June 11, 2020 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:29:37
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Hey! | ||
| What's up, brother? | ||
|
unidentified
|
How are you? | |
| What's up, Joe? | ||
| Good to see you. | ||
| It's great seeing you. | ||
| It's great seeing a fellow comedian that I don't think I've been inside a comedy club or seen any comedian for two months now. | ||
| It's weird. | ||
| It's like they're trying to get it out of our system. | ||
| Like, they're trying to, like, if we're junkies, if we're comedy junkies, we've gone through a rehab. | ||
| You have to live like a regular person for months. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's tough. | |
| I mean, I've gotten past a phase of like... | ||
| Because back in the day, if I didn't do stand-up for a week, I would get depressed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Because there's nothing else going on in my life. | ||
| But now I got other stuff going. | ||
| I can do writing, whatever. | ||
| But I feel bad for like the road guys. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| And the open micers that's just coming up. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| And I'm sure you've gotten this. | ||
| Are a lot of people inviting you to do virtual? | ||
| Virtual stand-up comedy shows on Zoom? | ||
| Yeah, they can eat shit. | ||
| That is the worst idea on the fucking planet. | ||
| Bro, even great comics look terrible on those. | ||
| And they can record you forever. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And record you looking terrible. | ||
| Bombing. | ||
| It's just not the right place. | ||
| It's like, let's play basketball underwater. | ||
| That doesn't work. | ||
| But that shows you how desperate people are. | ||
| They would put their whole material on the line to do virtual, no real people audience just to get their rocks off. | ||
| Dave Chappelle's got a very unique solution. | ||
| He's doing some shit in his backyard. | ||
| He sent me... | ||
| Well, not his backyard. | ||
| His friend has a wedding pavilion. | ||
| So he set up this thing at a wedding pavilion. | ||
| All of it is COVID safe. | ||
| Look at that. | ||
| That's Dave on stage in Ohio at a wedding pavilion. | ||
| Oh, wow, dude. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's awesome. | |
| So that would be where people would get married and Dave's up there doing stand-up. | ||
| Yeah, well, he's so good. | ||
| He doesn't need, like, a low ceiling, you know, packed seats. | ||
| He just needs a crowd. | ||
| And, you know, he also, I think... | ||
| He just figured out how to improvise. | ||
| He's like, there's got to be a way to get around this. | ||
| I'm going crazy. | ||
| There's got to be a way. | ||
| And doing it outside, separating everybody, following all the COVID requirements. | ||
| The governor actually had approved this. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| He's in Ohio. | ||
| So the governor of Ohio approved all this. | ||
| When did this happen? | ||
| Like recently? | ||
| He's just doing it. | ||
| He just started doing it. | ||
| He texted me a couple days ago saying it was going to take like four days to work the kinks out. | ||
| We're making history over here, Joe Rogan! | ||
| And then, you know, next thing you know, he's off and running. | ||
| I mean, comedy clubs probably got to be the last thing to open up, right? | ||
| No, not the last thing. | ||
| I think like Staples Center shit like that, arenas, big places, that's gonna be the last thing. | ||
| Restaurants are slowly starting to... | ||
| There it is. | ||
| Boom! | ||
| What is this? | ||
| Brooklyn Vegan? | ||
| Ew. | ||
| Very reputable site. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Don't shoot the messenger. | |
| I understand. | ||
| I understand. | ||
| It's just like, boy, is that fraught with peril. | ||
| People that are really into being from Brooklyn and people that are really into telling you they're a vegan, together at last. | ||
| Speaking of improvisation, I'm always very jealous because I think my buddy Ben Schwartz and Thomas Middleditch, they did an improvising show on Netflix, right? | ||
| And that is like the ultimate hack to people like us that take, like my first special took me 10 years. | ||
| And now these guys can crank out five in a day because it's improvised. | ||
| I'm like, what are we doing here? | ||
| Well, I remember the first time I saw you was at the improv. | ||
| I saw you kill in that little tiny room of death. | ||
| That lab is death. | ||
| Everybody eats shit in that lab. | ||
| That is the worst. | ||
| Ever since they remodeled it, half the room is a bar. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And then there's pillars in the front of the stage. | ||
| And right next to you is where the door is. | ||
| So people are coming in the door. | ||
| There's all this chit-chat and talking and buying tickets. | ||
| It's right there. | ||
| But you were killing. | ||
| And I was like, damn, this dude's legit funny. | ||
| Because you have to be legit funny to kill in that bizarre environment. | ||
| I ate shit in that room. | ||
| I've seen a lot of people eat shit in that room. | ||
| It's a tough room. | ||
| And sometimes you want to start in that small room and then do another set in the big room. | ||
| So you go home happy. | ||
| I did the wrong way. | ||
| That's the worst feeling. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I murdered in the big room. | |
| Then I came to the little room. | ||
| It was like 10 people in there and ate shit. | ||
| Yeah, and then your first set, you're completely forgotten, and then you're just like, well, I'm a piece of shit, and I can't do stand-up. | ||
| Not only that, I strolled in cocky because I just killed. | ||
| I'm like, I know how to kill. | ||
| Come on, I'm a fucking professional here. | ||
| Went up in there and bombed. | ||
| Yeah, it's just a terrible setup. | ||
| They know it though. | ||
| They've remodeled that improv more than any other fucking club I've ever even heard of. | ||
| Why? | ||
| The old setup was fine. | ||
| They don't listen. | ||
| They just say, I got an idea. | ||
| And then everybody goes, okay, great. | ||
| So they put a new green room that you have to duck to get into. | ||
| Have you seen that new green room that's upstairs that no one's ever going to use ever? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then you go down the stairs from that new green room and it takes you right to where the stage is? | ||
| Wait, the one with the piano and stuff? | ||
| No, that's the other green room. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| No, I haven't seen the other one. | ||
| There's two fucking green rooms. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Huh. | |
| It's the dumbest setup of all time. | ||
| The main room is a great room, though. | ||
| Great room. | ||
| It's one of the all-time classic rooms. | ||
| They haven't fucked that up. | ||
| I still think that improv, in LA, it's my favorite place. | ||
| It's a great place. | ||
| Yeah, and they show me love early on. | ||
| Paige has been great, Rita's been great. | ||
| Paige and Rita are awesome. | ||
| They're the salt of the earth, both those people. | ||
| It's a nice environment. | ||
| It just was weird that you had to kind of wait in the hallway before you go on stage, and so you kind of got molested by weirdos who'd come out and ask you questions and shit while you're trying to get your head together. | ||
| Well, sometimes, as a single guy, that might be the good move, though. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Laugh Factory, you do your set, you get the fuck out. | ||
| You don't get to meet nobody. | ||
| Improv, you do your set, you hang out at the bar, and then, you know, some girls come talk to you. | ||
| You have to swim through some weirdos. | ||
| You do have to swim through weirdos. | ||
| It's fine. | ||
| And some dudes will just wedge themselves between you and a girl, too, right? | ||
| If you were trying to chit-chat with a lady... | ||
| They go, hey, Jimmy. | ||
| Hi, Jimmy. | ||
| You were really funny. | ||
| I got to talk to you about something. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm starting a virtual comedy club and I'd love to have you be a part of it. | |
| There's been a lot of pitches that I inadvertently said yes to because I was half drunk at the bar. | ||
| It's like, hey, man, let me tell you about this show in Silver Lake. | ||
| It's kind of near Echo Park, but really it's in Boyle Heights. | ||
| But great open mic, man. | ||
| You know, Jamie Kennedy's done it. | ||
| You got to come do it. | ||
| I was like... | ||
| Sure, why don't you send me an email? | ||
| And the next email, I get. | ||
| I completely forgot about the interaction. | ||
| Next email, I get. | ||
| He's like, so I got you on the show May 15th, man. | ||
| So are you good? | ||
| You're going to do 15? | ||
| And I'm like, well... | ||
| I'm out of town! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I can't say that because I'm like, did I agree to this? | |
| Because I don't remember. | ||
| I was drunk. | ||
| So I was like, sure, how come? | ||
| And I get suckered into these terrible things. | ||
| Yeah, you got to know how to say no. | ||
| It's very important. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's very important. | ||
| Well, that's the thing about the open mic community. | ||
| There's always some dudes got some kind of a bringer show that they're putting something together and... | ||
| Usually it's okay. | ||
| It's good. | ||
| It's seasoning. | ||
| You get on stage. | ||
| You do a little set. | ||
| At any stage of the game, it's always good to get on stage in weird crowds. | ||
| But the problem with a lot of those shows is you'll go on after two or three people that are deaf. | ||
| There is no comedy left in life, and you'll be convinced that nothing is funny. | ||
| It's impossible to be funny. | ||
| Do you know what I'm saying? | ||
| You see someone really, really, really bad, and there's nothing to comedy. | ||
| Comedy doesn't work. | ||
| Because there's so many, I guess, approach to this, right? | ||
| Like, I think there's one that's like, you know, you don't want to follow someone that's too strong. | ||
| Like, if I go on stage after Chappelle, kind of fucked, you know? | ||
| He's both strong and super famous. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| It's a double hammer. | ||
| Yeah, like people will be leaving the store or whatever. | ||
| But also, the other side of it is you want to ride a wave. | ||
| If somebody is doing well, you want to go in there and ride that wave. | ||
| But then the opposite of it is if somebody is bad, you can go on, you can kill it, and then the crowd believes in you. | ||
| But if somebody is too terrible, then it's dead. | ||
| You have to spend your first five minutes just doing crowd work. | ||
| One of the signs of a terrible headliner is when they bring really bad openers just so they look really good. | ||
| They don't want anybody stealing any of their thunder so they bring complete scrubs. | ||
| That fucks me up though. | ||
| Yeah, me too. | ||
| For me, my opener is more about energy. | ||
| I want somebody's energy that matches my level but it's funny. | ||
| Or somebody that's kind of lower energy but really smart and good. | ||
| Because if you have somebody that goes super big, that's kind of hard for me to do an hour of that same energy. | ||
| You know what the worst is? | ||
| The guy before you does music. | ||
| Oh no. | ||
| You know that shit where they start doing songs? | ||
| They have songs for shit? | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| I never cared about an opening song. | ||
| You know DJ, when you go on the road, it's like, hey, what song you wanna come up to? | ||
| I'm like, whatever, just play some top 40 hip-hop. | ||
| Doesn't matter, right? | ||
| But then, one of my openers has a very specific Trick Daddy song. | ||
| I gotta shout out to my boy Derek Keener. | ||
| Hilarious guy, right? | ||
| He has a very energetic Trick Daddy song, and that bit kills. | ||
| And it's kinda dirty, and it's cool. | ||
| And I'm like, shit, I gotta set my game up. | ||
| Because if my opener is going up with a killer song and I walk up the stage with nothing, it just doesn't seem right. | ||
| In the early 2000s, the late 90s, early 2000s, a lot of guys would have funny raps and they would close with a rap. | ||
| Like a rap parody, a hilarious rap. | ||
| So things rhyme, they're loud, there's a lot of gesturing and they're like, thank you, goodnight, rap! | ||
| And then you'd have to go up. | ||
| So I talked to my mom today. | ||
| I remember I used to do a bunch of urban clubs and J-Spot. | ||
| You remember J-Spot? | ||
| Isn't that a funny name? | ||
| Urban. | ||
| All clubs. | ||
| Should I say black club? | ||
| Yeah, I guess it's a black club. | ||
| Urban may be more offensive. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| But they call themselves urban clubs. | ||
| I know, but isn't that weird? | ||
| That is weird. | ||
| Why urban? | ||
| It's a code word for black, right? | ||
| It's a weird code because it also means a city. | ||
| Like all clubs are in cities. | ||
| When the fuck was you ever done a club in the woods? | ||
| Right? | ||
| Clubs aren't rural. | ||
| It's like the word urban and inner city for some reason. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Huh. | |
| Right? | ||
| Isn't that kind of the same thing? | ||
| But I mean like there's urban clubs in LA that are just downtown. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh. | |
| Right? | ||
| Isn't that that one, what is that one club? | ||
| Garrett Morris' club back in the day? | ||
| No, there's a club downtown that's a black club. | ||
| It's supposed to be real good. | ||
| I don't remember. | ||
| But it was just like the term, urban, it's just very weird. | ||
| I remember, so when I did the J-Spot, I don't know if it's still there. | ||
| The J-Spot, it's opened by J. Anthony Brown. | ||
| I was pretty, very green, you know, and it was on top of Yoshinoya, but it's a popping club, right? | ||
| I remember DJ come up to me. | ||
| My set was like 15 minutes. | ||
| He was like, you got any music cues? | ||
| I was like, no, just play whatever. | ||
| He was like, are you sure? | ||
| I was like, yeah, no, I don't have any music. | ||
| He was like, you don't want me to play anything in your set? | ||
| I was like, no, why would you do that? | ||
| And then I realized, I watched all the other comics, everybody had like five music skits and the crowd loved it and they were killing it. | ||
| And then I went up, was just trying to do my observational humor and just ate shit, you know? | ||
| Cause it's just, if everybody's doing it and you're not, like you're at a complete disadvantage. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| This is a famous story about Mitch Hedberg. | ||
| Mitch Hedberg was on the road in Ohio and he was doing this club and for whatever reason, the manager of the club decided to book This guy who's like super high-energy and he had music I think he did like after acrobatics on stage and shit like crazy stuff and yeah got everybody riled up and then Mitch would go on there hey And everything was like and he was bombing and they wanted to switch Mitch with him and pay him less money It was like this big fucking deal. | ||
| It's like no man you fucked up. | ||
| It's not like Mitch isn't great. | ||
| Mm-hmm Do you run a comedy club? | ||
| Well, you know who Mitch Hedberg is. | ||
| You know he's great. | ||
| Why are you having a guy who does backflips to fucking bass beats before him? | ||
| You can't do that. | ||
| You ever do the Comedy Magic Club? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| One of my favorite clubs. | ||
| You know, they have 10 comedians on there, but sometimes you got to follow a magician or a juggler. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| You know? | ||
| I stopped doing that there. | ||
| I said, listen, we had a bunch of issues there. | ||
| One issue, they would not let me bring up Joey Diaz. | ||
| Oh, because he's not clean? | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's too dirty. | |
| But I'm dirty too, but I'm like, whatever. | ||
| For whatever reason, I can get away with it for him. | ||
| So, I love the guy to death. | ||
| Mike's the best, but he wouldn't let Joey go up. | ||
| He goes, I love him. | ||
| He's just not... | ||
| My crowd is just this and that. | ||
| I'm like, your crowd is people. | ||
| They're humans. | ||
| They come to see me. | ||
| Trust me. | ||
| It is a different crowd, and I do kind of like it, because if you just run your set at the improv or the factory or whatever, right? | ||
| And then you take it on the road. | ||
| Sometimes it doesn't translate. | ||
| But the comedy magic crowd is like almost like a Midwest white crowd. | ||
| They're the opposite of urban. | ||
| Yes! | ||
| What is that? | ||
| There should be a code word for a white crowd. | ||
| Suburb. | ||
| Like suburban crowd? | ||
| They're like gated beach community crowd. | ||
| Yeah, the 1%er crowd. | ||
| Older, too. | ||
| They're like Jay Leno fans. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Because Jay Leno used to work out his Tonight Show set every Sunday night there. | ||
| That was his thing. | ||
| He used to go there and he had all his monologue shit and he'd work it out at the Comedy Magic Club on Sunday night. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They're definitely... | ||
| I mean, it really helped me because Richard and Mike gave me a lot of stage time coming up. | ||
| They're great folks. | ||
| They're really nice. | ||
| And the club is ran so... | ||
| They actually care about the comics. | ||
| Usually, you do the improv. | ||
| There's no knock to the improv, but you got to sign a W-9 and they give you five bucks in cash. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's just the way it is at the improv, right? | |
| And then you go to Comedy Magic Club. | ||
| It's, I think, $50 a set, which is very nice for like a... | ||
| A quick set. | ||
| Yeah, for like a quick set. | ||
| But then if you do it on Valentine's Day, they don't tell you, hey, we're going to pay you whatever. | ||
| They just come down, do Valentine's Day because we like you. | ||
| But they sell these Valentine's Day packages. | ||
| And then at the end of the day, I think... | ||
| I opened up a check. | ||
| It was like $1,000. | ||
| They just gave all of us $1,000 checks. | ||
| It was like really, really nice for a comic that really needs it. | ||
| The food there is really good. | ||
| Real filet mignon in a comedy club. | ||
| Yeah, like a real restaurant that you would go to. | ||
| You'd go there as a restaurant. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That was a great spot. | ||
| But it is... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It's white. | ||
| It's too white. | ||
| I tell my stories, like my Asian stories or whatever, but you can tell people come up to me like, hey man, that was funny, but you know when they're talking to themselves, they're like, yeah, that Asian, that Oriental boy is kind of funny. | ||
| You know there's some kind of that going on. | ||
| I am so foreign to them that they found it refreshing. | ||
| They're like, I can't believe that Oriental boy spoke English that way. | ||
| You gotta get that vibe over there, you know? | ||
| Isn't it funny that Oriental became, like, taboo? | ||
| Like, the term Oriental. | ||
| It's a weird one. | ||
| And people that say Oriental, they never mean harm. | ||
| No, they're just old. | ||
| They're old. | ||
| Like, it's my buddy's father's in high school. | ||
| They're like, so you and your Oriental parents, you guys, like they're trying to be so PC. It's like when people call black people African Americans because they're too careful, you know, and that's like kind of weird, you know? | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah, I don't love it. | ||
| Yeah, it's just, I mean, well, Jamaicans are like someone who comes from Jamaica and lives in America. | ||
| I mean, I guess technically you'd be in African America because Africans went to Jamaica first. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And then to America. | ||
| It's odd. | ||
| It's all weird, man. | ||
| For Asian folks, also, people get upset if you can't make the distinction. | ||
| Yes, Asians have a lot of beef amongst each other. | ||
| Joe Coy has a great bit about that. | ||
| There's a hierarchy, for sure. | ||
| What's the top of the food chain? | ||
| Putting me in a spot here. | ||
| But I think... | ||
| Look, this is... | ||
| I think generally, it's... | ||
| You have your main, like, Korean, Chinese, Japanese. | ||
| And then they sometimes look down at the Southeast Asians. | ||
| So, whatever. | ||
| Filipino, Thai, whatever. | ||
| Vietnamese. | ||
| Probably. | ||
| But then if you call... | ||
| Chinese person, Japanese to get pissed. | ||
| But if you call it Japanese, I don't know the exact thing. | ||
| But it could get ugly. | ||
| It could. | ||
| And I mean, it's not just country to country. | ||
| It could be like my parents, they're from Shanghai, you know, which is a very metropolitan, like Manhattan of China. | ||
| So they have an elitist syndrome to them. | ||
| And they look down at people from the South China or whatever. | ||
| And then I grew up in Hong Kong, which was a British colony, right? | ||
| And it's a very different government. | ||
| We're a little more, I guess, progressive or whatever. | ||
| Just a different city-state. | ||
| So Hong Kong people has elitist syndrome towards mainland Chinese people. | ||
| My dad came from Shanghai to Hong Kong. | ||
| So he spoke Cantonese, which is the local Hong Kong dialect, with a Mandarin, like a mainland guy accent. | ||
| And they would always make fun of him as the mainland guy. | ||
| When you're seeing what's going on with Hong Kong right now, where they're losing their autonomy to China, does that freak you out? | ||
| Is it crazy? | ||
| Yeah, it's very disheartening. | ||
| But I think my dad saw that coming. | ||
| We moved here when I was 13, the year 2000. That was three years after the British gave Hong Kong back to China after the 100-year treaty. | ||
| I guess they're like nice colonizers. | ||
| They're like, we're going to colonize you, but just 100 years and here you can have it back. | ||
| It seems like it's going downhill. | ||
| The riots in the streets, excuse me, the protests, because they're extremely polite protests. | ||
| The way they part the street for an ambulance is amazing. | ||
| It's tough, and I think that's one of the main reasons, aside from education and all that, just more opportunities in America, that was probably one of the main reasons why my family wanted to move out of Hong Kong, you know, to America. | ||
| They saw it coming. | ||
| They saw it, because my dad grew up... | ||
| 50s, 60s, communist revolution. | ||
| Motherfuckers would kick down your door and take everything. | ||
| Both of my grandparents went to jail from both sides because they were intellectuals. | ||
| I believe my father's father, my grandfather, was like a chemistry teacher and he was considered an intellectual and he went to jail. | ||
| So they put him to jail just because he was an intellectual? | ||
| I believe so. | ||
| I don't know the exact story, but then I know uncles that were like talking shit that also went to jail. | ||
| A lot of people went to jail, dude. | ||
| So they went to jail because they were complaining? | ||
| I think it's a mixture of things. | ||
| Yeah, they just fucking throw you in jail and they kick down your door and take your shit. | ||
| Fuck. | ||
| Now I said that I can never do a movie in China anymore. | ||
| I'm sure I'm banned. | ||
| Because you just said that? | ||
| Yeah, but who knows? | ||
|
unidentified
|
But it's... | |
| I get... | ||
| Look, I don't ever try to get political in my stand-up or whatever, but I get mad when I see hipsters in their house having Chairman Mao posters or like wearing Chairman Mao t-shirts and shit. | ||
| Chairman Mao killed a lot of people, man. | ||
| That's like, on the other side of the spectrum, you have like a fucking Hitler poster in your house, but somehow that's cool. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| You know, like, it wasn't, because all I know, I don't know history that well, but I know the stories that my parents told me during the Communist Revolution, how they got fucked over. | ||
| There's something about Mao that's like, it's intriguing for people that just look at it on the surface. | ||
| Same thing with Che Guevara. | ||
| He looks cool. | ||
| Cool looking, revolutionary. | ||
| Oh yeah, murderer. | ||
| Yeah, murderer. | ||
| Genocidal murderer. | ||
| Tiananmen Square. | ||
| Yeah, right. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| That was Aftermill, I think. | ||
| But still, communist dictatorship. | ||
| It's in a weird place now because it's capitalist, but it's capitalist really run by this communist government. | ||
| The communist government and the businesses are completely intertwined. | ||
| It's interesting because they can make policies, they're less red tape because they can make policies faster because the government, whatever they say, just goes. | ||
| But then I guess you hope that it's a decent person in control. | ||
| That's the fear that people have here in the United States of competing with China, is that China has these advantages because their businesses are so, their corporations are so intertwined with the government that we might do the same thing here. | ||
| I mean, it's just it's a weird sort of slippery slope as sort of as laws and All your different rights get eroded you get closer and closer to the government being in control of things like these new laws that they've passed recently where the government can just Look into your internet searching with no warrant whatsoever. | ||
| This was something that I don't know if you know about this part of the Patriot Act that This was one of the things that people were furious at Senator Sanders, because Bernie Sanders wasn't there, he didn't show up for the vote, and if he had shown up and voted the other way, it wouldn't have passed. | ||
| Why didn't he show up? | ||
| He won't comment. | ||
| He's been reached out to comment on it, he won't comment on it, but it's very disheartening. | ||
| And a lot of people who are progressives are furious at him, and they feel very betrayed by this. | ||
| Because no one even knows. | ||
| You didn't know, right? | ||
| Most people don't even know. | ||
| Well, the government can now look at all your dirty little searches. | ||
| I don't care about that, though. | ||
| But you should care. | ||
| It's a slippery slope, right? | ||
| Is that the fear? | ||
| Well, here's the fear. | ||
| The government is just people. | ||
| I don't think I should be able to just go looking at Jamie's search. | ||
| For whatever reason, I know Jamie's at home. | ||
| What if I have some code I can go just look? | ||
| What is Jamie looking at? | ||
| What are you searching for? | ||
| That's creepy, right? | ||
| It's creepy. | ||
| Privacy is privacy. | ||
| It's important. | ||
| You should be able to reveal what you want to reveal. | ||
| And if the government, which is just a bunch of people, can peer into your life, but you can't peer into their life, it sets up abuse. | ||
| It's power. | ||
| It's the same thing you see with cops, right? | ||
| All this shit that you see with cops, for sure racism is involved. | ||
| But you know what else is involved? | ||
| Power. | ||
| When you see that old man get thrown to the ground, the one that Trump said is faking it. | ||
| That bashed his head, yeah. | ||
| Bleeding out of his fucking head and Trump's like... | ||
| Very good actor, by the way. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean... | |
| That's what Trump said. | ||
| He said he seemed to have fallen too easily. | ||
| But yeah, he's fucking dead. | ||
| He's an old man. | ||
| Oh, God. | ||
| The fact that he said that, that this might be Antifa, like, what? | ||
| All these conspiracy theories out there, as an actor, I must say, if any of these people are conspiracy guys, they're fucking Daniel Day-Lewis. | ||
| Like, they are great actors. | ||
| Like, you know, like, certain times I even send, like, dumb YouTube videos of... | ||
| There's a funny YouTube video of somebody's girlfriend deleting his 2K NBA account. | ||
| And he just destroyed. | ||
| You can tell it took everything for him, like, not to, like, hit her or, like, whatever, right? | ||
| He was just destroyed. | ||
| He was crying. | ||
| And then some of my buddies are like, I don't know, man. | ||
| That's fake, dude. | ||
| I was like, yo, that guy is a fucking... | ||
| Emmy Award Oscar-winning actor if that shit is fake, because that is not easy to do. | ||
| No, people think everything is fake. | ||
| They think so many things are fake. | ||
| So many people have sent me things like, you think this is fake? | ||
| I'm like, oh, Jesus Christ. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Some things are fake. | ||
| That old man falling the way he did and bouncing his head off the fucking concrete in the middle of a huge protest. | ||
| Yeah, that was real, dude. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's real. | ||
| That's what happens when you push an old man. | ||
| That's... | ||
| The fact that this is the President of the United States say that. | ||
| Like, hey bro, you would fall that way too. | ||
| He's a Meisner-trained actor, and he has a blood pack in the back of his head. | ||
| Like, how can that... | ||
| Like a pro wrestler. | ||
| Like, how? | ||
| Yeah! | ||
| He fell onto a mat that was placed there in advance. | ||
| He cut himself with razors for years, so that wound bleeds easier. | ||
| I don't fucking know. | ||
| You can hear the guy's head bounce off the ground. | ||
| Oh, yikes. | ||
| Yeah, it's a thunk. | ||
| There's a hollow, coconut-like thunk when someone's head bounces off concrete. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's fucking terrible. | ||
| But the fact that the President of the United States didn't just think that, but he thought it would be a good idea to tweet that. | ||
| Like, he's falling apart. | ||
| All this protest shit, he's falling apart. | ||
| And also the fact that they denied that they used tear gas to clear out that square so that he can go to the church. | ||
| Like, hey man, there's video. | ||
| There's video of tear gas. | ||
| You know, oh, you want to call, it's pepper gas. | ||
| Okay, you know what? | ||
| That pepper gas they're using, you're not allowed to use that in war. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know that? | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| Yeah, you're not allowed to use that shit in war. | ||
| You can't use tear gas, and it violates the Geneva Convention. | ||
| It's like a bio thing. | ||
| Yeah, Google that. | ||
| Make sure I'm right about that, but I'm pretty sure I'm right. | ||
| I'm pretty sure the argument that they're making is you can't use tear gas in war, but you should be able to use it in protests. | ||
| And these cops are shooting rubber bullets and, you know, people are losing their fucking eyes. | ||
| Here it is. | ||
| The military is banned from using tear gas on the battlefield, but police can use it on crowds at home. | ||
| Here's why, and this is on CNN. Just think about that. | ||
| The military is fucking banned from using this, but you're using it on civilians that just want to protest the tortured death Of a guy who was being detained by a cop who had a 14-year history of being a piece of shit. | ||
| And dozens of, I mean, he had more than a dozen complaints of abusive behavior. | ||
| And they're going to use tear gas on these people and just shoot rubber bullets randomly at folks. | ||
| I don't know what it takes. | ||
| What is the lowest competent denominator? | ||
| Like, he has to murder someone in front of you? | ||
| And people would still be like, oh, yeah, yeah, or whatever. | ||
| I think he's on the way out. | ||
| I think it's slowly but surely. | ||
| Stuff like this, he can't help himself. | ||
| And under pressure, when people are angry at him because of all this. | ||
| And I think one of the, it's kind of crazy, but one of the big things that started it off, where he really lost his composure, was all that shit that he said about Lysol. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Like, maybe we get disinfectant and put it in the body, a cleansing. | |
| When he started doing that, and then the next day, they were asking him about it. | ||
| I was being sarcastic to see how you reporters would call on it. | ||
| Like, no, you weren't. | ||
| You were rambling. | ||
| You were rambling. | ||
| Like, I've done that before. | ||
| I've caught rambling. | ||
| But I would say, the fuck am I talking about? | ||
| I don't know how you use Lysol on a person. | ||
| Why am I saying this? | ||
| He's pitching. | ||
| He's pitching as if, like, you're in the writer's room, and he's like, yeah, have you tried this idea? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You know, what about you pair this character with that character? | ||
| But you don't do that as the president in public about health issues. | ||
| See, look at this. | ||
| CDC, some Americans are gargling with bleach or putting it on food to fight COVID-19. | ||
| Isn't that real? | ||
| Really? | ||
| They did a survey of a couple thousand people and somewhere in the range of 4% of people admitted to gargling and or washing stuff with bleach. | ||
| This is Darwinism. | ||
| If you're over 18, go do it. | ||
| Don't say that, Joe. | ||
| If you're younger and you're young and you don't know any better, you're not uneducated. | ||
| But at a certain age, you should know not to fucking gargle with bleach, right? | ||
| Tide Pod Challenge all over again. | ||
| Yeah, it's Tide Pod Challenge, but it'll kill you. | ||
| It's interesting. | ||
| I stay off Twitter, all of that stuff. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| It's tough. | ||
| I think I'm going to delete my Twitter account. | ||
| It's so toxic these days. | ||
| I'm in a tweet thread, or a text thread, rather, with a couple comedians, and they'll send me the most egregious, ridiculous things that are going on on Twitter where people are arguing about all kinds of crazy shit. | ||
| And I'm like, man, this is toxic. | ||
| A lot of these people have severe depression and mental health issues, and they're lashing out at people, and they have these witch hunts. | ||
| And they go after folks for jokes from 14 years ago and attack them and put up screenshots, and they think they're somehow or another... | ||
| Doing something positive. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Did you do a Twitter scrub of old tweets? | |
| No. | ||
| I did that. | ||
| I mean, I see everyday actors getting fired and shit. | ||
| None of my stuff was terrible, but it was just bad jokes. | ||
| Well, the problem is, with us in particular, we say the most ridiculous shit to each other all the time. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And then Twitter was like a lot of it was like trying jokes out, and a lot of it was like you had a hot take on something that was ridiculous, and you knew it was offensive, but you're only saying it for fun. | ||
| And then people take those things out of context and they pretend that it's like your real feelings and thoughts. | ||
| Like these are jokes. | ||
| People say ridiculous shit that they don't really mean because they want to get you to laugh. | ||
| That's all it is. | ||
| And if you take those out of context, it can look pretty bad. | ||
| You're like a pretty pure comedian, you know? | ||
| I have to kind of... | ||
| You act. | ||
| I act and stuff, and that is a totally different world. | ||
| That world sucks. | ||
| Because you can't really say anything. | ||
| So even when I do stand-up, like, what the fuck? | ||
| What am I supposed to say? | ||
| Like, I can only... | ||
| I've learned my lane is only telling my stories. | ||
| You can't argue with that. | ||
| If I'm just telling you stories about my father or me growing up in Hong Kong, what are you going to say? | ||
| I'm a fucking asshole? | ||
| Because I grew up a certain way? | ||
| So that's the only thing that I found, Elaine, that I guess people can't argue. | ||
| For now, they can't. | ||
| For now. | ||
| But as things get more and more ridiculous, eventually one day they'll be able to get mad at you for that. | ||
| Once everything's been cleared out and people have been purified, they just move the goalposts and they find some new thing that's offensive to say or do. | ||
| There's things that people are getting fired for today that three months ago you could say easily and people would agree with you. | ||
| It's just weird, man. | ||
| Just say it to your friends. | ||
| Don't tweet about it. | ||
| I guess it's the lesson. | ||
| Well, the thing is, a lot of people tweeted in, you know, fucking 2008. They tweeted it, and then someone will go back and find it 12 years later, and you get in trouble. | ||
| And you get fired. | ||
| People are getting fired for old tweets. | ||
| I'm really glad I don't have a job job where someone hires me or fires me. | ||
| I've said a million things in the podcast, drunk or high or talking shit with comedians, where you're just trying to make each other laugh and say stupid shit. | ||
| If you don't see the whole podcast and get the vibe of how we talk, Right. | ||
| In the conversation. | ||
| You just make a snippet out of it. | ||
| You can make someone look like a real piece of shit. | ||
| But it's disingenuous. | ||
| It's disingenuous. | ||
| It's deceptive. | ||
| They know what they're doing. | ||
| They know that they're trying to paint a very distorted perception of who these people are when they're taking their tweets and taking them out of context and putting them up there and trying to get them canceled. | ||
| They have rocks. | ||
| It's just like a looter in a lot of ways. | ||
| Like they have rocks and there's a window and they want to throw a rock in a window. | ||
| You know, how the military hires hackers to hack into their own system to see how vulnerable they are. | ||
| I think there should be a new job out there for comedians, celebrities to hire these Twitter people. | ||
| To see if they can dig up any dirt. | ||
| And I'll give them five grand if you can find anything. | ||
| Right, just to prevent some sort of tweet storm against you. | ||
| That's a good idea, actually. | ||
| That's actually a good idea for actors. | ||
| Like, they should do that before... | ||
| Well, I know they do do that now when they hire someone for any sort of prominent... | ||
| Whether it's you're going to be on the Today Show, or you're going to host some show, or you're going to be a sitcom actor. | ||
| They'll check your fucking tweets down. | ||
| They want to make sure. | ||
| Especially if you're a comic. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's tough. | |
| They look at us like we're criminals. | ||
| They look at us like, what have you been up to? | ||
| What have you been doing when no one's looking? | ||
| What have you been writing on your own, you fucking weirdo? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Trying to make people laugh. | ||
| You ridiculous shit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ugh. | |
| That's why the virtual shows are the worst. | ||
| Imagine you trying a joke on Zoom. | ||
| They record it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You get canceled off a Zoom virtual show? | |
| Ugh. | ||
| It could happen. | ||
| It could happen. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, you know what's interesting, though? | ||
| I think... | ||
| I was talking to my buddies about this. | ||
| I think... | ||
| I'm a nice guy. | ||
| If somehow there was an old tweet somebody found, and it's some bullshit, and they're trying to cancel me, Do you think you or, like, friends of mine would speak up and be like, hey man, he's actually a good guy? | ||
| I would 100% speak up for you. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| Right, so I think the people that actually got tweets dug up about them, there's two ways. | ||
| Sometimes you get people speaking up and it's like, no, no, no, he's actually a good guy. | ||
| But most of the time, it's like... | ||
| Yeah, he was an asshole. | ||
| Yeah, he actually didn't hire no black people because blah blah. | ||
| So I think it's the combination of both. | ||
| That tweet just exposes a little bit of that person and then everybody jumps on and is like, yeah, no, you know what? | ||
| He's actually a dick. | ||
| It could be. | ||
| Or it could be the person who's getting attacked does not have a high-profile friend, and they're kind of just starting out, and maybe they got a job somewhere, and none of their friends have any clout, so they can't really speak up for them, and if they did, they'd get canceled, so they're scared. | ||
| They're scared of the mob, because it really is a mob, man. | ||
| When an internet mob comes after you, You know, it's just not a good way to communicate. | ||
| You know, there's an interesting guy who had a tweet about this. | ||
| I'm going to pull this up. | ||
| There's a gentleman named... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Where is his tweet here? | |
| There it is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Alex Levinovits. | ||
| I'm sure I'm saying this right. | ||
| Levinovits. | ||
| Alan, I'm sorry. | ||
| Alan Levinovits. | ||
| I'm trying to read his last name. | ||
| I glossed over his first name. | ||
| But he had a really interesting point that what we're eating when people get sick, you're eating highly processed food, right? | ||
| You're not eating healthy, natural food. | ||
| When you're consuming tweets and you're getting a lot of your information from Twitter and social media, you're getting highly processed information. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| And he was saying it's just as bad for you as processed food and then it's unnatural and it doesn't come in a natural form. | ||
| And I was like, that's a very excellent point. | ||
| The way he put his Twitter handle is Alan, A-L-A-N-L-E-V-I-N-O-V-I-T-Z. I'm going to have him on the podcast too. | ||
| He's an author and a professor. | ||
| He's just a that the point was excellent like I've said I had a similar point that I said too many people like you consuming gossip and bullshit and you're watching stupid television shows reality shows and your your mental diet is very poor But I think the way he formed it is actually even better that it's really highly processed because the form You're getting tweets, right? | ||
| You're getting 280 characters. | ||
| That form of like data and information, there's no social cues, there's no context, there's no nuance, and you're getting this very weird message, and you can decide good or bad. | ||
| Good message, bad message. | ||
| Bad person, good person. | ||
| Like it's hard. | ||
| And then anger. | ||
| There's no real way to... | ||
| It's a bad way to exchange information with other human beings. | ||
| What's the anonymity of it? | ||
| People wouldn't say that shit to your face. | ||
| They're either going to get beat up or just... | ||
| There's a common courtesy when you're talking face-to-face. | ||
| I wouldn't say certain things to you. | ||
| If you're a kind person, yeah. | ||
| But when you're anonymous and then you're angry, that's... | ||
| It's not... | ||
| It's also convenient you can demonize someone and attack them. | ||
| You don't care if you get them fired because they had a weird Halloween picture. | ||
| They dressed up like an Indian in 1988. You know what I mean? | ||
| There's a lot of that shit going around. | ||
| We should all have to delete our Twitters. | ||
| I don't know why people have Twitters anymore. | ||
| Well, it's good for promoting shows when we used to have shows. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| My Twitter never caught on because my shit is so vanilla. | ||
| You know, because I don't ever say controversial shit. | ||
| And that's how you get followers. | ||
| Well, you're smart. | ||
| Well, controversial shit helps. | ||
| I used to retweet a lot of cool shit that people sent me, but then I had to stop listening, reading things that people were sending me. | ||
| The one thing I ever really recently tweeted about was, I don't even want to mention this, but the whole Shane Gillis thing with the SNL. Mm-hmm. | ||
| I was sitting in my trailer. | ||
| I was just angry as an Asian person reading this. | ||
| And then I just said, this guy should not be here. | ||
| Blah, blah. | ||
| You know, like almost. | ||
| I became the mob. | ||
| But I was just angry and I never thought about it. | ||
| And then I got so much flack, you know, even saying something that I thought was right from my experience, what I thought. | ||
| And then ever since then, I was just like, forget it. | ||
| You know, I'm only going to retweet other people's shit. | ||
| I have no opinions. | ||
| You know, the Shane Gillis thing was very weird, because like, they're talking shit, right? | ||
| They're trying to be offensive, to be funny, and no one was listening, right? | ||
| When they were doing it, and there's like, you know, a thousand people downloading their podcasts, they just thought they were just being offensive and saying ridiculous shit because you can, and because you make each other laugh. | ||
| I don't think he's racist. | ||
| I don't think he's a bad guy. | ||
| I think he's just talking shit. | ||
| It's the casualness of it, though. | ||
| I think that was what got to me. | ||
| It's like, damn. | ||
| There's just white people in their rooms talking about us like that. | ||
| Like, that sucks. | ||
| I think they probably wouldn't talk like that if no one was around. | ||
| It's weird. | ||
| It's like you're talking like that because you know it's taboo to talk like that. | ||
| It's part of the fun of doing it. | ||
| I mean, you know, oh, you're a racist apologist. | ||
| I'm not apologizing for it, but I am saying that that's what a lot of those kind of guys do. | ||
| There's like a shock aspect to certain Comedy where they try to make each other laugh by saying shit you're not supposed to say and He he had some fucking great sketches. | ||
| There was a great sketch that he put up that Norm Macdonald retweeted because Norm was upset that he got fired for it all and it was about people taking things the wrong way and Misunderstanding and running with the worst possible scenario and it just like compounded it was a really great sketch and I shouldn't even have brought that up, and now people are going to tweet at me, like, you're a fucking asshole comic, trying to get another comic fired, but... | ||
| No, I get it. | ||
| Look, I get it, man. | ||
| Especially being a minority in America, I get it. | ||
| Being an Asian, like, I say this in my stand-up, it's like, people coming up and saying, thanks for representing Asians. | ||
| I love Asians, I love representing Asians, but it wasn't a choice. | ||
| When you wake up Asian, when you wake up Asian, you can only represent Asians, and there's some kind of responsibility, so... | ||
| I was talking to Steve Aoki about Bruce Lee. | ||
| You know, I'm a giant Bruce Lee fan, and we were talking Bruce Lee stories, and he was saying that, like, when he was a kid, it was like, Bruce Lee was like, finally, like, Asians had this representative, this badass representative, you know, which just didn't exist before in popular culture. | ||
| Like, that's how unique Bruce Lee is, if you really stop and think about it. | ||
| Like, there was literally no one, even remotely like him in pop culture before him. | ||
| And then burst onto the scene. | ||
| And then there was like a ton of fake ones. | ||
| There was Bruce Lye. | ||
| Do you remember? | ||
| Do you know about Bruce Lye? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| What's Bruce Lye? | ||
| When Bruce Lee died, they had this guy named Bruce Lye. | ||
| They had him dress like Bruce Lee and do very similar movies to Bruce Lee. | ||
| And Bruce Lee fans like myself, we were like, alright, I'll take it. | ||
| It's like, you know. | ||
| He was Asian though, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Okay, shit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| I mean, Bruce Lee was huge. | ||
| I mean, you can tell his impact. | ||
| 40 years later, he is still one of the most famous Asian sex symbols. | ||
| And representation, it's extremely important in that sense because I have had girls tell me, this is just anecdotally, you can't hate me for this story, but I mean, it's just a fun story. | ||
| But this girl told me, she was like, A white girl, she was like, you know, when I watched The Crow, which is Brandon Lee's movie, his son, he was like, when I watched The Crow, I felt like that was my sexual awakening when I was 15 years old. | ||
| And guess what? | ||
| I had sex with her that night. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Like, that shit matters, bro. | ||
| Like, I swear, when Crazy Rich Asians came out, and everybody was watching it, people wanted to start fucking Asian dudes. | ||
| Yeah, that makes sense. | ||
| Sadly, I don't know, statistically, you know, I think they did some research on like plenty of fish or something. | ||
| Asian dudes and black women are the least likely to get match on dating apps. | ||
| I don't know, it's probably a much bigger systematic conversation because we were, you know, emasculated, blah, blah. | ||
| But... | ||
| I think with Representative, if we had like 10 more Bruce Lees, you know, or 10 more Crazy Rich Asians, that really helps, just the media representation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Or you. | |
| Or me. | ||
| You just need to blow the fuck up. | ||
| I'm doing fine, you know. | ||
| You're doing real fine. | ||
| I need some other brothers to, or some white girl to be watching my stand-up and be like, you know, I'm gonna go fuck an Asian guy tonight. | ||
| That's important, man. | ||
| That's my dream in this business, is to help other Asian brothers get laid. | ||
| I think you can do it. | ||
| I hope so. | ||
| I have faith in you. | ||
| I might just do porn, Joe. | ||
| You should do that, too. | ||
| Whatever. | ||
| You should be the only guy that has a dual career. | ||
| Like, successful comedian, successful porn star. | ||
| There's something about, right, if you decide to become a porn star, it taints you for everything else. | ||
| Comedy, though? | ||
| Yeah, I think so. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Yeah, I don't think... | ||
| My acting career would be over. | ||
| Do you think if Dave Chappelle just started slinging dick? | ||
| That would be hilarious! | ||
| It would be kind of funny. | ||
| But do you think that it would taint his comedy career at all? | ||
| How's his dick game, though? | ||
| How's his dick game? | ||
| I bet it's pretty fucking strong. | ||
| If it's a strong dick game, I think it'll help. | ||
| You think so? | ||
| I think so. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| Somebody's got to be brave enough to do it. | ||
| Do you remember when Snoop Dogg was, like, hosting pornos? | ||
| He was? | ||
| Yeah, he was hosting them. | ||
| What does that even mean? | ||
| He would be in the room like, oh shit, people are fucking... | ||
| He was doing things with porn. | ||
| I'm sure I'm right about this. | ||
| But who wants that? | ||
| Doggy style, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, doggy style. | ||
| So he had porn that he was putting... | ||
| Look, Snoop Dogg is beyond reproach. | ||
| He's so cool, he can get away with everything. | ||
| He can get away with everything and anything, no matter what it is. | ||
| But that's a bad idea to start with. | ||
| I don't even like the dude talking shit when he's like fucking, you know? | ||
| I don't want any noise from the man. | ||
| Like this one guy, I think his name is a black porn star, like Wesley Pipes. | ||
| Maybe I know too much about porn, but he be talking some shit in his pores. | ||
| I'm like, yo, shut up, dog. | ||
| Let me just concentrate. | ||
| Yeah, dude. | ||
| Trying to be very careful here, but just showing you guys. | ||
| Oh, yeah, we can't really see this, right? | ||
| No, yeah, but it's available to find. | ||
| And so the girls were doing all their stuff, and he's not doing porn, but he's producing it, right? | ||
| He's not in the same room, right? | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| That's a good move. | ||
| Probably a good advisor. | ||
| It's like, hmm, let's keep you in the other room. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| This was back when we had the Authorize button on cable boxes, which doesn't really exist anymore. | ||
| Remember that? | ||
| No! | ||
| That's like how you bought pay-per-views. | ||
| You had to press a button? | ||
| You go to the channel, and then if you wanted it, you hit Authorize. | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| And then for $3.99, you get to watch whatever was on. | ||
| I don't really remember that. | ||
| Yeah, that's like when cable boxes first came out. | ||
| You press it on the box itself? | ||
| On the remote control, there's an authorized button. | ||
| So there's a DJ. It's very easy for kids to buy porn. | ||
| It's a whole party, and then it becomes porn? | ||
| Looks like it. | ||
| I mean, I'm no detective, but that girl's got her pants off. | ||
| Oh, there you go. | ||
| Geez Louise. | ||
| I think it's like the after parties after the show. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, there's Snoop. | ||
| And they're all dancing and everybody's having a good time. | ||
| Okay, seen enough. | ||
| Don't throw up. | ||
| I don't know if I like that. | ||
| I don't know if I like that. | ||
| You know, it's too casual. | ||
| The fucking is too casual. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| It's out in a party. | ||
| Everyone's out in the open in the middle of like, it seemed like they were by a pool. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I don't know about that. | ||
| Kind of a pool party, fuck party type of vibe. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Hmm. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Maybe I'll consider point career. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We'll see. | |
| But it's weird, right? | ||
| Because everybody wants to fuck, but nobody wants you to fuck on film. | ||
| It could taint you. | ||
| Like if you found out that Scarlett Johansson was having sex, you'd be like, of course she's having sex. | ||
| She's a beautiful girl. | ||
| She probably likes men and she has sex. | ||
| But if you said Scarlett Johansson wants to have sex on film and you can watch her, everybody would be like, what's wrong with her? | ||
| Yeah! | ||
| But I mean, look, like Sasha Gray, porn star who became kind of an actress from those Soderbergh movies. | ||
| How many did she do? | ||
| The Girlfriend Experience, I know she did. | ||
| Yeah, she did that one. | ||
| She's an odd case, right? | ||
| She's very smart. | ||
| Yeah, she's, I think, a decent actress, but she'll never make it to that next level because she was a porn star. | ||
| Now, has anybody done the reverse? | ||
| Where they're an actor and then became a porn star and then went back to acting. | ||
| Because you establish yourself as an actor. | ||
| I don't think they've ever gone back. | ||
| It's one of those Hail Mary, last dish effort things. | ||
| I think Dustin Diamond, after his career... | ||
| From Screech? | ||
| Yeah, I think he did porn, right? | ||
| Did he? | ||
| I'm sure he did. | ||
| But that was after he hasn't acted in a while. | ||
| Didn't he stab somebody? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think so. | |
| I think he stabbed somebody. | ||
| Yeah, he did a lot of shit. | ||
| He did stand-up, stabbed somebody, fucked people. | ||
| He did a lot. | ||
| We had a rich life. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I like how stand-up is grouped into that rock bottom. | |
| It is, though. | ||
| We're grouped into porn stars and strippers. | ||
| I think he did stand-up after he did porn. | ||
| I think it's porn, stand-up, stabbing people. | ||
| I think it was stand-up, stabbing people, porn. | ||
| But I might be wrong. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're all just one step away from stabbing and pulling. | |
| Do you know Vincent Gallo, the actor? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Great actor, but ruined his career by getting a real blowjob in a movie that he produced. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that's... | |
| Do you know about that? | ||
| Yes, I think I heard about that. | ||
| Brown Bunny. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, yeah, yeah, that was recent. | ||
| Well, no. | ||
| No? | ||
| It was like more than a decade ago at least. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| Yeah, I want to say early 2000s. | ||
| I want to say 2004, maybe something like that. | ||
| Brown Bunny. | ||
| I don't know what the story is, but that sounds kind of shady and me too, if you're the producer and the star and you're getting a blowjob. | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| Yeah, you could definitely see that. | ||
| 2003. Yeah, Brown Bunny. | ||
| So it's with... | ||
| I don't know how to say her name. | ||
| Chloe... | ||
| How do you say her name? | ||
| Oh, Savigne? | ||
| Is that right? | ||
| Is that how you say it? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| She's bounced back, but I don't necessarily believe that he has. | ||
| And he's a really interesting... | ||
| What is it? | ||
| Buffalo 64? | ||
| Is that what the name of that movie is? | ||
| Really weird interesting movie. | ||
| He did some interesting shit. | ||
| What is that his Buffalo movie? | ||
| Buffalo 66. Really interesting movie. | ||
| He's a great actor, but he decided, I think he was like, you know, he's out there, right? | ||
| He's a real artist and probably also a pervert. | ||
| And he's like, listen, how don't you just suck my dick for real? | ||
| And Chloe's like, let's do it. | ||
| I'm an artist too. | ||
| And so she really sucked his dick. | ||
| And it was pretty hot. | ||
| But people got very mad. | ||
| They got very mad. | ||
| Because his... | ||
| Critics were fucking furious. | ||
| Because they went to see it, and instead of it being simulated, it was actual sex. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hmm. | |
| Hmm. | ||
| It's weird, right? | ||
| Like, you could simulate violence, right? | ||
| Like John Wick movies. | ||
| I fucking love John Wick movies. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Great. | |
| Great movies. | ||
| But it's like... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Brains are splattered. | ||
| Dudes are getting stabbed in the eyeball. | ||
| Everybody's fine with it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Because you know it's not real. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Could you have simulated sex if you know for sure it's a rubber dick and a plastic pussy? | ||
| Fine. | ||
| Like, show penetration. | ||
| Fine. | ||
| It's fake penetration, folks. | ||
| No need to worry. | ||
| Nobody felt really good while they were doing this. | ||
| This is just rubber on plastic. | ||
| It's just... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| There was a robot, the robot was pushing, and it's a fake dick, and it's all CGI. Would everybody be cool with that? | ||
| Well, you know what's interesting? | ||
| Now that you're talking about real sex scenes inside of a movie, those movies, Nymphomaniac, what's that dude's name? | ||
| Van something, he's a European guy. | ||
| Oh, I don't know about those. | ||
| And that was like, there was like real sex scenes and I think real double penetration in those movies, but it was like... | ||
| I guess, like a good, considered a really good envelope-pushing type of movie. | ||
| So maybe if you're European, you can get away with it. | ||
| Yeah, they have different standards. | ||
| I was in Germany, and I was flipping through the channels one time, and just raw porn was on regular TV. I was like, oh, okay. | ||
| Just raw porn. | ||
| Just regular porn. | ||
| People were fucking. | ||
| It's kind of cool. | ||
| I guess. | ||
| For them, they're like, do you want to watch people fuck? | ||
| Here you go. | ||
| I don't get the appeal of it, because there's Pornhub now. | ||
| I think what people are trying to do is what I'm saying about violence. | ||
| Like, why are we so okay with overt, like, spectacular violence, but we're not okay with... | ||
| Like, if you knew... | ||
| Like, CGI is so good now. | ||
| It's so good. | ||
| You know, you can have monsters that aren't really there. | ||
| They're all created by a computer. | ||
| Why can't you have... | ||
| Could you have CGI sex? | ||
| Would people be okay with that? | ||
| Or are we so freaked out by penetration that we don't even want to watch fake penetration? | ||
| Nobody wants to get a boner next to their family in the theater. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Is that what it is? | |
| Maybe it's a shame thing. | ||
| Like, they feel... | ||
| We're so distorted. | ||
| We don't care if someone gets their brains beaten. | ||
| One of the scenes on television that made me abandon Walking Dead was when that, what's his name, Negan? | ||
| Is that his name? | ||
| He beat Glenn to death with a baseball bat, beat him over the head, his fucking eyes hanging out, and he smacked. | ||
| I'm like, this is murder porn. | ||
| Like, what is this? | ||
| Why are you making me watch this? | ||
| This is not fun. | ||
| I don't want to watch someone get literally splattered. | ||
| Like he's beating him over the head. | ||
| His brain is splattered like a watermelon that dropped off the top of a building. | ||
| It was terrible. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's okay. | ||
| But you couldn't... | ||
| If you had a scene in that movie where... | ||
| A man went down on a woman who was eating her pussy, and you could see him eating her pussy. | ||
| People were like, this is outrageous! | ||
| This is disgusting! | ||
| Get it off the TV! She's enjoying it, every minute of it. | ||
| She's got her feet up in the air, moaning. | ||
| She's happy. | ||
| People would be like, this is a terrible movie. | ||
| You're a piece of shit. | ||
| I can't believe you did this. | ||
| I think it's a shame. | ||
| Everybody watches porn and jerks off. | ||
| Not everybody. | ||
| Really? | ||
| There's like 40 or 50 people that don't even touch it. | ||
| That's tough. | ||
| Out there drinking water and running. | ||
| Yeah, I don't trust those people. | ||
| My old roommate, we used to watch Game of Thrones together. | ||
| Great show, you know. | ||
| But there's certain seasons that are slower than the other seasons. | ||
| And I didn't like it because I was like, oh, I wish the storyline would go faster or the character would get developed faster. | ||
| And my buddy Terrell, he was just like, man, I'm gonna stop watching this show. | ||
| There hasn't been any fucking in the last four episodes. | ||
| I didn't understand why he doesn't just go watch Pornhub or something. | ||
| Why does he watch Game of Thrones only for the fucking? | ||
| Yeah, some people are unique. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They have a different take on things. | ||
| But this Brown Bunny man, that tanked Vincent Gallo's career. | ||
| I mean, you don't hear about him anymore. | ||
| He was a big star. | ||
| Like, he was in a lot of, like, really interesting movies that were well-respected, and it was a big deal. | ||
| And this one movie, 17 years ago, fucking... | ||
| What's he doing now? | ||
| He might as well just double down and do porn. | ||
| No, I think he went back to doing movies, and I think he just does kind of obscure art house movies, probably. | ||
| Is that the case, Jamie? | ||
| That people don't really know about that much? | ||
| You just don't hear his name, and it's a shame, because he's a really fucking great actor. | ||
| He just had this idea, and his logic... | ||
| It's, you know, it's trackable. | ||
| Like, you get it. | ||
| Like, she's gonna actually blow me for real, instead of, like, a scene where a woman... | ||
| Like, if there was a scene, they're making out, and the girl goes down, and you just see her head, and he's like, uh... | ||
| And we're fine with that. | ||
| We're fine with that. | ||
| We don't want to actually see a dick in a woman's mouth, though. | ||
| Even though we know that's what it's supposed to be. | ||
| Well, but also, maybe it's because he produced it, or wrote it. | ||
| Like, that's like me writing a sex scene for myself. | ||
| That's gross. | ||
| Like, that's me too, for sure. | ||
| Well, unless your girlfriend was the actress and you guys talked about it and she's cool with it and she wanted to do it. | ||
| I don't know what kind of relationship he had with Chloe but that's the real, especially today in the Me Too era, you can fucking never get away with that unless it was the girl's idea. | ||
| You'd have to get her on video saying, it's my idea to suck your dick, I want to do it. | ||
| You'd have to get lawyers involved, you'd have to sign NDAs, people would have to sign consent forms. | ||
| Sadly, I don't think I've ever had a sex scene in anything. | ||
| I don't think that's sad. | ||
| Am I not a sex symbol? | ||
| Is that what's bothering you? | ||
| A little bit. | ||
| Time to write a movie, bro. | ||
| Yeah, I've been. | ||
| I can't write my own sex scene. | ||
| Somebody's got to write it for me. | ||
| Wasn't that a part of that ridiculously bad movie called The Room? | ||
| Where the guy wrote his own sex scene? | ||
| Oh, so gross. | ||
| So gross. | ||
| But the James Franco movie version of it was quite funny. | ||
| It's obviously kind of making fun of this guy. | ||
| He has some redeeming qualities. | ||
| He's just like a dreamer. | ||
| Good for him. | ||
| But it's making fun of the guy. | ||
| But he doesn't care. | ||
| He was next to James Franco on stage at the Golden Globes and stuff. | ||
| He just wants that fame. | ||
| Yeah, he just wants attention even if he's the nail. | ||
| He doesn't need to be the hammer. | ||
| You know what the most insulting thing I've gotten? | ||
| This is recent. | ||
| I don't even know how to talk about it. | ||
| But anyways, I should because it's just funny. | ||
| You know, I'm finally at this point in my career. | ||
| People send me scripts if I want to do it, which is very flattering. | ||
| I'm like, oh, great. | ||
| So there's an email my agent sent me. | ||
| He's like, you're going to be really angry at this. | ||
| I'm really happy about it. | ||
| I was like, oh, fuck. | ||
| Not a good way to start an email from your agent. | ||
| And they're like, they want you to play a lead in this biopic. | ||
| I was like, oh shit, what's up? | ||
| You know, like, I'm ready. | ||
| And then they're like, yeah, but it's the biopic of William Hung. | ||
| I was like, brother, are you kidding me? | ||
| Is that the Virginia shooter? | ||
| Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. | ||
| Oh, that's that guy. | ||
| He's the American Idol. | ||
| Terrible singer? | ||
| She bangs, motherfucker. | ||
| Oh, I met that dude. | ||
| Look, nothing wrong with the guy. | ||
| There's definitely something wrong with him. | ||
| Yes, yes, yes. | ||
| But he's not malicious. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| He might be a little Asperger or something. | ||
| I don't know what it is. | ||
| I thought it was that one dude who was a shooter at the university. | ||
| Yeah, that's tough, too. | ||
| I read all 115 pages of that script. | ||
| I've never been so angry reading a script. | ||
| Like, I wanted to fucking vomit. | ||
| Why were you angry? | ||
| Well, you gotta understand, I think, William Hung set us back like 10 years. | ||
| Look, nothing wrong with that, brother. | ||
| It's not his fault. | ||
| Maybe there's a very nuanced way to write this movie of why American Idol producers picked him out of the crowd and featured him just to make fun of him, and why the rest of America laughed at this guy. | ||
| That might be an interesting story. | ||
| Wasn't that the whole thing about American Idol? | ||
| It's like you had real talent, but then you also had delusional people, and the delusional people was part of the thing. | ||
| Oh, it was funny. | ||
| I love watching that, but I think it just cuts so deep as an Asian guy. | ||
| It's the opposite of Bruce Lee. | ||
| William Hung is the exact opposite of Bruce Lee. | ||
| But there's something wrong with him. | ||
| I mean, as a human being, there's something to be said. | ||
| I get that the guy signed a release, and I get that that's part of the fun with the show, but there is kind of a difference between people that are mentally challenged and someone who's just not very talented. | ||
| But people are laughing at him. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| That's what I'm saying. | ||
| He's mentally challenged. | ||
| There's something wrong with him. | ||
| When I say there's nothing wrong with him, I don't mean he's not, you know, autistic, mentally challenged, whatever it may be. | ||
| I'm saying there's nothing wrong with his intentions. | ||
| He's a dreamer. | ||
| He wanna make it. | ||
| So there's sure a very nuanced way to write about William Hung that could work, but we just shouldn't make that movie. | ||
| Have we ran out of Asian people out there that I can do biopics about and a fucking William Hung script lands on my desk? | ||
| Well, isn't that a part of the problem with reality TV in general, right? | ||
| It's like, what they're trying to do is... | ||
| There's some reality TV that's based on actual events that are taking place, but a lot of it is like they're taking... | ||
| You have to sign these releases on a lot of these shows that allow them to edit your words in a very distorted way. | ||
| You and I can have a conversation, you can have an answer to one question, and they'll put that answer on another question that's totally unrelated. | ||
| It makes you look like a real piece of shit. | ||
| And they're 100% allowed to do that. | ||
| And they do that for the storyline. | ||
| They do that for the narrative. | ||
| They don't care about your reputation. | ||
| They don't care about what happens when you go back home. | ||
| People are like, how can you fucking say that, Jimmy? | ||
| I didn't! | ||
| You don't have access to the raw tapes. | ||
| You can't release. | ||
| You know, no one's going to believe you, but they victimize people on purpose just so that they can make what they call a good show. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But they're doing that with him. | ||
| It's different because... | ||
| He's got a problem. | ||
| It's not like he's a guy like it's not like if I decided I was gonna be a singer and I went on American America's Got Talent. | ||
| I was terrible. | ||
| Yeah, and I was I'm singing and everybody just they hit the buzzer to get the fuck out of here Yeah, I'm I can I'm a normal person like if you think I suck like I probably suck Yeah, but if I have a problem like a mental problem like there's something wrong with me. | ||
| Yeah And I do that, and you know there's something wrong with me, and you still put me on television. | ||
| That's where we're getting weird. | ||
| That's where we're getting like, you're profiting off of people. | ||
| Taking advantage of somebody. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| You're profiting off of someone who's clearly mentally handicapped in some way, shape, or form. | ||
| If there's a spectrum of mental disability, he's on that spectrum. | ||
| It's not you. | ||
| It's not Jamie. | ||
| It's not me. | ||
| It's not like, oh, there's a regular guy. | ||
| We're all different, but regular. | ||
| You can talk to them. | ||
| That guy's off. | ||
| You know he's off. | ||
| But they're like, perfect. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Run it. | |
| Perfect. | ||
| Line him up. | ||
| Because people laugh. | ||
| They know people laugh. | ||
| And why are people laughing? | ||
| Look, it's tough being, I guess, one of few Asian actors in America, right? | ||
| I'm very fortunate to be in that position. | ||
| We all kind of know each other. | ||
| It's a small circle. | ||
| I'm very proud of all of us. | ||
| But... | ||
| Early on in my career, I got some flack from Silicon Alley. | ||
| My character, you know, it was an accented character. | ||
| Which, I mean, for me, it's a little different because I came to this country when I was 13. I couldn't really speak English. | ||
| So I was like, okay, I'm just going to play an earlier version of myself. | ||
| I understand. | ||
| I'm going to try to put some humanity in this character. | ||
| But then some articles or whatever, it's like, this is an offensive stereotype, blah, blah. | ||
| And I really looked into that. | ||
| I was like, okay, I get it. | ||
| eventually the character became a more three-dimensional character because the joke's no longer on him just being foreign. | ||
| It's on him being like a diabolical coder person or that. | ||
| But it's tough being an Asian actor because now not only do I have to decide on playing a part or not by looking at, oh, is this a good script? | ||
| I got to look at the cultural ramifications. | ||
| Is this good representation? | ||
| Because there's so few of us, each of us that does something means so much more, right? | ||
| That was the beef with the Apu character, because there wasn't a lot of Indian, and then you characterize, whatever. | ||
| Now, that's what's great about Crazy Rich Asians. | ||
| And I had a lot of fun on that movie, because for one of the first times, I wasn't the only Asian dude on set, and I can just play a character. | ||
| My character is an asshole in that movie, but I can just lean into that and be a character actor and play it. | ||
| And it's a powerful, funny movie. | ||
| It's a great production. | ||
| It came out excellent. | ||
| Everybody enjoyed it. | ||
| It's all good. | ||
| And there's a whole spectrum of Asians. | ||
| It's not just one Asian representing all Asians. | ||
| It's your handsome Asians, your asshole Asians, the romantic lead, and also the bitchy ex-girlfriend, whatever. | ||
| So we can just actually be actors for the first time and not be actors slash Asian representatives. | ||
| So when something like William Hung comes to the table... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Just can't do it, man. | ||
| I mean, come on. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| You know, it's interesting that when someone gets offended at racial stereotypes, society puts it through this filter of whether or not it's valid. | ||
| And I'll give you an example. | ||
| The Sopranos. | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| The Italian-American Anti-Defamation League or whatever the fuck it is. | ||
| They were pissed at the Sopranos. | ||
| They were pissed that it was reinforcing negative stereotypes about Italians. | ||
| And I'm Italian. | ||
| And everyone I know that's Italian was like... | ||
| What? | ||
| The fuck are you talking about? | ||
| Those are real people. | ||
| I know guys like that. | ||
| This is offensive? | ||
| What's offensive? | ||
| Reality? | ||
| Is the mob real? | ||
| Are those fat guys real? | ||
| Do they eat pasta like that? | ||
| That's real. | ||
| That's not a... | ||
| Because Italians aren't really discriminated against. | ||
| So it's... | ||
| It doesn't hold any water. | ||
| But also, you are Italian. | ||
| There's a ton of Italian actors, comedians out there. | ||
| So Sopranos is not the only place where you see Italians. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's not the only representation. | ||
| So that waters it down and it's fine. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because white people, you can play whatever. | ||
| Mentally handicapped guy, not so smart guy or complete asshole. | ||
| Because there's a million other white people. | ||
| But as soon as you play a mentally handicapped guy, it's over. | ||
| That's a very dangerous... | ||
| That was Robert Downey Jr. Oh, he was... | ||
| In Tropic Thunder. | ||
| Never go full retard. | ||
| Never go full retard. | ||
| But didn't he get an Oscar nomination for being in blackface? | ||
| I hope he did. | ||
| I mean, we talked about it on the podcast, and he was a... | ||
| It was like, thank God we talked about it on the podcast months ago. | ||
| And we didn't talk about it today. | ||
| Because today, I wouldn't even bring it up. | ||
| The guy who was the fucking editor of Bon Appetit, he got fired for a photograph that he took dressing up like, I guess he's Puerto Rican, like that was a costume that he did. | ||
| Like a brown face or something like that? | ||
| No brown face at all, just gold chains and a hat that said the Bronx or something. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, I think they called it racially insensitive. | ||
| Well, but that was kind of what I was talking about earlier, though. | ||
| Adam Rappaport. | ||
| I'm a big fan of Bon Appetit. | ||
| Until, like, maybe then. | ||
| And then I gotta, okay, what's going on here? | ||
| Because, okay, the news came out with him on that picture. | ||
| But it's not that picture. | ||
| And then his staff. | ||
| There's this girl that was one of the only minorities on camera. | ||
| She started saying, yes, I agree. | ||
| Not just that picture, but I'm the only maybe non-white person on camera that's not getting paid fairly. | ||
| They just want to push me on camera for diversity, but I get paid fractions of whatever the other people. | ||
| And then even other white people spoke up and be like, yeah, we have some systematic stuff here we should look into. | ||
| Oh, at the organization. | ||
| Yeah, so it's like... | ||
| So it's a combination of things. | ||
| Yeah, so if I have a Puerto Rican picture of me, I don't think people would start jumping on me and be like, yeah, he is kind of a dick. | ||
| But here's the example. | ||
| If someone had a picture of them pretending to be Italian, nobody would give a fuck. | ||
| If he had a tank top on with spaghetti stains on it and his hair greased back, no one would give a fuck. | ||
| The problem may be that there's not enough representation in a positive way of Puerto Ricans in the media. | ||
| There's a lot of famous Puerto Ricans. | ||
| Give me examples of... | ||
| I don't want to... | ||
| Get the wrong nationality with famous actors, but I'm very aware that there's a lot of famous Puerto Ricans, but maybe not enough. | ||
| Maybe it's the timing of immigration. | ||
| My grandparents, when they came here, I talked To my grandfather a lot about it. | ||
| They were horribly abused. | ||
| There was a lot of racism against Italians when they were initially immigrated in the early 1900s. | ||
| But by the time I was a kid, it was gone. | ||
| I mean, I experienced a little bit of it in Boston with Irish kids. | ||
| They would make fun of me for being Italian or shit on me for being Italian. | ||
| But by the time I was a grown man, anti-Italian racism is non-existent, basically. | ||
| Because you guys are just white, kind of. | ||
| It's like COVID in Italy right now. | ||
| You can't even find it. | ||
| You see the new CDC? They were talking about COVID. The viral load in Italy right now is so small, it's barely registering. | ||
| Oh, wow, really? | ||
| Because they were rough. | ||
| They had it rough for a while. | ||
| They're not healthy. | ||
| Again, these are my people. | ||
| They fucking eat pasta, drink wine. | ||
| They all smoke cigarettes. | ||
| They live on top of each other. | ||
| No one's washing their hands. | ||
| There's no exercise. | ||
| I was just having this conversation with Sebastian yesterday. | ||
| We were joking around about this. | ||
| He's like, try finding a fucking good gym in an Italian hotel. | ||
| It's totally true. | ||
| Every time I'd go, there'd be some cable machine with some fucked up pulley system that's broken. | ||
| I just wound up doing push-ups and sit-ups and just run up the rocks or something. | ||
| There's no gyms. | ||
| The gym is a joke. | ||
| No one over there is working out. | ||
| Well, the thing is, I don't think I want to say that or I could say that. | ||
| I can't just do a bit about Italians not having gyms and being fat, right? | ||
| Right, but Sebastian Maniscalco can do that. | ||
| I can do that. | ||
| But I'm saying you can do that. | ||
| But you could, too. | ||
| We wouldn't give a fuck. | ||
| Somebody would. | ||
| You and Sebastian wouldn't, but somebody might. | ||
| Those people are assholes. | ||
| Whoever would, it'd be like those Italian-American anti-defamation people that got mad at the Sopranos. | ||
| Like, shut up. | ||
| There's no anti... | ||
| The anti-Italian sentiment in this country is so small. | ||
| You can't even measure it. | ||
| It's a... | ||
| It doesn't count. | ||
| You can't complain. | ||
| You can't complain where you see what Asian people have to go through, black people have to go through, Mexican people have to go through, Muslim people have to go through. | ||
| You can't complain if you're Italian. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You can. | ||
| It's ridiculous. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Alonzo Bolton said this jokingly to me after, you know, my set, because my set has a lot of Asian stuff, my stories, you know, and some complaints. | ||
| And then he's like, you know, I like how you're talking about race because you got minor inconveniences. | ||
| Black people get shot, you know? | ||
| And I was like, oh shit, should I never talk? | ||
| But he's a friend. | ||
| He was joking, but he has a point. | ||
| But that's kind of what you're saying. | ||
| It's a point. | ||
| It's a real good point. | ||
| But yeah, it's a point. | ||
| But it's weird that we have hierarchies of racial discrimination in this country. | ||
| There's hierarchies. | ||
| And then there's positive racial stereotypes, right? | ||
| Black guys, big dicks. | ||
| Asian guys, good at math. | ||
| I go, are those okay? | ||
| Are those stereotypes okay? | ||
| Apparently not. | ||
| I don't think it is. | ||
| I wonder when, as a culture, we'll get... | ||
| I mean, I really honestly believe this, and I'm one of those... | ||
| I'm a forever optimist. | ||
| I really believe that this moment, the reason why these people are in the streets, the reason why there's all... | ||
| Take away the looting, just the peaceful protests. | ||
| The reason why all this is happening is because There's a lot of parts of our culture that haven't caught up to the zeitgeist, to the way people feel about things, the way people are disgusted by racism, the way people are disgusted by discrimination. | ||
| And then people are united and they're getting together to try to show that. | ||
| Like it's a cultural shift that's represented by this mass movement of human beings. | ||
| I think it's, I think everything, if you follow like Steven Pinker's work where he talks about violence and if you go back and look at crime a hundred years ago versus now, you see this very steady decrease in crime and violence and people getting better. | ||
| We're getting better at everything. | ||
| And I feel like this is a cultural moment where people are going to get better at racism. | ||
| Yeah, I hope so. | ||
| Not better at doing it better. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're going to be sneakier at it. | |
| We're all humans, man. | ||
| The only difference is that we came from different climates, and to pay attention to that and focus on that above all else, it's annoying. | ||
| It's dumb. | ||
| It's an artifact of the past. | ||
| You know, I want it to get to the point where you can make fun of everybody and no one gives a fuck. | ||
| Well, yeah. | ||
| It's just fun. | ||
| And also, you want to, like... | ||
| Like, when I talk to my black friends, I'm not asking them, yo, man, tell me about Black Lives Matter, educate me, or whatever. | ||
| Like, we're past that. | ||
| Like, when I'm talking, I'm talking about girls, you know? | ||
| Life. | ||
| Right, life. | ||
| But I think when you're uncomfortable, that's when you're like... | ||
| Hey, Joe, so you're Italian, huh? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Like, imagine if that's my conversation. | |
| That's weird. | ||
| Like, if you come up to me, I walk in this door, and the first thing you ask me is Asian shit. | ||
| When did you learn to use chopsticks? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Early on? | |
| We're not friends. | ||
| Like, we're just, you know, you're just... | ||
| I'm your Asian consultant or whatever. | ||
| So I think, yeah, it's good to get past that point where, sure, we can just talk about... | ||
| Anything that's beyond that, but yeah, there's so much work to be done. | ||
| I think what's happening is a great turning point. | ||
| We look back and be like, yeah, that happened. | ||
| There's great things happening, and then there's also the feeding frenzy. | ||
| The online mob feeding frenzy is happening, too. | ||
| There's this whole broad range of things that are happening all at once. | ||
| There's great things and bad things, but that's just part of being human. | ||
| You have to see the bad things and just go, this is fucking gross. | ||
| Let's get away from this and this is better. | ||
| When people see things that give them hope and you see all those heart signs where people love things and like things and say this is amazing and then they share it and repost it and retweet it, it spreads through people. | ||
| We should all be looking for more things that make us feel good. | ||
| Whether it's our own actions or things that we can find online. | ||
| More things that resonate with how we want the world to be. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't have anything to add to that. | |
| And pussy. | ||
| I mean, that makes you feel good. | ||
| All these things are good. | ||
| And dick for the ladies and the gay folks. | ||
| Pussy for the ladies that are into ladies. | ||
| So the conclusion of that entire conversation is, I should do porn. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I've been saying that to you in a subtle way for the past hour and a half, bro. | |
| I'll reconsider my career. | ||
| You can do it. | ||
| Well, you don't know my dick game. | ||
| You don't know my dick game. | ||
| I've heard your jokes about your dick game, so I'm assuming your dick game is pretty good. | ||
| I gotta represent, bro. | ||
| Gotta do a dick game joke, you know, to represent. | ||
| I'm tired of this shit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Do you feel like comedy has less opportunities for Asian guys? | ||
| Hmm, stand-up in itself? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Stand-up, I think, I look at stand-up as such a utopia. | ||
| I have such a love for it because... | ||
| It's a meritocracy. | ||
| It is a meritocracy. | ||
| And the weirder you are, the less fitting in you are in society, the better you're probably gonna be. | ||
| You have an angle. | ||
| And when I first started, I was able to do some, say, Brea improv or whatever, shows that I would never have gotten to do one year in because they were Asian shows. | ||
| So I was able to fit something, you know? | ||
| So that, it could be, I always say this, I think it's, It could be easier if you have an angle, whereas it's a race thing or something, some specialty of yours, to get into acting, to get into comedy. | ||
| But when you get to a certain level, it becomes less work, I think. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| It gives you an angle to break in, but once you've broken in, then it might not be. | ||
| I've had conversations with my female friends about stand-up, female friends that are comics about stand-up, and the ones that are really good all seem to think it's a meritocracy. | ||
| And the ones that are not very good seem to think there's some discrimination. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The one, like, you talked to Ali Wong. | ||
| Ali Wong and I had a conversation about it, and she goes, do you think it's a meritocracy? | ||
| I go, I do. | ||
| She goes, I do too. | ||
| I think it's... | ||
| Because, like, look, she's fucking murdering it, right? | ||
| Killing it. | ||
| Killing it. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Smash it. | ||
| She did, like, some insane number of sold-out shows in San Francisco. | ||
| She's a beast. | ||
| There's no denying that, right? | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| Also a woman. | ||
| But there's other women that'll tell you, like, it's hard for women to get on the lineups. | ||
| It's hard for women to get promoted. | ||
| I'm like, hmm, okay. | ||
| I think it's harder for women to go on stage. | ||
| First of all, if a woman goes on stage and does stand-up, almost automatically, her political opinions, nobody wants to hear. | ||
| Men don't want to hear your political opinions. | ||
| Men don't want to hear you telling them things that they don't already know. | ||
| Men don't want you to, like, if you talk about sex, Like man like you got to be like a broken slutty kind of a girl to talk about sex and then they'll go with it But if you're just like a regular girl with no problems and you want to talk about sex It's like you're you get scrutinized I think so you have to be better you have to think like for a woman to like ride like a Whitney Cummings or Eliza or someone to like rise through the ranks like you you have to be undeniable You have to be able to go into any crowd and | ||
| slay. | ||
| But some women, along that process of figuring out that there's sort of a narrow window that you can fit your jokes through, in the beginning at least, they stumble into that, and they bounce off those walls. | ||
| A guy can right away talk about politics, talk about sex, talk about anything. | ||
| For men, it just has to be funny. | ||
| It's basically wide open. | ||
| But men discriminate. | ||
| A lot of men do. | ||
| I don't want to generalize. | ||
| A lot of men discriminate when they see a woman go on stage. | ||
| They go, oh great, a woman comic. | ||
| Some woman I don't know. | ||
| Is she going to suck? | ||
| Is she going to talk about politics? | ||
| Shut the fuck up. | ||
| Some men don't want to hear a woman talk. | ||
| Yeah, that's tough, man. | ||
| I never thought about that. | ||
| Women have to be better. | ||
| And I guess... | ||
| Do you think it's harmful or is it helpful to start in that narrow lane, whereas it's a girl talking about dirty sex stuff or an Asian comic talking about being Asian, and then you can expand to other jokes? | ||
| Well, I think we all start with training wheels, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| We all talk about jerking off in our first five minutes. | ||
| You have to. | ||
| How old were you when you started stand-up? | ||
| 21. Me too. | ||
| I didn't know anything. | ||
| I was a moron. | ||
| Sex was the only thing that I was even interested in. | ||
| So that's all I talked about on stage. | ||
| You're just surviving. | ||
| Whatever you can get a laugh, you do it. | ||
| I think it's harder for women. | ||
| The beginning parts are harder. | ||
| It's harder. | ||
| It's harder to do that. | ||
| It's harder to just, you can't just talk about sex. | ||
| I think they have to be a little more undeniable. | ||
| They're a little more scrutinized. | ||
| And again, a lot of it is like men don't necessarily, a lot of men, again, I'm generalizing, don't necessarily want to hear a woman on stage. | ||
| See, there's a thing about stand-up too. | ||
| You're a smooth guy when you're on stage. | ||
| I love your delivery, your presentation. | ||
| You're very easy to watch. | ||
| You're very casual. | ||
| But because of that, because you're so comfortable, it gives you the illusion that anyone can do it. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| Because you're just talking. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I can talk too. | ||
| I can go up there and do what he's doing. | ||
| I know how to talk. | ||
| He's talking. | ||
| I can talk. | ||
| I'm going to do stand-up. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And so it gives the... | ||
| So dopey men already think they can do what you do. | ||
| And when a woman does it, dopey men that are sexist automatically think they can do better than that woman. | ||
| And they don't want to hear her. | ||
| Huh. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| It's like acting. | ||
| It's like acting seems easy, just being himself. | ||
| Right, just talking. | ||
| They don't know the writing that puts into it, like for us comics, and then the training for actors. | ||
| It's not like we're driving an airplane, you know, or flying an airplane. | ||
| Well, when you get to that, like, Daniel Day-Lewis style of acting, like, bitch, you can't do that. | ||
| Stop pretending you could do that. | ||
| You get to, like, my left foot, or some of the crazy shit that he did, you know. | ||
| I would say something about acting, there are naturals. | ||
| Like Jennifer Lawrence, never taken an acting class. | ||
|
unidentified
|
She's great. | |
| Probably crazy as fuck. | ||
| Who knows? | ||
| That's what I would say. | ||
| Just really good at something, whatever the skill set is. | ||
| At pretending and lying something, right? | ||
| And you're just really good at knowing the human condition somehow. | ||
| But comedians, even if you're a fucking natural, you suck in the first five years. | ||
| Yeah, you suck. | ||
| You suck. | ||
| I mean, you might get a couple of good sets here and there. | ||
| Have you seen anyone that's just, like, immediately good? | ||
| Some guys that have gone through Alcoholics Anonymous are really good right off the bat. | ||
| Because that's, like, their stage training? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| There's a dude that I knew back in Boston who was hilarious. | ||
| Well, quite a few guys, actually, in Boston. | ||
| Started out in AA. But this guy, Dave Fitzgerald, and I remember... | ||
| He was a grown man when I was a boy. | ||
| I was like 21 and he was you know late 30s and That's when he was starting stand-up, but he was way advanced Because he just had this ability because he would do the he was an alcoholic for years So he would he had these great fucking stories of all the times he did coke and drank so much that he didn't remember what he was doing and You know got arrested and he would tell these crazy drug-fueled stories on stage At an AA meeting. | ||
| And people would be dying laughing. | ||
| And he had this sort of way of doing it. | ||
| And then, I believe it was... | ||
| I forget who the comic was. | ||
| It was in the audience. | ||
| It was also in AA. They grabbed him and said, Hey man, you ever thought about doing stand-up? | ||
| You're fucking funny. | ||
| You could do stand-up. | ||
| Because he was killing at AA meetings. | ||
| So then when he would go to... | ||
| Because you've got to think. | ||
| It's stage time. | ||
| Yeah! | ||
| Hey, my name's Dave. | ||
| And he had this crazy, raspy voice. | ||
| He had a hard life. | ||
| Boston accent, hard life. | ||
| He's a funny fucking dude. | ||
| And he would go on stage at a comedy club the way he would go on stage at an AA meeting. | ||
| And murder. | ||
| So he was killing way before me. | ||
| Killing real early on. | ||
| Because he had months of stand-up. | ||
| Maybe even years. | ||
| I'm not sure how long he had done the AA meetings before he actually got on stage at a club. | ||
| But he had an advantage. | ||
| But that's still stage time. | ||
| It's like he's been doing open mics for five months. | ||
| Also, super supportive open mic nights. | ||
| Like, hi, my name's Dave. | ||
| I'm an alcoholic. | ||
| Hi, Dave. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, everybody's there. | ||
| You get a little more comfortable. | ||
| Get loose. | ||
| And you're around a bunch of other fellow junkies who fucked up their lives. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| You know what's interesting? | ||
| Speaking of being supportive, comics, we make fun of each other. | ||
| That's what we do. | ||
| It's like you walk off a stage. | ||
| Like, if you bomb and you walk off a stage, it's like, what are we doing? | ||
| A fucking one-man show? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You know what? | ||
| In a way, now, it's a compliment. | ||
| If you can do a one-man show, you're killing it. | ||
| But we just break each other's balls, right? | ||
| But I remember the first time I took improv classes, I was so uncomfortable because everybody's so supportive. | ||
| You know, it's like, zip, zap, zoom! | ||
| 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8! | ||
| Let's do these exercises and shit! | ||
| And then I was like, oh my god, if my buddy Terrell saw me doing this... | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would not hear the end of it. | |
| But there's something really nice about that. | ||
| When you get to a certain level in acting or when you get over yourself as a stand-up, you should be around supportive people. | ||
| Yeah, once you get to a certain level. | ||
| But then when people bust balls, like if someone gets off stage and has a terrible set and their friend busts their balls, usually they'll laugh. | ||
| They're like, dude, I just ate shit. | ||
| You ate plates of shit, son. | ||
| Let's have a drink. | ||
| And there's laughter. | ||
| It's like there's fun to it. | ||
| It's like they're picking up your spirits by making fun of you, and then you get to laugh at that. | ||
| We all know it's a process. | ||
| You trust the process. | ||
| You have a stand-up special that's out right now? | ||
| Yeah, on Amazon. | ||
| Is it right now? | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| Right now! | ||
| When did it come out? | ||
| It came out two weeks ago, I think. | ||
| Okay, beautiful. | ||
| So when did you film this? | ||
| November. | ||
| Oh, so you got in pretty early. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| It's funny. | ||
| I start my set by saying, Asians, we had a couple of good years! | ||
| I guess not so true anymore, you know, after the whole COVID thing. | ||
| You got in right before COVID became gigantic news. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| It was pretty tough. | ||
| I mean, before, so the special came out, what, in May? | ||
| Yeah, early May, right? | ||
| And I was like, I was kind of kicking myself. | ||
| I was like, shit, if it would have been later, my whole material would have changed, like blah, blah. | ||
| But it's like good to kind of have that out there. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And have people kind of see a glimpse of how good life was maybe six months ago. | ||
| You know, like how positive it was. | ||
| Because now it would have been, A little more somber tone, I think. | ||
| Yeah, it's hard now. | ||
| I mean, it's hard to figure out, like, what to say. | ||
| It's gonna take a while for everything to, like, settle in a place where people can accept even what's happened. | ||
| I mean, how many people you're dealing with in the audience that have lost their job? | ||
| How many people you're dealing with that, you know, there's no job for, it doesn't exist anymore, their business is gone, and they just want to laugh, and, like, maybe there's some wounds that you don't want to scratch up. | ||
| We're gonna have to navigate those weird waters. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know. | ||
| When we go back, do we open with talking about COVID and quarantine because that's what's on everybody's mind? | ||
| Or do we talk about something totally different? | ||
| I think I'm going to not talk about COVID. I might talk about the riots. | ||
| The riots fascinate me. | ||
| Because it's what I've always said. | ||
| People have said to me, why do you have guns? | ||
| Why are you into self-defense? | ||
| Why are you in all this stuff? | ||
| I'm like, civilization is a thin veneer. | ||
| We have only been civilized for the last 10,000 years or so. | ||
| Before that, we were fucking barbarians for hundreds of thousands of years. | ||
| We have that same DNA. Of those barbarians. | ||
| It's in our blood. | ||
| And we keep it together with religion and societal norms and community and love and friendship. | ||
| But when things go sideways, you get to see what people are really capable of. | ||
| And that's what we saw during the looting and the riots. | ||
| When people have an excuse and a reason, particularly when people are backed into a corner because They couldn't work for three months. | ||
| And then there's a justification. | ||
| The system is fucked up. | ||
| This guy that killed that... | ||
| The cop that killed that guy is a piece of shit. | ||
| There's riots. | ||
| And then you see cops that are fucking shooting tear gas at people. | ||
| And you're like, fuck you! | ||
| And they just want to smash and loot. | ||
| You see that thin layer of what a human being really is. | ||
| The civilization veneer gets removed. | ||
| And you go, oh, look at the real thing under there. | ||
| This is an animal. | ||
| Humans are animals. | ||
| We're a weird talking animal and we want to survive and we have ideas of fairness and rules and we have a mob mentality. | ||
| There's a weird thing that will happen that it's probably built into us from Thousands of years of surviving hand-to-hand combat and war, when shit goes crazy and you're around, you lock into chaos mode. | ||
| And if you've ever been around a mob that's going crazy and nutty, you can feel it, man. | ||
| You feel it in your skin, you feel it in the air. | ||
| I'm fascinated by that, and I'm probably gonna talk about that. | ||
| And you're the most prepared guy. | ||
| If some shit comes to shit, you can fight, you got weapons, right? | ||
| Yeah, but I'm gonna be the first to get the fuck out of here, too. | ||
| I'm the last to stay and fight. | ||
| I'm like, get the fuck out of here. | ||
| You can't win this. | ||
| This is not a winnable situation. | ||
| This is not a home invasion. | ||
| This is the world going sideways. | ||
| Like, you gotta get the fuck out. | ||
| How does it feel to be a martial arts expert, somebody that can fight? | ||
| Do you feel more confident going outside? | ||
| Because I'm always looking around like, okay, make sure that guy doesn't fuck me up. | ||
| He can totally kill me, whatever. | ||
| People can always shoot you. | ||
| They can always shoot you. | ||
| They can always stab you. | ||
| They can always hit you over the head when you're not looking. | ||
| There's always danger in being a person, especially when you're around bad people, right? | ||
| But if I'm in a situation where there's some guy who's a dick... | ||
| I've seen people get beat up, man, that couldn't defend themselves, and it's horrible to watch. | ||
| It's sad. | ||
| I mean, we've seen many videos online of people just getting beat up by somebody because they don't know how to fight. | ||
| And you see some person who really doesn't even know how to fight, and they're beating the fuck out of someone and hurting them really bad. | ||
| That's not gonna happen to me. | ||
| I like that. | ||
| I like that if some asshole tries to do that to me, I can hurt them. | ||
| I can detain them. | ||
| I can submit them. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But it doesn't ever get to that point. | ||
| Have you gotten in fights lately? | ||
| I'm not a fighter. | ||
| I mean, I know how to do it, but I'm a nice person. | ||
| So just knowing that, having a self-confidence, that feels good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It helps. | |
| That feels zen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It helps. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| But there's a lot of sketchy people out there, man. | ||
| We've all seen videos. | ||
| I watched a video yesterday of some guy punching some girl in the face for like no reason and knocking her unconscious. | ||
| I'm like, what the fuck? | ||
| People are assholes. | ||
| There's a bunch of people that are abused and they come from horrible backgrounds. | ||
| They're abused by their parents or their family and they're a mess. | ||
| And they walk amongst us free until they commit crimes and they get locked in jail. | ||
| So if somebody wants to fight me, what I do, I just run? | ||
| Yeah, get the fuck out of there, bro. | ||
| You gotta see it coming. | ||
| Seeing it coming is real. | ||
| That's a real important part of it. | ||
| Like, seeing it coming right away. | ||
| Seeing sketchy people and knowing you gotta have that spidey sense. | ||
| You gotta get the fuck out of there. | ||
| But it's exciting to be around danger. | ||
| That's the other problem. | ||
| For you, not me! | ||
| It's exciting to be in weird areas and be around weird people. | ||
| It's like, when things are a little bit, a little sketchy, a little seedy, people enjoy that. | ||
| It's like, what would you rather have? | ||
| Would you rather have everything be fucking boring and vanilla and just everything is Hermosa Beach? | ||
| Or, you know, every now and then you want something to be just a little bit fucking dirty? | ||
| It makes you feel a little alive when you do the shitty mics or random spots here and there. | ||
| There's a grittiness to it. | ||
| I think especially stand-ups, we really gravitate to that. | ||
| It feels live. | ||
| We lack a little danger. | ||
| Also, what you're doing when you're doing stand-up is you're kind of exposing these truths that everybody kind of knows about but doesn't talk about and it frees them in a way. | ||
| Like, yes! | ||
| Yes! | ||
| There's thoughts that are there, but you've got to unearth them. | ||
| You gotta dust them off and show them to people. | ||
| And they're like, yes! | ||
| There's a danger to that, right? | ||
| There's a riskiness to what we do. | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| It's a weird job, man. | ||
| And everybody does it different, right? | ||
| You get the Hedgeberg. | ||
| He does it. | ||
| Mitch did it one way. | ||
| You do it a different way. | ||
| Joey Diaz does it a different way. | ||
| Everybody's got a different way of doing it. | ||
| But it's ultimately you're trying to find those points, find those perspectives, use those comedy weapons to pop. | ||
| Hop through on these people and break into their mind and get those sparks flying. | ||
| What do you think separates a good comic to like the next level great comic? | ||
| There's a lot of things I think. | ||
| It's really dependent upon the person, but I think a lot of it is focusing on comedy. | ||
| Like really working on your shit and making sure you're a real objective about what you're doing. | ||
| Also, a lot of reps, man. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Putting in a lot of reps. | ||
| Reps are giant, man. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think there's no denying that. | ||
| And then also different things that you do. | ||
| One of the things that I do is I do stand-up, I listen to that stand-up, and then I write. | ||
| I write on stage, I listen to my sets, I write off stage. | ||
| I mean, I write on stage and I'll come up with ideas, I'll free ball, I take chances on stage. | ||
| But then I sit down and I write right. | ||
| I sit down in front of a computer for hours. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And every now and then, I'll sit down maybe for four hours and I'll come up with one line. | ||
| But it's worth it. | ||
| But that one line I would have never gotten. | ||
| Yeah, some of those lines like the best lines of my act came from me just sitting in front of a computer Yeah, just writing just it's it's a constantly I guess that the danger and the fear fearlessness of comics is also The willingness to try new shit. | ||
| Yeah four pages of new shit that maybe only one line works Because I know many people that I came up with that are much funnier than me naturally I think but they they're stuck in that 15 and They keep doing that 15 because they feel good. | ||
| That's their drug. | ||
| That's the 15 minutes they get to go away from their wife and have fun. | ||
| So they don't want to risk that and have a shitty night. | ||
| Right. | ||
| They want to kill. | ||
| They love that feeling of killing. | ||
| That's what I was getting at earlier. | ||
| One of the things about, like you just did a special, one of the exciting things about comedy is we all become beginners after we do a special. | ||
| You do a special, and then you start from scratch. | ||
| You're a beginner again. | ||
| So, like, I know you're a great comic. | ||
| I know you're really funny. | ||
| But if I see you, and you're eating shit, I'm going to laugh at you. | ||
| Because I know you're good. | ||
| I'm like, dude, this new shit's rough, sorry. | ||
| And we would be laughing. | ||
| We'd be like, ha ha ha. | ||
| It'd be fun. | ||
| We could laugh together at pain. | ||
| I'm still insecure. | ||
| I'm still insecure in a way that, okay, sure, I got to go write some new shit now. | ||
| And it hit in a weird point. | ||
| Now I can't come up with new shit because we can't go to comedy clubs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I know. | |
| Isn't that crazy? | ||
| So I'm kind of stuck. | ||
| We're all going to be beginners. | ||
| All of us. | ||
| But I'm still afraid. | ||
| I'm afraid that, even though I don't need another acting job from somebody watching me in stand-up, I don't need to impress a manager in the audience or another comic, there's still an insecurity. | ||
| Like, I don't want a tank in case somebody I like is watching me for the first time. | ||
| Mmm, yeah. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| But that's where alcohol comes in. | ||
| Yeah, shot a jack, hit of a joint, and just fucking let the good times roll. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Woo! | |
| I guess you can't think about it, because imagine that time you just walked by and saw me in the lap for the first time, and I just ate a dick. | ||
| I'd be like, everybody eats a dick in that lab. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's true. | |
| I'd be like, he's eating a dick just like I have. | ||
| Yeah, so I don't know if that ever goes away. | ||
| I know what you mean, but there's the thought process of, well, you should work out your shit at the Ha Ha, or at the Ice House, or at Flappers, a little bit off the beaten path. | ||
| You don't want to do it at the improv. | ||
| You don't want to do it at the store. | ||
| I disagree. | ||
| You have to be taking chances. | ||
| You have to swing. | ||
| I've flopped at the store a bunch of times where I pull out a joke that I have roughly in my head. | ||
| But it's also preparation is important too. | ||
| I think even when I have a new bit, sometimes I'll go up with just a seed. | ||
| And sometimes I'm like, no, I need like a plant that I could like just dig a hole and shove that in there. | ||
| I need a full plant. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But it's really dependent upon the subject matter. | ||
| Like I remember when the Harvey Weinstein shit broke, I had a bit that night. | ||
| I'm like right away. | ||
| I'm like, oh, I know my angle. | ||
| My angle is that if Harvey Weinstein did that to my daughter, I found out that I was sexist. | ||
| Because if Harvey Weinstein did that to my daughter, I would fucking kill him. | ||
| But if Harvina Weinstein came to my son with a solid contract, I'd be like, dude, you're gonna be Batman. | ||
| Right, right, right, right, right. | ||
| And I had this whole bit that blossomed that night. | ||
| Like that line, dude, you're... | ||
| We're gonna be Batman. | ||
| That came the first night on stage, because it was like right when he was getting arrested, I was like, wow. | ||
| And I was like, how would I feel if that was a woman? | ||
| It was like this disgusting woman. | ||
| It was like Harvey Weinstein in a dress that was trying to fuck my son. | ||
| I'd be like, come on, just do it, bro. | ||
| I'd be like, come on. | ||
| Do you think working in a coal mine's fun? | ||
| You gotta do what you gotta do to get by in this world. | ||
| Come on, pussy. | ||
| And that bit became a bit like it blossomed on stage. | ||
| I just had a seed. | ||
| I just had an idea. | ||
| That's the best feeling. | ||
| That's like you're freestyling. | ||
| It's amazing because it was like hours after he was arrested. | ||
| It was like hours after it went down. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it just popped. | ||
| And then it became a bit... | ||
| That I wrote and I worked on it. | ||
| I, you know, I honed it on stage. | ||
| But that bit was just, that was just a seed. | ||
| But then there's other bits that like, they took a lot of real thinking and like, oh, this is like, these are mine-filled Terrain that I'm going through here. | ||
| I gotta make sure that I really dot all my I's and cross all my T's when I'm talking about this, because this is a controversial subject. | ||
| I don't want anybody to misconstrue what I'm saying here. | ||
| Right, right, right, right, right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's also the tough part, the message that you're sending, because that's beyond just being funny. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| So you've got to be responsible at that point, and that's really hard. | ||
| Yeah, you want to, like, say if you're doing a joke, and in the joke you reference gay people. | ||
| If there's a gay couple in the audience, you want those folks to know you love them. | ||
| I don't have zero animosity to anybody. | ||
| I love gay people, I love straight people, I love everybody, but I'm gonna make fun of you. | ||
| I'm gonna make fun of something that gay people do. | ||
| But I want you to know, there's gotta be a way that I want you to know before I do this, this is not homophobic. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Like, if I'm saying this, I'm saying this just because it's funny, we're all funny. | ||
| So I have to figure out a way to navigate those waters. | ||
| Do you... | ||
| I guess what I try to do now, especially with the landscape of... | ||
| The stand-up comedy specials I see, the one that are really popping, I like it. | ||
| Where a lot of it, like Hasan Minhaj's or Hannah Gatsby's, not... | ||
| Funny in that sense, Hannah Gatsby's per se, right? | ||
| Like a lot of comics, it's not funny. | ||
| It's like a TED talk. | ||
| Yeah, but I think there's a point to that. | ||
| I think that's cool. | ||
| That actually gets a message across. | ||
| So I always try to... | ||
| Her thing is probably like maybe 50% TED talk and then 50% comedy, if that. | ||
| I try to do like 80% comedy and then maybe 20% I'm just telling a story that's a bit... | ||
| You know, like I have a story where I almost got deported a couple times, you know, when I was being an idiot. | ||
| It's not that funny, but there was some kind of a point to it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But you're like a pure comic. | ||
| You're like 100% stand-up. | ||
| Do you like that one-man show stuff? | ||
| Because I have trouble to see, like, am I kind of being a sellout here by doing that, you know? | ||
| No, I don't think it's being a sellout. | ||
| Look, people obviously like Hannah Gadsby. | ||
| Like, I had this conversation with comics about it. | ||
| Like, I thought it was weird when they were trying to say that she's redefining comedy or uncomedying comedy. | ||
| Like, no, you're not. | ||
| No, you're not. | ||
| No, you're not. | ||
| This is what you're doing. | ||
| You're doing your thing. | ||
| Your thing's... | ||
| Like, people are enjoying... | ||
| It's resonating. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's huge. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| So her thing, people are enjoying. | ||
| It doesn't... | ||
| To invalidate or invalidate Donnell Williams. | ||
| Or Donnell Rollins, rather. | ||
| Or Harlan Williams, I was going to say. | ||
| Or, you know, who's like totally silly. | ||
| You know, Harlan Williams is just completely silly. | ||
| Or Donnell's just wild and loud. | ||
| And like, that's great, too. | ||
| Or, you know, Joey Diaz. | ||
| It's like it's not invalidating Joey Diaz. | ||
| It's not invalidating people that also do a different thing that people love as well. | ||
| It's just you're doing something where you're talking about your, like, Hannah Gatsby's talking about her own pain, right? | ||
| She's talking about her own issues. | ||
| She's talking about her own life. | ||
| And it resonates because it's honest and it's real. | ||
| It doesn't have to be funny. | ||
| The people that enjoy it, maybe they don't want to just see stand-up. | ||
| They want to see something. | ||
| They want to see something interesting. | ||
| But if you go see Don L. Ron, he's just going wild. | ||
| He's having fun. | ||
| That's comedy. | ||
| It's wild comedy. | ||
| That's okay, too. | ||
| All things are okay. | ||
| Al Madrigal's okay. | ||
| Everything's okay. | ||
| It's like different genres of movie. | ||
| Right, but people get weird. | ||
| They do. | ||
| They get hateful about it. | ||
| Yeah, they get angry. | ||
| Like, you know, I only like blues music. | ||
| This rock and roll is bullshit. | ||
| That's really what it's like, right? | ||
| That is what it is. | ||
| I've heard people say that about Harlan Williams. | ||
| It's one of the reasons why I brought up Harlan. | ||
| He's so silly. | ||
| And if you saw Harlan on paper, you'd be like, what is that? | ||
| Hey there, butternut flapjack peachy pie. | ||
| Yeah, if me and you would have done a set, it would not work. | ||
| I would eat shit every time, and I'd quit comedy. | ||
| But Harlan, there's something about his delivery, and that's what he really thinks is funny. | ||
| And it's like, you can't tell me it's not funny. | ||
| I watch him kill. | ||
| Oh, he's amazing, yeah. | ||
| Amazing, right? | ||
| So, like, that's his way. | ||
| And then, you know, you've got John Mulaney. | ||
| He's got a different way. | ||
| It's also very good. | ||
| And then you've got Anthony Jeselnik, who's just mean with great writing. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But it's also very good. | ||
| It's his way. | ||
| There's a bunch of different ways to do this thing. | ||
| And for one person to decide, like, oh, Hannah Gadsby's real comedy. | ||
| Comedy's dead. | ||
| She just killed comedy. | ||
| Like, you don't know comedy, and you should just shut the fuck up. | ||
| Right, absolutely. | ||
| Because what you're saying is nonsense. | ||
| That's like saying rap music killed Beethoven. | ||
| It's dumb. | ||
| What you're saying is dumb. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| That's great. | ||
| That's... | ||
| That's all fucking comedy or whatever it is. | ||
| It means it's comedy until it's not comedy. | ||
| It's comedy until you decide to tell a story that's not funny, but it's also interesting. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Even within stand-up itself, there's so many different genres. | ||
| There's no wrong way. | ||
| I love that. | ||
| Yeah, 100%. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, one of the things I always loved about Hedberg is that it's so absurd. | ||
| And that's not my style of comedy, but it's so silly and absurd. | ||
| Or Stephen Wright, same thing. | ||
| Just non-sequitur after non-sequitur, bizarre, weird. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I used to work at a fire hydrant factory. | |
| Couldn't park anywhere near the place. | ||
| That kind of comedy. | ||
| I would never write a joke like that, but with him, with his bizarre look and his bizarre style, it murders. | ||
| You know, I didn't know about stand-up comedy when I was growing up. | ||
| Never heard of it. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Because I grew up in Hong Kong. | ||
| What was the first stand-up you saw? | ||
| BET Comic View. | ||
| What? | ||
| When I was 13. Which one? | ||
| Who was hosting? | ||
| I think it was J. Anthony Brown that year or Bruce Bruce around then. | ||
| It was so interesting to me because this wasn't even an art form that existed in my childhood in Hong Kong. | ||
| I'm sure there were some stand-ups. | ||
| But you never heard of it? | ||
| Never heard of it. | ||
| Never heard of it. | ||
| And then I came to America and I was trying to learn English just by watching TV. And then it seems like just completely different genres in this new art form. | ||
| It's like I heard music for the first time and I was like, holy shit, there's rock and roll music and there's, you know, hip hop. | ||
| So it was so interesting because I remember I really gravitated towards a comic view. | ||
| That was so interesting because it wasn't just jokes or me trying to learn English. | ||
| It was me also learning about culture, how each race saw each other, blah, blah. | ||
| Even though there were stereotypes that they were joking about, but it was cool. | ||
| Whereas I watched that Comedy Central premium blend, didn't really laugh. | ||
| I don't know why. | ||
| So I always gravitated to its urban comedy. | ||
| Well, they're having more fun. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Because I was watching the performance of it. | ||
| It's like there's hip-hop fans that like a song because of the beat. | ||
| And then there's hip-hop fans that don't care about the beat and only listen to the lyrics. | ||
| I was more like the beat guy. | ||
| And I just loved that side of performance. | ||
| And then only later on when I got into comedy, I was like, oh, wow. | ||
| Everyone that's doing that premium blend stuff, maybe not my cup of tea, but it made me laugh as an adult because I understood how hard that was. | ||
| Mmm. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I found out about comedy from my parents took me to see Richard Pryor live at the Sunset Strip when I was 15. In the movie theater. | ||
| Watching Richard Pryor on stage going, this is crazy. | ||
| I couldn't believe how funny he was. | ||
| Like I'd seen all these funny movies, but to watch this guy just talking on stage, I was fascinated. | ||
| He's one of those guys when you watch, you're like, I can do that. | ||
| Because he's just talking. | ||
| Did he write this? | ||
| But there's so much insane talent. | ||
| Like Michael Jordan makes basketball look easy. | ||
| But I mean, I guess... | ||
| Sort of. | ||
| You know you can't jump that high. | ||
| You know you can't dunk. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, there's so many different ways you can get introduced to comedy. | ||
| I love hearing when the seed get planted in people's heads. | ||
| When did you know that you were going to try to do this? | ||
| People ask me that question, and I hear great stories, like the Richard Pryor story. | ||
| It's like, me and my brother used to sneak into a movie theater to watch Eddie Murphy live. | ||
| After you had a heart attack, I promise I'll be a comedian. | ||
| Like, really? | ||
| You know, amazing. | ||
| I don't have that. | ||
| I think it was a desperation that made me want to do comedy. | ||
| Desperation? | ||
| I never thought that was... | ||
| Even a thing, right? | ||
| Because you don't go in the arts when you're Asian. | ||
| That's not a real job. | ||
| Is it because your family would discourage it? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| And also, nobody in my family did it in the arts. | ||
| Anybody that made money was in finance, whatever. | ||
| Real jobs, quote-unquote. | ||
| So, I was about to graduate college with an economics degree. | ||
| And I hated the internship I had in finance and shit. | ||
| And I just saw my life flash in front of me. | ||
| I'm like, oh my God, for the next 40 years, I'm behind this desk. | ||
| Fucking mutual funds, who cares, you know? | ||
| So I just tried, I had like a quarter-life crisis right when I was about to graduate. | ||
| I was like, I gotta do something to meet new friends, to meet girls, to whatever. | ||
| So then I took jujitsu classes for like two months. | ||
| Horrible. | ||
| I was the smallest guy and the weakest guy in the class. | ||
| They would team me up with the girls and they would twist me up like a pretzel. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was... | |
| Very discouraging. | ||
| I quit after like two months, if that. | ||
| And then I tried like different things, like boxing classes, gyms, whatever, you know. | ||
| And then I say this story, I wrote this book and I say in the book like, typing in local open mics in your Google search, it's one step away from typing in what's the best way to kill myself. | ||
| It is that desperation that you need, that I needed. | ||
| So then I just Googled local open mics, went to the ha-ha, paid $5. | ||
| You have to pay $5 for five minutes to stage time at the ha-ha. | ||
| So five other comics can not laugh at you. | ||
| It was, you know, horrific. | ||
| But that still felt better than me sitting at home making no friends because I saw a camaraderie. | ||
| I was like, if I'm good, I can make some friends like here in the open mic. | ||
| And there's a new world out. | ||
| There's an out for me. | ||
| So soon after, I think I quit that finance, you know, internship, very promising internship. | ||
| And I just... | ||
| Try to do stand-up. | ||
| I did everything. | ||
| I worked the door at the Comedy Palace in San Diego, this Greek restaurant that would turn into a comedy club at night. | ||
| I worked the door, folded envelopes, did everything. | ||
| If they let me sleep there, I would have slept there. | ||
| Answered the phones and everything. | ||
| I just dove into it. | ||
| Not just for the love of comedy and the arts, but for the love of this new life, this new fraternity that I found. | ||
| That's awesome. | ||
| So a lot of it, it was an improvement on my life that interested me in stand-up. | ||
| And through stand-up, I got laid for the first time. | ||
| So it worked out for me. | ||
| And I kind of had a crisis where, okay, I'm doing fine. | ||
| I have a lot of friends now. | ||
| I go on dates. | ||
| It's fine. | ||
| My life is fine. | ||
| And I started making money on Silicon Valley. | ||
| So I stopped doing stand-up. | ||
| I was like, I don't really need this. | ||
| But then after a while, I wasn't getting depressed either. | ||
| So it was a really good feeling because it wasn't a crutch. | ||
| It wasn't an addiction I needed to feed. | ||
| And then eventually I did stand up, finally, I think, for the love of it. | ||
| I was like, you know what? | ||
| I do miss this. | ||
| I'm going to go do it on my own terms, not just because I'm trying to make friends and trying to pull girls. | ||
| I'm doing it because I enjoy the process of it. | ||
| So let's fucking do it. | ||
| And that's the recent, I guess, resurgence of energy. | ||
| How much time did you take off? | ||
| Oh, from stand-up, on and off like a year or two. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| A couple seasons during Silicon Valley, I would do stand-up maybe at max. | ||
| I would just go down to Comedy Magic Club once every two months just so I can talk to some friends or something. | ||
| Just to do it and dust it off? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, but it was stuck in that same old material, wasn't feeling it. | ||
| And the reason for this special really was I kind of got pissed. | ||
| Because everybody that was coming up to me in the streets like, yo, Jing Yang, Silicon Valley, whatever. | ||
| And there's some YouTube clips people watching me doing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was like, oh, I didn't know this motherfucker can do stand-up, you know? | |
| And I'm like... | ||
| Man, I am a stand-up. | ||
| I started as a stand-up. | ||
| I think I'm a better stand-up than I am an actor. | ||
| So let me prove to the world I'm not just like a Vine guy or actor trying to do stand-up. | ||
| I am an actor who used to be a stand-up and that is my fucking forte. | ||
| That's awesome. | ||
| I had a similar thing when I was on news radio. | ||
| I kind of stopped writing for a while, like a couple years. | ||
| I was just doing the same old material. | ||
| Just phoning it in. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because when you're making money, it's hard. | ||
| You've got to find a new motivation. | ||
| And then I had some people come to see me and I bombed one night at the comedy store. | ||
| Then I woke up. | ||
| I was like, I gotta get back to work. | ||
| I'm just doing the same old shit. | ||
| I knew the material was stale. | ||
| It was flat. | ||
| I didn't have any connection to it. | ||
| I was just saying it because I was using it like a tool, like a screwdriver. | ||
| People understand. | ||
| They feel what's going on in your head when you're talking about things. | ||
| And if you're not totally tuned in to what you're saying, they don't want to hear it. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I think stand-ups can all be great actors and we all have a base for that because one of the magic tricks in stand-up is you told that joke a thousand times, but you got to make it sound like it's the first time. | ||
| And if you're just mailing it in and you're just telling it as if you're reading a script in your head, it's like watching bad acting on TV. If the guy ain't feeling it, you're not going to be feeling it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I always describe it as mass hypnosis. | ||
| It's like there's a vibe that you're putting out. | ||
| You're hitting a frequency. | ||
| And the audience, if the words are well worked, if you have a good economy of words, the things you're saying resonate. | ||
| It all makes sense. | ||
| You have confidence. | ||
| You have focus. | ||
| All these things are correct. | ||
| Your delivery is comfortable. | ||
| It makes people feel good. | ||
| They just let you think. | ||
| Like, go, Jimmy. | ||
| Think for me. | ||
| I want to hear what you have to say. | ||
| And they're not judging, they're just letting you take them for a ride. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And it's kind of like when someone's really killing, when you're watching someone on stage killing, your eyes are open, your jaws are open, you're like, ah! | ||
| You're just going along with it. | ||
| You're going along with whatever they're saying. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Owen Smith. | ||
| Owen Smith's killing. | ||
| I think the way he's thinking. | ||
| I'm allowing him to lead my mind. | ||
| You can't wait till you hear his next stop. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| You're not like going, I would have said this or he's, well, I'm bored with what he's saying. | ||
| No, no, you're letting, if someone's got a well-crafted act, but that's the thing is like creating that act, like, boy, you're going to have some weird hiccups when you put it together, when you got new shit and it's clunky and it's awkward and maybe go down a road that you don't want to go down. | ||
| You're like, I got to get out of this bit. | ||
| You don't know how. | ||
| And one bad new joke in an hour set. | ||
| Like, if you just have one bad new joke 20 minutes in, you need the next 10 minutes to prove your worth again. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Because they're like, ah, this guy, I don't know. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you got to be real careful if you want to open up with a new joke. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Woo! | |
| They say never do that. | ||
| I don't agree with that. | ||
| I don't think there's any never do that. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| I don't think there's any never do that, other than, you know, I mean, there's definitely a few never do that, but if you got an idea and you know it's fire, you know it's going to crack, you're like, just let me just run this on stage. | ||
| I know I got a real bit I can do if this doesn't work. | ||
| Like, have a nice segue into a real bit. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| In case this tanks, I'm just going to cut it in half and then go into my old bit. | ||
| But when some shit just happened like three hours ago and you go on stage, there's a certain energy to that too where the audience is like, this fucking guy has no idea if this is any good. | ||
| You have a hot take on something that just happened a few hours ago. | ||
| There's energy to that. | ||
| Yes, yes, yes. | ||
| And some things that you know it's an old joke that you've done, say, for two years. | ||
| And you're like, man, this killed... | ||
| What happened? | ||
| Yeah, you lost the energy. | ||
| Like, why is it not... | ||
| And then you try to force some energy into it. | ||
| Still, it's not there. | ||
| No. | ||
| Because to you, it's fresh. | ||
| And maybe there's an amazing actor. | ||
| Or you can put some acting skill into that to pretend. | ||
| But it's still not there. | ||
| You have to really be interested in what you're saying. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Can't fake that. | ||
| No, it's... | ||
| Comedy, it's the weird thing going on that's not defined between us and the audience. | ||
| It's very weird. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And sometimes even you think you're saying it with energy and with that same rigor. | ||
| You watch yourself on tape, you're like, no, I'm just going through the motions and reading lines in my head. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Same thing with acting. | ||
| You don't want to do too many takes. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| You know when you really tell? | ||
| When you're high. | ||
| If you go to the movies when you're high, you go, this guy's phoning it in. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You can see it. | ||
| There's like sometimes you go to the movies and you're high and it's just like seamless. | ||
| You just go on this little journey. | ||
| You believe every word. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And every now and then someone will pop out like, look at this motherfucker acting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Yes. | ||
| I'll never forget. | ||
| I went to see the Hulk with Eric Bana. | ||
| Remember that guy? | ||
| He was one of the many Hulks. | ||
| There's this one clunky scene. | ||
| Maybe they did it too many times or whatever. | ||
| I'm like, ew, acting! | ||
| Because I was barbecued. | ||
| I'm in the audience watching this and I was like, this is so acting. | ||
| I'll never forget in that moment. | ||
| I'm like, this guy's fake. | ||
| So there's the Space Force show that I just did. | ||
| How is that? | ||
| Great. | ||
| It's on Netflix, right? | ||
| It's Netflix. | ||
| It's Steve Carell, John Malkovich, Greg Daniels. | ||
| That's a great fucking cast right there. | ||
| Fucking dream come true. | ||
| Yeah, wow. | ||
| And it's interesting because sometimes... | ||
| If you're kind of unprepared, you go do a scene and you don't have your lines memorized, somehow you pull it off because it's fresh. | ||
| It's as if you're saying the line. | ||
| But sometimes when you rehearse... | ||
| I remember just one scene in this one episode. | ||
| I don't think... | ||
| I don't think other people would know. | ||
| People aren't actors. | ||
| But I watch it myself because I remember the day when I was doing that scene. | ||
| I was like, oh, I'm killing it. | ||
| I'm riffing. | ||
| Me and the girl that I'm doing the scene with, we're just going back and forth. | ||
| This feels good. | ||
| It's like a little boxing match. | ||
| But then when I watched it, I was like, damn. | ||
| Seems a little rehearsed, because I think I rehearsed it in my mind. | ||
| I know she's going to say this. | ||
| I'm going to say this. | ||
| Even though it felt good, it felt like it flowed, it lost a little bit of that natural singing for the first time. | ||
| And that was tough for me to watch that myself. | ||
| And I don't even want to say which scene it is, because I don't think people could tell. | ||
| But I could, and it kind of kills me. | ||
| That makes sense. | ||
| Also, you know what you're going to say. | ||
| There's no surprise. | ||
| When someone is watching the scene, there's all this surprise to it. | ||
| It's like watching a magic trick. | ||
| Like, where's his hands? | ||
| I don't even know what he did. | ||
| You're talking, and they don't have any idea where you're going, and they just follow along. | ||
| You know everything you're going to say before you say it, so you watch the weirdness to it. | ||
| And I know what she's going to say. | ||
| When you know everything, I mean, a really great actor, you're supposed to know everything, everything, and then you use your skills to pretend you've heard it for the first time, which is stand-up also. | ||
| And sometimes you forget that, you're just like, yeah, it feels good, but it's not. | ||
| It's practice. | ||
| It looks like practice. | ||
| Did your family give you a hard time about wanting to do stand-up? | ||
| Yeah, dude. | ||
| There's quite the story there. | ||
| It's a feel-good story. | ||
| Let me preface with that. | ||
| So, yeah, my dad was in finance. | ||
| He hooked me up with that finance job. | ||
| And when I was like, I don't know, I just don't want to do this. | ||
| He was like, what, do you have another job? | ||
| I was like, no, I'm going to give this stand-up thing a try. | ||
| And this was like a year or two in. | ||
| Obviously, I wasn't making any money. | ||
| So he was very disappointed. | ||
| He was hoping it was just a phase. | ||
| He doesn't even know what stand-up was, old Chinese guy. | ||
| He's just like, a talk show? | ||
| He just keeps calling it a talk show. | ||
| Still, till today, a talk show. | ||
| Just never got it. | ||
| So I was finishing my last year of school in San Diego. | ||
| I got just random jobs. | ||
| I worked at a used car lot during the day. | ||
| I worked at that Comedy Palace collecting tickets and trade for like stage time in the evening. | ||
| After that, I'll go put another shift as a DJ at a strip club. | ||
| Just so I was like trying different things, you know, and I didn't want to lock myself into something. | ||
| And then eventually the acting started to do a little better, you know. | ||
| My first job was two broke girls. | ||
| I had two lines. | ||
| And I was so proud. | ||
| I was so proud of myself. | ||
| I was finally making some money. | ||
| I called my dad. | ||
| I was like, Dad, why don't you watch CBS tonight? | ||
| I'm going to be on there and stuff. | ||
| He was like, I don't have CBS. I was like, who doesn't fucking have CBS? You stick a piece of tinfoil in the back of your TV, you get CBS. So he was just really not down. | ||
| And then eventually, when I got on Silicon Valley, The old man understands what a contract is, a serious regular job on HBO. He's acting. | ||
| He got it. | ||
| So he was finally happy. | ||
| I was financially secure. | ||
| So instead of ever giving it up and say like, hey, Jimmy, good job. | ||
| I'm proud of you. | ||
| Maybe I was wrong. | ||
| Good for you. | ||
| You know what he said? | ||
| He was like, oh, if it's so easy, you can do it. | ||
| I can probably do it. | ||
| And he started becoming an actor. | ||
| I was like, okay, Dad, you know what? | ||
| If you think it's so easy. | ||
| Dude, I was like, Dad, if you think it's so easy. | ||
| I was with a very small agency at the time. | ||
| I'm like, you know what? | ||
| I'm going to sign you up with her. | ||
| See if she needs an older Asian guy. | ||
| Because there's not a lot of older Asian guys out there competing. | ||
| So she signed him. | ||
| And then I was like, good, good, good. | ||
| Now you're going to go to auditions and understand how fucking hard my life is. | ||
| All the rejections I face. | ||
| All the nerves I got to deal with. | ||
| But then the plane completely backfired because he went to those auditions and killed it. | ||
| He booked like his first six out of ten jobs, which is like an unheard of ratio. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like you'd be lucky to book like five percentage jobs, but he was killing it. | ||
| A lot of like non-union gigs. | ||
| He even got on this show. | ||
| I talk about this a little bit in my stand-up. | ||
| He even got on the show that shot in San Francisco as a Chinese show. | ||
| We thought it was no big deal. | ||
| Low-budget Chinese show. | ||
| Became the biggest show in China. | ||
| Became like the fucking modern family of China. | ||
| And then my aunt from Shanghai would call the house. | ||
| I'm like, Richard, you're such a good actor. | ||
| Your son must have taken after you. | ||
| I was like, what the fuck? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ah! | |
| But now I've accepted it. | ||
| That's who he is. | ||
| I'm happy that me and my dad's in the same business in a way. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| And it's a fun story to tell people, right? | ||
| So I was jokingly saying that story to John Malkovich, Ben Schwartz on Space Force. | ||
| Everybody gets a kick out of this little story. | ||
| Episode 9 of Space Force Comes Around. | ||
| We're doing a table read. | ||
| And it's a China versus America thing in this episode. | ||
| And they needed a couple older Chinese scientists that are authentic Mandarin speaking Chinese people. | ||
| After the table read, Greg Daniels, the showrunner, he's like, you know, just, I don't know, it's always the same guys, you know, just whatever. | ||
| And John Malkovich was the one that said, Hey, what about Jimmy's dad? | ||
| Have you thought about Jimmy's dad? | ||
| And I didn't have thick enough skin to volunteer my dad. | ||
| And then that night I went home. | ||
| I cut together an acting reel for my dad. | ||
| And I sent it to Greg. | ||
| All I said was like, Greg, maybe give the old man a chance. | ||
| He's got a good look. | ||
| I think he fits this older scientist in China. | ||
| Just let him come in and audition. | ||
| But I guess Greg was so impressed with the tape, he just hired him. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Episode 9 of Space Force. | ||
| My dad is in it. | ||
| He's great. | ||
| He comes in, no fear, and the scene is toe-to-toe with John Malkovich. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| And how long has he been acting? | ||
| I mean, two years, if that. | ||
| Two years. | ||
| Never taken no classes. | ||
| That's so crazy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I practiced with him on Skype, you know, for that scene, you know, because I was like that. | ||
| Don't make me look bad. | ||
| Don't fuck this up. | ||
| Make sure you remember your lines, right? | ||
| And then he was practicing. | ||
| He's like, can you screen grab me, record me so I can see my own performance, you know? | ||
| And actors were all very self-conscious. | ||
| I hate to watch myself. | ||
| So I recorded him. | ||
| I sent him that tape and then he looked at it. | ||
| He was just like, wow, I'm really good. | ||
| Look at me! | ||
| I'm like listening to everything. | ||
| I'm good at this. | ||
| I was like, sure, go. | ||
| Go for it. | ||
| But it's that blind sense of confidence and also the fact that he never thought to be an actor. | ||
| So there's no fear. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I was nervous as hell my first day with John Malkovich and Steve Carell. | ||
| My dad came in and was just chilling. | ||
| That's so funny. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's so funny that it totally backfired. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But now it's fine. | ||
| It's a fun father and son story. | ||
| That's a great story. | ||
| It's so funny that he saw you doing it. | ||
| He's like, I can do that. | ||
| And he could do it. | ||
| He's a talented guy. | ||
| He wants to do stand-up now. | ||
| Really? | ||
| How old is he? | ||
| He's 70-something. | ||
| 72, 3. Wow. | ||
| And he was like, well, Jimmy, you think I can do some stand-up? | ||
| I was like, sure. | ||
| Just go sign up for an open mic at the Laugh Factory. | ||
| I'll put your name in the hat. | ||
| How about that? | ||
| He was like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. | ||
| I'm not doing open mics. | ||
| Can I do some theater or something? | ||
| I was like, no. | ||
| A theater? | ||
| Yeah, he was like, no, I'm not doing in front of five people. | ||
| I need to do it. | ||
| If I do it, I need like 500 people. | ||
| Oh my God. | ||
| I was like, that's not how it works. | ||
| But who knows? | ||
| Maybe when he does it in front of 500 people, he fucking kills. | ||
| What if your dad gets a fucking Netflix special next year? | ||
| What if your dad just starts murdering and puts together some whole routine? | ||
| Can you imagine how crazy that would be? | ||
| If your dad's just a murderer, just up on stage crushing. | ||
| Punchline. | ||
| Bang, bang, bang. | ||
| I want to say I would be happy for him, but there's probably a part of me that's like, oh, God. | ||
| How could it not be? | ||
| He's always been the funny one in the family, though. | ||
| He's always a ball buster and everything. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| It kind of came naturally to him. | ||
| Wow, there he is. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know if you can find that Space Force scene in Episode 9. Completely fearless, very natural. | ||
| Has he written stand-up? | ||
| Does he have any ideas of stuff he would talk about? | ||
| You know what, I should have him write a set to see what the materials would be. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Hmm. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hmm. | |
| I don't know. | ||
| That, I got offended. | ||
| The acting stuff, because I always felt like I snuck into acting. | ||
| I wasn't trained at Juilliard or whatever, right? | ||
| So it's kind of like a similar path. | ||
| He snuck into acting, I snuck into acting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Whatever. | |
| But the stand-up thing kind of offended me. | ||
| I'm like, I fucking put in 10 years, dude. | ||
| You can't just go do a goddamn theater. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What if he does? | |
| I mean, maybe he can open for me one day or my next special. | ||
| That would be fun. | ||
| If you have him open, it would be interesting. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because that's a rough spot anyway. | ||
| Even for a regular comic, you've got to warm everybody up for a few minutes before they start rolling. | ||
| Yeah, but if I introduce him as, like, my dad... | ||
| That would help. | ||
| And people heard the story on the show, right? | ||
| Or in my stand-up, then people would love it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You've seen like a Viner or like a YouTuber trying to do stand-up. | ||
| The five minutes, the crowd is crazy because they love this person and they're laughing. | ||
| But then it's hard to keep that momentum going if you actually don't have the goods. | ||
| That's what they say about famous people doing stand-up in particular. | ||
| Like you get a couple of minutes where they're happy to see you. | ||
| And then after a while, like, oh, this guy's fucking terrible. | ||
| That happened to me when I first transitioned from just unknown stand-up to the guy from Silicon Valley doing stand-up. | ||
| I remember the first couple of minutes were so hot, I couldn't follow my own hype, kind of. | ||
| And it's interesting, because my character on Silicon Alley, he has an accent, he's an immigrant, like we were talking about earlier. | ||
| So a lot of people, for a while, coming up to me in the streets, when they didn't know I was a stand-up, they didn't know I acted beyond that show, they were like, oh shit, are you Jing Yang from that show? | ||
| I was like, yeah, yeah, sure, thanks for watching. | ||
| And then they're just like, oh shit, I didn't even know you speak English in real life! | ||
| So imagine the stand-up crowd seeing that. | ||
| They have to get over that first. | ||
| They're like, oh shit, this motherfucker speaking English? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So that takes two minutes of all. | |
| And then they start to accept me as a stand-up. | ||
| Do you address that right away? | ||
| I say this, yes, in my special sometimes. | ||
| And people laugh because it's true. | ||
| That's what they think when they see me or when they saw me years ago. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, it would be really hilarious if your dad became a killer comic. | ||
| I should train him. | ||
| Fuck yeah! | ||
| Help him write bits. | ||
| We thought about doing, like, not a reality show, but like a little adventure show with me and my dad. | ||
| And I take him to try to find an agent, go to auditions, and bring him to the comedy store to get advice from you guys so he can be a comic. | ||
| Maybe I should go ahead with that. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Tony Hinchcliffe's mom. | ||
| Went on stage at Kill Tony one night. | ||
| He wrote bits for her, and he taught her how to do it, and she fucking murdered. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Murdered. | ||
| His mom's hilarious. | ||
| Just natural, no stage fear. | ||
| She's, you know, she's a woman who's had a long life, and she's experienced a lot of shit, and Tony wrote stuff for her, and everybody was happy to see her, and she went up there and fucking killed. | ||
| What do you think she did, Jamie, about four minutes, five minutes? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, sure. | |
| That's a lot for the first time. | ||
| Dude, she fucking killed. | ||
| Really? | ||
| I mean, she fucking killed. | ||
| I mean, killed. | ||
| I was laughing. | ||
| I think Dom Herrera was with me on the stage. | ||
| I think it was Dom. | ||
| He was laughing. | ||
| We were all laughing hard. | ||
| Tony wrote the bits, which helped a lot. | ||
| Obviously, he's a great writer, but she was delivering them like a killer. | ||
| It was funny. | ||
| I would not write for my dad. | ||
| I want him to eat shit a couple times. | ||
| You have to get somebody to respect your craft, man. | ||
| Right, because he doesn't respect acting. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Not that he doesn't respect, he just thinks he's a genius. | ||
| I don't know if it's a lack of respect for the arts or is it overconfident in his own ability. | ||
| But is it overconfident if he pulled it off? | ||
| And so much about acting, it is confidence. | ||
| Not being shaken, being yourself. | ||
| It's the correct amount of confidence. | ||
| It is a correct... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Dude, he's so relaxed. | |
| I have a video I gotta find on my phone and show you. | ||
| So, it's in the hallway between setups. | ||
| Me and Malkovich is running lines. | ||
| And I'm nervous. | ||
| And Malkovich works hard. | ||
| At his level, he still works hard. | ||
| He's amazing. | ||
| We're running lines in between takes. | ||
| The camera pans, pans, a bunch of empty chairs. | ||
| And it pans to my dad in an actor chair. | ||
| Fell asleep. | ||
| Just dead asleep. | ||
| So relaxed. | ||
| Chilling. | ||
| And he's about to work with John Malkovich. | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| No nerves. | ||
| Wow. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Does he know who John Malkovich is? | ||
| He does. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| And he still didn't give a fuck. | ||
| No, I think maybe it comes with age. | ||
| You know, when you're 70-something, you kind of... | ||
| You've seen so much. | ||
| He is such a fanboy. | ||
| Like, he loves taking selfies with people. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| At first it started off with just... | ||
| Like Crazy Rich Asians or like Patriot's Day, this movie I did with Wahlberg, you know, in the premiere, I'll take him to the premiere of my parents and just to kind of finally get their approval, you know, and he gets it. | ||
| He gives it up. | ||
| He was like very emotional, you know, after Crazy Rich Asians and all that. | ||
| But his goal is not to celebrate with a son there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
His goal is to get selfies. | |
| In the after party, you know those Chinese Groman theaters premieres, you know, at the Chinese theater. | ||
| There he is. | ||
| Right there! | ||
| Mark Wahlberg! | ||
| And he just keep doing selfies. | ||
| And I was sitting at a table and then Mark has his table and his boys and his security. | ||
| And then my dad just leaned over to me and was like, Hey, you think we can go get a picture with Mark? | ||
| I was like, I don't want to ask him. | ||
| Because I have fought so hard to not ask for pictures with people I work with. | ||
| I want a picture with Mark. | ||
| I want a picture with Malkovich. | ||
| But at the same time, I want to just be a colleague. | ||
| I don't want to be a fan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Of course. | |
| But then my dad forces me to do that. | ||
| He's like, come on, just go ask him. | ||
| I bet Wahlberg's used to that, though. | ||
| He probably just... | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| If I ask, I think it's still kind of lame. | ||
| But if it's like, hey, Mark, my parents are big fans. | ||
| Can they get a picture? | ||
| And they're just cute, old Chinese people. | ||
| Everybody kind of gets a kick out of him. | ||
| He played my dad in Patriots today. | ||
| Really? | ||
| He has a very small scene. | ||
| That's an interesting story. | ||
| That's how he got his SAG card. | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| Talk about nepotism in Hollywood, huh? | ||
| Yeah, that is nepotism. | ||
| That's how it works. | ||
| Well, but you know what? | ||
| I was actively trying to improve that movie because the movie was very serious. | ||
| It's about the Boston Marathon bombing. | ||
| And I was playing a based-on-real-life Chinese person. | ||
| You know, very detailed stuff. | ||
| Like, he speaks with a Chinese accent, but it's a Sichuan Chinese accent where he mixes his L's and... | ||
| I forget what it was, but I studied it for a long time. | ||
| It's not just a generic Chinese accent, right? | ||
| And then his parents, of course, speaks the Sichuan dialect, or at least just a very proper Mandarin. | ||
| And the actor they first hired to play my dad, it's just a Skype scene, very simple. | ||
| The actor they first hired to play my dad spoke Mandarin with a Cantonese accent. | ||
| So I went up to Pete Burke, the director. | ||
| I was like, Pete, man, I... I gotta say something, man. | ||
| The whole point of this movie is honoring these heroes and be authentic. | ||
| And this guy, you guys might not be able to tell. | ||
| I know and the Chinese audience will know. | ||
| This guy's from Hong Kong or from Guangdong or something. | ||
| He's not from Sichuan or mainland China. | ||
| So he's like, yeah, sure. | ||
| We'll find another guy. | ||
| And I was like, yeah, I was sitting with you on some auditions and stuff if you want. | ||
| He was like, yeah, sure. | ||
| We're already shooting in Boston. | ||
| It might take a long time. | ||
| I was like, Pete, why don't you just hire my dad? | ||
| And that was it. | ||
| They hired my dad. | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| But it's for the art. | ||
| It's for the authenticity. | ||
| Dude, I'm not so secretly hoping your dad kills. | ||
| I was just thinking it'd be the best story. | ||
| I want to have you back on after your dad has just murdered a few times on stage. | ||
| And you're like, what the fuck? | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| If he comes on this podcast and everything, he'll be a huge star. | ||
| I don't know if I can handle that. | ||
| Because right now it's very much like I'm hooking him up. | ||
| I'm still the star. | ||
| You know, he's just my dad. | ||
| But what if I'm starting to know as Richard's son and acting? | ||
| That would be kind of rough. | ||
| That's gonna be hard. | ||
| He's gonna have to really do something special to pull that off. | ||
| We'll see. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We'll see. | |
| Maybe he have his own Hannah Gadsby-esque special. | ||
| And just only talk shit about me in the special? | ||
| That would be funny if you and Tony or whoever, a bunch of great writers and great comedians, start plotting against me for his success. | ||
| Write for him and help him do strategies for how to kill. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| He loves it, man. | ||
| That's great, though. | ||
| That's so cool. | ||
| It's a good father and son bonding. | ||
| What did your dad used to do for a living? | ||
| He was always a really successful salesman. | ||
| He had his own medical device company that he sold. | ||
| Salesman? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| That's a thing where you have to have personality and you have to know how to read a room. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like we were talking about Alcoholics Anonymous is like a good gateway into comedy. | ||
| I think maybe Salesman might be too. | ||
| And then when he came to America, he became a financial advisor. | ||
| So that's people to people. | ||
| You got to give presentations. | ||
| So he was always a great public speaker and I think I took after him. | ||
| I never really had much stage fright. | ||
| So he's a natural. | ||
| And you say he busts balls, so he's always joking around. | ||
| He's the funny one on the family table. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I think he's gonna kill. | ||
| Richard. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I hope he does. | |
| I really do. | ||
| Yeah, well... | ||
| You gotta hope he does. | ||
| Maybe he would do a two-man show for Netflix. | ||
| Bro, the odds of him being better than you are very slim. | ||
| Let's just be honest. | ||
| But don't you just want him to do well? | ||
| Wouldn't it be great? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I do. | |
| I really do. | ||
| I think... | ||
| I joke about the jealousy. | ||
| I really don't care. | ||
| He's an old man. | ||
| Let him live his bucket list and act with John Malkovich. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Like, I'm just being good son trying to hook my dad up now. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| I can't wait to see how this plays out. | ||
| When is he gonna do stand-up? | ||
| Do you have a timeline? | ||
| Was he gonna try it when the clubs get back open again? | ||
| Well, I think once I told him he can't just do theaters, he kind of became disinterested. | ||
| He doesn't want to do open mics. | ||
| But you got to! | ||
| Or maybe he doesn't got to. | ||
| I mean it depends on how much of a perspective he has. | ||
| If he has like real takes on things that he could just go on stage with. | ||
| You never know, man. | ||
| Here's the thing. | ||
| If he goes on stage without the context of this is Jimmy's dad and he's just an old man doing a set, I don't know. | ||
| That's a long road. | ||
| But if I bring him up and he's my dad, I think people would just kind of eat it up, give him a little more slack. | ||
| Maybe, but that might help you accept the fact that he kills. | ||
| What if he goes on stage without any recognition of you whatsoever? | ||
| Someone introduces him, he goes on stage and just fucking murders. | ||
| That would be hard to take. | ||
| That would be hard. | ||
| Yeah, because if you bring him up and you give him a little training wheels and you push him, you give him a little boost. | ||
| Ready? | ||
| Go! | ||
| It's like exactly what I was saying, how you can't immediately be good in stand-up. | ||
| You need to put in that five, ten years. | ||
| But if he's just good... | ||
| Yeah, I would question myself. | ||
| Like, I would be like, well, fuck, I must be doing so long. | ||
| Please tell me when he's going to do it. | ||
| Please. | ||
| Okay, we're going to- Tell me when he's going to do it. | ||
| And I want to go. | ||
| I want to go watch. | ||
| Don't encourage him! | ||
| I don't want just people showing up. | ||
| I want to, if please do it in town, please do it in L.A. But if I was an older guy, though, I'd be really worried about COVID. Yeah. | ||
| So, like, it's going to be a while before he's probably willing to go to a comedy club or something, right? | ||
| Yeah, and speaking of that, I try to see him every week, so I'm very careful. | ||
| I don't want to kill him. | ||
| We'll see. | ||
| Maybe he'll do one of those virtual Zoom rooms. | ||
| Don't have him do that. | ||
| That's setting him up the wrong way. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know what? | |
| I should completely let go of my ego and write for him. | ||
| Or should I not do that? | ||
| Should I see how good he is with that? | ||
| You gotta see how good he is first. | ||
| Let him do it first. | ||
| Don't warn him. | ||
| Just let him do it. | ||
| Has he been to a live performance by you? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| How many shows have you seen live? | ||
| I think only one or two because he's disinterested in stand-up. | ||
| It's not his thing. | ||
| He gets movies, he gets TV. He doesn't get stand-up. | ||
| And one time I was doing a Brad Garrett's club in Vegas. | ||
| MGM. I was like, old Chinese people understand Vegas. | ||
| I'm going to hook them up with a nice room. | ||
| I was, I think, opening or middling. | ||
| It was years ago. | ||
| I was like, finally, they're going to see me in MGM because they know that's a nice place going to comedy club. | ||
| I crushed it that night. | ||
| I could set, and you know, afterwards, you and the headliner and everyone's out there shaking hands, meeting people. | ||
| My parents walked out, right? | ||
| My mom's all smiles. | ||
| She's very just positive, you know, general. | ||
| And then my dad walked out, and then my buddy Jack was next to me. | ||
| He was the middle. | ||
| I was the opener. | ||
| Yeah, my buddy Jack Cohen, older comic. | ||
| He went up to my dad. | ||
| He was like, oh my god, hey, Richard, aren't you so proud of your son? | ||
| He's so good, right? | ||
| And then my dad just looked at me in front of the entire audience of everyone else shaking hands. | ||
| He's like, no, Jimmy's not funny. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah, and I don't know if he was... | ||
| Years later, he said... | ||
| That was a joke because he said this. | ||
| He said, it's not funny if I tell you you're funny. | ||
| But it's funny if I tell you it's not funny. | ||
| There's a story there. | ||
| I was like, yeah, but yeah, you're my dad, though. | ||
| I mean, come on. | ||
| You're not my buddy at an open mic. | ||
| And then he also said, he was like, well, I honestly didn't think it was funny because... | ||
| I don't get the references. | ||
| I don't get culturally like what you're saying about whatever. | ||
| I didn't get it. | ||
| So he's kind of just being honest also? | ||
| So he's trying to be funny in his own way while being honest about his own take on it. | ||
| Yeah, he's honest, but he's also still being the ball breaker. | ||
| Right. | ||
| He's a funny guy, but sometimes it's hard to be his son if he's using me in the expense of comedy. | ||
| Is it like the style of comedy, like insult comedy? | ||
| When you say ball breaking? | ||
| Kind of, yeah. | ||
| That's what he does? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Like older Chinese Don Rickles? | ||
| Yes! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes! | |
| That's it. | ||
| Well, Chinese people, I think in general, I say this, my stand-up, and it's funny, if I do it in front of a white audience, or a non-Chinese audience, you're like, what the fuck? | ||
| Does that really happen? | ||
| Like, I do this bit about how Chinese people would tell you exactly what the fuck is wrong with your face. | ||
| Like, at Thanksgiving, you know, my mom would tell my girl cousin, like, oh, Christina, you got so fat. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Just straight, I was like, ma, you can't say that! | ||
| And then my mom or my dad would be like, oh, if we're not telling her, who would? | ||
| And like also being like a comedian. | ||
| I mean, not being a comedian. | ||
| Being, fuck, what was I going to say? | ||
| Oh, being Chinese. | ||
| Being fat or gaining weight is prosperous. | ||
| It's good. | ||
| It's auspicious or whatever. | ||
| Dude, she's a girl! | ||
| You can't just fucking say that, you know? | ||
| And Christina is not fat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
She's this beautiful young woman, you know? | |
| And yeah, it's hard to grow up with a high self-esteem in an Asian household. | ||
| But there is a weird honesty to it. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I don't buy it. | ||
| They say it's honest. | ||
| I think it's passed down trauma. | ||
| Their parents did that to them, and now they're doing it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Well, there's something about work ethic in Asian households. | ||
| When I was young, one of my good friends was this kid. | ||
| His name was Jung Sik. | ||
| Jung Sik Chang, and he went on to be National Taekwondo Champion while he was in his medical residency. | ||
| Like, yeah, I always used to compare myself to him. | ||
| If I ever thought I had discipline or I worked hard, I'd compare myself to that guy. | ||
| I was like, I'm a lazy fuck. | ||
| Because this guy was, he worked so hard. | ||
| But he was telling me that this is just how it was with his family. | ||
| Like, nothing you ever did is good enough. | ||
| Like, he's Korean. | ||
| And he was like, my parents are so ruthless. | ||
| It's like everything had to be better. | ||
| Nothing was ever good. | ||
| It didn't matter if you had straight A's. | ||
| You could do better. | ||
| You could always do better. | ||
| You're never good enough. | ||
| It's interesting. | ||
| I think that is more like the very stereotypical Asian parents, the helicopter tiger parents or whatever. | ||
| Tiger parents. | ||
| Tiger mom, I think is the real term. | ||
| Mine is, I guess, a little nuanced. | ||
| They would give it up for academic and they always call me smart and stuff. | ||
| But they will make fun of me, like, I remember after orchestra practice in high school once, my dad came, very proud of me playing the violinist, like, oh, you're great, you know. | ||
| So that stuff, they'll give it up, you know. | ||
| But then a girl, this really cute white girl came and talked to me after, Tracy was her name, that I kind of had a crush on. | ||
| She just came and talked to me. | ||
| She was like, oh, God, you're so good. | ||
| Hey, hey, I'll talk to you later. | ||
| Gave me a hug and everything. | ||
| And I was such a nerd. | ||
| I didn't get any action. | ||
| And then I just looked at my dad. | ||
| I was hoping he'll be proud, you know, and then he looked at me and he's like, you and her? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| So certain things, like, he goes a little too far making fun of you. | ||
| That's a confidence crusher from Pops. | ||
| Yeah, but I mean, once again, it could be because he grew up, he never got no girls like that. | ||
| So he's like, if I couldn't, like, why would my son, you know? | ||
| Do you think he's competing with you a little bit there in that way? | ||
| I hate to think about that, but I think there's got to be a part of that. | ||
| That's got to be a part of why you wanted to get into acting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| And maybe that's one of the reasons why he's so confident. | ||
| It's because he shits on you, and if you can do it, he's like, this fucking guy can do it? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's a weird... | ||
| He picks and chooses what he gives it up and not. | ||
| Ooh, so it's manipulative. | ||
| A little bit. | ||
| So you never know. | ||
| It's like... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Stockholm Syndrome. | ||
| Well, you know, I called him out once. | ||
| And I was like, Dad, why don't you... | ||
| Why didn't you, first of all, tell me any dating advice? | ||
| And also, why did you never think I could, like, date cute girls or whatever, right? | ||
| Like, that took me years to overcome. | ||
| And he was like, sure, but, like, I always said you were smart, right? | ||
| Like, he just gave me, like, a non-answer of, like... | ||
| He was like, but I always said you were smart. | ||
| That's what's important to me. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So it's sort of like he's excusing the fact that he... | ||
| Dismissed your ability to... | ||
| I think whatever he wasn't good at, he projected it on me. | ||
| Like, I was a, as small as I was, I was a pretty good athlete. | ||
| I could run pretty fast. | ||
| I could jump pretty high. | ||
| I used to play basketball. | ||
| Even though I was small, I was like the underdog, but I was athletic, you know? | ||
| But my dad, like when I was trying out for the high school basketball team, my dad was like, no, you can't do that. | ||
| You're flat-footed just like me. | ||
| You can't, come on. | ||
| Oh, that's weird. | ||
| So it's the opposite of what some weird theater parents do or coach parents do. | ||
| It's a thing that happens when kids get into athletics where their parents failed at sports and then they get really invested in their kid being awesome. | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| I'm not sure which way is healthier or less healthy. | ||
| Both of them are gross. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They're both gross. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, there's something really weird about, like, it's a burden, too, for the kids. | ||
| Like, I've seen it with kids where the overbearing parents just want the kid to succeed so well because, like, that's my boy out there kicking ass. | ||
| That's my boy. | ||
| Look how fast he runs. | ||
| It's a very selfish reason. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's very selfish. | |
| You don't really care about the kid being happy or not. | ||
| And it also fucks with the kid's head, and a lot of times it ruins their love of whatever the sport is. | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I guess... | ||
| You know, it's fine. | ||
| It's fine. | ||
| I'm fine. | ||
| Joe, I'm fine. | ||
| Joe, I'm fine, dude. | ||
| I've seen enough therapy. | ||
| I'm fine, dude. | ||
| It's fine. | ||
| It's fine. | ||
| He's flawed. | ||
| We're all flawed. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| No worries. | ||
| It's like the scene in Good Will Hunting. | ||
| Like, I'm afraid you're going to be like Robin Williams and be like, it's not your fault. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's not your fault. | ||
| And I just start bawling. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| The thing is, parents that do weird shit to you, there's some benefit to it. | ||
| My parents were not supportive about anything I've ever done, ever. | ||
| And my parents split up when I was really young, so my whole life was like... | ||
| I'll show you. | ||
| I'll show you. | ||
| Like, oh, I don't get any attention? | ||
| Watch what I can do. | ||
| So that was... | ||
| It led me to get really good at things. | ||
| That was why I got really good at everything, because I never got any attention. | ||
| So my thought was like, I know how to get attention. | ||
| Be better than everybody else at everything. | ||
| Whatever I do, I just have to be just fucking fully immersed in it. | ||
| So I became obsessed with getting really good at things. | ||
| But if I had really supportive parents that were really there for me all the time, Who knows? | ||
| But that's you. | ||
| That's your personality to take that kind of negative thing and turn into something awesome. | ||
| A lot of kids maybe in that same situation would have been like, nobody cares. | ||
| I'm gonna go fuck myself. | ||
| Well, I got really lucky that I found martial arts like really young. | ||
| And when I found it, I realized like, oh, I am good at this. | ||
| Like I found a thing that makes me feel like I'm not a loser. | ||
| Because I just felt like we moved around a lot. | ||
| Like we moved from, like I lived in... | ||
| New Jersey till I was 7, and then San Francisco from 7 to 11, and then Florida from 11 to 13, and then Boston from... | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And it was like, fuck, man. | ||
| I never had, like, long, steady friends. | ||
| I was always the new kid. | ||
| I was always small. | ||
| People were always fucking with me. | ||
| And then when I got into martial arts, it was the first time I didn't feel like a loser. | ||
| It was like a year or two in, when I started getting really good, I was like, this is something I'm good at. | ||
| I'm really good at this. | ||
| I got praise from my instructor. | ||
| I got praise from other students. | ||
| I was winning tournaments, and I was like, I am something. | ||
| And so I just threw myself into it. | ||
| That was my whole life. | ||
| And I always think, maybe I wouldn't have been that good if I was just loved. | ||
| It's not that my mom didn't love me or my stepdad didn't love me. | ||
| It's just they're fucking busy, man. | ||
| They also grew up in a fucked up life too. | ||
| Their parents weren't supportive either. | ||
| So it's sort of like that cycle just sort of repeats itself with kids. | ||
| You know, I thought that back in the day about certain things like acting. | ||
| I'm like, if I didn't have low self-esteem growing up about this or if my dad never thought I could be in the arts, maybe I'll never made it here. | ||
| Like I made it here for a reason, right? | ||
| And my therapist said this one thing. | ||
| Not to get too foo-foo or whatever here. | ||
| He said this one thing that really resonated with me. | ||
| He was like, have you ever thought about you made it not because of it, but despite of it? | ||
| So that was kind of nice to hear. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, there's both those things, right? | ||
| It's like... | ||
| Whatever it is that shapes your personality. | ||
| Those negatives, like, there's an ebb and flow to all things. | ||
| And sometimes those negatives gives you this gust of energy to go in the opposite direction. | ||
| And the motivation that you have is sometimes more important than anything else. | ||
| Sometimes the willingness to go through a lot of shitty things to make it. | ||
| Like, sometimes that doesn't exist. | ||
| I have a good friend. | ||
| He's a really nice guy, but his mom was too nice to him when he was young. | ||
| She gave him too much love and she always said he was amazing at everything and he even admits it talking about it. | ||
| He's like, I think my mom was just too fucking nice to me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's got no drive! | |
| He's always loved and he's always cared for and he never felt scared. | ||
| He never felt alone. | ||
| He never felt like, there's nobody out here helping me. | ||
| I gotta go do this on my own. | ||
| And I remember that was like my overwhelming feeling my whole life. | ||
| It was like, no one's looking out for me. | ||
| I gotta look out for myself. | ||
| The world's dangerous, you know? | ||
| Mm, mm. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But that, it's like, it's all in like, I mean, that's a stupid old expression. | ||
| Life gives you lemons, right? | ||
| You make lemonade. | ||
| It's like, whatever it is that was negative about it, it can become a positive. | ||
| It can become like a reinforcing thing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Every bad set is actually the most helpful thing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes! | |
| Dude, every time I've bombed, like I talked about that one time when friends came to see me at the comedy store and I realized, like, I'm phoning it in. | ||
| I'm fucking up. | ||
| I needed that to happen. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I needed it to happen. | ||
| Even with... | ||
| Acting or stand-up, it's like, sometimes I'm like, okay, I'm trying really hard for this film because I'm proving myself. | ||
| And then sometimes you coast. | ||
| You're like, oh, wait, I coasted on that movie and people still was like, oh, he was good. | ||
| So you keep coasting, coasting, and at some point you get caught. | ||
| And you're like, oh, fuck, I gotta step it up again. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, we need lessons. | ||
| No one's perfect, right? | ||
| We need lessons. | ||
| Lessons come in strange forms. | ||
| Sometimes you don't ask for them. | ||
| Sometimes you get dealt a hand that you didn't want to get dealt, but it turns out to be the best thing that could ever happen to you. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Jimmy, you're a bad motherfucker. | ||
| Thank you, man. | ||
| Great to have you here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's fun. | |
| Sit down, talk to you. | ||
| Tell everybody what your special's called so they can go get it right now. | ||
| Yeah, my special, it's called Good Deal on Amazon Prime Video. | ||
| And, of course, then there's Space Force on Netflix, so you can watch both. | ||
| Beautiful. | ||
| And your Twitter handle and Instagram and all that jazz? | ||
| Well, I might delete my Twitter now. | ||
| Delete it. | ||
| Burn it. | ||
| Let it on fire. | ||
| Instagram and TikTok. | ||
| I'm a TikTok guy now. | ||
| Oh, you're doing TikTok. | ||
| Well, I don't know. | ||
| But it's at FunnyAsianDude. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Beautiful. | |
| Check it out. | ||
| Thanks, brother. | ||
| Appreciate you, man. | ||
| Thank you, Joe. | ||
| Thanks for being here. | ||
| Bye, everybody. | ||
| That was great. |
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