South Beach Sessions - Anthony Jeselnik
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Hello and welcome to West Coast style South Beach Sessions here. I'm a little afraid of this man. He is one of the smartest comedians that there have been, probably the darkest, one of the darkest. And he likes that I'm afraid. Look at him. Anthony Jezelnik. He's got a tour.

You can get his new special, Bones and All, on Netflix. AnthonyJeselnik.com is where you go for tickets. Thank you for being with us here. Thank you for having me, Dan. I'm a fan. A lot of my friends have been on your show, and I've just been waiting until I get my turn. Okay, excellent. Well, you also have a best friend who's a sports writer. Have you ever done any of these where the first question is about the Jeselnik and Rosenthal vanity problem?

No, never. That's like the last thing on my resume. People do not bring it up. But in the sports world, they know Greg more than they know me, which is great. Greg and I have been best friends for 25 years now. Went to college together at Tulane. Ended up in LA together. And I kind of was there as he decided I'm going to get into sports writing. And now I was with the NFL.

And what is that friendship like? And why is it that you're doing that with him? Is it an interest in sports or just an interest in rekindling something with an old friend? I'm interested in sports. There's only a handful of people in the world that I can sit in a room with twice. You know, you were not on that list yet. This is going great so far. I'm aspiring to it, though. People always wanted me to do a podcast. That's the only way I would do it. I don't want to have guests. I don't want to have to do the booking that you have to do. I'm sure that's a pain in the ass, even though you don't do it.

So I thought if I just sit with my friend and we started doing it at the NFL Network, we really was like a guerrilla project where I would just come in secretly and put it out on their feed. And we kept waiting for Greg to get fired.

And at the end of the season, the NFL was like, get out of here. We don't want to get you to get in trouble, but like go. And then we started the podcast again. And now we're with all things comedy. And I've been there for a while. It's a different choice for you because surely you're watching everything that's happening in comedy. The way that podcast is sort of replaced what radio used to be. And you have chosen a specific economic lane with a friend that is apart from some of the other stuff because you're

You doing a daily podcast, people would want access to you to see what your funny sounded like every day. Sure. I mean, we do this once a week. Again, no guests. We don't talk about anything serious. It's very goofy and it's not successful. You know, not a lot of people watch it, but that's fine because I make my money from stand up. Greg makes his money from talking about sports. We don't want it to be the podcast. I think a lot of comics have gotten bad recently.

because they make too much money from the podcast. And so they're putting too much effort into that. I want my effort to go toward the stage. Oh, you think it's been a little poisonous for the industry, the cotton candy of how sloppy you can be in a form three times a week, as opposed to the way you do it, which is clearly sculpted very carefully. I mean, the podcast isn't sculpted. We're just going out there and doing it. But I think people have made so much money from podcasting that it's made stand-up comedy as an art form worse.

I think that's without question is happening. People are making more money. If your success is making money, you're doing just as well. But if it's about making the art of stand-up comedy great, it's suffering. It's gotten bad.

I want to talk to you biographically about how you became who you became. And I don't know how close I can get here separating who you actually are versus the character you've created that has a persona that is unlike any that's allowed in comedy at the moment where it seems like.

You have a lane where you can get away with things that no one else can get away with because your character is so finely honed on. Yeah, I'm an offensive comic. I go right to the edge of the dark line and over. Thank you. I saw someone describe it online as it's like my character just thinks that being an asshole is cool.

And so he's just bragging about all the cool shit he's done that couldn't be less cool. It's insane. But the audience is kind of latched on to the logic of the character. And yeah, I can get away with just about everything. How did you create the character? Like, how did you get confident in creating the persona that would lead to the success that you wanted as the person who wasn't the persona? The first step was faking the confidence. You know, I'm sure as you when you started, you know, being on TV yourself, you were faking it. You have no idea what you're doing and you're terrified.

And you fake that for a while. And I noticed that the audience didn't like me because of what I looked like. I was like a skinny, you know, 23 year old white kid who looked like everyone else on the lineup, you know, of the show. And they didn't like me. So I thought, OK, playing a villain is interesting. Let's see if I can pull it off. And I was able to. And the more I played with that and leaned into being a jerk. And I know you don't like me, but I'm so good. You have to laugh anyway. It just took off for me.

That takes even more confidence, right? Embracing villainy. But the audience tells you, you're on the right path. We're laughing at this. So that certainly helped. But yeah, it was a confidence to say, I'm just going to go with this. I want to be different. I want to be unique. And I want to push the art form a little bit. And I was able to kind of find a way to do that. And it's aged with me.

You see a lot of comics who get older and their act doesn't work anymore because they started out silly. They're like a frat guy. And then they're 50 and you're like, what the fuck is this? But I thought that my character will outlive me, I think. So how did you do all of that, though? How did you get to the point of trial and error on what it is, like the early days of grinding through how am I going to develop my voice? What is it that I'm going to chase and become? You're going to so many open mics.

and you're just flailing, trying to find anything that will stick that they will laugh at. And so they didn't like me. I thought, well, what if I go up and I say, I don't like you either? You know, they would kind of laugh at that. And then I just leaned into it or a joke wouldn't work and they would hate my joke. And I would say, oh, I'm sorry. I thought you guys were cool. And they would laugh at that. And I was like, oh, this is interesting. I'm finding new ways. You know, I remember Jay Moore came up to me after a show once. He was like, I've never seen anyone talk to the audience like you do.

And I said, he was walking through the room and I was like, you know, I wasn't always a standup comedian. You know, I used to be a regular old piece of shit like you guys. And the audience, he's like, I couldn't believe you got them to laugh at it. Like, I think that's what my talent is being 22 years in. It's not so much the surprising punchline. It's getting you to believe me in the beginning of the joke.

When I say my uncle used to babysit me as a kid, I get you to believe that. And so people are just like, oh, they're truly surprised by the twist because I got them to buy in. When you say change the art form, like when you say my character will outlive me, where and how along the journey, how many years into the journey did you get before you were like, it's not merely that I want to do this. It's that I want to leave an impression. Yeah.

It was more getting into the business and realizing that my other avenues weren't going to be as successful. I wasn't going to be an actor. I wasn't going to be a podcaster. I wasn't going to do a lot of the things that other comics can do. So I thought, let me just focus everything into stand-up, and I'm just going to get great at this. If you get a sitcom, it takes you away from stand-up. If you get SNL, it takes you away from stand-up. I'm like, I'm just going to commit to this.

And then as I would come up with a new hour each time, I was surprised that I was able to come up with so many new jokes to fill an hour. And then once I started to get like three, four hours, I was like, wow, if I can keep doing this, I can go for greatness, you know, and go for God level if I can keep it going for the next, you know, 15 years. But it's just output. What does your process look like? Is there suffering in how it is that you're a perfectionist and you make things and they have to be just so?

Not so much suffering, you know, in terms of like I've got to go through depression or be upset. It's frustrating writing for sure. I mean, anyone who's ever written anything knows that. It's just a numbers game and putting the work in. You know, I don't watch any stand-up when I'm working. And then when I go to write, I watch a new special every day. And I find something that I don't like. And like, what do I want to attack about here? You know, the first 15 minutes of my new special, Bones and All, is like a direct answer to Dave Chappelle's

10 years of anti-trans material, you know that I'm like, okay, let me how can I talk about this without complaining about it? Just showing you that you suck

Oh, wow. So you go through, when you get going, you're watching the specials of others to like really look at the things that you don't like? Usually that's what jumps out to me. It's not so much what I don't like. It's like, how would I have done this? I'm not even saying they're wrong. It just, that makes me think this would be a good way to take it.

You couldn't have always been this confident in what you do, like along the path at some point. Like you're talking about embracing villainy, but where were the points in your career? The family's not supporting what you want to do. Comedy's hard as a career where you're not this confident in your talent.

You faked it. I thought that the people that I looked up to were confident. If you look up to Michael Jordan, you can copy his confidence before you can copy his shot. So I think that that was just trying to match my talent level to my taste level. I think a lot of people get into art, they want to be a painter, they want to be a writer. And the things that they love about writing, it's great writing. And they're not that good yet. And you have to just hope that

that you can work hard enough to get to that level. People give up too quickly when it comes to being an artist. And I think if you can hang on through the tough part, then you can truly get great. Well, tell me about the tough part, though. Tell me about the family not supporting what was, I imagine, a dream. Sure. The family not supporting wasn't the tough part because I didn't expect them to. They were like, well, where's the money coming from? It was, and you're out with your friends doing open mics and everyone's bad.

Everyone's bad all the time, so you're just kind of grasping onto any sort of victory. I got a laugh at this open mic. I got this comic who's always been intimidating to me to tell me I have a good new joke. Those little victories meant so much where you always thought you were about to get the phone call to do The Tonight Show. You had to think that even though I was years off. It was like four or five years doing it until I got anything, but I always thought it was going to be the next day.

I always thought that. Because? Because I was an idiot. I was dumb. I was 23, 24, and I thought I was so much better than I was. I thought my first five minutes set, I thought I should be on TV. And if I go back and watch it now, I'll have a panic attack about how bad it was. You just had to be a little stupid. Yeah, that helped. What did the struggle look like? What did the early years of it look like?

You know, at the time I enjoyed it and I look back and I can't believe I survived it. It's like going through your couch cushions to get money to put in your gas tank. You know, having zero dollars ever. I remember eating ramen. I wouldn't even make the ramen. I would just eat the little bricks of ramen noodles and just always writing.

I would, if I had any money, I bought a case of beer and bought a little weed and I would just sit on the couch with my laptop or a yellow legal pad and I would just write hundreds of jokes every day. And most of them were terrible. I didn't know my voice yet, but I would just write so many and just try those out every night wherever I could. How much doubt, how much fear was there? A lot, but the bigger fear was not that I would fail. The fear was that I wouldn't know I was failing.

was that I would be one of those guys at the open mic who was like 20 years older than everyone else, doing the same five minutes and had no chance, but that's just what they were stuck in. They were stuck in this loop. That was scary to me. Being someone bad who didn't know they were bad. Hopefully that doesn't happen to me.

How many years or months were you eating the ramen by the brick? Like how long was the period of the grind? Oh, years. I mean, I was living week to week until I was, I think, 30 years old. I got a job writing for Jimmy Fallon. And that was the first time I got a regular paycheck because even though I did well and I had a name, it wasn't a profitable name.

Being super edgy with like 10 minutes of dark one-liners wasn't gonna make me money I had to kind of wait until I could do a special or something with that the roasts really helped But still it wasn't that profitable. You're not gonna see me in a lot of commercials, you know Well the the the the Trump roast was the break right or that that that go you go right from there from writer to Okay it I've got a career right? Yeah, I remember firing my agents because I had an agent as a writer and

he was they just represented me as a writer i was an actor or anything and after the roast was like well now what am i going to do i'm like everyone in comedy is talking about me and they're like that's great but what do you want to write on next and i just fired him it's like i'm not a writer anymore really oh yeah those days are over yeah take me through all of that until that moment though so you're talking about about 10 years of fear and doubt where you're wondering

Am I hanging on too long? But you're not having the kind of success you expected, right? You're making a career, but you didn't expect for 10 years for it to be paycheck to paycheck. Well, I'm getting respect, but I thought that I would become a writer. I never thought that I would be a star myself. I thought I'm too dark for that. But comics who had a dark sense of humor will see me and say, come write for me. And Jimmy Kimmel asked me to write for him. Sarah Silverman asked me to write for her. And so I would do that. And then I started to write for Fallon.

Hated that they did not like my material. They knew they liked me, but they're like Jimmy can't tell your jokes People are gonna hate Jimmy. I'm like I agree with you Why am I here? And so when I left I started headlining for the first time and doing my own show I'm not an opening act anymore and I'm struggling because I'm not enough of a name I had to put on an album maybe but people aren't coming to see me They're coming to see comedy a couple fans and then people are like why is this guy talking about dead babies and

for an hour. So I was bombing and struggling. And that ruins a lot of comics too, because they'll get good in LA or New York. And when they go on the road, their act doesn't work because the audience is dumb. And so they changed their act. I never changed my act. I was like, I'm just going to bomb. And then about a year into that process, I got the Trump roast and overnight the audience was filled with people who knew what I did and were there to see it. And it changed everything. Then it was like, from the second I got on stage, just boom, applause. And they loved it.

A common cliche or trope is some idea that comedy comes from pain, but do you know, can you explain me where your dark comes from?

I always thought dark was interesting and I do not to this day. I do not understand why it's so taboo. You know, I get that it might not be for the dinner table, but I don't understand why I was in trouble so much of my youth for being obsessed with death and thinking dark stuff was cool. You know, violent movies. Have you seen this movie, The Coffee Table? I have not. It's a Spanish horror film.

And it is the most uncomfortable 90 minutes of your life. It's not gory. It's not like, oh, someone's getting tortured. But it is almost impossible to watch. And I watched it with a huge smile on my face and was delighted. And 99% of the population, it's unwatchable. But I loved it so much. And that was kind of how I approached comedy. Is let me just try to do the things I think are interesting and a little taboo, but shouldn't be. It's natural. Everyone does.

And to just be hardcore. And those are the things that I looked up to. I didn't need to be the most famous guy. I get why Bert Kreischer is the biggest comedian in the world, but I never wanted to be that. I wanted to be kind of a niche, if you know, you know, kind of thing.

Well, you're not going for likable. You're not going for likable. You're almost saying, in fact, you're saying almost calculated, I know I can't be likable and authentically as dark and me as I want to be. I'm going to land wrong if I tell you I'm smarter than you and I know it.

That's how I try to do it. People somehow find me likable anyway. People will still say, when you smile, you know, we like you for that. And so I try to smile as little as I can on stage. In the special, I think people were surprised. They're like, yeah, you smiled in the second taping. We got it. And I'm like, oh, that's so funny. And I am enjoying myself, but I just think the smile is a trick.

It is a, you see a comic laugh at their own joke. That's a trick, you know, and I try not to use any of those tricks. It's harder that way, but it's more rewarding. I still don't know though why attracted to dark or death from a young age. What's happening there? You know, it just fascinated me. Reading a book where someone was killed, you know, people are obsessed with murder. People are obsessed with true crime. These like horrible dark things, but...

But for some reason it was taboo. It was something you shouldn't speak about. And so I just never understood why. It just seemed the most interesting thing to me. You know, I loved the 80s violent movies, all the Schwarzenegger stuff, but like you couldn't talk about that. Basic Instinct as a 12-year-old boy, that was the most fascinating movie in the world to me. And you couldn't discuss it. And I didn't understand why. So I just thought if you're really intelligent...

Then you can discuss difficult subjects without, you know, flipping out. Is it as simple as you just liked it or is there something else there in your raising and your upbringing, something that was happening around you? It is as simple as I just liked it. I didn't, I've never had someone close to me die. You know, my family was close. I was the oldest of five kids. Like we got along. It wasn't, it just, darkness attracted me. There was, I'm surprised I wasn't goth.

I think I was like too good looking to be a goth in high school. But if I could have been a goth, I would have been. Most people are not comfortable talking about death, right? Or considering their own mortality. Yeah.

Yeah, but they should. I think it's healthy to do so. And maybe the fact that I never lost someone is why I felt so cavalier about discussing it. Why it could be a joke to me was if I'd lost someone, probably not. Stephen Colbert once said that when you're young and in comedy, you're edgy because none of these things have happened to you yet. You can joke about cancer and AIDS and different things. And as you get older, things start to happen to people that you know. It's happened to me. I've seen friends and family members...

have horrible things happen to them. So those things, it changes my relationship to them as comedic subjects.

I wouldn't imagine that you look at a whole lot of comedians and say that person is better at the craft of this than I am. Are there many that you just look at and you're awed and admire? Like maybe, look, I couldn't do it that way. They're different. That's for them. But I really admire what an artist that person is. You know, I'm so specific and to Toot My Own Horn unique that I don't compare myself to anyone. There's no one that I'm like, oh, they do it better than me.

There are comics that I think are incredible. And there are very few. I could probably name them Chris Rock, Doug Stanhope, Nate Bargatze, John Mulaney. And there are other people doing great stuff too. But those are the guys that I'm like, wow, I will watch anything they do. I kind of have to see it. But I wouldn't even say better, worse. No, I would just say they're incredible. They're at my level.

Do you mind going through the wow of each of those for me as an artist viewing other artists and admiring the art of it? Like go through those four guys you mentioned. Sure. Chris Rock is more disciplined than any comic I've ever met. Just really studies the art form, knows what he's doing. It's not just about the laugh. It's about what he's saying, who he is. I respect him and admire everything about him.

Doug Stanhope is an insane person who is like he donated his body and his brain to comedy when he was 21 years old and never looked back. He's the most pure comic that exists in this world. Bill Burr, I think anything he talks about becomes infinitely funny. He finds an angle and it's organic and he could just do hours and hours of comedy for the rest of his life. You'll never feel like he's taking it easy on you or getting soft.

John Mulaney, I just think is brilliant. I want to see his take on things. I love his take as a performer, his charisma. And Nate Bargatze is a guy that I've been singing his praises for 10 years. Just clean, but in an organic way and just smart. I don't want to look at a comic and think like, I know what you're saying. I've heard this before. Like I know everything that you're doing. And a lot of comics do that and that's okay.

It's like some audiences want a little hacky. They want to kind of feel as smart as the comedian. Like I've heard this before. I know this joke. I never wanted to do that. Have you ever seen a movie trailer for a comedy? And they put the biggest joke in the movie in the trailer. All right. So you've seen this trailer a hundred times. You go to see the movie live opening night. You see that the scene from the trailer is about to come on. Everyone in the movie has seen this trailer. That's why they're there. You think they shouldn't laugh at it.

It's the biggest laugh of the movie because they feel comfortable laughing at it. And I wanted to eliminate that from standup. And I think those guys do that.

You pride yourself on the degree of difficulty on doing the hardest thing. The people I admire most among my friends are the people who will choose the hardest thing because it's the hardest thing, because of the nobility of it being the hardest thing. It's not so much the nobility. It's just that I think that if you do the hardest thing, the final product is superior. You know, if it's harder to do, if your workout is harder, you're going to be in better shape. You know, I thought of it like that. Are you a perfectionist about other things as well? Not at all.

So it's just this one thing that you care about unreasonably deeply. Yeah. It's just the one thing. Like when I was growing up, it was a lot of, you're not applying yourself. You should be doing much better. You're smart, but you're not, you're throwing your life away. And I just finally put my foot down. It was like comedy. Like this is going to be, and just stand up. I don't care about improv. I don't care about sketch or movies. It's just stand up.

how old were you when that decision was made that decisively probably 23 probably i just moved out to l.a and i was trying to find a job doing anything and my friend greg was we'd greg and i had an internship out in l.a in between junior and senior year at tulane and we both moved out here together and he got the job at the internship like the paid job and i didn't so for a year i was kind of struggling and then just decided like what could i

what would be the treadmill that I could get on that would be productive and just pick standup? What was that year? Give me some of the details beyond the brick of ramen, some of the details that you remember of that year. I remember I was working at a Borders Books and Music. Remember that with the Borders Books? And just wandering around the store so bored.

And I would look at books while I was there because I just didn't want to help anybody. I was just wandering around. And I went to the stand-up comedy section, and there was a book about how to do stand-up comedy by Greg Dean. And it was the thinnest of all the books about stand-up comedy. So I stole it. I took it from my job. I went home. I read it. And it was like how to write jokes, how to do this. And at the end of the book, it said this guy teaches a class in Santa Monica.

And so I looked it up. It was, you know, an hour's drive away. It was 350 bucks for a six-week class. And I paid the money. And by paying the money, I was committed. That $350 was all the money in the world to me. So I couldn't miss a class. I had to do open mics afterwards and just had to start working. And I remember I did the class. I did stand up. My friends come to the show and they're like, you're amazing. And this is the set that if I watched it again, I would have a panic attack.

And then I went and did an open mic for the first time outside the classroom, the supportive experience. And I bombed so hard. I remember I had three minutes and I had five minutes of material. And all of a sudden I'd done all the material and I still had two minutes left. And I was covered in sweat and I didn't know what was happening to me, but I knew I had to get off the stage. And I just ran out of the room and I went into the bathroom and like calm myself down. And I know now it was a panic attack. At the time I had no idea.

And then I couldn't get back on stage for months. I would drive to the open mic and sit outside and not get out of my car. And I couldn't tell my friends, I couldn't quit.

Because being a stand-up comic before your name is embarrassing, but telling people you used to do stand-up comedy is the most humiliating thing I can think of. I'd rather tell people I'm a child molester than that I used to do stand-up comedy. Oh, come on. And it's less embarrassing. And then the movie Comedian.

Did you ever see the movie Comedian? I tell people about that movie all the time and nobody's ever heard of it. And I'm like, you don't know how fascinating it is to see Seinfeld in a kitchen in Cleveland suffering the fact that he's got no act yet that he believes in and watching Chris Rock and Seinfeld talk about Bill Cosby being...

I can't believe more people haven't seen that movie. Can't believe it. People tell me, how do I become a comedian? I say, watch that movie. And they look at me like, it's two hours. I don't know. It should be in museums. It's so perfect. I watch it at least once a year. I've watched the commentaries in that movie. But that movie...

taught me how to do it. Where I remember I walked from my house or my apartment to the theater, opening day at noon, saw that movie the day it came out and was like, got it. And then I just went to open mics every night. And it was like, the more you bombed, the better it was. You think about it like you're going to do a thousand sets in your lifetime. 200 of those are going to be terrible.

So I wanted to try to get those 200 out of the way as quickly as I could. The more sets I do, the quicker I'll be good. And that's part of how I came up with the persona was what if I was a genius who'd been doing this for 100 years and now you're just seeing me for the first time. Instead of I'm coming up on stage for the first time

Like I've been doing this forever and that helped me. Give me something to kind of work at. I wish I was better at treating failure as learning. I say it all the time around here. Failure to me feels like failure. I don't know how you navigated that one as a perfectionist. But what's failure to you? Well, bombing. Going through five minutes of material in one minute because you're so scared that you're not yourself.

But you don't think, oh, now I've got this story about the time I went through all that material. When comics get together, nobody wants to hear about the time you killed or you got a standing ovation. They want to hear about the time that you ate a fucking hot dick up there for an hour and there was nothing that could get you out of it. That's what they want to hear about.

Okay, but you're looking at that through the wisdom of retrospect and confidence and success. It didn't feel like that when you were doing it. It took you months to get out of your car and do it again. At these open mics, no one's doing well. No one's having a great—it's not like I'm the one guy bombing. It's just like everyone's doing badly. How can I make it fun for myself? How can I win? You know, people would get on me, other comics, and say, you're doing the same five minutes every time. I'm like, yeah, I'm learning how to win.

I'm learning how to like sink that putt because eventually I'm going to be in that situation. Everyone's just doing five minutes trying to do something new. Talk about the news that day. Who gives a fuck? Try to get great at that five minutes. Master five minutes. Then you can master seven, 10, 15, 30, and then an hour. You know, that's like how comedy grows.

Stugatz, more muscular. Mm-hmm. I have lost 10 pounds. Have you? Yeah, using my Peloton. I've had the Peloton in my house. So my daughter, she wanted me to get a Peloton. I did. She used it a couple of times. Yeah, great endorsement. But once she left to college and the Peloton was just sitting there in my office and it wasn't being used, I said, you know what? I got to use this. And I have lost 10 to 12 pounds, Billy.

So I started using Peloton as a bike. Obviously, that's like what they're known for. But recently, I discovered all of the other classes that they have. They have like a series of weightlifting classes. They have programs, which for me, the programs is great because I don't have to think about what I'm doing. If not, I just go and I pick a class at random and I don't know that I'm actually accomplishing anything. I would like some recommendations on classes because I keep going to the same class. Okay. It's the Grateful Dead class, by the way.

You do like a four week core program with Emma Lovewell. I would recommend that one. Anyone can do that. Any level starts out easy and then you work your way up. And then there's like a core program two that you can do after core program one if you want to do that. Yeah, if you graduate. Wait a second.

You have to graduate course one to get to course two, the harder course. Well, you can start at course two if you want, but I eased my way in. I did course one first. Then you can do some strength classes with Andy. Love a strength class with Andy. He really puts me through it. I get up and I'm like a sweaty mess. And I'm kind of disgusting and I love it. You know the thing about Peloton, Stugatz? What? Peloton coaches, they walk the walk. Really? Yeah. Do they talk the talk? They have...

You're my teacher. Am I?

Yeah. You know, no, I'm not. Well, I just go with the program so then I don't have to think because I don't actually know what I'm doing. Anyways, what's the Mr. Olympia, right? Is that what it's called? Yes. The one where you go and you're lifting giant boulders. We should talk to Magnus again. That's Mr. Olympia. Yeah. Yes. What did I say? Olympus. Did I? I don't know. Anyways, find your push. Find your power with Peloton at onepeloton.com.

You've mentioned panic attack a few times. You're clinically diagnosing that as you were having panic attacks. You didn't know it, but you were. Being short of breath, covered in sweat, like my whole body, it was my whole body just at once, just boom, that I assume that's a panic attack. I haven't had them more than a couple of times since, but I assume that's what that was.

That's caring so deeply about what you're doing and feeling like it's not working and feeling like everything is collapsing. Your identity collapses in there, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm working as hard at stand-up as I can the whole time. Even though it might seem like I'm talking slowly, I don't move around a lot. If you notice, I don't really blink on stage because I'm so focused in. And part of me is jealous of guys like Gerard Carmichael, who I think is a genius, right?

and does not work at all. His art is just existing in front of you. And I'm in awe of it because again, I would be panic attack city. I need to know every word coming out of my mouth. I don't want to waste anyone's time. I'm very conscious of that. Now in my hour, I call it an hour, it's 52 minutes. Because where I used to take questions from the audience for 10 minutes, I stopped doing that.

Because I got so annoyed by seeing the internet now. If you ask someone who watches the internet what stand-up comedy is, they say, well, you ask someone what they do for a living, and then you make a joke on that. You know, you ask someone how long they've been in a relationship, and I think that's

garbage so I just don't do it get mad that my hour's shorter but I'm not going to get into that crowd work you know you're the audience is the show kind of thing that comedy has become you know five years ago I would have happily taken questions and messed around with the crowd you are disgusted by hackery you're disgusted by lazy here you you insist that people respect what you do and try

Yeah. It offends you. I take almost like a lawyer's or a doctor's how they would approach the law or medicine, and I apply it to comedy. A lot of guys get into comedy because they want the lifestyle and they want to fuck around. I don't fuck around at all. I take it very seriously.

And there's great joy in it, right? Absolutely. But it's also hard at every point, right? This is not necessarily easy for you. It might be easier because you've had so many reps, but it has to be hard in order for it to be good. At this point, your standard is very high for yourself and for others. And it almost gets harder because, yes, you know who I am of reputation, but I've done this five times now.

So I'm trying to surprise an audience who's seen five hours of my material has gotten more difficult. There's subjects I can't talk about anymore because I've done too many jokes on them. So it has become more difficult in that way. I have the reputation, but I don't give myself grace. I feel like even if I go up to the comedy store and say, I'm doing 10 minutes of new jokes, I'm sweating up there because these jokes are bad. I've seen Chris Rock go, what else is going on? And stand there,

wasting everyone's time for half an hour and not give the slightest fuck and i'm jealous of that but i just i don't have it in me it kills me so do you need to let go more do you need for your like because obviously it works for you it succeeds and i don't know if you can separate yourself from it and also have success with it doing it another way but it seems like there are other ways that would you could do it where it would be more gentle i don't know if you if if

When you say you give yourself no grace, that's probably not just generally healthy walking around in life. No, I'm hardest on myself. I'm not taking it on anyone else. My personal relationships, my friends wouldn't know that I'm miserable trying to figure out this joke. But that's okay. As an artist, I'd rather take the beating. I see a lot of artists get worse as they get older. They can just trade in on the name. They get the bigger paycheck and people are happy to see them. That's my biggest fear.

is just becoming bad because the audience lets me. So I make it hard on myself. - Oh, really? Your biggest fear is that success will make you lazy. - Just soft and lazy and you can just cash in.

And I see people doing it now. It's fine. I just, the way that I do it, I live joke to joke. The jokes have to be strong. I can't get lazy with the jokes. So I'm just, it'll be done one day. I'll just know I'm done. Like, it's almost like tearing the ACL. You think so? It's over. Yeah.

That you think you'll be that self-aware that you will know how to walk away from the laughter and what I assume is a lopsided part of your identity. That you represent that you don't do anything in life as well as you do this. You don't do anything in life that gives you the confidence and the rewards that this does. You think you can just look in a mirror. The reason I say it was a bit stunned is because

athletes have to make some of these choices in their late 30s in the world that I work in, and they're generally not self-aware enough. They always overcome odds. They always think they're going to overcome odds because they've always overcome odds, so they don't have the self-awareness. The way I've said it is that the mirror is the last to know, and confidence is the last thing to go. Yeah, and I think what you're saying is probably more accurate for team sports than

than for the individual because team sport you you like the locker room you like hanging out with the guys you don't want to give that up whereas being like a golfer you know they know no one can kind of hold them up they know their swing is gone and they're just going to go out and embarrass themselves if they try to go out and make the cut and i think i think i'll finish an hour maybe it's this one maybe it's the next one and i start to write the next one and i'm like this isn't coming

And then I'll get an offer. They'll be like, we'll give you a million dollars to do an hour somewhere and I just won't be able to do it. And then I'll probably say, that's it. Maybe I do a greatest hits. Maybe I suck it up and take a year in Vegas and do that. But yeah, I think when creatively it's over, I can't fake that.

So I hope it's a ways off, but I think it is coming for me one day. But if it does, if I've put out five hours in a career, that is, even though I did it in 20 years, to me, that's more than I ever would have expected to. My idols, Rodney Dangerfield, Stephen Wright, Mitch Hedberg, two, three hours tops lifetime. So I don't feel like I would be quitting. It's more like, don't embarrass yourself.

You mentioned athletes in the locker room and the camaraderie. What is your relationship with the world of comedy? Because it's a small world, but you guys have so many different commonalities that I would assume that there are places where you can make a lot, lazily make a lot of comedy friends just because you can fast forward through life.

whatever the dating process is in friendships and adulthood and just go straight to you care about your work. I care about my work. Let's talk about our work. In the beginning, it's you're very, it's like you're just stuck in that locker room forever, you know, because you're just doing the open mics. You're in the same city. You're doing it. And the people who start to get success, you all rise up together. You're friends because you're all successful at the same time. And then all of a sudden there's like a hard pivot where you stop seeing each other.

Because all the successful people start to work. So you're gone on a TV show or on a tour and you never see anybody anymore. The only people you see are the ones who were like, never really made it. So then you start to lose touch with people. Then people start getting canceled. People start going fucking crazy and like finding religion. And so you're like, okay, these people had their egos and money is out of control. I can't be around them anymore.

So now my relationship to comedy is pretty arms distance. I have my openers. I have people that I know at the store, but I don't really engage with a lot of comedy. And that's mostly my reticence to do podcasts, to do the podcast rounds where a lot of comics, it's like you have your same five guests and they're all big and huge. I never wanted to be part of the Rogan's crew. So I kind of just stay back, stay doing my own thing. A loner? Sure.

Yeah. Is that lonely? It can be, but the loneliness of being alone is much easier for me to handle than the annoyance of being with someone. At a certain point, I'm just like, I don't care if I'm alone for the rest of my life. I need this person to get the fuck out of here. And it's just, there's always going to be a time where I'm like, this is it. Except for my best friend, Greg. There's always been a time where I'm like- A sports writer. Yeah.

I'm sure. I'm sure sports writers, I mean, I'm sure it's the same thing. You know, you're working at the paper. The rivalries, the friendships must be very, very similar. Well, yeah, the television business also has a lot of vanity and insecurity in it. But I am surprised to hear you say that you're going this kind of lone wolf. I would think it would...

I understand you being annoyed by bad company, but I would think that it would feel more fulfilling or enriching to have just a couple of people who would understand uniquely what it is to be you and then to share some of that. So to be less alone, to be less lonely with that. But listen, my brother, Greg Rosenthal, my two favorite people in the world.

I could not be in a room with them for 24 straight hours. Like, it was just like, listen, we can talk. I want you in my life, but leave me alone. I just want to be with my dog. And I like to read. Like, I don't feel like I'm just...

I've got to get away from people. It's anxiety. It's more like I just like being alone. And I'm at the age now where I've realized like, oh, it's okay. Like do what you want. I've tried to do the thing where, oh, I should go to that party that I don't want to go to. I should make an appearance and realize as I get older, like why?

I'm not going to change. This is who I am and I enjoy it. Did you become an avid reader after stealing from the bookstore or during it or before that? When I was a little kid, like little kid, I'm in Montessori school. So I'm like four or five years old. They put me in Montessori school. I was such a bad kid in terms of like upending the lessons, running around, getting into the kids' faces. The only thing they could do to calm me down was to read to me.

So they had volunteers who would come into the school and just read to me for a couple hours every day. And then once I learned to read, it felt like I had cracked some code and I just wanted to go and read all the code. And then I was from, you know, six or seven years old, just wanted to read books, just loved novels. I read a little nonfiction, read some journalism, but I love the novel. That's my favorite. Bad kid class clown or bad kid seeking attention or bad kid worse than that?

i'm there's the phrase what was it uh i forget who said this the class clown is the guy who runs across the football field naked at halftime the class joker is the guy who talked him into it i feel like i was more the class joker

But I was in honors classes. Like I was in the smart classes. The class clown was in the dumb kid classes. I was in the smart classes, but still disrupting because I would think of something and have to say it. I was like, I thought of this joke. I've got to get it out there. I think I was just so bored. I probably could have benefited from Ritalin or something, but thank God they didn't do that to me. But I was a problem all the way through college. It wasn't like I matured when I got to New Orleans, but I just hated school.

I hated having to sit there. The rigidity of it? The rigidity and just a lot of things I didn't care about learning. If it had been all literature classes and creative writing classes, I would have been very engaged. But it was a lot of like biology, physics, geography. I just didn't care.

And it wasn't that I couldn't do it. I didn't have a learning disability. I just truly did not care. And when you say through college, give me some of the examples of you just, whatever you remember as landmark or extreme examples of, I don't fit with the other people here. I'm clearly, I don't know how much self-awareness there was at the time, but I'm bored and I'm going to act out. I need to be, I need stimulus. In college, I was a little better behaved and I wasn't interrupting class because they didn't tolerate that. But I didn't go to class a lot.

I cheated whenever I could. I think I took a calculus, a pre-calc class where every quiz once a week, and I would say I had to work my job. They'd leave it in a little box. I would take it to my friend who was an engineering major. He would do it in five seconds. I would put it back. And then the final was multiple choice. And I just copied every answer off the person next to me and just hope for the best. I think I got a B. Learned nothing. Nothing. And again, a waste of money. Yes.

but then I would go home and I would read a novel and I would try to work on the novel I was working on. I was doing things, but I just didn't care about anything academic. When did you give up the dream of being a novelist? You were going to be a novelist before you... You imagined being a novelist before you imagined being a comedian. Oh, yes. Because being a comedian...

didn't seem possible. You know, being a kid from Pittsburgh, I didn't know any comedians. It just seemed like there was a select group. I didn't know about open mics. I just knew about the guys who were on The Tonight Show. But novels, I saw everywhere. There were always new novels coming out. I thought, I could do this.

and then realized after college what a lonely life that was. And I had hoped to be Bret Easton Ellis. When I was a kid in high school, American Psycho was released, that book. And then I learned about this guy who wrote his book about sex and drugs and violence, I'm talking about Less Than Zero, while he was still in college. And so to me, that was the dream. I didn't want to be a novelist. I wanted to be Bret Easton Ellis.

And when I realized that wasn't going to happen, I was like, well, what else is there? Maybe I'll be a journalist. That was too hard to break into. Like it was impossible to get hired. And, uh, and I thought, well, I can just go and do standup without any resume, without anything. You can just go and sign up for an open mic. I can go do it. I didn't have the money for an acting class.

but I could go and just do open mics and do it myself. And I thought, okay, this is something I can just get on the tracks and start putting coal in the engine. American Psycho's on brand. Yes. It's in keeping with you just gravitating over to the dark arts whenever you can. I'm reading about the controversy about the book and being like, what? Why is there controversy? It's a violent book. So what? And then like reading it and being like, wow, like this is, I think a brilliant book. And just the...

The excitement of knowing that you weren't supposed to be reading it was big for me.

I say this in no means to insult you, but are you good at anything else? Or have you pursued this with such mania that of course other things are going to fall to the side because you've been so interested in making this a success and it's hard to make this a success? Good question. I wonder if, I mean, if I couldn't do it anymore, you know, like during COVID, it was like, well, what are you going to do now? And I thought I'm going to do nothing.

I'm just going to like just try to stay healthy and I'm not going to try to write a novel or write even a joke. I'm just going to try to like lock this down that if I couldn't do stand up for some reason, I'm sure I could find something else. But I think I've just kept all my interests. It's like an athlete who only works the one muscle. You know, you can arm wrestle anybody, but that's all you can do.

you know you've only got that uh that one skill what are the things that end up making you fulfilled like what are the most enriching of the experiences when i tell you you've sold out north america or just the idea that with your funny you could go travel overseas and have a european tour because your humor is something that crosses the oceans

- Being known and respected is nice. I really hated being famous. In 2013, I had a TV show, it was like right after the roast and my billboard was all over the place. New York City, my poster was everywhere. And it was, you were just famous.

and people would see you and they wouldn't know what you were from, but they knew you and they wanted something from you. And I hated that. Now that it's like, if you recognize me, you're a comedy fan. You've seen a couple of my specials. I've been around long enough that I enjoy that interaction. But just the fact that every tour gets bigger than the one before it,

When you're a stand-up, you put the special out at the end. You don't really know how it does until you go on tour again years later. For me, anyway. A lot of comics now will put out a special and the tour starts the next day. I'm not like that. It's years. But it's gratifying that people remember you. They liked you enough to want to come see what's new. And they're happy to pay a little bit more. So that's the most gratifying thing. It's almost getting your flowers because you've been doing it longer.

Hated being famous. Hated it. Like being known, hated being famous. And there's a difference. You know, it's getting recognized in an elevator is fine. But when you're in a casino and you're performing at the casino, your posters everywhere, that's famous. Where everyone's just looking at you and it kind of sucks because it doesn't feel earned.

Well, the distinction you're making, I don't know if you have insecurities elsewhere on this, but I've said recently in this venue that where my confidence resides, you made the distinction between known and famous.

known is I'd like my work to get out of the limousine at the red carpet and walk down the red carpet. Me, myself, I'll stay in the car. I don't, I don't, I just, I'd like the work to speak for itself. Yeah. And part of it is just, it was new. So I'm not used to having eyes on me. Now I'm pretty, I'm okay with it. I'm used to it. I can walk into a store, I can clock and maybe that guy, you know, recognizes me, but it's not that big a deal.

For that year of 2013, it was not fun. You just felt exposed. You felt like an open, like a raw nerve. Well, you say 2013, the Trump roast was in 2011 or was it in 2000? It was... 2011 was the Trump roast. And then you start to get recognized. And that was nice, but it was like a niche thing.

Uh, then it was the sheen roast kind of kept things going. Roseanne roast. No one gave a fuck about like it was like it did not air. Uh, and then the TV show was more, it was more the advertising for the show than the show itself. It's when you're on billboards and subway posters, it's a different level of, of fame that is just, it's off-putting.

You don't regret doing the TV show, do you? No, and I didn't enjoy it that much, but it kind of took me to another level. Like it let me, I could go from that show to headlining theaters, whereas before it was headlining clubs. So like there are some things you do throughout your career that you're like, I'm glad I did that to get it over with. Like I probably will never do another roast again.

But I was very happy to do the three that I got to do. Well, tell me how much your life changed, you said, overnight with the Trump roast. Tell me what went into that. At that point, you were saying you're a writer on Fallon and you don't like it that much because you run much darker than Fallon does and he's not going to tell your jokes. But at that point, you still think that what you're aiming for as a career is a writer. Yeah.

just a writer. At the time I got the Fallon job, I realized that I had a shot at being my own thing and doing my own jokes. Because before this, I don't know if I can write an hour of these jokes. The jokes are so short and I'm very proud of them. But if I come up with a great, a brilliant joke, it's only 60 seconds of my act. So I'm like, can I even do this?

And around the Fallon time, I think I'd gotten my half hour on Comedy Central. After I left the Fallon job, I wrote for a roast and did very well in that room. It was like, okay, you can do this. So when Trump came along, it was like, okay, this is my chance. I know I know how to write these jokes. I had a couple in my back pocket that I had been using on my own that I'm going to put these in there and I'm just going to murder this. And again, like then people just knew who I was as a comedian. And then the pressure, I remember Charlie Sheen was like four months later.

And I remember that was more pressure than even Trump because I thought Trump, I don't want people to say, oh, he did it on Trump.

but he can't do it again. You know, not being able to repeat it is failure to me. I was like, I need to make this as good, if not better than Donald Trump. So take me through though, what you're feeling before that. And you're saying, you know that you're going to crush it. Like you're going out there and you know you're about to change your life, that you're going to meet this moment of pressure. I'm hoping. I know I've prepared. I've been writing these jokes. I've been practicing them. And when I'm practicing them in New York, they didn't believe me.

Because they would say, this guy's going to be on the roast of Donald Trump. And then they hadn't heard of me. So they didn't believe it until I'm halfway through my set list. So I think these jokes are going to go well. But I'm up against Lisa Lampanelli. I'm up against Whitney Cummings. I'm up against Jeff Ross. Those are my fears that I thought I need to, I don't want to be like weak compared to them. And Lampanelli was always the murderer. And Lampanelli goes up like second or third. And I remember just being like, almost laughing like, oh my God, I'm so much meaner than she is.

I'm so much meaner that I had overcorrected. And then when I got up there, it was like Darth Vader just going up there. Did you ever see a movie? It was about like the first Olympics that they brought back. It was like, it takes place in the 1900s or something. The guy from, uh,

Who was the guy who played Caruso from NYPD Blue is in the movie. And they're like a bunch of Princeton brats who they make be in the Olympics. And so they're training, but they get those things wrong. Like they're training shot put and then they get to the Olympics and they're like, wait, this is tiny. They're like, yeah, you've been playing with the wrong thing. So they kick everyone's ass. It felt like that in the roast. That my biggest fear was everyone being meaner than me, that I just overdid it and just destroyed that thing.

You used the phrase up against those comics. That's how you viewed it. On a roast, yes. Because you're being compared to, it's like, okay, like Jeff Ross murdered, you know, the comedians were the ones I would compare myself next to. And not in so much I need to win, but that I just don't want to look like a pussy compared to them. You know, there would always be a rule, you can't do this. And then Jeff Ross would always do it. It would get cut out. But I remember being like, God, he got me on that one. I should have broken the rule.

Do you do up against outside of the roast? Outside of the roast format? Like, are you doing much comparison to yourself at all? Because you've said, you've already said you don't do much of that. Do you do any of it? No. Even if I'm on the same show as someone, like, I understand that.

Why Eliza Schlesinger might destroy and I'm gonna eat shit afterwards like I'm okay with that and I get we have different audiences So I would never compare us in that sense and on a show who cares who did better You know, it's it's fine. If my favorite comic won't always be the one who does the best so I was okay with that but on a roast it's Definitely like you can almost score it to see who did who did the best who won the roast. I

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But do you know when you arrived at like this kind of confidence that you have where I don't need to compare myself to anybody? I do what I do and my standard is the hardest standard. And so if I meet my own standard, I will have succeeded. I remember becoming jealous of a comedian early on. And I never, I'm not a jealous person ever.

And all of a sudden this new guy comes on the scene and he's just killing it. And he's kind of like me a little bit, like a little bit different, not as dark for sure. Where I'm like, fuck, did I mess up? Did I go too dark? Did I mess up? Should I have done this? And it drove me crazy for a couple of weeks. And then one time I realized there's one thing about this comic.

that I would not have done, that I would never do. And I was like, oh, would I have ever done what this guy's doing for this? And it was like, when the answer was no, I realized, oh, then why are you worried about this? Like this guy, he wore a funny hat every time on stage or something. Like would I ever wear the funny hat on stage? No.

So then I was never jealous again of this person. And if you look closely, everyone's got a funny hat. Everyone's got something that you can say, I'd rather be me than be them. So it's been, once I had that, then I had the confidence to say, okay, I'm just doing my own thing. No one can really even give me helpful advice. Chris Rock has tried to be like, hey, say this instead of that. I think that'll work better for you. And he's wrong. I've tried it and it bombs. Is there any particular reason you didn't name the comedian? No.

the comedian that we're talking about? How long ago was this? I mean, this was 15, 16, 17 years ago. It was just, it would make them feel bad. I'd happy to tell you off. No, no, no. I was just curious whether you are protecting somebody or, or whether it is you wouldn't give someone the satisfaction of knowing that, uh, that you were at one point jealous of them. It never, I would, I would give them the satisfaction of that. But once I told them how I got over it, it would not be a nice for them to hear. And I, the,

in my in my place as a kind of a grandfather in the comedy scene now it's always just a bad look to to on anybody what a blessing though to have what you're basically saying is uh 17 years of confidence in your position like that's um

To not necessarily, I don't know how much stage fright you have if it's normal every time to have a little bit of that because you're working without a net and every crowd is different and you never really know what a crowd is going to be. But I can't imagine the amount of confidence you have if it's 17 years of feeling confidence.

The confidence there, but it comes and goes where the tough part for me is I'm telling the same jokes. I'm doing the same hour every night, twice a night that to keep that fresh can be difficult, you know, to not let the audience know. And I'm such a professional at this point. And my stage character is so kind of laser focused that,

The difference between me having the best set of my life so much fun or hating a crowd where I like want to quit the business. You cannot tell the difference between the two sets. What? You will not be able to see me. You will not be able to tell on my face or any of my mannerisms or actions which audience I enjoyed and which I despised. And I'm very proud of that.

Because you're deep in there. I'm just so professional that I've done it so many times that like, I remember Jim Brown would walk back to the huddle after he got tackled and people would get on for being lazy. And it was like, no, I'm playing a 60 minute game. At the end, I'm hurt. And I don't want them to know when I get hurt. So I walk the whole time. If I ran back, eventually I got to start walking. So for me, it's a slow walk across the stage every time. So you take pride in the idea of this audience cannot hurt me.

Like I will not allow, they can hurt me, but they will not see me hurt. Yeah. And I don't know if they even can hurt me at this point, but they'll never see me sweat. Like that, like you see comics, you're a bad crowd. That to me is failure.

I can go a whole hour without getting a laugh. And as long as I don't say that, then I didn't fail. Then it's them. But if you're like, this sucks, guys, then that's a failure. And you see it happen occasionally now with some comics, but that's my, that's my, that's failure to me. And I haven't had done that in 10 years. That is a, but you feel like you've arrived then you've, you have arrived at a, at a serenity inside of your expertise. Yes.

Yes. I feel like I've gotten as big as I can get. I can go further, but this is as big as this gets when you're talking about the things I talk about. And I'm 100% thrilled with it.

It's got to be unusual. I don't know whether if you're a loner and you're not talking to other comedians about this, I generally associate almost always not that kind of confidence around this sort of a lack of footing, no matter how good you are, what you're articulating is so stubbornly resolute in a way that I'm not used to hearing from from.

the frailties that come with performing? I think it depends on the kind of comedian you are. And my, I'm just, I've written it out beforehand. Like I won the battle two years ago. You know, now I'm just celebrating it on the road where some comics every night are

is a battle with the audience. So you can't, confidence would be deadly. You know, I don't think I'm better or worse than them, but just I've locked into what I do. Well, if you're talking about the movie Comedian, I guess that's where I discovered, I hadn't known before then, oh, Seinfeld knows exactly the music of and the symbol for boron. Wait for pause because that's the comedic word. Wait for laughter because that's...

That's like, you know, you've gotten to the point I would guess I don't want to be presumptuous, but I would guess that at the end of whatever your process is on getting to a special, you might be damn near sick of the material because you know it so well that the last show before the special, you're not even necessarily inspired anymore, not working from the place you'd like to, which is.

New and joyous and challenging as opposed to I know how to hit that that that that that that mm-hmm Oh, that's by design you almost schedule the whole The whole tour around when you're gonna get sick of it, you know, it's a you do I go to a year of comedy clubs I owe a year in Los Angeles writing the jokes and once I'm so excited I can't I've got 30 minutes 45 minutes. I go to clubs for a year two shows a night in a comedy club and

And then after that year, I go into theaters. And it's a year of theaters in America. And at the end of that year, I tape the special. Right when I'm like, I don't want to say these fucking jokes ever again, I tape the special. And that kind of gives me a second wind. And then I have six months to go international. And by the time I do my last show in Oslo at the end of October, I will be truly done. But in a way that I would never...

I would never do these international dates and be like, let me get through these. You know, it's like, I'm excited again. But by the time I finished that, it's let people see it on screen. And I start the new one because I'm so sick of it.

Do you struggle with inspiration then by the time that you're hitting the notes first, you know, two years or 18 months of hitting notes? A little bit. Yeah. I mean, I've done a lot of topics. You know, my last special, Firing the Maternity Ward, I ended with like a 15 minute joke about taking a friend to get an abortion. Where I was like, if I even thought of a great abortion joke now, I wouldn't put it in the new hour because that's just done for me.

Um, do I have jokes about killing babies in every single hour? Yes, I do. Uh, that will always be evergreen to me, but I missed those days in the beginning where I could, you wouldn't, there was no subject you would tackle yet. So you could just write about anything. Now I kind of have to find, you know, what are those little gems? It's like mining, you know, when you're running out of gold. Is it getting harder or easier? Harder. Oh, it's absolutely getting harder.

Yeah.

I've got 18 months of work ahead. That's going to be, I think like grueling, correct? Like work that's got you, when you think of the next special after this one, and I put you at the, at the bottom of the mountain, the feeling that sweeps over you is what?

And disbelief, like I don't believe it's ever actually going to happen. It's not like something that I'm like, oh, I can visualize the process of what it's going to take to get back into shape. Like I can't even visualize it. I talk about retirement at the end of every tour because I almost have to mentally to get through it. But it's that scratching around and finding one new joke. Once there's one new joke,

Then I'm like, oh, fuck, this is brilliant. I can't wait to go tell that. Then I almost have to write the hour around it to be able to get it up and get it out there. So it really, it's frustrating to get that first one. And I'm more confident now in that I, you know, I have the confidence. I've done it five times already. And I have the money for the first time in my life where I don't have to run out and

and go do something a lot of comics now you know you see guys who got a divorce and now they have to go out there and their act just gets really bad because people will go buy tickets but they're just kind of finding it on stage and i think that's not always good disbelief when you say first step of the next special is disbelief you're saying you have no way you don't know if you can get there you don't even know you've just trained for the fight

You've had the fight and now you can't imagine going through another training camp. Can't even visualize it because it's a blank slate. Yeah, I can't even picture what it would look like. What's in the room of training camp? Like I know I can get there, but I just don't know. I can't visualize it. I really will just sit there with a blank page. I'll write a bunch of different subjects. You know, what could I talk about? What are things I'd like to get into? Maybe I'll see a standup special that'll be like, oh, I have to, I want to get into this.

And that will inspire me and I just write as many jokes as I can until one of them catches me. And I'm wrong a lot. Where I'm like, oh, I can't wait to try this out tonight. And the audience is like, what are you fucking talking about? This is terrible. And that's fine. But go back and try it again. They decide.

I mean, the line between brilliance and hack is so thin that you can think, oh, is this hack? I can't tell. And most of the time it's hack. One of my first jokes was, I had written it, it was, whenever I meet a pretty girl, the first thing I look for is intelligence. Because if she doesn't have that, then she's mine.

and i remember writing that joke and being like this is hack and then someone was like no this is brilliant and then every time i told that joke for years it always killed and i was like i can't believe i almost threw that away like it was a friend had to tell me no this is okay so jokes like that on that line that's where i i enjoy that a lot and a lot of times i'm dead wrong and i'm still surprised 22 years in i think like this is going to be amazing and the audience is like they don't know that i finished the joke it's so bad they're still waiting like

- And then? - Well, that's one of your favorite feelings, is it not or no? Like the idea that you're keeping an audience off balance, I assume that you enjoy that.

I like them off balance, but there has to be... You can't just tell a bad joke to keep them guessing. Like, oh, well, maybe the next one will be bad too. I feel like Norm Macdonald did some of that. Very different. He liked to waste your time and do the long street joke. He definitely thought it was funny when he was bombing. I think anytime I'm really bombing, I think about him saying...

He would think it's funny that these audience came on pay all this money to come see him and they hate him So he starts to smile thinking about how funny that is and they see him smiling and now they're really mad Because they think he thinks it's funny that they hate him and then it gets so much worse than by the end of it He's laughing. I do not smile. I'm like, oh shit, but there's no plan B. I

When Norm Macdonald, I wonder what you think of this. He said, do you want to, I think he was talking about Bill Maher. There are a number of comedians you can do this with, I suppose. But he said, do you want to be a comedian or do you want to be a smart guy? Are you going to pick? Are you going to pick? Where are you philosophically on that? Oh, I want to be a smart guy. And I love Norm Macdonald. He is my hero. He is one of my idols. We worked together on Last Comic Standing and did not get along.

I took the job to work with him. Our philosophies were very different. And his criticisms of the other comics, he was a judge, I was the host. I was surprised by. And so it was just very different philosophically. All the respect in the world for Norm and what he did. It was amazing. I never tried to replicate what he did. Not that I would change anything about Norm Macdonald. It's just, it's very different.

You didn't get along, though. You thought you were going to get along. You were hoping to get along. I wanted to be best friends, but I think we were both... And we figured it out, but I think we were both a little disappointed in the job we had taken and saw the other comedians on the show and went like, fuck, what are we doing here? And so we were both not in the greatest of moods and then would butt heads a little bit. Like, I don't...

Just because he's my idol didn't mean that I backed down at all. I kind of treated Last Comic Standing like it was my show and no one else thought that. And so, yeah, we were going to butt heads. But that's okay.

uh, it, it is okay. But I wonder if, you know, you're going in thinking someone's going to be your best friend. You're a loner. He's a hero of yours. I imagine a bit of an inspiration at least. And yes, of course it's okay that you didn't get along, but it would have been better than okay if you had. Sure. But it didn't make me like him less or respect him less. It was like, this is a, this is an issue of mine and like neither one of us had, you know, a lot of friends or was around people a lot, a lot of the time. But, uh,

Yeah, I think just right off the bat, I think he said something. I made fun of him for it. He wasn't happy about it. And I was like, I don't, I'm going to keep making fun of you because I took this job and I'm not just going to sit here and like let you take over. And that was a tough, it was a tough week. We did eight episodes of that show.

Yeah. And neither one of you liked being there because you thought the show was going to be something different or you thought this particular thing, once you realized it wasn't up to your standard, you're like, what have I done? Or I think Norman, I thought this was going to be like the norm. I thought this was gonna be the Norman Anthony show where the comics go and perform and they're all bad. Like they're all like young do comics doing three minutes. It's not like the comics were bad, but it was still all about them.

And if the comics were really bad and we said something funny about it, then that whole thing was cut from the show because they only wanted to show the good comics. So Norm and I were like, what are we doing here? If we can't give our real opinion, you don't want anyone to be mean. And there's a hundred fucking contestants. We were both just like, this is not the best use of our time. But by the end of that show, we were getting along. I worked at it.

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Who do you regard as your inspirations? Oh, God. Jack Handy.

Do you know who that is? I do not. Do you remember Deep Thoughts on SNL back in the day? Yes, that I do remember. Deep Thoughts was by Jack Handy. People thought he wasn't a real person. Oh, he was writing them? Yeah, he was the writer. And now he's a much older guy. He had a new book come out. He writes for the New Yorker sometimes. But his jokes, that was my Bible, where I would just read his books, write my own versions of them. But all of my jokes, I'm just ripping off Jack Handy. So Jack Handy, big time. Stephen Wright,

um albert brooks i was uh i was loved uh dangerfield i think was the absolute greatest man you're not that old though like those are old school comedians those are 45 i know but those okay so those people are 25 years your senior some of them more than that and you're what you're a kid you're this is the first this is the this is your introduction to laughter or the idea of this as a career path

No, I never never occurred to me as a career path until I was out of college living here I loved everyone loves laughing even if you don't have a good sense of humor you love to laugh and all comedy to me was it's like it's laugh time This is great as a kid and as I got older I started to gravitate more towards Stephen Wright. I like the joke I like the how did he think of it the the deep thoughts especially was like how did he make that connection there? That's so brilliant that I just wanted to go for that. I

When I think of personas in comedy, I think of, and I hope this isn't an insult to you because I remember Andrew Dice Clay was trying to pull something off and couldn't eventually at the end pull it off. You're doing all of that better than he did it. Thank you. Who else is it that you look at and say that person is in character? That person is not breaking character.

It's hard because everyone is doing a version of a character. Some are closer. You know, you look at a guy like Richard Lewis, who we recently lost. Like, it seemed like he was doing a character. I remember Bob Odenkirk once described it as like, sometimes there's a microphone in front of him and sometimes there's not. But he's just always doing that. I don't know that any people have a persona the way that I do at this level. Everyone, again, everyone has like a sheen of a persona. But I don't know if anyone's like as...

night and day. It's a light switch. You know, and I still have it, you know, in me in my regular life. But I don't know if anyone's as night and day as me. But it's not you. That's what I'm saying. What I'm saying is you're wearing a mask. You're in costume. You're, and you're doing it and it's your identity, but it's not really you. Mm-hmm.

it's a bit of mind fuck like that that you're doing it that extreme right because this isn't you turned up to 10 this is you doing a person that is calculated orchestrated to be an an occupying a different lane with the audience yeah i mean it's great it's great it works as a performer and as an off off stage guy it gives me a little bit of a buffer you know i don't get you know it's the comics who seem like your best friend on stage

always seem like assholes offstage because they had to be. Because people were just like, oh, you're my best friend. I know from watching you on stage. If you come up to me, like it's brave. Like you must really be a fan and you are taking your life in your own hands that I enjoy that. If someone's a little nervous, like I'm at ease. It's like, okay, I can handle this.

And you're very comfortable with who this person is, right? People think they know you upon meeting you and they end up being afraid of you. And as I introduced myself telling you that I'm a little afraid of you, that's what happened there. A smile came on your face because that means my reputation precedes me. The character I created is a wild success if you're a little afraid of me. Well, because I'm a nicer person in my regular life, it's easier to do. If you expected me to be meaner or you were like...

I used to run into the morning radio DJ who was like challenged by me. Who was like, oh, you think you're funny and dark? And then it was the worst like 20 minute conversation ever that I would rather they're a little afraid, a little nervous. It's like, okay, I can be polite. I can work with this.

I can handle it. And how does it relate to relationships with just people who think they know you before meeting you? You've lowered the expectation so much that they get pleasantly surprised that the human being in there isn't an immoral baby killer. Oh, yeah. If you come up and you're like, hey, I'm a big fan. I smile like, oh, thank you. Well, you want something to eat? Like people are just so taken aback. Like it's like it's extra charm that, yeah, if I like you, you know, I like you.

that I think people can take comfort in that. Who do you look at and say that comedian most resembles the thing that I did or came close in some form even though you blazed a unique path? You know, it's hard to say because there are certain guys that I hear are similar. A guy like a Daniel Sloss

that I will try to never watch their stuff because I don't want anyone who's even remotely in my neighborhood, I don't want that in my head. So there are people out there who do a version of this very well, but I don't want to know about it. But you don't know of anyone who did a version of this before you, right? Oh, a version, like the character and the one-liner or the... Just all of it. Like your...

going back and forth over the line on a number of different places where I don't know that there are a whole lot of people that are going out and saying, you know what I really want to see tonight? I want to see really dark comedy. I mean, listen, the shows are selling out, but I think, uh,

i don't know if anyone's committed to this as much as i have to do five hours of it as opposed to just like a 10 minute one-off character at an improv show you know i don't know if anyone's ever committed the way that i have to just the darkness and just making it about comedy and less about myself you know i'm not trying to promote myself i'm trying to promote my comedy

What is better about Bones and All that represents all of your learned experiences in doing these things? Great question. I would have said nothing. I really thought my last special was like my masterpiece, but people keep saying it keeps getting better. This is the best one. I have a couple of stories. I have a story about Norm, about Norm pranking me on Last Comic Standing. I have a story about making fun of Mike Tyson at the Sheen Roast. And I have a story about...

Oh fuck, what's my other story? Telling my first joke on stage ever. I kind of get into the whole like the 20 year, it's almost like a recap of the last 20 years of my career. And I think that the trans material in the beginning is some of the best thing I've, maybe one of the best things I've ever done. Absolute tour de force and I do not throw that word around lightly.

Yeah, people just, I don't notice my own evolution the way that someone who watches me would get it. They all seem about the same to me, but I think this might be my best special. And why is it that the trans stuff is something, you're going to a trough that everyone is at that is, look at the smirk on your face, and it's dangerous and you think that you had, you probably felt you couldn't

avoid doing that, right? I just, I, the trans material absolutely disgusts me in that I think anti-trans behavior is disgusting. I think homophobia is disgusting, racism, all that stuff. And everyone has been so bad at this, so bad at it. And I think I just cracked away. And usually it's like, you just get a little absurd with it. You're smart with it.

but I think that it would be impossible to get upset at my bit, which is, I think is the victory of the tension of when I say, here's what I'm about to do is intense. Even from my audience who wants to hear that stuff. And then the release is, is incredible. I think it's one of the best, the smartest things I've ever done.

Is there anything that you fear that you simply will not do? Like you won't do it that you, you say, Nope, that's taboo. It's not a fear, but I'll hear this. People would say, is there any line for you? I would not use a racial slur. I would not use an anti-gay slur. And I will talk about, I will make gay jokes. I will make racial jokes, but it's, I think once you use the slur, I think you're dead in the water. I've thrown comics under the bus for using slurs before. Uh,

Because I just think it's got no business in stand-up comedy. So I would never do that. I wouldn't call it a line because I'd be happy to talk about these subjects, but you have to do it in a smart way. Again, you want people laughing, not just like that can't be all there is. It's got to be a laugh in there. It can't be provocative for the sake of provoking. You're trying to get people to laugh.

Feel and think something different and if you're provocative for the sake of being provocative, which again, okay You can't complain about it. You can't say you can't be provocative for the sake of being provocative and like why aren't you laughing? You guys don't fucking get it like that's what? Embarrasses me about modern stand-up comedy is the complaining from people who are just so clearly trying to provoke. I

So you, do you get, you get bothered by the comedians that are complaining about what the present climate is? I'm, I'm, I'm embarrassed by it. And that's, I don't, it doesn't bother me so much. I mean, it's just, it just feels like, why are we complaining? Comics are making more money than ever made before. This comedy boom is insane. You got this money, Netflix money, touring is huge and people are just complaining all the time and I can't stand it. And why is that happening?

I think because they've gotten more money and more attention is on them and they don't like negative attention. It's like if you want a million people to see your special, 100,000 aren't going to like it. And you have to be okay with that. You got a million people to watch it. People have forgotten about that. They just don't want to hear any negative complaint or they use it as a marketing tool of the PC culture is trying to stop me. You better buy tickets to my show. And I think that's embarrassing.

How uncomfortable or how much thought do you give to in this particular divided America that there are a whole lot of people that you might not be comfortable with the fact that they don't totally get who you are and now are allies with the actual asshole? I get it. I get it because my audience is, I would say probably, and I'm being generous, 70-30 conservative to liberal.

And I'm okay with that. And thank you for buying a ticket.

But you get what you get. You know, my last hour I was doing, it's a lot of Trump people. And then I have the 15-minute abortion close where everyone's like, oh, wait, I thought he was on our side. I'm not going to explain myself to you, but you're getting what I give you. And they seem okay with it. No one ever really gets mad at me for any of the political stuff that I do. If I talk about anything political, like in my hour now, it's like...

I'll bring up politics, but it's a way to, oh no, he's about to lecture us. And then of course I don't. But I'm okay with it. I don't have a problem with it. And I also don't feel like I need to tell my fans how to vote.

You know, I don't, I don't, it doesn't bother me. So you're saying you think that 70% of the fan base runs conservative and thinks that you're on their side. I don't know about that because I, a few years ago when Trump became president, I felt like I had to kind of announce my intentions in a way that I would have been afraid to before. Remember Pepe the Frog, that little thing?

It was like a little, it's a little, if I showed you a picture of Pepe the Frog, you would get it. It was this little internet cartoon that got adopted by white supremacists. And all of a sudden they were wearing the little Pepe pin. This guy's like, what the fuck? This is like a little, that was my biggest fear. It was a huge fear that I would become co-opted by this portion of America. And so I kind of had to go out and say, listen,

That is not, I am not one of America's foremost conservative comedians. Like I don't know who made the put this list together, but I am, I am, I'm not, I vote like a black woman. You have mentioned fear a couple of different times or biggest fears. So what if we, if we were actually looking at what your fears are,

are not just professionally, what are they? What are the biggest fears? You're talking about fearing getting lazy, but you also said you've arrived at money or safety or comfort for the first time, which could make one lazy. - Sure, sure. I don't think of it that, I don't have that much money that I can truly be lazy with it. It's more, I worry about becoming a victim of success.

The idea of getting a TV show, a hit TV show that you hate and you've got to do it for the next 10 years and you're just so miserable. Like success that you didn't like is worse to me than failure. Failure is over pretty quickly, but a success would be tough. To show up to work every day and hate what you do, but it's so much money you can't leave it. That is maybe one of my biggest fears.

What an odd fear. I know. I just knew too many people who were rich as shit and everyone thought they had the greatest job in the world and they hated it. Like, have you ever heard the phrase, the only thing more miserable than an out-of-work actor is a working actor? I had not. Because when they're out of work, they're like, I don't have anything. Boy, they get a job. Now they're just thinking about all the other jobs they can't have now because they have this job.

And that always worried me. I don't know. I assumed watching the Gary Shandling show and Seinfeld that those guys were enjoying what they were doing. But I do remember them being on Comedians in Cars, getting coffee next to each other, talking. And it seemed like nobody understands how actually hard it was to make it look

Like what they were doing is easy when it was in no way easy. Oh, yeah. I mean, 25 episodes a year. Like we can't even understand now. Now your hit TV show makes 10 episodes a year and they spend the whole year doing it. But doing 25 of Seinfeld, it seems like it would have been a nightmare, an absolute nightmare. What a funny. So you're fearing.

success, but success that doesn't come so much on your terms, because I don't even know what that would look like other than what you're presently doing, which is touring as a standup. I don't know what project imaginatively, creatively I could put in front of you that would represent success the way that you want it, exactly how you want it. It doesn't have to be exactly the way that I want. Like I think about the Big Bang Theory.

You know, I never watched a second of that show, but there were like some cast members on it who were just kind of like the friends who just sat off to the side, have a couple lines of dialogue and episode, and they made billions of dollars. I would have been fine doing that. But if it's my show and I've got to run it and I'm coming in and I'm approving everything and I hate the final product,

That would be a nightmare. Is it a burden having that kind of standard? You're not going to put your name on something that you don't feel meets the standard of what your name brings in terms of expectation. It doesn't feel like a burden. No. I mean, and again, I think I've kind of self-isolated in terms of like people aren't, you know, I've never been on CBS. I don't think I'll ever be on CBS. You know, I've never been like Hulu. When I was trying to sell my special, Hulu was like, we want to get in the standup game.

And then like, they came to, they had a meeting with me and then I go, listen, everyone thinks we're Disney. We're not. We're FX for all these things. We're edgy. We can do this. And I was like, great. Have you seen my hour yet? And they're like, no, we're coming to Carnegie Hall this weekend on Sunday or Monday. They call and they're like, we can't. Like we are Disney. We can't, we can't put this out there that I'm like, okay. Like, thank you for making the decision for me. I don't have to worry about selling out because no one's trying to get me to sell out.

You've done all of the other late night shows though, right? You've done, you've. I did Leno's, Leno's Tonight Show was the last show I ever did stand up on. And then I've done, I think I've been Kimmel a bunch of times. I'm friends with Jimmy and I did Seth Meyers, but I've never done, never been on CBS again ever. And yeah, I don't think I've, I haven't been on Fallon's new Tonight Show. Do you like doing that? Have you, you don't like it? No.

I don't. I really don't. And I don't think that's even weird. Like Daniel Tosh would only do stand-up on those late night shows. He would never be a guest. There's something inorganic about it. It feels a little weird. And as a stand-up, you're used to doing it the way that you want to do it. So yeah, I don't enjoy it that much. It feels like almost like you're doing a bit, you're doing stand-up, but you got to pretend that it's a conversation. I don't like that inorganic feeling.

I really enjoyed this. Thank you for spending the time with us. I will tell the folks again, anthonyjeselnik.com. He's got the Bones and All special on Netflix. Anything else that you would like the people to know before we get out of here on what it is you've got coming up? Check out JRVP, the Jeselnik and Rosenthal Vanity Project on All Things Comedy, wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you, sir. Appreciate the time. Thanks, Dan. Appreciate it.