In this episode of the Babylon Bee Podcast, Kyle and Ethan talk to Dan Whitney better known as Larry The Cable Guy. Dan gained fame from the Blue Collar Comedy Tour while patenting the phrase "Get R Done" in his hilarious stand up act. Dan was able to reach out to the next generation when he voiced the role of Mater in the Pixar film, Cars. Dan talks to Kyle and Ethan about how he snagged the role of Mater, how he's canceling cancel culture, and the time he had to get Chuck Berry off stage. Topics Discussed Larry The Cable Guy on the View Why Dan chose the name Reagan for his daughter How Dan found the Babylon Bee The Story of Dan snagging the role of Mater Joking with Paul Newman Kicking Chuck Berry off stage How Dan became Larry The Cable Guy Ben Shapiro Tweet Can't cancel Larry The Cable Guy Late night talk hosts Goofiness of Steve Martin The worst audiences of the world Being a comedy superstar Tobacco spitting and Delta Farce Replacing the Rock and Arnold Schwarzenegger Subscriber Portion Friendship with Lewis Black Cool stories with Jeff Foxworthy 10 questions Another Carmen story
I just have to say that I object strenuously to your use of the word hilarious.
Hard-hitting questions.
What do you think about feminism?
Do you like it?
Taking you to the cutting edge of truth.
Yeah, well, Last Jedi is one of the worst movies ever made, and it was very clear that Brian Johnson doesn't like Star Wars.
Kyle pulls no punches.
I want to ask how you're able to sleep at night.
Ethan brings bone-shattering common sense from the top rope.
If I may, how double dare you?
This is the Babylon Bee Interview Show.
Hello, everybody.
Welcome to the Babylon Bee Interview Show, a show where we interview people.
I'm Kyle.
I'm Ethan.
And about to join us is a man named Dan.
Dan Whitney, known better to you as Larry the Cable Guy.
That's right.
Known better to your children as Mater.
Mater.
Yeah.
My kids, one time, we went to the Tennessee airport in Nashville, and the guy at the, you know, the at the, you know, the TSA.
Sure.
I mean, he talks like the accent.
Oh.
And the media, they're like, he talks like Mater.
Oh, no, no, they didn't say they said it to him.
He go, he go, you talk like Mater.
How did he take it?
He laughed.
He's like, they got a good.
That's the thing about these, you know, people out in the South and kind of Middle America and even out here, too.
It's just people on TV are idiots.
So he didn't call you in first.
They don't take themselves seriously.
So they like to laugh at themselves.
They didn't like flag you for strip search and everything.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Frisco.
Full body cavity.
Yeah.
So, I mean, he, yeah, so it was a fun interview.
Yeah, he's, I mean, you guys all know him, obviously.
I feel weird like introducing him.
Yeah.
The blue-collar comedy tour, tons of comedy, CDs, albums, whatever you want to call them.
And then obviously the Cars movies, other movies he did before that that weren't as successful.
Not so, yeah.
But still.
The Tooth Fairy part two.
Yeah.
I didn't know.
You mentioned that on the Tooth Fairy with the number tooth.
Did they?
No.
Oh.
It's an idea.
It would look like 12th fairy.
Tooth.
Yeah.
No, the number two.
I get it.
Oh, the number.
Then it would look like second.
I got it.
I mean, I got it.
I'm just.
They probably went through all that.
There's anyway.
So this is a funny.
This is one of the funniest interviews we've done.
It's just because he's a professional comedian.
They do tend to be funny.
Yeah.
Comedians.
They'll be really successful ones, anyway.
But he did.
I mean, he doesn't take himself seriously.
You could tell we even threw a couple jabs at him here and there.
He seemed to continually forget that he was on his cell phone talking to us on camera.
So the camera slowly drifts to like his head and like his hat and just goes like it's a little jarring at times.
And I felt bad because he was giving a very serious, very thoughtful, great answer to something.
And just to put the camera slow, you know, he just looked like he does this.
It looked like a hill.
Like we were looking at like a scenic picture of it.
It's alaska.
A hill made of human skin.
But we pointed out to him and he starts cracking up.
Yeah.
He's like, oh, I completely, because we just thought like maybe he was talking and his phone was falling over or something he didn't notice.
But he goes, oh, yeah, I forgot we were on video.
But you can watch the interview.
Yeah, you can watch that.
And here it is.
Are we interrupting you?
Do you want to go on mister?
No, shoot.
I'll get.
Hey, that's all right.
I'll tell you later on the rush replay.
On the rush replay.
I've received my news from cable before, but never from Larry the Cable Guy.
This is my first time directly from Larry the Cable guy.
Yeah, I'm missing my tooth.
Oh, yeah.
Are we recording?
I assume we're going.
We're on.
So, yeah, how'd you lose your tooth?
Yeah, we tried to interview you last week and a couple weeks ago, and you told us the story.
So, tell us what's going on with the tooth there.
I have bad teeth.
There's no story.
Oh, I thought that we were trying to make a connection that you told us that you got kicked in the face by a large animal.
No, I uh this whole time.
Was that a lie?
I mean, a joke?
I mean, it's kind of, but it's kind of live.
I had this, I had this tooth worked on, and I was out with the horses, and the horse did buck.
I did move out of the way, and as I moved my head, my tongue came up, hit the back of my tooth.
I heard a snap, and I snapped my post.
I snapped my post in my tooth, and so I got to get my post redone.
I had a post in there, and I that's what happened.
I wasn't kicked by the horse, it did have to do with my reaction.
It was all related, man.
I would fear my tongue if I knew that my tongue could knock my teeth out.
And then, when you call me to do my thing back here, another just happened, man.
No, that's I know.
I went, I went to get a retainer for this, and you saw when I was telling you about back there, I had to get two more posts put in for two implants.
And I would think with the financial success, like if I just envisioning my life, if I like became like you know, the guy that became mater and stuff, that I'd just be like, give me some new teeth.
I'm you know, five minutes.
Get this going.
Well, that's what I'm doing.
I'm going to get an implant, okay?
But I would assume you have like dentists on staff in your home ready to go, they just wait in the closet.
I told my wife, I told my wife yesterday, I go, man, honey, it's unbelievable.
I go, you know, I'm getting fat, I lost a tooth.
I go, I used to be something back in the day.
She goes, No, you weren't really anything.
We all need wives to keep us humble.
What do you have any other growths or scars you want to show us?
Missing body parts?
No, I think I'm pretty good.
I got my moles checked the other day, so we're good on that.
You've worked with a lot of.
If you were here, I dropped my shorts, let your check for ticks, but I used to only play, I used to only play a redneck on TV.
Now I'm turning into one embarrassing.
You have worked with a lot of animals in your life, a lot of pigs.
What's like the on the scale of getting like what animals have you been bit by?
And can you rank them from best experience to worst experience?
You know what?
I got bit twice on the view, and then I left.
Has anyone heard that joke way back in the day?
I did the view.
Yeah, they got bit on the view.
It was like the only people laughing were like all the stage guys.
Oh, man.
This is crazy.
We like to just ask God any good stories because that's yeah.
So, got any good stories from being on the view?
Is that it?
Anymore inside baseball?
That was about it.
I do remember one time when I was on the view the one time, the director, the guy that directed the show was from Texas.
And of course, they tell you what to do.
And it was during it was political.
It was a political season.
It was when this was early on.
So, let's see, 2004 was the election.
And what's her name?
Who was that chick that was in Twister?
Oh, Helen Hunt?
Helen Hunt walks in the door and just was going off on Bush and just cussing up a storm.
And I look at my tour manager, like, what the heck is wrong with her?
I mean, no hello, nothing, just donkey.
Complaining and cussing.
And about 10 minutes later, she walks out.
10 minutes later, the director walks out and he goes, hey, Larry.
I go, yeah.
He goes, hey, listen, I don't know what they told you you can or can't do, but I'm so sick and tired of all this garbage.
You do whatever jokes you want to, and I hope you piss every button along.
I said, all right, I'll do it.
And that's when I went on and did my joke about I alienated the crowd when I did the joke about, oh, doggone it.
What was his name?
One of the early American Idol guys.
Aiken.
Remember, what was his name?
Clay Aiken.
Yeah.
I said, everybody's on the Atkins diet.
I said, I'm on the Clay Aiken diet.
She said, what's the Clay Aiken diet?
I said, you listen to a Clay Aiken CD and try to keep your food down.
And yeah, that got me in some hot water.
All the Aiken fans went on my social media killing me on that.
That's a very dad joke.
I'd say that in the nicest way possible.
Yeah, well, you know what?
You never make fun of Clay Aiken on the view.
That's the one thing I found out.
Whatever.
Well, where do we begin with Larry the cable guy?
I mean, my name's Dan.
Yeah.
You can call me Dan if you want to.
Okay, Dan.
Sorry, we're getting used to that.
Dan Whitney, you have a female last name like I do.
My name's Ethan Nicole.
So I'd like to acknowledge people with a man with a female-sounding last name.
Yeah, you guys see each other in the street and like, no.
I know what it's like.
Yeah, but my name is, I don't have a female name.
Mine's Daniel.
No, Whitney, your last name, Whitney.
My last name's Nicole.
Oh, okay, okay.
Yeah, I get it.
All right.
Well, you know, my daughter is named Reagan.
Okay.
And we didn't give her a middle name because when she got married, we figured she could use her last name as a middle name.
Okay.
smart reagan after the britney's very girly Name Reagan after the exorcist character, I assume.
You know what?
No, but after I named her after the president, but then I got to thinking.
I got to thinking, oh, crap, that was the possessed chick.
Probably shouldn't have done that.
But my son, it would have went well with my son, Damien.
You're funny.
You should be a comedian.
I should be.
So we.
So we have.
I used to do a joke about it.
I used to say, name my daughter after the president.
I'll never forget our first words were, Mr. Larry, tear down this crib.
Beautiful.
So we've came into contact with you because we found you through Twitter.
You were liking and sharing our stuff.
And do you remember how you found the Babylon Bee?
Yeah, I was just sort of on the internet one time and I came across an article.
I go, man, this is hilarious.
I told my wife, I go, honey, you ever heard of this Babylon Beat?
They're like a Christian satirical site.
They're hilarious.
So we both started following you.
Then we started sharing everything.
And every time I come across one or two of yours, I like to send them out.
I do it because they're funny, and then I also do it because it pisses off everybody.
You like to provide both services.
Hey, what was the one?
I forget what you did.
You did one that was so funny.
It was about, I don't remember what the context was, but they went through his old tweets.
And now he got, I can't remember what it was.
It was like something, one of the apostles or something did something.
Oh, yeah, it was the prodigal son kicked back out after old tweets.
Oh, my God.
That was so funny.
Yeah, that's good stuff.
You guys, that's really fun.
You got like a staff of writers, or is it just you two?
You three.
We got a few other guys besides us.
Yeah, we've got about, I think, eight staff writers or so that send in articles, contribute part-time, and such.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, it's really funny.
I will say, and I'm not blowing smoke.
It's, you know, coming up through the ranks of being a comic and stuff, I was always, the onion was always the big paper.
We always looked at, oh, this onion's hilarious.
It blows the onion away.
The onion's kind of lost it.
The onion's gone in a whole weird direction.
So it's definitely way better than the onion.
Keep going.
Just keep talking.
It probably is the onions trying to play it safe.
They're scared.
Yeah, there's something, something happened to the onion.
No, I'll put you guys up there with hee-haw and dixie-riddle cups.
Thanks.
Googling.
Google that.
Quick.
Hey, you can quote me on that.
All right.
We'll put that on the back of the next book.
So there's like a, there's kind of a generational thing with you where, you know, you found the success with, you know, like my dad, I tell him I'm interviewing Larry the cable guy, Dan, and, you know, he's like, oh, yeah, blue collar comedy tour.
Hilarious.
Kyle's young.
And then I tell my son, I'm interviewing Larry the Cable guy, and they're like, who?
And then I'm like, Mater.
And they're like, oh, Mader, you know.
So it's, you know, you found, you lucked out that you got this character that's so, you know, great for your comedy act.
And then it just fits Mater perfectly.
Like, I can't imagine, you know, there's some characters you can imagine a different voice for.
Yeah.
The Mader.
I mean, how'd that work out?
Getting Mater.
Yeah, no, that was a bless.
I'm telling you what, that was a complete gift from God above.
I'm telling you, because that character fits me perfect.
The personality of that character is my personality in real life.
And it's just, you know, and I wanted to make sure, you know, they always get sound alikes to do everything once the movie's over, but I wanted to make sure that I always did Mader.
So I'm the only Pixar person voiceover artist that has done everything.
I've done video games, commercials.
Anything with Mader is my voice.
I don't think I've missed one thing as Mader.
And I told everybody, this is how good I am at doing Mater.
I'm the only voiceover person that actually puts on weight to do the character.
That's how good I am about it.
Yeah, you're getting on the ride at Disneyland and the Dory voice comes on.
Yeah.
And it's clearly not clearly not Ellen Generous.
But you get on the Mater ride, and it's obviously.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
You get on the Mater ride, and then I got to do the announcements.
Well, the cool thing about it was John Lasseter, of course, he was a big fan of me.
And he heard me on the blue-collar CD.
And that's how I got the part.
He said he'd been through about 150 voice actors and 200 celebrities, and he couldn't find the right voice.
And on a last-ditch effort, he had a day to go before he picked somebody.
Somebody said, Go get that blue-collar CD.
I want to hear those guys.
I've heard of Jeff, but I don't know who the other three are.
And fortunately, I was the first guy up there, and he said he was in tears laughing.
And, of course, they sent me a back in the day.
It was a fax.
But yeah, it was really cool.
I remember I went to the, I went, I got home, and my manager called me and said, Hey, go to your fax machine.
There's a thing in there for you.
And I went in there and I looked at it and I said, Wow, this is cool.
I go, So I got to go out there.
When do I got to go out and audition for this thing?
Because I hate to go.
I didn't want to fly all the way out to California, Florida.
And he goes, Oh, no, no, no, you don't have to go anywhere.
You got the part.
I go, I got the part.
What do you mean?
He goes, No, you got the part.
You don't even have to audition.
They're just giving you the part.
And I'm not kidding.
I started welling up with tears.
I was so dug not excited.
And that's how I got it.
He just liked my voice.
And then when I went out there, it was really funny.
I went out there to do it.
And I met John and made he was just so nice.
Everybody was so nice to me.
And I went in and did my first session.
It took about four hours and I got it done.
I only had probably 25 lines.
And I got done and went home.
And I didn't hear from Pixar or Lassener or anybody for like six months.
Four, yeah, like five or six months.
I finally called my manager and I go, Hey, JP, what happened to that cartoon I was doing for Pixar?
I didn't heard nothing from him.
Did I suck?
And so he said, Yeah, what did happen with that?
So he called them up and they told him that they fell in love with Mader and the Mader character turned out to be more than they thought it would be and that they were rewriting a portion of the movie to add more heart to it.
And so I went from my 25 lines to the to like the second most.
And it was just, it was just really awesome.
I mean, they really, they really did me right there.
So yeah, that was a fun character to do.
And it came along at the perfect time, right in the middle of the blue-collar thing.
And so it definitely brought in another whole generation of fans to what I do.
So it was pretty awesome.
You got any cool stories about Owen Wilson?
You know what?
I don't.
Owen's very quiet.
I mean, he's super nice.
You know, he doesn't like to watch himself on camera.
So I remember when we did the premiere, we did the premiere at the Lowe's Motor Speedway.
Most people do it at the Lowe's Theater.
We did it at the Speedway.
And just right when they had all the ceremonies and right when the movie started, Owen got up and left.
I guess he didn't like to watch himself.
I sat there and watched every minute of it.
I made everybody else.
Well, I stood up and I said, My part's coming up.
You know, it's funny.
I'll tell you the crazy thing about that.
I got two funny stories about that.
I had to host the little program we had before it started, so I got to introduce the characters.
And when I did Paul Newman, John Lasseter goes, I don't know if you should do that joke.
I go, no, he'll think it's funny.
Trust me.
So Paul Newman, who I'd met the night before when we went out to eat, he was super nice.
He was a fan.
He was quoting back a couple of jokes he liked that he heard because he's a big race fan.
So he liked my NASCAR joke.
And he introduced him this way.
I said, folks, the next guy coming out here to play is Doc or no, not Doc.
Plays, no, what was his character again?
I can't even.
Yeah, Doc.
Yeah, Doc.
My son would know.
I could ask you.
Yeah.
So I said, you wouldn't even know.
I said, Paul Newman is 80 years old and he took a race car this afternoon at the Lowe's Motor Speedway around the track at 170 miles an hour.
I said, the only way that you can tell that Paul Newman is the age he is is in the movie Cars.
He's the only character that has his blinker on the whole movie.
And he came out and pointed it at me with his laughing.
So I knew he liked it.
And the only weird thing that happened was I was standing over there.
And, you know, I'm a small town kid from Nebraska.
So all this was pretty cool.
And Chuck Berry's tuning his guitar up.
And I look over and I go, man, that's Chuck Berry.
And Chuck Berry looks at me and he goes, Oh man, Larry the Cable Guy, get her done.
And I'm like, Are you kidding me?
So he waved me over and he goes, Man, can I get a pitch with you?
My wife, we did love what you do.
I'm like, holy mac.
And so I took a picture with Chuck Berry.
So then Chuck Berry goes on stage and I guess he's going along.
And they told me, Hey, go up.
We got to get the show moving.
Just go up and get him off stage.
And I'm like, going, you want me to go on stage and tell Chuck Berry to get off thing?
Are you nuts?
And they said, he's got to get off.
He's got to get off.
And what am I going to do?
I mean, this is Pixar telling me this.
So I said, all right.
So I walk up on stage right in the middle of a Chuck Berry solo.
I go, Hey, everybody, Chuck Berry.
And let's keep it going for Chuck Berry.
And he's looking at me like, What are you doing?
I'm playing my song.
And he just quietly, just slowly stopped playing and walked off stage with his head down like he's all dejected.
Make counseling great again.
That's what I always say.
Yeah, because man, it's really gone downhill lately.
Yeah, all those atheist counselors, Satanist counselors, demonic counselors.
Yeah.
You don't want that.
So you're looking for a counselor that has read their Bible.
Yeah.
That knows what a Bible is.
Yeah, at least knows.
At least has it on their shelf.
Yeah.
It's like, oh, yeah, Jesus.
I've heard of that guy.
Right.
Things are hard right now.
Quarantine.
You may be locked down.
You might be depressed.
Depression's way up.
I also have people without families.
I don't think about that.
It's like, you're just like, I got nobody.
Yeah.
Imagine people locked in their houses for months with nobody.
Yeah.
What you might need is some faithful counseling.
Faithful counseling is online professional Christian counseling to deal with depression, stress, anxiety, crises of faith.
Correct.
You can text, you can chat, you can phone, you can video anything because you know, a lot of us, we have our certain method of communication we prefer.
I hate when people want to talk on the phone to me.
I would text I would text a counselor.
Yeah, I like texting.
I don't know if I want to go show up in person.
But it's affordable.
Faithfulcounseling.com slash Babylon B. Listeners get 10% off your first month.
Yeah.
Do you think counselors use emojis?
Probably lots of smileys.
Yeah.
Like they probably wouldn't send a lot of like crying.
Yeah.
Well, maybe they're trying to sympathize.
Like you're like, oh, I'm so sad today.
And they would send the sad.
I would feel good about that.
I feel weird about a counselor using emojis, but it's everyone.
They probably accommodate what we're not guaranteeing that they use emojis because we don't think we don't know.
But that's not, yeah, that's not a guarantee that they make.
Yeah.
But you can get started today.
Faithful counseling.com/slash Babylon B. Do it now.
Now, but other than that, surreal, right?
That's crazy.
He's dead now, so what am I going to do?
Well, I don't know what, yeah.
That's compassionate.
No, he was a great guy.
He died of dejection from that experience.
I know.
I felt bad.
You know, his last words were, Larry.
Then they went in his house.
There was a picture of Mader with a line drawn through it.
So you grew up on a pig farm.
Your dad's a preacher.
Yeah, my dad did a lot of things.
He was a guidance counselor at a high school, and then he was a preacher.
He had two churches on Sunday.
We had cattle, hogs.
I did the hog business all by myself.
I did all that myself.
I lived next to a sale barn.
And that was pretty much my life.
I spent most of my time over there unloading cattle trucks and hog trucks.
And I wanted to be an auctioneer when I was a kid.
I can hear it.
I know.
We all have dreams.
We all have dreams.
I wanted to build a catalog and drive a pot belly hog trailer.
That's what I want to do.
I want to be a cattle, a hog, haul hogs.
And fortunately, that didn't happen.
But I still do.
It's really funny.
I got a buddy of mine that is an auctioneer.
He grew up the same way I did next to a cattle barn.
But he is an auctioneer.
I'm an amateur auctioneer.
But I always find it funny, these auctioneers and my buddy Marty, they're always in that auctioneer mode.
You know, and it's always with numbers.
And my buddy Marty does this.
And as I've noticed, others do.
It doesn't matter, but when it's numbers they're dealing with, they turn into an auctioneer.
For example, if I had a new pair of boots on, Marty would go, Man, them good-looking boots.
What'd you pay for them boots?
I said, $740, $740, $740, zero.
It doesn't matter what it is.
Hey, would you pay?
How much that Jeep cost you?
$27,000.
$27,270.
I mean, they're always in that mode.
But I wanted to be an auctioneer, but I ended up being a comic.
But yeah, my dad was a preacher and the whole deal.
And I always thought, you know, Ben Shapiro, he'd make a good auctioneer.
How fast he speaks, you know?
Okay, folks.
He would make a good auctioneer.
I think I said Ben to Twitter one time and said that it was wrong because my brother converted to Judaism just to cover up his bald spot.
I don't know if he got back to me or not.
Well, you named your kid Reggie.
You named your kid Reagan.
You know, you're from the South.
We can just kind of assume that you're more conservative.
You know, you probably didn't vote for Obama in 2004 when you went on The View and all that.
So, has anyone ever tried to come and cancel you?
Yeah.
Have they come for you?
Dig through your old tweets or anything?
They can't.
Look, they can't cancel me.
I'll cancel them.
I mean, you know, first of all, my act isn't political at all.
It's all goofy one-liners.
I made the mistake of when I was doing social commentary when I first started doing the character.
Of course, it was all political, but it was the character.
It's what I was doing.
When I took it to the stage, it was just my act absorbed into the character.
And so I, of course, added some political stuff because I didn't really have any jokes written for the character.
They were just all my jokes.
If I had it to do all over again, I would have stayed apolitical and just because I'm a comedian.
I want people to laugh.
But, you know, people are so bent out of shape nowadays.
But my crowds, you know, I just appeal to regular people.
People just want to laugh and enjoy life.
And they, you know, they don't, they get that it's comedy and move on.
I've always been like that.
I don't change anything.
If I've changed anything, it's probably because I've gotten a little more.
I've gone from PG-16 to PG, I've gone from PG-16 to PG-12 to PG-10, you know, which I like to say pretty good for 10 minutes.
And so I think my acts kind of gotten like that with kids because there's some jokes I realized.
I got kids.
It's like, I don't want to see my kids to see me doing a joke like that.
So I kind of edited that kind of stuff.
But as far as doing jokes that I find that people might find politically incredible, I don't care what people think about my political credit.
I'm telling jokes and I want people to enjoy their life.
Most people can go to a comedy club and laugh and then get on with their life and not worry about anything.
You know, that's just like why televisions have knobs and televisions have different channels.
I don't think they have knobs anymore.
That's why we have different flavors of different flavors of Coke and different flavors of, you know, so I don't worry really about that.
I mean, what are they going to do?
They're not going to cancel my fans.
My fans are going to come see me anyway.
They don't care.
So, you know, I'll say what I say.
And if they say you're going to cancel me, well, I'm canceling you.
I'm getting ahead of the game.
What do you think?
I mean, in comedy, there is that distinction.
Your style, the blue comedy style, it's very self-deprecating in a way that's very jolly.
I mean, people that love to not take themselves seriously.
And then on the other side of comedy, you have a version that's very angry.
It's all jokes about how angry they are at these other people that are so horrible.
And it's kind of this rage comedy.
I don't know what's your perspective on that.
Is it that divided?
Well, it's kind of like that's the thing now.
The anti-comic is supposed to be funny.
It's like all these late-night guys.
You know, they're not getting laughs.
They're getting applause.
Yeah.
I mean, I'd rather get laughs than applause.
They're not laughing because it's funny.
They're so full of hate.
They're applauding because they agree with.
But I mean, there's no jokes there at all.
I mean, when you're on stage and you're trying to do political jokes and the political jokes aren't getting laughs, they're just getting applause breaks.
You're more of a lecturer, a politician lecturer than you are a comedian.
You're just, I mean, there's no comedy there.
I think as far as it seems like it's going more angry, uh, it's like Steve Martin used to say back when he was coming up, why did he do the goopy stuff?
He says, Because everybody was doing all this anti-war material and all this mean stuff, and they were angry.
He goes, I figured I'd go the other direction because nobody's doing goopy stuff, and people like to laugh at goopy, childish stuff, which is true.
People like to laugh at funny stuff.
I uh, so that's that's the way I went.
I just did my own style.
You know, I mean, I came up with this character.
I never meant to do it on stage, but I've always been a fan of all the one-liner comics and the setup, set up punch, and that's the kind of comedy that I like to do.
Uh, I don't think that all these angry, uh, all these angry comics, they're just I mean, they can do it if they want to.
Comedy's hard no matter what you do.
I support anybody doing comedy, but um, uh, they're just if you're just up there, be a politician, then run for something, run for office.
I mean, if you're just up just a donkey, and you don't get laughs, but applies breaks, you're not a comedian.
I'm sorry, yeah.
And then, what about the actual audience?
Because I think that's one interesting thing to me about sort of the middle, it's not just middle America, we frame it like that, but people like this are everywhere.
We like laughing at ourselves in our own well, well, absolutely.
I mean, you know, I was born in, you know, I grew up in the South pretty much.
I moved away from Nebraska when I was 15, but I was born, I grew up in a town of 1200 in Southeast Nebraska.
And then I moved to Florida, of course, when I was a kid, lived there the rest of most of my life.
I'm back in Nebraska now.
But, you know, country, I'm a country kid.
We can laugh at ourselves.
We do things.
I mean, people can stereotype me all I want to because it's funny.
We do.
Country folks, there's different degrees.
There's honey booby rednecks, there's Swaxworthy rednecks, there's Larry the Cable Guy rednecks.
You know, the difference between redneck and country, you know, is like, you know, 70 bucks.
You know what I mean?
So there's degrees of redneckism, whatever you want to call it.
But we can make fun of ourselves.
And, you know, like the we think there's, it's funny.
We can take a joke.
It's not a big deal.
We get that it's a joke and we move on with our lives and we enjoy our lives, where other people can't poke fun at themselves.
They can't do it.
It's like the person that makes fun of everybody else, but the minute you make fun of them, well, that's off limits, you know.
You know, and I will say, I performed, I performed in front of all kinds of audiences.
And I will say it, and a lot of comics will agree with me.
The worst audiences on the planet are your upper white liberal lefties because they can't laugh at anything.
My favorite audiences are rednecks and black audiences.
You know, they laugh, they love to laugh.
Country folks love to laugh at themselves.
They love to laugh at humor.
They love jokes.
Same with black audiences.
They love to laugh at jokes.
They love it.
You know, when I was on Steve Harvey's a buddy of mine, and I remember when I went on Steve Harvey's radio show, used to do a live radio show in LA, you know, and I went on that show.
And man, they were dying laughing.
And Steve Harvey told me that before I even came out there.
He said, oh, Larry, you got to come on my show, my crowd.
They will love you, man.
They will love you, which is true.
And I remember when I was doing my show for History Channel, you know, I got stereotyped by all these lefties as this comic that does this and he hates this.
He's a big racist and blah, blah, blah.
Well, the guy that was my director, he needed work.
So he wasn't a fan of mine, but he took the job.
He was my director on a history channel.
And after the first three weeks, he came up to me and said, man, you are absolutely nothing like I read about on the internet, people that trash you.
And you're absolutely nothing.
We go, he goes, we go to all these towns of diverse people and everybody likes you.
Everybody says nice.
Everybody, they love your comedy.
They love to laugh.
And I said, I know.
It's, you know, it's always those stinking, those Northeast liberals and those West Coast, they just can't handle anybody that laughs at something that they don't agree that you should laugh at.
And, you know, when I went into Harlem and I played basketball at Rutger Park, man, it was amazing.
It was so awesome.
I was even shocked at all the people that came up to me, said they loved my show and they loved, you know, and quoting my bits and saying get her done.
And I mean, it was awesome.
I love people.
People love to laugh.
I think if you do your jokes in a way, if you're going to be politically incorrect, if you're just not hateful about it and just a jerk about it, you can, people like, they just like to laugh.
And if you don't, if you don't present the material as you're better than everybody else and these people are below you and you're making fun of them, then it's different.
But if you do it in a certain way where you make fun of yourself, you know you're not better than anybody else and you do things that are dumb and stupid.
You know, I mean, everybody can relate to that.
Everybody is stereotyped.
Everybody does something stereotypically that you can do jokes about.
I mean, if you can't, if you can't, if you get rid of all that kind of stuff, there's nothing to do comedy over.
Nothing.
You're reminding me of like video chatting with my grandpa because your camera's like pointing at your head, your forehead.
I totally forgot that I'm on video.
I know you're laughing at ourselves.
I'm like a toothless curly.
I know you're giving this impassioned speech on the video.
It's just the very top of your head.
You just slowly start doing this.
I got into the conversation around.
I totally forgot.
That's fantastic.
That's why I should have done it on the iPad instead of my phone.
But my whole point is that I love all audiences.
I like to make people laugh.
And it's just, we've come to a point in our country where some people just, they have to pick apart everything you do.
And, you know, so when you say, am I worried about the cancel crowd?
No, I'm not worried about them at all because my fans like to laugh and they're going to come see me anyway.
And so, I mean, and if they, if I, if they say, well, you'll never work here.
Well, fine, then I won't work there again.
I'll go play golf.
What do you want from me?
You kind of got that screw you money now.
That's what I was wondering, like with Disney, you know.
I mean, you worked for Pixar, and that's you say you do political jokes, so you kind of escape some of it.
But that's what they do, is they don't care if you're doing political jokes or not, they just go dig up and find some opinion and they try to cancel.
I mean, I know you're probably past that because you've done the three cars movies, and I mean, what can they do now?
You are Mater, so it's not like they can get someone else to do it.
Well, and not only that, I'm not a jerk.
I'm not like, you know, sure, I've said a few things I probably shouldn't have said, but I don't, you know, you get older, you have kids.
I mean, look, a comedian's act generally is going to be different if they're single and they're dating and they're out there.
Their act is way different than that it is when they're married with kids.
It just gets that way.
It gets different.
Life changes.
You change.
I mean, you look, I say that to my kids all the time.
You know, you look back on stuff you did when you were 20 in your late 30s.
You're like, boy, I was an idiot.
You know, now it continues to do that.
I'm 57 years old.
I look back at stuff when I was 45 now and go, what a brigand moral.
You know, I'm curious because you have the ability to laugh at yourself, to not take yourself too seriously.
You have a quality of like, I mean, just like a guy I would talk to at Home Depot or, you know, the hardware store.
So I'm just a regular guy.
Was it ever a challenge through?
Because you had some insane success through Disney Everything and your comedy tours and stuff.
I mean, it's just, you know, for doing full stadiums of people.
Was it ever hard to hold on to that?
Was it ever a challenge?
Does it always come natural to you?
Did you ever take yourself too seriously through some of it and think, hey, I'm a real, I'm a superstar now.
So don't make fun of me.
You know what's funny?
Not at all.
And I never even realized how big things had gotten.
I mean, now that I'm kind of semi-you know, I only do about 20 dates a year.
And I mean, even with, I mean, now I'm not doing anything because of the stupid virus thing.
But before this happened, I was only doing 20 to 25 dates a year because I told my wife I'd been on the road 285 days a year.
My kids grew up on a tour bus.
I mean, we were never home.
And so I promised my wife when I turned about 55 years old, I was going to chill out and I was going to enjoy the rest of my kids because they'll be getting older and I'm going to miss out on stuff.
So once I said that, I only did about 20 dates a year.
So, but when I started chilling out and then seeing the other comics come up and watching friends of mine that are now out on tour buses, and it made me reflect and look back and go, Man, I can't believe some of the things that we did.
And at the time that we did it, I didn't even realize it.
I didn't realize it was, you know, you'd get off stage and it was like a comedy club.
You're still going, man, I did that joke.
Was that pretty good?
Was that show?
I don't know if that was.
Then you go on the bus and you hang out with your kids and you want.
I never realized how big everything was until the last couple of years.
You know, now I look back on it.
I'm like, holy mackerel, I was the guy for a while.
You know, so then it checked in, but I have never lost that.
I've always loved people.
I've always been very approachable.
I'm, you know, I never got this big.
Hey, I'm a big Hollywood celebrity.
Even when I was doing the movies, I never, I remember one time we did a movie.
I like to chew tobacco.
I don't know if you know or not, but I do love this stuff.
I remember I started chewing tobacco so I'd lose some weight.
And you can see that's working out real.
I remember one time I'm on a movie set, and we literally, when this is when I was filming Delta Farce, which should have won an Oscar.
I don't know why I didn't.
And, you know, my movies, my movies, you know how a lot of movies give you an alternate ending so you have something different on the DVD?
Yeah.
We did something different.
We would actually put in an alternate movie.
That's how good it was.
Yeah.
Yeah, in case you didn't like that one.
But when we were filming that, we had the crew that just got done filming the Batman movie in Chicago.
But they took, they worked on my movie just for that four weeks while they were waiting on another movie.
And I remember the first day I was there, the cameraman, the main camera guy goes, hey, Larry, you mind if I is okay if I have a dip while I'm filming?
I said, well, I don't care.
Why have a dip?
Yeah, I don't care.
A lot of the celebrities, they don't like any tobacco products.
They don't like they make sure no bad stuff.
I said, dude, you dip them.
You know, we're just hanging out, having a good time.
He said, awesome.
So within a week, every guy on there had a dip cup.
Passing it around.
Every single guy, every single guy on that crew was either smoking a cigar or had a dip in.
I felt very proud that day.
I grew up in such a small kind of hillbilly town in Oregon.
So that's hillbilly, you know, that on my school bus, a can would be passed around to spit into because so many kids chewed in high school.
That's true.
That's true.
It's disgusting, but we love it.
I have no idea why.
I just get it passed through to keep it going.
Something about the wad and the spit.
I don't know.
You got to do something.
You can't just stand there.
You got to have something in your mouth.
Well, I love that you were talking to you with your tooth missing and you played the tooth fairy.
You'd think you'd have some special access to tooth stuff through that.
That's right.
And rumor has it that one time, one of Gary Busey's teeth brought $32.
That's tooth fairy lore right there.
Did you ever imagine you'd play the tooth fairy one day?
Was that an excuse?
It was pretty fun.
And they asked me if I wanted to do it.
And I'm like going, when I look at these, when you know, I did my first three movies.
They were in the theater.
Then we did the cars.
Then I remember, I think it was Warner Brother Home Movies said, do you want to do some direct-to-DVD sequels?
I said, yeah, that'd be fun.
Let's do some.
And this is the time where my kids were, you know, one and two years old, three years old, four years old.
And I only have two kids, but that's two years.
And so I said, yeah, let's do it.
So one was Tooth Fairy and one was Jingle All the Way.
And we did the sequels.
But I find it funny.
I did the sequels.
And the two guys that started both sequels I did were The Rock and Schwartzmann.
That's pretty awesome.
Oh, my gosh.
Fantastic.
Do we want to move to the subscriber portion?
Are we already in there?
What are we doing?
Yeah, let's move to the subscriber portion.
Coming up next for Babylon B subscribers.
So we were talking about how you have a friendship with Lewis Black.
No, here's the deal with Lewis coming up through the comedy ranks.
You got any cool Jeff Foxworthy stories?
Tiff are the same guy.
How's the best answer to that question yet?
Did a show with them one time and I was on the plane Molly Hedge.
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