stuff that might be 20 or 30 years old.  You can watch comedy and enjoy it. Yeah. And I love when I meet young people who are maybe, you know, still in college who where I see it, I sense a real kindred spirit. Sometimes with some of these kids where I'm just like, oh, you're this kid's like like I was, you know, he's looking back and finding the Marx Brothers and, you know, also finding stuff that's coming out now, but also looking back. And that's certainly how I was. I loved looking back at old screwball comedies, you know, with Carol Lombard and stuff, just as much as I like the newer stuff. What is your daily diet of comedy? Do you make sure that you watch something funny every day? You know, that's it. It's funny. I don't know if this is, I've heard variations on this from other comedy people, but if I'm really honest with myself, I think I watched less comedy than I did when I was younger. I think there's something about it. Like I still, I still really enjoy it and appreciate it. But a lot of times I end up being drawn more to drama stuff or documentaries. I don't know if it's because I work in comedy now that sometimes you want to just kind of go somewhere else. But I tend to watch like documentaries or, you know, I've gotten back into watching like college sports, you know, more than I used to. Do you feel guilty that you're not watching comedy?  You know, some of that might be actually on a subconscious level with what's actually happening. I do, I think most comedians do feel that mixture of admiration and jealousy sometimes when you watch stuff. Like to this day, like if I watch an old Mr. Show sketch, like the audition or something like that. Dino Rodger, right? Dino, yeah. And I remember Jay Johnson telling me about that in Chicago before he even worked at Mr. Show when Dino used to just do that as a stage sketch. And when Jay told me the premise of it, this is just writing in a van in Chicago.  And that was long before I even saw it realized, you know, on TV. And so I think there's always that element of, and I've had musician friends say the same thing where you're just like, oh, you know, there's always that mixture of admiration and also jealousy, not a destructive kind of jealousy, but more like, oh man, that's so good. And I get that to this day when I, you know, even when I'll, like I sat in on a comedy bang bang live stage show, you know, with Scott Ackerman and Paula Tompkins and Lauren Lapkus and Neil Campbell when they came to Terrytown, New York, where I live.   Do you think it's fair to say that on any television comedy show, there are three types of writers. One would be the failed stand-up. The second would be the genuine writer, the person who's never performed and everything is on the page. And then there's the improv performer, who's also a writer. That seems to be the three variables, right? Well, a lot of the rooms I've worked in have been a mixture of people with a stand-up background, an improv background, and a strictly writer background. And I think that's a really nice, healthy mix. And what I love too is a lot of times the stand-ups, I've never done stand-up in my life and I admire it more than I can say, just the courage and the artistry of it. I've exclusively did improv. But I love that the friends of mine who I've worked with as writers, can you continue to get up and do it when they can? And some of them, like Lori Kilmartin, will still go out into the hiatus weeks.  It's gotten very hard for me to go out on tour because nobody wants me. I would say the- Do you ever not go on tour anymore? I, yeah, I still, I still perform. Actually, the podcast, believe it or not, has generated a loyal, I mean, anyway, let's not talk about me. So I find that stand-up comics who turn comedy writers are a little more possessive than the improv guys. The improv guys are much happier around a table in a comedy writing room, having fun out of themselves, part of the fabric, and not keeping score. That's what I've noticed. And it took me a long time because I'm not an improv guy, but it took me a long time to go over to that side where you're just, it's all about the table, not about scoring. I suspect you came into it knowing that. That's really an interesting observation. To be honest, most of the stand-ups I've worked with have been very collaborative, like in terms of like people like Dan Cronin and Laurie and all those people have been really loved spitballing stuff around. But it's really interesting to hear that perspective from you because that may very well be true for a lot of stand-ups who go into writing. I can understand the sense of control you have over your own material and the fact that it's always exactly what you want it to be when you go out there for better or worse, you go out there and you deliver exactly what you want to do.  And I would think giving up some of that control and having it things get tweaked and stuff like that would be a real adjustment for stand-ups going into writing you know with a staff. And with improv it's complete lack of control. That's true. You kind of have to, you can go out on stage with an idea but you have to be prepared to abandon it immediately if it takes a left turn or a tangent you know that you weren't expecting and you it's all about kind of discovering while you're out there with the you're seeing partner with the ensemble. You studied at Second City. Yeah I took, I started doing improv when I was going to grad school in Madison and then I went off back to Chicago which is my hometown. I always admired people that moved to Chicago just to do improv but I was from there anyway I don't know if I would add the guts to move to another city just to do comedy which seems so, would have probably seemed so reckless with my Irish Catholic guilt-ridden upbringing. I think I went off to, so I was basically going back to my hometown anyway. And so I did improv Olympic and Second City classes and then worked in a few groups while I was working in an ad agency for a few years and then ended up working at Second City as a cast member for four years before working at Conan. I toured around the country in the touring company for a couple years and then I was in one of the resident companies. So do you think Second City prepares a person for life better than stand-up comedy? I think having a Second City background makes you a better human being even if you never get a job on the Colbert show. I'm not so sure living the life of a stand-up comic for a couple of years makes you better. I'm almost convinced that in some ways stand-up can be a sinful pursuit in that it separates you from your fellow man whereas you know when you do improv it forces you to be part of the fabric of the universe. I think on a spiritual level improv makes you a better human being. That's a really interesting perspective because like having not done stand-up I wasn't asking for your opinion on that. I'm telling you what makes a Jesus Christ. Like I completely I completely believed you. Do you think I need your affirmation on this human? Well that's basically what I was saying was I don't even feel having never done stand-up I'm always fascinated by hearing the perspective of guys like you who've done it and have been out in that world because all I really know is the improv world and then the writing world so it's always interesting to hear. I do notice that when I hear like podcasts like yours you're listening to WTF or something where when comics talk to each other I do get the sense that there is a really strong community and people do cling to each other and form really strong bonds that I related to as an improviser you know where you just a lot of times the closest people the people you trust the most are people you've been in the trenches with you know whether you're stand-up or improviser you know to this day some of my closest friends or people I met when we were all really you know kind of struggling in the early days and uh in those in those trenches or um you know Stephen Stephen Colbert still talks about paying for the bus with pennies once you know like everybody was really you know those uh those early days in the trenches really do form a lot of strong bonds and I'm sure it's the same with stand-ups it's just a lot of times you're traveling completely on your own I'm sure yeah and you don't have that like when we would go do a show in a in a crappy van with the second city touring company you know if the show went well you did it together if a show was a disaster you did it together and you could kind of commiserate but it must be very lonely at times being a stand-up on the road. Did you see Bermuda's film about the the improv troupe? I forgot the name of it. Oh don't think twice yeah it was so I was actually afraid to see it for a while because everyone I first thought I love Mike Mike had been an intern of ours at Conan actually and Tammy Sager and I love all those guys Chris Gatherd and Keegan and those guys um they're they're all wonderful and like I was I was looking forward to seeing it and I was also a little afraid to see it because everyone I knew who'd been an improviser said he completely nails it and completely nails the dynamic of those groups and how jealous he's formed and how there's always someone who's doing better than the other people in the group you know and there's always someone who's more ambitious and there's always someone who is the unsung hero that holds the group together and is the glue of the group and when I watched it I was like yep he got it absolutely right this is this is exactly the improv world as I as most improvisers know it you know it's very true in a very funny and also sad way it's uh he really gets it right you know it's called don't think twice right yeah yeah thank you for I couldn't remember that I went to see it and I thought well I don't know anything about being part of an improv troupe so I think this is fantastic but that's probably because I don't know what it's really like so I'm really pleased to hear that he that he nailed it it must be very hard to have to be in an improv group and know that you should be surrendering and be thinking of the group but still be a human being it must be a constant struggle for some comics have changed I don't think they're as competitive as they were when I started out because I think comedy has gotten more personal when I was starting out it was joke heavy so jokes you're are possessive you know I wrote a joke I hope nobody steals it is he doing what I'm doing comedy stand-up comedy saved itself through Patton and Janine Garofalo by making it very personal so you can't take it guys like great point guys like verbiglia for example we'll get up and talk about their real life stories and it doesn't matter nobody can take what you're doing I think it's a better scene than it was when I was starting out that that makes sense to me just to hear even having never done stand-up that that that really that's a great point because I do get the sense that like even even with Louis's stuff you know where he early on I'd almost forgotten that a lot of his early stuff was very absurd you know it had nothing to do with his own life or his own family or his kids or anything like that and to make that shift and what you're talking about the truth of your own life as opposed to just yeah making as funny as his early absurd stuff was you know making that shift or you know Patton talking about his depression or you know and making it so funny and talking about grief and things like that that are uh that's a very brave way to do comedy it's very vulnerable and it's also it makes people feel a lot less alone about their own pettiness or their own grief or their own insecurities I think that it's it's a nice thing to see the art of stand-up taking that I think there's still room for a lot of just absurd stuff which is great but I like the mix you know how deep do you get into your characters like you're Trump because this is what I've noticed about Smigal and Smigal is when he does Trump I'm pretty sure he's Trump I think half of him thinks he's Trump how deep down will you go do you think like Trump how are you getting there well you know it's it's odd that I ended up doing Trump in some ways because I never did Trump you know at Conan or anything and uh I filled in when Trump was doing a call-in thing at at a The Colbert Show uh last year they had me just fill in to have someone on the phone to riff around with Stephen and converse with them and I kind of that kind of morphed into me doing the cartoon Trump voice in all honesty I don't think I do a real Trump impression the way Anthony Atamanic does who completely nails him or Robert used to do him so beautifully in the clutch cargo bits on Conan I do my best to kind of capture the the you know the pestilence and the arrogance and the narcissism but it's less of an impression than it is kind of an impression of his attitude but when Robert I'm and I'm also kind of doing it the way I sort of remember Robert doing it at Conan to sort of just trying to it's sort of doing an impression of an impression like Anthony when I hear Anthony do it it just is Trump you know it's pretty it's so dead on you know you sit there and go oh my god that's just and it's funny my wife Miriam Anthony I bumped into Anthony on the street a while back and he said the first time I did Trump was in an ass cat scene with with Miriam and and I guess it just kind of I don't even think he knew he could do it and it came out in a improv scene and it's so funny now that it's like such a big part of his life yeah but uh he really channels Trump like he even had the hand gestures down and but in terms of characters in general I've often seen myself in all honesty is I remember John Cleese saying once of Python he said Michael Palin the real actor in the group the rest of us are more caricaturist and um I've always kind of seen myself a bit of as a caricaturist and that's not a put down it's more like just you know you put on a character kind of like when you're wearing a hat and uh you can have a lot of fun doing it but I've always admired the depth you know when you see a a really deep performance like when I watch when I watch someone like Fred Armisen or Bill Hader at times I'm just like kind of awestruck at their ability to just completely transform you into courage of the commitment are you all in when you're you I watch you you're all in I feel like I I'm doing my best to be all in and uh I really enjoy I've always loved doing characters more than anything like especially if they're completely different from me you know like playing a book like last week I got to be a crazy kind of Detroit kid rock Ted Nugent type rocker dude and um you know those are the most fun things for me to do when they're they have absolutely nothing to do with my own personality or upbringing or background or but the odd thing is it most of the time if you leave a sketch world like Colbert Conan or whatever most of the time they're going to get somebody who already looks and acts like that to play those parts so that is one of the nice things about working at a a show like this where you you do get to do some characters like that where in a movie they would catch the guy who plays bikers all the time or whatever you know when you're all in and it's television it's live to tape it's it might as well be live television what are you measuring what's going on in your head are you listening to the audience do you know if you're getting laughs or are you in the character and the character doesn't care about the laughs well I notice it seems to work best when you're just playing the character in the intention of the scene but there are times like like I've noticed and you probably find this too is a stand-up when you're asking for the laugh you don't get it you know that feeling where you're like I always remember that old story and it was a it was an old theaters see where someone had been in a in a play and they they always asked for the cup of sugar and every night they got a laugh and they said why didn't I get a laugh tonight and the director said you usually ask for the cup of sugar tonight you asked for the laugh wow and and I remember thinking that always stuck with me because if you're in the moment and you're playing the scene I think there's a there's a sense in the audience where they can tell if you're you're pushing them to laugh like right but if you're out there just kind of doing your jokes and it seems effortless and it's in the moment it's like when basketball players are are in a on a cold streak and they're they're pushing to get the ball into the basket that's when it doesn't go in you know it's like when you're when you're in a kind of zone and ideally what y'all you always want to be in the zone but you know as you know there are some nights where you feel like you are another night where you're like oh I'm in a hole here uh the audience can tell there's blood in the water right there's a thing that I've seen 10 times and we've played it over the years and it was in your in memoriam and by the way I was very upset so a pair of your death oh it was so sweet of Conan and Sweeney to to do that yeah that farewell thing by the way I just wanted to I don't want to interrupt you just I just wanted to say real quick how grateful it was because I was not expecting that and um they were so nice about me feeling to pull back to New York with with my family and everything and it was something I was not expecting and it meant a lot so I've seen that I must have seen this 10 or 15 times people have shown it to me I saw it you're Frankenstein and you and Tom Hanks is waiting in the wings and there's a light switch right and you're like selling the light switch like it's the greatest thing and and I mean what am I what it's your is are you aware like people are laughing at your eyes and are you are you selling it with your eyes or is it just instinct are you is there any mechanics to it well you know it's funny with with Frankenstein because I would never would probably even thought of playing Frankenstein but Brian McKen originally came up with the idea for that bit Frankenstein waste a minute of our time where he just drags you down the hall with the camera crew and shows you something stupid like a light switch I think my natural goofy personality came out in that character as much as anything I've ever done of just like being a people pleaser like it's like sort of bringing your park card home for your for your parents to look I I'd look at this art project I got to be plus on you know and um and I think that uh my natural kind of goofy people pleasing I came out in Frankenstein like he was almost like a little kid you know like what do you think look what I found for you isn't this amazing and um Tom Hanks was so nice and funny like he actually he came up with the idea to get just as excited about the light switch like Frankenstein was which like I used to hear that about him like I don't know him at all obviously but uh but Conan used to say when Tom Hanks hosted SNL he was one of the hosts one of the few hosts that would stay up all night with the writers and roll up his sleeves and just he loves comedy he he just loves making things as funny as they can be and he really really enjoys the collaborative fun process of bouncing ideas around and I think that comes through in his work but uh he was definitely like I remember our cameraman tripped on that cord that was a pre-tape when we shot that with him because he was so busy and um he's like I'll do it again no problem he goes hey how about if I get excited about the light switch and you know wow so that was inspiring to see you know that um he's still just kind of a uh obviously a comedy fan and loves loves doing it are we ever gonna see a compilation of all the Conan stuffers that tied up somewhere you know that's one of the unfortunate things is like I look I I'm very jealous when I see that all the old SNLs are on uh you know Netflix or whatever or on uh CISO because I would love it if uh god bless the people that put a lot of our old bits on YouTube because otherwise they kind of just disappear into the ether you know there's no there I don't know of any plans to release the old shows and um and that's that's kind of sad to me because I think there's so much fun stuff including the musical performances and the interviews and the remotes that Conan did and but thank god there are some on YouTube like you can go on there and look at his 19th century rules baseball remote which is still one of the funny things ever triumphed at the Star Wars you know premiere did you ever see Coman's sketch it was Aaron Sorkin and Tina Fey were both coming out with shows about Saturday Night Live and Aaron Lee Shriver was in it yeah we we uh that was um that turned out so beautifully I remember we were kicking around the idea of doing a Sorkin-ish type parody and then I think uh I think Michael Coman and Andrew Weinberg were the main guys who ended up writing up the final version and they got Lee of Shriver and and it would turn out so beautifully it was such a wonderful kind of uh live from Studio 6a yeah that was actually um I think one of the most beautifully realized pieces like I remember when we were first just kicking around the idea of doing a Sorkin-ish backstage version of our own show and then the fact that it turned in it was one of those rare cases where it turned out better than I even expected it would you know from the initial idea and um the brilliance of it the brilliance of it was you know they captured the walk and talk and all that stuff Conan played a network executive who was you know really putting the hammer down on Lee Shriver who played Conan and they just amped up all the stakes on a stupid television show what was genius about it was that Conan played a network executive who was fawning over Conan so Conan got to fawn all over himself which I love I was like you're the full package you're brilliant yeah that was oh that was wonderful that was the thing that I always remember about Robert Smigel is last year we were in Cleveland during the Republican convention and somehow we got Robert inside a tank as Trump and it was it was Trump driving through a black neighborhood and Robert was on a loudspeaker talking to the blacks as Trump is he wearing the wagon set no no no he was inside he was afraid to go out and actually meet the people oh that's great yeah I'll send you a link to it it is one of the funniest things I've ever seen in my life going through these the inner city in a tank with Trump for president emblazoned on it and then Robert's inside and there's a loudspeaker hello the blacks how are you you're gonna have so many jobs and and most of them didn't most of them didn't believe it and it we were really worried about it because it was borderline it could have been it could have been bad taste and I was watching Robert in the tank and I thought this this must have been how he was raised because the power to keep going and doing it and I said to him you were raised to know right from wrong and that sometimes you need to say the wrong things to make the right point and that's that's a great point yeah and and I think parents really instill a lot of your comedic viewpoint you know I still ask my mother am I wrong for going after ice you know the homeland security for doing what they're doing to the Mexicans and then my mother starts screaming about Donald Trump you know get him you know you have to point this out and and so like I'm pleasing my mommy what was instilled in you growing up well you know it's fine my parents in in all honesty are pretty conservative people you know I think they're uh they would consider themselves republicans even though my dad voted for Kennedy and everything but they they they don't like Trump but they're they're they're pretty conservative people but the sense of humor they've always had but my dad was in my dad was a military guy before he went he was in Vietnam and then he left and went into business and stuff but he uh he was the major dig at the hand or hill right he was he was luckily he was never captured but he did get shot down in a helicopter and blown through a door by a shell and stuff so he he went through some stuff but he uh luckily came home to us just fine and um they're pretty conservative people but they always instilled in me a sense of kind of questioning things and having a sense of humor like they they were the ones that oftentimes like turn me on to Woody Allen and you know the old movies and uh so my my parents always had a great sense of humor about things so I think they kind of accept the fact that we won't don't always see eye to eye on things but they also share kind of my irreverent sense of humor about things and in questioning not accepting things at face value and uh digging underneath to through the bullshit and stuff right now right so I think that's something I'm grateful that I got from them even though we don't always agree politically that's something we definitely share and when you talk about like that kind of fearlessness that that Robert has you know I've always admired that myself when I just I don't know if I would have the uh like when I watch like Colbert and in old daily show bits too and he would be to someone's face playing the very position he was statorizing you know to make a satirical point or Robert you know I remember being at one of his when he was doing triumph at the video music awards in 2001 I was standing right behind him and he was trying to get in to talk to in sync there was a wall of huge bodyguards and Robert was pushing trying to get past the biggest human being I've ever seen and I remember the guy turns around he goes back off man and Robert's just like come on I just want to talk I just want to talk to him and uh I'm just going to make some jokes and the guy goes can't make jokes with a broken jaw and uh Robert was utterly fearless like if it's something if he thinks he's going to get something funny out of it he I think I got the sense he was willing to get physically harmed by this guy he was going to get one really good joke and uh and I really I'm not like I'm not crazy like that out in in the open with people like I could never do I could never operate triumph out among people at like a Michael Jackson trial or something like right by the way congrats I meant to say congratulations to all you guys for the WGA award very well deserved finally okay our guest has been brought in I was waiting we're done no I'm I was so excited for you guys and that was so well deserved and I was so happy to see you know the work you guys are doing recognize like that thank you thank you um it's uh I was gonna make a bad taste joke the the John Cleese moment with my father watching him beat up the old lady that was where I went oh that's what comedy can be there's a moment in the past 10 15 years where I saw the possibilities of comedy watching triumph at the Westminster dog show the second time he went in and I really recommend this because I don't know if you remember it but he got thrown out the first time from the Westminster poster there what I'm sorry they put up like a wanted poster the second time do not let this pump it in or whatever I'm sorry to interrupt and this is when I I to me it's just you know there are certain points in your development and this was a major part of my comedy development triumph and I really recommend that everybody's I think it's it's on the best of triumph on Netflix so triumph decides to go to the Westminster dog show in disguise as ed bradley do you remember this I forgot about the ed bradley part so he puts on a gray beard and the gray hair and he goes hello this is ed bradley not triumph the insult comic dog I'm here at the dog show just to report for 60 minutes no Conan O'Brien nothing and he's going around and he's introducing himself as ed bradley to always people but he's you know it's an effin dog right well near the end as always triumph starts pumping all the animals as ed bradley and it gets really out of hand and suddenly the beard falls off and the hair falls off the beard is off and then you see Robert's hand push the beard on the floor just into the shot and it was just such a deconstruction of comedy it was Robert saying okay I'm denoting ed bradley now right the beard is in the shot so triumph is still ed bradley it was like a virtuoso of comedic sloppiness where I thought oh you don't you know nothing has to make sense if you don't want it you don't have to explain anything or even just a smidgen of an explanation can be enough for comedy you don't have to overthink it that that's such a great example I love to when I think the audience always appreciates too when you're trying to keep it consistent like the fact that you was shoving it in like well this is the best I can do in this moment and I think you're going to appreciate that I'm it did fall off let's acknowledge that but let's just push it in to show that I'm trying to maintain a sense that this is still ed bradley and uh yeah that's that's a those are beautiful like some of my favorite things in comedy are when things go wrong and you just play with it acknowledge that something I remember slipping I was playing god once at Conan and I slipped on the stairs in my sandals and he asked if you've been drinking yeah exactly that's right I think that ended up in the montage and and those are some of my favorite moments because if the audience knows something just happens so you might as well have fun with it acknowledge it and you know we we a lot of my favorite that's one thing you definitely that I carried over from improv and I know Conan came from an improv background and Steven too you know if you don't treat mistakes like they're mistakes they can be wonderful gifts as funny as that sounds it's like if you just roll with them and have fun with the mistake okay something just went horribly wrong let's let's have fun with it when I ever have insomnia which is every night I listen to the control room tapes from Apollo 13 you can you can listen to them on youtube why no idea it's very interesting it's Jim Lovell right as the service module exploded and they're talking back to Houston and it's just this calm voice and I find it like well here they're about to lose three guys and they are as calm as possible and and they got them home that's how I view I try to view life can you be funny around mean people because you're you're cursed you've worked for Conan and Colbert who are the two nicest guys in show business that's true they I've been lucky that way but yeah I have I try not to take that for granted too because I think we've all worked around people that are very have very negative energy and stuff and sometimes they can be a healthy mix of personality types because I think sometimes they can compliment each other I think the I think good work can still happen even if people are very different personalities as long as they're all pursuing the work with the same attitude like they just want to make it good because like I worked on improv teams where some people just weren't getting along at all but if they could leave it aside when they went on stage it was fine it's a lot easier when you're getting along because personally I think a lot of the best stuff the best material gets developed when you're screwing around in the office and you don't want to screw around with people that you don't like right so if you like a lot of my favorite bits came up from us literally screwing around in the hall or in the writer's room or something and if everybody's sitting in their own world like and it's really toxic environment you're going to get less of those moments for sure I've been in toxic environments because I'm there and it becomes toxic and there's a myth about comedy writing and that is all of us are broken this is what they say to justify I do agree well what they do is to justify a toxic environment in comedy they'll say everybody in comedy is broken we get our best work when they're off kilter when they're insecure when they're competitive when they're miserable because that's where comedy comes from on the rare occasions where I spoke up I would say first of all the human condition is we're all broken there's nobody who isn't broken the reason broken people turn to comedy is because they're incredibly broken that the audience and comedy heals them and they do their best work when they're feeling good and by keeping them off kilter you're just making them miserable you're not making them funnier anyway you've been not not I think that's a very wise theory what is this what is this sketch show you're doing for bright bar television the white power comedy hour that's kind of a secret I'm I don't want it you know too many spoilers to get out it's uh we're going to change things for the better um and uh bannon's got some great a great chunk and um and you know all kinds of things oh man it's it gets weirder and weirder than it like I I keep thinking about um I don't know how many people I've told us through it uh it was funny when when Trump announced that he was running in the summer of 2015 we hadn't gone on the air yet we weren't going on the air till September and I remember we were all thinking well we this is hilarious we got to do a web video because he won't still be in the race when our show started and um to this day I still think about that moment it's just at how utterly absurd it was that the idea that he was even running again let alone that he could ever be president and um what do you say the people who are scared I I think the what Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the other day I someone was sending around a clip of her saying that she thinks the true symbol of America is not the bald eagle but the pendulum and that things swing back and forth and that they'll swing back again and you know that that things do tend to shift to the right or the left as long as we keep the checks and balances in place and we don't let the fascists completely take over I think personally I think what Trump fears more than anything more than anything is being humiliated or made fun of if we just keep doing that I think that's the way to go and I'm not saying that's going to take him down because like people used to make jokes we all know about a great role of satire played in bringing down Nazi Germany um and I know that it's not like that's all you need but I do believe that what he fears and it's very clear just from the fact that he won't go to the White House Correspondent Center that his biggest fear is being belittled or made to feel less important or less great than he sees himself do you ever do the narcissists yeah do you ever get scared I mean do you ever I do get scared I get scared for uh especially for you know as a as a as a middle-class white guy I'm I'm less scared for myself than I am for um a lot of people I care about who you know don't weren't born that way and like just just people that uh and I get very scared for the country I'm I think I think most people I know feel this way I feel so embarrassed too for our country right now I feel so embarrassed just thinking about how people outside looking at us think that's who they want really you know like that that's who they want that's who they want to be as their figurehead and um it just it's so embarrassing that these are president to me but I know a lot of people what's really sad to me I think is that a lot of good people voted for him too it wasn't all like racist maniacs you know like I know there's some uh relatives of mine that I know vote a form and what's really sad to me is they vote a form on the pro-life issue which I know he doesn't actually even really right feel that way about and that makes me deeply sad you know and he's a he's a con man who conned a lot of good people along with the bad people that makes me that's the saddest thing to me is that you know guys like bannon of course are gonna want him in there but the fact that there's a lot of good people in like you know coal mining towns that just want their jobs to come back you know and I understand that that's he's the one that was saying I'm gonna do this for you and he's not but he gave them hope and that that's very sad to me you know I think the democrats missed the boat I think they won I think Hillary won no 70 000 votes is another discussion there is a problem though with the democratic party because there are people who believe that abortion is murder and you and you have to respect that absolutely there's a huge segment of people and I thought actually I thought when bill clinton was running in 92 he said we can all agree that we want fewer abortions the goal should be fewer abortions we're all on the same page I'm a big fan and this was a little intimidating to be quite frankly with uh bryans that's so that's okay to you to say David it meant a lot to me that he asked me to do it and are you kidding I really enjoy your podcast and thank you so much for asking me how do people follow you on twitter oh I'm uh it's basically just if they want to follow me it's just brian stacked 153 the 153 is utterly meaningless you gotta get a sign in me because they didn't I don't know much about internet stuff but uh it I won't even get into the expert there is no explanation but it yeah they want to look at it it's just brian stacked 153 yeah they want to follow me there and if people are ever interested you know the only other thing I do outside of the show usually these days is the last Monday of every month at ucb in chelsea here in new york I do a show called gravid water which is fun if people ever want to come down and see that Tammy sager and scott adson some other people do it it's improvisers and actors pair it up the wow actors the actors are have memorized lines from a scene and the improvisers don't know what the scene is until they go out here and so they have to just respond to each line wow that they're hearing for the first time and it's a lot of fun it's the last monday of every month including this monday and um that's the only other thing you see me yeah ucb in chelsea and uh it's a lot of fun steven ruddy is the producer and he um he gets some wonderful actors to do the the acting side of things you know like a lot of stage actors from broadway and stuff that give full-on performances and the improvisers have a lot to react to and scenes from plays and movies that you would be familiar with very rarely in my case the only time I really wrecked the there were only a couple times where I recognize what it was and I still didn't know what the next line was going to be usually but there was one time there was a scene from all that jazz that I've seen that quite a few times and there was another time it was romeo and juliet but most of the time it's like yelp plays by that i'm a little unfamiliar with by like david hair or something you know and i won't know the scene at all um so it's a nightmare that is the nightmare of every actor it's funny because the audience is so on your side because they know it's kind of an actor's nightmare to go out there and not know what's coming but it the audience is so wonderfully supportive because they know you're just trying to make sense of what you've just heard and as long as you're kind of rolling with it and trying to what a great idea what a great idea it's really a wonderful uh it's it's my favorite show to do over at ucb and and i love watching the other scenes because i you know there's usually five scenes and you're just in one of them yourself and then you get to watch four of them so it's always a lot of fun to watch and they uh they do it in la too uh the first or last sunday every month and i would highly recommend if you live in la too just to see it at ucb franklin they do it there too well it's a great show to to see or or do but i thank you again david thank you brian for having me please you'll come back please i'd love to anytime oh thank you thank you so much brian thank you david have a good day you too bye you're listening to the david feldman radio program you sad pathetic hump before we start louis i know you love me oh boy yeah and i know this is a big thing for you to come on my show but the dynamic has to be that you're put out this is an inconvenience and you have to be the alpha dog in this even though you've worshiped me for 50 years well well 50 minutes 50 minutes but i did have to ask you to be on the show that's what's astonishing that i had to go out of my way to ask you to do the show because it's like the only way i was going to see you you know because otherwise it's i call i get no you don't call back i get nothing from you so i have to say can we be on the show so i can see and talk we could talk for a few minutes i yeah i mean it's i've wanted to have you on the show but you know there's a waiting list so long to get on the show i mean and then now you've opened up the floodgates now that i've had you on i'm gonna get a million calls from steve martin and tom hanks yeah my close friend tom hanks yeah i mean now now i've i've kind of raised the standard and it's not going to be good no gary bucey i think i think i think angeline nejolie i mean you're going to be sad american stand-up comedian author playwright social critic actor and publisher of molly aficionado lewis black joins us your molly every month i get your magazine on molly and uh it's fantastic my magazine i'm what the fuck is molly it's a mind-altering drug that the millennials are that's what i thought yeah how can you be the publisher of the magazine you don't even know what no am i the publisher yeah you are no seriously the joanne got you the job is no i wish i had the i'm getting no money for it i'm making somehow i'm making a fortune off your work but molly aficionado that's not really is it a real magazine no i just wanted to oh but i'm glad you made it up and it makes me want to get a subscription i mean maybe we could do that instead of this bullshit well one of the questions i wanted to ask you is what's kathleen madigan's phone number and how can i get her on the show instead of you oh if i only know i was just talking to her right here and if i because i so wish because i could have just hooked that up i could have left my fucking phone here and it's completely mophied so it's the charge would last you could do the whole god damn interview is she the i think she may be one of the most underrated comedians working i think it's astonishing that she's not recognized for yep she did the lack that they don't know that you know that they're not paying attention and have them for a long time and then it really in the last you know and then you kind of go okay there's this or that and but then when you watch somebody really come into their own as she has in the last you know five five years let's say that's coming i mean i've always you and i both have known her forever so she's always been funny but really where it's like now it's like bam bam bam bam how do you not notice how do you not i don't get it you know but but but that happens to a lot you know there's others too that we could sit here and make a list of but with her it's really uh but that's absurd well there are two comics she and Todd Barry yeah Todd oh yes are just two comics who when i see them on television i say oh i that i remember i want to be a comedian they may like Kathleen makes me want to be i remember we were in ireland and where she's beloved yes and i remember watching her and there are a lot of tough oh you were there too this is 2000 yeah i know i'm forgettable and i we were two jews so it cancels each other okay uh i had i had some questions about Kathleen madigan you toured iraq and afghanistan with her yeah aren't there better places to go on vacation it's really unbelievable yeah no we had their pictures that we've sent out and stuff from there it was unbelievable it was just it was really it was Kathleen and i and you got to realize in the land's arm store wow yeah and um uh three dopers three dopers Kathleen's an alcoholic and then uh kicks brooks but brooks and done can you imagine you and brooks and done well it was just brooks he done was done done was done and then uh uh then there was and robin you know robin so it was any i mean but but we wandered into places we went into a place called cutter uh that q u q a t a r cutter they called you know they were the country yeah that's where aljazeera is from well that's where they were after we went there and i was able to organize themselves uh it's a jewish ours here at the now it's just out just out no the uh um no it's a oddly enough it's and we go there and they say um whatever you don't tell people that we have a base here nobody's supposed to know that we have a base here well what are you taking you know you know jimmy kathleen robin really three schmucks you know really you know we're going to keep it a secret and like anybody believe us and anybody believe that we went there it was uh uh it was really uh the whole thing we would we were really running around like it he was rebecca erwin robin's partner yeah rebecca uh no rebecca spencer no rebecca spencer wasn't there for and she's you know she's she's smart she saved it for the movies you know she traveled with him on those she traveled on some i can't no she she was there you were mullen because one steinberg came on one of them so he's uh and david his manager i mean yeah his uh his manager so yeah rebecca was there yeah that's true the former you're right the former uh joint chiefs of staff mullen said i don't know i can't imagine i that robin would go to any outpost as deep in country if he if he if he said there are three guys he would go yeah no robin was on now you weren't stupid enough to join him no no no no no no no no no no no no it was it was hard enough to do what we were doing i was out of my depth doing what i was doing um you really uh i mean he he would do that on his own i mean he didn't do it when we were together i mean because it was you know 14 shows seven days six countries that kind of thing but when but he would go back on his own um you know and fly into these but before we're operating basis we like to call him those of us in the state and we would go you know and then he you know chopper into these fucking places and i just i i can't imagine i literally can't imagine it but what was astonishing is that when he came off a plane you know like kathleen i would waddle off the plane you know it'd be like the uh you know it's like you know kathleen and i would come off the plane as if we were going to be entering an assisted living situation and robin would whip off the plane at a hundred miles an hour and the there'd be troops you know like eight nine guys standing around and uh and he'd run right up to him and just start and for the moment we hit the ground until we left he he was on right for them and i think you know robin you know i'm from san francisco he was built that way the the frustration that you must have felt is boy i wish i could do what he's doing with those soldiers right now but my comedy comes from some someplace else yeah his comes from this love and neediness and hug me and energy and your comedy comes from f u yeah my comedy and so there's no you know it's so it's hard to you know don't you wish you could be that way isn't that you mean be the you know the robin yeah well you know i i wish you were like that oh yeah that's really in fact i wish robin were here to see you in every sense of the work that would be it is too bad i mean that's the same thing when you when you lose someone that you've known over time yeah and you kind of then you kind of realize the questions you really should have asked yeah but you know we didn't get to do a podcast together and that's really where the probe begins but you must have been able to talk to him about theater you must be able to connect it on a number of levels but i have to say i wouldn't i i just can't imagine um because it's not just that drive it's also that sense of being whatever uh because even to by by the third time i had a real sense of it because but but yet the third tour i did but you did three tours yeah yeah i did one where i was there was no robin i was the the lead comic i'm going is there is everyone dead because i said to them can you please find a big name i was come on guys find wait find a really big name you know like steve you know martin or you know somebody somebody okay hang on hang on for one second louis black you did three tours overseas yeah i want to get to robin in a second first tour was what year i just uh 2005 2005 and you went to iraq or afghanistan we went to iraq and we went to afghanistan i think we were in afghanistan then okay so but that was 2005 in iraq afghanistan and we also were in italy that year we flew that's insane why would you well because you fly into italy because there's a big air force base there so uh miso's in japan oh sorry i don't know and in in vietnam it's oh me so horny isn't i'll be you begin with an a i don't remember it was somewhere it was like the greatest gig i literally i just stood on stage going um but you couldn't say this but i'd said it in so many words who did you blow to get this because it was it was plus it was a kid show it was the kids and i'm like seriously i'm what blue and animals you got blue and animals so we but you flew in there because the air force was there we also flew into uh germany where that the major hospital is where they flew them out to um to get to to the that hospital we went there we went um there was also we went to kuwait um entered entered initially that was the first and you were with whom on that tour this was um robin uh i get on the plane i get on the plane and you gotta realize i mean kind of i'm i'm i'm i'm not really i'm i'm out of my depth and just going now i'm but i'm also out of my celebrity depth i mean i knew robin there's lance armstrong who is who's it's so it's 2005 so you don't know that he's you don't know that he's you know you don't you know there's you know there's some things about him cheating but kid rock um admiral mullen uh the the woman who is miss america whose name escapes me i feel terrible because you're a judge every year well i will be now that uh did not be doing miss universe now oh okay right now the scaly is dead you've been there it's so so we so we and there and his singer another singer i feel terrible i don't uh i don't remember what i had for lunch yesterday so uh um but those were the you know this because that that was really the it was the three of them and then uh uh and then so that was the first go around the second go around was i believe it was just me and uh you know the third was just me it was it's tough to okay panic attacks panic attacks i didn't have any over there yeah did they allow alcohol in the country i i know no no so we were sneaking by the there was there was some sneaking around you had to do some sneaking around the canadiens had alcohol so you had to kind of what about i was told by somebody when you're in afghanistan drew it down oh no i was told that i just had to wear a huppa do you know this is true do you know that there were two jews left in kabul afghanistan did you ever see that story in the new york times the hardest i ever made bill marlough it was page two of the new york times it was 2005 there were two jews living in afghanistan i swear to god i'm gonna wait till you finish taking a sip yeah swear to god two jews in afghanistan kabul two separate temples they would not worship together they both i swear to god i have to look it up i swear to god they said i will not talk to that guy and they accuse each other of collaborating with the taliban i swear to god i'm gonna find that article uh i'm sure jonathan alper who listens knows this story so the hardest you ever laughed i would assume was in afghanistan why do you find drone strikes so funny i would assume that's the hardest you ever laughed was in afghanistan and iraq where i kind of laughed that you never had again right well i was uh yeah no you you have that laugh but it's not a laugh it comes from a different place it's a laugh but it comes from a completely different place it comes from a level of a oh i'm gonna die and then and then that follows uh because we were actually every so often you would go you know holy shit i mean because you're kind of you're with admiral mullen so you you know you're with him so you kind of know there's as much protection as you could possibly have you really would be kind of a toughie if they blew the joint chiefs out of the sky and you're not in a battle zone of that nature but but it is still you know we were doing a show one night and mortar there was a mortar attack around the whole place you know what did you say robin was on stage robin hiddles robin hiddles mortar well did he leave what did he do no he was on stage no we kept to show them we didn't stop they never you never stopped i'm literally getting the chills i remember something mullen said about robin uh and my friend rebecca posted in facebook that she she saw mullen mullen said when he was talking about robin's service yeah he said there was no question that robin was completely devoted to the the troops even though he expressed to me severe reservations as to why they were there yeah i get the chills when i think and the way mullen said that it reminded me that uh we we can trust people in the military that the military we have a good military the problem is the people who yeah it was that was that was the the life changer in part that was one of the 50 life changers do you mind if i pursue this with you because i know not okay because it's relevant because i don't know if you had time to see the state of the union on tuesday that was yesterday and it's already changed my life it was actually wasn't a state of the union it was uh it was the speech to congress and it was so moving i don't i don't even know if i could it would be easier for me to talk about my time in iraq i can't understand that i don't know for you but a life changer for me i yeah don't go on i'm sorry i i don't know if you saw it because it's oh i saw it because i i saw it because i feel obligated you know okay you know that's because i got a gig coming up again and i got a gig you know and i'm i'm trying to shape the fucking shit in front of people i feel like i'm there with my stool and i'm making little claymations oh my god damn it you had to bring this up you fuck i was hoping my mother who loves you always introduces his parents in the audience that's why always always well if i had parents like lewis black i would introduce you loves you loves you and and just so you know that i'm telling the truth you and collin quinn so how's she is great taste right taste yeah i'm interesting in the in in the yang of it yeah yeah yeah she my mother has great taste in comedy needless to say i've disappointed her her needless to say i've disappointed her i'm glad you didn't bring the writer's guild award and put it between us that i thought was very sweet oh well we'll talk about that later that was a sweet night it was yes you and you did an amazing job there's a line that can i quote a line sure of yours that i said i turned to one of the writers i was sitting with and i said i could never have written this joke it's it is not in my dna you said kelly an con way it's not mine either that was bill chef's joke oh what a great joke it's a great joke i'd written the setups i'd written all these setups and and i there was i i had a comment about kelly an i'm not a comic as much as i'm a commentator i feel so i stumble into punchlines as i've worked through the year i don't really every summer i'll write it down yeah i'll write it down into but bill had gotten a bill who's like tell everybody who built bill chef was the was the head writer of the letterman show for a hundred years and kind of a professor emeritus of all really of the great of the great joke writers of of art of our time um and uh he uh he was working backstage with me and his his part of his gig was to help me with my stuff if i wanted help and so i came in and i went wow i didn't even know he's going to be there it's a bill give me a favor here's what i wrote take a look at it and he added that kelly an conway line and it's it's a it's a that's a master craftsman that show can i sure please uh she's not somebody to run your political campaign she's the person you hire to kill your daughter's cheerleading rival cheerleading rival yeah but let's just sit for a second she's the one you hire to kill your daughter's cheerleading rival yeah wow that is and i remember hearing that joke and when i was done laughing because i you know because i'm an asshole i said i could never have gotten there there's no way i could have made that that's not joke that's not a joke that's a truth yeah no it's a really i mean to the point that i mean that night it exploded i said to him because he had three jokes and they were all great but this one was like you said what about i said this is the joke bill look at this thing right and he said okay if you want to use it i said and i'm i'm gonna take it and and eventually i'll think you know i said and i've told people along the way that you wrote it i said you know because i'm really well you were giving him so much credit throughout yeah he's and you said something like did he go to harvard and he speaks fluent greek and latin or something yeah he's that brilliant he's a brilliant son of a bitch and he's a close friend with a a great jazz artist jane ira bloom who i've known forever they were kind of raised around the same place yeah no he's really quite something and but that line it was it was let me see if i can get it precisely it was um kelly and conway isn't the person you hire to tell you what the president meant she's the person you hire when you want to get rid of your your daughter's cheerleading rival that is as perfect and perfectly constructed it there's not a wasted word there's not way and it and it literally everywhere i've been doesn't matter everywhere so far right five six times same same level of explosion right because it's not because it's not a joke it's not a joke that's what's amazing about that and it also brings in the image of her it takes an account everything about her it really is extraordinary right those are because they sit there what's funny is as i do it you know that thing when you're doing when i'm doing my own jokes i don't you know right you know i'm kind of used to the fact okay well okay and they're not going to laugh okay so we'll move on but but i do it and i go they're thinking they're thinking they're thinking ha it's like as soon as you get to the the cheerleading right as soon as you get to rival boom right i don't want to i have so much i want to ask you i don't want to get into the mechanics of comedy but the best kind of comedy is not well there's all different types of comedy but more so more so yes which people so often wish i did this podcast the way Marcel Marcel performed that i cannot tell you how i do that i get my show my listeners compliment the worst jokes i make the worst the joke i i love that when you did that joke about corn kernels and nobody laughed i didn't think it was funny either but i enjoyed your pain but i i think going back to stand up when i was at when i was really doing it before you were born the biggest laughs always got not from how clever the joke was but the amount of tension i was able to create in the room with a thought and then release it with something and it and that is a much higher art form than just yeah yeah it's i mean there's someone told me early on and it would and it takes a long time to understand this but the comedy quite simple simply is in you you put it you almost to what it's tension release you create the tension in the room and then the laughter is the release that's why i find podcasting for me has been the most rewarding there's not an audience but it gives you the room to create that tension and really let it hang from yeah for months before i come up with it so i have an interview scheduled with tide glass in september well i thought he was coming in in a minute no i thought you were gonna wind us up no i haven't interviewed with that this was terrific no no i just want to tell the listeners that in september of 2017 tide glass will be here and that's where i will prick the bubble and a laugh will come is that right it's worth the wait he's not coming till september yeah that's when i finally say something funny let me get back to the war because he really scheduled for september now i'm just joking i love that idea though that he's got so much on his plate it should be great actually i love him i do i you're absolutely right tide used to do a show with my opening act for 100 years now john bowman and the two of them used to do a duo thing that was like completely psychotic that they were hoping would of course you know you were in LA and you did it and they were hoping it would become you know and then of course people saw it and anyone would have a brain thought it was great and then uh and then the rest of them went well well this will never work right yeah it's like bruce smirnoff's one-man show did you ever see that no okay i have to get bruce smirnoff all right let me get back to the war okay something you deserve a lot of credit bill marr deserves a lot of credit john stewart deserves a lot of credit and steven steven colbert deserves a lot of credit because when we went to war in iraq unlike the vietnam war there were political satirists from the outset within a year saying whoa whoa whoa whoa this is a mistake or this something is screwy here and that is the first time in american history when america went to war and the comics within less than a year we're saying nope wrong when first of all were you scared doing that no because i did it right at the start i did it from the time they started i mean this is a weird story i um i was here on 9 11 and uh i uh was looking out my um i was i was getting ready to see my shrink really did he charge you for the miss session not until late not until the end of the year okay okay that wait a second that may be the funniest 9 11 the inadvertent 9 11 joke i know and it's funny because i it was rarely i don't talk about a lot of it so it was um so it was i was uh wanting around there was a girl i was seeing at the time and she was uh um i was wondering around getting ready and i was i'm on the i was this was i'd finally gotten the apartment that you know that with the view i had devoted you know and it was kind of at the it was at the end of 42nd street and it was near the west bank where i did a lot of work and and continue to hang out and it was you know so it was like i finally had it i finally had you know i mean i've been in new york took 30 fucking years for me to be able to live on a in a nice place i'd lived in shitholes and i'm wanting around the apartment now and you get that view and what happens is it becomes wallpaper so you don't really pay attention to the view so i wasn't paying attention and the girl i was with goes oh my god she starts yelling and um uh she's uh goes and turns the tv on and that was and then i looked out the window i said what she said the the the the tower is burning and she and i had a direct view of i was in midtown and but completely clear view not you wouldn't have it now but it was completely clear view at that point it was it was blocking stan island yeah yeah and so i could see it burning and then um and then they and then uh and then turn the tv on and they started up and i started you know going looking the tv looking on then uh and then the second one went in my and this is what i thought it and um i thought but uh they are going to use this to do horrible horrible feelings it was the first thought that i had wow and it's weird i mean it's not that i was it really wasn't like oh you know i just felt it i kind of knew it my bones i was like stunned i said they are going to do they are going to do something horrible even worse than i imagined in the sense and then going out and doing those tours and it was worse than i had imagined to what they did to these people to the to their to their armed forces and what they did to us but so from the very beginning so i couldn't wait so my take on it was different than everyone's was the first joke i had was you know graden carter goes or whatever the fuck whoever it was you know this was the death of irony and i wouldn't get would be the death of irony if anybody in america knew what the word so that was that was day two the death of irony fuck you the only thing people know is this thing and i was in listening and so i was going to san francisco and that's where i told the joke i said the only thing that people know is that somebody says something and somebody goes how ironic that's you know but nobody knows what the fuck irony is so except you i'm not so sure were you being were you being ironic when you said that you said that very sarcastic so how did that go over in san francisco how how soon were you performing okay so this is how nuts it was this is how crazy i was um so i i wanted out but it was money i can't do anything i know this i can't go down there i had friends who did go down there i know i'm worthless okay i'm not gonna you know what am i gonna do i don't do anything the tools i i'm not great at that stuff i never was i'm not you know a good rolex from a fake rolex no i don't even know that okay because that's why i went down i'm sorry i apologize no don't apologize don't ever and that's that's why i love your work it's the ability to mine and not care really that at some point somebody's gonna hurt you for that and that's why we're doing this show in my mother's basement so i i wanted out i wanted away from new york as quickly as possible i mean partly out of shock obviously because i'm i'm going i developed my you know i mean and the other joke comes immediately because of what i was thinking of also at the time i said um i said i don't give a shit what happened to anybody that day uh what you know really in terms of the people outside the people who lost someone there outside of that throughout the whole country i believe that at some point during the first three hours after the attack the thought crossed everyone's mind son of a bitch this is really fucked up my day and that was another joke that and i would just tell it i didn't care what people thought i knew the fuck i knew it was true all right um but i wanted out so i could go do something and the only thing i knew that um and this was by the next day i really and i was supposed to be in um i was playing cobs another just a very well adjusted man well you know what though i but i did love i loved working and has i do think of all the people there tom is a taste maker when he he was he helped shape the san francisco comedy scene there was well then you know i mean you know better than i do i just had that kind of he had impeccable i mean he brought canis and go ahead no but he had great people come through a great taste yeah um you can cut that no no it's good please cut it i don't want to get blowback yes okay from especially for someone that you admire maybe two people we'll believe it that's funny we'll believe it so so i i wanted to get out of there and i wanted to go back i wanted to go do comedy because i'm watching tv and i'm going this is psychotic you know and i'm seeing uh this is horrible but i'm seeing juliani basically telling us the 12 000 people up to the lie start 12 000 people dead down here well i'm going no they're not 12 000 people dead down there right and then you're watching is the the fox news guy is getting in the way of the cnn news guys getting away of the other news guy you know all of the jokes that are occurring around it not the not the center but around it are um are coming to me like and uh and it was the only way that i could deal with it uh and uh and i and i felt the faster we get we can get to the funny or at least for myself and i flew to san Francisco on thursday i would assume and nobody was there was hardly anybody on the flight there was you know um and uh i worked there that weekend and um were you able to were they laughing yeah here's uh this is i think you'll understand it coming from there but um and i understood it when i was done i thought if there was anywhere else anywhere in the united states i would and i think if i think if i was going to to houston or um you know somewhere in florida uh practically anywhere else i don't know if i'd be excited about going the play i i had the feeling that um san francisco is lives in a different time zone it's 10 years out of the country on any measured scale san francisco is living i i felt that san francisco was already at the point that this didn't have to happen it had already psychically occurred to them 10 years ago a town in which that basically says hey you and your rules go fuck you we're gonna have this gay community that is a real live living breathing community you're you're living way beyond you know it's gonna that's the explosion that might take these people to the next level it's a horrible thing but but i felt san francisco was already there so if i could go anywhere right instead what i wanted to say would be san francisco so let's ask what and so the i'm still i'm so i i literally walked on stage and spoke for an hour and don't remember anything that i said w come out bell was there and said and he was a you know a kid wanting to become a comic and there was a bunch of those young comics in the back and he said it was one of the you know i'm not blowing now he said it was an unbelievable set i wish i'd recorded it i don't remember and he you know i remember the only thing i remember it was i did three minutes on the fact that bush didn't show up in new york for three days that's sacrilege right i mean that is the ultimate at that time yeah he didn't show up for three days fuck him but that's to to have said that that was not the framing that was going on no everybody rallied behind him i want to fast forward to tuesday's speech before joint session of congress where our neanderthal and chief had the widow of yo chief petty officer william ryan owens he was an avi seal he died in a raid in yemen that the obama administration had recommended against but bannon and trump said do it yeah instead of going into the situation room because there's no wi-fi for trump to tweet he so he didn't go there to watch this what was basically a failed raid on an al-qaeda camp trump didn't even go into the situation room uh there was a a widow that he had in the stands i think when he introduced her that may have been i think that could be the first in a long series of final nails in donald trump's coffin you think so i think this i mean there's been final nails in that coffin he thinks it why i think that was as bad as it gets for commander in chief to exploit that widow but they all do it but this especially since the father well that's the one yeah that's the other thing you know that the father is big here and i i mean in that back story i wondered about because i was shocked she was there kind of in them what's going on in that family i never liked i said don't marry her wow well what is the back story i mean she she went i mean i guess you know he's the president you know i mean it's that whole thing we do it out of form well the father is a veteran yeah and the father's live it father's a detective from fort lauderdale refused to shake or meet yeah but but trump said that he met him you know of course right and the detective specifically said at dover i will not meet trump this raid was unnecessary and i want an investigation and that's i hate to say that's so funny but there is an element of truth to the fact that yeah the father probably has a problem with the widow yeah you know but you know the thing about that moment which is uh those moments as much as i just think that if they would stop if they would take all of the energy that all of the all of the commanders in chief of this country had and take all of the energy that they put into that kind of moment and put that into actually of finding real funds for when these folks come home and make their lives easy or rather than i just always feel it's manipulation you've got george w bush now going on the today he's on the today's show painted he has a book out painting wounded warriors and no stop you have to stop now why because it sounds like it was set up too seriously oh yeah yeah yeah yeah he was on the today how do i miss this stuff well there's so much coming at us on monday painting wounded warriors you mean like he goes and he paints them you would look blue sometimes he puts aluminum siding sometimes he paints them it turns out but he's not a bad artist there's a book out he was on the today's show monday promoting his new book of where he's painting wounded warriors and it's for the wounded warriors project and they're really great paintings during the i'm supposed to trust you alex if you could print that out i'm supposed to trust your opinion of art you who have worked in comedy barely understand and grasp your own field this is a visual form well i mean he's lowered the bar so the guy choked almost choked to death on a pretzel the fact that he can not paint you know stab himself but he really it is supposed to be good did you see him i saw i watched him on the today's show and i'm going to confess to something and i wanted to i'm not going to confess i'm going to ask you first of all he's haunted by iraq yeah i'm sure he is he knows that something that he screwed up royally and he's committed now to he's dedicated his life now to painting wounded warriors and raising money for them good dream and there were stories i remember reading a newsweek at the height of the war when he was defending it he would go to the veterans hospitals and meet the families and break down and cry and say i'm so sorry i did this i'm so sorry we did this is that right yep and if you if you go by you can see it on youtube if you go look at him he's definitely haunted by the war in iraq my question is i do believe and maybe i'm a fool that deep down inside and this is why i hate trump right he's made me like george w bush for that i can never forgive him that painting a wounded warrior is sweet but wouldn't he be doing a better service to the country by saying folks this is how you end up invading the wrong country yeah why can't he do that then he would go down if he were if he were to say here's the textbook here's how a president ends up messing up watch for these pitfalls he would be he would deserve to be on mount rushmore but they don't do it you know they were given you know those guys are all given the opportunity george bundy though the there's that documentary about um the vietnam war where they talk to that those guys the fog of war the the arrow the arrow morris you know so we've been through this before they don't it's it's just not in their makeup it's because you know i knew abcd you know if you only knew and then we were given that information and that was wrong you know whatever it is they and the problem is i don't know what you know i mean the problem is nobody remembers nobody has context or history i i i think that that exploitation of that widow will go down if there's any history ever to be written in a month or a year depending on what happens with this cretin in chief it's the worst thing i've seen in my life and i i've sawn it with jim belushi i've seen some horrible things this was as bad as it gets somebody said to me i was on stage and somebody said to me where do you get off criticizing the widow and this is what i'm going to get to my question where do you get off criticizing the widow did you serve in the military and i said where were you like last night you did this yeah i couldn't dumber you and i went on after this yeah you were you really are and let me take your temperature so where do you get off criticizing and i said that's not how it works pal the military doesn't get to criticize the president the commander in chief i do i'm a civilian that's our role that's why there's the maddest role right that's why the civilians crit anyway aren't we better than we were during the vietnam war aren't we wiser the fact that we're criticizing this early and and we we recognize that leaders hide behind the troops aren't we a savvier populace sort of i mean you know some of us some of us but i mean the fact is is that you know you got to realize the generation that took us to war in iraq was the generation that was uh you know basically the ones who should have been you know we're supposed to be in vietnam ones who're supposed to learn right lesson right from vietnam are the guys who took us to war in iraq right but they didn't go no and they didn't go but they but also you know i mean that was the thing i mean i had one friend there um there was so much inf uh you know you didn't know early on and then as it came out you knew what you knew it really fast and then you also knew okay you know from that you knew you just don't wander into iraq you don't wander into a you know you already did it and but i said i mean i the stuff i was doing stuff already before that occurred that was the before we went in i was i said you know this is a reverse domino theory the idea we already did it it didn't work okay the idea was that if one country went communist it all go communist now we got a new idea right new ideas if one country goes capitalist you know they're all going to be want to be democracy and be capitalism right and i'm like first off the other took place in the jungle now we're going to try it in the desert i mean it was like and i kept saying things like i'm more than i'm willing to go to war i'm fine just manipulate me better you're doing a shitty job of manipulating me make better shit up you know i mean the stuff that was coming out was insane you know him sitting here how the fuck these people allowed you know he's and and column power i'm sure feels when he's sitting there with pictures of stuff look these are pictures and i said you know they're carrying weapons of mass destruction or ice cream asshole so i was doing all of that stuff this is literally before before we go in uh to war it's like i'm doing it in uh i did a whole bunch of stuff like that along those lines weren't you scared i mean they were really you know arry fleischer the president's press secretary so you need to watch what you say he said that to bill mar yeah you need to work did you feel any i'm under that tremendous blanket of nobody gives a shit when it comes to me well they do i mean you're you know they don't they really don't i'm kind of left alone i'm like they kind of see me as this uh you know he's wandering around he's a big barking dog and to let him roll no paranoia patriot act nothing never felt never felt a goddamn thing never even thought about it so that's my only problem was in the club you know it's like you know the idea of what if somebody comes in the audience and but by the time i was really in the heart of work in that i become a pretty good goddamn comic so i had no basic fear of dealing with you know because the same thing happened to me it was like you know you know how can you say that you know what what are you doing you know looking what dick chaney's doing what do you do for america and i said this this is what i fucking do i make people laugh right that's my gig right his gig is supposed to keep us safe right but we had a i had a cd that was out really i was coming out just before just before 9 11 it was already i was already screaming about shit and we didn't cut it is this the worst right now i'm trying to get a handle on where we are in american history is this the worst you've ever seen it because it does remind me of 2001 things were okay and then the republicans came in and ruined everything how scared should we be right now how scared how truly scared more excited are you are you more scared and more excited i'm more worried about my sinuses than anything else those are the things that that's what i'm really worried about between scared and excited there were sinuses you know what i um i get scared and i and then uh part of me feels that uh what's occurring is the the the people have gotten and i get i get crazy around it people get really hopped up but you know they've been getting hopped up every day and i just keep thinking guy we got to calm down because you know this could this could go on for quite a while so it doesn't help if every day we're doing this the the joke that i have is if this keeps up will will be anybody anyone down to the age of 30 will actually in four years will be an assisted living because they'll have exhausted themselves and and full the full economy will come because um of the people under the age of 30 who will be hired to be uh caregivers because every one of us is going to need somebody's going no come on it's come on come on get to the breakfast table today huh try try honey i won't turn on the tv so we got to stop part of it is that that it's kind of an energy that's not going anywhere uh i asked my shrink did i interrupt no no no okay i asked my shrink i'm glad you see one yes uh is it by the way what happened did the did your shrink charge you for no no no as a matter of fact i charged her she called you yeah i need to see you and um i asked my shrink is it me or is it trump and he said honestly it's trump well that that he has succeeded in giving the the world a massive anxiety attack yeah and i think you're right i think there's this is a ground game this is he's not going away no and it doesn't help um you know it doesn't help that are uh that that the democrats have i mean nancy pelosi in place doesn't help that we uh that they have chuck schumer and that we have no um no one there's no pushback from the from a real kind i mean except from the people um and that uh there's and that you know and the ones that are kind of doing that you've got you know now you're you know you're at the mercy of you know lindsey graham and john mccain you know john mccain kind of like you know but john mccain who who wants more money for the military who wants wants more money yeah he wants more money than trump wants it's like yeah so you know uh you don't i i just think it's what makes it weird is that um we're than anything else is that we uh elected somebody who's that the person in office is not an adult that to me is the weirdest did you see him coming did you think he was gonna did you think this would ever happen when you were watching him walking through i really had this and i this uh innate the only thing i didn't put in the mix was the democratic party who's uh i didn't put them into the mix because i watched him and uh and i thought that just on his own that were the things that he said um that i that my faith in the american people is is that they wouldn't buy it right i really thought that they were not that it would discuss them to the point that they would not allow this to occur you were in man of the year the barry levy right yeah years ahead of what it literally came out that's talk about timing that's i i've been saying that this trump phenomenon is a the type of movie robin would make so that he could do something with gulf weight that's funny right i mean this is like this is something robin would dream up with barry levinson make a lot of money and then robin would say good now i can go yeah do well man of the year i've i've said to people that um it's it's a flawed movie but i think uh if you watch the first 55 minutes of that movie that movie says more in a in a sense about um what's occurred now than what commentators were saying yeah just i mean it was prescient and a lot of it was uh i mean robin and robin and barry already had their take and then and then it was great because they'd like chris and i uh chris walken and i sit in and you know what do you think and you know we throw stuff in or you know we have a line here and there but it was really i think a real sense of what's what has in essence come to pass i just really feel like um you know there's you know that i just thought that we there would be people would not buy it and and the thing is is that you know uh you know the thing is is okay nine out of ten new yorkers voted against him in new york was and and the state of new york is you know they're just the city of new york is screaming don't vote for him but the problem is is the rest of the united states looks at us as assholes so so you know they can't trust a group of assholes calling someone else you know we're going he's the king of the assholes right the the the city that was attacked on 9 11 said don't invade a wreck yeah you know sometimes you need to listen to the people who who've experienced the horror of 9 11 or donald trump yeah but they don't try you were you did a great job hosting the the writers guild thank you you really did and they did a tribute to john waters yeah which is which you can actually if you go to the writers guild site i think you can watch that tribute which is well worth your time because it is he's amazing if you're a young writer it's well worth watching it because he says a great great deal about writing from someone who is really totally off the still in a sense off the charts as a as a creator not someone you go you know i mean there's everyone's got a path but his was like coming out of baltimore because that's what i wanted to ask you yeah so mr simon from the wire who used to be a journal right yeah and then he created the wire now he's doing the deuce yeah uh no jobs for me he's from he's from mary levenson is from maryland and you're from maryland and uh is there a maryland mafia are there a group of artists from maryland who are dedicated to the baltimore area and if so why well i'm coming from i come from silverspring as does goldie hawn okay i think i've said this before he leads into my i've said this time and again that when when they look back at the the you know 300 years from now and they look back at where did the great minds come from but they will be stunned by the preponderance of how many came from maryland um uh there's uh yeah barry it's just you know part of it is is that it was a um if you look at if you look at barry john um david i think part of it is is this uh it was a real community so there was a real sense of place and then uh and so so you got people who have you know kind of come out of that and then and then it's also in this kind of a completely wacky you know it was it was like treated like a city you drive through so uh you know you have this uh you're close to dc you're close to new york you're so there you fill it out you're influenced you're influenced by it but you're also you know you had that was um where the hot strip clubs were we're in baltimore so you had that you had a seedy side there where john probably you know kind of stumbled into and uh and then you had that whole you know this you know what became more and more of a horrifying uh urban you know a uh the ghettoization of baltimore so you have david simon can come into that and barry you know barry comes up with diner and barry you know barry uh you know and then he did another movie later on about that about being yeah kevin pollock was it yeah yeah and uh so you've got that sense of a place you know the the baltimore seems to have right more so than dc and the reason you don't see it out of dc is every four to eight years it's a whole different town the whole taste change and it comes to the next guy or the next woman or would you know the next person and boom you got a whole different restaurants change everything changes taste change your proximity growing up so close to washington dc you couldn't shake that from your art you ended up going to yale drama school right you're an accomplished playwright you when we were starting out you were a dilettante you were not really committed to stand up comedy no not at all you were somebody who was as i recall i think you mentioned the west bank yeah some theater i ran a theater that was in the basement of a restaurant and then you would introduce the shows and get laughs but you were committed to grinding out plays and then i heard about you through robin hordon who oh and the harvard yeah at your eyes yeah great room one of the great great room and he was one of the great men yeah he was one of the guys who nurtured political humorists yeah he was an air traffic controller fired by reagan was a union guy hated reagan if you had an act that was anti-reagan you were booked in barry and that's barry's i think home barry crimans and i'll get to that in a second so what i remember about you and maybe charlie hill the do you remember charlie hill he was a native american comedian mm-hmm uh he used to work for pelts as i remember sorry it's a very sweet guy maybe he told me when my father died wow he was a sweet guy i remember when my father died he told me to write my father's name down on the piece of paper and then set it on fire and that's that's what the so and i did it and uh in the apartment burnt down as you as you said as you sat on your couch weeping but my recollection of you and this would be mid 90s yeah was you were not really into stand-up you were a playwright who got up and did stand up as a lark but you didn't develop in the generic comedy clubs that came out of the boom in the 80s is that a fair statement yeah and absolutely i developed my act totally in the uh in the west bank in the west bank yeah i mean i'd done other stuff you know on and off but i never were clubs i'd always i'd gone to catch in new york and uh i went to i was not i was not going to stand i wasn't going to stand on line okay this is alex this is where it gets really do you have time sure you sure okay this is where if i had a life okay this is where it's going to get really good not that it hasn't been fantastic but this is okay so you developed an act that would not play in those generic comedy clubs during the boom you would if you had to go work the road and do political humor but i wasn't doing totally political but i was doing a chunk of it it was always a bit of it um but i wasn't my in my real problem was is that you know in in the 80s part of it was is i had no interest in i had an interest kind of going in and seeing what it was like and uh and i love comic stand up yeah i love watching comics uh i mean i would go in i mean i'll never forget uh you know uh we were on 42nd street it's still there the west bank there's still a theater there and we go i go around the corner the improv was on like 45th or something 46 and occasionally rarely you know would stumble up there and watch it show gilbert got freed i saw gilbert for the first time his life you know and that was like one of those life changes wow and this is what i thought it's 12 30 at night he's fucking spectacular there eight people in the room that's your last act you for you you're you're fucking him that hard he is this good and he's going last fuck you and i said to him you come in that was where he was that was where he was in the lineup i'm going off well fuck this shit this these idiots don't know anything about comedy and i was because i was working with people who where i would work you know there was there were people like my friend john bowman who'd been a comic and now is acting in new york and use the room to do stand-up and in the stand-ups that i kind of knew around bill masters who was they'd become later on we left left new york to become a writer in los angeles eventually he came in there was all sorts of people did stand up this is how i think you experience stand-up right as a playwright and a performer you would go to the improv and see tremendous freedom that was not available anywhere else but then when you explored stand-up you realized that there wasn't as much freedom because the audience dictates a certain type of comedy unless you're famous wow i didn't really i was so outside of the clubs it didn't even strike me you know that um i was doing it on the the side is kind of a hobby um and uh and i and my problem has always been my problem with theater was the artistic directors my problem in the clubs like right was uh well you're gonna come into catch this is what happened to catch you go in uh i'm gonna audition to catch this is my first foray in mid 80s late late 80s and not just to see really um what it's like and uh and i get um 5th 12th 10th uh it was even earlier than that because i hadn't really even i just had started at the west bank and i uh i had to pay for like five friends of mine to come and i was broke and uh they came in and there was like 15 people in the club it was an you know it was an open mic night like a monday and it was like you know 10 30 or something 11 were you nervous not really because you had been doing it i've been doing it again i've been doing it on and off and i only need to do that in front of theater crowds yeah but i'd also been doing like but and also i only had to do seven minutes and i had seven minutes i was doing like 25 30 minutes i didn't i was doing 30 minutes with i had seven minutes i'm like the covering the other 23 i would go in to i would say i'm gonna work one night at a theater and get a theater for free uh and say um you know that because they were open and i knew people and like you know okay 30 40 of my friends 30 40 50 people that i knew from the theater community come over to watch me do it and i would get on stage and just have my list of notes and talk for an hour about stuff and for what purpose just to get a sense of stand-up okay also it was a way in which at the time i didn't realize this i could get my writing out there without having it to go through you write a play and you can wait two years until you hear back this was uh she had like to talk about this this and this okay i'll go in there and do this Yale drama school yeah what did you study at Yale drama play writing play writing yeah and i studied as an undergrad so you went to Yale drama school to study play writing yeah the politics did you intend to shake the politics or did it just stay with you were you did you want to write about things other than and i know that you have written about things other than politics is politics government something that for me i wish i could shake it yeah is it something you wish you could shake but it just i mean i i mean i stayed away from it from a long time for a long time i was known as a political comic and i was only doing 10 minutes of politics you know um which was still a lot right but uh but it was uh i mean what i did do you know from the beginning especially at Yale was be like you know the the election was coming or something or there'd be running you know i i would take i wrote all by and they would say nobody's playing the cabaret this weekend would you do it and i would do an hour you have 45 minute show and i had how'd you memorize it i didn't i would i i didn't never memorized anything so how would you do it i just talk did you tape it no you're supposed to i don't know no i didn't i just it got up i had an outline of what i was going to talk about and then some of it i would write i mean i'm so oddly you know how you know this is when i was going there's henry scoop jackson is running for office so i wrote i wrote all of these i wrote every presidential candidate's uh speech so i wrote all the speeches and then get up and i'd read the speech and then throw it off the thing and then i'd go talk about something else and i'd come back and talk about another candidate and then the next day after i worked that night that you know they were stuck with me those fuckers because they had nobody to work the room and they needed to fill the room so that they could whatever the fuck i didn't make any money off of it you know the the school did so so the next so i would do that and then the next time i come back and go oh and i had friends of mine that go but you should do this first try that there and then i would replace the stuff around right at the right nobody was around a new stand up i mean i was the only one doing stand up everybody else was i learned my comedy from marclyn baker joker fozzie from uh from actors that i watched the lesson that i'm taking away from this is you reinvented stand up because you didn't come out of the traditional mold that your stand up is different than most others because of the way you developed and there was almost an entrepreneurial spirit to your creative development it from for guys like me they're already existed a scene so i said well what do you have to do to be accepted into this scene oh be like everybody else i'm gonna be like him oh i'll be like him and so i turned into this generic i'm fishing for a compliment here i was trying to come up with one and it was it was harder than coming up with an act well it just so happens loose that i wrote a compliment for you to give to me so if you could just read this i would certainly welcome no he's always you've always been thank you one of my favorite comedians yes nobody writes nobody writes his look you can say this uh and um and and uh but the the truth is no no one writes some some of the good what makes me laugh is dark yeah either stupid profoundly stupid or profoundly dark and that's why you were a big fan of the minstrel shows a lot of people don't know this about louis black his rich he actually changed his name it's louis blackface is actually what but they changed it at ellis island but your grandfather was one of the leading minstrel show performers in Kiev but louis blackface no but you but you have a you there's you know you're you're you get a sense of there's a dark streak in your comedy that i really you know makes me fucking well dark is the only thing that's funny yeah it is well it well no it is no there's i think it's a certain breed well there's those great christian comics of my funny bone fuckers you know i wish i could be a christian comic boy i wish i could be a christian i would make a lot a lot easier just gone into fucking wish we should have just gone into fucking that bracket yelling uh there are some cultures where yelling is acceptable it's almost a sign of affection what fucking jew land jew land italian land irish not so much irish not so much it's weepy land it's weepy land so we're a hot-blooded people i i have a friend who's 80 years old he's my accountant and does he know there's quick and books and stuff just the tip maybe things see yeah you can get a nicer sweater we my kids yeah i'd be on a speakerphone and we'd be going over and he'd be screaming at me and my son would go what did you do i go nothing we're just going over the it's just a way of so yelling yes i don't think you yell in real life i think you found the funny in yelling around you i don't think you're a screamer in real life no i was as a kid i mean really yeah i was in the sense that the big i mean the the the revelation to me of my or my comedy you know that thing of like you a comic the most difficult thing for a comic to do is take the person sitting at the table and move the three feet to the stage and take the personality that's sitting in that seat and get trundle that personality to say that again a lit that's really important say that again so it's taking the difficulty for for any comic i think is taking the personality that they have that makes them funny of who they are the essence of their funny and taking it from sitting around the table with the gang and getting up and you move you walk onto the stage and getting the like the three feet that you would if you're sitting in that front table to go from that front table you're the funny because everybody well i can do that you know i'm fucking up so fucking funny and then you move that three feet and all of a sudden you're not funny anymore right you getting that personality from here to there is is an extraordinary journey an extraordinary journey that doesn't require jokes or talent but authenticity right very good that's true something i never understood yeah so i just kept looking i just gotta find that right joke i just gotta find that right joke and no you just have to be yourself you have to be yourself and it's difficult to be yourself because i'm david i'm david feldman and i'm louis black and who was the and and not just because we're jews but i mean for a lot of the people who work in stand-up it's there's they they're getting over that kind of self loathing or self that touch of been that lack of confidence right because the changeover from you some why when i started to go into clubs and watch before i really transitioned in from playwright to stand up i would go into clubs and watch and i'm going are you shitting me this schmuck has not said one fucking thing i'm i'm in panic about my fucking stuff that's funny and i'm watching this guy it's the dale carnegie school of comedy i am so confident that what i'm saying is absolutely the funniest thing you've ever heard that you will all laugh now right wow right you know and it's like and then i started to notice which uh which is something that john and i and any kind of kind you do it any comic that i trust does it is just like you're in a live room so if something occurs like you don't get three laughs in a row you got to be fucking get the cognizant of it you can't just kind of fly by as if well you know you know i look at my shoes really special you kind of have to you know notice that these people they didn't even need to be in the fucking room right and that was the big where i kind of but that is off what we were saying no that's important but it's but that was where i went oh my god the only thing that changed different the only difference between me and them really in terms of presence i have i'm bringing no self-confidence under the stage what the fuck's the matter with me you're not bringing self i'm not at all right i got and you're still not you know you know you're still not right you're you're loud but and angry but you're you're losing it on stage you're you know it's a controlled nervous breakdown it is and it's real yeah you're not thrilled to me what's great about you and i don't like complimenting other comedians especially ones who have done a lot better than i have but it's an inconvenience for you to be there to me that's the funniest thing in the world is that it's a sold-out audience people have paid money and hired babysitters have been waiting to see you for three months they have to pay for parking they're all excited to see lewis black and you rather be someplace else and that's exactly what comedy is nobody should be happy to be performing comedy that's very fun that's why i mean the quiz that's really true i did something i'd never thought of there's something wrong with you if you're happy yeah on stage but the but the yelling was uh getting back to that whole thing of anger is that uh that it was that was when i when i someone told me to start yelling a comic uh who was a friend of john bowman's who was uh a big big guy and then ballard's his name is big six six four is huge he looks like the he looks easy a nice looking version of the hills with eyes guys he's got propitia whatever that thing is he's got no hair uh and and he would put a little mini plungers on his head that was i mean it was and he was very i mean fucking funny guy but he would scream and he was in in my club was at the west bank and he would scream at the audience and he came off stage one night and he said it was the it really was the life changer he said because i couldn't figure it out i and when i would yell i was so you know not sure of that is a thing that i would turn around and yell it i would yell when i would yell i'd yell at the wall behind me i wouldn't yell directly in at the audience and he came up and said look he said i'm on stage yelling and he said really uh there's there's nothing i should be yelling about you know but part of what made him funny was just the sense of if you don't laugh at me i'm going to beat the shit so there was a nice touch to that but he said there really is i'm not it's not there's nothing that i should be screaming about in here you he said it really angry you need to express so you really are angry there is a well in terms of what i was talking about right yeah are you i i mean the the cliche is that all comedy comes from anger right i think great comedy this is my theory comes from fake anger manufactured anger well it is in the sense um you have to i mean uh i one of the things i learned early on was is that when i because when i yell what i found when i was yelling that time i mean he said i want you to go on stage and yell everything so one thing i was doing was is i was sitting on my anger you know and that's why i'm going well that's why i'm not fucking getting the laugh talk about creepy somebody who's like got a slow burn going and it's going in no direction because he doesn't know how to get it you know he's building the tension without any release to it um and i and i realized as soon as i started yelling i go that's right that's when people watch me get excited about nothing like you know it would be like i'd be sitting with my friends again you're not gonna fucking believe this so i'm down at the fucking this and that and i go on and on and on and it would build and uh and so when i so when i started to hit the road kathleen said we i worked uh i was kind of a year and a half into the gigs or maybe two maybe two years i was still had not i was getting my sea legs finally i was even earlier than that i was and she was breaking in and she said she said you know you're on stage for eight minute shelling and no one is laughing and i said and i said no cognizance of that none wow none at all i thought they were you know that because i would hear them because i said i wasn't um i wasn't the other thing is is i used to talk and you know silence to me was not even in the ballpark you know my fear was silence you you put a silence in and they're all gonna you know sharks the sharks are coming now they can smell my blood so i never had silence it would i would keep i throw words in i didn't give a shit i would keep it moving until and then but the so the theater training when i go to a broadway play the the laughs don't come at you the way a stand-up act right so i the hardest thing for a stand-up a generic stand-up to do is to not think about the laughs you're always thinking about the laughs how am i doing how am i doing how am i doing and that stifles creativity right you weren't worried about the laughs yeah i didn't even know i was um i was just thrilled i was getting a paycheck seriously i mean i i wasn't and then you were concerned about what you were saying as opposed to what the audience was telling you and also wow i but also i thought they were getting it i thought everybody was you know like that i thought that the character was funny was inherently funny this guy who and then with Kathleen's input and some of the i mean and just you know you kind of go out every night because that was the key to it of all the things was being able to work eight shows in a row 45 minutes because i had the material at that point i mean i literally went when i hit the road i was a i was a middle act for i had maybe eight gigs as a middle acting you know because nobody wanted to follow me so um so i ended up uh once i kind of became the headliner and i had the time i went oh see if i start with the weather if i'm psychotic about the weather then a it takes the onus off at the end when i'm psychotic about politics because obviously i have no sense of proportion right but i'm just as livid about that piece of shit al roker as i am about that piece of shit donald trump and now you're in theaters yeah and you're working stuff out in theaters yeah you've done how many 50 specials 10 12 50 how many specials have you done um every night is special no i've done about 12 or something 12 specials but but but not bu