Feb. 26, 2022 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:06:36
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! | |
| The Joe Rogan Experience. | ||
| Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. | ||
| Alright. | ||
| Talk to me, Earthquake. | ||
|
unidentified
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What's happening? | |
| Hey, what's up, Joe? | ||
| Great to see you, man. | ||
| Thanks for having me, first of all. | ||
| My pleasure. | ||
| Listen, your special is fucking outstanding. | ||
| It is one of the best specials I've seen in a long time. | ||
| It's hard to laugh by yourself out loud on a phone. | ||
| When you're watching someone on a phone, I laughed hard. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| It was great. | ||
| It's you. | ||
| It's like, you know, sometimes someone does a special and it's like, it's better seeing them live, but you captured it. | ||
| It was a journey. | ||
| It was the first time I was properly financed. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| We wasn't borrowing money or had the right vehicle, properly supported by the distributors and everything. | ||
| It was the opportunity. | ||
| Then I knew the significance of it by Dave being a part of it, that this is the one I needed to elevate me to get off of this level that I'm on right now. | ||
| Well, we were talking about this before, but in my mind, your level in terms of your ability, you're already there. | ||
| You're one of the best comics alive. | ||
| There's no doubt about it. | ||
| So this is a great representative of that. | ||
| It's a great representation of that. | ||
| Because... | ||
| It's very rare that someone gets as good as you are that's not selling out arenas. | ||
| That's how good you are. | ||
| Well, thank you. | ||
| So it's exciting for me. | ||
| Yes, and I hope that you know it. | ||
| You're a comic, man. | ||
| You never know what's going to do it, what's going to generate. | ||
| I never had a problem with... | ||
| I never equated quantity with quality. | ||
| So when I seen people 15, 17, 18,000, I never felt inferior or bad that I had 2,000. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| The work of it. | ||
| And then at the end of the day, to be quite honest with you, as a comic, you know, when you first get into it, you just want to make people laugh. | ||
| And I have achieved that. | ||
| So... | ||
| I had already felt that I was successful, but sometimes you do sit back like, God damn, when are they ever going to get to the ease? | ||
| They keep skipping me. | ||
| How long does it take? | ||
| I mean, because, you know, I said in my echo, the thing I'm saying, I've been the bridesmaid for so long and never the bride. | ||
| And watch all my friends just get TV shows and everything. | ||
| And like you said, I look at my friends and I see them. | ||
| Talent-wide, I don't feel it. | ||
| I just look at them and say they had an opportunity and they achieved. | ||
| And they won on it. | ||
| And they cashed in on it. | ||
| I have yet to have that opportunity to cash in, so that's what I'm looking for. | ||
| Well, the fact that Dave Chappelle's behind it and that Dave produced it and he introduces you at the beginning of the special, that's gigantic. | ||
| That's gonna help a lot. | ||
| But we've all been talking about you for years. | ||
| Everyone's terrified to follow you. | ||
| Everyone. | ||
| When we find out that you were at the Comedy Store, everybody's like, oh shit, where is he at in the lineup? | ||
| Fuck that spot. | ||
| That spot after you is not fun. | ||
| I mean, when you have nothing but your jokes, you gotta at least perfect that aspect of the career. | ||
| Well, you're a hustler, too. | ||
| You're always out there. | ||
| And the guys that are constantly working, there's a polish that you get when you're on the road and you're doing those Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, where you're just constantly doing sets. | ||
| There's an undeniable polish that a guy gets. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, you there. | ||
| I call them the frontline workers. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Success takes you off the front line. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| It does. | ||
| It keeps you from your fans to feel exact because we feed off the information that we get from our fans. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And if you're isolated with security or other things that you have to do or the enormous of your career, you kind of like get away from the people who are actually Support you. | ||
| And that's the key to me. | ||
| I always stay within my constituents some way. | ||
| Family member or somebody. | ||
| I take a young comedian on the road with me who I look up to and say he can make it. | ||
| And just allow him to be in the life, and I just watch what he do and what he going through, and that's how I keep my stuff. | ||
| Yeah, I do the same. | ||
| I do the same, and I also bring a lot of comedians to the shows that I do in town. | ||
| I bring open micers. | ||
| I have them go up. | ||
| I give them tips. | ||
| I give them good spots. | ||
| Let them try it out. | ||
| Give them rough spots sometimes after someone really good. | ||
| Let them feel that. | ||
| Let them feel that. | ||
| And I think for a lot of guys, a lot of guys get big, and then they start getting television shows and movies, and you don't realize how much time that takes away from your stand-up. | ||
| True. | ||
| When I was doing Fear Factor, I remember seeing guys that would come into town that were doing the road constantly, and I'd be jealous. | ||
| I would. | ||
| I was on a television show, a hit show, and everybody wanted to be on a hit show, but I would see these guys that were so smooth because they'd just been doing those Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, two shows Friday, two shows Saturday, Sunday on the road, and they were just whoop, whoop, whoop, just greased up and just smooth and just everything was polished. | ||
| Yes, yeah. | ||
| That's the top level. | ||
| You get to that when you're headlining constantly and your act is just so polished. | ||
| Yeah, and you can see it too. | ||
| Irrelevant. | ||
| And they talking about things, you're like, damn. | ||
| I didn't see it that way. | ||
| Damn. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So it's the beautiful part. | ||
| That's what I look for. | ||
| You've never seen it this way. | ||
| You've never seen this angle of it. | ||
| Well, that's the best when you watch a comic and they say something that you would have never expected. | ||
| And you're like, wow, that's a nice angle. | ||
| Yeah, that's it. | ||
| That's the craft. | ||
| That's the hook. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, that's the sweet spot. | ||
| We call it in the pocket. | ||
| That's when you're in the pocket. | ||
| You get it. | ||
| Where did you record this? | ||
| Washington, D.C. Nice. | ||
| Yeah, at home. | ||
| I'm from Washington, D.C., Southeast D.C. So when Dave came to me, where you want to go? | ||
| I said, well, let's go ahead and make it as rough as possible. | ||
| Let's go on and do it at home. | ||
| Let everybody be here. | ||
| So at least, if nothing else, I stamp my hometown. | ||
| That's why you talk about that in the beginning of it. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| The other guy that I've had on recently who's also, it's undeniable and unbelievable that he's not huger, is Tony Woods. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yeah, I had Tony Woods on recently and then we did a show together at the Vulcan. | ||
| I'm like, God damn, he's good. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| He's so smooth. | ||
| Me and Tony have been friends for over 25 years. | ||
| Yeah, me too. | ||
| I've known Tony since the 90s. | ||
| Yes, Tony is my man. | ||
| He's from D.C. too. | ||
| And he has that slow delivery and sarcastically. | ||
| It's beautiful. | ||
| When you write, do you sit down and write? | ||
| Do you just collect information throughout the day? | ||
| How do you come up with the material? | ||
| I write in my mind. | ||
| I never physically write. | ||
| What I do, I come up with a concept and elaborate on it. | ||
| And usually it comes with a truth and then it expands to a big-ass lie. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Like they say, the first casualty of war is the truth. | ||
| So that's what it is. | ||
| There it is. | ||
| And then I just expand on it and expand on it and expand on it. | ||
| So when I get on stage, I never know what I'm going to say. | ||
| But once I see it and I just say what I see, because I see it in my mind and then I just it comes out that way. | ||
| That's how I do it. | ||
| So when you write new material, do you just go up with it? | ||
| Or do you try to sandwich it in between material that you've already done? | ||
| No, like this right here, I say, this is what I'm not going to talk about. | ||
| I take everything, like this special, I'm not going to talk about any of that. | ||
| And then I start from then on. | ||
| So you take all the material that you're not going to do anymore because you did it in the special. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But when you, like, say if you have a new bit that you're trying to work into your act, do you try to do it first? | ||
| Yeah, I do it right there because I know where it is to be funny with it. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So I'll start just say what I find is funny. | ||
| Like, we're going through this thing with Kuwait. | ||
| I mean, with Ukraine, excuse me. | ||
| And I'm like, okay, the Russians are marching. | ||
| They're marching. | ||
| So you start from that point on and just elaborate all the way through. | ||
| And you just work it out on stage? | ||
| Work it right there on stage. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I work it right on stage. | ||
| Have you always done it that way? | ||
| Always. | ||
|
unidentified
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Really? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| See, I had my own comedy club. | ||
| And it was the Uptown Comedy Corner. | ||
| And the comedy act theater wouldn't allow me to perform there. | ||
| So when I... Where was that? | ||
| In Atlanta, Georgia. | ||
| So they wouldn't let me perform there. | ||
| So I told my mother, my mother said, told you if they're not going to let you ride their bike, you either get your own bike or walk. | ||
| So I got my own club. | ||
| And because I was affiliated with this dude, they said, it's not an all-black comedy club. | ||
| It's white dudes and probably own it. | ||
| So they kind of like boycotted my club. | ||
| So they left me there to do all the jokes. | ||
| And I had to entertain them. | ||
| Go up there and just go. | ||
| And it was the best thing that ever happened for me. | ||
| Who the fuck boycotted your club? | ||
| Other comedians. | ||
| And you know back in the day, because you know back in the day, you've been in the game long. | ||
| If you work this club, you can't work this club. | ||
| You know, Comedy Act Theater was the premier black comedy club. | ||
| So you got a club in Los Angeles, Atlanta, that's the premier black club, and it's this new club with the dudes that's not from here named Earthquake, and the owner say, you go up here, you'll never work in my club? | ||
| You know what comedians gonna do. | ||
| They're gonna go like, nah, man, I would do your club, but Gary said, if I go up there, I ain't gonna be able to work. | ||
| I'm like, alright. | ||
| And it was only until Steve Harvey, which is a good friend of mine, called him up and said, Steve, none of these motherfuckers ain't doing it. | ||
| He's like, fuck that, I'd do it. | ||
| Steve came in, sold it out, and when they saw him come seeing him, they saw me, and the rest was history. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So you were basically working at your club almost every night? | ||
| Every night. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| I was the feature, the open mic, and the headliner. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| That's why if people see and thinking I'm drunk or something, leaning up against the wall, that's just what I would do. | ||
| I used to just lean up on the wall and do an hour straight off the top and just hit it that way. | ||
| And that just became my style and I just continue on. | ||
| See what I say? | ||
| And just riff right off of it. | ||
| That's an amazing gym to train at. | ||
| To have that kind of a setup, it's kind of by necessity, but still, that's an amazing way to work on your act. | ||
| Holy shit. | ||
| Yeah, that's how I do it. | ||
| I just come up with some different topics and elaborate on them. | ||
| So you didn't do any prep beforehand? | ||
| Like you would never sit down with a notepad and write ideas out or anything? | ||
| No, I don't do that. | ||
| What I do is, this is what I'm going to start at, and I continue on, and then at the time, I tape every show I've ever did, and I suppose I've been disciplined enough to go back and say, I know it's something that I want to elaborate on later, and I got it down so I could talk about it later, but I never did. | ||
| I never did. | ||
| I just said fuck it. | ||
| I caught it and something else to come. | ||
| Do you know any comics do that? | ||
| Record and never listen or never watch it? | ||
| How many? | ||
|
unidentified
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A lot. | |
| Almost every one of them. | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| I got all my shows and I never watched none of them. | ||
| I occasionally will go back and look at them if there's something that I don't remember I said. | ||
| I know I said something and I gotta figure out what it is. | ||
| I'll go watch. | ||
| See, that's where it's also Achilles. | ||
| If I try to think about what I said... | ||
| It'll never come out. | ||
| Right, because you won't be smooth. | ||
|
unidentified
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No, I won't. | |
| You won't be in the moment. | ||
| Because I'm thinking. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| That one is just for y'all. | ||
| It was there for that. | ||
| If I try to capture it and bring it up and take it to St. Louis, what I did in Dallas, it ain't going to work. | ||
| It has to be right then and there. | ||
| So you just pray. | ||
| You get up there and say, God has never let me down before and keep on going with it. | ||
| Well, that is one of the beautiful things about your style, is that it seems so loose and relaxed and natural. | ||
| Because if you can achieve that mindset and just do that every night and never think about the material, just let it flow out, that's an amazing gift. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, Steve told me that too. | ||
| I remember I did get caught up in the comedy club, this is how you pose, write a joke and everything. | ||
| And I was writing, and he said, what you doing? | ||
| I said, I'm writing to get my stuff together. | ||
| He just grabbed the paper, tore it up. | ||
| He said, you don't need to write. | ||
| Your shit come out already. | ||
| Don't let them fuck what you got. | ||
| And once he told me that, it was on. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| It was on. | ||
| So he gave you the advice to not write? | ||
| Yeah, he gave me the advice. | ||
| He said, don't write it down. | ||
| Let it be. | ||
|
unidentified
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Let it go. | |
| Ordinarily, I would argue with that. | ||
| I would say, no, you should definitely write. | ||
| But then I see what you're doing, and I'm like, leave it alone. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I try. | ||
| I try to conform it in and put it in. | ||
| I really, to be honest with you, I envy those polished-ass comedians. | ||
| I mean, every word, like Seinfeld, let's go here. | ||
| I mean, polished. | ||
| That's not me, because mine is like a testimony, like preaching. | ||
| You get caught up in the gospel of it, and you just, some words don't come right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because you're in it. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| You're in it. | ||
| So, you know, it's like Michael James. | ||
| Chum On Now, I'm pretty sure it wasn't written down. | ||
| He got into the song and Chum On Now came and it worked with the song. | ||
| Well, some of my favorite people perform like that, like Joey Diaz. | ||
| Joey Diaz will go on stage with some shit that happened five minutes before and he'll open with it. | ||
| And you'll be dying laughing. | ||
| And there's no preparation. | ||
| It's just smooth and natural and just who he is. | ||
| And you can't achieve that. | ||
| That's not something that a guy who doesn't do that can do. | ||
| It's like a rare ability to be able to just be smooth and loose right away with a bit. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, because we already know that it's funny in our head. | ||
| Now we just want to tell you. | ||
| It's like, you say, man, guess what I saw? | ||
| And you want to tell her, I saw this funny thing. | ||
| And that's what it is. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And if you try to tell the story again, you'll tell the story again, but it'll never be like you told it the first time, the second time, the third time, the fourth time. | ||
| It competes, you know, completely just revolve and revolve to a bigger life, to more funnier. | ||
| Now, when you prepped for this special, how many shows did you do? | ||
| I did two shows. | ||
| Two shows. | ||
| Two shows. | ||
| Same night? | ||
| No, one per night. | ||
| One per night. | ||
| Like a Friday and a Saturday? | ||
| Friday and a Saturday. | ||
| And which one was the better one? | ||
| Second one, I think. | ||
| Everybody else said the second one. | ||
| The first one you say, let me get it in the can. | ||
| The number one objective for me was to make sure it captured who I was. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And I made sure that was on the first one. | ||
| Then the second one, it was like it's another night at the club. | ||
| I knew I had that one in the can. | ||
| They was like, you ain't even got to do the second show if you don't want to. | ||
| We got it in the first. | ||
| I said, nah, let me do this one. | ||
| And I did it a whole different way. | ||
| He's like, god damn. | ||
| That is what it's about when you do a special. | ||
| When someone has to do one special and you have one hour to do it. | ||
| I always talk about Bill Hicks' special, Relentless. | ||
| It was this HBO special. | ||
| Yeah, I love Bill. | ||
| Bill was amazing. | ||
| But that special, you could tell he's kind of tense. | ||
| He's got one shot to do this in one hour. | ||
| There's no looseness that you would get from a regular show. | ||
| So if you can get a few shows in, I do four. | ||
| I do two on Friday, two on Saturday. | ||
| When you tape? | ||
| Yep. | ||
| That would you do? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Because I did two, like the last time I did two was in 2014 and a lady heckled me during the first show. | ||
| And I was like, oh no. | ||
| I was like, if someone heckles me during the second show, I'm fucked because this one bit was ruined when she yelled something out. | ||
| So when I do four, though, it's just like right away from the beginning, I'm like, this is going to be just a regular show. | ||
| So from the beginning, it doesn't feel like a recording. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, for us, I feel, Bill, on that because you're really saying, I need this recording. | ||
| To do something. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I need this to do something. | ||
| I need it to work for you. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| You want your rate to go up. | ||
| And what I mean, your quote to go up. | ||
| You want to be considered in the room. | ||
| Because, you know, I tell people all the time, the only difference between me and my peers is, again, Opportunity that they cash in on. | ||
| But you at least got to get that opportunity. | ||
| You need somebody to say, well, what about Quake? | ||
| You know, in the room. | ||
| What about, let's try him. | ||
| And those opportunities. | ||
| And that special for Bill will put him in that room. | ||
| They say, what about Bill? | ||
| I've seen this comedian. | ||
| They had a special. | ||
| He was funnier. | ||
| He would be great for this. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And that type of thing. | ||
| Well, your performances, they've all been amazing, but it's all word of mouth. | ||
| It's like people had to find out about you because people went to see you and they said, you got to see this dude. | ||
| And then boom, boom, boom, and it builds up. | ||
| But there has to be something that the mainstream can see. | ||
| People that don't know the people that have seen you. | ||
| And that's what this is. | ||
| Like something that can get out there so that anybody can watch it and go, holy shit. | ||
| Yeah, and for somebody to draw them in. | ||
| See, that's what's so important about Dave. | ||
| You put Dave's name on it, then everybody that loves Dave is going to come see it because it's Dave off of it. | ||
| And then they get to see to know you. | ||
| And he's doing that with Donnell as well. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Donnell's is next month. | ||
| Is it just the two of you? | ||
| No, I heard it's four. | ||
| Who else? | ||
| I think Tony Woods, Rutebute, and Luenelle. | ||
| That's what I heard. | ||
| I asked Tony about it, and he's like, I don't know when I'm doing it. | ||
| I'm like, what do you mean you don't know when? | ||
| He goes, I don't know. | ||
| I'm like, well, you should fucking know. | ||
| No, when you're dealing with the master, you don't know. | ||
| We filmed this in July. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, and it's just dropping here in February. | ||
| So you got to work with, you know, with Dave on Hype because he's a perfectionist. | ||
| He reminds me, I worked with Dr. Dre on the beats, the shit, the speakers. | ||
| And we did divorce on it. | ||
| And I swear to God, I was in that studio with Dr. Dre for about eight hours. | ||
| I'm like, listen, motherfucker, I am not a rapper. | ||
| I mean, every word was precise. | ||
| Let's try to say what again. | ||
| I said how many motherfucking times do you want me to say what? | ||
| But he is like that. | ||
| Dave is like that. | ||
| He is particular with his work and how he want to be done. | ||
| And, you know, that's where it is. | ||
| So he'll get to it. | ||
| And when he get to it, the way he want it done, he'll do it. | ||
| And I can't argue with this process because the results was great. | ||
| Yeah, it's not an accident that he's considered the greatest living comedian. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's work. | ||
| Yes, it's work. | ||
| And he's particular with it, and he has in it. | ||
| His timing, only people know the timing when they drop it, when it's right, it's right, it's him. | ||
| And his timing is impeccable. | ||
| Yeah, no. | ||
| He's also, he's constantly working. | ||
| Dave's constantly doing sets. | ||
| He'll constantly do drop-in sets places. | ||
| Like, on my Instagram feed, I'll just find him. | ||
| He's in New York. | ||
| He's here. | ||
| He's there. | ||
| He's in LA. He just shows up places and does sets. | ||
| Like, he's constant. | ||
| And not even necessarily working like getting paid, just working on his craft. | ||
| True. | ||
| He's constantly going in and fucking around and having fun and creating new shit. | ||
| He's a comedian. | ||
| He turns over an hour so quick, too. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| We were working together doing arenas, and he put out a special, and then he's headlining an arena with new material. | ||
| The special was a couple of weeks ago, and he's already working out new shit, and he's doing it in front of 18,000 people. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| It's wild. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The confidence is... | ||
| unmatched yes yeah gotta ride that quiet yeah the confidence was also like the connection with his audience like they know exactly who he is true they want to see it you know and he knows what to give him he knows how to be Dave it's beautiful that he's producing specials too I love it. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I have never received so much press in my career. | ||
| Over 30 years of career, I have never received so much press in this one time, in the totality of my whole career. | ||
| What year did you start? | ||
| 91, after getting out of the military. | ||
| Oh, yeah? | ||
| Yeah, I was in the Air Force for nine years. | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| Yeah, I wanted to do 20 years, but the war broke out. | ||
| So I had to let them know. | ||
|
unidentified
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I had to tell them I don't mind practicing for war. | |
| Y'all fighting for real. | ||
| I gotta tell you the truth, I ain't no real soldier. | ||
| I just got here to get out of my mother's house. | ||
| Did you plan on doing stand-up eventually? | ||
| No, what happened was... | ||
| I used to just sit there, anything to get out of work, you know, because I was that soldier. | ||
| Anything to get out. | ||
| So the USO had a tour. | ||
| So I go up there and talk a couple times on that stuff. | ||
| Anything to get out of the military. | ||
| I mean, get out of work. | ||
| And then I saw what's about to happen. | ||
| I knew they was getting tired of me because I was a terrible soldier. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Came in as an E1, left as an E1. What's an E1? That's the first strike you get. | ||
|
unidentified
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Really? | |
| Nine years later, still just one strike. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| What do you have to do to get stripes? | ||
| Some of them come with seniority and then to get to a level that you have to pass tests and know all the different aircraft. | ||
| I ain't gonna care about this. | ||
| I'm just over here trying to find out what my real purpose is. | ||
| You the one got me when you said it's a great place to start. | ||
| You ain't say nothing about finish. | ||
| So let's just kick it until we break up. | ||
| You know, like dating a woman like, you ain't gonna be my wife until this real woman I want to mess with come along. | ||
| I'd just kick it with you. | ||
| And that's what the military was, and it was the best experience of my life because it opened up my mind because I lived in D.C. and it's segregated, and I found out there was people out there like you that had more in common with me than difference, and it was the best thing ever. | ||
| Yeah, that's water. | ||
| Okay, thank you. | ||
| So it's kind of amazing, right? | ||
| Because if the war didn't break out, maybe you would have never done stand-up. | ||
| Probably not, but I would have been out the military. | ||
| They would have put me out. | ||
| Because no advancement. | ||
| You just can't stay in as an E1. But it was probably not. | ||
| I never thought that this was my destiny. | ||
| It was the best decision that day. | ||
| Nothing better hasn't came along, so that's what I suppose we're doing. | ||
| So what inspired you to do an open mic? | ||
| As usual, a woman watching Eddie Murphy do delirious, she was falling all on the ground. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I said, if you want to fuck him, just say you want to fuck him. | |
| But that ain't that funny that you throwing up and all that. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Just stop it. | ||
| You can't do that. | ||
| I said, I can do that. | ||
| I heard more funny shit than that. | ||
| That's funny, but that ain't the funniest thing I ever heard. | ||
| Definitely had to get this reaction you doing. | ||
| So she's like, come on. | ||
| I went to the comedy club and... | ||
| I said, okay, I can do this. | ||
| And then the dude gave me $500. | ||
| I'm like, okay. | ||
| And then the money just kept coming and ain't nothing came to take its place. | ||
| You got 500 bucks for the first set? | ||
| First set, dude gave me $500. | ||
| What kind of dude is that? | ||
| Hey, a good dude. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| He was like, look, I want you to come on back. | ||
| I'm gonna give you $500. | ||
| I said, 500? | ||
| I said, you serious? | ||
| So I thought, you know... | ||
| Must have been a drug dealer or something trying to set me up, right? | ||
| And he said, nah, I'm gonna give you $500. | ||
| Come on back the weekend. | ||
| And I did the whole weekend. | ||
| And that was the $500 for the whole weekend. | ||
| And so what was the club? | ||
| Coconuts. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Coconuts. | |
| Down at the Holiday Inn in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. | ||
| Ah, I've heard of that place. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What they used to do is they used to rent out the bar at a hotel. | ||
| That's how they'd do it. | ||
| They'd go to the food and beverage person and say, listen, we'll put some comedians in here. | ||
| They'll give your guests something to do. | ||
| And we'll keep the door and give us a little bit off the bar. | ||
| And the food man says, of course. | ||
| And they'll book us, give us like $50 a show, $100 a show, and do five shows. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you remember your material? | |
| My first joke was something about Michael Jackson. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that was it. | ||
| That's all I remember. | ||
| Did you write anything out before you went up there? | ||
| No. | ||
| Well, I tried writing, but my penmanship is so bad. | ||
| I've been coming out of public school. | ||
| It's a damn shame when you can't even read your own shit. | ||
| And my spelling is terrible. | ||
| Okay, it's Michael Jackson. | ||
| What did I think about Michael Jackson? | ||
| I took it from there. | ||
| So did you rehearse it in your head? | ||
| Like, how did you do it? | ||
| I rehearsed it in the mirror, like most comedians. | ||
| And, you know, the toothbrushes are hollering and the toothpaste is standing up and everything. | ||
| But it didn't translate on the stage that time. | ||
| Because when I first started doing it, I just looked up, unfortunately, looking up at the sky, up at the roof of the place, like a woman ain't making love for money. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Ain't enjoying it at all. | ||
| So that's how I got down for my first one. | ||
| So you just didn't know where to look? | ||
| Did you feel uncomfortable? | ||
| The insecurity. | ||
| That's why my name is Earthquake. | ||
| People keep asking me, why your name Earthquake? | ||
| I say the reason I named my name Earthquake, because if this shit don't work out, I ain't gonna mess up my good name. | ||
| So somebody come in and say, "Hey, what's up, earthquake?" "Hey, my name Nathaniel, I don't know no earthquake." "It was earthquake, he was dark." Nah, that was my brother or somebody, but my name is Nathaniel, I don't even know no earthquake. | ||
| I thought it was just from the reaction you got from the crowd. | ||
| No, it was an insecurity that if this don't work out... | ||
| I did not fuck up my good nap. | ||
| That's hilarious because I thought it was the total opposite. | ||
| I thought it was a cocky move. | ||
| No. | ||
| Like you're about to cause an earthquake. | ||
| No. | ||
| It was like, nah. | ||
| This don't work out, baby. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I wouldn't be Scully. | ||
| I wouldn't Scully my good name. | ||
| It's funny because it's a perfect name for you. | ||
| Oh, thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It really is. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| It's in the insecurity of wanting to protect your name. | ||
| You literally came up with the best nickname ever for you. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that's how it came. | ||
| I used to tell a joke. | ||
| We'd be like, how you came up with an earthquake? | ||
| This is happening when your mother takes heavy precautions and Not to have a child and you still get pregnant. | ||
| And there's nothing else you can name that child but a natural disaster. | ||
| That's what I wrote as a joke for it. | ||
| But the truth honestly about it was the insecurity that if this don't work, I don't want to mess up my name. | ||
| Were you living in Florida at the time? | ||
| I lived in Florida. | ||
| When I got out, I went to Atlanta. | ||
| And from going on to Atlanta, that's when I started seeing what the comedy clubs was like. | ||
| That's when we started opening my club two years later. | ||
| So you do an open mic two years later, you have your own club and you're going on every day. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So every, you gotta understand, I'm Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. | ||
| Three shows on Fridays and Saturdays. | ||
| One on Tuesday, one on Wednesday, one on Thursday, two on Sunday. | ||
| Every day for about four straight years. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| And it just... | ||
| And you're doing like an hour every night. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Every show. | |
| Every show. | ||
| Off the top. | ||
| Have you ever read the book Outliers? | ||
| No. | ||
| It's a great book. | ||
| Is that a Malcolm? | ||
| Who is that? | ||
| No, it's someone else. | ||
| It's Malcolm Gladwell. | ||
| It's a great book. | ||
| One of the things it's about is they detail people who are extremely successful and he talks about the amount of time that's required to get really good at something. | ||
| Mm-hmm and how many people that look like overnight successes the amount of time they put in was extraordinary one of the things he talks about is the Beatles and the Beatles they did all these shows in Germany where they were doing like what you were doing where they were doing every fucking night they were doing shows and And they had put in hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours doing these shows. | ||
| And so when they first, you know, air quote, made it on the scene, they had put in so much time performing, so much different than most bands because they had done so many shows nightly over and over and over again. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There's no substitute for that. | ||
| Not at all. | ||
| And it's the foundation of who I am. | ||
| So when I have to sit here, I go in with the confidence knowing, All I gotta do is make sure my environment is pure for me to be able to write the way I do, keep my mind straight, and I can come up with an album. | ||
| I can come up with an album. | ||
| And when you were doing this, like, two years in is a very unusual... | ||
| That's not a lot of time for someone to be... | ||
| Forget about headlining at all, but headlining every fucking night? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And basically being the whole show every night? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| We would get some comedians that come on it, but we didn't get any of the main comedians. | ||
| Comedians because Comedy Act wasn't happening. | ||
| That's such a cocky move to open up your own club two years in. | ||
| That's amazing. | ||
| But they were so vulnerable. | ||
| They was in the bad part of town. | ||
| They didn't serve food. | ||
| And then the Cardinals, I mean, the one that really would bring them down, they were so arrogant with it that they had booked a comic, two comics, for the whole month. | ||
| Same comic, every week. | ||
| Every week. | ||
| Oh, that's crazy. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I remember it was Joe Torrey and Ted Koppiner, and they did the whole month. | ||
| So when I brought my investors there to get the club, I said, look, these same two are going to be here. | ||
| There's 400 people in here. | ||
| They got two waitresses. | ||
| Plus they ain't got no food. | ||
| Plus they're in the bad part of town. | ||
| So what we're going to do, we're going to put the club in Buckhead. | ||
| Black people don't go there that much right there because they don't go there. | ||
| We're going to call it Uptown. | ||
| And we're going to serve food, we're going to have valet service, we're going to be in a better part of the town, and that's how I got it. | ||
| So once you, any of you going to go up against anybody, you first got to recognize their weakness and where you can draw from what they got. | ||
| And that's why I pivot all my commercials to them that way. | ||
| Are you tired of going down to a place, you park your car, and you might don't know who going to be there and they begging you for money? | ||
| No! | ||
| Come get your jokes up at Uptown Comedy Corner. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Where you don't see the same comedian over and over again. | ||
| And we have food. | ||
| And we have prompt service and everything else come to Uptown. | ||
| So I just... | ||
| And as you sit there, you give them a comparison, better time, and people are like, yeah, we like it. | ||
| And that's how I got them. | ||
| That's amazing, though, that you did that two years in. | ||
| Like, go from your career in the military, where you kind of half-ass it, you're not really into it, and then all of a sudden you find this new thing, and you're all in. | ||
| You're all in. | ||
| You're opening up your own club 24 months in. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| But what, you know, it was out of necessity. | ||
| Because I got tired of driving, like, all the way to Lakeland, Florida to get $50 a show. | ||
| And then the biggest one, you'll tell a woman you're a comedian. | ||
| And she's like, oh, I ain't never seen you at the comedy act. | ||
| You know, we segregated in the black community. | ||
| If you ain't here, then you ain't doing it. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So it ain't done. | ||
| It wasn't as expanded as it is now that they can even imagine this other club. | ||
| This was the club of all clubs, the only club. | ||
| If you didn't work there, you wasn't no black comedian. | ||
| So you had this in your head that you wanted to do this. | ||
| And how did you make that happen? | ||
| Like, who did you get to invest in it? | ||
| Like, how did you start a club? | ||
| Well, it was this dude named Gary Abdu. | ||
| He was a comedian, too. | ||
| But he booked things. | ||
| He used to do little small places, like Denny's, for example, and put a plywood box up there, little small place, sit there, and he'll throw a shell. | ||
| And he'll book me. | ||
| Pay me $150. | ||
| Me, Ricky, Smiley, and the rest of them. | ||
| And we sit down and say, what you need to do is we need to open up a black club. | ||
| So I showed it to him. | ||
| And I said, this is how we can get him what I previously said. | ||
| He said, good idea. | ||
| So we all went out and tried to get Investors. | ||
| I went to all Deon, Sanders, Dominique, all the people in Atlanta. | ||
| Hey, man, show up! | ||
| Just call this person, call this person. | ||
| Motherfuckers ain't never do nothing. | ||
| One of the person was real. | ||
| One of the person represented was very honest. | ||
| We said, listen, man, quick, I get five of these calls a day. | ||
| He ain't gonna do shit. | ||
| He ain't gonna do nothing, man. | ||
| I ain't even gonna waste your time. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So lucky, Gary found the number one plastic surgeon in Atlanta, and he invests. | ||
| But he told us, I'm going to give y'all $10,000. | ||
| If y'all can flip this and show it can work on the small states, then I'll get the club. | ||
| So we went to Birmingham, a couple places, and turned the 10 into about $50,000 to $60,000. | ||
| And then when we get that from that point on, he said, you can do it. | ||
| And he gave us the half a million dollars to get the club. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Dr. Tom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Rest in peace, my brother. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Yeah, white dude was great. | ||
| He used to put all the titties in the women in Atlanta joints. | ||
| He was the titty specialist. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So if you've seen any big titties in the 90s, in the early 2000s, it was Dr. Tom. | ||
| And how did you know him? | ||
| I didn't. | ||
| My partner Gary at the time knew him, and he brung him in, and we got together. | ||
| We said, I found somebody I could do it, but it's just a stipulation for us to do it. | ||
| And when I met him, I was cool. | ||
| It was beautiful. | ||
| Do you remember the opening night? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| We had 15 people. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah, it was 15 people. | ||
| How many seats does it play? | ||
| It hold 250. Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, 250 people. | ||
| Some of the people, matter of fact, my video person who handled my media for me, Star, that's how we met. | ||
| I hired her as my waitress, and we've been friends ever since. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And I gave her a job to handle all my social media. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| So you go from there, 15 people. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And was it you the first guy on stage? | ||
| Yeah, I had a couple of comedians to help me out, but I was the main man until we was able, because see, once that club closed, then all the comedians, oh man, I'm sorry. | ||
| I'm going to get down, because now you're the only comedy club in the city. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| You know what I mean? | ||
| But till then, it was a battle. | ||
| And it was a blessing in disguise, because it made me the beast that I am today. | ||
| When did it start to catch on? | ||
| After Steve left. | ||
| Once Steve, and Steve, he taught me so much, you know, because when he came, he said, I'm going to do your club, because I couldn't get no headliners, nobody that could draw. | ||
| And I was like, Steve, would you do it? | ||
| He was hosting Showtime, and he probably said, I'd do it for you. | ||
| And he came in on a Wednesday, and it was only about 30 people in there. | ||
| And I was like, okay. | ||
| And he came in there and looked. | ||
| He said, give them all their money back and come pick me up tomorrow at 5 o'clock when we do media. | ||
| I said, what you mean? | ||
| There's 30 people in here. | ||
| He said, Steve Harvey don't do no show for 30 people. | ||
| I said, okay then, man. | ||
| And then I picked him up and he took me to the radio. | ||
| That's when I learned how powerful media is. | ||
| And he stopped by. | ||
| He said, let's stop by Dunkin' Donuts because we got to get some donuts and some oysters because you got to smooth these jocks' egos because they feel you're going to try to take their fucking job and everything. | ||
| You got to be good on them. | ||
| And we got in there at 530, stayed on from 6 to 9, I tell you, Joe, when we got back, he had sold out two on Thursday, four on Friday, four on Saturday, and two on Sunday. | ||
| Back in 93, I wrote him a check for $45,000. | ||
| I didn't even know that kind of money exists in comedy. | ||
| I was like, oh yeah, I ain't never going nowhere. | ||
| I ain't never going nowhere. | ||
| And when I saw him pick up that kind of money and seeing what kind of money can be generated as a comedian... | ||
| I said, this is where I need to be. | ||
| And once all of those people came and seen all the things that club had to offer and where it was at and we had valet service and all the things that it could do, it was no turning back after that. | ||
| And they saw me. | ||
| So it was great. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| That will change the whole game. | ||
| That's a great story. | ||
| Yeah, that's changed the whole game. | ||
| He said Steve Harvey don't. | ||
| That's why I tell people about Steve Harvey. | ||
| Steve Harvey's always been Steve Harvey. | ||
| Always the ultimate confidence. | ||
| He was like, do no show for no 50 people. | ||
| I said, well, it's packed. | ||
| What the fuck you mean? | ||
| You're packed. | ||
| There's 50 people in here. | ||
| I read an interview with him recently where he said he doesn't want to do stand-up right now because his television career is too good and he's worried about cancel culture. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Steve is... | ||
| If they really pull Steve to the side and allow him to speak his mind, you'd think they was after you. | ||
| If they ever allow Steve Harvey to talk his mind... | ||
| Well, put it this way. | ||
| If Steve Harvey ever talked his mind the way he really feels about everything... | ||
| Beautiful man to watch. | ||
| I learned so much just watching his craft. | ||
| Just watching how he put it together, that rah-rah-rah. | ||
| Well, I was reading this interview and it seems like he wants to. | ||
| It seems like he's gonna wait until he has a certain amount of money and then go back into comedy. | ||
| That's what it seemed like to me, because he was saying, like, there'll come a time. | ||
| But, like, right now, I mean, he's got Family Feud. | ||
| He's always got five different shows on simultaneously. | ||
| Every time I turn around the show, TV's got some new show. | ||
| I told him, give up one of these mufflers. | ||
| God damn, man. | ||
| I don't know how he does it. | ||
| Oh, he's a workaholic. | ||
| I just don't understand where he has the time. | ||
| I mean, doesn't he do like Miss Universe? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| How the fuck does he have the time for all this? | ||
| He doesn't sleep and he's a money-making machine. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He got enough money. | ||
| He just don't got enough he wants. | ||
| But he's straight. | ||
| I'm sure. | ||
| He's trying to get more. | ||
| Well, the thing is, like, when you hit that level where you can make that kind of money, you don't really want to... | ||
| Let it stop you want to let it accumulate as much as you can but I think like once you're a comic you're always gonna want to do comedy you're always gonna want to get that the rush of stand-up it might not pay as much as the other things but there's nothing greater in terms of like the way it feels when you're on stage and you're just murdering and everyone's dying That is a groove that very few human beings ever get to slide into. | ||
| Who don't want to be the funniest man in the room? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| I tell people all the time, we got the greatest job in the world, because no matter what you do, say it about a good time with your friends, it includes us. | ||
| Laughter. | ||
| When you sit there and say, hey, hey, man, I was with my boy and we was having a good time. | ||
| We was laughing all night. | ||
| Bingo. | ||
| We are the laughing all night dudes. | ||
| You understand? | ||
| We are that. | ||
| We walk with that. | ||
| We are the good time dudes. | ||
| You understand? | ||
| We give good times everywhere it is. | ||
| You want your woman. | ||
| Let a woman describe how much she love a man. | ||
| I was with him and I swear like we knew each other for the longest and we laughed and kicked and everything. | ||
| Always got to put laugh in it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Laugh is included. | ||
| It's a necessity to have it. | ||
| So I love it, man. | ||
| I mean, when you on. | ||
| When it is and you know it's hitting and you see it, it's beautiful. | ||
| It is beautiful. | ||
| And it's a beautiful thing to watch still. | ||
| You know, I've been doing comedy 33 years. | ||
| I still love watching it. | ||
| I still love it. | ||
| And I was worried in the beginning that I wouldn't. | ||
| I was worried in the beginning that I would get jaded or I would be jealous. | ||
| I'd watch someone kill. | ||
| I'm like, oh, why didn't I think of that? | ||
| Because that's how it was when I was 21. When I was 21 and dumb, I'd see someone kill and I'd be like, oh, why is he doing so good? | ||
| And then I realized that and I was like, oh, that's so weak. | ||
| I'm like, that's a weakness. | ||
| Like, you can't think like that. | ||
| And I snapped out of it. | ||
| And then I just started being a fan again. | ||
| See, that's it. | ||
| Good thing about me, I can't watch other comedians because I don't physically write. | ||
| So I have to keep my thought patterns pure. | ||
| So I don't want to watch them and then I see it and then subconsciously I think I came up with it. | ||
| So the best way to keep myself pure, I don't watch other comics. | ||
|
unidentified
|
At all? | |
| No. | ||
| Even Dave? | ||
| I don't watch any comedians at all. | ||
| I see a part of what they do, what their style is, but when they get into their bits and stuff like that, I tap out. | ||
| I don't even watch Minds after I've done it. | ||
| Did you watch this special at all? | ||
| Just this Wednesday when we had the premiere. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| So you weren't involved in any of the editing? | ||
| No, Dave and my manager, Jermaine, did it. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Because I know if I watch it, damn, I should have said that. | ||
| I should have said that. | ||
| See, that's the gif and the curse with it. | ||
| You're like, damn, I forgot to say that part of it. | ||
| Damn, I put that on it. | ||
| So I have yet to perfect... | ||
| Everything that's supposed to came out in that came out. | ||
| Isn't that because comedy is so organic? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| It's like a living thing up there. | ||
| You never get it perfect. | ||
| Especially you know. | ||
| You know what you can do and you know that Wednesday was different than Tuesday. | ||
| Sometimes one bit's better one day and another bit's better another day. | ||
| It's never going to be exact. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But see, that's the blessing of it. | ||
| You can keep striving for it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You see what I'm saying? | ||
| So you can never get jaded and you can never get burnt out. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because if you already set that standard for yourself trying to strive for perfection, which you probably never do make it, but God damn it, the journey is where it's at. | ||
| And that's what it is. | ||
| So I don't even watch it on it. | ||
| It's gone. | ||
| Let me see what it do. | ||
| Yeah, the striving for perfection is where it's at. | ||
| It is the journey. | ||
| Because the destination's not real. | ||
| Not real. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And a lot of us comedians, swear to God, get jaded by that. | ||
| How so? | ||
| Because they already know that there is no perfection, so fuck it, why even try? | ||
| Oh, but... | ||
| You understand? | ||
| You see them all the time. | ||
| You have comedians that's been doing this as long as mine. | ||
| I haven't just given up. | ||
| Hell with Hollywood. | ||
| Hell with not having a show. | ||
| They ain't never gonna give it to me. | ||
| I say, I tell them all the time. | ||
| I won't know it, because I'll be dead before I stop trying for it. | ||
| I would never know that I would not have all the professional accolades my peers have. | ||
| Because I would always strive to get it. | ||
| The thing about the Hollywood part is that you're getting a bunch of people that aren't even comedians to try to give you something. | ||
|
unidentified
|
True. | |
| I'm glad I escaped that. | ||
| True. | ||
| Well, no, I can't. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I wish I could. | |
| I think you can. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I think you can with this special. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| It's that good. | ||
| But you're that good, too. | ||
| It's not like it's just the special. | ||
| There's a few guys like you, Dave Chappelle, or Dave Attell, rather, Tony Woods. | ||
| There's a few guys that, like, they don't get the credit that they deserve, but the performance is there, which is the hardest part. | ||
| Like, if you're a famous person, but you're not good at stand-up, and then people come to see you, that's not so good. | ||
| No. | ||
| That's the opposite of what you want. | ||
| You're better off being in your position, because you've got the product, you've got everything. | ||
| It just needs a vehicle presented to people, and now you have that. | ||
| Let me ask you this. | ||
| When you see this... | ||
| Self-proclaimed great comic that the industry then put up on it and then you actually go see his act and it's elementary at best. | ||
| How do you react to it? | ||
| Do you tell him or you just say, good set? | ||
| Because a lot of them, oh, he was outstanding. | ||
| I'm like, man, stop lying to that man. | ||
| You know that wasn't outstanding. | ||
| Say you're happy for his success. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But he's not a great comic. | ||
| There's a few guys that get stuck on shows. | ||
| When you get stuck on a show and you get famous for a show and then your comedy suffers because you don't have the time. | ||
| True. | ||
| But your profile gets elevated. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And then you start believing the hype and everybody loves you anyway. | ||
| That's one of the things that Steve Martin said when he got really famous. | ||
| He stopped doing stand-up because he wasn't getting an honest reaction. | ||
| They were just so happy to see him, Steve Martin, this huge star, that they were laughing at everything. | ||
| And you see that sometimes with people. | ||
| They're just happy to see you. | ||
| And so you don't get this honest reaction. | ||
| And that's what I was jealous about when I was doing Fear Factor. | ||
| There was these guys that were just... | ||
| They didn't have a TV show like I did, but they were so good. | ||
| They were so polished. | ||
| And it made me realize after I was done with Fear Factor, no more of that. | ||
| I'm done. | ||
| No more. | ||
| Now I'm just going to be fully dedicated to stand-up and podcasts. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So, when you decided to do that, how much more did you hit the stage after that? | ||
| Constantly. | ||
| Constantly. | ||
| Much more. | ||
| Much more. | ||
| And much more touring. | ||
| That's the big one. | ||
| The big one is the road, you know? | ||
| Charlie Murphy, me, and John Heffron did a tour for Bud Light, this Real Men of Comedy tour. | ||
| It was the first time I ever did a tour where we did 22 shows in a month. | ||
| That was like 2007. And we did 22 shows. | ||
| We'd wake up in a hotel room. | ||
| I don't know where the fuck I am. | ||
| You stare at the ceiling. | ||
| Ohio? | ||
| I don't know where I am. | ||
| I forgot. | ||
| I'd have to look at my phone. | ||
| And we did these shows where we're headlining. | ||
| We would go back and forth. | ||
| He would headline one. | ||
| I would headline the other. | ||
| And by the end of the month, my shit was so tight. | ||
| It was just cracking. | ||
| And I remember I was talking to my friend Brian. | ||
| And he was like, have you ever done this before? | ||
| We've done like 22 hour long shows in a month. | ||
| And I said, no. | ||
| And he goes, man, your show is so tight. | ||
| Everything is so smooth. | ||
| And I go, this is what I gotta do. | ||
| I gotta do this all the time. | ||
| I gotta do this all the time. | ||
| And it reinforced, because it was right after Fear Factor had ended, and that's when I started doing that. | ||
| And it made me realize that is... | ||
| There's no substitute for the attention that you give something, the focus that you give something, when you're just fully, completely dedicated to it. | ||
| Yeah, and... | ||
| This, if any profession, shows who's dedicated and who's not. | ||
| You cannot cheat this right here. | ||
| You can have all the accolades. | ||
| And he's on this and he's on that. | ||
| You'll get that first five, seven minutes. | ||
| Not even. | ||
| Yeah, well. | ||
| You got a minute. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Then they like, come on now. | ||
| We used to see that at the comedy store. | ||
| A guy would go up and he was on a sitcom or something like that. | ||
| Everybody like, oh, I can't believe he's here. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Oh my goodness. | ||
| And then you see 30 seconds in, they'd be like, hmm, when is this going to get funny? | ||
| And then a minute in, they're like, what the fuck? | ||
| Right. | ||
| And there's too many funny people on the lineup. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Because you got 12 people on that night. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And you better be funny, man. | ||
| And that's the great part about comedy. | ||
| Because you better be prepared. | ||
| I tell comedians all the time. | ||
| It's not how many followers you got. | ||
| It's how many comedians you can follow. | ||
| so you must be able to be able because at some point you're going to be on the same stage where they're able to compare yes now you can go and put that little weak comic in front of you when you had your own show and then everybody loves you but eventually you're going to come And when you come in the pit, you ain't going to be able to pick your opposition. | ||
| And you're going to put in the lineup. | ||
| And based upon your accolades and your profile in your show, it's going to bump you up to last or whatever. | ||
| And you're going to have to be able to go behind all of them. | ||
| So that's when you know you are the truth. | ||
| Especially when you don't have no accolades other than your name. | ||
| I remember when Cat was the hottest out. | ||
| We're in American Airlines Theater. | ||
| He had just flew in to do the Alonzo morning thing. | ||
| Steve Harvey was hosting. | ||
| And I don't know what Cat said, but you can hear the shit, the laughter coming underneath the door and everything. | ||
| I'm like, God damn! | ||
| You know, and all the groupie girls was over there, and they was like, come on, man. | ||
| We can go ahead and go now, because Kat Gerag, we need to go here. | ||
| And Steve was like, show over? | ||
| You got your motherfucking... | ||
| See this motherfucker right here? | ||
| This motherfucker's gonna show y'all what it is. | ||
| Come on, champ! | ||
| I'm like, alright, man, but did you hear what this motherfucker just... | ||
| I mean, this is when Cat first blew. | ||
| And everybody know, good evening, sirs, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| I mean, this motherfucker. | ||
| Oh, he was so good. | ||
| Oh, ladies and gentlemen and pips and everything. | ||
| 18,000. | ||
| Oh! | ||
| And we in the back. | ||
| I was like, what the fuck? | ||
| But as usual, you know, just ride that wave. | ||
| Wherever he took it from that point on, I don't write long jokes and long setups and got right into it. | ||
| And once you get there and you hit him there... | ||
| You like, ride that fucking wave. | ||
| The key that I noticed when I first started, I would get nervous going on after someone who was really good. | ||
| And then eventually I realized, no, you should be laughing at them. | ||
| True. | ||
| You should be having fun. | ||
| True. | ||
| You go up there enjoying it and ride the wave. | ||
| Ride the wave. | ||
| But you worry, like, what if they don't like me as much as they like him? | ||
| And if you're going out... | ||
| Went on after Martin Lawrence in the 90s almost every time I was at this because Mitzi Shore one of the The great things about Mitzi Shore was she knew how to test you she knew how to put you in a bad spot and every time I I was on the lineup. | ||
| If Martin Lawrence was on the lineup, I was going on right after Martin. | ||
| So Martin would go. | ||
| The whole main room would be sold out. | ||
| He would murder. | ||
| This was the leather jumpsuit days. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Martin would murder. | ||
| I wanted to quit comedy. | ||
| I would go on after him. | ||
| Most of the crowd would leave like three-quarters the crowd would just leave the moment Martin was offstage and then they would bring me up he would bring me up because you know the Comedy Store tag teams right he would just say my name this guy's real funny guy give it up for Joe Rogan number like thanks and I just go up my shit, but I learned how to survive and you learn how to grab people you learn how to ride the wave and you learn how to grab them and Because you're going on after a guy who's selling out arenas, | ||
| and he's a movie star, and he's got his own television show, and he's just way better than you. | ||
| There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. | ||
| You know it. | ||
| The audience knows it. | ||
| You've got to figure out a way to elevate. | ||
| You've got to rise up. | ||
| There's no other way. | ||
| You either rise up, or you quit. | ||
| Or you go home. | ||
| Oh, you take that ass whooping. | ||
| You take that ass whooping. | ||
| You gotta take it. | ||
| Everybody has to take it. | ||
| I see them up there taking them ass whooping. | ||
| I be wanting to stop the fight. | ||
| Just let them off. | ||
| Just let them off. | ||
| Hit the light. | ||
| Put the light up and let them get off of it. | ||
| That's why everybody wants to bring those weak comics on the road with them. | ||
| That's the worst move ever. | ||
| Ever. | ||
| Because you're torturing the audience, too. | ||
| No, but what you're doing is you're giving yourself a self... | ||
| To be quite honest, self comfort, I mean comfort, it's going to come back and bite you in the ass. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I like to take the funniest young dude that's out there and take him on the road with me. | ||
| So now I know where the standard is, and still shopping stills. | ||
| So do you. | ||
| Do you. | ||
| I mean, I give him 30 minutes. | ||
| Do you. | ||
| And then I come behind it and do me. | ||
| And as long as doing you, and you the top one, and I still kill all over and they still love me more, that keeps me hot, man. | ||
| That keeps you sharp. | ||
| You don't want to sit here and... | ||
| These punching bags they put in front of them. | ||
| And you can see it. | ||
| You'll see it. | ||
| But a lot of comics like, I mean, I got friends. | ||
| They're like, man, I'm not coming to work and fight every weekend. | ||
| This is the time I'm going to wait for my wife. | ||
| I can go up here and have a good time. | ||
| I'm not sitting back in the green room over here sweating because this young woman is going to turn the roof off. | ||
| Now I'm auditioning for my own show. | ||
| And that's what they feel. | ||
| You got to sweat it. | ||
| I sweat it still today in local shows. | ||
| I put it in local shows. | ||
| Ron White, Tim Dillon, Tony Hinchcliffe, Derek Poston, David Lucas. | ||
| We have these giant monster lineups. | ||
| I'm still backstage getting ready, feeling it. | ||
| Open the door, close the door. | ||
| This is a show. | ||
| You have to be on that edge. | ||
| If you're not on that edge, you're just not going to be what you're capable of. | ||
| You're never going to achieve what you're capable of. | ||
| No, you'll never reach a potential, and you'll never stay sharp. | ||
| And if you were doing shows with Cat Williams during the Pimp Chronicles days, my God, he was good. | ||
| My God. | ||
| I mean, Joe, I'm telling you, the green room was way down. | ||
| This motherfucker broke it, and it came underneath. | ||
| It reminds me of... | ||
| The Ten Commandments. | ||
| Remember when the fog went underneath the shit and everybody put the blood up the left? | ||
| For the first round, don't they get killed and everything? | ||
| His laughter came under like that to the point you're in a mid-sentence talking to a guy like, yeah, baby, I love it. | ||
| What the fuck? | ||
| Excuse me, baby. | ||
| You go out here and see people stand. | ||
| What did he say? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, he had a look, too. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| He was funny just looking at him. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And he's a very intelligent brother. | ||
| Very intelligent. | ||
| I learned something from him talking about his preparation for shows. | ||
| How he has a playlist that he listens to just before he goes on stage. | ||
| And he doesn't eat before he goes on stage. | ||
| He goes, I always want to be hungry. | ||
| He goes, I never want to be full. | ||
| You never want to be full when you're performing. | ||
| No, I can't eat before I go on stage. | ||
| I don't eat before I go on stage because of him. | ||
| Because I saw that interview and I was like, of course. | ||
| Why didn't I think of that? | ||
| Because there's times where I've eaten, because I'm always hungry, man. | ||
| I have to force myself to be disciplined. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But you look good, though, man. | ||
| I'm going to lose about 20 pounds, man. | ||
| How are you going to do it? | ||
| Just be disciplined. | ||
| I mean, I did it before, but after a while, I said, fuck it, man. | ||
| You know how I lose weight? | ||
| I eat only meat. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, only meat. | ||
| It's called a carnivore diet. | ||
| I eat meat and fruit. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| No bread, no pasta, no sugar, no bullshit. | ||
| I just eat steak and fruit. | ||
| That's it? | ||
| That's it. | ||
| And I take a lot of vitamins. | ||
| And I work out a lot. | ||
| Okay, there you go. | ||
| That helps too. | ||
| I know that workout had to come somewhere. | ||
| Oh yeah, that's what I keep saying. | ||
| I need to work out. | ||
| That's me. | ||
| I don't have like a I can just hang out brain. | ||
| My brain needs activities. | ||
| My brain needs tasks. | ||
| And if I don't give it tasks, it turns on me. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| My brain's like, what are you doing, pussy? | ||
| What are you doing, bitch? | ||
| I'm like, listen, I've got shit to do. | ||
| My brain will turn on me. | ||
| I have to get out ahead of it. | ||
| My brain's like a wolf chasing me. | ||
| I've got to get out ahead of the wolf. | ||
| Damn. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| My brain lazy as shit. | ||
| Stay right here. | ||
| Get this pussy down here. | ||
| You know, you done already exceeded your expectations. | ||
| You won. | ||
| Listen. | ||
| You know, I mean, really. | ||
| Well, we all have different heads, you know. | ||
| You have to think, like, what's the best way to balance out your head? | ||
| And that's... | ||
| I figured out a long time ago. | ||
| When I exercise a lot, I can relax. | ||
| And if I don't... | ||
| If I don't squeeze all the extra energy out of my body, I can't relax. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Not only can I not relax, but I turn on myself. | ||
| Damn. | ||
| I am relaxed when I don't do a damn thing. | ||
| Let me explain something to you. | ||
| I mean, I could sit on the couch for, hey, listen, I could sit on the couch for four days if I could get away with it. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I don't need a damn thing. | ||
| I'm that dude. | ||
| Give me a remote. | ||
| I'll sit on that moment. | ||
| I got all moment. | ||
| Listen, I only go to work because I have to. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Listen to me. | |
| When I get some money, you'll know when I got some money because you won't see me. | ||
| I'm being honest with you. | ||
| That's why I never understand seeing all these people would say they got all this money. | ||
| Why are you working? | ||
| Once I get enough money to the point that my black ass would never have an unseen episode... | ||
| You know? | ||
| Hey, man, I'm good. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I swear. | ||
| I can't. | ||
| I don't get it. | ||
| I just don't get it. | ||
| Working, the only reason I see people supposed to work because you're supposed to go get the money. | ||
| Even if it's a pleasurable job, which we have. | ||
| But let me get the money. | ||
| My black ass ain't going nowhere. | ||
| I'm the opposite. | ||
| The more money I get, the more I think I don't want to get lazy just because I have all this money so I work harder. | ||
| See, I don't want that. | ||
| You keep that philosophy. | ||
| I want to get the money so I don't have to be able not to do a damn thing. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| I get that. | ||
| Not a damn thing. | ||
| I get depressed. | ||
| I can't just watch TV. If I watch TV, I'd have to have accomplished a lot of shit before I can just sit down and just relax. | ||
| I mean, that's my everything. | ||
| Watching TV. That's about everything. | ||
| Right below a woman. | ||
| You understand what I'm saying? | ||
| I can't. | ||
| I mean, I could just sit there and watch TV and don't worry about nothing. | ||
| That's why I have a perfect mentality for stardom, because I don't have to go nowhere. | ||
| I don't have to be at the after party. | ||
| When I say goodnight, it's goodnight. | ||
| When I walk off the stage, I'm gone. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I am. | ||
| I go straight to the hotel, chill, and be prepared for the next place I go. | ||
| I don't do none of the rest of the stuff. | ||
| No. | ||
| Dave likes to go out. | ||
| Oh, Dave hard. | ||
| He's an animal. | ||
| He goes out. | ||
| He's an animal. | ||
| I learned about vitamin IVs from Dave. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Because when we first started doing shows together, he'd be drinking all night. | ||
| And then next thing in the morning, he's like, hey, Joe, we're going to do these IVs. | ||
| And I go, what are you doing? | ||
| He's like, vitamins. | ||
| That's how he does it. | ||
| Glutathione, which helps your body process alcohol. | ||
| High dose IV, vitamin C, D, E, zinc. | ||
| And I was like, really? | ||
| So I first started doing vitamin IVs when I worked with Dave. | ||
| And I was like, oh. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So it just rejuvenates the body. | ||
| So we would be in a room, and there's like eight of us in there, all hooked up to a tree, like this IV tree, and these tubes coming off these bags hanging from this metal stack where they've got all our IV bags. | ||
| We're all just sitting around talking shit, getting the IV drip. | ||
| Damn. | ||
| I heard about them. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I couldn't afford them. | ||
| It's not that much money. | ||
| No? | ||
| No, no. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| I heard about him. | ||
| You should do it. | ||
| I'm going to try it out one time. | ||
| You do shows with Dave ever? | ||
| Only a couple of times. | ||
| I stepped into Houston. | ||
| I'd say about four or five I did it. | ||
| Did you do Yell Springs at all when he had that? | ||
| No. | ||
| No? | ||
| No. | ||
| Did you go? | ||
| No, I didn't go. | ||
| No. | ||
| I went up there when we had to do the taping for the Get Together when we were going to release it and he did all the editing on it. | ||
| Little tale, I could never live there. | ||
| No? | ||
| Fuck no. | ||
| How come? | ||
| Nah, I'm not a Mayberry type guy. | ||
| Is it really Mayberry? | ||
| It's all farms and shit? | ||
| Yeah, it's a small town. | ||
| You know, everybody know each other. | ||
| But it's great for Dave. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Dave can go do what he want to do in the world and come back there. | ||
| You can tell who don't belong there. | ||
| They'll stick out like a thumb. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| You can't just say you were just in the area. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| You came here looking for him. | ||
| You can't, you know what I mean? | ||
| Does he get a lot of that, though? | ||
| No, I don't think so. | ||
| The town loves him in this small town. | ||
| It's really Mayberry type shit. | ||
| Well, he's got a comedy club he's opening up there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He bought a firehouse. | ||
| Yeah, and he's going to turn it into a comedy club. | ||
| And he's going to call it the firehouse, though. | ||
| Is he? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, that's what he said last time I talked to him about it. | ||
| I told him I'd do it. | ||
| Oh, fuck yeah. | ||
| It's going to be a 120-seater. | ||
| He also said $64 million. | ||
| Something like that. | ||
| That's how much it cost? | ||
| He said all together the development when he was cussing out them other people. | ||
| When he went to the county meeting or city council meeting when the other buildings was coming, he was telling them, you want to lose this $64 million to bring that $24 million? | ||
| Is that what he said? | ||
| Yeah, something like that. | ||
| Is this it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Oh, shit. | ||
| Is that the design of it or the actual image? | ||
| I mean, it is not built yet, but that's the design. | ||
| So that's a CAD. Yeah. | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| What a great idea. | ||
| Look at the image of him in neon on the side. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That's amazing. | ||
| And that used to be a fire department. | ||
| He has that whole thing in the shack. | ||
| He has that whole replica right up there. | ||
| When is he supposed to have this open? | ||
| I don't know, but it's nice. | ||
| Wow, that looks great. | ||
| It's perfect. | ||
| That's a perfect thing. | ||
| That's a perfect size, too, to fuck around, too. | ||
| And if you're in a small town, you could get 120 people. | ||
| Well, people are gonna go there. | ||
| I think it's a little bigger than that, but you're only, like, 40 minutes, 30 minutes from Dayton or anything? | ||
| Ah, okay. | ||
| Far from civilization. | ||
| And plus it's Dave. | ||
| And then it's Dave. | ||
| Build it, they will come. | ||
| Yeah, it's Moses talking. | ||
| Come on. | ||
| They're gonna come see him. | ||
| When this episode's over, I'll tell you about my club. | ||
| Because I bought a place in town. | ||
| Did you? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| I'll tell you the whole deal. | ||
| I can't talk too much about it on the air. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But it's got two rooms. | ||
| One is 250 seats and one's going to be about 120 seats. | ||
| Perfect. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'll give you the whole detail. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| I'm going to come down, man. | ||
| Oh, 100%. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Please. | |
| Please. | ||
| Make safe makes you book me down here. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| Come on down here. | ||
| I'm just not going on after you. | ||
| Stop it. | ||
| I'm going to put on someone after you that talks too much shit. | ||
| That's a lot of people. | ||
| There's a lot of people, man. | ||
| He talks a lot of shit. | ||
| There's a lot of people. | ||
| A lot of it. | ||
| But those kind of clubs, like the Comedy Store, or like what I'm going to plan on doing here, where you have a lot of people go on at night, I think there's a camaraderie to that. | ||
| There's a thing to that that you don't get when you're just doing the road by yourself. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And then it's a mixture. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| One thing I do love about the Comedy Store... | ||
| They have a list of comedians and the people come in and they come out. | ||
| They're having a set show. | ||
| MC feature. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Just let it rotate. | ||
| I like the tag teaming too. | ||
| Each comic brings up the next comic. | ||
| I like that too. | ||
| It's beautiful. | ||
| It's a beautiful way to do it. | ||
| Mitzi Shore was a fucking genius. | ||
| She really was. | ||
| She was a genius. | ||
| I liked her. | ||
| She gave me confidence because I went to audition. | ||
| Yeah, you can go. | ||
| You can go, Earthquake. | ||
| Yeah, she sure gave it to me because I sure wasn't going to be no non-paying regular. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Watching the daughter get on stage. | ||
| I just couldn't take that process. | ||
| I was a non-paid regular. | ||
| I was a non-paid regular for like six months. | ||
| Yeah? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I had kids. | ||
| I can't, yeah. | ||
| When you got a woman on your back, everything got to be paid. | ||
| Ain't such thin as non-paid. | ||
| Everything you're doing, you better bring some money home. | ||
| I came to L.A. in 94. I'd only been doing stand-up for like six years. | ||
| And I auditioned for Mitzi. | ||
| She goes, well, you can go on after the show. | ||
| You can be a non-paid regular. | ||
| And I was there every night. | ||
| I didn't have any friends. | ||
| I didn't know anybody. | ||
| I was on this terrible TV show. | ||
| So I was out there. | ||
| All I cared about was the Comedy Store. | ||
| That's all I cared about. | ||
| I was out there because that was Mecca. | ||
| When I started out in Boston in 1988, everybody would talk about the Comedy Store. | ||
| That's the Comedy Store. | ||
| Comedy Store in Hollywood. | ||
| That's what Richard Pryor would perform. | ||
| Sam Kinison would perform there. | ||
| Dice Clay would perform there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're like, whoa. | |
| It was like this place, like a mythical place. | ||
| I remember the first time I went there, there was like a boat act on stage. | ||
| That guy was like a cruise. | ||
| It was terrible. | ||
| That guy was awful. | ||
| The crowd was half full. | ||
| I was like, this is the comedy store? | ||
| Like, what the fuck happened? | ||
| It killed your dreams. | ||
| Well, it just was a dose of reality. | ||
| Because the comedy store goes in these waves. | ||
| And like in the 80s, it was Pryor. | ||
| And he was this massive star. | ||
| Right. | ||
| All the celebrities who would come to the comedy store to see him. | ||
| And, of course, there was always Robin Williams was there, and David Letterman was there. | ||
| There was all these other comedians who were there, too. | ||
| But it was propelled by the gravity of Richard Pryor. | ||
| And then in the 80s, later in the 80s, it was Kinison. | ||
| I came in when all that was gone, and there was no big comic there. | ||
| There was no one guy. | ||
| So there's always, for whatever reason, been a few big-name guys. | ||
| And I got in in 94 where there was this lull. | ||
| So I got to see these guys that hung around too long, and they had the same act for 30 years, and they were half-assed, and they were bitter, and they hated young guys like me. | ||
| Yeah, I agree. | ||
| That's what I said. | ||
| Angry. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You from Boston? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Well, I was born in New Jersey. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| But I grew up in Boston. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| That's where I started doing stand-up. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you came out there in 94? | ||
| I came out to LA in 94 because I came out with a sitcom. | ||
| I was already on a sitcom. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Called Hardball. | ||
| It was a baseball sitcom on Fox. | ||
| Ooh. | ||
| Nobody watched it. | ||
| But see, that's what I'm saying. | ||
| Came out with a show. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Boy, I swear, man. | ||
| I know. | ||
| Some of y'all, bro. | ||
| You just, you just, god damn. | ||
| I got a golden horseshoe. | ||
| I mean, come on, brother. | ||
| Then Fear Factor. | ||
| No, it was on another show after that called News Radio. | ||
| So I was on a sitcom for five years. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Say god damn another one! | |
| Yeah. | ||
| So I did that sitcom for five years, and then I did Fear Factor for six years. | ||
| So it was like bang, bang, bang. | ||
| How did you get Fear Factor? | ||
| Man, I showed up for the audition stoned because they told me about it and I thought it was ridiculous. | ||
| And one of the guys who was the casting agent had cast me on news radio. | ||
| So it was still an NBC show. | ||
| And they were trying to do this show and they knew that I had a martial arts background. | ||
| And they thought, well, that would probably be good because this is kind of scary. | ||
| We're trying to make it scary. | ||
| I showed up stoned. | ||
| And I was laughing at everything, because that was like my getting high every day stage of life. | ||
| So I was there and I was like, you're gonna sit dogs on people? | ||
| Like what the fuck is wrong with you? | ||
| And I was laughing, like slapping the table in the meeting, and I was just making fun of everything. | ||
| And one of the producers was like, he's not right for the show. | ||
| And the other guy was like, listen, if you, this is my friend to this day, David Hurwitz, he said, if you don't make fun of this, if he doesn't make fun of this, other people are going to. | ||
| Let him make fun of it. | ||
| This is what you want. | ||
| This is a ridiculous show. | ||
| We're making people eat animal dicks and we're sticking dogs on them. | ||
| You need a comedian to go, what the fuck are we doing? | ||
| And so that's how I got it. | ||
| They had a totally different idea before I came in. | ||
| They wanted someone to fear is definitely a factor for you. | ||
| They wanted like a sports... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The monotone-ass radio dudes. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| They wanted someone who was cookie cutter. | ||
| I had a name. | ||
| I was on a sitcom. | ||
| It was like, this would work. | ||
| I've already been on NBC for five years. | ||
| This would be a good transition. | ||
| See? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| See how being you... | ||
| Now, everybody else that walked in that moment took advice. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| This is how you should get it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Notes. | ||
| You understand? | ||
| Directions and this is what they looking for. | ||
| And you took your high ass in there. | ||
| And said, fuck it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And got the job. | ||
| That's what... | ||
| I mean... | ||
| And it's... | ||
| That's... | ||
| And if anybody listening to me, especially community, that is the key... | ||
| You have to be you. | ||
| Just be you. | ||
| Can't nobody tell you else how to be you. | ||
| And it took me a while to do that. | ||
| Because, you know, when I tell people I don't write, oh, hey, you should write and rehearse this. | ||
| I say, man, it comes out already. | ||
| Just turn the mic on and let me do it. | ||
| And it kills me. | ||
| What's your first joke going to be? | ||
| What's your second joke going to be? | ||
| Listen. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| But I will stop in seven minutes. | ||
| You understand? | ||
| Just, I don't know. | ||
| If I can't cuss, I won't cuss. | ||
| But I will stop in seven minutes, if seven minutes is the lot of time. | ||
| You do it right for you. | ||
| That's you being you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Some guys have to write. | ||
| I write. | ||
| I write and then I do fuck around too on stage, but I sit down in front of my computer and I write. | ||
| And some bits come to me from that that I never would have got any other way. | ||
| And then I still have to fuck around on stage too. | ||
| I have to do all of them. | ||
| But some guys, their whole thing is written. | ||
| George Carlin used to write every fucking word he said. | ||
| Everything was written out. | ||
| He would write like a monologue, and then he would punch it up. | ||
| Yeah, I believe it. | ||
| Jay-Z apparently doesn't write any of his lyrics. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Keeps them all in his head. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I mean, it's Bill Burr. | ||
| Bill Burr doesn't write. | ||
| He comes up with bits, works on them. | ||
| He'll make like a set list maybe of shit he's going to do, but it's all in his head. | ||
| He's all just constantly working on it in his head. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And he's one of the best alive. | ||
| The whole thing is, it's depending on who you are. | ||
| Yeah, what's right for you is right for you. | ||
| There is no right way. | ||
| The results is the right way. | ||
| It's just hard to be yourself. | ||
| The fear factor thing, I was only myself because I didn't give a fuck. | ||
| I didn't think it was going anywhere. | ||
| And I had a development deal, so I was like, what do you want me to do? | ||
| Like, what the fuck is this? | ||
| Because I wanted to do another sitcom, and then they came with this, and I was like, this is even better, because now I don't have to work with actors. | ||
| I mean, this would be so much better. | ||
| Because working with actors is... | ||
| I got lucky with news radio, because it was a really talented cast, and they were fun people. | ||
| But I had done some other shit with people where they're fake, and it's a nightmare, and you gotta play the game, and they're all reading The Hollywood Reporter and Variety every day. | ||
| I'm like, I am not like you people. | ||
| At all. | ||
| I can't wait to go to the comedy store tonight. | ||
| I'm just here because you're gonna give me a lot of money. | ||
| And they're some of the most insecure people in the world. | ||
| They're so weird. | ||
| Oh, they're weird. | ||
| They're so fake. | ||
| That's why I would never, ever could marry an actress. | ||
| I never believe her. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I love you with all my heart. | |
| Baby, you're important to me. | ||
| Sing. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Just nothing is, and I really think, especially when they do this method, I say, why are you doing all this studying, being somebody else? | ||
| Who's developing you during that time? | ||
| While you sitting here playing this actress, doing all the different nuances of this person, doing all these, but just acting them for months and months, being, who's developing you at that? | ||
| Do you just stop your growth at this point? | ||
| Say, fuck it. | ||
| I'm already reached the potential I want in myself. | ||
| Let me go play this motherfucker for a while. | ||
| You gotta be a crazy person to be really good at it. | ||
| But, some of them aren't. | ||
| Like, I've met actors and actresses that are cool as fuck, that are real normal, and real friendly. | ||
| But, it's just not worth the risk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| The risk is, 8 out of 10 are crazy. | ||
| Crazy. | ||
| There's some of them that are great people. | ||
| They're really nice and normal. | ||
| They just love acting. | ||
| They love being able to pretend that you're a different person, just dive into the role and become that. | ||
| You know, you got these people that can do that. | ||
| They transform themselves with each movie. | ||
| They're a different person. | ||
| That's a real craft. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But eight out of ten of them are just crazy people. | ||
| And I believe it stumped their growth. | ||
| And at one point, I'd be like, God damn, who am I talking to? | ||
| You or Earl that you played last week. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So you sit back on it. | ||
| I just can't deal with actresses that way. | ||
| Well, especially with what we do, which is you try so hard to be authentic. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Like, the whole thing is avoid anything that takes you out of being authentic. | ||
| True. | ||
| And what that is is the exact opposite. | ||
| It's like you have to pretend you're this dude who lives in, like, Virginia in 1600. And you're talking in that dialect when you're ordering food. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Like, you won't break character. | ||
| Like, what are you doing, man? | ||
| No one talks like that anymore. | ||
| Don't call me. | ||
| My name is King Earl. | ||
| Don't call me a teenager or have your kids call. | ||
| It's just too much. | ||
| People that get into character and they stay into character for days and days. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I remember I was reading this article where Jon Voight, you know, the famous actor, he's the father of Angelina Jolie. | ||
| True. | ||
| And Angelina Jolie and Jon Voight would talk on the phone in character. | ||
| That's how they are. | ||
| I'm like, I'm out. | ||
| I'm out. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| You're asking too much. | ||
| If my daughter ever talked to me on the phone in character, I would drive over to her house. | ||
| I'm like, what the fuck is wrong with you? | ||
| I'm your dad. | ||
| I don't want to hear about this fake Debbie lady you play from Brooklyn. | ||
| I want to talk to you. | ||
| This is Debbie Dad. | ||
| Yeah, I'm Debbie Dad. | ||
| This is who I am today. | ||
| No, fuck you. | ||
| You're my daughter. | ||
| Talk normal. | ||
| This is crazy. | ||
| I mean, but again, I wouldn't say they're all nuts because I've met a lot of them that are very sincere. | ||
| They're nice people, but it's just not worth the risk. | ||
| At all. | ||
| And then especially in the real one is the acting coaches. | ||
| I want you to go deep down and grab that feeling when you was treated wrong and remember that and translate that into the character. | ||
| I don't want to open none of these doors. | ||
| Open up these doors, fuck around, be on some hair on by Friday. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Find out my father really didn't love me. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| No, I'm good. | ||
| I'm a functional adult, and I can deal with everything. | ||
| I don't want to know nothing else. | ||
| I don't want to know what circumstances my mother did to give me away. | ||
| I don't want to know why she did. | ||
| None of that. | ||
| I am good, okay? | ||
| I sleep well at night. | ||
| I am good with my... | ||
| No, you got to find that pain and translate that pain into the character, and that way is authentic. | ||
| I said, if I can't just play like I'm crying without remembering when something really hurt me, I'm not your guy. | ||
| I am not your fucking guy. | ||
| And again, I am not an actor. | ||
| I'm a movie star. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's the difference. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| So we're not going down that way. | ||
| That's where it is. | ||
| It starts from the teaching of those acting coaches, because they ask you that all the time. | ||
| Go deep. | ||
| I remember I had the fire acting coach over there. | ||
| You're not going in the deep. | ||
| Okay, let's sit down. | ||
| And just talk about the most painful thing that ever happened to you in your life. | ||
| And that way, if you can tap into that, you can bring this character to life. | ||
| I said, listen, lady, I'm going to waste my $55 here. | ||
| Because I will not be here tomorrow with this kind of shit at all. | ||
| Especially when you can be a comic. | ||
| That was my take. | ||
| I remember I was on the set of NewsRadio once, and one of the guys who was a producer said, why do you still do comedy? | ||
| You're an actor now. | ||
| And when he said that, I was like, oh my god, I gotta get the fuck out of here. | ||
| True. | ||
| I'm like, I gotta get out of here. | ||
| You guys are out of your fucking mind. | ||
| Do you know how much better comedy is than this? | ||
| Even though this was comedy because it was a sitcom, there's no fucking comparison. | ||
| Not at all. | ||
| Everybody would look forward to the laughs that they would get when they would perform a scene in front of the crowd. | ||
| Everybody wanted to get a good laugh. | ||
| I'm like, I do that every night. | ||
| I do it every night. | ||
| I don't have to deal with an actor. | ||
| I don't have to deal with a producer or a director. | ||
| It's just me. | ||
| True. | ||
| And I get the bigger... | ||
| And my results are bigger than yours. | ||
| A lot bigger. | ||
| A lot bigger. | ||
| And you can ride them, and you can fuck around and do different things with it. | ||
| You don't have to, like, cut. | ||
| That's not in the script. | ||
| Like, it's free. | ||
| You're free. | ||
| Very free. | ||
| Let me ask you something. | ||
| When you was a comedian, did they surround you with... | ||
| Did you establish actors and just allow you to play off of them, or you had to conform to being an actor as an acting comedian? | ||
| Well, luckily on news radio, the producers were brilliant, and they wanted us to ad lib. | ||
| They wanted us. | ||
| So there was Dave Foley, who's from the Kids in the Hall, the sketch show, and Dave It was a like one of the secret producers of the show really because he was the star of the show But he was really like producing scenes so we would rehearse and he would come up with completely new lines for things and If you had a line that was better than the line that was in the script they wanted you to say that so they wanted you to They wanted it to be collaborative where you would come up with the best shit. | ||
| So there was fun in that. | ||
| And we would write jokes for each other and we would fuck around with each other. | ||
| So it was very fortunate that that particular job was, you know, it was okay. | ||
| You could fuck around. | ||
| I'm laughing, Joe, because you had a great life, man. | ||
| Lucky! | ||
| Very lucky. | ||
| Blessed, lucky, whatever adjective you want. | ||
| But that's a great life, to have a person in a position to understand your strength and allow you to utilize it. | ||
| You have so many people. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You can't change the actor, the writer's words. | |
| That was all his birds. | ||
| And I'm going to look at him and say, this shit is corny. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You hired me because you said me. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But you want me to say something that I wouldn't say. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Or say it like that. | ||
| But alright, the Czechs say this. | ||
| Come on down here, little laryl. | ||
| Come on down here, little girl! | ||
| I did that for the first show, though, that sitcom that I did, the baseball show. | ||
| That was terrible. | ||
| I learned a lot from that because that was terrible and it started out great. | ||
| The guys who wrote it, they wrote on Married with Children and The Symptoms. | ||
| They were really good writers and they were really funny guys. | ||
| And they put together this pilot Jim Brewer was in the pilot with me and it was a very funny pilot but then once it got on television Fox decided to hire some dude who was a producer of that show coach and like all cookie cutter type right stand up or Sitcom writing and they brought in a bunch of hacks and they they fucked up the show and it was terrible like I remember saying lines like I can't believe this is a line on a fucking sitcom and It was just not good. | ||
| And there were talented people on the show, but it was just a bad show. | ||
| And then it got canceled. | ||
| And so to go from that to news radio, which was the opposite, working with Phil Hartman and all these seriously talented people, Steven Rood and Maura Tierney, Candy Alexander, Vicky Lewis, Andy Dick is like, this is a great show. | ||
| Like, holy shit. | ||
| It was like, I can't believe how good everybody is. | ||
| And then there was a freedom to fuck around. | ||
| So I had the worst case scenario and then followed by the best case scenario. | ||
| Yeah, that's, I mean, you've been very fortunate on that because all my scenarios were fucked up. | ||
| I mean, I mean, it is. | ||
| You just read it. | ||
| You be like, God damn, who wrote this? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Give me a little leeway on it. | ||
| A comic that has to do bad lines in a sitcom is in hell. | ||
| Hell. | ||
| Hell. | ||
| What is his name? | ||
| Oh, he told me this off of Seinfeld. | ||
| Richards? | ||
| What is his name? | ||
| Michael Richards? | ||
| Michael Richards. | ||
| He said, Quake, you're going to be on the show. | ||
| You're going to have your own show, but I want you to remember one thing. | ||
| Whatever show you do, you're going to be on there. | ||
| You're committing five years of your life if it's going to be successful. | ||
| You want to go there and get the same joy that you do on stage. | ||
| You don't want to go there five years of a job of hell. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And I took that and I kept it. | ||
| So now when I make decisions, I'm like, do I see myself doing this for five years? | ||
| No. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I don't want to play this role for five years. | ||
| That's a good mindset. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because we all know those guys who get on a show that sucks and they just take the money. | ||
| All they want to do is buy things. | ||
| They just want to give themselves little rewards. | ||
| They're always unhappy. | ||
| They're like, I can't wait to buy a new jacket or a new car or a new this. | ||
| They're always just concentrating on the rewards that they get rather than the reward they get from the actual work. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, because you... | ||
| To be honest with you, you need something to justify this hell that you're in. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Because you're in hell. | ||
| You could look at some sets and you're like, I would love to be in that. | ||
| You could look at like Martin. | ||
| You could tell that was a great place to go to work. | ||
| Living Color was a great place to go to work. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| It wasn't work. | ||
| We was all friends coming up with some shit and we just put it on tape. | ||
| That's what you want. | ||
| That's what you want, but those are hard to get. | ||
| Those are and one of the worst things that happens is some of the guys to get those sitcoms that are shitty is They can't do stand-up anymore because they're worried that if they do stand-up And they and people find out that they're dirty or they said something crazy Then they'll get fired from the show, right? | ||
| There's a lot of guys that like how to stop doing stand-up while they got a sitcom Because and I strongly believe this that's why a lot of lose their fans see prime example Whatever show that I do is gonna be the biggest show for most of my audience to see me. | ||
| So that's gonna be their interpretation of who I am. | ||
| So I must portray who I am in my first venture on TV. Yeah. | ||
| So I can bring my fans Who sees me, who already been fans of mine, they can recognize me in that. | ||
| And then the people who just see me for the first time can come see me on stand-up and say, okay, that's who I got. | ||
| A lot of comedians, like my boy Mark Curry, had his show. | ||
| Mr. Cooper. | ||
| Mr. Cooper, good dude, man. | ||
| Then they go see Mr. Cooper. | ||
| He's from Oakland, California. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| These bitches and these hoes, oh my god, Mr. Cooper, what are you talking about now? | ||
| You alienated. | ||
| The people who like Mr. Cooper. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And the people who supported you when you was the cussing and the comedian see you playing Mr. Cooper like that ain't the mark we know. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You see what I'm saying? | ||
| So you don't get to transfer. | ||
| Most comedians who blow, I have learned this a long time, play themselves in their first major production. | ||
| So they bring their current fan and expand their base and their brand bigger in them. | ||
| Martin playing Martin. | ||
| Steve Harvey playing Steve Harvey. | ||
| Cat playing Cat. | ||
| Eddie Murphy being Eddie Murphy. | ||
| All of them that blew on that. | ||
| Now, all the comedians that did other things and went into as a character actor or comedy actor and didn't bring their stand-up with them, what they was known for, died. | ||
| It's true. | ||
| Burnt in hell. | ||
| And the way they did it, because they alienated both. | ||
| They alienated the people who support them to get them that point, and then when they got to that point, the people who just saw them for the first time wanted to go see them do stand-up and was insulted. | ||
| It's like it's the Urkel rule. | ||
| No matter what Urkel do, he's always going to be Urkel. | ||
| I love Jaleel. | ||
| He can be anything, but you're going to see him as Urkel. | ||
| Because that was the first he was introduced to as Urkel. | ||
| And people are always going to see him as Urkel. | ||
| Now, if he was a comedian, he would never work again. | ||
| Because if he was a stand-up comedian doing all that, no, that ain't Urkel. | ||
| And if you supported him, you're like, why are you out here selling out playing this dude like this? | ||
| That ain't that hard, my man. | ||
| And Urkels, Janelle, smoke herbs, hang out, he's a real motherfucker. | ||
| Doesn't he sell weed now? | ||
| Yeah, he sell weed now. | ||
| That'll kill somebody back in Family Matter. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They found Urkels out this motherfucker. | |
| I smoked some of his weed. | ||
| It was good. | ||
| I met him after the show. | ||
| He was telling me he grows his own weed and sells weed. | ||
| Yeah, but it'll kill somebody right now if they found out Urkel was selling weed. | ||
| It'll traumatize their childhood. | ||
| That's true, yeah. | ||
| Mark Curry's a brilliant comic. | ||
| He's a brilliant comic, and he's very different than he is on Hanging with Mr. Cooper, which is like a very family, easy, soft show. | ||
| It's like a nice show. | ||
| Nice guy. | ||
| But you watch Mark Curry on stage, he's a funny fucking dude. | ||
| And a great guy. | ||
| Great guy. | ||
| Great guy. | ||
| Edgy as hell. | ||
| So if you enter that family, ABC, 830, hanging with Mr. Cooper, role model for the kids and everything, you go over here saying, man, I'm fucking all these women tonight. | ||
| You're like, oh my God. | ||
| I think you could say the same with Damon Wayans now. | ||
| Yeah, you think so? | ||
| Yeah, because Damon, you know, he had that sitcom he did for a long time. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| You don't see him doing... | ||
| I mean, if you go to see him live, you'll still see wild comedy. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yes, you will. | ||
| But Damon's in that sort of big money sitcom world where they keep giving him these shows where he's the star of a show and he's like a dad and he's like... | ||
| Family man and he's got the children. | ||
| It's like a family sitcom. | ||
| There's a lot of money in those family sitcoms. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I know. | |
| That's what I'm trying to get. | ||
| Is that what you want to do? | ||
| I do want to have a TV show. | ||
| I want to do a TV. I want to do more movies. | ||
| I'm going to do another hour. | ||
| I'm going to do an hour. | ||
| I'm going to do another special and tour. | ||
| I'm going to do the things. | ||
| Write a book about my struggle. | ||
| Talk to Kev about that. | ||
| Yeah, everything that come in the make-it bag for comedians. | ||
| You know, they call it the make-it bag. | ||
| You get the book deal, the TV show, the tour, the movies, the fine chick. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| All the shit that come with the make-it bag. | ||
| The make-it bag. | ||
| Yeah, it's the make-it bag. | ||
| I made it bag. | ||
| These are all the things that comes in it. | ||
| You just pull it out. | ||
| You get to host everything and all that type of thing. | ||
| Pull into the comic store in the best car. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah! | |
| And you just park in the back and they say, yeah, man, you going up today? | ||
| Nah, I'm just here to chill. | ||
| Oh, God damn. | ||
| Can I get you a drink? | ||
| Make it back. | ||
| Can I get you a drink? | ||
| Yeah, thank you very much. | ||
| Give me an 18-year scotch McAllen. | ||
| I'm just gonna sit back here. | ||
| The book thing is a hard one. | ||
| That's real work. | ||
| That's a lot of work. | ||
| I had a book deal. | ||
| I gave him the money back. | ||
| Did you? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I started writing chapters, and they were like, well, we'd like it to be more of this. | ||
| And I was like, I'm good. | ||
| I'm going to give you the money back. | ||
| I can't do this. | ||
| Like, there was too much editorial control. | ||
| At one point in time, they asked me to transcribe my stand-up. | ||
| They said, that's what we want to do. | ||
| I go, what? | ||
| I go, but people can go see it live. | ||
| I go, if you read it, it's not the same thing. | ||
| Not at all. | ||
| But they were like, but Jerry Seinfeld did it. | ||
| I go, yeah, well, that's Jerry Seinfeld. | ||
| George Carlin did it. | ||
| I'm like, well, they probably needed the money. | ||
| Well, Jerry didn't, but maybe they did it because they thought that was a good way to do it. | ||
| I don't think it's a good way to do it for me. | ||
| I don't want to do that. | ||
| Well, I might have a ghost ride. | ||
| Yeah? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I ain't writing that shit. | ||
| I ain't writing that shit. | ||
| I'm like, this is what happened to me now. | ||
| Put it into words. | ||
| I'm going to sit down and go over it. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I'm going to have a ghostwriter. | ||
| Do you have a set of stories that you want to get out? | ||
| Probably. | ||
| As I reflect, I'm a today person. | ||
| I live in the moment. | ||
| So yesterday is gone. | ||
| Ain't nothing you can do with it. | ||
| Ain't nothing she can do for me. | ||
| It's like a woman that's gone. | ||
| So I would have to sit back and reflect. | ||
| And usually for me to do it, I would have to be with friends that made that ride with me. | ||
| So as they remind me, yeah, yeah, yeah, put that in there. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, put that in there. | ||
| So how will you do that? | ||
| Will you have someone come with you on the road and just talk to them occasionally and have them write shit down, record it? | ||
| Well, I have a literary person that does a lot of books that also worked for me in my comedy club. | ||
| So she's been trying to get me to do it for the longest. | ||
| And now that it's coming to fruition, I'm going to allow her to be the point person on it. | ||
| And I supplied the stories and she'll write it all up for me. | ||
| So you're already in motion with this? | ||
| No, we talked about it. | ||
| We've been talking about it for the last three or four years. | ||
| I said I would do it when the... | ||
| Opportunity prevents itself. | ||
| See, I'm not that kind of person around here. | ||
| I'm not a supermarket type dude. | ||
| Please, you know the test. | ||
| Try this, please. | ||
| Would you do this? | ||
| This is tied 2%, 2 ounces. | ||
| Try it if you like it. | ||
| You can come over here and get the whole thing. | ||
| I'm not. | ||
| Who's going to do the deal? | ||
| Let's do it. | ||
| If you don't want me, I don't want you. | ||
| But I'm damn sure I ain't knocking on your door talking, I got a book, can you do it? | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| So I really believe when it's your time, it's your time, and then it'll fall in place. | ||
| And that's what I'm going to do. | ||
| Now that the opportunity is to present itself, Then I got a person that we've been talking about for the last five years that'll take care of it for me. | ||
| So that's one part of the make it bag. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Book deal. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What's the big one? | ||
| Is it starring in a movie? | ||
| Is it starring in a sitcom? | ||
| Both. | ||
| Both. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I want, you know, I do what you do. | ||
| I have a radio show. | ||
| You got the podcast. | ||
| I got to talk to you too. | ||
| I ain't gonna make it over here like you doing. | ||
| I've been watching YouTube saying, boy, I got to talk to Joe. | ||
| God damn it now. | ||
| Um, Yes, I want to have a hit. | ||
| I think I can hold the country's attention for 22 minutes if you give me a fantastic situation with some actors around. | ||
| Do you have an idea who you want to do it with? | ||
| Yeah, I thought I was going to work out something with CBS, but unfortunately it didn't come to fruition. | ||
| They played with me. | ||
| And so now we're just out here and see what we're going to do. | ||
| I would like to have a network television show. | ||
| I would like to... | ||
| Me and Donnell is starring in my first lead in a movie, so we got that one done. | ||
| What's that? | ||
| It's called Bedridden. | ||
| It's about a dude who's a very arrogant womanizer and finally, you know, karma catches up with him and he's temporarily paralyzed and he's bedridden and he's losing his company and wife at the same time trying to see how bad he'd inflict pain to his wife and his kids and those type of things. | ||
| And Donnell plays my brother on it, you know. | ||
| And we did that, and we did an independent movie together for that. | ||
| And I want to do more of that and my own sitcom around my life, that kind of thing, where I'm at now. | ||
| So around your life as a stand-up? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Oh, like a... | ||
| Yeah, about to blow, and then I finally blow, and now the kids that I couldn't get to see, now they came and visit me and never left. | ||
| Now they living with me. | ||
| Yeah, that type of thing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So you've been thinking about this for a while. | ||
| Yeah, we was in development for it. | ||
| We got all the way up to the president of CBS, but unfortunately he didn't see our view on it. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| It's a gamble. | ||
| You know, they have like 30 shows and they have like four slots. | ||
| And so they'll have to, like, I've been in that developmental process. | ||
| It's a strange process when they're trying to figure out what's going to work and what's not going to work. | ||
| I mean, I get that too, but to give an honest shot, if you're going to give it to you, you at least got to shoot a pilot to see what you got. | ||
| I don't think you can sit down and say if it's good. | ||
| Like you just said, you can't tell if it's funny just off the paper. | ||
| No. | ||
| You have to sit here and put the players involved and then look at it and say, this is what you got. | ||
| If you honestly say that you're trying to give a show, and definitely... | ||
| If you say you're trying to have diversity on CBS, you have to at some point allow, you know, the actors to put it on or invest enough to see what you got tested and see is it. | ||
| I understand the four slots, but if you're going to sit here and say you're trying to do diversity with the NAACP, it's supposed to be a slot there already! | ||
| Supposed to be one there, or at least an opportunity for it. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So that's what I come into vain. | ||
| I never want to be anywhere that no one wants me to be. | ||
| But at some point in this game that we're doing, if you're not familiar with the... | ||
| The creative aspect of certain people, you have to at least see it and let someone else see, can this work? | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| That's the way it is. | ||
| I mean, I don't think anything should be killed just on the paper right there without you investing in the point to see it. | ||
| Especially if you was part of writing it itself. | ||
| And you were happy with the script and how it came out? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, we got write-ups from the president of the network, notes on it, on the script and everything, and then when it came to the point of, they said they passed up on it, and it was shocking to me to the point that we didn't even get a chance to even shoot the pallet for it. | ||
| Sometimes it's like a bunch of shit like the people that are producing it they don't have a good deal with the network or you know like sometimes the network wants to produce and own their own shows and maybe Warner Brothers will come to CBS or something they like it but Warner Brothers owns it so they don't want Warner Brothers to make a shitload of money and CBS has their own show they would rather take that even if it's not as good there was a lot of that at NBC Yeah, but we was coming out of CBS Studios to CBS on there. | ||
| The writer had a deal already with CBS to write it, and I'm already on CBS while working on The Neighborhood. | ||
| So everything was in-house. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And then we did an announcement saying that it was part of the NAACP diversity to put more on there. | ||
| So I was shocked about that, to be quite honest with you. | ||
| And we're going to see what we're going to do with it because we're still on here. | ||
| But I do want to have a TV show. | ||
| Might end up being on Netflix. | ||
| So is this the past pilot season? | ||
| This happened about a week ago. | ||
| Oh, that's why you're so hot. | ||
| I'm not hot. | ||
| I mean... | ||
| I get it. | ||
| I mean, I just don't understand the process if you sing you want to include. | ||
| If you don't, then don't. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| If you have a demographic that's happy where it is and you don't want to, God bless you. | ||
| But don't come over here. | ||
| It's equivalent to say, hey, I do country music. | ||
| Country music is good, but I want some R&B on here. | ||
| I want you to come over here and put some R&B song on our station. | ||
| Like, alright, I submit the song to you and you sit down here and you go over to work. | ||
| Nah, people don't want to hear that, don't hear that. | ||
| We reconstruct the whole song around after three or four rewrites of my song on it. | ||
| And then I said, okay, when are we going to go to the studio and cut the song? | ||
| And they said, nah. | ||
| We don't like the song. | ||
| You wrote the motherfucker. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I thought you said she wanted it on here. | |
| Do you have an opportunity to do it at Netflix? | ||
| Because I think that's the best place. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I mean, you know the deal. | ||
| We couldn't go nowhere else while we was doing it with them. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It was there with them. | ||
| So we didn't get a chance. | ||
| Are you free? | ||
| I don't know what my situation is right now. | ||
| It just is fresh off of it. | ||
| It just happened this Friday. | ||
| Netflix is exciting to me for something with you doing it because you could be yourself. | ||
| Language, subject matter, no restrictions whatsoever, and no commercials. | ||
| Commercials are bullshit. | ||
| I know. | ||
| They're brutal. | ||
| When you watch these sitcoms and they have to cut everything into these little chunks so that it fits perfectly inside of a network break, it just doesn't work good. | ||
| It's not fun. | ||
| And then you have to sit there and watch the commercial and wait for it to come on, or you record it in advance, you have to fast forward through it. | ||
| With Netflix, You film the whole season. | ||
| You watch it all in one sitting if you want. | ||
| You can binge watch it. | ||
| You can pause it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Go take a shit. | ||
| Come back. | ||
| Start it up again. | ||
| You know, it's a better format. | ||
| It's just better. | ||
| It's better because it's uncensored. | ||
| It's better because the programming on Netflix is better. | ||
| You know, we were talking about Ozark before the podcast. | ||
| God damn, that's a good show. | ||
| My friend Eric is the producer and creator. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| Yeah, he goes. | ||
| He wants to do something with us. | ||
| But I want to take anywhere that they want us. | ||
| Anywhere you want it. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Wherever you want it to allow me to be me. | ||
| I have no problem with any Any format. | ||
| Do you! | ||
| But if you're going to come and say you want to do us, and you want me to do us, then allow me to be me. | ||
| And negotiate. | ||
| But if it is, if this is what you want, then come in all good faith. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| You know, and it was very disappointing. | ||
| No, I understand. | ||
| It was very disappointing. | ||
| Like, a lot, and we've all been through, because I think Dave then had more fucking development deals than anybody in their life. | ||
| Oh, he's had a lot. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Shitloads. | ||
| It's just free money a lot of times. | ||
| Free money and meetings. | ||
| Yeah, well, we didn't get no money either. | ||
| No? | ||
| No money. | ||
| Nah, we didn't get no money. | ||
| They didn't give you money for the development deal to put together a second? | ||
| Nah, we didn't get no money. | ||
| That's just blunt. | ||
| That's like the I mean, no money either. | ||
| That one used to be like the whole thing about Montreal Comedy Festival. | ||
| Everybody get a development deal. | ||
| Yeah, you were talking about six, seven figures. | ||
| You was like, yes! | ||
| That money gone now. | ||
| They don't do that anymore? | ||
| No! | ||
| No, they'd sit around and probably give you about 18,000. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| Tell you just sit here. | ||
| Thank you for your shit. | ||
| You know, but you ain't... | ||
| No money. | ||
| And you're talking about five, six months. | ||
| And once you negotiate with them, of course you can't go to nobody else. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Because you're saying, hey man, I'm going to have this. | ||
| Six months. | ||
| Yeah, six months. | ||
| And they dangle that carrot. | ||
| Oh, they dangle that motherfucker. | ||
| I was around this bitch, just knew I was going, I was like, when is the Super Bowl going to be on CBS? Because I'm going to be on that motherfucker. | ||
| I can't wait until they give me the plug and the teaser. | ||
| Quake House today, 8 o'clock on CBS. And the motherfuckers call me up, boy, they get, boy, they give you that call. | ||
| That's the worst call in the world, though. | ||
| They found out they want to go another way. | ||
| Another way. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Like, well, Without even seeing it? | ||
| I mean, you ain't invest enough to even do a palette to see, to play it? | ||
| I mean, come on, man. | ||
| But that's the problem that I always had with Hollywood is you have to be chosen. | ||
| And that's one of the things that makes people so crazy. | ||
| Like, some people don't have the mental fortitude to withstand that kind of rejection over and over and over again or disappointment. | ||
| And, like, if you think about what, like, especially with actors, you get a bunch of people that are insecure, that are kind of crazy to begin with, and then they go to this place where they're asking you to pretend in this moment. | ||
| Like, okay, Quake, you're gonna sit down with Mike, and Mike is gonna play Sally. | ||
| So there's a guy pretending to play your wife. | ||
| And you're running through the scene with this person, and like, okay, well, thank you. | ||
| We'll be in touch. | ||
| And then you leave, and you're like, I don't even know how that was. | ||
| And you have to be chosen. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So you start to see people behaving in a way they think the casting agent would like. | ||
| True. | ||
| Saying the kind of things they think the casting agent wants to hear. | ||
| True. | ||
| They adopt the politics of the casting agents. | ||
|
unidentified
|
True. | |
| You know, they'll say something about a current event thing like, my heavens, like, why are we even doing this? | ||
| That's true. | ||
| Like, yes, why are we doing this thing? | ||
| Thank you, Joe. | ||
| We agree with you. | ||
| You feel like a piece of shit when you're getting a cup of coffee afterwards. | ||
| Like, what the fuck is wrong with me? | ||
| I'm a whore. | ||
| Hey, my lips are chapped in my ass. | ||
| I kissed trying to get this show, man. | ||
| I mean, it was... | ||
| But, you know, I never take it personal. | ||
| Because, again, like my mother said, you can't get mad at somebody that ain't gonna let you fuck with that shit. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| At the point... | ||
| And people ask me all the time, you know, like Quake, my fans say it to me. | ||
| Quake, you the funniest motherfucker. | ||
| Why you ain't got no TV show? | ||
| Why you ain't got no movies? | ||
| I say, ain't like I turned the shit down. | ||
| Ain't like I say, hey, yeah, I don't want to be on CBS. I'd rather be in Lackland, Florida or somewhere else. | ||
| But it's subjective. | ||
| What's funny to somebody is not funny to another. | ||
| So I always... | ||
| The way I took it is that I just haven't made the right person laugh yet. | ||
| Who will believe in me to sit here and give me the opportunities that my peers didn't have. | ||
| And until I break that person who believes in me, that sees that I am a valuable commodity that could do both me and them a great service in what they say they're here to make, Entertainment and TV shows, then I will always be sitting at the door with this bullshit. | ||
| And it won't. | ||
| And I don't even take it personally, man. | ||
| I'm so fucking used to it. | ||
| I try not to put myself out there. | ||
| So you feel the pain. | ||
| So you don't feel the pain. | ||
| Yeah, because disappointment is the worst thing for me. | ||
| I'd rather not have it. | ||
| Then to be disappointed. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So in the future, the next one that I do, unless they come to me and say, hey, we gonna put you to series, this is what we get, but it ain't gonna no more stringing along. | ||
| You're not gonna be sitting around here, we together, and then give me a call at 12 o'clock on a Friday night and say, nah. | ||
| Well, when you've been doing it as long as you have, too. | ||
| It's like, and you develop an audience the way you have. | ||
| It's like, you don't want to fuck with that anymore. | ||
| But you're always wanting that thing that you didn't have. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But it's, to me, to be honest with you, it's just expanding what I am already is. | ||
| I hold people's attention for an hour. | ||
| I know I can do it with 22 minutes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| With a lot of people playing in a fictitious world and on it. | ||
| Come on, goddamn. | ||
| And... | ||
| It shows that it worked. | ||
| That's why you have so many reality shows that's killing your scripted shows. | ||
| Because your fictitious world, you bring it up, don't nobody buy this. | ||
| You understand what I'm saying? | ||
| Don't buy it. | ||
| And definitely, if you don't know about that world, you at least have to see it so you can see and test it as a CEO of anything to expand your own brand. | ||
| If I owned a record And I want some country singers. | ||
| I'm going to get somebody to know about country singers. | ||
| And I'm like, is that good? | ||
| Okay, that's good. | ||
| When I owned a comedy club, I used to tell people all the time, I don't book the comedians. | ||
| The crowd do. | ||
| And it's not my job to find is he funny or not. | ||
| Do he pull the people in and they laugh? | ||
| Then that's what it is. | ||
| How I feel is irrelevant. | ||
| I would prefer my friend to be up here, but if my friend is only bringing 10 people and Shucky Duckie is bringing 200, Shucky Duckie Quack Quack is coming on through here. | ||
| Regardless if I think my friend is funnier than Shucky Ducky. | ||
| Because I have to sit here and make a decision based upon what the fans and what the consumer wants. | ||
| And you have to evolve. | ||
| That's the great thing I say about rap is, they always had a person like Russell Simmons, P. Diddy, Puffy, they was able to talk to the record label and say, listen, we got what you need. | ||
| Don't come down here and mess with our artists. | ||
| Because you'll never understand it. | ||
| Either trust me, give me the money, and I'll bring you back the results. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| But don't you come into the booth. | ||
| Don't you come in the booth and say he shouldn't say that. | ||
| That ain't how it is. | ||
| You don't understand. | ||
| Do you want to win or you don't want to win? | ||
| We in comedy has never had a Puffy. | ||
| We have never had a Russell Simmons. | ||
| We had a Walter Latham. | ||
| And he did The Kings of Comedy and all them brothers came out and became stars. | ||
| But he got upset because he think he supposed to go farther with him. | ||
| So he never did The Kings of Comedy 2, 3, 4, and 5. He just shut the shit down. | ||
| And didn't let nobody else play King, put King on nothing else no more. | ||
| He came back with another tour and called it The Walter Latham Presents. | ||
| I was on it. | ||
| And I was like, present what? | ||
| Don't nobody know you? | ||
| Don't nobody know you, man! | ||
| You should call this king of comedy, too! | ||
| Right. | ||
| We already had brand recognition, so we can continue on. | ||
| But you still mad at them brothers, because they elevated and didn't go that way. | ||
| So what you gonna do? | ||
| All the people... | ||
| No, because we never had a person didn't want to be us. | ||
| But I mean him. | ||
| Imagine that kind of ego. | ||
| You're getting to work with these amazing comedians. | ||
| You put together this huge hit, but you don't feel like you're getting enough attention. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| He did us, and I swear to God... | ||
| Me, Bruce Bruce, Ricky Smiley, a lot of... | ||
| He had us all surrounding him, and he was in the middle holding his hand on the poster and the advertising. | ||
| What? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So Bruce Bruce said, I just want to know how much time the motherfucker in the middle going to do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know what I mean? | |
| Man, I... | ||
| Ego. | ||
| Ego. | ||
| Ego's so crazy. | ||
| I'm sitting here. | ||
| Yeah, look at that shit. | ||
| Look, he's in the middle. | ||
| Latham presents all new DL, some more, me, Bruce Bruce, J. Anthony Brown, and Ricky Smiley. | ||
| He will not name that the Kings because of what the relationship was with them. | ||
| Oh, that's crazy. | ||
| He didn't like how it turned out for him? | ||
| No, so make sure he get the claim Walter Latham presents. | ||
| And I say, who on the fuck is Walter Latham? | ||
| Nobody know who you are, man! | ||
| See, I ain't had these breaks you had. | ||
| The people say, yeah, you shouldn't let them do this. | ||
| You had this kind of shit. | ||
| Well, my hope for you is that this Netflix special, which I think is undeniable. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| It's so good. | ||
| I think Netflix opens the door. | ||
| That's what I think. | ||
| I think that's the smart thing to do. | ||
| Because, look, this special's gonna be killer. | ||
| And then you having a sitcom on Netflix is natural. | ||
| It's easy. | ||
| It's better. | ||
| It's better. | ||
| It'll be real. | ||
| You can say whatever the fuck you want. | ||
| They'll let you fuck around. | ||
| Netflix leaves you the fuck alone when you do a special. | ||
| It's beautiful. | ||
| I've done three specials with them. | ||
| They just leave you the fuck alone. | ||
| They never say anything to me. | ||
| And they take care of you. | ||
| Yes, they take care of you. | ||
| I ain't got no Monique problem over here. | ||
| It was good. | ||
| Yeah, they take care of you, and they leave you alone. | ||
| They leave you alone. | ||
| They trust that you're funny. | ||
| They go, when are you going to record it? | ||
| Okay, we'll go watch. | ||
| They're there to watch, and then when's it going to be delivered? | ||
| September? | ||
| Perfect! | ||
| Okay, it'll air in fucking November or whatever it is, and it's nothing. | ||
| There's no involvement in the creative process, which is beautiful. | ||
| Because I had to deal with Comedy Central, and they had to make a transcript of my set. | ||
| And then I had a phone call with them, and the phone call, the transcript, they go, well, you can't say that. | ||
| They got to the third, you can't say that. | ||
| I go, stop. | ||
| I'm good. | ||
| I'm done. | ||
| I quit. | ||
| And they're like, what? | ||
| I go, I'm not doing this. | ||
| I'm not doing this with you guys. | ||
| I'm not doing this. | ||
| I'm like, this is not happening. | ||
| Eventually went on to do one a couple years later, but there was no problems with that material back then. | ||
| They'd kind of changed when streaming came along, too, because they realized they kind of had to open up the content a little bit more because they were losing comics. | ||
| They're losing people to Netflix and losing people to HBO and Showtime and places where you could just be free. | ||
| Do you feel that Netflix... | ||
| HBO is what HBO used to be with... | ||
| Bigger. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's bigger than HBO. What HBO was, there was only HBO. The thing about HBO is it's still around. | ||
| Like, there's still guys who do HBO specials and they're still great. | ||
| But what Netflix is, is you can watch it any fucking time you want. | ||
| True. | ||
| You can watch it on your phone. | ||
| You can watch it at... | ||
| I mean, I know that HBO has HBO... What is it? | ||
| Max? | ||
| HBO Max. | ||
| Yeah, which is great. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But... | |
| It's a beast. | ||
| And it's global. | ||
| It's global. | ||
| It's a juggernaut. | ||
| You can't stop it. | ||
| That's what Dave told me. | ||
| He's like, man, you don't even understand. | ||
| You're going to be raking in money. | ||
| I say, please let that come. | ||
| Jesus. | ||
| It's easy for you to say while you're sitting on it. | ||
| But please let it come. | ||
| A guy like you, one of the beautiful things is you could turn over an hour quick. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So you do this special, this special comes out, and then you can do another one in a year. | ||
| Oh, I will. | ||
| I'm working on it right now. | ||
| That's what I'm talking about. | ||
| No, it's going to be better than this one right here, because now I see it. | ||
| I'm going to get this stomach off, and I'm going to get ready for it. | ||
| And that's all I'm thinking about from that point on. | ||
| I told Dave, I said, all right, man, we're going to follow this up with this owl. | ||
| And he was like, yeah. | ||
| I said, yeah, man. | ||
| And he was the one who told me, don't even try to get a TV show. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, because he wanted the executive to produce my TV show. | ||
| And I was talking to him. | ||
| He was like, listen, man. | ||
| You only want to go down that road. | ||
| And just go be the top comedian for a year. | ||
| Smell the roses after you drop this. | ||
| Be the top comic. | ||
| Then come back. | ||
| I'm like, no, no, no. | ||
| I want to be on TV. I want to do this TV. You want that make-it bag? | ||
| I want that make-it bag. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I want that goddamn makeup bag. | ||
| You know, the thing is, man, when something like that has been in the distance for so long, and now you can grab that bitch. | ||
| I thought I was so close, too, man. | ||
| You don't every day get to talk to the president of the network. | ||
| You're like, boy, I know I'm in. | ||
| And you're like, I think I'm in. | ||
| But it just didn't come to fruition, and everything happens for a reason. | ||
| But, boy, I thought I was close. | ||
| I swear, you couldn't tell me a damn thing, Joe. | ||
| I just knew. | ||
| It was going to happen. | ||
| Oh, it was going to happen. | ||
| I was. | ||
| I was. | ||
| You couldn't tell me that it was. | ||
| I tell you, Quake, I think it's for the best. | ||
| I do. | ||
| I know it would be great to have that, but I think you'd be better on Netflix. | ||
| And I think your special's gonna be gigantic. | ||
| And I think from there, you doing an even bigger special in a year from now, you're gonna be like, thank God I didn't do that corny-ass fucking CVS bullshit. | ||
| I got to I have to fuck up my jokes and change the subjects and change... | ||
| Fuck that. | ||
| Fuck that, man. | ||
| You're too good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're too good for network TV. It was a blow. | |
| It was. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| It was... | ||
| I can tell. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| On a Friday night. | ||
| It's terrible, but it's for the best. | ||
| I believe that. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| I think there's not a lot of guys that are as funny as you. | ||
| You're at this elite level of stand-up comedy where me personally, as a comic, but more importantly as a fan of comedy, I love excellence. | ||
| I love when someone achieves this level of harmony with the audience and the material and the delivery and the years and years of performing and the polish of the boom, boom, boom, boom! | ||
| I mean, that special is just one after the other. | ||
| The bang, bang, bang! | ||
| The pauses are perfect. | ||
| The time in between the jokes is perfect. | ||
| It's beautiful, man. | ||
| That's what I like. | ||
| Fuck a sitcom. | ||
| Fucks it comes. | ||
| Well, if you can say that, man. | ||
| I can tell you. | ||
| Yeah, you done had them, and you Spotify. | ||
| You're over here nice. | ||
| Fuck them. | ||
| Fuck. | ||
| They can't call me. | ||
| You can call me, I'll start laughing, like, what do you want me to do? | ||
| I know you'll laugh. | ||
| I'll be over there, motherfucker. | ||
| I'll forgive you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Fuck. | |
| Like, I forgive you. | ||
| Let's do it again. | ||
| I think you doing a sitcom anywhere other than Netflix or even HBO or somewhere where they just let you be free, it's a travesty. | ||
| Your material is too, you're too edgy. | ||
| You go out there. | ||
| You say risky shit. | ||
| And that's beautiful. | ||
| That's what I love. | ||
| You know what I really wanted to play though? | ||
| The Black Archie Bunker. | ||
| Oh, someone needs to. | ||
| The Black Archie Bunker. | ||
| That's what I want to do. | ||
| It's amazing that no one has. | ||
| I mean... | ||
| Because a black guy can pull it off. | ||
| Oh yeah, the right one. | ||
| Still, yes. | ||
| You can do it. | ||
| I can pull it off. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| Oh, I can pull that off. | ||
| I'm talking about... | ||
| Talking about the show, I mean the Black Archie Bunker. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| Boy, the things that I wrote for this show, for the Black, we have that. | ||
| And the Black Archie Bunker is what I would love to play. | ||
| That right there. | ||
| Well, Red Foxx kind of did that a little bit with Fred Sanford. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I wanted a higher note just on Red Foxx, that kind of way. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Well, as a fan of comedy, I'm hoping that you don't get any sitcom. | ||
| I'm hoping if you do, it's going to be on Netflix, and I'm hoping you just go on to do hour after hour after hour. | ||
| I'm just saying... | ||
| Because your ability to turn over material is extraordinary, and your ability to write is extraordinary. | ||
| And I think that that's just... | ||
| You have these chops that very few people develop. | ||
| You don't get a chance. | ||
| You don't get a chance to hit that level of excellence as a comic. | ||
| How many guys get through it? | ||
| How many of us are there? | ||
| Let's talk about that. | ||
| True that. | ||
| Is there even a thousand of us on Earth? | ||
| No. | ||
| Probably not, if you're gonna be honest. | ||
| Like a real headliner, how many of us? | ||
|
unidentified
|
There might be 500 of us on Earth. | |
| There's a million doctors in America alone. | ||
| How many comics are there? | ||
| Real ones. | ||
| Guys can go up there and light a room on fire. | ||
| Maybe a few hundred. | ||
| It's hard to get there. | ||
| So when someone gets there like you, I want you to stay there. | ||
| I mean, I want you to get everything. | ||
| Everything you want. | ||
| I want you to get all the accolades and all the money and all the make it bag, but fuck that sitcom. | ||
| You sound just like Dave. | ||
| You know that? | ||
| I can tell both of y'all. | ||
| That's why I love him. | ||
| Yeah, you and Dave. | ||
| That's the same thing he told me before I even did my day. | ||
| Fuck that. | ||
| You don't need that. | ||
| See what you want. | ||
| We both have fuck you money. | ||
| Yeah, y'all do. | ||
| That's what it is. | ||
| And I got... | ||
| If I don't work, goddammit, I'm in trouble money. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| But that keeps you hungry and sharp. | ||
| There's something about that, too, man. | ||
| There's something beautiful about that, too. | ||
| It's beautiful. | ||
| It is. | ||
| And I just want to explain. | ||
| But see, in my defense, y'all both had successful TV shows. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| Y'all both have already achieved that feather in your cap. | ||
| I've developed the ability to say, fuck you, because of fear factor. | ||
| Yes, you have. | ||
| I got that Fear Factor money, and then I was like, oh, I'm free now. | ||
| I'm free. | ||
| And then I just... | ||
| I wouldn't listen to anybody anymore. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that's when I started doing the podcast. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And look at you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Listen, man. | ||
| I watch you. | ||
| That's what I was going to call you. | ||
| Like, all right, man. | ||
| How do I... Because my show is on Kevin Hart's. | ||
| It's on Sirius, right? | ||
| It's on Sirius right here. | ||
| And I watch you. | ||
| How much longer are you doing it on that? | ||
| I do one-year deals. | ||
| That's good. | ||
| I only do one-year deals. | ||
| This is my thought on that. | ||
| First of all, being connected to Kevin Hart is a blessing. | ||
| It's an amazing thing. | ||
| He's an amazing guy. | ||
| But the problem with something like Sirius is it's limited to people who have Sirius. | ||
| True. | ||
| Which is a lot, a lot of people, but it also doesn't work in a tunnel. | ||
| It's weird. | ||
| The satellite thing is weird. | ||
| The internet is better. | ||
| I don't want to tune in when it's on. | ||
| I want to get it whenever the fuck I want it. | ||
| I want to download it before I get on a plane. | ||
| If I'm going to listen to a podcast, I want to listen to it when I'm running. | ||
| I want to press start when I want. | ||
| And that's the beauty of the internet. | ||
| The satellite was amazing when it came along, Because when it came along, it was uncensored. | ||
| It's like all of a sudden you have this uncensored medium that's basically like when Howard Stern went over to Sirius, it was a giant thing. | ||
| Because here you got this guy who's the greatest uncensored radio personality ever. | ||
| Everybody says that. | ||
| He's the guy who opened up the doors for everybody like me. | ||
| And now he can be uncensored. | ||
| Now he can go wild. | ||
| He doesn't have to worry about the government. | ||
| People forget the government was coming after Howard Stern. | ||
| The FCC was fining them hundreds of thousands of dollars every time he would say things that are easy now. | ||
| Now all those things that he said are nothing in comparison to things we say every day. | ||
| But back then it was a big fucking deal. | ||
| And he was the guy that got arrested, or got in trouble rather, and sued. | ||
| He was the guy who broke down all the doors. | ||
| Just like guys like Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce and George Carlin got arrested for material. | ||
| He was in trouble. | ||
| He was in trouble for talking. | ||
| But the internet doesn't have any of those restrictions. | ||
| Like if your show that you're doing on Kevin Hart's thing, you just take it to the podcast world, it'll be fucking huge too. | ||
| I never understood the background and everything had to do with podcasts. | ||
| But I knew everybody had one. | ||
| What the hell going on? | ||
| It's just talking shit and you're a master at that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's what it is. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I was like, everybody got a fucking podcast. | ||
| And I did radio, regular radio, and that went well. | ||
| I wanted to be like Steve and get syndicated in 90 cities, you know? | ||
| Terrestrial radio. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| But then my boys ain't let me do it either. | ||
| So I said, I ain't come to New York to be number one. | ||
| I want to be heard all throughout the country. | ||
| And it was WBLS, so I tried that. | ||
| So I always did radio, but I never understood what it was with the podcast. | ||
| And then when I heard about you, I was like, God damn it. | ||
| Send me to school. | ||
| And then when I saw you when we was on tour, I was like, Joe, I need to talk to you. | ||
| Listen, you can do it. | ||
| You can do it 100%. | ||
| Listen, you're interested in people. | ||
| You're interesting. | ||
| You're great at talking to people. | ||
| That's all the elements. | ||
| And then all you have to do is just get used to it. | ||
| Just get used to doing it. | ||
| It'll be, oh, your podcast will be gigantic. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, goddammit, I'm gonna have to do that too. | ||
| Do it. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| I'll help you. | ||
| I'll promote it. | ||
| Goddammit, there it is. | ||
| I'll promote it. | ||
| Keep that on tape. | ||
| Cut that. | ||
| Send it to the real earthquake. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I will help you. | |
| I will 100% promote it. | ||
| IG on here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Get it done. | |
| Would have happened, though. | ||
| But yeah, I did want it to be on TV. Whatever you do, I'm in the earthquake business. | ||
| I'll be happy to promote whatever you do. | ||
| Just let me know. | ||
| Well, thank you, man. | ||
| And you have supported me because I asked you. | ||
| I said, hey, man. | ||
| Doing this special with Dave, before we did it, whenever I get to do it, it's like, no problem, come on down, and here we are. | ||
| I'm your man of your word. | ||
| I am, but I've been singing your praises for a long fucking time, as do everybody else. | ||
| All the comics. | ||
| You are a comics comic. | ||
| And so for me... | ||
| As a fan of the art form, I'm very excited to watch you pop. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| Thank you, man. | ||
| I love the fact that you got this Netflix special coming out. | ||
| Thank you, man. | ||
| So today, it's going to be February 28th, it turns out. | ||
| So February 28th, Netflix, you know what to do, people. | ||
| Please! | ||
| Please. | ||
| Please. | ||
| And follow me at TheRealEarthquake, please. | ||
| It's at TheRealEarthquake. | ||
| And thank you, my brother. | ||
| My pleasure. | ||
| My pleasure, brother. | ||
| Pleasure's all mine now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Anytime. | |
| All right. | ||
| Bye, everybody. |
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