Jeremy Piven joins Andrew Schulz and Alex to dissect the Warriors' alleged deception regarding Kevin Durant's Achilles injury, arguing the dynasty deserves an asterisk due to organizational negligence. They contrast this with the Knicks' failure to sign stars, comparing owner James Dolan to socialist failures, while analyzing how comedians like Dave Chappelle control narratives through vulnerability versus Hollywood's revisionist history. The conversation extends to Manny Pacquiao's controversial training camp rumors and concludes that true legacy requires managing one's own story against opportunistic media manipulation. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Welcome To Flagrant Analysis00:12:50
What's up everybody?
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Now, let us start the show.
Hello, new listeners that came on board with Lisa Ann.
Shout out to all y'all that found us through Lisa.
Shout out to Lisa, man.
Ain't nothing wrong with following some pussy.
Ain't nothing wrong with it.
We're here for you.
That's how society's.
It was an epic episode.
Yes, it was.
I think we had something around a quarter million listens with that one.
Almost half a million.
Well, over half a mill now with the Akash Lisa.
Oh, oh, we're talking about the clip.
The actions went viral.
Clip viral sensation.
But the whole episode around a quarter million.
So that means we got some new people listening.
We're speaking to you right now.
What's up?
That's just a minor dose of flagrancy.
What's up?
You want some real fuck shit?
Go listen to Franks and Beans.
This is the year.
This is the one anniversary.
And y'all don't even know what we're talking about.
There's an episode on here that probably should be taken off.
It should be scrubbed.
The wildest 11 minutes in the history of podcasting exists on Flagrant 2.
I'm not going to tell you exactly where it is because I can't make it that easy.
No, I'm going to.
This shit will be shut down immediately.
YouTube is going to get us the fuck out of here like Steven Crowder.
Listen, if you're a new listener, you're probably like talking to somebody who's been a longtime listener.
And if the first episode, I guarantee you, they're going to suggest to you is the Frank and Beans episode.
And it's the year anniversary of that.
So go back into that.
And welcome to Flagrant 2.
I was doing shows in San Francisco.
Shout out to everybody who came out for that.
That was amazing.
We'll get to that later.
But a woman came up to me.
She's like, let me tell you something.
I just had a kid and I was wildly depressed.
I was going through postpartum depression.
And I mean, it was like my life was like falling apart.
And I was just searching for things to distract myself.
And I was listening to the Franks and Beans episode.
And she said, she said, that 11 minutes changed my life.
She said it changed her life.
Dude, it changed her life.
I love it.
Wildly depressed.
And we made fun of retards for 11 minutes.
And immediately she was like, I didn't get that bad.
Maybe I should feed my kid.
You know, keep working.
Put some clothes on his back.
Do what I got to do.
All I'm saying is we're doing the Lord's work.
Okay.
Oh, God.
This is God's favorite podcast.
Say what?
This is God's favorite podcast.
Obviously, it's God's favorite podcast.
Y'all didn't know that.
And you know how I knew the Lisa Ann episode slapped me?
Because for the first time in the history of this podcast, a video went out.
Yes.
And people still tuned in to the tune of a quarter million listeners.
Record numbers.
And maybe that's a sign that we should be cutting that video off more often.
Maybe we should.
Maybe we're what's wrong.
Maybe we're what's wrong on the podcast.
Maybe this is more of an audible thing.
Maybe we ain't as cute as we thought we were.
I'll tell you the most flattering thing about the Lisa Ann episode is that 600,000 people listened to that, right?
Yeah.
Or no, watched it.
600,000 people watched the clip on YouTube at this point right now.
And they could watch her get cummed on.
And they chose to watch us ask her questions.
Like, that is how you got to be good at interviewing.
Like, it's rare in life if I'm speaking to a hot girl and I'm thinking, I would rather talk to you than watch you get fucked.
Listen to you.
Listen, listen to watch you get fucked.
Like imagine any interaction with a hot girl.
It was like one click away from her being in that exact same position, only she's getting fucked.
She's butt naked.
Like they stayed and watched the whole episode.
That's how dope we are.
That's not just a testimony to us.
That's a testimony to Lisa as well, man.
She's a great talk.
Shout out to her.
No, Lisa a star.
Uncle Dennis And The Media Pressure00:15:25
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean that 100%.
She has a very intriguing star quality.
And there's a reason why it resonated with porn, but it would have resonated whatever other things.
She was successful in anything she wanted to do.
Yes.
She just decided to fucking do it.
Within the entertainment industry.
She has this, there's a magnetism.
Some people have that.
They just do.
You can't explain.
You got it, bro.
Anyway, so I thought that was really cool.
We have some serious stuff to talk about, obviously.
Today sucks.
Today sucks.
I was in Toronto last night for the game.
Oh, God.
Yeah, it was, I've slept maybe a combined total, maybe two hours.
Well, outside of one thing.
Let's say two hours in the last four days.
It's not really that, but around it.
I was in Toronto last night for the game.
There was a weird feeling in the arena.
It was an odd feeling.
What do you mean?
Odd, like everybody felt like something is up or odd, like they're like, we're so happy.
This is weird.
They were happy.
It was exciting.
But it didn't feel like a closeout game.
No.
It didn't.
The best way I can describe it is this.
And we'll go back to, you know, obviously KD and everything in a second, but when Kyle Lowry missed the shot or it got blocked, right?
Yeah.
It was the most anticlimactic finish to an NBA Finals game with a last second shot that I've ever seen in my entire life.
And I think, now that I really kind of process it, I think that they've hit every last second shot this playoffs.
So I think the entire stadium in that moment was thinking, this is it.
Well, yeah, we're just going to hit it.
Yeah.
I thought it was.
They didn't even realize they were down.
No.
So when you miss that shot, usually there's like a, oh, you know, like a, you name it, like everybody goes, oh, there's this exasperated moan or whatever it is.
It was silent.
Yeah.
It was.
Yeah.
It was so fucking weird.
I'll tell you, it probably, because it translated on TV as well.
Like, I've never, I told people, like, I've never watched a game that had no, I mean, I guess in a roundabout way had to do with the Knicks, but didn't have any Nick's Rudy interest that I went through so many fucking up and down emotions watching that shit because it's like, at first, like, all right, it's a formality.
Like, Toronto's going to close it out.
Right.
Whatever.
Then it's like, oh, shit, KD might be playing.
And then it's like, oh, shit, he actually looks really healthy.
And it's like, oh, shit, he's busting their ass.
Right.
And they're down 3-1.
If there's any team, if there's anything more poetic to happen to end this dynasty, it's them to come back 3-1.
And it looked like they was about to do it.
Right.
Because KD was looking like he was on his way to a 40-point game.
Steph was getting loose.
And they were down by like double digits.
And then he fucking goes down.
And You hope for the best, but like, I felt like everybody knew immediately.
Like, nobody here is doctor.
I thought it was a calf strain, and I was like, good, missed a couple games.
Oh, let me, let me real quickly say something.
I forgot to say this in the beginning.
And I'm doing this at this point of the episode right now so that Alex doesn't have to go back and re-edit stuff.
But this episode is actually a two-part episode.
Right.
Because the back half of this episode, I'm telling you guys this now, is an interview with one of the most iconic character actors in the history of television.
It is Jeremy Piven, the guy who played Ari Garden on Entourage and a plethora of other characters.
He's in.
We have a great long conversation about him, comedy, him losing everything because of the Me Too movement and what he's doing now.
So it's very, very cool combo.
Can't wait for you guys to follow up.
I'm just last week, too, man.
Just as far as like big guests.
Talk about people getting fucked.
So that's what we're doing out here.
But anyway, so keep tuning into that.
But back to back to the finals.
Yeah, man.
So like just when he, when he went hurt, when he got hurt, everybody's like, nobody was really concerned with the calf strain because they said he couldn't get hurt anymore.
Well, that's what the doctors was telling people, right?
Can we, but anybody with any fucking brain is like, yo, if you're laboring one side, something else is going to get fucked up.
If you're over, overconfident.
It's the same leg, though.
It was the same leg.
But when he went down, that was my thinking.
I'm like, oh man, he was going so hard to favor this and something else.
But then they saw the replay, and you literally see the Achilles fucking pop.
See, I didn't see that until someone DM'd us.
Oh, my God.
So a couple things.
One, addressing the booing.
Yeah.
The cheering or whatever.
Sorry, sorry.
Addressing the cheering in Toronto.
To be fair, it was a little shocking that all these people were cheering.
And there were people, the chant was KD's done.
KD's done, right?
But to be fair to them, everybody in that moment thought he just pulled his calf again.
That's what I thought.
Right?
And it was all calmed down.
And then when it looked like it was serious, there was this kind of somber note that took over the arena.
And that's what I felt for almost the entire game.
Shout out to Lowry and like Habakkuk.
So, you know, quietly.
Like, yo, like, no, this is, this isn't, this isn't good.
Yeah, it was the right thing.
But let's go.
Let's talk about something because we need to discuss something.
This is very important.
The Warriors are scum.
Yeah.
The Warriors are the scum of the Warrior organization and that crocodile tier, fake, phony, Oscar worthing, bullshit performance that Bob Myers put on in that press conference where he fake cried talking about it's an Achilles injury.
Motherfucker, you knew it was Achilles.
You knew it was.
Why do you think that there was ice on his Achilles for the last two?
Why do you think that every one of the reports that you got from the team doctors said that there was an issue with his Achilles, right?
So let's talk about what scumbags this organization is.
Number one, I have on very good authority that they were pressuring him to come back.
Absolutely.
Not only were they pressuring him to come back internally, they were pressuring him to come back with the media.
Yes.
So they were dropping all these articles about why maybe he's faking.
Maybe he's actually okay.
Maybe he's protecting himself, etc.
Even say number two, number two, real quick, the reason why they're pressuring him to come back is because they know he's gone.
So if something does come happen to him, it doesn't cost him anything.
You know he's off the books at the end of the year and you know he's not resigning.
Now, we got Clay has a little hammy injury.
You know he's resigning.
So what do you say to Clay?
You say, please don't play game three.
You could possibly hurt yourself.
How dare you?
I know you're coming back to my team and I got to protect your body.
But this guy over here that I know is leaving, I don't care if his whole shit busts.
Go beat it.
And this nice guy approach that Steve Kerr uses all the time.
This, I'm a sweetheart.
I'm just here.
I'm just lucky to be in this position.
Shut the fuck up, you ruthless piece of shit.
Okay, at the end of the day, you knew this guy had a partially torn Achilles.
I don't know for a fact it was partially torn, but remember when I said he's not playing?
Yeah.
The reason I said he's not playing is because the information I got was accurate.
He shouldn't have fucking played.
And it's not even just you.
There was not one single report.
Like when somebody's playing.
Now I'm going to give flagrant credit.
We get credit on this motherfucking podcast.
And he said before anybody else, he is not playing.
He said, the only way I could see him playing is if they go down two games, but he still shouldn't play or he's still not probably going to play.
Because what my prediction, not my prediction, what I basically said was based on the fact that the injury was far more severe than people knew.
And this is what, to use your point about the media, another way I think they kind of pressured him was since the fucking day he got hurt.
He could be back in a week.
And when it goes four weeks and you keep saying, oh, I think he might come back this game.
He'll likely come back game three or game four.
Then you start looking at KD like, what the fuck, dog?
So now we have an interesting situation.
And it's really interesting because of the parallel with Kawhi's last year.
Right.
And what happened was Kawhi got injured.
He didn't like the treatment that he got from his team.
And him and his uncle, Uncle Dennis, basically said, hey, we're going to sit out.
We have to recover and we want to trade.
We don't want to be part of this organization because you don't value my health.
Right.
So what does the organization do when you have somebody meddling in your player's ability to play for that organization?
They have to cut that person's legs out from under them, right?
So they call you crazy.
It's no different than what they did with Chappelle, right?
Chappelle goes to Africa.
Sure, sure.
But Chappelle goes to Africa, right?
And leaves $50 million on the table.
They're like, well, shit, we can't let the general public know what Chappelle knows.
So you get like the Spurs brass.
You get like the fucking pillars of that franchise.
You get Genobly talking shit about Kawhi.
Tony Fox.
He's got a good teammate.
Who's in the press?
Like literally everybody was shitting Kawai.
Not only Kawhi, it's the father figure.
It's Dennis, right?
You go after the person that's advising him and you call them crazy, right?
Because you want to delegitimize them in the press and hopefully use the press to delegitimize Dennis in this situation to Kawhi.
Right?
So it's like you're playing, it's warfare right here, right?
So what happens?
Kawhi actually trusts Uncle Dennis that we all think is a nut job from Jersey.
I mean, even my friends in the league were like, who the fuck is this guy?
Like, why is he even care?
Now Kawhi's in the finals, up 3-2, and could potentially and should win a championship.
And now you have KD.
Someone who doesn't have an Uncle Dennis.
Somebody who obviously has his mother, but he doesn't have someone in his life who's going to say, hey, sit your ass down on the fucking bench.
Don't be a hero here.
You're not built to play for this.
And you are going to fall apart if you go out there.
And I don't give a fuck what the organization says or what the media says.
You are not playing.
He didn't have an Uncle Dennis in this situation.
A crazy Uncle Dennis.
And now he's going to miss the next year recovering from an Achilles injury.
And he might not ever be the same.
And he might not ever be.
He's not going to be the same.
That's the one part that fucks me up the most.
Like, if it was a cap strain or whatever the fuck it was that he originally was hurt from, we all assume by the start of next year, he'd be back to normal.
Yep.
But this shit completely changes the entire fucking face of the NBA, not just for the Warriors, but it's different.
For potential.
Everything is different.
If you're KD, do you opt in?
Yes.
You got to.
I opt in just to.
Golden State over.
You fucking have to.
Pay me $30 million to recover, you pieces of shit, and then I'm leaving immediately afterwards.
Let me ask you.
Opt-in just for everybody's listening.
So KD has a player option next year with the Golden State Warriors.
So it's his choice to either opt out and test free agency or opt in with the Warriors and take the $31 million that they owe.
And the $31 million, he could essentially, for the whole year, rehab, he gets to fuck over the Warriors because now they're in cap trouble.
They can't sign people.
Oh, shit.
Yeah.
And that's what I would do out of spike.
Of course.
But here's the thing.
He's going to get offered.
Four years or 160.
He's going to get offered the full thing from all the teams.
They're going to go, hey, rehab for a year.
We trust your greatness that you'll be able to come back.
An injury that I can only think of one person they came back from.
Who?
Brent Grimes.
Yeah.
It's the only successful ACL.
I was hoping there was achilles.
Oh, sorry, Achilles.
I'm trying to think who.
Wesley Matthews played.
He wasn't as good.
Wesley's not the same, bro.
Achilles is almost like the fucking...
Dude, there's a goddamn Greek character based on the Greek god based on this fucking injury.
Yes, like that's how he wasn't sitting in.
Unstoppable.
KD is a Greek god before this.
Unstoppable.
Great defender hitting threes from anywhere.
Kind of a bitch, but whatever.
Hurts is Achilles, never the same.
I'm so...
It's a great point.
Can I defend the Spurs real quick?
I'm not a huge Spurs fan, but I respect them.
Pop has a history of sitting players against the Warriors when they had the dirty play and slid their on the Zaza Pachuya.
Pop did not let Kawhi play.
He's like, he's not playing.
He did that, I think, in a series before, and he had done that with Tim Duncan before, too.
In like a game seven, I think he was like, he's not playing.
We're going to prioritize his health.
I still believe you, but I do think a little more.
And let me clarify.
I don't know where the blame goes on that.
And I think it's, and I love Pop, so like my own bias is going to slide in here.
I would love to believe that Pop was not part of the decision making on the Spurs that said that he was ready to go and his injury was, you know, over-exaggerated or whatever.
I would like to believe Pop was like, hey, if Kawhi says he's injured, he's injured.
But the Spurs were like, well, we're also paying him a lot of money, so get the fuck out of him.
I mean, they're team doctors for a reason.
The one thing I'm taking away from this is that the job of a team doctor in the NBA is going to be fucking scarce as fuck going forward.
Because the Kawhi shit, the LeBron shit, fucking...
What's the LeBron thing?
The groin?
So with the groin.
Remember, they had that fucking nurse that went on Instagram.
It's like, wow, this guy's such a warrior.
He came back.
He shouldn't be playing.
Yada, yada, yada.
Like, they hid what his real injury was.
Oh.
You know what I mean?
So when team doctors, they're doing what's best for the team.
They're doing what's best for the owner.
And the guy who's cutting their checks, which is your Bob Myers, your Rob Palinkas, your whoever the fuck runs the Spurs.
And if they're down 3-1, their dynasty's on the line.
They don't know what the fuck they'll do.
They're going to do whatever their boss tells them to do.
If you're a max player, you know what you do?
If you're a max player on your staff, you have a personal doctor.
So let me ask you this question.
Should the players union step in?
Absolutely.
Wait for it, but yes.
And say the medical staff for each team will be provided by the team, paid for by the team, but it'll be chosen by the players' union.
So the players' union will hire a medical staff for each team, which the Lakers will pay for, the Knicks will pay for, but they will be beholden to the Players Union.
So if you fuck up a player, guess where you ain't getting another job.
Yeah.
There might be another way to go around it because, like you guys said, if they're completely loyal to the Lakers and their job is to get LeBron back down the floor, not get him healthy, you're not going to get the most out of these doctors for the injuries that they have to deal with.
I mean, the one thing that whole team went through and Kerr went through and Bob Myers, they all said there was no way he could re-injure it.
He could only strain it more.
That's the only risk.
There was no Achilles danger.
Y'all believe that?
That's what I'm saying.
When it comes to medicine, it's subjective.
Like, everybody recovers differently.
They give like timelines, but how do you?
You have Grimes who came back from an Achilles and no one else.
So it's like you can't put it on the doctor.
If you know it's an Achilles injury.
Was my suggestion, but he just didn't recover in the way.
Well, Alex, if you know it's an Achilles injury, don't fuck with that.
If you have any inkling, and if the thing is, it's a cast strain and then he tears his Achilles.
I guess it's possible it's a freak fucking tear of the Achilles for no reason, but that doesn't really make sense to me.
So to me, it seems like what makes sense is you are out with an Achilles injury.
Andrew has horses that say as much.
And all of a sudden, you're playing on an Achilles and then you tear your Achilles.
Draymond Timeout And Injury Takeaways00:14:31
It's probably the team that ruined your career.
And if I'm KD, I opt in for the full year, rehab, say it's going great, and then I sign a big deal somewhere else.
But then he takes the chance that they know he's going to leave after, so they can put out reports that the rehab isn't going that well.
I think at this point, at this point, he's getting the max contract.
At this point, I take that chance.
At this point, I take that chance.
You see what?
It worked out for Kawhi.
Kawhi had to eat shit from the Spurs for the entire year, didn't say nothing.
And I guess Kawhi's more built for that than KD is because Katie's more, he's more out there.
He tweets, he interacts with motherfuckers.
Kawhi doesn't give a fuck.
He's a robot.
So like he ate the shit for a year, came back to Toronto.
Now he's a hero.
If I'm KD, I take that chance.
Opt in, rehab, put it on Golden State's tab, and then next, get your own team doctor.
And then next year, you go and get your big money.
I mean, that's the smart thing to do.
You got to take the chance of the team saying that, oh, he's not rehabbing as well as the same thing.
Well, but then you go rehab on your own like Kawhi.
Kawhi straight left the Spurs Medical Treatment Center and was their team was like, no, I got my own team in New York.
That's what I'm doing.
I think even Porzingis did that too.
Didn't he fly back to Lithuania to rehab or fly back to where the fuck he is?
Maybe.
I don't know.
It's a tragic thing.
It's bad for a few different reasons, right?
It's like, one, this game in general is bad for a few reasons.
One, because the ending, it was so anticlimactic because it robbed Kawhi of his Jordan moment.
There was a point at the end of this game where Kawhi scored 10 straight points.
It was unbelievable.
Yeah.
It's like he just flipped the switch and we all knew like, okay, it's over.
As soon as I got the lead, I was actually.
Three minutes left.
They were up six.
He scores 10 straight points.
He had the three, a couple hard twos, another big three on Boogie.
And it was so fucking dominant.
I'm just watching this happen.
I'm like, he's the best player in the league.
This is the way you win a game.
This is the way you close out a series.
He was hitting those fucking threes in front of Draymond back to back.
And I just thought it's done.
The momentum, the crowd was fucking rocking.
Dude, he was stopping and popping for those little mid-ranges.
I was like, yo, it's over.
And then once that moving screen happened, and it was one point to win the game, who else do you want with the ball in your hand than Kawai Linux?
I don't understand why.
First of all, Nick Nurse called a timeout when they're up six, I think, right?
So here's the thing.
They're up six.
Nick Nurse calls a timeout.
And he'll be criticized for that.
Yeah.
But he's killed for that.
If you remember the play that came after it, so they call the timeout up six.
I forget exactly how much time left.
Maybe three minutes left, right?
It was about three minutes here.
Up six calls the timeout.
They come out of timeout.
Kyle Lowry goes pick and roll to Marcus Saul.
Marcus Saul gets hammered at the rim.
Right.
No call.
Right.
I remember that.
They got the shot they wanted.
That's why you call the timeout, right?
It's like, don't get me wrong, you are cooking and everybody, you know, what is it, Monday morning quarterback?
So they're going to be critical.
But like, they got the shot they wanted.
He should have gone to the line, had two.
He's a good free throw shooter, or he could have made that layup with some contact.
That was a makeable layup for contact.
Definitely.
It turns into fast break.
Either Clay or Steph.
Clay hit the first three.
Clay hits the first three.
Clay hits the first three.
And they run Steph off that curl.
And then they get it.
And then they tie it up.
Here's what I would say.
I don't remember in all the years I've watched basketball a team going on a run and then calling the timeout on themselves.
It is a, it is, I was talking to guys after the game, and it is conventional wisdom.
You're up six.
You know this is a big possession because you lock this down and that's kind of the game.
You score one more and that's kind of the game.
Why don't we get a good play?
Yeah, you let the defense get set, but you also get everybody on the same page.
He did say his guys look gassed.
Is it conventional wisdom against the Warriors?
It's conventional basketball wisdom.
Sure.
Warriors don't have their own rule set, right?
It's like, and Kyle knew it too, right?
Kyle is a high IQ basketball.
I love the way Kyle played, by the way.
He played great.
He fucking played his ass off.
And I'd love to see him play again like that for the rest of the series, but even he was on the same page, right?
He goes across half court and Kyle starts looking back at Nurse and Nurse is calling for timeout.
And Kyle's like, I think we call timeout.
Let's just set it up and get one.
If that layup goes in, Nick Nurse is a genius for calling that play and then getting a bucket.
If it doesn't, how could he call the timeout?
I'll live with that.
I honestly think we're not giving enough credit to the Splash Brothers, man.
Bro, they did what they do.
They had no business winning that at that run, at that point, that the fucking Raptors were cooking and the arena was rocking.
Like, they had no business.
They're the only team that wins that game that has two weapons that can literally go off for six or nine points in quick seconds like that.
They're the only team in the world that can pull that off.
And they did it again.
Makes me fucking sick.
And they both did it.
Oh, my God.
Doing what they do.
The other question I have, Monday morning quarterback, why don't you run a pick and roll for Kawhi on Klay, who is their best perimeter defender on the last possession?
They let Kawhi go ISO, and I was wondering, and maybe somebody said it, and that's why I was wondering, but like pick and roll.
I actually think Kawhi waved them off.
If you go pick and roll, you run the risk of getting trapped, passing out of the trap, and then getting it picked.
Fair enough.
That's the idea, right?
I think in that position, Kawhi felt, I mean, he just scored 10th straight, right?
So there's nobody that he needs a switch on.
He can get his buckets on Klay.
He can get his buckets on anybody.
It's really credit to fucking, and once again, Iggy out of nowhere makes an amazing play, amazing defensive play.
He had great help defense.
He came all the way over.
They ran the risk.
They ran the risk of giving up that layup because Iggy came to help.
From weak side.
The weak side help came to guard whoever was down in the post to give up the open layup because that's what happened if they got double teamed.
They kicked it back out.
They got Kyle Lowry a pretty open shot and Draymond made a hell of a defensive play to stop it.
So it's like...
You got to give it a draft.
They made the right play.
It's just, they're champions, dog.
Like, the Warriors a chance for a reason.
Like, they're not just some pretty jumpshoot of motherfuckers.
Like, they make those dirty plays that you need to win at the end of the game.
And like, you don't, when you have championship teams, man, like, you got to cut their head off when you have the chance to because now they're alive.
They're going back to Oracle.
They got all the emotion and the momentum behind them to pull some shit up.
They have a narrative.
Now they have it.
Because this is very interesting.
What will not be in the news this week is the Warriors let KD play when they knew that his Achilles was at risk of popping.
What will be the story is what pieces of shit those Toronto fans are booing a guy who got injured.
It's like, well, why was he even in the position to get injured?
Yeah.
Like, they're going to make it.
They're going to make KD a hero.
He gave everything, gave it all for his team.
You fucking pieces of shit.
We'll find out in July what KD really thinks.
Real talk.
We'll find out in July what KD really thinks.
And you know what?
You're going to say it.
Of course.
KD, you're going to say it.
Of course, because as much as it makes sense for him to opt in and be petty and have Golden State pay for that rehab, I wouldn't be surprised if he says, fuck you guys, I'm out.
I'm going to go rehab where I want to rehab.
Does this hurt the perception of the Warriors within the league for players?
He's a big free agent looking at the Warriors.
Like Giannis, there's rumors already kind of starting that maybe Giannis goes to Golden State when he's free, if KD leaves.
If I'm Giannis, am I looking at that like, you know, I'm kind of similar to built to KD, much more muscle, but like kind of similar.
Do I want to do that?
Do I want to risk an injury and then they throw me out there, parade me out there before I'm ready?
Who knows, man?
I don't know.
It might.
I think it's worth chewing on.
I do.
I think what the real takeaway from this is for players is if you're hurt, be hurt.
Sit.
Sit.
Just fuck it.
You don't have to be a hero.
This is a job.
Okay.
This is a job.
And your job is dependent on your physical ability.
And if your physical ability is hampered for the rest of your life, you no longer have a job.
Look at Isaiah Thomas.
He's about to be.
Was it you that texting me that?
He's about to be out the fucking league, possibly.
He'll be in the big three killing.
How many of these lessons do we need to learn?
He's going to need to learn Chinese lessons.
It's different because so many times, we kind of did the same thing with Derek Rose, but social media wasn't that crazy back then.
So we don't know the very intricacies of every team doctor.
But being clear to play and ready to contribute and not hurt yourself are two very different things.
A team could clear you to play.
But if I don't feel like I could go, I ain't going.
And that's what happened with Kawhi and the Spurs.
Did you notice how they worded it?
This is how clever these motherfuckers are.
He was never clear to play.
Cleared to practice.
And the no minutes restriction thing.
The no minutes restriction thing is what raises the fucking red flag for me.
I'm like, who's clear to practice, Kaz?
You could be clear to practice with a whole cast on your leg.
You could just do layups.
Practice isn't anything.
Shalen Rose was on GetUp talking about how the reason why he didn't see him playing is because they tried to work him out before game four.
And it was basically just like a three-on-three.
And it just wasn't going up.
And KD, and quote-unquote, he said, he punted the workout because he just couldn't go.
He just couldn't go.
And that's the whole thing that raises the red flag for me, dog.
Like, not just is it going to affect the Warriors and how free agents look at their, but just team doctors in general.
I think players are going to take more power back more than ever, especially if you're a max guy, if you're a superstar type player, and say, fuck the team doctors.
I'm my own guy.
I'm not risking it if I feel like I'm in danger and now my bag's fucked up.
What do you think happens with the end of the series?
Predictions.
I still think Toronto wins it because, to be honest, even when KD was playing, this is one of the few times as a sports fan I've been supremely confident and it didn't work.
But like even when KD was balling, I was like, whatever.
They're going to weather the storm.
Then when KD went down, I was like, they're going to win.
Then when they went down five, I was like, oh, shit, they might lose.
But I still kept thinking, Steph cannot run like this.
Now, the one thing that's different is two days off between the next two games.
But my feeling is Steph isn't built like LeBron to carry a heavy, heavy workload night in and night out.
He can break down.
And that's what happened.
Now, again, it was only one day between games, but between game three and game four.
Right.
And Bill Simmons actually said this.
It was a really brilliant plan from Nick Nurse in game four.
After Steph went crazy in game three, just run around everywhere.
Frenetic pace, up and down the court.
In the second half, he'll wear down.
And that's what happened.
In the second half, Steph started missing.
He got tired.
And there's an extra day of rest, but I tend to think the same thing will happen.
Cass, what are your pressure?
I still think the Raptors close it out in the Oracle.
I've said Raptors in Six for a while, even though people say I go back and forth.
No, you said Warriors first.
I knew the exact time.
You've been saying all that stuff anyway.
I do think the Raptors close it out in six.
I think that even in Katie's very little productivity, all of those points, they needed every one of those points just to squeak by one point.
Not having him having a whole game to pretty much swarm stuff Curry and make sure he's not effective.
I just think it's going to be too much.
And I think Toronto closes it out Thursday, man.
Yeah, and I think Boogie, something Andrew pointed out, like, I don't think Boogie can go heavy knights back-to-back.
No.
Heavy minutes, back-to-back games.
I think he's going to have a worse game.
I think he started to fall apart at the end of the last game.
Yeah.
That's why he had the moving screen and like the one goal 10 that they called and like upheld the call.
I think it was a bad call.
Yeah, I thought it was good.
But he just got tired, I think.
And he's got a fucking, he's coming back from a torn quad and a torn Achilles.
And mind you, he was about to not play.
They had, I forgot who they started.
They started with the Hamptons 5.
So Draymond was essentially playing center.
Then they threw Kavan Looney out there, who's fucking, who's clavicle or whatever the fuck is fucked up.
Broken cartilage right there.
You know what I'm saying?
And Boogie was sitting there not getting no burden.
Then Bogey got out there.
And once Bogey got out there before Boogie, I'm like, all right, they're not planning on playing Boogie at all.
But Looney gets hurt again.
Bogot needs a blow, and they just fuck it and threw Boogie out there.
And they gave him what they could give him at that point.
But to think he's going to come through with that for the rest of the series, it's so many injuries that the Warriors got to weather.
It's so many depth issues.
It's like they've seen.
He got upset about it.
It's sad.
He needs sad.
You can't make it to the championship and your whole team is.
You know what?
I wish Andrew was here for this.
I want to go through every championship the Warriors had.
Their first champion was 2015.
Okay.
Clay said something about this yesterday, but you're right.
They're down 2-1 to the Grizzlies, Grit and Grind Grizzlies.
Wear you the fuck down before they got champion confidence, the Warriors.
Mike Conley, arguably their most important player, maybe second to Marcus all the time.
Facial fracture doesn't play the rest of the series.
That's the conference semifinals.
Conference finals, you play Houston, Harden, and Howard in the playoffs.
Who gives a fuck?
Finals, LeBron, no Kyrie, no Kevin Love.
That's how you get your first chip.
They lose the next year, and they blame a one-game suspension on Draymond, which might have been bullshit, but you also forget he kicked a dude in the dick this series before and got away with it.
And that's why he got suspended this time because he was a repeat offender.
A little dick kicked.
Then the next year, you are down 20 points in the conference finals.
To whom?
Kawhi Leonard, the guy that's destroying you now.
And Zaza Pachulia, this dirty fuck, slides his foot underneath him, and then he gets hurt, and they sweep the Spurs.
The next year, you're down 3-2 to the Rockets.
Chris Paul playing his ass off.
Harden ain't really doing shit.
Chris Paul strains his hamstring, and then you win the next two.
Find me one championship they didn't win without injuries to marquee players on the other team.
Yeah, Clay Thompson said this in the press conference after the game.
He said, we've been very fortunate to be on the other side of injury luck.
Man, fucking for me to get scored about it.
He came up with Strando.
He's like, yo, we've been very fortunate to be on the other side of injury luck, but I think now we're getting it all back.
You're getting it all back.
Knicks Propaganda And Rebuild Plans00:15:01
It's one series, you fuck.
It's the finals.
You just ignore it.
You're getting 2015 back.
Here's my thing.
I'd much rather these injuries happen before you get to the finals because to have that be the defining factor in this, it kind of takes, it makes it anticlimactic.
Nobody brings it up for 2015.
And it's the same thing.
Have you ran into any LeBron fans?
Oh, LeBron.
I'm not talking about anything.
He went in there with Matthew Delvadova as the second best player.
It's a wild exception.
Straight up, they would have won that series.
Yes.
Yes.
It was wildly.
Straight up.
You two would have won that series.
It took two games in Oracle.
When you look at the history of the Warriors, you count them as an all-time great team.
Three championships in four years, potentially four out of five.
There's no asterisk there.
But now you want an asterisk because KD went out?
No, there's no asterisk championship.
You of all people should know that.
I don't think we should give them an asterisk.
I'm just saying, as a basketball fan, I'm like, damn, this isn't how it works.
Yeah, I just wanted to see a better series.
Bro, that first quarter, the whole playoffs has been fucking amazing.
And then for the finals to be like, if it's in a completely fair world, all these series have been fair series.
2015 is a fair series.
2016 is a fair series.
2017, 2018, all fair.
In a fair.
I'm not talking about fair and fair.
I'm talking about the family.
So to me, they're an asterisk dynasty.
And I think anybody complaining about it.
It's part of the game.
Nobody's going to put an asterisk on this Warriors dynasty.
It's not bad because you're making it.
Just because injuries happen.
Like, if you go back and look at it, what the Knicks are doing?
What's that?
Katie got hurt.
Watch next season.
You know what?
Katie got hit.
Watch next season.
Katie thought about going to the Knicks and ruined his career.
Even thinking about going to the Knicks ruins your career.
It's over.
You can't tumble from it.
That's how shitty the Knicks are.
Take my sympathy hat off of the Warriors right now to calm any Knicks fans off.
Sympathy for the Warriors?
No.
Sympathy for the Knicks.
Sympathy for the Knicks.
Usually, this type of fucked up luck happens when they sign to the Knicks.
Usually.
Yeah.
So as fucked up as it is, Knicks fans, you got a lot of young talent.
You're going to draft another good young talent.
You're still going to have a shit ton of cap space that you can save for next year.
It sucks.
You're not getting the best player in the world anymore.
At least you got the number one draft pick.
At least he got the listen.
I like that.
Did you see what RJ Barrett said yesterday?
It was a super.
Yo, fuck you.
You didn't watch any college basketball.
It was there.
As soon as he signed up, losing the fucking buggy.
Elite 8 or whatever it was.
As soon as he closed on his property in New York.
I would love to do my son as soon as he closed on his property in New York.
Andrew, I say even thinking about going to the Knicks ruins your career.
True.
I said it's usual Knicks luck.
Yeah.
But this usually happens when they sign to New York.
That's usually what happens.
So as fucked up as it sounds, Knicks fans, you've been in worst positions.
What did I just say?
You've been in worst positions.
I said the Knicks are not getting KD.
Come on.
Get the fuck out of here.
I said the Knicks are not getting Knicks.
They're all KD.
KD is not coming back.
I said the Knicks are not.
They shouldn't have.
They shouldn't.
Hold on.
First of all, I was 100% right about KD not coming back.
But also, you can't take the Knicks Knocks.
I actually reviewed the tape.
I reviewed the tape.
He said he might come back if they go down two games.
That is exactly what I'm saying.
So exactly what I said was right.
We're definitely not getting KD.
And we're not going to get Kyrie.
I'm right about that.
Now Kyrie is going to go to the Knights.
That's the best thing that could happen, you guys.
Brooklyn Nets.
Which is great.
I don't want Kyrie.
Sure.
But the Knicks are going to end up getting Chris Milton and Tobias Harris.
Watch.
I don't think they're going to sign those guys.
I think they save their money.
I think they're going to go all in on the kids.
Like, I think you spend that money with the assumption that you got a guy like Katie coming.
Now that you know you don't have to get him a complimentary like all-star with him, you fucking chill, you save your money, you work on those kids.
You don't have the pressure of like, oh, we got to get KD.
Okay, we got to win a championship.
Okay, we got to do all this shit.
The pressure is off the Knicks now.
Right.
Just do what the fuck you've been doing.
Just draft and build.
That's it.
I don't know what we've built.
Look at the Brooklyn Nets.
Absolutely.
All you got to do is look across the bridge.
They were shit four years ago.
Absolute shit.
They had cap space problems.
They had no prospects.
They have no draft picks.
Now they are the premier destination in New York.
And it's crazy that they still rebuild faster than you guys.
And they rebuild faster than us because they stick.
They stuck as much as I don't fuck with the Nets and I'm a Knicks guy through and through.
They stuck to their plan.
They developed the guys that they drafted.
They made smart trades to get more draft picks.
And they built from within.
So, like, all you got to do is look across the bridge and be like, hey, it's not all that fucking terrible.
You're not going to get KD.
Or if you get KD, you're going to get an injured version of him.
But you've been in worse positions before.
Don't panic.
The pressure's off now.
You can build like a regular competent NBA franchise does and not swing for the fucking dream scenario like we've always been used to.
Come on, Tom.
Fuck the Knicks, dude.
Knicks fucking suck.
We need to turn on the Knicks, dude.
We really need to turn on the Knicks.
I actually do think we need to turn on the fucking Knicks.
This idea that we're so loyal to the fucking Knicks.
Propaganda, everything.
It never works.
Name a franchise that it's worked for.
Name a loyal franchise that has ended up winning again.
The Browns?
They haven't won shit.
The Browns were pretty good last year.
They haven't won shit.
They haven't played shit.
They haven't played Chipotle.
You could say the same thing about the Brooklyn Nets.
They haven't won shit.
Exactly.
They're on their way.
They're also a new franchise.
Also, nobody's loyal to them.
They have to win so they can get fans.
I'm talking about, look at L.A. L.A. starts losing.
The second LA starts losing, nobody gives a fuck.
They're not a loyal team.
There's other shit in LA, though.
That's why.
What have you done for me lately?
Or is the thing?
We need to have a more what have you done for me lately attitude about our sports teams so that they do some shit for us lately.
What have you done for me lately, Knicks?
What have you done for me lately?
Like, have you seen Star Row on the Knicks?
It's the same guy from the Sopranos.
They can't even get real celebrities to show up at fucking Knicks.
They throw the portrait into that motherfucker two weeks ago.
What's his name?
I don't remember what was his name on the show.
Whatever, Bob Pussy or Social Spotsylvania.
Bob from that movie with Jamie Foxx.
We can't even name the guy.
Guys, breaking back.
The white guy, they got, okay, they got Aaron Paul.
Aaron Paul is like, no, Brian Cranston.
It doesn't matter.
We can't even name Celebrity Row.
Dude, Celebrity Row is so sad.
They veer over to him.
It's like some guy from SNL you've never fucking heard of, right?
Then they show a picture of the character he plays, and then people are like, we don't watch that shit.
It's embarrassing.
Yeah, Cardi goes to the Barclay Center now, bro.
Cardi goes to the Barclay Center now, man.
She don't even think me.
I don't think she really does.
I'm telling you, man, this idea that you support your teams when they're good and bad, it is propaganda from ownership so they don't have to be good.
Because if we were all honest and we were like, yo, why would I go torture myself?
You pay for season tickets to watch your team lose constantly.
Thousands and thousands of dollars.
I'm not paying for any Cowboys shit until they start winning.
I'll watch a game, but I'm not putting no money in your pocket directly.
No.
Fuck that.
Why would I do it?
The owner sucks.
We don't get anything from them.
Like, it's just the weirdest thing.
The only thing that they can provide us is wins.
So why would we support them when they don't win?
And they make stupid business.
I'm a guy who loves basketball.
And it's been a while since I could watch a young team develop within the Knicks and not just break it up for one of those fucking blockbusters.
Real quick, what the fuck is it in us to support a losing team?
It's propaganda.
I understand that.
I'm saying, what is in it?
For me, Jesus was supposed to come back year after year after year.
And you just still have faith that maybe one of these chances coming back.
You're comparing Knicks.
No, no, no, no.
This is very good.
This is still good.
We're going to get a chip.
This one day I have it, Jesus.
We're comparing the return of our Florida Savior to the Knicks ever being good.
And just like Jesus, it's not going to happen until we're dead.
Okay?
We're not going to see shit until we fucking die.
That's what's going to happen.
No.
I'm not going to have faith.
Also, Jesus makes you pay way less for attendance.
Okay?
Jesus does not.
Jesus is like, give me 10%.
Okay.
Jesus is not charging $300 a ticket.
That is true.
What about those mega churches, though?
Say what?
Those megachurches.
They all stay in credit cards.
You give whatever you want.
They pass those buckets and you can put a dollar in that shit if you want to.
It's up to you.
It's like a yoga to the people.
I don't know, bro.
That's a good rep, though.
Me and my heart of hearts, I can't find myself.
I can't find the hearts of cheerfully.
I want to have this conversation.
I understand what you're saying.
We understand that it is propaganda.
Real quick, we understand it is propaganda from it's not propaganda.
This is just how a business runs, right?
You want to find ways to people support your business.
No different.
That being said, we have to truly start asking ourselves, what do we get out of supporting a business that sucks?
It's un-American.
Do you know what it is?
It's socialism.
It's communism.
It's communist.
Supporting a bad basketball team is collusion with Russia.
You are a Russian if you support the Knicks.
You like the Knicks.
You are a fucking Russian, a commie bastard.
You made Chernobyl happen.
There is a Chernobyl happening right now on 32nd Street and 7th Avenue every fucking season.
And we need to put a stop to it.
They need to cover it with that same shit they put over Chernobyl.
The radioactive waves have made their way to Golden State.
It drives me crazy.
We get nothing from it.
Why do we support it?
You have season tickets.
I'm asking this question of myself.
I'm trying to have a come to God moment.
I have to re-up these tickets.
Some bitch named Nancy is going to pick up the phone.
I'm going to ask for better seats.
And she's going to say, well, this is the best we can do.
No, it's not.
It's fucking absurd that we should support a shitty team.
It's not American.
Also, everybody.
We're not Americans about it.
I'm being.
Everybody hates James Dolan.
We're Venezuelans.
This is Venezuelan.
They're eating paper down there.
They are.
They're eating paper.
Shouts Eden.
Shout Said Eden.
Fuck.
Yo, everybody hates James Dolan.
Why would you keep putting money in his pocket?
Starve him out.
I mean, he's not going to starve, but if he stops making money for long enough, he'll be like, you know what?
Maybe I should sell this thing.
That's the only way you get rid of bad ownership.
Quick update.
Golden States Kevin Durant is traveling to New York for doctor evaluations on the intended Achilles right now.
Can he fly on that thing?
I don't know.
But he's on his way to New York right now.
It's better than flying cross-country to the Golden States.
By the time this podcast drops off, it's an hour away.
No, he's traveling to New York.
Traveling is probably cost.
So I am like about to burst a blood vessel over this idea.
It just fucking hit me.
These fascists.
These fucking fascists.
The fan base is the fascists.
Or you're like North Korean supporters.
Or you're like North Korean supporters where you just are so sure.
Like, I got to keep supporting Kim Jong-un.
He's doing right by us.
No, he's not.
You know what's crazy?
That is such a great fucking reference that you made because you know how the Kim Jong-un people, what are they called?
North Koreans?
The North Koreans are like, yeah, Kim Jong-un doesn't even have an asshole.
Like, he doesn't even shit, right?
Like, you know, it's also not believable that the Knicks will ever be good.
The Knicks are going to get KDs.
I actually, it is more believable that Kim Jong-un does not have an asshole because he is so fat.
I don't think he's taken a shit since I started seeing him as the dictator of that country.
Then the Knicks could potentially be good at basketball.
This is...
I'm so depressed, bro.
Good.
Get depressed.
I'm so depressed because it's like...
You got to hit bottom.
The more I think about it, Katie getting hurt, like, it lets Dolan off the hook.
It lets Dolan off the hook.
You always let Dolan off the hook.
No, no, no, no.
This lets him off the hook more than ever because if Katie was healthy and the entire world knew Katie wants to come to the Knicks and he still swung and missed on KD and ended up staying in Golden State, the fire around James Dolan for him to sell the fucking team would have been hotter than that.
He is Daenerys.
Now that's mother of dragons.
There is nothing that can happen to him.
He is impervious to fire.
He doesn't care.
Yes, please.
Kaz will write an entire article calling Magic Johnson to task.
This is a guy who's been around for upwards of a decade and a half.
Never once has he written an article saying, hey, Knicks, fix your shit before I give a fuck again.
You're right.
You've had this powerful time.
You're absolutely right.
You're like the incredible Hulk in the last adventures.
But I know this, though.
But I know the Knicks would be in better shape if they had better ownership.
I know this.
I'm trying to work within this system.
The Knicks, they just rebuild him, man.
I'm trying to work within the system here, and it's not helping.
That is how New York would rebuild some shit.
Magic, it's on union time.
The Knicks rebuild.
Two words.
It's delayed by four years every year.
Oh, my gosh.
I don't know.
I'm just hurt.
I've been hurt.
I've been hurt this past like 12 hours since this whole thing happened.
I don't think I've been this devastated for an injury since like it reminds me of like RG3.
Like the RG3 era when he was on the Redskins and they brought him back quicker than he was supposed to come back.
And like he's not even on my team.
RG3 is a fucking idiot, dude.
I am that meant nothing to me.
Yeah, I know.
And I'm a football fan.
I'm a football fan.
Let me say two things.
My guy's mouth is too big.
He also come out of that.
So when's the last time an injury really was like, damn, he's not even on the team like, damn, that's fucked up.
Kobe.
I'm not.
Probably 30 years.
Kobe had a full fucking career for like five years.
I was still seven.
And to me, is it really affected by this?
RG3 and Derrick Rose.
Those are the only three injuries out there.
You know what?
Actually, Kobe got hurt with at the end of his career.
Thornton Achilles.
Yeah.
But he was also 37, 38.
He was up there in age.
He was old.
You guys want a little scoop?
What's a scoop?
Well, this is what I think.
This is what I think is going down.
I think there's a little power struggle in LA between Kobe and Magic for who's going to own the Lakers.
Really, no?
I think there's a chance that the buses could sell.
And I think that's what Magic and Kobe want to happen.
To be honest.
Now, sorry?
He told it to Bean?
I don't understand.
Let's sell on the Lakers to Kobe.
Kobe Fingering And Career Endings00:02:24
Oh, oh, oh, oh.
Yeah, Kobe being Bryant.
Yeah.
Okay, this is what this is.
This is a little speculation.
I don't have anything that can confirm this specifically, but I've heard little whispers.
Kobe and Magic both want to buy the Lakers.
Together.
No, no.
Separate competition.
Now, neither of them can afford it because both of them are broke when it really comes to owning.
They're not wealthy.
They're not rich.
They're rich to us, but they're not really rich.
Wealthy people laugh at their fortunes.
But there is a company that has the first right of refusal if the Lakers ever choose to sell.
That company is going to need a face for the team.
So you will have a minority ownership, but you will be an owner, similar to like Jay-Z in the next probably owning a much bigger percentage of the team than Jay-Z.
Jay owned like 0.5%.
Similar to when Jordan first bought it with the Wizards.
Right.
So apparently, some people believe that this Palinka meddling with magic is actually Kobe's doing.
And Palinka getting magic out of there opens the door for Kobe.
Kobe fingering this whole thing.
Kobe finger.
Kobe fingering it.
Kobe fingering it, bro.
Kobe fingering is better than Kobe.
Never mind.
Anyway, so that's that's that's a theory.
We'll see how that actually plays out, but that's a theory.
Magic alluded to that, though, when he was on ESPN.
Did he?
Yeah, like he was talking about possible people who would be open for approaching the team.
And he mentioned Kobe, he mentioned himself.
Like, he alluded to that.
I just think they don't want to do it together, at least Kobe doesn't.
Kobe's like, I don't need a partner in this.
No, they're the two alphas.
They're the two alphas.
And Magic, yeah.
Anyway, we'll see what happens.
Who knows?
Who knows exactly.
I was actually about to break out a little bit.
I got to.
Well, I think this is actually a good time to.
How long are we at right now?
An hour.
Because I think this is actually a good time that we break into the Jeremy Pippin conversation.
You know, we spoke about obviously the finals.
Before we bust into that, I just want to say that this weekend I'll be in this weekend, some shows, some Mad Door shows.
Michigan Crowd Goes Crazy00:02:49
Or real quick, let me just say San Francisco, man, and Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Unbelievable, man.
I mean, so cool.
Thank you guys so much for coming out.
It was just crazy.
And the reason why it's so crazy is because Ann Arbor, Michigan is like the Austin of Michigan, right?
It's like the super liberal college town of a conservative spot.
And I love it when comics come to my shows to watch.
And even when the comics are on the shows, they're like, yo, your crowd is amazing.
I'm like, what exactly do you mean?
I know what they mean.
No, but like, they're down for jokes.
They're like not sensitive.
They're not like oohing.
And then, and they're all like, I mean, this is like Ann Arbor.
You know, you can't joke about anything over here.
And you guys were going crazy.
And the same thing with San Francisco.
San Francisco is super sensitive.
Super sensitive.
Super, super, super progressive.
And the comics were like, yo, your crowd is amazing.
You can tell dark jokes, this, the other.
And it's like, we've curated this shit for years.
We basically for years told people, get on board or get the fuck out.
This is what we're going to do.
And I promise you that we have the best crowds in comedy right now.
The most diverse crowds, the best crowds, and the ones that are willing to let us go the furthest with the jokes.
And it's just an amazing thing to happen.
Amazing thing for other people to see as well.
Like when you get to see these comics react.
Like even that kid, the Chernobyl extra.
Son.
There's this kid.
Yeah, he looked like an extra from Chernobyl.
He was on the show.
And even him afterwards, dude, he was coming up and he was just like, dude, it was just great.
Blah, blah, blah.
So it's just, yeah, it's just, I don't know.
I'm just really proud of what we've been able to put together.
And I got to say thank you so much, man, because I've realized this, what happens at all these shows, there's always people who go, hey, man, I'm a huge fan and I brought these five people and they had no clue who you were, you know, but they had a great time, whatever.
And that's how it spreads.
I realized that's how I've gone from a venue that seats 200 to a venue that seats 400.
It's just by people bringing their friends.
And I'm so grateful.
And I know there's people right now listening to this, like, yo, I'm bringing some friends to the show this weekend.
Thank you.
You guys are the influencers.
You guys are the difference makers.
You guys are what take a comedian or a musician or anybody in entertainment from one level to the next.
It's that simple.
It's like everything you put in your group texts and your group chats, all that kind of stuff.
So thank you, man.
The Discord, too, is live.
Thank y'all, man.
The Discord was in the building, man.
You guys have been fucking murdering it.
So anyway, I just was so appreciative, man.
Sold Out Merch And Special Guests00:02:42
Y'all sold out the merch the first fucking day.
We almost sold out all the merch.
Fashion.
The fashion video is still popping.
I really want to have a lot of fun.
We're going to do it.
We're going to do it.
I want to have it with everybody, man.
And y'all can recreate them.
Go for that shit, man.
And, you know, the fashion challenge, go for it.
But, dude, it was so crazy.
Like, there was a feeding frenzy for the merch because the fashion videos, everybody knows about the merge.
So we sold out.
Son, we brought merch for Annabar and San Francisco.
We were almost sold out after Ann Arbor.
We had a few things left for the first day of San Francisco.
We were sold out at the end of the first day.
Wow.
Dude, it was unbelievable.
Massive.
Massive shit.
It's unbelievable.
So shit has been crazy.
It is hot too.
This weekend, come check us out.
Indianapolis, Helium.
Then next weekend, we're going to be at, where are we at next weekend?
Liberty Township, I think, Cincinnati.
And then the weekend after that, Denver.
And then that Sunday, we'll be in Houston.
And then DeAndrew Schultz for any more tickets, dates, et cetera.
We're adding some new cities, some very cool, exciting things to share with you.
But go get those tickets right now.
And don't forget about the New York, Chicago, Toronto, and Boston shows that are all up there available as well.
Those are some big-ass theaters.
Let's go sell them out.
Got some things to plug.
Yeah, this weekend, Atlanta, Georgia, Masquerade, we got Walk a Flock of Flame headlining at Duce Palooza in Atlanta.
There's a little bit of tickets left, so make sure you go to DucePaloos.com slash tickets and get those.
The week after that, we'll be in Los Angeles, June 22nd at the Velasco Theater.
Get your tickets, DucePaluz.com.
And Essence Fest, we will be in New Orleans July 5th at the House of Blues.
You know, we got a lot of special guests for that one coming out.
And it's a special start time, too.
It starts at 11.59 p.m.
It starts at midnight.
So as soon as Essence Fest day one is over, hop over to House of Blues.
We're going to be doing that until 5 a.m.
So get a lot of sleep or just don't sleep at all.
And this Thursday, I'll be making my debut on SNY's The Thread at 5 p.m.
I'll be a panelist on there.
So, you know, I'm getting my sports talk on over there for about a half hour.
So if you got SNY in the New York area on Verizon or Comcast or Spectrum, whatever, tune in there.
It should be a good show.
And yeah, all that good shit.
I'm good.
Yo, so check it.
Real quick, just because we're doing this on the anniversary of the flu game.
I remember we were having a conversation.
I don't know if it was on the Patreon or if it was on this, but I was talking about how maybe Steph was poisoned.
So apparently what Grover said.
Tim Grover.
Yeah, Tim Grover said that.
Introducing Tim Grover Guest00:04:39
You're right.
I forgot this.
Yeah, so Tim Grover said the rumor was that Mike was out drinking late and then he was really hungover.
And that was a flu game.
But what Tim Grover, who was Michael Jordan's trainer, said was that Mike ordered a pizza at like 2 a.m.
Yeah, to his hotel room.
And they thought it was weird that five guys delivered it.
Not five guys like the burger, but five different human beings delivered the pizza.
And then within like the next couple hours, he was like throwing up all over the place.
Couldn't sleep for a dick on the pizza.
Son, they poisoned that motherfucker.
The Mormons poisoned Mike, bro.
And then he dropped 38.
Legend.
Fucking legend, bro.
Anyway.
I got to break out.
Anyway, yeah.
So listen, guys, without further ado, we have Jeremy Piven.
We chop it up.
It's a very interesting conversation, touching on all forms of his life, career, what we've all got going on.
Get into comedy.
He's pursuing stand-up right now.
And I really hope you like it, man.
Let us know how you feel.
Thank y'all so much for supporting this.
And then we'll see you over at the Patreon, man.
I love y'all.
We're appreciative.
Keep it tight.
Peace out.
We got a very special guest.
Very special guest.
We've had a lot of special guests recently, man.
It just keeps on getting better.
We're on a ride right now.
I think we really are.
This guest, I'm going to give you a good intro because I think that you happen to accomplish something in television that is very rare.
I can only think of one other time that's been done where A side character becomes the main character.
And the only other time I can remember it being done was Dwayne Wayne in A Defense.
Different world.
Fucking great reference.
That's a very strong.
Great reference.
And that only happened because Lisa Bonet got pregnant.
But I also think it happened because it was straight, he bodied that role.
So we started watching it for the show.
The first season was, I'm like, oh, Different World stand low-key.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The first season was not good.
It was like all the time.
I'm so confused.
Was this a good one?
Well, let me introduce you, bro.
Let me introduce you.
Right now, we got Jeremy Pivot in the building.
That's a legendary.
Now, some of y'all know him as Ari Gold from Entourage.
And it was that Ari character, which I think initially starts as this side character, and then you found the series kind of wrap around you.
Yeah.
Yeah, but that to me is a metaphor for all of our journeys in the way that, you know, it's interesting.
When I started that role, I was 37 years old.
I won the Fresh Face of the Year Award.
There was nothing fresh about my face.
Literally, I was 40 movies into the game.
I was starring in shows and producing and blah, blah, blah.
And just let this be a lesson to you in the way that this thing came along and it was one scene in the pilot.
You know what I mean?
And it was like, look, even my representative said, why would you do this?
We have opportunities to produce shows and do the lead and blah, blah, blah.
And you have to put your ego aside and all the preconceived notions of where you think you should be.
Do you have any idea who I think I am?
No, it doesn't matter.
What's the best show?
What's the best opportunity?
Where are you going to do your best work?
Where will it be seen in the best light?
And HBO had, you know, Sopranos and Sex in the City and all these great shows.
And that, and, and, and I knew that Wahlberg's life would be fascinating.
And I knew there was a real drama E-Turtle.
There's a real entourage there.
And there's a real Ari.
And so I...
Arianu, right?
Ari Emanuel, yeah.
Who, I mean, you guys deal with sports as well.
He's good in the sports world.
Yeah, yeah.
And he's crushing the game.
And I knew that if we did it right, that we would capture people's attention because people all want to know about the back.
That's why this show does well.
Of course.
People want to know about the backstage life of sports, entertainment, everything.
So how pissed was Adrian Grenier or E?
What's the guy's name who plays it?
I don't even know his name.
Good guy.
What's his name?
What's the guy's name who plays it?
Damon's.
Wait, hold on.
Somebody.
Jerry Ferrara.
No, not Jack Damon's brother.
Kevin Dillon.
No, E, the redhead.
Oh.
Kevin Connolly.
Kevin Connolly.
Yeah, yeah.
Bro, I thought he was one of the hobbits for so long.
I kept on mixing him up with the other Game of Thrones.
Oh, damn, I thought that was Rudy.
That's Rudy.
That's Rudy.
I know they're not Rudy.
None of us are very tall.
Let's get that out of the way right now.
I'm trying to breed up right now.
I'm looking for a woman with height.
Let's go.
You know what I'm saying?
A better hairline, a vertical, something anything.
Let's go.
No, listen.
They had to be tight.
No, no.
You have one scene in the pilot, and by the, let's say, second, third season, you're the main storyline.
Look, you know, it isn't my concern.
Bar Mitzvah Stand-Up Memories00:06:53
I'll tell you what doesn't concern me.
Yeah.
Other people's salary.
Yeah.
Other people's expectations, disappointments.
Right.
You're going full Kawhi Leonard on us right now.
Hold on.
No, no, seriously, because, you know what?
If I don't want to know what anyone else makes, it's not my business, man.
You know what I mean?
It really isn't.
I'm not just saying, I'm just like, I'm just going to keep it real right now.
I have to.
You know, I have no other way.
This isn't me trying to be seen in any way.
This is just who I am.
So I have no idea what their perception of me was.
I have no idea what anyone made.
There's no resentment.
There's no jealousy.
You know what, man?
Listen, if anyone was to be jealous, you know, it's like, where does that come from?
That, you know, that's the manifestation of insecurity.
We're going to go really deep right now.
We're artists, man.
We're insecure, bro.
We're all insecure.
100%.
We're not.
Everybody gets for validation because we feel so good about it.
Listen, I like that Ayana fix my life answer you're giving us right now, but I need to know were they jealous or not?
They were jealous, bro.
I still call him the hobbit.
That's how you know they're jealous, bro.
Listen, let me just tell you how crazy the world works.
All right, go right now.
Kevin Connolly, who you refer to, is an incredibly prolific director who we would all like to hire us.
So, what I'm saying is, you know, before you throw those stones, my man, and I've seen your stand-up and you're a killer.
That's why I'm here.
Appreciate it.
Because I've watched your stuff and you're just inspiring and you're doing your thing.
And one of the watch this transition.
One of the great things about stand-up is that you get to write your own story.
It's in the first rodeo.
I'm going to smooth since the days of Underwriter.
No, look at you, you're in an arena where you don't.
It's like you look at Ricky Gervais and he basically says these things like, look, man, I don't care if these people hate me.
Fuck you.
I write my own stuff.
Fuck you, Monday.
You know what I mean?
So you do your own thing.
You don't need to be okay to fuck you art dudes.
It's not even fucking studio or anyone.
As you said to me off camera, you know, it's supply and demand.
You're good.
You bring the people in.
You eat.
And that's what I love about this game.
It's like it's stand-up.
It's so real.
There's more, dude.
Admit, when you leave the acting world where you're auditioning and you go into the stand-up world where you have, for the first time, a little bit of control in what happens that weekend, isn't it a little bit intoxicating?
Yeah, it completely is.
It's a lot of things.
It's intoxicating.
It's addictive.
It's terrifying.
Why terrifying?
It's terrifying because I mean, you have to understand, I haven't been doing it very long, but my learning curve is strong because I've been on the stage since I was eight years old as an actor.
So I've got 40 years on the stage.
So I'm very comfortable and it's my home.
Now, you know, how do I dig deep every day, sit with guys like you, and just, you know, I'm in graduate school, learn, put my ego aside, talk to everyone that's featuring, hosting whatever.
I'm shooting a documentary about it.
Good.
You know, so I'm learning at the speed of light.
And people, so it says a lot about you that the first question that any of you didn't have is, how long have you been doing stand-up?
Yeah.
And there's something about stand-ups, and I get it.
And you're so protective of your space, and I get it because you've had to grind forever.
But the reality is, if I told you the exact amount of time I did stand-up, it wouldn't match up to what you're going to see because I have so much respect for the game.
That was my next question.
I mean, like, stand-up is a lot like rap music.
Like, you know, if somebody's as popular as you who has played such an iconic role on TV comes and sees Andrew go do stand-up, a lot of times people aren't that inviting because like, oh, here comes this guy.
Well, did you get any of that when you started getting your stand-up?
You're trying to get hate, right?
Yeah.
You know, you know what?
You know what's interesting is that, and again, I'm not just saying this.
I swear to you, it motivates me.
It just, there's nothing better than, you know, one time I want to lose his job.
I'm not going to take in his pages.
Every time you open that script, you're like, oh, he only got four pages.
I got him.
Let me make fun of this Chinese guy.
Do you know that, I'll tell you, I'll tell you, I'll blow your mind even further about Entourage really quickly.
Everything that I said was written so that think about how improvisational it looked and I'm not celebrating myself.
I guess I am.
But it's our job to make it.
You can blow your mind for a second.
I'm amazing.
No, no, no.
What I mean by that was, what I mean by that was, it's just simply our job to make everything look improvisational.
That's what it felt like, bro.
And that's what you do.
So in order to do that, if you don't own the lines, And if you don't own them to the point where you can then be totally present in the scene and not have to be reaching for a line or whatever, if you're totally present and you're really playing off the other person and you have all the specifics of all that stuff, what you need, want, fear, blah, blah, blah.
And if you can be totally present, then that's why everyone's like, oh, you were just making that up.
It was a documentary.
It's like, no, that was written.
It wasn't a documentary.
It was written.
And there's someone there literally looking at the script.
And if I were, yeah, man, I'm Jewish.
And it's just like all the songs.
It starts like my bar mitzvah.
It's like, you know, every day was my bar mitzvah.
You want to go to heaven?
You better get these ports, right?
I wrapped my Haftorah portion because I was one of the only white boys growing up.
So explain for people who don't know, when you're at the first time.
So during your bar mitzvah, you have to take part of the Old Testament.
I think everybody gets their own little piece of the Torah.
Of the Torah, right?
And they call it the Haftorah portion.
And for those of those Gentiles out there, the Goyam, there you go.
Wow.
Okay.
He's an annoyingly cultured person.
No, no, no.
I got him say something.
I'm like, yo, how the fuck do you know that?
I've been to a lot of bar mitzvahs.
I'm not surprised by any of this.
So it's a rite of passage for young men and women, botan bar mitzvahs.
And I got up there and I was a terrible student, man, because people don't realize that it's a very difficult language.
You're 12 years old.
You're a child and you're learning Hebrew.
I wanted to be the first Jewish linebacker, but there aren't any five foot nine linebackers anywhere, anywhere, literally.
So I was very much, you know, a delusional kid.
And my rabbi said to me, you're terrible.
You're not going to make it.
Awesome Character Reputation Issues00:08:09
And I was like, what does that mean?
And so he's like, look, I heard that you can freestyle and you can rap.
And I was like, I was like, what?
He said, because you have to understand when you do your Haftorah portion, it is the weirdest cadence.
It just, it's so strange.
You've never heard anything like it.
It's the hardest thing you could even wrap your mind around.
Do you remember?
So I had to wrap mine.
So I was like, till the sweat runs off my balls.
Ah, ski, ski, ski, ski.
My neck, my back, my pussy.
Yeah, no.
There was no pussy.
There was no.
See, that's another thing I heard about you.
I heard you.
My back.
Everything's covered from the head.
What is the comic in you?
That's the comic in you.
Go for it.
I love it.
I gotta go for that shooter.
I gotta go for it.
Shoot a shooter.
My neck, my back.
Cover your yarmulke and your back or something like that.
He's writing it down.
He's writing it down.
I like where you're going with that tag.
I came to take notes.
I always take notes.
Anyway, man.
Yeah.
Now let's fit.
No, go ahead.
Keep going.
So, yeah, so we're just in this interesting time.
Glad to have you here because I thought, I don't want to harp on entourage too much, but it was one of these things where I often think about characters that I see where people fall in love with the character so much that they create an expectation of that character for who you are.
Yeah, that was the one first mindfuck.
Because you're so that character to me.
Boom.
So you see what this is?
So it's like, I'm like, all right, this is the I.
So like, it's like Andrew Dice Clay, right?
Yeah.
Dice is not dice.
Dice is a Jewish kid from Brooklyn that turned into dice because people kept treating him like this character he invented.
Right.
Right.
Even like Ross from Friends.
I don't know Ross, but he's Ross.
Right.
So it's like you became so synonymous with this character.
Do you feel like this expectation when you're on stage to be Ari?
Well, I am.
Or even also, yeah.
I address it right away.
I'd love for you to see my set because that's the last thing you want to do is see another guy's set.
No, but I'm actually curious.
That would be awesome.
That would be awesome.
One of the first things I have to address that right away, you know, and talk about the misconceptions and then be self-deprecating and show different situations in which people they just can't separate the two.
And which is, which, by the way, is totally fine with me and funny.
But once I tell the audience how absurd it gets, it's really, it's kind of comical because, you know, I had a dude come up to me in Jersey.
He's like, bro, by the way, bro, I'm a big fucking, I'm a big fucking fan.
I go, thank you, brother.
He goes, I'm a douchebag because of you.
No.
That's my legacy.
Really?
Absolutely.
That's a good question.
I had a couple questions about that.
That character is so magnetic and big, but like one question is off stage, people not only expect Ari Gold, especially in that time, but they reward you for acting like that.
So if you give them what they want to, I would assume if you can just like be a little mean, be a little dickheaded, be honest.
No, no, no.
Here's the most fascinating thing about what you just said.
Okay, okay.
They may want me to be Ari Gold, but the reality is, if I walk out of this door and I am a reactive asshole to people, I will get that detention slip.
I will be in page six tomorrow.
So the duality is that's fascinating is they think they want me to do it, but they don't actually want me to do it.
And if I do it, believe me, I'm the bad guy.
Did you have to learn that the hard part of it?
Yeah.
All right.
Wait, what happened?
What happened?
Oh, my God.
How much time do you have?
Well, I mean, look, that's the only way I can pay it.
I mean, look, I'll just give you one example that'll kind of illustrate my point.
And by the way, I'm just a stage actor from Chicago.
So, you know, by the time this hit, by the time Entourage hit, I was a grown man who had been, you know, working as a journeyman actor that had been working steadily my whole life.
Right.
So then this thing hits, and I never expected because, you know, I just didn't, I didn't think it through.
I didn't think, okay, you're going to be in people's living rooms, and it could be for multiple years.
They may, my mom saw it coming, but I didn't.
They may tie you to this character, and then they may vilify you based on the authenticity of the character, right?
But I had no.
This is interesting because he's such a departure from who you played before.
I was actually a fan.
Whenever I saw you in a movie or something, I'd be like, yo, I love this guy.
Thank you.
But keep young.
Yeah, what's funny is I never played a character with any power until then.
I was playing, you know, Nick Cage's best friend, Cuzak's best friend, Schlumpy, you know, plus ones.
You know, and then that was when white guys could play those roles.
Now we're off camera waiting in the car.
You guys need to think.
I'm not going to make some sandwiches.
We had a good run, bro.
I'm a closeted gay.
Every character I audition for is closeted gay.
There you go.
If I'm not straight gay, like completely out of the closet, it has to be closeted gay.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah.
But anyway, go back to what you were saying.
So you have this experience.
So I'm smash cut to like, I'm with my mom and we're at a restaurant and we're hanging out and we're leaving and there was a bunch of paparazzi outside.
My mom was very confused by it and it was overwhelming and whatnot.
So we had a great time.
And it's always good.
To this day, you know, I talk about this on stage that I run lines with my mom.
And just imagine like, you know, everything I said is already golden said to my mom's face, which is insane.
So I do a whole bit about that.
But so we had a great time.
And then in the paper, it said that I was yelling at my mother so badly that people had to get up and leave.
And I've been banned for life from the restaurant.
And my mom called me up and goes, what did I miss?
And I'm like, mom, you didn't miss anything.
You were with me the whole night.
And my mom is from another generation.
She was from, she's from a time when, you know, there had to be a kernel of truth in order for them to publish it in the paper.
We're talking about a woman that's, you know, seen it all.
And so she had no reference for this type of insanity where they can just literally go, yeah.
And so I call, my buddy was, you know, runs the restaurant.
And he wasn't there that night.
He rang up the staff and they're like, and it said I've been banned for life.
And he called up the staff and staff was like, oh, no, no, we love Jeremy.
He's, you know, he was great.
He was here with his mom last night.
And so he called up the paper and said, no, no, you know, I run the restaurant.
This never happened.
That's my guy.
He's, he's not banned for life, blah, blah, blah.
And they said, we have reliable sources.
He goes, I run the restaurant.
So my point.
My guy's already made it away around the world before the truth even puts his pants on.
That's what Charlemagne says.
Always say, yeah, the lie.
No one believes the truth if the lie is more interesting.
Yeah, that's heavy.
That's heavy.
But Martin Luther King said, no lie can last forever.
So take that motherfucker.
Damn right.
I like that shit.
There we go.
And I have to name it.
And he trumped my black guy.
I was like, Charlamagne, yeah, Martin Luther King motherfucker.
MLK, bitch.
No, so that was a trip to just go, oh, wait a minute.
Okay.
The game is rigged.
Okay.
This is interesting.
And, you know, so it's been interesting.
Does Hollywood make a decision?
Like, I hate this Illuminati version of Hollywood or politics that we put out there.
LeBron James And Rigged Games00:11:40
But like, sometimes it seems, like, I'm one of these guys where like sometimes my reputation precedes me, right?
And my reputation hasn't been the best, right?
So, and it's always poor amongst people who I've never met.
Right?
So anytime I hear bad things about somebody that I haven't met, I give them the benefit of the doubt, right?
Because I know what it's like to be that guy, per se.
But do you think that there are people in Hollywood or these different industries that make a decision about you and then kind of coalesce behind that?
Absolutely.
Like a revisionist history, if you will.
Oh, for sure.
For sure.
And, you know, but that's been going on forever.
And I get that.
And yeah, whenever I sit down with someone and meet them, the response is always, oh, okay, that's not what I expected.
I'm never what they're doing.
You're not that bad.
Yeah.
No, not at all.
I'm just literally a journeyman actor from Chicago that's been doing my thing.
And, you know, I like to work hard.
And, you know, sometimes that can stir things up in people.
And man, am I not perfect?
And I've had some bad moments.
But yeah, it's a trip, but it's your job to not focus on how you're perceived.
You know what I mean?
And it's easier said than done, especially when it's being done, you know, on a on a massive scale.
Do you know what I mean?
It's not easy.
But if you can think of it like, okay, well, what a great gift because I need to rise.
I need to realize that that's not real.
I know what's real.
I have to hold on to the truth.
And instead of being a slave to your fears and your thoughts and fires and all that bullshit.
Yeah.
And trying to be loved by people you don't know, just try to be the best person you possibly can.
Yeah, there's a Kaz brought out a great point about LeBron James, right?
We were talking about LeBron James out.
He has this media platform, right?
And he's the first athlete that we've seen take their narrative or take control of their own narrative.
Yeah.
Right.
So easily back in the day, especially like in Hollywood, it's like, okay, we don't like this guy anymore.
We're writing this guy off or this girl.
We're writing this guy off.
And then you can't do anything because there was no Instagram.
There was no Twitter.
You didn't have your own outlet.
And now with social media and the extreme version is what LeBron has done with Jeff Bezos has done with the Washington Post.
You can literally put out your own story.
It is called your Instagram story.
So anything that comes out, anything that comes out about you, right, you can combat in real time if you need to and write that shit.
Right.
And I think the most powerful thing about being a comic is that if you can do something with humor, you win.
There's no tool more powerful.
So say whatever you want about me.
If I can make that thing funny, it doesn't matter how scandalous it is, you lose.
Right.
And I mean, you can see.
Cecilia and us both use words for a living.
We're both trained with words, but our words are trained to be funny.
And that sword is just sharper.
Medicine in the candy.
Track more bees with honey, man.
Yeah, and humor is the honey right there.
And you can see LeBron, like even LeBron not being in the playoffs this year, like he's really upticked the content that he's putting out.
Fun family stuff.
Taco Tuesday.
There is that video going on.
Tuesday, the fucking shop and shit.
All the shows, everything is 100% planned.
People give a shit about it, but I'm like, yo, if I had that fucking power, hell yeah, I want to control my narrative.
Hell yeah, I want to put out shit that I want people to see, especially if I'm that big and powerful as an athlete.
Like, why wouldn't you?
So that's the shit that we got to do now because there's going to be situations where, you know, a version of our path might be a little bit more blurry or misrepresented.
You know what I'm saying?
I do know what you're saying.
And yeah, I would like nothing more than to be understood.
You know what I mean?
That would be fantastic.
That's on you.
That's the beauty of what you're doing now.
Stand-up is literally telling your own story.
It's not somebody else writing the words.
Entourage, everybody wrote every word you said.
Testament to you for making it seem like you just hate everybody.
Stand up.
Now you can explain yourself exactly like Andrew said with humor.
And then everybody walks away believing that.
Or with confusion.
Like, look, Chappelle did it better than anybody else, right?
Like, Chappelle created mystery, right?
I'm going to go to South Africa.
If you don't think Chappelle knew every single step of what he was doing, this is a brilliant man, right?
He understands the value in mystery.
He created mystery.
He created exclusivity.
He created scarcity, right?
Instead of screaming to the mountaintops where he's going to be, he's like, I don't know where I'm going to be.
I'm just going to pop up randomly.
And then once he started putting out dates, people are like, we have the opportunity to see him?
Oh, my God.
Right?
And then he's like off lights.
Exactly.
He's like a hot sneaker, right?
Steve's hypebeasting.
Boom.
And then when he puts out the special where he alludes to what happens with Comedy Central, he doesn't say exactly.
He just does a kind of metaphor for what the pimp.
The pimp diary.
The pimp analogy.
All that stuff.
Oh my gosh, it was great.
And everybody is like hanging on every drop of his last word.
And immediately Comedy Central becomes this big bad boogeyman.
And he is the hero's journey, if you will, that has ended up being victorious because he made that 50 million back and some, right?
But here's a perfect example.
a guy who took it, you know, took control of his own story.
It was very easy if he just bowed out for him to just be that crazy guy that went to Africa.
And yet, if he didn't come back with his sword as sharp as it was, if he didn't come back with truly no fear and illuminating what's going on right now in our culture where no very few men, if any, are willing to speak that truth, then it doesn't matter that he's being secretive.
Because if he didn't come back with that game that is just rarefied air, you know what I mean?
Where he's talking about stuff that it's very difficult for men to approach.
And he's like, look, here's the way it is.
Sorry, guys.
And that was the first of it.
When he first came back, like, the first special wasn't that great.
And he talks about it in the second special.
The first special wasn't that great.
And, you know, all the people seeing the jokes like, oh, my God, we can't believe he's talking about it.
It's like, bro, this is Chappelle Speaker.
Not Aegis Bin.
The first Netflix special that came out.
Yeah, it was Aegis Spin.
I thought that shit was amazing.
The one that came after that, that and the, I forgot the Bird Revelation.
Agent Spin.
Deep in the Heart of Texas.
To me, the Bird Revelation is that's brilliant.
That's fucking incredible.
That's one for the ages.
You know, that you just put in a time capsule and go, okay.
That's his live and smoking.
Yeah.
I think he did that very intentionally because he talked about live and smoking.
I don't know where.
In the context of live and smoking.
So live and smoking.
So I don't remember where I saw Chappelle talking about this, but he said his favorite comedy special was Richard Pryor Live and Smoking.
It's from like 1970, whatever.
And he goes, honestly, he bombs the entire special.
But at the end of the special, they show his set list from that special.
And a lot of those bits go on to be classic Richard Pryor bits.
And he said, that's my favorite special of all time.
And I think Bird Revelation is his live and smoking.
Yeah.
This is my live and smoking.
And he had to earn it, right?
It's like, no new comic could go up there and then get a laugh every minute or two because they were just talking and building a world.
I think that first special, we were just happy to see him.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
But he also has the equity and the confidence in the audience.
It's like what we always talk about stand-up is like, if you can train an audience that every time they feel anxious, there's a positive reward at the end of it, they enjoy the anxiety, right?
It's Pavlovian.
It's great.
Where are we going?
Exactly.
But they know it's going to pay off.
Exactly.
So it's like that same feeling of when a comic is bombing and you're an audience member, you're up there like, this feels so awful.
If there's no reward, you hate it.
But if there's a reward, that awful feeling kicks in.
You're like, oh, it's about to go down.
You know what it is?
When you know there's a reward, it's at the top of the roller coaster.
The tick, You know the fun is coming.
Boom.
So those butterflies that you feel inside, you tend to enjoy them.
And when Chappelle is up there and he's building up those butterflies, you notice that there's a calm in the audience.
If you ever watch him live, right?
And you watch really good guys live, not guys that rely only on momentum, but guys that can create a calm within their crowd, right?
Like Tony Woods is like a master of this, right?
It's like, we're just hanging out.
Imagine you could make 3,000 people think that you could just hang out.
Exactly.
And he basically took all that equity that he built up over his whole career and he put it into that one special and actually spoke to us.
It was the fucking shit.
So are you that premeditated with your sets in terms of with your bits that you know, let me just kind of play this out a little longer than drop it on them?
Are you that premeditated?
So for me, it always starts off kind of like ranting, right?
I'll have one idea and then I'll roll with this idea.
And I'm just kind of throwing things at a board.
It's almost like abstract art in a way.
I'm just like yelling tags and a lot of momentum building.
I'm just yelling shit, everything that can go with it.
And then after I stretch that bit out and get everything I can, I start finding out where the real laughs are.
So like a bit that I'll stand up doing, I'll like one night sit down.
And when I'm sitting, I can't really perform it.
So I'll find out where each funny line really is.
And then I'll find out how I can build as much tension before that line to get the most juice out of the orange.
Right?
So a lot of guys are just walking over their punchlines.
I don't want, I want that alley thrown as high as possible.
So when it's dunked, one thing I learned from Andrew very early, we came up together, and he's obviously just so good so quickly, I was the power he used, the power in silence, I actually picked up from Andrew is like, he was always good, even a year in, at being really quiet and just letting it be okay.
Build.
And that takes a lot of confidence.
I would freak out.
This is like a newer thing for me finally being like, yo, it's cool.
It's cool.
But that for me, there is that panic initially, and that's why I'm just going, going, going.
But it's once I find the bit.
I don't feel panicked once I know that there's the punchline here and how they're going to react to it.
So you're kind of writing jokes backwards.
Always.
It's like you know where you're getting to, and then you just kind of go back.
Okay, how can I?
Especially with a story.
Like, once I have the end of the story, that one minute story becomes seven minutes.
Got it.
Got it.
Right?
Because now we're just having fun.
Like, there's a bit right now in the act that Alex has seen this from, that's Alex, right?
Alex has seen, you see, he's seen this bit from it being maybe 30 seconds to 10.
Now it could be 10 minutes.
Because I know the end.
So I know the out.
There's no anxiety.
We know where it ends.
We know the reaction.
Now it's just how much fun can we have in this world we set up?
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
And that punchline that you know is strong enough to build to is something that will illuminate a kind of a universal truth that they hadn't thought about that you know is going to crush them.
Or come out of absolutely nowhere that they couldn't have seen.
Yeah.
Right?
Like bait and switch or whatever.
Bait and switch misdirect, but it can misdirect in a way that like it speaks to something or misdirect in something you set up in the beginning.
Like sometimes you plant a seed real early.
Spoken Needs After Twenty Years00:04:51
They forget that it's planted.
Right.
And then you see that seed come to people.
Right.
He talks about it in the sun.
I'm so good at this.
I'm going to tell you the punchline.
Oh, yeah.
It's like kicked her in the pussy.
He goes all the way back.
And then he comes right back at the end of the show.
He's like, see, I told you I'm on the end of the kids.
A gem he gave me, just because he's just the friendliest dude.
We're not like friends by any stretch, but I just met him once and I remembered his inside the actor studio.
He said going to theater school, acting school helped him be a better comic.
And I said, how?
And he goes, you just learn little things.
Like one time a teacher was talking about us and he was just holding up a remote control and he was just like, everybody look at the remote control.
And then he keeps talking about us about everything.
He just keeps moving the remote control.
And then he just keeps talking and keep talking.
And suddenly, it was some story like that.
And he was like, that was a big lesson for me.
And I was like, yeah.
Then in my head, I was like, what the fuck are you talking about?
And then I saw him.
I was about to say, what the fuck is that?
I saw him go on stage at the comic strip that night, does four hours.
And at one point, he starts talking about all this shit, Jack Johnson, and how like John McCain only ran on this platform because something happened with Jack Johnson.
You know who Jack Johnson was?
He was a great white.
He used to, black, heavyweight boxer, used to knock out white dudes, only love white women.
They threw him in jail on the man act.
That's what they got Elliot Spitzer on.
And then he gets whole all conspiracy theory shit.
And he goes, like, I'm not even going to tell y'all what I think about 9-11.
Like, you want to know what I thought about 9-11?
You know who I think did 9-11?
And everybody's like, yeah, tell us here.
I was like, all right, fine.
Ashton Kutcher.
Like, the whole thing is one big punk episode.
So all this was just bullshit.
All this conspiracy theory stuff is just waving the remote or the phone.
And his remote is actually his cigarette.
Interesting.
So, like, if you see how he uses the cigarette on stage, right?
It's like, okay, let me milk this moment.
If I just stare at you as an audience, you're going to get uncomfortable.
But if I look up and I take a deep drag of the cigarette and I blow it out and I tap it, right?
It's just how I build this.
What is he going to say?
So, like, everything with him is calculated, man.
It's like use of his voice.
Yeah, and yet.
Nobody talks like that.
I don't use it.
I don't care where you're from.
Hey, that's not an accent.
Bitch.
But it is the most compelling sounding voice.
Right?
Like, we love the sound of that.
You know, it's really funny is when I drink too much, I fall into the Chappelle's cadence.
That's how.
I told him that.
He's like, me too.
God damn it.
But isn't it funny that, or interesting, that as great as he is, to me, the bird revelation, which I asked him about it, and he said, I said, how long did it take you to come up with that?
And he said, like, three months.
But he was ready for that moment because there's no rust on him.
It took him 20 years to come up with that.
Correct.
Let's be honest.
Well, it did, but it took him 20 years to be ready for that moment because everything that he was talking about was in our consciousness in that moment, you know, that was happening in real time.
Right.
So that he was able to comment on that.
It's tapping into the zeitgeist.
Yeah, in such a brilliant way.
That's the difference between comics that write and don't write, right?
People go, oh, but you got these old jokes.
It's not about your jokes being old.
It's just you're not addressing culture.
When you write new jokes, a lot of times it doesn't matter what they're about, but you're speaking about things in a way that needs to be spoken about, right?
So I can talk about fucking bananas or Michael Jackson.
It doesn't really matter, but I'll speak about it in a way that the ecosystem needs.
Like for the last special, that the ecosystem needed, at least for me, I thought they needed like political incorrectness.
Like everything was too safe.
Everything was too PC.
Everything was too network.
Right.
So I was like, oh, man, we need to push back and talk about all these things.
You can't create that if you're not writing new, right?
You have to be able to speak on it.
And you should, man.
Like, you have a lot of stuff that needs to be spoken on.
Now, whether you develop the skill set to speak on the really difficult things is up to you and the amount of time you put in.
But you got a lot to talk about.
I do.
And what's crazy is that we're living in a time right now where the variable for the media is clicks.
And it's not about the due diligence and checking on the validity of a source.
It's like we got to be first.
And there's no honor amongst thieves.
They just want to get it out there.
Man, I learned this from Skip Bayless.
He was talking about what he talks on when he tweets stuff.
Golden Goose Target Problem00:06:16
He doesn't even read comments.
He just looks at the insights and see if it spikes.
He's going with it.
That's what he's going with.
It's not even like.
He doesn't care if he's right, wrong, whatever, as long as it got more impressions.
That's what he's going to do.
And have you been, you've been fucked over by that?
100%.
Irreparable.
I don't know.
Remains to be seen.
Really?
Remains to be seen.
Now, this is the Me Too shit.
Correct.
And as DL said to me, you took one for the team.
Really?
Oh, yeah.
Interesting.
Wow.
Yeah, I'm a case of collateral damage.
It was you got lumped in with the bad guys.
Correct.
And we're cleaning house.
We're getting all the.
Not only we clean it.
Well, yeah, we're cleaning house.
This guy is an easy target.
He is a very powerful agent, right?
He is.
Right?
Because think about this.
It's very easy if you've created this, you know, I've created this character.
Now, they had just taken down another powerful Hollywood guy.
What's another power for Holly guy?
I'm just, I am a journeyman actor.
Just play one of those.
Stage actor.
I grew up in extreme poverty.
My parents are theater actors.
I grew up in a retirement home.
I am a Jewish stage actor.
There is no white privilege.
There has never been any white privilege.
I did 40 movies before I did entourage where I'm playing blah, blah, blah, you know, his best friend.
We are getting scale plus 10 and I'm grinding and I wouldn't change a thing.
Okay.
So I've earned every crumb I've ever, you know, in my entire life.
You know, I've auditioned for all those roles.
And then unbeknownst to me, you play a big major Hollywood guy, you know, who is very abrasive.
And we all know those people.
They exist.
And they're not so fun.
It's fun to watch, but we don't really want to be around them.
Let's be honest.
I mean, that's why you put on TV.
It's entertaining.
Correct.
You know what I'm saying?
So that's an easy target to take a shot.
Who wouldn't believe the story?
Not only who wouldn't believe it, but who wouldn't rally behind to take that guy down?
Because you must be him.
Right.
Right.
And every time we see you, you're doing these abrasive, brash things.
You're speaking about women in a certain way.
So why wouldn't you do that in your regular life?
Characters are real.
Correct.
That's what I was saying earlier about you become this character, right?
It is so synonymous with who you are.
So any behavior within that character becomes believable within your life.
Now.
Do you regret any of it?
Like with that's a specific thing.
It's so tied to that character.
But do you think it was targeted?
Do you think it was a specific target?
Because I look at guys like Louie and shit like that, and I'm like, none of these girls offered information.
They were contacted.
That means that there is a strike.
That means somebody said, you know who we're getting today?
We're getting Louie.
This is the story.
Figure out the evidence to support it.
Like some college essay.
And we've heard.
Do you think that that same thing was with you where they were like, hey, this is the story?
How do we prove it?
They think about this for a second.
Who benefits from putting that story out?
What is the variable?
How much, as you just said, your buddy, it's all about the clicks, right?
So the problem was it was a feeding frenzy.
And the editors basically said, go out there.
Get me more.
Get me more.
Get me those Hollywood actors.
You know what I mean?
Let's round them up.
But the problem is now is that the audience has, you know, they've worn out that they're not, they're looking at it going, well, who are you taking down now?
So you see some shit.
It's like, oh, and so, and so it's almost like, you know, when it's on, here's the biggest tragedy of what's happened is because of that and because of opportunists coming out of the woodwork, the real victims are taking a step back.
And that, forget about me, I'm just some random dude that got taken down.
I took one for the team.
Forget about me.
I'm just one dumb life.
Who cares, right?
It was only my whole life that I put towards acting.
It doesn't matter.
Right?
Just put me aside.
You know, I just, you know, just put, it's all good.
That shit hit me in my stomach.
Okay.
Right.
But what's more important than that is that, you know, it's a deep misuse of.
Abuse of power.
Yeah, it really is.
And now what's happened is, if you notice, they'll try that stuff.
They tried it with Tony Robbins.
You know what I mean?
It keeps happening.
What you don't hear about is that Jeffrey Rush, Academy Award winner Jeffrey Rush, just took the Australian, the Telegraph to court over his Me Too stuff and won.
And won, and they paid him for all the money that he lost because you don't see any of it.
No, no, of course you don't see it.
Wait, hold on a second.
Think about that.
The first actual, we're not talking about the court of public opinion.
We're talking about an actual court, and none of us have heard about it.
And it just happened.
We don't want that stuff because it messes with the golden goose.
Doesn't do clicks.
What's the golden goose?
No, no, it's not about it.
What's the golden goose?
The golden goose has been, yeah, it's been the scandal.
The scandal is the golden goose.
But the problem.
Every accusation is a golden egg.
Right.
But it's lost its momentum now.
And people, they see it and they go, I don't know if we can believe this stuff anymore, man.
It's every day you're taking down a new dude.
And they're shutting off.
Now, what's reality for me?
Controlling The Narrative Chaos00:03:01
Reality for me is every morning I have to check in and go deep and go inward and understand and own the truth and operate like that.
You can't be a slave to your thoughts and your fears.
Otherwise, you'll be in deep trouble.
That's why people really go off the rails.
And when I go on the road and I'm selling out these rooms and I'm standing up there with nothing to hide and I'm making them laugh from beginning to end and that's my job.
That's real.
That's reality.
And the rest of it, I can't control.
But I can connect with people on the road.
I can get better as a comic every day.
You know what I mean?
And not take a victim mentality, which is, man, they took me down.
You're too tight.
There had to be moments where you're like, are you fucking kidding me?
Well, when nothing makes sense, when absolutely nothing makes sense, it can do your head in.
It can really do your head in.
For sure.
No doubt.
I can't say names, but a buddy of mine was dating a woman who was one of the women who called out.
I forget who it was, Weinesnier or something like that.
And what she said to him was, I'm upset that I'm not getting offered to co-host The View.
I'm upset that I'm not getting these same offers that these other women are getting.
Meaning her purpose for now was to get on the fucking view and be a co-host.
And it was like, whoa, whoa.
There's always motives behind that.
What's much worse than that is the woman that was raped.
It's the woman that was raped and is saying, hold on, man.
This has become something else.
And she's not coming forward.
That's the tragedy.
What the great things that have come, there's been some great things that have come out of this.
Equal pay.
You know, in terms, my sister is a director.
Women are getting more opportunities than ever before as directors.
There's been some amazing things.
And I'll take one for the team for that.
You know what?
I'll, you know, put you in a movie.
I'm saying.
Like, bro, sis, what's up?
Come on, sis.
Take a little sip of that drink.
No, no lie can last forever.
Just remember that.
That's why we got to control our shit.
What were you saying?
Two questions I had, and they might be the same thing.
One, you said you have to go inward every morning and say, I know the truth.
What is the truth to you?
The truth is I know who I am, and I know who I am in my soul.
And people can...
You know, they can have a misconception about me, but I can't control that narrative.
You know what I mean?
I can only control what I know to be the truth.
You can't control it.
Yeah, and this is what I was going to...
Ticket Sales And Boring Movies00:14:57
My second question is, you said you're just a guy who's misunderstood, and you have an opportunity as a comic to be understood.
Cliff's notes for us, what do you want understood about you?
I have a joke for you, by the way.
I think depends if you want to.
It depends if you want to use it.
But like if you're in a really shitty town doing stand-up, you can say that like one of the benefits of the Me Too movement is you get to see me here.
I would never be in Homestead, Pennsylvania if it wasn't for hashtag Me Too.
How stupid, man.
Like that's a way of leaning into this thing.
See, yeah, you know what's interesting?
It's funny.
If I were to, one of the misconceptions about me is that I really enjoy going bad on people and making them feel terrible.
And I'm an equal opportunity offender.
That's basically what Ari Gold was.
Yeah.
He's the greatest.
What my job with that character was, was to take a guy that said terrible things to people, very hurtful things, and to make him dimensional and truthful and accessible and human and tragic and all of these things.
And that was my job.
And the result of putting everything that I had into this character.
And by the way, like you talked about Chappelle.
Yeah, I mean, you know, I've got 40 years on the stage as an actor.
So, you know, that wasn't an accident.
I didn't get lucky.
It wasn't because the suit fit.
You know what I mean?
There were other variables that were involved.
I went to NYU.
I went to the National Theater of Great Britain and studied Shakespeare.
I was at Second City doing sketch comedy and improv and all these things.
And a lot of people, yeah, I mean, like even Joe Rogan, when he introduced me one night, he said, yeah, that's all we need is another actor trying to do stand-up.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, 1,000%.
And the reason why Joe is so loved is because he is authentic.
And people gravitate towards that.
And he'll never stop being that way.
And then afterwards, he came up to me and he said, oh, you take this seriously.
And I do.
And believe me, if I didn't, you would have heard about it.
Right.
You would have heard.
That's why I feel like you must be doing well.
Because nobody's talking about you, period.
They're not going to compliment you.
Yeah.
Okay?
They're not going to compliment you because they're not rooting for you.
Did you hear what DL said the other day about me?
Well, I was doing his show, and I love DL.
He's one of my favorite comics.
He hits on many different levels.
And he, now I'm saying that he's saying it.
I'm going to cut that clip that he hits on men, not different levels.
We're just going to run with that.
That's how it works.
Hashtag.
No, too.
We were both doing this charity gig.
By the way, you'll never see any coverage of any charity I ever do.
You'll never see a picture of me and my mom walking down the street.
That's a real character, though.
You don't do it for the fan for you.
So to be understood, yeah, I'm a fucking mama's boy.
Yeah, I grew up in Chicago.
Yeah, I have a great relationship with my mom, my sister.
Yeah, I've grinded my whole life.
Yeah, I'm a decent human being.
Yeah, I have people's back.
Yeah, boring.
Boring as shit.
Who the fuck cares about that?
You curse out.
Right.
Yeah, yeah.
Right.
You know, we need a scandal.
We need a story.
You know.
But what was DL saying?
So DL said that, you know, he said that he saw me up on stage and he was actually jealous because he knew how long I've been doing.
stand-up.
And I said to him, there's no way you were jealous.
There's no way.
Because that guy is a king, man.
Killer.
He crushes it.
And I'm still just trying to figure it out.
But the fact that he said, by the way, DL doesn't have to say that.
He would never, ever say that.
So I do know that, yeah, believe me, if I was up there running the clock out, doing a Q ⁇ A, being a hack, you would have heard.
You know what I mean?
You can name names.
I've seen some.
I've seen this some shows.
You know what I'm saying?
I welcome anyone.
If you're the guy that asked to go second, we would have heard about it.
We would know.
We would know.
And again, I haven't seen it.
He has to go second.
I take any killer, any killer that is not headlining yet and wants to open for me, I will only get better.
There's a guy named Eric Myers.
I don't know if you know him, but he's, man, it just gets out there and he just throws bombs until they pull him off that stage, man.
And people are like, you're going to let him fucking feature for me?
I'm like, hell yeah.
Because it's my job to then go.
I'm going to get a bunch of desiring, man.
Yeah.
I mean, and they are exhausted by the time I hit the stage.
And it's not a great idea.
And he should be headlining.
And he will be.
He's had an interesting journey himself.
He'll be the first person to tell you that.
But yeah, I don't want some viciously mediocre, you know, someone that's soft to save the day.
Yeah, so I can come in and look better.
That's not interesting to me.
I want to get better fast.
And I'll do whatever it takes to do that.
And that's why you haven't heard a word.
Right.
But not hearing a word is the right thing is what I'm trying to say.
That's a good thing.
Yeah.
Because we would hear.
And people talk.
And there are people out there that, you know, that sometimes struggle and especially newer guys.
And then you hear the word on the street.
Yeah.
Especially if it's an actor, a successful actor.
Because there is this resentment I think stand-ups have for actors.
I don't personally have it because I think any actor, at least a comedic actor that doesn't do stand-up is an idiot.
Like, I think they're a bona fide idiot because how else could anybody see you be funny?
Like, you're basically just going, hey, director, I'm really funny.
Well, how?
Do you have anything?
No, but if you give me a shot.
Well, why don't you do something where they can come see you every single week, at least improv.
Bear, man.
Just business sense.
I'm just talking about like baseline.
I'm investing in you and your humor without knowing if you're funny at all.
That's an absurd notion to me.
So like when I see actors, dude, we've had friends that, you know, were initially really want to act and then they started doing stand-up.
But I think comics are going to, comics who aren't successful are always going to have an excuse for their lack of success.
You're not taking any stage time away from people.
It's the reality of the matter.
You sell tickets.
You either sell tickets or you don't sell tickets.
The question is going to be, is that next time you come into a market, do people come out again?
If they do, it's because you did a good job the first time.
There's been a lot of acts that go out there, they sell a lot of tickets the first time, then they come back and they'll market.
Can't sell any tickets.
Listen, I know that every time I perform, it's a home game.
I get that it's not an away game.
I get it.
And that they're there to see me.
It's everybody with an audience, though.
Yeah, 45 minutes is just a game.
It ain't no home.
It ain't no way.
45 minutes to hold my attention.
I'm behind you.
That's gonna be funny.
I'm gonna be honest with you.
This idea that people who don't have a fan base at all should be out there headlining is kind of absurd.
They don't understand business.
Yeah, headlining is when you have fans and then you build up to that, right?
So there was a time where like people were just such fans of comedy that they would just go out to the comedy show and just watch Joe Schmo perform, right?
But in reality, the reason why you're listening to a stranger talk for an hour is because you're invested in that person.
You know who killed that business model?
Comics.
By being shitty and headlining when they weren't ready.
Real talk.
When nobody knew who you were, and then everybody walked out, like, I just wasted my fucking money.
Let's never do that.
Yeah.
Every one of you guys are doing a massive disservice to comedy.
Now I want to see you.
You better not bomb.
I would be honored for you to come out and see me, man.
Yeah, this week.
Yeah, I was about to say, once in the next one, are you doing shows this week in the city?
I wish, because I have to leave tomorrow to go to Pennsylvania.
Maybe tonight we can pop in to a club.
He's got some pull.
Go somewhere.
Let's do it.
Yeah, for sure, man.
Let's do it.
This will be fun.
Yeah.
Yeah, I would love it, man.
Because, yeah, to piggyback what you guys were saying, the reality is, is no matter what stage you're on, you have to respect the space that you're occupying.
And if I'm up there doing stand-up and I'm wasting people's time, then I don't deserve to be there.
But I know, believe me, I understand that in the very beginning, they're excited to see me.
And there's that first few moments of like.
Five minutes.
Not even five.
It's a lot shorter than that, man.
Believe me, it's a lot shorter than that.
Because with my crowd, they, for the most part, haven't been to a stand-up show.
So they go silent fast because they're just like, what is he going to say?
So it goes silent.
And if I don't hit him, and if I don't continue to hit him and build, it's game over.
They also don't know if you can do stand-up.
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
So if you had proven yourself as a funny stand-up, then they're at ease.
Right.
They're waiting for you to make them feel comfortable.
They're like, buddy, I'm here.
I got the drinks.
I told my friend.
We watched the show.
I don't fucking know if you can do this.
Right.
Okay.
I know you're funny on the show, but that doesn't mean you're funny here.
Make me laugh quick.
And if you get that first laugh, they're like, relax.
We're going to have fun.
Exactly.
You know what I mean?
So there's certain guys, like people know me just from stand-up.
So I can go up there, probably not make him laugh for a little while, but they're like, man, I've seen hours of his jokes online.
He's funny.
When he's ready to turn it on, he'll turn it off.
Chappelle can walk up there and not make anybody laugh.
I've been funny.
I think some of Chappelle's like, you know, I don't know what you guys call it, where you're just like riffing and shit like that.
There was like some secret show he did like at 1 a.m. in, I think, the knitting room.
Yeah, yeah.
And he just talked for like two and a half hours.
I might have laughed like twice, but I'm just sitting here like, oh, shit, I'm in the same room with Dave Chappelle.
You know what I mean?
If you're not funny, you have to be interesting.
Right?
So that's the thing.
You need to like.
No, I can't be up there for two hours and not be like, bro.
Literally, it was fucking Hassan Minaj.
He was like opening up.
He had a newspaper.
He was literally just reading headlines and he would just joke back and forth.
And he did that for two and a half hours and nobody left.
It was like two in the morning, three in the morning.
After a while, we're just sitting there just like, holy shit, we're in a room watching.
Because you know that this guy's funny.
He's already proven.
So there is a world with like you were.
I'm like, oh, I watched Michael Jordan shoot by himself in the show.
You know what I mean?
Like that's the same thing I was doing.
There's a world where you, where it's almost like if you put out a bit, right?
One of your jokes.
It doesn't have to be a long one, but it has to be a good, strong bit.
There's almost something about that.
I wouldn't be surprised if you even see ticket sales like spike, right?
Because it's proven.
That's your Yelp review, right?
That's the picture of the food at the restaurant, right?
And they're going, okay, no, he's funny.
This is a funny joke.
Okay, we can go out.
Yeah, it might be a risk if we haven't seen any stand-up.
Who knows what's going to happen?
Because trust me, there's a lot of like these YouTube celebs and shit that go out and try to do stand-up and it's awful, right?
But you might put one of your bits out on YouTube and then they have something that they can digest beforehand just to prove to their friends.
I would not be shocked if you see ticket sales go up and the comfort initially with an audience increase tenfold.
Yeah.
It's like, yeah, we're fine.
We're in good hands.
Right.
Well, I actually, for the first time, recently did that because I've been pretty much under the radar and not allowing anyone to film it or anything because I'm documenting this whole thing and I want it to kind of be a surprise.
And so, yeah, I just recently started putting some stuff out.
And what's so fascinating about that game is because it's a live form, it's so interesting because you kind of lose a generation when you see it being filmed.
You know what I mean?
And you're not there live.
It's a trip.
Oh, yeah.
Comedy is not good.
It does not translate to TV well because you lose all tension, right?
It's like there isn't the anxiety that the audience has.
And that's why like the real good guys can kind of penetrate.
I also think the way it's shot is very important and the sound is very important.
I mean, off the pod, we'll sit down and, you know, if you want to go over like different ways you can kind of recreate that live feel through video.
We could do that.
Interesting.
But I really think that it would be a cool experiment with you and I would track your ticket sales once you have a piece out there.
Once you have something that they can look for.
Because the first thing they're going to do is if you're in a market, they're going to go, oh, he does stand-up?
Let me see if I can see it on YouTube.
There's one clip of you doing stand-up on YouTube.
It's not even stand-up.
It's like, I only watch a little bit of it, but it's like you at an award show or something like that.
Here's what it might be.
And they say it's stand-up and it's not.
It's nice.
It's just you presenting or something or something like that, right?
Yeah, I've done a lot of hosting and presenting and blah, blah, all that kind of stuff.
But I'll never forget it at Just for Laughs.
Right.
My agent at the time, 2008, said they want you to go host.
And I was like, oh, well, I don't do stand-up.
He goes, no, no, this is going to be great.
He convinced me to do it.
I get out there with my boy Brian Callen, who's a great stand-up.
Yeah, I love Brian.
Brian's a great stand-up.
Shout out to the fire, the kid.
There you go.
And a great friend.
And Brent Shaw.
There you go.
And Brian's been a great friend and mentor to me.
And 2008, we go out there together.
And it's the night before I'm supposed to host this thing.
And he goes, you know what?
Let's just see what they expect of you.
We go to the theater.
The theater is bigger than we ever imagined.
And the people are leaving.
And he says to them, hey, guys, what do you expect?
What are your expectations for Jeremy?
They said, well, it's going to be presented live on TV.
Jeremy's going to get up and do a quick 20.
And he said, I'm sorry, a quick 20 stand-up?
And they said, yeah.
He goes, oh, no, Jeremy's never done stand-up.
And they go, oh, no, he'll be fine.
And he just, he went, imagine a white dude going even whiter.
He was fucking, it was crazy.
And he said, all right, Bubba, we're just going to go to dinner and we're going to talk this through.
And the great thing about me is ignorance is bliss.
So I really didn't know anything about stand-up then.
If I did, now it would have freaked me out because I've been through the game.
So he sat me down.
It was very brilliant.
He said, here's what you're going to do.
Tell me a story right now that you think is funny.
Tell him the story about taking my mom to the Golden Globes and he said, great, great, great, great.
Okay, here's the deal.
This is the through line of your 20 minutes.
He spoke to me like an actor.
Your through line is tell this story and we're going to create all these obstacles along the way.
You're not doing stand-up.
He put me at ease.
I'm up there on live TV with one night's notice at just for laughs.
20 minutes.
20 minutes.
And by the way, I had to do five-minute wraparounds between each comic.
Refine Material Before Attack00:02:16
Six comics.
That's 30 more minutes.
I did 50 minutes of stand-up on live TV and I was dumb enough to do it.
They should have gotten anyone else.
Listen, I took every note that he gave me because I'm an actor, every single note he gave me, and we survived.
I don't ever want to see it.
Believe me, I don't want to see it.
But you know, you didn't hear about it, so it wasn't terrible, right?
But, you know, you know, so you, those from, and that's out there.
So that's like the only thing out there.
That's like some, you know, thing from 2008 that I literally found out about the night before.
That's not fair.
Right.
That's not, that's not giving a guy a chance.
For fair sake, yeah.
Now put out a little something now.
We're going to talk, let's talk about it after.
Let's find like a piece.
I'll look at, you know, you can tell me something to say, even if it's a couple of minutes, but that's just what people will see.
That's what the club will push out to their email list.
And it's like, oh, shit, he really does this.
Oh, we got to see this.
Yes.
Boom.
And I would just track sales.
See if that makes a difference for you.
Because it changed my career, right?
Just having something for them to go see.
I was like, you know me from the podcast.
Why aren't you coming out?
No, no, no.
They need the product proven.
Yes.
Okay.
So.
But your stuff does translate because I've seen it.
I've even just seen random stuff that they filmed at like the comedy seller of your stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like the jumping out of the airplane bit.
Right, right, right.
Yeah.
How long did it take you to come up with that?
That was pretty quick.
Sometimes with stories, like, again, these, like, even with my new hour now, I've only been doing it for a few months, but it's like now it's refined stage.
It's like add and refine, add and refine.
So it starts out really fat, and I start cutting all the fat off of it.
You know?
So that's my process.
It's like, I don't know, Al, how long do you think it was before we were after the last special to I had like a good 45, at least 45?
Fairly recent, so probably six months.
No, no, less four months.
Yeah.
Yeah, maybe like four till like 45.
But it was like, but I don't know.
I can kind of produce.
I can kind of produce a lot.
It's the refining stage to get it to the place where I really think it can be special.
Vulnerability In Awkward Moments00:07:49
So you're saying you'll get after a bit.
It'll inspire you to get after it if you know where you're going to be landing.
Bro, if I have the ending or if I know where this goes.
So in that story, what was your initial ending of that story?
It's a great fertile premise.
It's brilliant.
Yeah, it's just, it was like that bit specifically was like, I needed something vulnerable in the set because I attack a lot.
Okay.
So if you attack a lot, you also need to attack yourself and create the vulnerability so they allow you to attack.
Now we're really breaking down stand-ups.
So like every arc within the stand-up set is like, if I'm going hard on a group or I'm going hard on other people, I'm being super judgmental.
I also need to go hard on myself and I also need to show that I'm fucking, I'm not just this guy who's pointing fingers.
I'm not like one of these people making fun of actors' outfits on the red carpet.
I also make fun of myself.
So that joke represented maybe like a five-minute chunk where it was just all vulnerability, all on me.
You could laugh at me because I've been making fun of you guys.
So once we're in there, I'm just tapping into the vulnerability of every part of that situation.
So you knew by the end you were going to reveal that you needed him.
You needed to be held.
If you don't mind me asking.
Sure, Bill, what was the button in your mind when you knew, okay.
So the thing I'm using within the bit is the juxtaposition between masculinity and machismo and homosexuality.
Right.
And here I am trying to fight this thing.
So the flip is going to be me laying into it.
Right.
Right.
We know that.
It's like, I'm so, I love this.
And once you had that, you're like, I got to do it.
Now it's like, how gay can I make myself?
Right.
I know at the end, I'm going to want him to hold me.
I'm going to want him inside me.
I'm just going to go as far as possible as far as I possibly can with that.
But initially, it's how vulnerable can I make myself and how uncomfortable can I make myself?
We're strapped together.
The airplane is shaking, so I'm essentially twerking on them or whatever these things.
How can I build up all these other things that are going to make this uncomfortable for a dude who's macho?
If I'm like an effeminate woke guy, then that's not funny.
But if I'm this dude who's like, yeah, I like girls, blah, blah, blah, and this person's on me, then we can create that kind of humor.
So, yeah, we'll sit down, man.
We'll go over some of the bits and like see if I'm sure it's similar to like when you take a comedic choice in acting, right?
It's like, this is funny because I'm taking this seriously.
The hardest part about the reason why comics suck at acting is because we're trying to be funny on stage.
And I think great comedic actors are trying to be serious.
And them being serious in this awkward situation makes it funny.
Right?
Like, Will Farrell's not trying to be funny.
His character believes he's a stepbrother.
Well, he believes.
Because Will is a great example of how to play comedy, which is you play it a little more serious than the serious stuff.
So he's playing a Greek tragedy in Stepbrothers.
Yeah.
When their parents tell them they have to get jobs, that's the craziest idea they've ever heard in their lives.
And they're going to lose their, and that's why it's so funny.
Because he's playing it serious, right?
Yeah.
On stage, we're up there going, hey, I'm funny and I'm trying to be funny.
And here's me trying to be funny.
And then you see Chris Rock do that in a movie.
You're like, I guess it's kind of funny that you roasted him.
You know what I mean?
But it's not vulnerable.
There's no, like, any acting that I've ever done that people thought was good, I just dumbed myself down like crazy.
And I didn't know that what I was doing was funny.
The joke was on me without me even knowing it.
It's, you know, I got to be honest with you, I'm a little offended by you just saying dumb yourself down.
That's my character.
Right.
No, no, no, but that's what I needed to do.
Well, it's semantics, but there's a different choice of words.
Okay, go, go.
It's not dumbing yourself down.
It's, first of all, you know, you just simplified.
This is what I find fascinating about comics and actors.
You believe that comics should just immediately jump into acting and be like, bro, dumb yourself down and fucking kill the game.
No, hold on.
Hold on, brother.
No, You got to shut up and take it.
I want to clarify.
No, no, no.
It's all good.
It's all good, but we're going to get to it now.
That would be like me saying, bro, I can just jump on that stage and fucking kill it.
All I have to do is, yeah, it's just, it just, it's just, it's just, it just tell my stories and hit my punchlines.
Yeah.
I get it, man.
You know, I'll do this tomorrow, man.
I'm all good.
Don't worry about it.
But see, the thing about acting is it's like if you, it's logging the hours like stand-ups.
It's going through that journey.
It's the rite of passages and all that different stuff.
And then it's like, well, whatever character you're playing doesn't have the skill set that you have.
Okay?
So that character doesn't have the skill set.
So if you're relating to that person truthfully and you're just committing fully and the material is good, then it's game on.
If the material sucks, then you got to bring in your skill set.
Believe me.
And as an actor, I've also, because my background is in sketch comedy and all that kind of stuff and Second City and whatnot, so that the only reason I was working as much as I did was because I could take these tiny roles and explore and heighten them and write on my feet and improvise and add stuff.
If you were to look at the first 40 movies that I did, you try to find those lines in the script.
I was adding and doing all that stuff so that they could use, you know, like when I, I don't know if you guys saw Rush Hour when I'm playing the Gay Versace salesman.
That's a complete freestyle rant because they needed comedy.
Right.
So how is that?
That's very similar to stand-up.
And that's why when people say you can't do stand-up, it's like, well, wait a minute.
I might have a shot.
Let me clarify by dumb down.
Okay.
Remove self-awareness.
That's what I meant.
So like if I'm playing a character or like Will Farrell's character is not being self-aware in that moment, right?
He is leaning into, as you said, the Greek tragedy, right?
He's not going, it's weird that I'm an adult that lives with my parents and I have a punk bed, right?
A comic is always aware of that.
Whereas a comic is hyper self-awareness, right?
I am awkward in this environment because, and I will tell you why, and this person is acting.
So they're like diametrically opposed.
And I feel like that's why, in a lot of ways, it's so hard for comics to be funny actors.
You know what they're good at?
Drama.
Why?
Because what is drama a lot of times?
Yeah, which is hyper self-awareness of your emotions in that moment.
Right?
Yeah.
So when I meant dumb, I just meant the character that I'm playing is unaware of these things that as a comic, I would be uber aware of.
Isn't it interesting that there are more success stories of stand-ups who have gone and switched arenas into acting?
But you guys would be hard-pressed to find any actors that have acted funny.
You can act sad, you can act angry, you can act heartbroken, you can act somber.
You cannot act funny.
You're either funny or you're not funny.
You're funny before you were your role.
Like you, as Jeremy, was a funny person before you played.
Wait, but I'm not Ari.
Manny Ariza Shoulder Surgery Talk00:04:41
That's going to be the name of my tour, by the way.
I'm not Ari.
More than gold.
Cancel to more than gold.
More than gold.
Coming to Homestead, Pennsylvania.
Fool's gold.
Fool's gold.
Put that in the notebook.
Oh, shit.
Fool's gold.
How much do I owe you for that, sir?
Hey, man.
Can I tell the kids where I'm going to be?
Please do.
Please do.
I'm going to be at the improv in Tampa, Florida on the 21st, kids.
Nice.
Yeah, man.
And then I'm going, then after Tampa, I'm going to Orlando at the improv on the 23rd.
So catch me there.
Yo, Improv Ibor City is the one in Tampa.
Great club.
Ebor is tickling.
It's beautiful.
Yeah, where do they get tickets?
You go to the improv site or you're seeing it.
You can go to my site, jeremypiven.com.
You know, or just go to the improv site.
You know how to, you know, however.
Before you leave, I know we did a lot of talk on comedy, but there was a place, you know, this is, we talk sports on this podcast.
And there is, I would often see you, if there is a Manny Pacquiao fight at Freddy Roach's Wild Card Gym, watching Manny train.
Right.
You're a boxing fan?
Yeah.
Fanatic?
Or you like it?
I'm pretty fanatic.
Okay.
So is this guy?
Huge boxing fan.
Love boxing.
Watching Manny train.
I've never got to see him, unfortunately, live or up close.
Yeah.
Unreal environment.
This was back when every celeb in LA seemed to be at Freddy's gym.
Have you ever been to Wild Card?
Just outside.
There was actually a comedy night at the place next door.
Right.
Of course.
Of course.
I didn't know they did comedy there.
They used to.
I didn't know Wildcard was right next to that.
Listen, Freddy is such a legend.
And he basically, I mean, that place is like, you know, a little, it's a strip mall.
Yeah, yeah.
It's a little strip mall, and he put up shop there.
And you build it, they will come, you know.
And Manny, you know, walked in his door and Freddie.
They've been together ever since, and he's been an incredible mentor.
But Manny, you know, you, you can't, until you see that speed in person, you can't imagine.
But also, like, you know, it's so interesting because he's such a happy, joyous little guy.
Yeah, he really is.
That's him.
You know, really sweet guy.
And what people, they see his frame, and he's so slight and tiny.
Take a look at his calves.
Unbelievable.
Take a look at where his power comes from.
I played basketball with him one time.
Yeah, he came from Terminal 23.
It was still open.
Big hoops guy.
Yeah.
Not the best ball player, but he's so explosive.
His form is terrible, but like he would just fucking just explode like left to right and jumping and shit.
And he's like so small, but like he's the calves, absolutely.
Tons of explosiveness or something.
Unreal athleticism.
Yeah.
And the hand speed is just absurd up close or what?
Yeah, it's crazy.
You know, I mean, his angles that he creates, you know, listen, there's no excuse, but when he fought Mayweather, his shoulders were jacked up.
Oh, really?
Oh, yeah, that's a fact.
So there was rumors about that, that he needed shoulder surgery.
He needed shoulder surgery.
And, you know, we can go really deep on this.
And he was working with a guy named Alex Ariza, and Alex is great.
Alex is great with Ariza got a little, you know, he had a little heat on him.
Reza got a little heat on him from for steroids.
Right.
Well, you know, first of all, why am I wearing that belt buckle?
But anyway, anyway, I digress.
So Alex, you know, we won't talk about scandals or any of that stuff.
Talk about it.
But no, I don't know anything about it.
I just know that Alex is really great.
I started working with him because I watched him work with Manny's shoulders.
And he's really great at working shoulders.
You know what I mean?
And he was doing a great job with Manny.
And then they parted ways.
And, you know.
Did Floyd hire him for that fight?
Say that again?
I think Floyd hired him for that fight.
Yeah.
Indeed.
A lot of stuff that people didn't talk about.
There's some major stuff behind that.
What else?
Well, I mean, that's heavy.
That's really heavy.
You know what I mean?
Anyway, so Manny.
Yeah, so I always had trained Oscar De La Jolla when he fought Floyd.
Right, but yeah, but there's a specific reason why Floyd hires Ariza away from Manny.
That's a reason.
I mean, the argument was that, you know, Ariza might have been giving Manny the juice.
Floyd Hiring For That Fight00:01:02
Yeah.
Okay.
I mean, look, all I know is that Manny's one of those guys where we wanted to see that fight with Mayweather, and there was a much better version of Manny that would have been a more interesting fight.
And now, after he had the shoulder surgery, and now you're seeing him, you know, pull off these great fights, which is what he was capable of.
And he's, you know, he's taking control of his life, and he's, you know, he's cleaner and all this kind of stuff.
He's a 40-year-old dude, but he's a young 40.
Right.
So it's going to be.
He's an Asian 40.
28.
They're young up until they're 80 and they have like a long fucking period like Mortal Kombat or something.
They're just floating above temple steps.
That's right.
That's right, man.
Well, dude, man, I appreciate you so much.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you for having me.
I appreciate it.
Yeah, I'll hit you up later and then we'll talk more.