Ginormous Food, Gigantic Cancellation: The Josh Denny Interview
In this episode of The Babylon Bee Podcast, Kyle and Ethan talk to stand up comedian, Josh Denny. Josh was the host of Ginormous Food on Food Network until he was cancelled back in 2018 for a tweet. You can support his podcast and comedy on Locals.com by searching Josh Denny. Kyle and Ethan talk to him about how he became a food show host, why McDonalds is worth fighting for, and the future of stand up comedy. Topics Discussed Making a food network show Fault of most competition shows Two reasons that will make Josh walk out on a restaurant filming Getting emails of doppelgangers Creating the wardrobe for your food show Project Greenlight McDonald's Jim Gaffigan's stances Comedians talking against Trump George Bush Multi racial whiteness The absurdity of politics Ridicule over arguing Winning on absurdity instead of intellectualism Being cancelled in 2018 Silver lining of covid Choosing where to spend your money The reality of being a comedian Subscriber Portion Defending the tweet that cancelled Masked Singer Judging people by the color of your skin Being openly Pro-life Being educated on your rights Problem of censoring bad ideas Josh's way of making comedy Racial separation Creating bits beyond the first idea Jeselnik Offensive Time machine Putting guard rails on comedy Being relatable vs boring The Pixar movie Up Giving people a new perspective Bombing story Why you need to bomb Auditions Self tapes
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 B interview show.
Babylon B interview show is beginning right now.
Right here.
Right.
Now.
Yeah.
Now.
And today we're talking to Josh Denny.
We were trying to get a little diversity in the show, so we asked a white guy to come on in.
Yeah.
Well, he's a ginger, though.
He's a ginger.
And he's also... Ginger.
He's more in my weight range, which I always feel like the fattest guy in the room.
I still was, but like, at least.
Is that why you invited him?
Yeah.
That's every fat guy walks through and goes, am I the fattest guy in this room?
So if you find someone that's a little more, you feel a little bit better.
Yeah.
Got it.
Right.
Got it.
Anyway, so yeah, so Josh worked in the food network.
He got paid to eat huge food.
And he had a show called Ginormous Food.
And he ate ginormous food.
And it was cool.
And so we talked a lot about that.
I'm kind of fascinated by getting paid to eat huge food.
I always want to know how you get paid to do that.
Sounds like you had a lot of personal reasons for bringing Josh in here.
All right.
Well, you can check out Josh's comedy, JoshDennyComedy.com.
And you can support him, joshdenny.locals.com.
Right.
Let's bring him in.
Let's do it.
He'll come into this chair.
Right there.
Right here.
Food.
Liberty.
Comedy.
All areas of expertise for our guest today.
Yeah.
That was pretty good, right?
Yeah, it's a great.
Yeah, sounds very, I don't know if I'm an expert on that.
Controversy.
Yeah.
I think you can tell by looking at me, I'm definitely pretty proficient in the food world.
Somebody asked me the other day, they're like, what were your qualifications that got you a food show?
I was like, well, this, this is my body, literal body of work.
That is my instant question I want to ask.
Like, how do you get the show where you're the guy that eats the biggest food there is?
The answer is I got very lucky.
I mean, I, I, but would they have hired a skinny guy?
I don't know.
Probably not.
Now that I think about it.
Well, you know what's interesting is I think I fit two criteria at the time that they were casting my show.
Because if you look at the guy who was hired to do a show right after me, it was Casey Webb, who is the host of the rebooted Man versus Food.
He's a fat red-headed guy, too.
So either they literally got him as like a backup Josh Denny, or I think the woman in development who developed both shows and rebooted that one has a thing for chunky gingers.
Or she just associates.
Yeah.
But I mean, she was the one who did like Birth the Conqueror.
And so she kind of gave Burt Kreiser his first show.
So yeah, I don't know.
I think that in general, they just like fat, silly guys.
But do they like scout you out?
Like they show up at your, you're doing stand-up one night and they come like, hey, we think we like you a lot.
No, it was totally random the way it happened.
So I had started like a food comedy podcast probably like a year before I ever heard from anybody.
And I just got this random email from a woman who had this little production company out of Nashville or Knoxville.
And I was like, this is it.
I was like, somebody trolling me.
This isn't real.
And she's like, yeah, we are interested in looking at you for a possible show.
And I was like, okay, You know, real funny.
And then she was like, you know, self-tape, you know, self-tape doing.
And the whole time I'm thinking this is fake.
This, their website was like a splash page.
And I was just like, okay, this is somebody with an elaborate trick.
And then turned out it was real.
And then we ended up shooting a sizzle and then got a pilot, shot a pilot.
It was supposed to be a travel channel show.
And then Kathleen Finch, the president of Scripps at the time, was like, no, I think this is a food network show.
And then we got pushed over to Food Network.
So it was like this really kind of magical 12-month period of going from being a completely unknown dude to having one of the top new shows on their network.
So it was just a very, very lucky, you know, stream of events.
And, you know, I'm definitely grateful for it.
It was a fun time and a total blast.
Like making a show like that is harder work than you think, but it is as fun as you think it is.
Did you originally were they thinking you got to eat the whole thing?
Yeah, first I thought we were, well, we didn't know what the show was going to be.
Like part of the process, unless you're like an established person pitching a clearly defined idea, part of the process is like sort of them sitting back and assessing you like livestock.
Like, what do we want to do with him?
Yeah.
And they were like, let's see how much we can shove in his face.
And then they're like, well, let's just, we have that show already.
That's another guy.
But what if we shove some of it in his face and then we shove it in strangers' faces and he makes commentary?
And they're like, that's a new thing.
Let's do that.
So that's what the show became.
And part of the reason it became that was because that was being a comedian, that was more entertaining.
It was like doing crowd work.
So they liked the footage of me riffing with people and kind of messing with people while they're making a fool of themselves trying to eat, you know, a 10-pound burger.
And then that sort of became the show.
So the show wasn't even really the show until it was done, if that makes sense.
Like you kind of are developing it as you go.
And they cut the company I worked for, Lucid, they cut like four different shows basically.
And then Ginormous Food was the one that ended up being sold.
So it's kind of weird how that process works.
But you have a lot of these sort of like boutique production companies that all year round, they're just conceptualizing shows, finding people to host them and seeing what sticks.
So it's kind of like a dartboard approach.
Do you hold any Guinness records for food consumed?
No, no, no, I don't.
I generally try to do all of my record setting consumption in private.
Like any good, shameful American.
It's funny because when the show first started, I was like, the only scandal I'm looking forward to having is like when TMZ catches me in a dark parking lot at three in the morning, just power shredding burritos, you know, and shame.
Just get out of here.
Don't look at me.
I thought that was going to be my scandal video.
It's like, you know, Kevin Hart's cheating on his wife in that car on the other side of the parking lot.
Go film him.
I thought it'd be a scandal for you to be like, if you're like caught eating a little tiny acai bowl.
Well, you know what's funny is that was like that.
So this is what was hilarious is when we did the show in the beginning, this is what a lot of people don't realize.
When you sign a futures contract, they do this massive deep dive in your background.
And so before we ever launched the show, I had a conference call with like the president of the network, their HR, their PR, all of their people.
And they literally like went through my tweets and my comedy and everything else.
And they're like, how are we going to address any of this if it comes up?
And I go, the blanket answer is I'm a stand-up comedian.
It should, none of it should be taken seriously, et cetera.
And they go, okay, well, we just don't want any outrage about this when the show launches.
And the show launches, and there are two points of outrage.
One was that we were wasting food and there were literally thousands of comments.
There are starving children in Africa and you're just wasting all this food.
And in reality, we probably wasted less food than most food shows because we would give it away to the entire restaurant.
And so almost everything we cooked got eaten or taken home with people.
Whereas like in a competition show, everything you see that gets cooked gets thrown away.
All of it.
And particularly like in New York, they're not even allowed to give it to homeless people because of the stuff that they do to make it look.
good.
It's considered then inedible.
It's all glued together or whatever.
It's a liability.
It's this weird thing for people.
He's faking it.
Look, they cut away every time he bites into it.
It's like, yeah, because I have a beard.
And like, if you ever seen a guy with a beard like, you know what it's like.
You have a beard.
You take a bite of a giant burger.
You come up, there's sauce all over your face.
Nobody wants.
What am I going to do?
Let's like completeless sauce beard and keep talking camera.
Like, yeah, so next thing you know, we're going to, it's like, yeah, it's, it's called editing, morons.
I like the idea that, you know, feeding, you know, the people that were upset about, you know, you should feed this to the hungry.
I like the idea of like, you're like, okay, we just ate this massive, you know, 30-mile sub-sandwich.
Now, let's see what the people in the say, you know, Africa think of this.
And all of a sudden you see it being airdropped into a village.
Yeah.
They don't even see it coming.
They're like, what the heck?
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
And then civil war breaks out and who gets the sandwich.
And you parachute in and you talk to them?
Yeah, I would love to do that.
I would love to go to the third world.
Yeah, like airdrop a massive pizza.
Yeah, like the size of the village.
Yeah, but that's the funny thing is you'd go, there's enough to feed everyone.
And then one tribe would be like, no, we kill them.
We take it home.
Yeah, you'd start wars.
It's like flower bed.
Africa, we have enough for everybody.
Never enough.
Like at the last slice.
Yeah.
Yeah, I like when people say there's this image, like there's all these kids around your table and there's a trash can and you're eating.
You're like looking at them.
You're like, no, no, no.
Trash can.
Oh, yeah.
Well, it's so funny, too.
And there were times where like we, there was one where we were filming like a remote and we were doing it outdoors and we had this giant burger.
And there was a homeless guy who came up and he was like, y'all go throw that away?
We're like, no, you can have it.
He's like, I don't eat meat.
I know that sounds like a cliche made up story.
He's like, I don't eat meat.
She's like, what?
He's like, but I might be able to sell it to another homeless guy that does.
And I was like, dude, we're going to leave this on the edge of the trash can.
Do with it whatever you want to do.
And I was like, by the way, it has bug repellent on it because we couldn't have flies in the shot.
And he's like, oh, it's fine.
We eat bug repellent all the time.
It's like South Carolina.
He's like, yeah, if you can't eat food with bug repellent on it, you died years ago out there in the streets.
It's like this grizzled homeless ex-vet who's just like, yeah, I eat bug repellent on everything.
It's like, there you go.
You just spray bug repellent on the food?
Yeah, yeah.
To keep to keep bugs away from it because nobody wants to see you holding like a giant burger in front of a Civil War monument.
Probably in bad taste for the show at the end.
Anyway, it's already.
We didn't really, it's so funny.
There's bugs in the beer.
They're expensive.
They're like, we're worried about some of your jokes that you do as a stand-up comedian.
Also, stand in front of Ulysses S. Grant and hold up this burger that could feed the entire city.
Did you ever eat something that you were like, oh, this is gross.
I don't like it, but you had to pretend you liked this.
Yeah, there was one place in Mobile, Alabama.
It was like this beer garden.
And so this is like, there was a whole scandal around this episode that I didn't even realize.
And I was pretty pissed off about it.
Turns out, and this is something you never think of, sometimes food.
So what happened at this restaurant was the local food supplier wanted to be on TV and he paid the restaurant that we had auditioned to be on the show to let him be the chef on the show.
This guy wasn't even a trained chef.
So like we get in there and like, this guy doesn't know what he's doing.
He doesn't know how to fry things.
He doesn't know how to cook things.
I mean, like, when I'm telling somebody how to fry something and I'm supposed to be the comedy relief of the show, there's a problem.
And so, like, he hands me like this, it was like a bacon-wrapped corn dog, and I bite into it, and it's raw, raw bacon, raw hot dog, and I spit it out on camera.
I'm like, freaking out.
I'm like, dude, I just ate a mouthful of salmonella.
And my culinary producer is like, I don't know what he's doing.
Like, I don't get this thing.
They didn't find out until later.
So, like, sometimes in the restaurant, depending on the way, like what we're shooting, my crew would either go in before me and film all of like what we call the beauties.
So you get all the close-up shots of food, all of the B-roll in the kitchen, all the B-roll in the lobby, or the, or the, you know, the restaurant itself.
And then I would come in and do the, you know, the crowd stuff and everything afterwards, or we would do that first and they would stay later.
For the place in Mobile, and their big thing was like a donut burger.
It was like the most unimaginative thing.
It was conceptualized by a guy who's a food supplier and not a chef.
And so they just wanted the press.
And this guy just wanted to be on television and like literally paid the restaurateur to pretend he was their chef for the day, which pissed off the actual chef who was literally in the restaurant sabotaging everything that we were doing throughout the day because he was pissed off.
So like, I was like, literally waiting for this guy to like poison people's beers so that everyone in the wide shots start throwing up.
I mean, the dude was livid.
And so like, I feel sick.
I get done and I go back to the hotel.
And then later that night, the crews down in the hotel in Mobile had like this little cafe where you could get like packaged salads and stuff or whatever late at night.
So I went down there and I was like, I'm not hungry.
I'll just eat a salad because I feel like crap after eating all this raw food in the morning.
And they tell me everything they found out about this after we left that they basically sold, they like auctioned off the ability to be on the show as the chef.
And I was like, how hard up as a restaurant do you have to be?
Like, you're going to get enough money from the exposure of being on this television show, but you got to bleed it dry that much more to where they actually like auctioned off the ability to be on the show with me in secret and then had me working with a guy that wasn't even a chef.
And I was like, I was like, how does that get by our people?
I literally was like on the phone with our producers the next morning, go, this can't ever happen.
If I ever get to, and I was like, I'm not a diva, but if I ever get to a place and I find this out again, I'm not shooting.
We're not going to give a restaurant this exposure when they're basically lying to people.
And I said, there are two ways I will walk out of a restaurant is one, if I think they're taking over their workers, like and they're not, you know, if I find out it's a place like Batali's restaurants where they're skimming tips or taking money from their workers, I won't, I won't film there.
Or if they're not up to snuff health-wise and we're going to send people into a restaurant where they're going to get sick, I'm not going to film there.
And we had one of those in season one.
We went to this Mexican restaurant in Virginia and it was like, dude, there were like rats in the kitchen.
And I was like, yo, I'm not, I was like, I know I'm new here and the show hasn't aired yet and we don't know what it is.
But like, if I ever walk into a restaurant that has rodents in the kitchen, we're not filming.
So send the scout team there ahead of time.
And if there's rats in the kitchen, we're not going to film there.
Like, just so you know.
I almost like, almost walked out.
I was like, dude, I don't want to send people to a restaurant that's going to get them sick.
You know what I mean?
I was just like, and they were, they made so many excuses.
They're like, we're sorry.
The owner's been out sick for like two weeks.
And I go two weeks and it turns into a hacksaw.
A rat hole.
Like, you know, I worked in corporate retail for a long time.
And one of my great bosses, a dude named Rob, who's still one of my very good friends and has always been like a second dad to me.
He used to tell me when I was like a 19-year-old manager, store manager at Hollywood Video.
He would come into my store and I would go, yeah, we just cleaned that two weeks ago.
And he would go, yeah, there's new dirt and there's old dirt and that's old dirt.
Flower bed.
And so I remember you're like, yeah, the rats weren't here two weeks ago.
Flower bed.
Two keys to this place.
Okay.
It's not two weeks old.
It's been here for a while.
That rat's building an addition on in the back.
I see what's happening here.
That surprises me.
I would have thought Virginia would have great Mexican food.
Yeah.
I mean, that should have been the telltale sign right away.
But I will tell you, like, there's weird things.
Like we went to this other restaurant in Mobile that was called, God, what was the woman's name?
But it was this amazing, if you go back, if you can find the episode of Ginormous Food, she was like a Vietnamese or Korean immigrant who was adopted by, you know, Southern Baptists.
And so you meet this woman who's like 100% Asian and she's like, hi, sweetheart, how you doing?
And like that's, and you just, that's, first of all, that's jarring.
Yeah.
Okay.
But she had this, she, her entire restaurant was like Asian soul food fusion and it was amazing.
And so you would never think like, you know, Mobile known for its Asian food.
But I mean, there are those places where it's amazing.
But no, you're right.
The Virginia Mexican food run by white people was as bad as you can imagine.
And that's where racism can save your life.
I think if you walk into a Mexican restaurant, you see all white people, walk out, save yourself the trouble.
It's not safe in there.
In the sushi restaurant, too.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Well, that was an episode of the league, wasn't it?
Where they walk in and the guy doing sushi was a white guy.
And he's like, I can't eat this.
I won't eat here.
Yeah.
So it's, yeah, there's some times where I think you can safely go, like, this is not who I want making this cuisine.
I know as a, as a, I've been a fat guy my whole life.
I don't like being looked at while I eat.
No?
It's, you know, it's a place of shame for me.
So, you know, I don't want, I don't like eyes on me.
Yeah.
So, yeah, did you, was that weird for you at first to have a camera in your face as you're eating like the most messy, biggest thing?
I guess at the same time, you're being, you know.
Yeah, there's, you kind of get over it really quickly.
Like, you just, it's, it's, in a weird way, it's like it stops being eating when you're doing it on TV.
Like, it's just, it's like acting.
It's like the idea of me doing stunts.
It's like, I wouldn't do this in real life anyway.
So run, you want me to run?
Okay.
Well, if we're filming something, that's fine, but I'm not going to do it on my own time.
You know, so it's like, it is, it's a weird thing of where there is this separation and there's so many people around that it stops.
Like I agree with you.
Like if I were just sitting somewhere eating by myself and somebody were like staring at me from the other side, yeah, I would get up and say something.
But when there's like two cameras and a sound guy holding a boom like right over your mouth and, you know, a director off screen going like, yeah, smile.
You know, it's like there's so many things going on in your brain that looking fat is like the least of your concerns, right?
Yeah, they're like, can you close your eyes tightly as you bite this time?
Like more passionately?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, that's a, that's real direction where they're just like, yeah, like, you got to like get in there.
You know, just get in there, you know?
I mean, I had, we had two directors for my show.
We had Mags Miller, who was great.
She was like kind of hardcore, like, and really dark and funny.
Like, but our, our main director was this guy, David Konchnik, I think is how you say his name.
He's done a lot of like reality stuff over the years.
And you can find, he does stuff like Nat Geo and everything else, but just like such a fun, playful guy.
And I always loved him.
He would always be kind of afraid to come over to me after, like, I did it because some of these big bites, it's like you get one take.
It's like blowing up a meth lab in an action film.
Like, all right, we got one shot at this.
We're not making 10 of these burgers.
And so, you know, we really had to get good at like getting the bite.
And there'd be times, there'd be times where he'd come over and he's just like holding the monitor in his hand.
And he looks like coming over to tell me my dog just died.
And he's like, We didn't get it.
No, you got to do it again.
And I was like, oh man, really?
So eventually, like, you do that two times.
And then you're like, I'm going to go all in on this.
And it got to a point where it's like, the more ridiculous you look biting into something like that, the better it is and the funnier it is.
So the most ridiculous one we did was like we did a Thanksgiving themed burger in Georgia.
And this thing was like, they made it in a full-size cheesecake tin.
That gives you an idea of like how big this thing was.
And it was probably this tall when I was eating it.
So like, literally, it's like, how do you even, you don't even, but just shove your face in it and look stupid.
And which is pretty much the best advice you could give anybody in a food show.
Shove your face in it and don't be afraid to look stupid.
So did you do all your own eating action shots or was there a stunt mouth?
I didn't have a stunt mouth.
No.
Although there were two things that happened, there were a lot of people like, hey, man, if you need help eating that, you just hit me up.
And I always wanted to be able to try to call one of those guys and go, hey, I need help.
Get in the car and meet us in Tampa.
The other one, too, was I literally would get emails every week about, my grandson looks just like you.
And it would just be a fat guy with glasses.
Doesn't even have to be redheaded.
It was just like every fat person with glasses became my doppelganger while that show was on the air.
I got pictures of like 300-pound black dudes with glasses.
I'm like, my grandson, just like you.
It's like, all right.
I think we're getting a little liberal with what it means to be a fat guy with glasses, but okay.
Yeah, you do tend to just the more fat you get, the more like everybody kind of looks alike.
Maybe like if everybody got really fat, we'd all look at the same person.
Yeah, maybe.
I don't know.
But it is one of those things.
Like babies.
I did start replying to some of those and go, oh, so we're just all the same to you?
You can't tell us apart?
I always wanted to know, and maybe this is why your show didn't last.
They like people.
A number of things.
Well, they like people with a lot of product in their hair and dyed blonde.
Yeah.
Like every single chef, like bleached, like totally bleached.
It's like a lesbian walking your dog in Portland kind of hair to you.
You know what?
It's very true.
It's very true.
You want to know the cringiest part of the show was when they dissected what my look was going to be.
That was when I felt the most gross.
So you say, like, I don't like people watching me eat.
Yeah.
There's nothing worse than like two 40-year-old women putting clothes on you and then talking about how disgusting your body looks in an outfit.
Like literally in a hotel room in West Hollywood.
Yeah, but at least my significant other will lie to me so that I don't kill myself.
She'll at least go, like, yeah, you look great.
What are you doing?
Like, these women are like, no, look how your side is coming out of this t-shirt.
We can't do that.
Is there some kind of jacket we can put on it to make it like, I mean, wardrobing is the worst as a fat dude, it is the most uncomfortable thing.
And then they've, and then, of course, the stylist has a hot 22-year-old assistant who's like, they're like, Vanessa, would you hacksaw?
No, never, never in my life.
Is there an outfit that we could put on him that would make you change your mind?
She's like, I don't know.
Maybe give us a $10,000 budget.
We'll see what we can do.
I mean, and I was like, I'm eating giant food.
Nobody has to want to like why can't I wear a t-shirt and just be a dumb guy?
And they're like, no, we need a cool jacket, some product in your hair.
How long should the beard be?
I mean, these are real discussions they have.
And I was just like, oh, is this what in a way I was like, if this is what women go through, I get it.
Like, this is horrific.
Patrick furiously typing all the spots he's got essentially.
He's got a lot of editing to do.
Yeah, I didn't even ask how, yeah, how lip.
You can say whatever you want.
How much liberty do you want me to express?
Yeah.
It's like the cable version.
You have a different word that goes over you.
Oh, there were so many.
I mean, there are probably award-winning shows on the cutting room floor of ginormous food of like really funny things.
And then what was funny is we had a focus group feedback come back one time and they're like, you know, where the, where they really start to tune out is when you try to be funny.
And I was like, well, it's a real good thing you got a comedian to host this show.
But we would do so many like really funny bits that they would just never put in this show.
Like every show, if you were to line them up, they almost cut exactly the same way.
It's like two Nickelback songs.
Yeah.
And, you know, my wild idea.
Have you heard that?
They had a nickelback.
They have those two hits.
And you play them over each other and the verses and choruses are same beat, same key.
And it sounds like two, this, it's like ACDC to me.
That's always what it is.
Yeah.
There was, there was the wild idea I had after season two when the numbers started to go down was, what if we just let what we film in a day determine how we edit the episodes?
So like you generally one of three things wins the day.
You would show up and either the chef would be the coolest part or the most interesting part of the day.
The patrons would be the most interesting part.
Like you got really funny stuff with people in the crowd or the food itself was the most interesting thing of the day.
And I was like, if you just edit down to what we tell you is the best, like, hey, do more crowd interaction.
We had really funny stuff with the guests.
Show the kitchen.
The chef is really interesting.
Like there would be places where we'd have like these meth addicted black dude chefs who are like throwing knives in the back.
And I was like, put this guy on.
And they're like, he doesn't have teeth and he's on crack.
And I was like, yeah, but it's awesome.
Like people will watch this.
And one of those guys made it into the trailer for the show.
If you find the trailer, you could see this like methed out black guy dancing in the kitchen.
And I was like, that guy should be eight minutes of the show at this trolley car diner in Philadelphia.
But yeah, I was like, just pivot to what's the funniest thing of the show.
Like we had, there was this place in Ackworth, Georgia.
And it's called, oh, God, what's the name of it?
I'm drawing a complete blank on it.
It's a seafood restaurant.
Oh, God, the chef's going to be so mad at me for forgetting it.
But it's like, it's all Southern Creole food.
And, oh, Henry's, Henry's Louisiana girl.
Thank God.
I was going to hate myself if I forgot that.
And this guy, Henry's, this great, like big character, long hair, hippie guy.
And he was like, he grew up in like the total like antebellum South.
And he had not a slave, but a nanny, we'll call her, whose name was Mammy Castile.
And so like he had this whole shrine in his restaurant dedicated to like her raising him.
And it, yeah, it looked like still shots from the help.
But it was, there's this an amazing story and he has so much love for this woman.
And he talked about like wanting to like help her cuisine live on and everything else.
And I remember having this conversation with our showrunner at the network and I go, that's such an interesting story about cultures coming together.
And they're like, I will not have this man on our network talking about how slavery taught him how to make Creole food.
And I was like, okay, well, that's not what it is.
But, you know, it was literally like my first taste of networks sort of like, I can see where this could be horribly perceived.
And we're not going to tell this story because of how the biggest jerks in the world will interpret it.
Versus like, I see it as a great story of cult, like learning something culturally that he never would have learned otherwise.
And there was, it was like completely respectful and told with so much love the way he told the story and his upbringing.
But it was sort of like this idea that they didn't want to show, you know, a black woman, you know, as a nanny raising like a rich white kid.
And, you know, it was, it became politicized.
And I was just like, this is such a part of his story.
And anyone who goes to his restaurant finds it interesting and awesome.
That's also why his food is so great is because it's legit.
And, you know, they just completely made it about the optics.
They were like, this could look bad.
So we can't show any of this.
And then that's sort of like how they like cancel like Mrs. Butterworth or something.
It's like it's kind of also racist, right?
Like, oh, we're canceling the black lady because we're being so woke that now.
That's one less one less person.
I don't know, to kind of cancel that out.
Well, did you guys ever watch Project Greenlight on HBO?
So Project Greenlight was a show many years ago where it was like people would enter contests to try to make their own independent movie with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were the producers for one.
And anyway, there was this season, the last season they did of it where they had this black producer on the show named Effie Brown, and she's like super SJW, super woke producer.
And, you know, there's a scene where they have a black, there's a black extra who's a limo driver.
And she raised hell on set that there was a black person cast as the limo driver.
And so Matt Damon goes, great, fire him, send him home.
You send him home and tell him he doesn't get paid today because he's black and you find that offensive and we'll find a suitable ethnic person.
So you want to replace him with a white guy so that it's not racist?
Okay, great.
Let's do that.
Let's give a black man's job to a white person so we're not racist.
Got it.
The importance of looking not racist is way more important than not being racist.
Right, exactly.
It's like, you know, listen, that's why, as a comedian, I love where we're at as a society now because pretty soon people are going to start walking in and going, listen, turns out if we ask you to work in exchange for money at all, we're kind of white supremacists.
So we have to fire all the people of color and replace you guys with white people or else we're part of the problem.
Now, to clarify, every time you're saying black, you're capitalizing that, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, am I supposed to?
Whatever the right thing.
If you want to look right at the camera and just say Black Lives Matter for us.
Yes, exactly.
I appreciate that.
Yeah, the gun is out of the frame, right?
That I'm being held hostage with.
I joked about that with like Trump's apology videos about the insurrection.
I was a good thing they don't zoom out so you can't see the guns pointed at him.
It's like, it's bad.
It's wrong.
Just like looking around.
Laser dots.
Yeah, exactly.
Line all over.
Yeah.
Go home.
Everything's fine here.
Go laser dot on his face.
Yeah.
Oh, man.
It's wild to me how it's just completely turned around the other way.
And, you know, now it's like with hosted shows, they're like, oh, we have to make sure that we have the first, you know, transgender Muslim woman to host a food show.
It's like, yeah, how's she going to eat through the face covering?
You didn't think that one through?
Well, that's a problem for everybody now.
Yeah.
That's very true.
That's very true.
Did you see the masks with the hole in the mouth?
It's like, how stupid are we?
There was a hole?
Yeah, there was a, there was like a Bill Crow, like the pajama bottom.
So remember the guy that had the Pac-Man one?
You had that like mechanized man that would like open, grab the food, and then he'd open it in the back.
Oh my gosh.
I saw gnaw it out of the back of his mouth.
There was like a video from the, or like an article from the New York Times that showed a couple at a restaurant and their masks had like holes where the mouth is.
And it's like, okay, now we're being, you might as well wear a fake beard.
What are you doing?
She making that a little compartment that's like a food processor in front.
And then you put the bite in, and then the hoses squirt it behind the mask in your mouth.
Yeah.
Well, how about through your nose?
So you don't even have to open your mouth.
That's true.
That's good.
Yeah, it's pretty wild.
I mean, the mental gymnastics it takes to believe that any of that stuff makes a difference is crazy.
Yeah.
You know, and this is what this is like, not to get overly political, but this is the part of like universal health care that nobody ever stops to think about is, did you ever think that if the government starts paying for all your health care, they might just get to say at one point, no more McDonald's?
Do you really want to live in that world?
Because I'll tell you what, if we get universal health care and then they go, by the way, you can't have McDonald's more than once a month.
I'd be like, somebody get my gun.
We're going back to the Capitol.
I wasn't there the first time, but now it's real.
He's crossed the line.
Yeah.
We at Babylon B want to clarify that we do not support inciting any kind of violence.
Thank you.
Now back to the yeah, let them take I have a McDonald's tattoo.
Let them take it away from me.
Let them pry it from my cold dead hands.
You do have a McDonald's tad too?
Yeah, I have a McDonald's.
Like hamburger or no, I have a tramp stamp and I have a straw that comes out of my butt crack and then it says, I'm loving it.
I was going to say, can we see it?
But I think we'd rather have a photo of it if you guys want to post it in.
No, it's probably not going to be one of our overall.
If you guys want to put it up on the wall here or whatever, it'd be great.
It would fit in with all of this aesthetic.
All this stuff.
So how are you going to make jokes with Trump not being in office anymore?
I mean, that's the only thing that's going to be.
Yeah, I never made jokes about Trump.
So you're good.
Yeah, I voted for Trump.
I was a Trump supporter.
So not the first time, not in 2016.
I voted for Gary Johnson because that was obviously a smart choice.
But Aleppo.
It's funny.
Yeah.
What is Aleppo?
I was like, I still think we got this.
I think it's in the bag.
It's like, what's Aleppo?
Yeah.
But in a way, in hindsight, like it's, that's not that bad.
It's not as bad as or whatever he said.
Yeah.
This guy doesn't remember Aleppo.
And then Biden's up there.
You're like, this guy almost forgot his pants today.
He's fine.
No, I mean, so, yeah, I don't know.
I think a lot of comedians are doomed now that Trump was in his face.
But those ones sucked in the first place.
True.
Yeah.
Yeah, I saw you talked about Jim Gaffigan going bonkers on Trump.
I think you said he would never do the same thing about something like abortion.
No, which is interesting to me because he's obviously a pro-life guy.
His whole act is about having five kids.
And he opened for the Pope and is obviously a religious guy.
And I just, it's again, like, you had the opportunity to take a stand about something that personally, you're personally involved with and personally passionate about, but it would make you very unpopular in Hollywood.
So you don't speak out about that, but you're willing to take the, you know, the hard path on Trump.
And it's like, I don't buy it.
You know, I went at Gaffigan in the summer about that because it seemed just opportunistic.
I mean, you have this fact about you that's a very unpopular truth that you're pro-life.
And there aren't any real advocates for or that are against abortion that are in the major entertainment space.
And as somebody who also feels that way, and recently, by the way, like part of the reason that I came around to being a pro-life person is that I listened to somebody who didn't agree with me.
And they made better points and completely changed my perspective on it.
And it made me like a fierce pro-life person of no, like no exceptions.
And so to see somebody like Gaffigan who has the platform to, you know, you want to make good points about something that's difficult, do it about that.
But to jump on the bandwagon of hating on Trump, it's like there's enough of those out there already.
I just kind of respect the guys that have been doing it for like five years or six years.
Yeah.
Okay.
You know, you've hated Trump this whole time.
But when you wait till like 2020, you're like, I'm going to take a stand.
Trump is bad.
Yeah.
I'm actually going to come out against Trump in three years.
I'm actually going to wait until he's longed on me.
You know, guys, in hindsight, pretty bad guy.
You know, it's just like, but the thing that people don't realize is, you know, with all the censorship and everything going on and shutting him down, everyone's like, you know, can't wait until Trump's gone.
I go, you just wait until you see what's next.
You might be looking at President Alex Jones in four more years.
I mean, I mean, I mean, like, you know, because we live in this world now where something that's true is getting painted as being radical.
And in a world where all truth is radical, then why can't radicals be truthful?
And so eventually people will just start, that line will become so blurred that even the craziest conspiratorial right-wing person will be lumped in with the guy who's just telling the truth because they're both treated the same way in the public sphere.
Well, liberals always end up lionizing the Republican president that was, that served, you know, eight years ago.
And now they're like, George W. Bush.
Now there was a guy.
You know, there was a conservative we could really sink our teeth in.
You know, all the great things he did for us and the Middle East.
You know, it's just the revisionist history.
I remember having, you know, being in entertainment since 2006, I remember having super crazy left-wing fans or friends who were like, yeah, we got to get George Bush.
George Bush is going to kill the entire country.
We got to get him.
He is the worst thing since Hitler.
And then Barack Obama gets in and then Trump comes out and he's like, he's the worst thing since Hitler.
And it's like, what about Bush?
Wasn't he Hitler?
No, Bush is Jesus.
Compared to this guy, it's just like, it's amazing the lengths that people will go.
I had this funny idea, but I tweeted this and then I immediately thought this would be like a Babylon B headline where it's like zombie Hitler comes out and condemns Trump and then the left embraces zombie Hitler.
Like, you can't really hold him responsible for the actions of living Hitler.
You know, his frontal cortex isn't operating.
He's purely medulla.
And so, you know, zombie Hitler is actually a great guy.
He's now signed by CAA.
He's got a couple TV talk shows in the works and the podcast.
Yeah.
He gave good speeches.
Yeah.
He was civil.
He was upheld norms.
Yeah.
I can't wait until we start going back and finding all the ways that Hitler was better than Trump because those articles are coming for sure.
All the ways Hitler wasn't as bad as Trump.
I mean, it's the lengths that they'll go to try to paint some sort of picture just completely discredits their arguments.
I mean, the article that came out that everybody's making fun of this week of starting to understand multiracial whiteness.
I mean, come on, man.
Multiracial.
I couldn't even figure out what they were trying to do.
What are they saying?
Yeah.
Well, you guys have to wait for my next book on the white supremacy of being black.
It's a new book that I'm publishing right now.
It's just, we've gotten to a point with like identity politics where it's completely fallen off the cliff.
And now you can't even make, you know, you can't even make good points.
That's why I love what you guys do at the B.
I was telling Ethan before we recorded, I said, the problem I think a lot of people on the right have is that we're over-intellectualizing the conversations about the absurdity.
And sometimes you just have to do what you guys do at the B and just point out how absurd it is.
And, you know, I think the left does a better job of that with conservatives where they make such a mockery of it that, you know, and if your response to being ridiculed.
Don't even debate.
Yeah, don't joke.
Yeah, ridicule them back.
There's way more material.
And I think more people on the right, and this is oftentimes you'll hear people say, like, there are no funny conservative comics.
I think that's the problem.
I think it's because too often we try to over, we try to win on intellectualism instead of winning on absurdity.
And I think the more you win and beat them at absurdity, because they're giving you way more of a stick to beat them with than we give them, then you just show how ridiculous it is.
You find in comedy, do you?
I mean, the liberals are definitely the most outspoken, and they probably are the majority.
Do you think there's more quiet conservatives or libertarians in comedy?
Or do people reach out to you because you're so outspoken?
Yeah.
When I got canceled in 2018, I had, and I say this all the time and people don't want to believe me, but I mean, if I were to pull up my Twitter messages from that time, there were so many white celebrities that messaged me and they were like, we get what you're saying.
You know, they were like, we agree.
And you're right about it.
And it is a big problem in our industry.
But, you know, thanks for taking the bullet.
I'm going to stay over here in my Laurel Canyon bunker.
You know, that's a frustrating thing when millionaires who are beyond reproach tell you, like, we agree with you, but we wouldn't support you.
And then you're like, cool.
I got to figure out how to figure out how to pay rent this year while I'm right.
You know what I mean?
Like, my favorite thing is being right and poor.
What is your advice on that, celebrity?
Yeah, but it is one of those things of I think you have to decide if you want to, you know, I think so much about choosing to be a comedian.
I tell people this all the time.
I had a good job when I started doing comedy.
Like if I would have never done comedy, I'd still be in the corporate world.
I'd be making, at this point, I'd probably be a C-level executive.
I mean, I was a multi-unit supervisor at 21 years old.
I'm 37 now.
If I would have just stayed in that place for 16 years, I'd probably be a COO or something at a company somewhere.
Might have been Me Too.
Might have been Me Too'd by me.
I don't know.
I get that sense on something.
Yeah, maybe.
But you'd have to touch a woman, I think, to be me too.
I don't even care for them.
But no, what I will say is I've been with one for nine years.
I can't think of anything that would make you like them less.
The thing about it?
She's laughing.
Did you hear that in the background?
Usually you get laughed at your wife.
Your wife is here, sir.
Yes, they're all uncomfortable, but she's like, she hates me too.
That's what it is.
You guys are both married.
You guys both have to know how hated you are at home.
That's what it is.
That is the magic of marriage is that you get to experience the whole gamut of love and hate.
Do you know what makes us love each other is how much we're not everybody else.
That's it.
I just look at every other woman.
I go, thanks for not being that.
And she goes, yeah, you too.
That's what it is.
That's the magic of togetherness is just going like, oh, do you see everybody else?
And then she goes, oh, yeah.
And then you just go like, oh, thank God we're not them.
I say that all the time.
But, but yeah, it's like with comedy, I think the good comedians are people that are willing to are naturally curious.
And if you're so closed off to where you won't even hear people that disagree with you, you're not naturally curious enough to be a good comedian.
And so you're probably not a good comedian.
And there are a lot of people that kind of trick the system where they're likable, Trevor Noah, or they're ethnically diverse, Trevor Noah, or they're, you know, they'll check these boxes that the industry likes and they'll carve a niche.
But like, there's a reason why a guy like Trevor Noah doesn't have a huge podcast like a Joe Rogan.
Like I think the people that are real fans of real comedy find these people and will support them no matter what they do because they're naturally curious and they're the more interesting people begets more interesting comedy.
And I just think, you know, one of the things that I think is kind of good about COVID and the pandemic is I think it's made everybody kind of reassess where they put their money.
You know, like, oh, why am I supporting this thing that I don't agree with?
Or why am I giving money to this restaurant when they're not politically aligned with what I'm doing?
Or, you know, I want to support these restaurants that are refusing to shut down or whatever.
I think it's going to be the same way when we come out of this pandemic with comedy.
I think where a guy like Jim Gaffigan could have made those comments about Trump and not really felt it before the pandemic is going to feel it after the pandemic.
And I think people are going to be far more kind of scrupulous, I guess.
I don't know what the word is I'm looking for, but definitely they're going to hold their purse strings a lot tighter when it comes to making decisions and how personally aligned they are with the side that someone chooses in the intellectual battle, I think is going to determine where they spend their money a lot more.
So the idea of like, I disagree with you, but I'll still go support you, I don't think that's going to be out there as much anymore.
I think you're going to have to be somebody who picks a side.
Like you can't just be, you know, the guys like a Sebastian Maniscalco, who really like never say anything politically at all, who are just funny guys, they'll have an audience.
But I think the guys who are, you know, more clearly understood about who they are outside of their act are going to have bigger followings and bigger fan bases and things like that.
Being a comedian anymore isn't just what you do on stage.
People want to be, they want to know who you are offstage.
They want to know what your opinions are about things.
You know, they want to see the full 360.
And so I think to be a comedian in the market as where it's headed, you've got to be somebody who opens up your whole life to your audience.
And that's got to be interesting too.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
Well, and plus you have, then there's the divide in big tech and everything.
So the platforms, even if you want to be a comedian that's reaching everybody, comedians are naturally going to be getting pushed to this platform and that platform as they divide further and further.
Do you guys think there's like a speakeasy vibe coming back to comedy though?
Where, so one of the things I found that's interesting, for a long time, I didn't want to put something behind a paywall because I found that I was like, well, if it's not, if it's not massive for free, why would people pay for it?
Interestingly enough, more people are supporting my paywall stuff than were supporting my free stuff.
I think there is some, it's sort of like the mentality of Facebook when it started about the exclusivity is what made it popular.
I think there is, at least with like conservative people, there is this excitement about being part of something that's underground and not for everybody.
And so I think live comedy will take the same steps as we open back up or even as we don't.
I mean, I've talked with some comedians.
I was like, what if we just did an illegal speakeasy tour and did them underground and absolutely just refused to follow those orders and announced our venues the day of the way some conservative comedians have been doing it for a couple of years now.
So people don't try to pick at their shows.
It's like, what if we just did what artists used to do in the 60s and 70s?
Like when they were arresting Lenny Bruce for obscenity, he was still performing and he was going underground into speakeasies and cafes and just not, you know, be a little rebellious with your art.
Be a little rebellious with what you're doing.
And I think people want to be a part of that.
I think audience members want to be a part of it.
I think an audience member is more likely to participate in something like that than to just buy tickets off a website and go to the improv to see, you know, somebody that was on VH1's I Hate the 80s or whatever.
So, Yeah, I think like being a fan of a certain comedian is more going to be like being a part of a club than a fan, if that makes sense, a community.
Well, speaking of paywalls, it's time we go behind the curtain to our Babylon B subscriber lounge.
Ah, yes, we're going to move and sit in our leather chairs, wear our smoking jackets, and pretend to smoke.
I want to hear more about the tweet you got canceled for.
Yeah, I want to hear more about that.
And I want to talk more about big tech censorship and pizza, I guess.
Pizza.
Which is not a code for anything.
It's just pizza.
What would it be a code for?
Oh, you don't know.
I don't know.
Is that a t-shirt somewhere?
Welcome to the right, where pizza is just pizza.
That's good.
That's our shirt.
We were trying to find a new shirt idea.
There you go.
I'll take a 22% royalty.
All right, here we go.
Coming up next for Babylon B subscribers.
So you got canceled.
Yeah, in 2018.
Yeah.
That was like the big time.
Yeah, I. Would you like to say your tweet for us?
Sure.
Yeah, that's the mean.
You just took racism to the third dimension.
And by the way, in that scene, what I find funny is kind of hacksaw.
And so I'll make jokes about race or suicide or death or enjoying this hard-hitting interview.
Become a Babylon Bee subscriber to hear the rest of this conversation.
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Kyle and Ethan would like to thank Seth Dillon for paying the bills, Adam Ford for creating their job, the other writers for tirelessly pitching headlines, the subscribers, and you, the listener.