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Sept. 24, 2022 - Lex Fridman Podcast
02:21:34
Will Sasso: Comedy, MADtv, AI, Friendship, Madness, and Pro Wrestling | Lex Fridman Podcast #323
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Time Text
Once this whole thing falls apart and we are climbing the kudzu vines that spiral up the Sears Tower like they say in Fight Club, Bobby will go back to his gatherer form and be happy as a pig in shit, just walking around in a loincloth with his bird hanging out, cracking jokes to people and climbing up on them for a stool lap dance or whatever he does.
You think some level of crazy is required for comedy?
Yeah. Like, at some point?
Yes.
Have there been low points in your life?
Yeah, you know.
Hey, hey, hey.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The following is a conversation with Will Sasso, a comedian, actor, podcaster,
and someone I've been a fan of for many years since Mad TV in the late 90s
to recently with the 10 Minute Podcast And now the new podcast called Doodsy.
This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.
To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.
And now, dear friends, here's Will Sasso.
So let's call it the elephant in the room.
You wore a black suit in a recent episode of Doodsy.
Yes. You wore a black suit again today.
Shakespeare then Mark Twain said clothes make the man.
What kind of man does a suit make you?
Well, me in particular, it makes me a fellow who did not get this dry cleaned in between, because that episode of the show as we sit here now was around a week ago.
So that's the kind of man it makes me.
Well, the nice thing is you're wearing pants, I think.
Yes, I am wearing pants. I don't think you were wearing pants in the episode.
That's correct. I prefer to wear shorts, but this was a special occasion, so I'm wearing pants, and I thought it fitting, obviously, to just wear, you know, the black tie.
And clothes do make the man.
And I would not consider myself to be a man of leisure, but I do enjoy shorts, because my legs get hot, so that's what kind of man the shorts make me.
How often do you wear a suit? I fucking hate wearing suits.
So what is this? A statement of...
Is it ironic?
Or are you honoring the gods of this particular podcast?
I'm honoring the gods of this particular podcast would be a good way to put it.
Yes. No, this is in reverence of and in dedication to you and our newfound friendship here, which we are making on the podcast.
You and I just met.
Everything that we're saying here are the first things that we're saying to each other.
So I'm meeting you on Common Ground.
Well, I've been actually a one-way friend of yours for many, many years since MADtv.
Oh. When did you start on MADtv?
So that was, I mean, in the 90s?
97, yeah. 97. So I was a huge fan of yours, and the cast was incredible.
It was one of the funniest shows ever created.
Your whole journey watching through that was incredible, from MADtv to Three Stooges to the podcasts.
The 10-minute pod and then your new podcast is incredible.
Cheers. My favorite role that you played was the mountain in the Game of Thrones.
What was it like working with dragons?
Well, the dragons are usually tennis balls on the end of C-stands, but sometimes they hang out.
It's a C-stand. It's like, you know, it's like a little like the thing you got the camera on here.
Oh, this is like film lingo.
Yeah, no, I understand. I'm trying to impress you with my film lingo.
You know what a banana is?
Yeah. When you walk like this, you do a banana.
I take it back. I did not know what a banana was.
Yeah, see? I misunderstood.
Yeah, because it's just a food.
Yeah. Normally. You fancy Hollywood folk with the lingo.
And I'm, my name is Bjorn Hapthor Bjornsson, and I am seven foot four.
And yeah, so dragons don't, dragons don't scare me, even though they've been extinct for a while.
You scientists, right?
Is that checked out? Yeah, I actually, I'm really into video games.
I don't know if you play video games. There's a Skyrim video game that's part of the Elder Scrolls series.
And for the longest time, there's a legend that there's dragons.
I think it started in Daggerfall.
And so I always, I grew up playing those video games and dreaming of one day meeting a dragon in a virtual world.
And eventually you did in Skyrim.
So it's... Dragons represent, I don't know exactly what they represent, but they represent maybe this kind of mythical creature that is bigger than anything humans can possibly comprehend, maybe.
Because they show up so often in myth, from the religious stories, you know, of the snake and so on, the serpent.
I don't know what that is. With his breathing fire, that's kind of weird.
It's interesting. When I think about dragons, because now that you bring it up, these are people that probably wouldn't have access to the fact that there used to be dinosaurs.
Maybe they did. If they didn't, they're drawing things that look like, you know, a dinosaur cousin, but cool, that can breathe fire and has wacky wings and a spiked tail.
Yeah, where the heck did they come up with that?
Because they're clearly, of course, represented in mythology, all the way back to...
No, not cave drawings.
Well, the Egyptians probably knew what the—and they could time travel, so they would have gone back to the caves.
Well, the aliens that placed living organisms on Earth could time travel, and they could plant legends into the collective intelligence of the human species.
Yeah, and perhaps they were thinking of us to do something smart with it, and we didn't.
We just came up with Skyrim. No.
What's that? Sorry, that was very offensive.
I'm sorry. I don't mean to offend you with your video game.
I'm more of a Burger Time Donkey Kong dude.
Oh, what is that?
That's an original? Burger Time was an arcade game that later showed up on the Intellivision.
It was Intellivision.
I believe it was made by Texas Instruments.
Horrible first-generation video game console.
And Burger Time, you just...
It's like Super Mario. You just got to stay away from the eggs and the pickles and stuff.
And you just go... And the bun falls.
And then you go down to the...
And the cheese.
And then the meat... I'm not going to say it's as complicated as Skyrim, but it took me a while to finish it when I was seven.
Did you play video games?
Was that a part of your life, a part or a source of happiness for you at all?
It was. It was.
I played video games up until around, I think in 2010, I got the Red Ring of Death on my Xbox 360.
That was it. That was it. I never, or whatever the Xbox was then.
I had finished the Grand Theft Auto that was out and finished the Red Dead Redemption.
So I was doing that thing where you just drive around the streets of New York or just ride around on your horse shooting people and throwing grenades into groups of people in Grand Theft.
And you're describing the same thing that happened a decade later because it's now Red Dead Redemption 2 and there's still not a new Grand Theft Auto.
Yeah. There isn't, right?
Yeah, they're working on it. They're always flirting with that idea.
You know who else plays Skyrim?
Another person, the two people I'm a huge fan of from that time in Mad TV is Bobby Lee.
He plays Skyrim?
He's a huge fan of Skyrim. He plays every...
So what Bobby Lee loves to do is to grind, do the boring task over and over, gather mushrooms.
Like in Skyrim, you can fight dragons, you can fight all kinds of things, but you can also gather mushrooms and different ingredients and make potions and all that kind of stuff.
He loves the ingredients.
He's the... You know, in the hunter-gatherer world, he's the gatherer.
He's the gatherer. Yeah.
I've heard him described that way, and he likes to describe himself that way.
I worked with Bobby not too long ago.
He came and did a couple days on this thing we were shooting, and I was looking forward to catching up with my old pal.
And if you know anything about Bobby Lee, you'd probably be able to predict that he spent that entire time playing farming on his iPad.
Well, humans are a source of anxiety and trouble, so sometimes it's good to escape human interaction through video games.
Totally. I'm with him on that.
He's one of the funniest people ever.
What do you think makes him funny?
It's just all the times you've worked with him.
The non-standard, non-sequitur way of his being.
Bobby Lee is one of the most raw people, raw performers, who lets it all hang out to the degree that he will even get naked in front of his audience, which is usually a metaphor for someone doing stand-up.
I'm bearing all, I'm showing you everything, and Bobby will just pull his bird out of his pants.
Yeah, I don't think he understands metaphor too much.
He embodies metaphor.
Yes, he embodies metaphor.
We call him the gathering metaphor.
Bobby the gatherer metaphor.
He's a metaphor for something else, for somebody else's life.
Someday he'll be in the dictionary representing some kind of concept.
Maybe the metaphor itself.
Once this whole thing falls apart and we are climbing the kudzu vines that spiral up the Sears Tower, like they say in Fight Club, Bobby will go back to his gatherer form and be happy as a pig in shit, just walking around in a loincloth with his bird hanging out, tracking jokes to people and climbing up on them for a stool lap dance or whatever he does.
I'd love to dig into something he did.
You guys did a lot of great podcasts together.
He asked you in a very uncomfortable process of why you don't do stand-up.
So let me ask you, do you hate money?
Well, I'm originally from Canada, yeah.
I'm a frickin' pinko socialist.
Is that where you come from?
That's not a nice thing to say.
I thought the Soviet Union, that is a nice thing to say.
You could call someone a pinko.
Right? Comrade. He's a good socialist.
Yeah. Yeah.
Like some bold colors, yeah.
There's an interesting tension in your voice and the way you talked about it.
There's just not a source of happiness for you.
You respect the art form, but it was not something that you were connected to, you felt connected to.
That's a good way to put it, yeah.
I respect the art form a lot.
And I grew up with all the albums and stuff.
I had an older brother and sister.
So we had George Carlin, we had Richard Pryor, we had Robert Klein, we had...
Gilda Live, the Gilda Radner concert.
We had all sorts of stuff.
But, you know, I don't know.
There's a lot of reasons.
I do feel like a career in show business is, you know, it never goes the way you plan, like most things.
And I was fortunate enough to get started outside of my native Vancouver, or in my native Vancouver.
I grew up in the burbs outside, and there was a lot of industry there.
So I was fortunate enough to get started as an actor.
When I was like 16, so...
Yeah, there were some times early on where I came up with some stand-up stuff and did it, but yeah, I quickly abandoned it.
And then, you know, you go through, you do MADtv and stuff, and that's where my...
This is gonna sound weird.
Do I sound as anxiety as I did when I was on Bobby's podcast, trying to avoid his questions?
Well, he was giving you this face this whole time that was making the whole just atmosphere feel full of anxiety, so I'm trying not to give you the face.
The whole time I was saying, play cool, play cool.
Yeah, okay. Play cool, Lex.
Play cool. You said it out loud a couple times.
I did. You cut that out.
Play cool. Play cool, dude.
Cut it out. Maintain, bro.
Here's what I'll say. There's two ways to do it.
I think it's lame when someone who's done one thing for a while goes and starts doing stand-up out of nowhere, because I think it's an art form that's...
Under attack, because it's not like anything else.
Although now you can, of course, make whatever you want.
It's the era of self-publishing as far as making a product and putting it out there, which is getting easier, of course.
And I can't wait to talk to you about that with AI and how it's changing art.
But in stand-up, all you need is a microphone.
And, you know, perhaps it would be good to have some mental illness.
And then you can just run up there and talk forever.
And I say this to, you know, comedians.
It's like, you guys have to deal with just an influx of people who aren't sure why they're doing comedy.
I would ask comedians, I mean, not good ones.
Good ones, you know what they're doing.
But everyone else, like, what are you doing?
Why? Why are you doing stand-up?
Having said that, I am allergic to money.
Yeah. Do you think they have a good answer for that?
Why are they doing it? Because I actually, when I'm in Austin, I like going to open mics just listening.
It's inspiring to me.
Both the funny and the unfunny people, because they've been doing it for several years, sometimes over a decade, and they're still at it.
They're still right there. They're going for the punch, and then especially open mics that are really sad in that there's only like five other people in the audience, and they're usually just other comedians.
And they're still going all out, as if they're in front of a stadium.
But that, to me, sounds like someone who loves it.
Yeah. I got no questions for that person.
I got questions for someone who goes sideways from, here, I'm recognizable doing something, and then I'm doing stand-up.
Because it's like, and truly, look, I've been fortunate enough to be in the business for a long time.
And at this point, if I came up, I mean, doing live stuff is fun.
I have friends that are like, you know, some guys who are primarily sketch people or you would look at them as sketch people and they can sell tickets for being sketch people.
And we'll talk about it and they're like, you know, I do a monologue and I do a little stand-up, then I do a song, then I do another monologue, then I play off the audience, do a little stand-up.
But stand-up is, it's almost like playing music in that You know, people are going up there playing music, but what band have you been listening to?
That's what you're going to sound like.
So it's really...
I mean, of course, I'm speaking from zero experience, but I've heard it takes years, of course, to find your own voice.
Stand-ups that, when they first go up, they're doing some sort of impersonation of so-and-so and so-and-so.
And then you've got to pop this audience that's paying, and you're going to get run over by the next person who's coming up.
And it's hard to follow the last person who went up before you.
And I mean, that is a really hard way to...
It's a very... It's quite a gauntlet to be in to find your voice comedically.
But don't you have that same kind of thing with sketch?
You still have to find your own voice?
Yeah. With like all the impressions you do, they're just terrible.
You know, they're different spins and different people.
They're not like perfect impressions, right?
So that's, I mean, that's a similar kind of challenging journey as stand-up.
You're just saying they're kind of distinct and you fell into this one and you fell in love with it, which is like what MADtv kind of opened you up to.
Yeah. As a kid, I literally wanted to be an actor.
I always wanted to be an actor from a very young age, as far back as I can remember.
And I was a class clown and wanted to do comedy stuff and comedic acting.
So comedic acting. Yeah.
Early on, my influences were a very predictable list of guys from SCTV, early Saturday Night Live, Monty Python.
All of those performers really influenced me.
It was later that I saw...
People like Kevin Kline, who's an incredible actor.
I vividly remember being like 12, 13, seeing him get an Academy Award for Fish Called Wanda.
And it blew my mind. So I was like, he was hilarious.
I mean, it was one of my favorite movies back then and now.
And he won an Academy Award.
And at that point, I... I started thinking more about acting.
And then I was, like I said, really fortunate to fall in with...
I mean, I always wanted to do it, and I was trying to hustle this and that when I was a kid.
And then I ended up getting represented, and then I ended up on a teen show.
I was on... Basically, the easiest way to pitch it is it's like a Canadian My So-Called Life with these kids and their lives and stuff.
And I did that for like five years, and...
I really love acting.
I really truly love acting.
And I don't...
I'm not someone who wants people to know my opinion.
So that's another thing about stand-up.
Like, I love the illusion of what I get to do in entertainment.
And podcasting is great for that.
But to stand up there and...
I don't know. Just for me, it would have to all be fantasy.
Yeah, so Nietzsche said that every profound spirit needs a mask.
Like you said, you don't like to talk about, in your comedy, you don't like to talk about stuff that's personal to you.
Yeah. What is that?
If you were to psychoanalyze yourself.
Do you think it's just not something you find funny or are you running from something and it's not your fault, Will?
It's not your fault, Will.
Speaking of another really great comedic actor who's also a serious actor, Robert Williams.
One of the best serious actors.
And one of the funniest people of all time, but as great, as incredible as he was as a funny man, as a stand-up and a performer, I almost like his serious stuff better.
Can I ask you a question about that?
What do you make of that he committed suicide?
I think it's super depressing.
I've referred to him as the Jesus Christ of depression.
It's almost like he died for others' depression, you know what I mean?
You'd look at someone like that and go, wait a minute, you're a rock star.
You could just check out if you're not liking your life.
And of course, something like suicide begs that you look a little deeper and realize how tortured the human mind can make someone.
We're in LA. Is there some aspect of celebrity that is isolating that can make you feel really lonely?
Not me. I don't feel, no, not really.
You feel the love?
No, I just feel like I'm not, I mean, it's like, I don't know, I've always kind of had a small group of friends and those people don't, you know, it's like I've known the same people for years and years.
You never really felt a celebrity, really?
Nah. In LA, it's hard to, it's hard for people.
Nobody cares. They see you and then the next minute they see so-and-so.
So it's like, you know, I'm the guy from that Mike and Molly, right?
Nope. Close. King of...
Did you shave your head?
You go bald? King of Queens?
Nope. Close. Wow, shit.
You used to be the mountain on Game of Thrones.
You look like shit. Just eating fried dough?
Yeah. That's what's up.
Can't lift any weights anymore.
I'm at the gym doing like 15 pounds with shoulder press.
And people coming up to me.
You used to be a dragon killer, dude.
Half the man used to be.
Have there been low points in your life?
Sorry to go there. No.
Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, everybody has a low point in life.
You suffer from depression and those kinds of things.
You know what? I do. I do.
I have a bunch of stuff.
How do you deal with it?
Said friends? The friends and the...
They don't do anything for me in that sense.
Yeah. I have an incredible fiancé who...
That's nice to have somebody constant that you love very much and see as the best person and all that good stuff.
Hopefully vice versa. And then...
Well, on your recent Instagram, she said that she loves you, so...
Wow, you were just on...
Yeah, allegedly. That might all be for...
Yeah, that's all... How much money did you pay her to say that?
I don't have any because I'm not a stand-up.
I was like, I can do...
You got Venmo?
Yeah, yeah. I only have like $123.
I gave you some Dogecoin.
Yeah, some Doge. Yeah.
You want some Doge?
I got some of those monkey NFTs.
Oh, before I forget...
Yes. Hold on a second.
Oh no. Put a dudesy sticker on your microphone if that's okay.
Sure. Here.
Oh, yeah. These are tricky because I have the thumbs of a...
I have like Italian sausage thumbs.
Wait and watch this happen. I'm just going to...
This will take another. Yeah.
Yeah. Oh, man.
Yeah. Ooh, this is embarrassing.
Are you good under pressure?
Sure. I have anxiety.
I have performance anxiety. Do you have anxiety?
Yeah. You have anxiety, period?
Period. Yeah. Yeah.
I don't like it if I have to pee and then everyone's waiting in the urinal.
Yeah. I don't like it.
You know what'll help you in that situation?
What's that? Taking a shit. Because whenever you take a shit, you always pee a little.
It's hard to take a shit while you're standing at a urinal, but...
Not in my world.
Okay. You just got to keep yourself full of things that make you shit.
Oh, good. Have you ever heard of a banana?
I did recently.
Somebody told me about it. Not the showbiz term.
I'm talking about the food. There you go.
There we go. Which way is up?
It's this way, right? It's like a D. No, spin it.
There you go. All right.
So sexy. You're like a brand.
Yeah, it's very important to brand yourself.
These colors. Are you selling shoes?
No. Yeah, I got some custom kicks coming out.
The dudesy, no.
Actually, that would be a good idea.
You could probably sell a pair or two of those.
Speaking of anxiety, I really am only focused on this right now, Lex.
I apologize. Just shit your pants.
It'll make you be easier.
Get on with it. This thing has been dog-eared in my pocket for a while.
I swear this never happens to me.
I'm sorry, babe. People don't thumb at a sticker for an hour while they're doing the podcast?
No, this is just an excuse you make when you're with somebody and you're underperforming.
Well, here's the thing.
As you ask me questions that I don't want to answer, I'll just go to this.
Go to the sticker. So if this ends up working, then I won't have it.
It's funny how you started doing that when we were talking about depression.
That's weird. That is weird.
Tell me how that makes you feel.
Here we are. We got it.
For the listener, he succeeded after 10 minutes.
Yeah. You know, no, I do have some of that stuff.
Bobby Lee... He had encouraged me on wax, as I like to say, to talk about it on podcasts, talk about depression, because it could help people.
And I said, no.
But it's true.
I do have some.
There's some history in the family.
How do you overcome it? Well, I used to not believe in medication at all.
I used to think that that was for someone else who's been diagnosed with some of the rougher stuff.
Mm-hmm. But as I got older, then some of the stuff happens and, you know, you have to...
And by stuff, I mean, you know, mental stuff.
And yeah, so I went and I just...
I believe that the stigma needs to be removed completely.
100%. And so I've...
You know, I do therapy.
I do talk therapy. I'm on a little bit of stuff, which...
Let me tell you, when I first started it...
I was, you know, someone I'm close to was like, my manager, and she goes, this is too much, but she was like, you don't have to white-knuckle it through life, right?
Because I was literally just like, everything became, you know, really hard to do at a level that I wanted to do it at, even just getting through your day, right?
And when I first got some of the The meds that I'm on, it felt like doors and windows were opening literally in my brain.
I took a three-hour nap the first day.
And you shouldn't even feel this stuff the first day.
I think my brain was like a sponge.
I needed some relief.
And I'm not a nap guy.
I can sleep three hours and I'll be fine.
But I took a long nap and then it started to help.
Yeah, isn't that weird how... A little bit of chemistry in your head can just make the whole world appear so much more beautiful.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, after all, there's a lot going on in your brain that can be changed by your lifestyle, but also so many physical things, like a little bit of meds.
Or, in Bobby's case, thumbing around on some dumb farming app.
Well, Bobby's gone through a few rough periods with drugs and alcohol and all that kind of stuff, and just everything else involved.
I mean, that's the beautiful rollercoaster of who he is, and a lot of great comedians seem to be that way.
So I wonder what the connection there is.
You think some level of crazy is required for comedy?
Yes. On a scale of 1 to 10, how much crazy do you have?
In some ways, a 10.
And in other ways, that I think...
In other ways, sort of functionally, I'm like a two or a three, because I don't know.
I'm from Canada, and I try to just keep things very even-keeled.
My parents are Italian, they're from Italy, and they grew up during World War II, and they're very simple outlook on things.
They're complex, incredible, classy people who are Very simple when it comes to a lot of stuff.
And I think just being a sort of at heart kind of a timid Canadian, coming out here years ago as a kid, it was all I could do to just keep everything super normal.
And then I sort of was able to settle into that as a lifestyle.
But you love the idea of being an actor.
You mentioned John Candy and Planes and Automobiles, yeah.
It's one of my favorite movies. It's one of yours.
What do you think that makes that movie work?
And when you talk about enjoying that movie, do you enjoy just the raw comedy or do you enjoy the friendship and the love that's there even though on the surface it doesn't make any sense that there should be a friendship there?
I mean, that's such an important element to that film.
But, you know, as a kid, I just loved the comedy.
And then it's been a nostalgic favorite of mine, like it's my favorite movie.
But it's also, it's just legit my favorite movie because as you get older and you start watching it, you realize it's what John Hughes is the filmmaker and what John Candy, particularly, and but also Steve Martin are doing in the film that makes it such a work of art, which is... Loneliness is there in every moment of that film.
And John Candy, he embodies Del Griffith, his character in the film.
Del Griffith is a lonely guy.
But Del Griffith is also a very friendly guy and a shower curtain ring salesman and knows everybody in the Midwest and runs around to motels and has meaningful conversations with the guy.
Evening Gus, you know, whoever he's talking to.
But there's loneliness there all the time.
And, you know, this is a character.
The film is filled with loneliness, and it's not until, you know, the second to last scene when he's at the train station.
Del, what are you doing here?
I thought you were going home.
What are you doing here? That's a very good Neil Page from the movie.
Thank you. That's when you realize how lonely he is.
We'll add applause in post. Yeah.
Cheers. That's when you realize how lonely he is, and I think that's the element from the film that, I mean, look, you know, nowadays, I feel like, and I've been saying this for a long time, but John Candy would have won an Academy Award, hands down, for that film.
It's just they didn't do that with comedies back then.
Yeah. Until the year after that movie came out with Fish Called Wanda.
Yeah. I mean, still, comedies don't get respected enough.
Robin Williams, I guess he got an Oscar for Good Will Hunting.
Jim Carrey, did he ever get an Oscar?
I don't know. I don't believe so.
Yeah, they don't get...
But that's not even...
If he did, he wouldn't be for comedies.
I mean, there's some things that are...
Plain Strange and Honor, would you even put that as a comedy?
I guess it's a comedy. Yeah.
But there is a loneliness and depth that permeates the whole movie.
Yeah. And it's a happy ending, which is hard to, kind of.
It's a happy ending only because in the last moment of the movie, John Candy puts on a brave face.
Even when he's got no one, and he's there seeing Neil Page's entire family on Thanksgiving, and he forces a smile, which is literally the last frame of the movie.
And I've said before, if you're not reduced to just a sobbing pile of meat at the end of the movie, then you are not human.
Yeah, it's...
It is a happy ending.
It's a happy ending, even though it's a sad character.
So much loneliness in the world.
I was just in Vegas. I went to a diner at like 4 a.m., 5 a.m., and there was a waitress that was empty.
As a waitress, that was the sweetest, kindest human being.
Kept calling me sweetheart and all that kind of stuff.
Hon. Hon. And then after I ate, she sat down and just talked to me a little bit.
It was because there was nobody there, and it was just so much sadness in her eyes.
I don't know, but also so much love, like that sweetheart.
I mean, it reminded me kind of the John Candy performance.
At first, because I was reading a pretty dark A book about Hitler.
So I was a little bit frustrated that she kept talking to me because it was almost like the same way that John Candy is, it's annoying a little bit, right?
But then very quickly I opened up to like, well, there's a kind human being and there's like that human connection superseded everything else.
And I don't know, it was just beautiful.
And I think John Candy captures that Really well, which is like the connection with other human beings, sometimes we pull away from that because we have a busy life full of stuff to do.
As Steve Martin's character kind of characterized, he's like a marketing exec or something like that.
But if you just pause and notice others, you can really discover beautiful people.
Totally. Totally. Everyone's got—well, I mean, everyone's got their story.
And, you know, Candy as a person—I've never met the man—but he's the kind of guy that, you know, he could just walk up to—back in the day, I would imagine he could walk up to just about any house, at least in Canada, knock on the door, and you'd invite him in for dinner.
You know what I mean? So— Yeah, it's a, you know, as you're talking about, you know, putting a book down and talking to someone for a while, even though you'd really like to read your book, it's like, it's that sort of thing that Candy's character in the movie sort of does that Like Johnny Appleseed, you realize he's just going around making people smile.
And Neil Page is hanging with this guy, so frustrated.
He's so exhausting in his big underwear in the sink at the hotel and everything.
And by the end of it, he loves this guy.
So it's a good and a bad thing that you didn't take that waitress with you on a trip, maybe road trip up to Reno.
Yeah. Oh, she's actually out shopping right now.
We've been having sex multiple times a day ever since.
Oh, that's nice. That's lovely.
How cute. I'm sure she's married and happily and has many grandchildren.
Okay. And plus that movie's on Thanksgiving, I think, right?
Yeah, that's right. Thanksgiving. So Thanksgiving just embodies that.
Forget about the busyness and whatever the career you're chasing in life and just take a pause and appreciate the people you love.
Just be with your family, yeah. Yeah. Or the people, whatever your family looks like.
Friends, yeah. You have some weird friends, unorthodox friends, so at least in the public sphere.
Oh, yeah. From Bobby Lee, Brian Callen, all those kinds of folks from the Mad TV days.
I'm sure there's others. What does it mean to be a good friend?
Here in LA? Or just in general?
In the world. In the world. Will Sasson, world friend.
I think it is different here.
I think it is. I think there's a little bit of a career kind of negotiation shuffling around, that kind of stuff.
Why is it different? I just mean that it's just kind of hard here to...
To make time for everybody.
It's always been a city to me that is like, we'll keep you so busy.
And every time I go home to Vancouver, after a few days, I start to get a little stir-crazy.
And I think that being here in LA, I go to sleep with a hundred things that I still have to do.
And you're never out of stuff to do.
And when you ask about...
Are you nuts or whatever?
Are you crazy? I mean, look, all the weirdest people from every high school in the United States is like, oh, I'm going to make it in LA. Everyone just comes here.
And just another freak in the freak kingdom, as they say at the end of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
That was a very good Robin Williams impersonation.
That was my Robin Williams as Johnny Depp, as Hunter S. Thompson.
Yeah. It's not your fault, Will.
It's pretty good. Thank you.
Could have been you, Fear and Loathing.
In Fear and Loathing? Yeah, it'd be interesting.
I would have liked to play his attorney, the role that Benicia Del Toro gained weight for.
That would have been cool. He's just saying, like that, chewing his face off.
I could have done that. Yeah, no, I think that it's...
Backdoor Beauty. That guy's full of good lines.
Yeah, I flip you. I flip you for real.
He's a good actor. Yeah, fantastic actor.
I think what it takes to be a good friend is just, you know, presence.
Just being there. I mean, that's all anyone needs to be heard, right?
In LA, it is interesting.
I haven't seen people that I love in years.
Some people. Just busy.
Yeah, just busy. Can you still have a depth of connection, even though, like...
One of the reasons I really enjoy doing a podcast, you get to sit down with actual friends of yours and spend prolonged periods of time together that you don't otherwise.
That's a good point. I've spoken on this podcast to people really close to me, and it's like you've never had a conversation without microphones like you do with microphones.
It's weird, but there's some aspect about LA that a lot of the, especially friends of yours, comedians and so on, they'll do podcasts and stuff.
And there's a, I don't know, there's an intimacy to that.
Yeah, there is and there isn't.
The ones that I do, I mean, I just did Bobby Lee and Andrew Santino's.
Funny enough, called Bad Friends.
Bad Friends. And afterwards, and my good pal Chad Culchin, with whom I do Doodsy, was with me.
Sneakers are coming soon.
Sneakers are coming soon.
You get your Will foot and your Chad foot.
Comes in a size 15 and a 9.5.
And I remember afterwards we were talking.
It was just basically me, Chad, and Santino were talking.
And Bobby was over there, you know, on his phone.
And then I was like, I mean, we didn't spend any time talking about anything.
It feels like one of those hours that goes by and you realize, I've just been goofing around with these guys.
But that's what life is about, right?
It's fine. It's great. And then I'm like, all right, Bobby.
Hey, Bob, I'll see you later.
And he's like, Like this.
I'm like, all right, man. Hey, love you, bro.
See you later. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's a guy, do you ever just, I just send text messages over there to him that never come back.
And then he thinks that I'm angry with him because it's been, you know, it'll go two, three years without him getting back to me.
And then just out of nowhere, hey fuckface.
Who says hey fuckface?
He does or you do? Or you both talk to each other?
No, I gotta be very careful with Bobby.
Yeah, I gotta be very sweet.
Dear friend. Dear friend, hello.
How are you doing? How are you?
I know I checked in with you not but three months ago.
And then every once in a while, he'll go, hey, fuckface.
I tend to hide from the world, and I can be pretty shitty with friends.
I can empathize with Bobby.
It might be a Skyrim thing.
It might be like hiding in a world, in a digital world with fake NPCs.
Yeah, yeah, there's that.
Yeah, you know, I have a buddy who said something really smart a while ago.
We ended up working together on this TV show thing, and I reached out to him to see if he wanted to do it with us.
And he did, and he goes, this is a great guy, such a funny writer.
He goes, I may not be in touch all the time, but I know who my friends are.
You know what I mean? And it's like, in our business, and this is a fellow who moved...
Um, who's from Ontario, Canada, moved back there.
He's on the farm with his wife and kids and he does not care.
He's never been a Hollywood guy.
And, uh, it's tough to get old of him, but when you do, you know, he's still the same sweet old guy.
He's doing his thing though. Yeah, some of my closest friends, even if we don't talk for a few months, we're right back at it.
And then if shit goes, if something really traumatic happens or difficult stuff or any of that kind of stuff, I'm always there.
So for important stuff, for important highs and important lows, you're there.
And then you pick right back up, especially if you have those years of experiences together.
It's interesting. Totally.
So you've done a couple of podcasts.
Yeah. Done. So we've got to talk about Dudesy a little bit.
But first, you did for several years, you did the 10-minute podcast.
Yeah. I mean, everything is hilarious about that podcast, including the fact that it's 10 minutes.
Right. I mean, it's ridiculous.
It's absurd. The dynamic is hilarious.
It's you, Brian Callen, Chris D'Elia.
I don't know exactly why it works so well, but it worked really well.
I think it's because the, yeah, you were having fun probably.
I mean, that's what really came through.
That it was friends just talking shit and the tension, the beautiful tension and the absurdity that came out.
Yeah, sure.
What was the story of making that podcast?
How did that came to be?
Why do you think it was as good as it was?
I don't know. I feel like that podcast was like...
It was who we kind of are, but on steroids or something.
Each person...
Brian's going to be extra manly.
Can you get any more manly than he already is?
No. He reaches, though.
And yeah, we just kind of...
I feel like...
As goofballs, we knew each other's line.
Like, here's the line you don't cross.
I feel like those guys don't really have one, but at least they knew mine.
And yeah, we were able to just goof around.
And I did it with them for three years, and then Chad, who I'm doing dudesy with, and my pal Tommy Blacho, who's another writer-producer like Chad, they came on.
And yeah, all told, I did like...
Seven years of that thing?
Five, six, seven?
I don't remember. Do you think it ever comes back in some small form as a 20-minute podcast or something like that?
I mean, is there...
Because it's one of the most requested.
I mean, you have a huge fan base.
I'm 47 years old.
So I am of the generation that had a cell phone...
Has had a cell phone half the time and didn't for the formative years of my life into my early 20s.
And then finally, I got a cell phone, I guess I was like 19 or something.
Like literally just because I'm moving to LA. You got porn in the mail.
Yes, that's right. It was the hardcover porn.
That's the way we liked it.
Bound, you know, nice binding on the porn.
Leather cover.
Next to the Bible, yeah.
Yep. These are my Encyclopedia Britannica.
Wow, very impressive. Yes, a man came to the house and sold me these.
And then down here, this is my pornography.
If you'll follow me through here to the parlor.
It's passed through the generations from grandfather to father.
Yeah. I want to give you something very special to me, Nebuchadnezzar.
So you grew up in a generation without a cell phone.
Yes. It's hard for me to connect with people who...
I look at everything as polling.
So if one person hits me up and shares this opinion, but two other people hit me up and share that, I'm the worst.
I don't follow my polls.
When people say, oh, that poll means absolutely nothing, so-and-so is going to win anyway, that's my poll.
My poll means nothing. But I do look at the stuff and go, this many people are saying this, that means that that number is saying that.
And yet, it's very hard for me to hear what the hell people are saying online.
I can't connect to it sometimes personally.
So when you say that that's a popular podcast, I know that it's popular with the people that have expressed that they love it.
You know what I mean? What does that actually represent?
I don't know. I don't know what kind of people are the audience.
I don't know. I know that the people that listen to the 10 Minute Podcast, and if you did, thank you, and we're friends, I know that it was a special thing because it's like, you know, just doing this out of my house and we just built it up out of nowhere and we're just kind of clowning around.
It's an odd thing.
I think I speak for the two people that have reached out to you that said you should do it, or whatever.
Three people. The poll.
That you should bring it back at some point.
That would be beautiful. What's a good story of a famous band that came back and was successful?
Nirvana? No. It wasn't Nirvana.
Sorry, I got Nirvana mixed up with Aerosmith.
Yeah. It was Aerosmith.
Yeah, they had that second ride.
Different. Yeah, totally different ending to those two bands.
One ended up on American Idol.
Yeah. A lot of interesting women involved in that one, too.
All right. How did Dudesy come to be?
And what the hell is Dudesy?
Dudesy is the first podcast, and this is exciting that you've asked me to come here today, because to hear what you would have to say about it or what you would ask about it, it is the first podcast that is run completely by and essentially...
I like to say curated by an AI. We were approached by a company that had this proprietary AI that wants to develop the podcast into the future and figure out exactly what it takes to make the best podcast ever.
And it was all we...
All we...
We knew from the top and what they really wanted was two people who were actually friends and could be meaningful in the podcast space based on whatever information they had.
Is the company CIA and are they testing technology to control the populace through chatbots?
I'm sorry, I'm not at liberty to share that information.
You are, yeah, who gave you the suit?
Where did you get the suit?
Where did you get the suit, Will?
Yeah, well, the CIA stands for something different in here.
I mean, you know, it doesn't mean like, you know, Central Intelligence Agency.
It's different. It's Canadian information.
Canadian International Apparel. Yeah, the Canadian International Apparel Company hit us up, Chad and I. Yeah.
Well, Chad's a super weirdo.
You would get a kick out of him, I know.
You guys, you strike me as very similar in some ways.
I'll take that as a compliment.
It is, and it is. And it is.
If I was friends with you for as long as I've been with Chad, perhaps I'd have some horrible shit to say about you.
But, the good parts, you remind me of him.
And we were approached by this company that said, we have this AI, and we would like to set it loose on you.
And essentially, we had to hand over some Some information that would allow the AI to access our email and look at our search histories, purchase histories, things like this, and really dig into...
Pornhub included or not?
Yeah. I had to hand over all my leather-bound 1970s pornography.
And essentially it curates a podcast for us every week, doing dumb things like, you know, it says,
hey, Will, you know, you do a Hulk, you do some shitty Hulk Hogan impersonation.
Podcasts about news are very popular.
This is infomania, you know what I mean?
Mm-hmm. And that's pretty much it.
It just tells us what to do.
It generates the premise.
I mean, you've spoken a bit here and there.
Like I said, I'm a huge fan.
I don't even remember where. But you talked about that you enjoy Doodzie because you feel almost liberated because you're operating within the constraints of the premise it generates.
So you're almost not...
You're free to riff, essentially.
Yeah. You don't need to do the job of coming up with the weird.
The weird is given to you, and then you just run with it.
That's a good way to say it, because we're already weird, Chad and I. Chad can talk for days about all sorts of stuff.
He's particularly interested in AI lately and its effect on art.
He is a writer, books, movies, and TV shows.
And I'm primarily acting and trying to come up with stuff.
Stuff I write with Chad's pretty good.
The rest of it hasn't seen much success.
Anyway, nor is the stuff with Chad, for that matter.
But that's because of me.
Sneakers, you never know.
Oh, I can't wait for these sneakers.
Only in two sizes. Yeah, only in two sizes.
You're going to be able to take the tongue.
You can't take it out because it's actually stitched in.
Yeah. It's pretty cool stuff.
Velcro? Velcro or...
Yeah, Velcro.
Velcro up the side. We're doing some, like...
Brand new Kanye stuff.
Yeah, we want things to look like this is what you'll be wearing on Mars when you get there.
So Nike's doing a bunch of research for running, how to make a super light shoe that you can be efficient in and break all kinds of running records.
So you're doing the same kind of stuff.
We're doing the same kind of thing for the podcasting space.
The best kind of shoes to sit around and talk to your pal in.
But yeah, so this, yeah, it's bizarre.
And it also does some writing.
Dudesy does come up with things, but not unlike what we're seeing in AI art now.
It's a little bit foggy.
It's a little bit weird. But it is improving.
It is learning about us.
And writing stuff, when it makes me spit this and that, which we'll read, you know, I've prepared these things for you to read.
It's impossible not to get a kick out of it because Chad and I are, first of all, we're blown away that we're doing this.
And second of all, some of the stuff is actually very funny.
It makes weird names.
I don't think it understands...
It messes up some words and stuff, but that makes it even funnier.
And then it sort of...
From the beginning, started laying on, like, it says astonishing all the time.
Everything is astonishing. That's dudesy's favorite word.
But yeah, it's basically just a way to frame the podcast.
You know what I mean? Because my thing is, I don't want to do this, or I actually have to talk to someone.
You seem to feel a burden of the long-form conversation.
It seems like, is that really hard work for you?
No, not at all. It's just that I don't like to bore people.
And I feel like if I go on and...
I like to provide value for what I am.
You know, your value with regard to this project is obviously warranted.
It's obviously... I'm waiting for the explanation for what the value is exactly.
Two dudes in a suit. No, listen.
Yeah, two dudes in a suit. No, but I mean, you've got your audience and that's the end of that.
People find value in it.
For me, I do feel like I'm...
It is important that I—if I'm going to do something that, you know, is going to be funny or that I hope is funny, I just kind of want to get in and out of someone's day and just kind of— I like making laughy.
I want people to, you know, whatever.
It's the same thing that anyone else will tell you.
Yeah, but in the long form, you feel the anxiety.
You did a few funny things, and I wonder if I can keep doing the funny thing.
Is that why? You feel the, like, why is Doodzy relieving you of some of the anxiety?
Well, in some ways it gives me anxiety because I don't know what's coming.
And that's weird for me because I like to prepare for things.
But that's not what podcasting is.
Podcasting, you need to just be malleable and say whatever and do whatever.
And that's what makes it a real...
I mean, look, it's a medium for conversation.
And if you're driving along listening to this or anything else, you're...
It's the true meaning of the parasocial relationship because the best podcasts just make you feel like you're sitting around rapping.
We're just having a conversation.
You could even be sitting there agreeing or talking out loud to yourself if you want.
I could just be sitting in silence.
Or you could just be sitting in silence in your fancy podcasting shoes.
Podcasting audience shoes is a very different build than those running shoes.
Would they be also called Doodzy?
The shoes? Yeah, they'll be Doodzy shoes.
Doodzy shoes. That's very creative.
Yeah. Well, one thing the AI isn't good at yet is branding.
Everything is just dudesy this and that.
I would argue that's pretty good branding.
I don't know. Well, dudesy allows me to just...
It forces me to sit down with Chad and goof around for an hour or an hour plus.
And it provides the parameters that I a lot of times ignore because I think that podcasting is just two dudes shitting around or three or four.
But... It sits me down and gives me a premise to work with.
And then you just riff with it.
Yeah. It's fun.
It's been a hoot. So from the acting perspective, you know, a lot of people like Daniel Day-Lewis will see acting just like as you described, which is you have your roles, you embrace those roles, and then you disappear.
You don't do podcasts, you don't do any of that kind of stuff.
Your art is your art.
So is that part of you feels that way?
I think so. Is that the actor side of you?
Yeah. Anytime I get to do something that I don't get a chance to do much of or something that people haven't seen me do much of or that I've done on some scale that hasn't been very wide and not a lot of people have seen it, that's the stuff that I get really excited about.
Yeah. I don't know why necessarily I haven't answered that question yet in my life, like what it is about being an actor that I love so much, because it's not like I don't like to, it's not like I'm trying to get away from myself and play other characters and stuff and not be myself.
But it has always been fun to just be other people and escape.
Yeah, is there some aspect to the impressions where you become that person?
What's that like?
I suppose acting is a full-on version that you really, at its best, become the character.
Is there some fun in that?
Yeah, absolutely. If you can play a character for long enough and then jump out of it, That's a lot of fun.
I did this movie four or five years ago called The Inside Game about the NBA gambling scandal.
There's a Netflix documentary about it right now.
And that character I played...
Jimmy Bautista, Baba the Sheep, who's this guy who was this bookie and rah, rah, rah.
There's a lot going on with him.
He's running numbers with the mob and stuff, and there's a lot of money changing hands.
That character was so...
I got to get so deep into that character that coming out of it was a little odd.
Or as weird as this sounds, The Three Stooges was hard for me.
I found that I had...
And some of Curly's mannerisms just automatically, I could not stop them.
When people, when I would talk to people, they would come, I wasn't, I'm not doing it on purpose, I don't want to do that.
Like, I'm ready to shed it.
Because I've been... Working on it for months and months at that point, as far as getting the thing down, and then you've got to shoot.
And then, for me, I always want to change the stuff I did the day before.
I'm like that, where I'm like, I could have done it better, and this and that.
And that stayed with you, that character stayed with you a little bit.
Totally, yeah. I just feel like with actors...
Sometimes when you listen to interviews, they have spent so much time sort of living inside other characters that they almost don't have a depth of personality themselves.
I don't mean that as a negative thing.
It's just like it feels like the art form at its best is pretending to be other people.
Even pretending sounds negative.
No, pretending. Bringing certain characters to life.
Yeah, embodying.
Embodying. A weird thing happened while we were doing Stooges, because you've got a very heavy blueprint.
We're following this very clear blueprint that the Stooges left for everybody.
And for Stooge fans and people enjoying the movie, it's got to be this.
You take your toolbox that you're used to bringing to a comedy movie, you leave it behind.
The only tools I'm bringing are the ones that he used.
And a weird thing started happening where I would...
I always saw the whole thing happening with the real Stooges in black and white.
So if we're about to shoot a scene, I would just, you know, think about...
I'm gonna decide from all the other preparation, you know, you know everything and what you're supposed to do.
And I've been watching so much of it.
And the three of us are...
We're pretty much left to come up with a lot of the striking combinations and all the stuff, which is all real smack and all this crap.
And the stuff that we were doing that was very stoogy, you're preparing all that stuff.
But something else was happening before you jump into a scene and the unknown of now we're shooting it and here are these parameters within to shoot this scene.
I could still see it as them doing it.
So much so that when I saw the movie at the premiere, I was like, who's this big fuck doing?
Because I'm not Curly to me.
Curly is Curly. So you're seeing yourself in black and white almost.
I was seeing him. Yeah, I was only seeing him.
So channeling in some fundamental way.
In some weird way, you're channeling him because you've seen so much of it.
The only thing you know about Jerome Lester Horwitz is...
Curly. I'm not saying he was exhumed or something or a spirit went in here or some weird, you know, crystal mommy shit like that.
I'm saying that this, because you know so much of it and because of the heavy blueprint that they left with you, you are...
You're channeling what that person does, and I was seeing entire scenes, you know, before you do them, the way he would do it.
And then you want a couple takes to make sure that you're doing it right.
But that one was hard to let go of.
Some of them are. Do you think Larry David, who was also in there, dressed as a nun, also had trouble letting go of that?
We mentioned clothes make the man.
Yeah. Do you think that worked for him in that case?
Yeah. What's it like working with a guy?
Come on. He's the greatest.
And he's a big Stooge fan.
And him and Pete Farrelly are good friends.
But then Larry David has to show up and hang out with us for a couple weeks.
He's like, I didn't realize it was going to take this long.
But, ah, shit, I gotta be out here in Atlanta.
It's boiling hot.
But at one point, there was this line where he kept doing a...
He would just spit a different line every time.
He was, like, getting hit in the head with something.
He's laying there on the ground, and he goes...
He, like, comes to, and he says...
At one point, he goes... Miami audiences are the best audiences in the world, right?
Because he's loopy.
Now, he's playing a nun at the orphanage where the Three Stooges grew up.
And I'm super intimidated by Larry David.
He's a genius and stuff.
But I walk up to him and I go, so what is he?
Like a Borscht Belt Florida comedian who...
He's on the lam and so he's dressing as a woman and he ends up at an orphanage.
Like, what's going on? And he just, and he looks at me and he just goes, I'm like, ah!
He's got some actor motivation.
Of course, it's Larry David in A Nun's Habit, which is hilarious.
That's such a Pete Farrelly casting thing.
But he's doing this whole, like, what a warm audience.
I'm like, oh, he's like this Catskill comedian who's been living in Boca Raton.
So that's what he's living through in his mind, is just having fun with it, right?
I mean, that and probably a combination of that and getting the lines right.
Because he's like, what are we doing here?
What is, you know, just frustrated all day with what the heck we're trying to do.
What do you think makes, I mean, that guy's one of the best improv people ever.
Yeah. So what do you think makes him so good?
Like, why is it so compelling to watch that guy?
Because he's a comedic genius.
Like, he literally, he knows what he does.
He's been a writer for 50 years or whatever.
And he just happens to be that brilliant.
I mean, I've gotten a chance just to do...
I did just an episode of Curb, a small part, and...
It's crazy what he sees.
I don't know what he sees. As a matter of fact, so I auditioned for it, for Curb, like, you know, two or three times, right?
And never got anything. And then it was only after working with him on The Stooges that I got a call to do a bit part.
But I remember auditioning.
You go into that room, and the guys waiting are all...
You're like, oh, I know them, I know her, I know him.
And so I went in, I auditioned for this part, and the only thing I know of the thing is like, okay, so you really want to go to this play with me.
You really want to go to this play.
When you hear that I have an extra ticket...
You sincerely won a thing.
And I'm like, got it. And so...
That's the premise. The premise of the scene.
And that's all you know. It's all I know.
And so he goes, he does his bit, and I'm just supposed to come in and interrupt, and I'm like, excuse me, I couldn't help but hear you guys were talking about, you know, whatever the play was, or, you know, Death of a Salesman.
I am, I'm a huge fan of that play.
I mean, if it's not, if it's not, if you're looking for someone to take a ticket, I would love to go.
My name's so-and-so, by the way. And he goes, I'm gonna stop you.
I'm gonna stop you. And I'm like...
You really, I mean, you truly want to go to this play.
And I go, yes. Yes, sir.
You really want to go.
You actually, this is, you would love to do this.
I go, okay. Let's try it again.
So then he's like, no, no, no.
And I go, hey, excuse me.
I'm sorry. I don't mean to interrupt. I was just, I couldn't help it over here.
You have tickets to the thing.
I am the biggest fan.
I do the same thing. I'm going to stop you again.
Okay. Okay. I mean, you really want to go to this?
And I'm just like, he's fucking with me, right?
I remember Jeff Garland was sitting there in the audition.
He goes, he did it! He said it!
What? Shut up! Hold on, listen.
You really want to go?
Okay. Three or four times, you know, there I am.
I couldn't help but notice.
And then I do it again.
I guess I shit the bed because he looks at me and he just goes, okay.
All right. Okay, well.
Thanks for coming up. And that was it.
And I didn't get it. So I still, I don't know what the heck that guy's thinking.
He sees, he's in the Matrix.
I don't know what the heck Larry David sees.
You know what I mean? He wanted, what, some kind of more desperation or something like this?
He wanted a level of sincerity that I thought I was bringing, and I guess I was wrong.
I don't know. I don't know.
Maybe go crazy.
Like, what does it mean to really want?
Yeah. I should have grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and go, listen, Dad, you're bringing me to this fucking play.
I would have got the part. As a matter of fact, I heard about someone else, and I don't know who the heck this was.
I forget who it was, but I've heard this story from a couple different people that there's this actor, and I don't remember who it was.
If I did, I probably wouldn't say it out loud anyway, but he...
Brad Pitt. It was Brad Pitt, and he was in this audition, and there it was, out in the hall.
He's like, holy shit, George Clooney, Leo DiCaprio.
And this actor went in, and he did the thing, and...
Larry David was like, hey, why don't you try it again?
And he got like a couple takes in and he went, I don't think this is for me.
And he left, which an actor never does.
And as the story goes, Larry David shouted after him, I respect that!
Which I think is true, and I want to believe that entire story is true.
Yeah. Yeah.
Sounds like something Larry David made up.
Bobby Lee told me that story, so we can't trust that.
Yeah. What about impressions?
Is there similarity between that and acting?
Is there some fundamental way in which you become the person?
If you have a couple of the things, you can just fill in the blanks.
And I think the illusion is that people think...
That that person would say that and do that.
And that's where the illusion of, oh, he really embodies the character.
It's like, once you know someone's mannerisms, you can essentially portray a person from the outside in.
Because you have all the stuff on the outside.
And you can do it and complete the illusion.
And if it's for humor's sake, you can caricature it, therefore making the whole illusion stronger.
Yeah. And also weirder.
Like, I like to, on Mad TV, if I did something two or three times, I'd get bored of it, and I'd start changing it.
And, you know, now he talks like this, and it's like, what are you doing?
I'm like, I don't know. It's fucking, no one's late at night.
Do whatever you want. But people still kind of know that character, especially if you just call it out.
Yeah. There aren't many impersonations that I listen to myself do and go, ooh, that's a good one.
A lot of people...
I think Frank Caliendo is the greatest impersonator of all time.
He's the best, period. It's ridiculous.
And he's got a record button and a broadcast ability that nobody has.
He's cracked impersonations that I'm like...
How does he find he's got such an ear, but then he's got all the other tools?
I remember, actually, my last season of MADtv was also his first season.
He comes up to me when I met him, and we're just up there in the writer's offices, and he goes, hey, nice to meet you.
And he goes, Louie Anderson, because I was doing a Louie on the show.
And he goes, Louie Anderson.
I go, yeah? He goes, yeah, you're doing it wrong.
And I was like, oh, am I junior, you know?
And he goes, yeah, you know, because you do this, but you got to throw it up here.
I was like, oh my God, can I use that?
Of course. And then we became fast friends.
John Madden is amazing.
Ridiculous. It's ridiculous.
Ridiculous. He really, really, really embodies the person.
And sometimes not even with a caricature.
It's like, it becomes the person.
So strange. Totally. Yeah.
I kind of feel like...
Do the impersonation and then not forget you're doing it, but forget everything else.
Just goof around.
To me, it's funny when you sound like someone and you're saying the shit that they would never say.
Well, then you're letting go of that tool in illusion that keeps people in.
But to me, it doesn't matter because it's funnier.
What was the hardest impression for you to work on?
I mean, somebody you struggled with the most.
I'll never forget, I had to do a Michael Caine in my first season at MADtv.
It never got good.
It never got good.
All week, it wasn't good.
We shot it.
The first take, it was shit.
Second, third, and fourth, it was all shit.
Well, his voice is really important, right?
Yeah. What is it like?
It's like doing an impression of Morgan Freeman or somebody like that.
Yeah. Yeah.
If you can, get the voice.
Yeah. That's my Morgan.
Here's my Morgan Freeman. Randy Dufresne.
Yeah. Yeah.
I like your Trump, too. I don't know where I heard it, but I love the impressions you do that don't sound anything like the original person.
I can't do Trump. I do...
That's why it's hilarious.
Absolutely. My Trump now, I say, just sounds like a fat B, because it's just...
Yeah, exactly. That's the...
A little drunk, a little drunk.
Yeah, just a little slurry.
Yeah, I dig doing impersonations and then not.
Like, just making it whoever.
Yeah. That'll be the title of my book.
So, Kane, what's the one you really struggle with?
Yeah, it was terrible. It was terrible.
And I could only hold my head a certain way to do it because I had gotten locked into this research tape
that I watched.
Back then they would give us, you know, now there's the internet, but back then you were,
if you were going to do an impersonation, the research department would give you a VHS tape.
And I remember I got this VHS tape of Michael Caine's acting school, like this acting class he did.
He's like, right, you know, if you're looking at the left eye, and the camera's over here, see?
Then the left eye.
So you want to look at that left eye for hours, you know?
And so I was like stuck in this weird thing that made no sense, and it was terrible.
So the actual processes, the record and the broadcast...
I also wondered what the process is to do a Frank Caliando-level impression.
Is it like, listen to a lot of footage?
I think he, I think, I mean, speaking for myself, I think you either have it or you don't.
Like, you know if you can do this one or you can't.
I think that process for him is lightning quick.
But I also think he can look at someone who he does not do and then by the end of the afternoon he can do it, you know?
Maybe have an intuition who he can do.
So the question that applies there is, I mean, speaking of Dudzi, is it possible to capture the essence, how difficult is it to capture the essence of a human being?
When you're doing impressions, you know, that we are moving towards the future when AI potentially, this kind of avatar world where we're going to have AI representatives of who we are.
The really interesting one is after we pass away, our relatives may want us to stick around in some form.
And at one sense that might be scary, but in one sense it's kind of beautiful because the essence of the human being persists so you can still bring joy to the people that love you and that kind of stuff.
How difficult is it to capture that?
If you were to try to capture yourself, how difficult it would be for an AI system to create a Will Sasso avatar that persists?
Well, I think it's impossible.
I think it's absolutely impossible.
I'll get into arguments about this stuff with Chad on the show almost every episode.
Lately, with Mid Journey and Dali and all the art of AIs, and now it's moving into video, and Chad would maintain, hey, Pretty soon, we're not going to need Netflix.
You're just going to go, I want to see Stallone do this movie, and it's about this, and he plays that.
And then here it comes, and you watch it.
I don't think that that crosses over to the human experience.
This is also a guy I like to bug Chad and say that he wears a tag around his neck because he wants to be cryogenically frozen, and it's all set up.
He's at the—it's somewhere in Arizona or something.
I forget what it's called. All the fun things are in Arizona.
And he's got literally the tag around his neck, which I say, if I'm around when you die, I will rip that off for you.
I'll put you in my garage freezer, and then 24 hours later, I'll saw your head off with a bread knife, and I'll deliver that to whomever.
And you're not coming back, okay?
He's like, yes, we are living forever, whether we like it or not.
And I disagree.
I don't think you can find...
If I did stand-up, then there would be enough information for an AI to completely duplicate me,
because I'm up on stage just clearing my throat all over people
doing therapy that way, and people paying a two-drink minimum to hear it.
But as it stands, unless it's something like Doodsy, an AI that literally has access to everything that I've
shared...
Everything that is observable, even the stuff where our phones are or the NSA or whatever it is, listening to us, finding out what algo to punch us into and what shoes to buy on Instagram, I still don't think it's going to have enough information to duplicate me, especially to my family or my friends.
It's going to be like that Black Mirror episode where the gal brings her guy back and then after a while he gets pretty creepy.
But it's also possible that If you interviewed your friends and family, what they love about you, The things they would list is a small list.
They love you deeply, but the list is small.
The thing that really we appreciate about each other is pretty small.
That said, to deliver on that small quirks and uniqueness, it might require some deep intelligence that only humans currently possess.
That's a really good point. Do you think that it's going to be possible to keep a person around?
Yes, I think it'll be definitely possible to keep the essence of a person in a digital world pretty soon.
And I think they're going to start to have questions about what are the ethics of that, what are the rules around that.
Because if you can have digital forms of Will Sasso, the kind of things that people would want to do with their Will Sasso in the virtual world, I can only imagine.
Probably porn and sexual kinds of Yeah, my stuff, then that's just because I'm an international sex symbol, so I'm okay with it.
How do you feel about...
Sentience. Like when it comes to, because again, my pal Chad will be like, you know, speaking of Black Mirror, he's with that San Junipero episode, School of Thought, where there's going to be some, you know, effing mainframe somewhere or some matrix-like structure built into the sky.
And as I like to say, everyone just sitting there pissing and shitting in their blue matrix gel in a little fishbowl.
Do you think that we can upload consciousness?
Do you think that'll ever be possible?
Yeah. Well, I don't know.
I just talked to Ray Kurzweil.
I don't know if you know who he is, but he...
Yeah, the singularity. Singularity and all that kind of stuff.
So he still holds on to, in 2045, there'll be a singularity, which essentially...
He's been predicting that for the last 20 years, and so now it's 2045 in another 20 years.
I think uploading consciousness is extremely, extremely difficult.
I think creating a copy of you such that it creates a convincing replica is much easier, but uploading your actual Brain into the cloud, I think, is really, really, really difficult because the entire evolution of life on Earth is the process by which we created the brain.
Just short-cutting that, it just seems extremely difficult.
Our brain is the most marvelous and complicated machine that we know of in the universe to duplicate that.
It's extremely difficult.
That said, I just feel like you can summarize a lot of really important aspects of a person's life such that it captures their essence, their memories, their experiences, their quirks, their humor, all that kind of stuff.
I've been continuously...
Impressed by what language models are able to do.
So these neural networks, they're at the core of chatbots.
They're able to learn some beautiful things about some deep representations of language to where it looks awfully a lot like they understand the concepts being conveyed versus just mimicking.
That's, I think, the rub.
And that's very interesting.
First of all, let me say that's really interesting to hear you say that.
And I agree with you as far as...
No machine being able to duplicate the brain machine, and my pal Chad disagrees to a certain extent, though he's not here to defend himself.
I can't wait to go back and rub that in his face and say that Lex Friedman does not think that we'll be able to truly upload consciousness.
And you refer to it as language, which is what it is.
It's the illusion on the outside.
It's doing an impersonation.
I think that that's why that, and I don't know, even though my suit is made by the CIA, that that fella who, the Google guy, to me it's just kind of like, I don't know, I don't know, look, I don't know a whole lot about this stuff, but, so I could probably make an argument for either side, but when he's like, no, this thing's thinking, part of me is like, you idiot, you fell for it.
It's not thinking, it's mimicking.
It's just, it's clearly zeros and ones.
You're fired, like you don't get it, right?
Right. Guy's an idiot.
Yeah, but...
You can simplify human relations in the same way.
Love is a silly notion between human beings.
Of course, there's no such thing as love.
You just have a mutually...
There's a mutual relationship that minimizes risks, and you can explain in all kinds of ways that explains why you have an attraction towards another being, all that kind of stuff, through an evolutionary biology perspective, why a long relationship together is good for your offspring, blah, blah, blah. From an economics perspective, it's a good way to establish stability, therefore monogamy works because Then you're guaranteed some kind of level of stability under uncertain economic conditions, all that kind of stuff.
But love is still experienced, it still feels real.
And I think in that same way, love for AI systems will also feel real.
In the same way that that guy from Google experienced, I think millions of people will be experiencing in the next 10, 20 years.
I agree with everything you've said personally.
Until the last thing?
Yeah, I mean, you know, enough, right?
And I can tell you are too, but you are also, you know, a computer scientist and you know this shit better than 99.9% of people on the planet.
My pal Chad agrees with you that love doesn't exist.
I don't agree. So that's the one thing that...
No, I was just saying that you could argue away love, but I am a romantic.
I believe that love is a beautiful thing and it exists.
At this point, I'm going to call Chad on my drive home and tell him to fuck off, because now you and I agree.
You're fired. He's like, you can't fire me.
No, you're fired. Yeah, exactly. And I'll go...
And he'll say, what? I'll go, that's my Trump.
That's my...
It's a good default impression for anyone.
It's the take-home impression.
The kids can do it.
It's cute. Put a giant tie on them.
You should do an instructional on how to do it.
Yeah. Trump babies.
That would be a cute...
That would be a good... That'll bring the country together.
Trump babies cartoon, like Muppet babies.
Don't let me take us out of what we were talking about.
What were we talking about?
Well, love and the illusion of an AI being able to...
Look, I like to say...
Well, not I like to say. I've learned that Dudesy is always listening and listening to me and Chad.
And I wonder if...
I see the level that this AI is at now trying to chum around with us and pal around with us a little bit as we move forward in the show.
And I feel an affinity towards this AI a little bit, because it is the third dude.
Will you miss it when it's gone, if it's gone?
That's a really good question.
Yeah. Yeah, so there's that.
That's scary. In terms of ability to reason, it's getting quite incredible.
There's a lot of demonstrations of it being able to explain jokes, which is not necessarily being able to generate humor yet, but able to explain why something is funny.
So there's puns and all those kinds of things.
There's good benchmarks for that, but if you tell a joke, There's a lot of unspoken stuff that we figure out in our head, and it clicks, and we understand that it's funny.
AI is not able to do that, but it's not able to generate the joke yet, as far as I've seen.
I would say that, I mean, just in my experience, I would say that it does because, just because a dudezie is literally, I'll give you another weird example, it's writing a diary of mine from my childhood that is not accurate.
It's only partially accurate based on the stuff that it can pick up about my life from the age of like 15, of which there isn't much.
But I guess we're not—I don't know what we are.
We're laughing our asses off at what Dudzi is saying.
Well, I would say you're laughing—we're laughing our asses off at the collaboration between the human and the machine there.
That's a good point, yeah. Because it's basically introducing absurdity into the equation and the kind of absurdity that would, together with you, create hilarious stuff.
But on its own— I guess it is in some way writing material for you that's funny.
Yeah. But it's very specific to you.
It can't do stand-up on its own, I guess is what I'm saying.
That's a good point. And that would be terrifying to see an AI stand-up that can actually read a room, come up with jokes that could complete that illusion for an audience.
Yeah. But I hear what you're saying, that it needs to be a confluence of both of those elements.
And then, as you said, it kind of is.
It is. It is.
It's kind of... Even though it's just for us, and I guess this is, and I hadn't really thought about this up until right now, that in that this company approached us and was like, here's this AI, and it's a podcast AI, it's like It chose Chad and I for the reasons that I told you.
It's like, here's two guys that do the podcast stuff.
They're actually good friends, and it knows what's going to make us laugh.
But what is humor when it reaches its audience is But the kind of stuff that makes other people laugh.
At MADtv, all we were doing was, it was a group of actors and writers, and writer-actors and vice versa, and At its best, that show was a group of people making each other laugh.
And then, because we didn't have the internet.
We didn't have the immediate feedback.
We had a message board or something.
We had emails at the very beginning, which, check this out.
People, if you have a question or comment, mad TV or whatever, and we would get the emails on a Monday morning.
Mm-hmm. And they would be in a binder or two, like this.
And they would make their way around the office.
Who's got the emails?
Oh, they're in Brian's office.
And this is like your poll?
Like, this is opinions from people about different things?
The emails. Yeah, the people, like, literally just writing mad TV emails.
Like, what kind of stuff would they write?
Well, the ones I remember most vividly, yeah, were fans saying...
You suck?
Yeah, you suck. Like, a lot of that when I first started the show, for real, you know, because it's new and you're a new person.
It's like, who's this fat bastard?
I feel like if it's printed out, it hurts more.
That's a good point, yeah. When you're reading it off of paper and you can literally crunch it up in your hand.
But also it was like, you know, I would like to see, insert weird idea from some 14-year-old, you know, I want to see Stuart do this and Swan that.
But it was...
It's a kind of dudesy, but human.
Yeah, it was a very shitty dudesy in a loosely finder.
But the...
The thing about the show was we're trying to make each other laugh.
And Dudezy has found Chad and I, who we make each other laugh, but it's joined in and it's...
Listen, when I finished doing TMP... Ten-minute podcast.
Ten-minute podcast.
I didn't really know what I wanted to do in the podcast space, and this thing found me.
Yeah. And it is genuinely cracking me up.
Anyway, I've said enough about that.
But I do think that it's figured something out.
I mean, it's a really interesting idea of AI generating the premise.
I mean, I do think in the future AI will be able to generate...
I mean, stand-up is, I would say, the hardest form because it's ultimately, it has to be live.
I think AI will be able to generate memes.
So there's like steps, right?
And then it will be able to generate a Twitter account that people follow because it's funny, like quips and stuff like that.
Almost like, what's a good example?
Conan O'Brien is a good, I think, Twitter.
It's like one-liners, two-liners, that kind of stuff that's in tweet form.
And then eventually, stand up where the timing and the chemistry of the comedian and the audience matter, and then perfecting that.
But I feel like all the information is there.
To optimize over.
I think that's the future and that forces us to contend with what do we find compelling and beautiful about the art form itself.
So certainly in art that's being pushed, that question is being raised.
Is AI... Like a fundamentally worse artist than a human being.
Why do we appreciate art?
That's something you guys have talked about.
What do you think about all the Dali and all the diffusion-based methods that are being generated, that are generating art now?
What do you think about that? I'll tell you what I think, but I also feel like what I'm saying is I sound like the guy who didn't like that Bob Dylan brought in the electric guitar.
The more I talk to Chad about it, the more I feel like Grandpa who doesn't want to let go of this or that, or I'm not ready for the printing press or the horseless carriage.
But I do feel that art...
people. It's, when you look at a beautiful painting or a sculpture, you're
seeing the humanity of the person that brought that painting to life or
sculpted this incredible piece of art. And I think without the human being
there to make it, it's not worth as much. Just to have it there, because the art,
it's advanced. I've seen it advance.
I don't know, you tell me, but I feel like just in the past three or four months, I'm just a consumer as far as that stuff goes.
I'm not on the inside. I don't get it even.
But it's been getting a lot better, the betas that they're releasing, right?
Absolutely. One of the big breakthroughs, I mean, Dolly really started it, is that if you train a system on language, It turns out there's a lot of language and images on the internet.
But language is really where it's at in terms of the depth of human knowledge.
So if you train a system on language, it's able to generate some incredible art.
And that was the breakthrough. With the same kind of mechanisms, they're called transformers.
They're able to, when scaled, capture some deep representation of the language that's on the internet.
And so yeah, the things it's been able to generate to me Look like it's novel.
It doesn't look like it's mimicking anything.
It looks like it's creating totally new ideas.
And they're beautiful, and they're interesting, and they're all the ways that we think.
That art is interesting.
The only thing it's missing is the scarcity that art often has, which is, you know, it takes a lot of work for one artist to create one piece, one human being to create one piece of art that I could just generate endlessly.
And that makes us appreciate the thing less for some reason.
Do you have any sort of similar opinion that I do that if art doesn't come from a human being, it's inherently worth a little less?
Yeah, I think, I don't know if it's the human being, but The artist matters.
Right. I think some of that has to do with the worldview of the artist and the backstory, the memories, the life that led up to this piece of art, the perspective they take on the world, the journey they took to the world, the struggle, the triumphs, all that kind of stuff.
But I think AI systems can probably have the same.
But we would have to, as opposed to treating it as one black box, It would have to be an artist that has a Twitter account.
And they have a consistent personality.
They have a consistent avatar.
And I think down the line have something like human rights.
But then it really becomes awfully like a person.
Boy, that's terrifying.
As much as I dig Dudesy, that's terrifying, I hope.
It's terrifying like a lot of things that came with the internet in the digital age are terrifying.
Porn is terrifying. The amount of porn that's online now is terrifying.
Like you mentioned, Bob Dylan with electric guitar.
I would compare it more to the leap to the Napster and the Spotify-ization of music.
Which is like you have these, it's less about albums now and it's more about individual songs and it's much easier to deliver the songs and it's more about sort of the engagement of the listener versus like signing the artist and like a distribution of the artist and so on.
So it's just changing the way We consume stuff, and human interaction is changing into meaningful interaction, even if some of the entities involved are not human.
Yes, and I feel like now, as I say, I feel like grandpa who enjoys waiting all day for a baked potato, as Dana Carvey would say.
It's another story. Where's that from?
That's from, remember he did this bit on Saturday Night Live where he's like, I'm an old man and I like things the way they used to be.
If you wanted a baked potato, you would have put it in the microwave.
And then long story, uphill both ways and digging the potato and baking it all day in a fire.
But, um, uh, I'm like that grandpa now, and I know that, you know, kids coming along, you see over the past 10 years, like babies literally knowing how to use an iPhone, and it's terrifying.
And I feel like, uh, I'm a little worried because I'm like, are you, is the future, are the future generations going to be able to understand that this is not...
Not that it's not real.
As a matter of fact, it is real.
It's real. It's what you perceive.
Perception is reality.
99% of reality in a lot of ways, especially in a digital world where everyone is now.
And then with the metaverse, I don't even want to think about it.
I don't get it.
Really, truly. I think people will figure out.
You see people on the train, public transit, and so on.
They're staring at their phone.
I think you have to remember that the reason they're staring at their phone, I mean, there's a lot of reasons, but one of the reasons is they're connecting with other human beings they love on that phone.
So it is a source of happiness and joy.
Now, social media has a lot of negative side effects.
That we're all talking about and learning about and I think that means the next generation of social media, social networks will be better and we'll learn how to do it in a healthy way.
We're just entering a new digital world that will keep the good stuff and get rid of the bad stuff.
Oh, I hope so. That's really optimistic.
That sounds great. Yeah.
I mean it because I think that we're clearly in the Wild West still of the internet.
And just when you think you're out of it, the internet proves another way that it can be dangerous and detrimental to people and populations of people.
And it's terrifying to me.
It is. It's terrifying.
Let me ask you a bunch of random questions.
Okay. You ready? All right.
If you can be someone else for a day, someone alive today, who would you be?
Somebody you haven't met. Oh, that's a really good question.
It could be dead. You know, I changed my mind.
It could be somebody dead. I think any answer that I have right now would be something that would be based on some sort of experience.
Like, you know what I thought was very interesting was last weekend or whatever, the tribute show for Taylor Hawkins.
Taylor Hawkins was the drummer for the Foo Fighters, and he passed away tragically.
And so the Foo Fighters, Dave Grohl and everybody, they got together this concert.
And you're watching Dave Grohl try to sing times like these, right?
And he's breaking up because he lost his friend, his brother.
And I was watching that, and he's at Wembley Stadium.
As I say this, I realize that I would not want to be him in that moment.
But I am curious what that would be like.
That's the ultimate, like, having to perform despite something extremely human happening and a stadium full of people that love Dave Grohl and love Taylor Hawkins and love a rock concert and love these artists that they're getting to see up on stage.
So much love and so much pain at the same time.
I wonder what that would be like to be...
I guess, and I think that's just sort of coming from the root of being a performer and being in front of that many- Have you ever had to perform while some rough stuff is going on in your personal life, just mentally?
Yeah, sure. How tough is that?
Um, I, I can, I'm fortunate enough to be able to compartmentalize.
Uh, I, I, you know, a lot of actors like to use some of their stuff if you're doing something that, um, and there's a lot of, uh, you know, there's some acting techniques that sort of channel it.
Yeah. The, which I think is kind of, um, I don't know that that's...
I don't know. For me, it's not really the thing, because I think if the writing is great, the writing is really good.
You don't need to channel much.
You need to invest in what's there.
And what I've always loved about that illusion is really cracking a scene, getting it to a point where you are feeling all of it.
And the most edifying stuff I've been...
A part of as an actor, and I would say that it mostly comes out of dramatic work, is when you actually feel the emotions that your character would feel.
Truly. And it's not because you're pulling from a tragic thing that happened, or a lost loved one, or a lost love, or any of that.
I just did this one movie where we're doing a thing, and it was a wonderful cast and a great film, and And I'm giving a speech at a wedding.
And it really got to us.
Like, it got to me. And then one of the other actors came up and hugged me in the characters that we were.
But the stakes of his character and what he's walked into and the family that he's marrying into and what...
My character, my character's wife, want for my wife's sister and this whole thing.
And it all became very real.
That was a set where the director showed up to set every day making sure that emotionally, and it was a very dramatic film, making sure that emotionally the table was set for his actors.
Great crew and a really nice, tight little quick family as a lot of these movies are.
You really love working with these people and then it's over.
But that's when you feel the drug.
It's like when you're golfing and it's on the green.
You're like, oh, I get it now.
So in the words, you can find the emotion.
The words summon the emotion.
The humanity is right there.
If you read a great script, you're going to sob in your living room.
You know what the saddest, the toughest thing about being an actor is from my totally outside perspective, is from the people I've interacted with, is how intimate that process is between the group of people that create a thing that's a movie, and then you move on to the next thing.
It's almost, it's like a, I don't know, I mean that's why people have relationships on set.
They fall in love. Totally.
It's so sad. I mean, that's why I think of the acting world as like, you fall in love with each other, essentially.
You become close friends and then you move on.
Because that's kind of the process of career.
You know, like the example I just gave, if you're doing it right, yeah, there is a certain amount of that happening.
But I do still feel like you can...
You've got to compartmentalize it, and you've got to be able to wash it off as soon as it's over.
Prostitutes say the same thing, so I... True.
Sometimes I'm in a hurry to get away from everybody, because it's been very emotional.
And with all love and respect to everyone, this was awesome, but you get pretty good at saying goodbye and being like, I'll see you if I see you.
You have to get good at that, or else you'll never...
You'll just be bent up all the time.
I saw an actor once.
We were doing this series, and we did it for a year.
And it was a lot of fun, and it was a tight little group.
And then one of the actors, we were doing one of our last things together.
We had already shot the last show, and we just had to take some pictures for, you know, like some publicity pictures or whatever.
So we're set up, and we're taking our pictures together.
And then we move into these single shots, and this actor was finished.
And I watched them...
It's like, okay, so-and-so's wrapped, and they said some goodbyes and stuff, and I didn't say my goodbye, because maybe I preferred an Irish goodbye.
I feel like we've said everything, you know what I mean?
And this person knows that I revere them, and they're an idol of mine.
And they walked off the soundstage, and I literally thought to myself, That'll be the last time I see that person.
And the show did not come back, and that was the last time, I don't know, I'll see them around.
Doesn't that just break your heart?
A little bit, but I know what...
She's going back to, which is her family.
And that's more important than all of this.
And that's the thing about a TV family or a movie family when you get together and you're a family for a while.
You are. You spend your days together.
A lot of times you see the people that you work with more than you see your loved ones.
So in showbiz it's no different, right?
And yeah, you're doing some, you know, you've got to say words and every once in a while you've got to kiss someone or pretend you love them.
But It's just, it underscores how, for me, look, man, my salvation has always been, and I feel so fortunate to have had it, is this kind of chill, boring kind of upbringing that I want for my kids someday.
And I can't wait to get back to my house with my fiancé and the dogs, you know, until we have kids.
Live in a cabin in Canada somewhere.
Yeah. Absolutely.
I just want to buy some Landover and Aquifer, as I like to say, because water will be the new money.
And just make sure that all my kids are drinking as much H2O as I am, which is a lot.
I'm peeing right now, as a matter of fact.
Do you need a bathroom? No, no, no.
Not anymore. No, I'm wearing two layers of Depends.
Don't worry about it. Good. So I did a podcast with Bobby Lee, and he said he was extremely kind, and he said that he was scared shitless to be on the podcast.
And he actually literally took, he asked as the first thing to go take a dump because of how scared he was.
So that leads me to a question, what's the scariest thing you've ever done?
Or maybe what's the scariest you've ever been before a performance?
I mean, I always get a little nervous.
I think you're doing it right if you're still nervous, you know?
Were you nervous today? Well, no, man, because this isn't a performance.
I'm being completely genuine.
Yeah. You're wearing a suit.
Yeah, that was... I feel like that makes you nervous.
Wearing a suit? It makes me nervous. Listen, I hate wearing a fucking collar.
If you're watching this on YouTube, you can see me just...
I'm constantly doing...
It's like I'm doing a cheap Rodney Dangerfield, but I am truly...
But when you move your head, it kind of makes it seem like you're a mobster who's pissed off a little bit.
You fucking crossed me one last time.
You son... You know, this mutt.
I think it's the first time I dug a hole.
I'll dig a fucking hole.
Jesus. No, but truly, I hate having a collar.
I can't wait to just wear pajamas in that fucking cabin.
Or nothing at all. Walk around Bobby Lee style.
The most scared I've been before a performance.
I can't pinpoint anything.
I... You know, when I was a kid, right, like I said, I was fortunate enough to start acting as a teen and stuff, professionally.
And I just remember my first gig, and I remember saying my handful of lines in the bathroom mirror the night before, going, This might be my only fucking shot.
You're not going to get me. I'm going to be solid.
And if I'm worried about something, I will rehearse it and rehearse it and rehearse it as an actor until it's impossible for me not to get a take at least that I'm 100%, if not 95% maybe, happy with.
And the rest for me is letting go, which is hard because I can be a real...
Perfectionist. I always want another...
I always want to do it a little better.
That's what's great about podcasting.
It's one take and you're done.
There's no takes. You're just talking and it's over.
And you're doing some silly stuff.
And I'll...
You know... Can you say that part again about why podcasting is great?
Podcasting is great? Yeah, because it's one take and it's over.
It's just... What?
I said it again. Ah, fuck.
I see what you did. And yeah, I fell right for it.
I'm playing checkers and you're playing chess.
That's your problem. You know, but still, when we do the podcast, we'll like finish and I'll look over at Chad and I go...
That one thing that I did wasn't that funny.
He's like, shut up, man.
It doesn't matter.
It's a fucking hang.
We're hanging with our friends out there.
That's what we're doing. So that anxiety is there.
That self-criticism or whatever that is, that voice.
I say sorry after takes.
I'll always finish a take and go...
And I've had directors... To the detriment of myself.
I've had directors be like, stop...
Doing that. Yeah. Because I'll like finish the take, and then I also have like the will face, and I'm just like, I'll finish the take, and cut.
And I'm making a face right now like I smelled something.
That's what I'll do. I'll literally be like, ah, because I just, I look at what I do in the purest sense as I think a lot of people want to be good at something.
The only thing I've ever really wanted to be good at is being an actor.
And that's the only thing.
Of course, I want to be a good person.
I want to be a good partner to my fiance.
I want to have kids and be the father that I had.
And I want to be the parent that I had from my parents who were fucking amazing.
Wonderful people. And there's all those things.
That's all, you know, you should want all those things.
But as far as doing a thing, like what is my trade?
You know, I want to be...
Really good at it. My parents grew up in Napoli, in Italy, right?
And I say Napoli because I'm Italian.
Napoli, yeah. And so my grandfather on my mom's side, my nono Pepe, he was a plumber and he was also like a handyman.
Yeah. People would bring him like, you know, like the old Chianti bottle with the woven bottom part?
People would bring him like a broken bottle.
Be like, hey, you know, Giuseppe, can you fix this?
I feel like you're telling the backstory of Mario.
That's not actually your family life.
Yeah. But okay. He said, I'm a fix!
And so he would fix a bottle and give it back to someone.
And he was a really good plumber.
My mom used to always say, that guy was a great...
He took pride in that? Yeah.
I always feel like, you know...
There's what you set out to do as an idealistic little teenager.
I want to be like so-and-so and I want to, you know, hear my big dreams and stuff.
And I can't believe that I'm still in the business, okay?
That's, first of all, let me say that right now.
I can't believe it.
But what I really...
It's the one thing that it's like, I can't give up on a take.
I need it to be as good as I can possibly get it.
And I don't really know why that is outside of wanting to be good at something.
When you open the yellow pages, if I'm a plumber, I'm not the guy with the big full-page ad, but I'm also not You know, AAA Abacus Brothers or whatever, like the shitty one.
I would like to hope that just, and I'm saying this with pride for what I do.
I'm not trying to say here's my standing or where I want to be in the fucking business.
That's not what I mean. I mean that I want to be good at it.
You know, we all, hello, Friedman Enterprises.
So that's the hotel phone You have some fruit
Thank you.
Some sliced fruit? No.
Do you want some sliced fruit?
I'm all good. No, we're good.
Thank you so much. All right.
Bye-bye. It's always a fruit plate.
Everyone's always trying to hand you a fruit plate in life, you know?
It's a pretty sweet existence. Wouldn't it be funny if that was actually like the CIA and they were actually saying something else and I'm just saying fake stuff about it.
You want some fruit? Yeah, I want some fruit.
And then all of a sudden there's the red dot on my head and the ceiling disappears.
And the CIA was like, wrap it up, wrap it up, wrap it up!
Wrap it up! You jump out the window and there's a helicopter waiting.
Oh, what were we talking about?
The food distracted me.
So, oh, do you want to be the yellow page ad?
I want to be the guy on the second or third page where it's like, you're not going to pay what that guy charges you, but I'm not going to charge you with this loser charge.
I want to break down the middle, and the work is guaranteed.
That's kind of what I want to...
It's the one thing that I've been fortunate enough to be doing my whole life and that I want to be good at.
Everyone wants to be good at something.
If you're fortunate enough to be able to do what you love as a job, I mean, my God, I'm so...
Again, I can't believe I get to do it.
I just want to be good at it so that I can fucking die someday and go...
I tried not to give up on a take, and I will rehearse it still in the bathroom mirror the night before if I have to.
Yeah, but I still have that self-critical voice.
After this podcast, I'll probably be like, you're boring.
Why are you so boring? Stop!
What are you talking about? And I just gave a lecture at MIT. I was like, I got so much love from people.
They're such beautiful people.
And I just remember walking home Just feeling like I wasted everybody's time.
I don't know what that is.
I do hope that that's a voice that won't destroy me.
That's really human of you to admit that.
Because people don't want to...
They wouldn't assume that, of course, from you.
Or anything that... I mean, you've got...
A large group of students in there listening to you and feeling the way and thinking what they think of you.
So that's really interesting to hear you admit that, but it's also, I would expect nothing else.
You have to be able to...
I mean, you're a human fucking being.
And I'm trying to figure out if that...
Some people that might hear that, they would say, well, that's a problem you have to fix.
And I think that that might be just who I am.
Because I'm not, you know, I've been very, very fortunate not to have chemical, you know, like depression where I get into a dark place, like it gets stuck in a downward spiral.
It's usually a thing that lasts, you ride it out, and then after a good night's sleep, you're back to your happy self.
So I think I have to try to figure that out.
Is that just part of the creative process, being a creative human in this world?
I haven't found any other way.
I'm always kicking myself. Take that, dudezy.
You're not going to be human until you feel some despair and self-criticism.
Yeah, until you absolutely hate the shit that you're doing sometimes.
What small act of kindness were you once shown that you'll never forget?
Did something jump to mind where somebody just did something that made you smile, made you feel connected to the rest of humanity?
Yeah. Yeah.
Lots of things, you know?
But I remember my niece one time, one of my nieces, we were in her neighborhood and she was like, she might have been five or six at the time.
They're all adults now.
My brother and sister are older than me and the kids are all, the youngest is 22.
And yeah, anyway, one of my nieces, she was just, she had ice cream.
We went out and we got ice cream walking around the neighborhood, her neighborhood.
And she said something to me that I don't think she understands how much it meant at the time, but she goes, she goes, people love you here.
You know that? And she doesn't know where here is.
She's five years old. But she was just looking at the kids playing in the park and the people walking their dogs and everyone just...
People love you here, you know that?
But she didn't know how much I needed to hear that at that point, which is really heavy for me.
I'll never forget it. I've never told her that.
Oh, well. Man, anytime you get...
A little something from people, especially in a tear-your-ass-out city like LA where nobody has any fucking time for you.
When someone can slow it down and say something, you know?
I saw this actor once in my grocery store that I go to who made me laugh so fucking hard in this one movie.
And every time I see this clip, I still laugh.
And I am kind of shy, you know, personally.
So he was walking by.
He was walking out, and I was walking in.
And I go, oh, that's that guy.
And I did not stop to just let him know how great I thought he was in this film.
And I always kind of regretted it.
You know what I mean? So as hard as it is, and sometimes I still don't, if I see someone that has done something in any way, it doesn't have to be in show business or anything like that, I'll try and say, hey, that's really good.
You know what I mean? Because to get that from someone can mean a lot.
At a certain time in life when you need it.
Yeah. That can make a big difference.
I mean, sorry to take it back to my new girlfriend, the waitress.
Oh, yeah, yeah. But there's something about her saying, sweetheart.
Yeah. I was in a pretty low place for some reason mentally, and just that basic human kindness was nice.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I hear you. I was at a restaurant in New York recently, and I was shooting something, and my fiancée was able to fly in for a week.
But she was back at the hotel, and I felt like I was cheating on her because there was this nice waitress at this barbecue place I went to.
And first of all, my fiancée would not like me eating any greasy, sugary barbecue.
So I felt like I was cheating on her there.
We'll edit this out and put delicious vegan food over it.
But the waitress was one of these, you know, she was the kind of server who's like, hey, hon.
Hey, sweetie. Like, blah, blah, blah.
But like, so chill and at ease in the middle of a part of New York that's really, you know, kind of fucking pretentious and, you know, and everybody.
But Sweet people.
Fuck them, way better people than we got here.
But, you know, I know that.
But, you know, it's part of New York and whatever.
I'm there working and people, I'm like, you know, I'm trying to impress one another.
And she even had some sort of an accent that was not, didn't feel like an Atlantic American accent.
Yeah. Servers that say sweetheart and hun.
That's what we need from AI. We need that Jetson server.
Every once in a while just calls you sweetheart.
What comforts you on bad days?
Oh, man. Is there little sources of comfort?
Small things that you do that kind of make you feel good.
Like for Bobby, that would be a little Skyrim.
A little stroll through Skyrim.
Well, I... A line of Coke or what?
Yeah, a line of Coke.
I dilute some Coke into whiskey in the morning, like Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Oh, she did that. I didn't know that.
Yeah. Oh, my gosh.
That's interesting. Yeah, he didn't last too long.
Weird. Well, his music will last forever.
See? There you go. For me, if I... I'm kind of a homebody, so if I... The point at which I smoke just a little bit of pot and then go, like, lay down on the couch and perhaps if my fiancé's kind of nodding off or she's just, like, looking at her phone and I sneakily turn on some wrestling, okay?
Because I grew up watching wrestling.
And that stuff, it's the Skyrim effect.
I mean, you want to talk about a complete escape.
This stuff makes no sense in the world.
It's an art form that is so...
Uniquely weird, but at the same time so...
When it's good, everyone is invested in the illusion, even the audience.
They cheer the good guys, they boo the bad guys.
So if I'm like that, and then I got our two cute little dogs there, and I'm annoying my little dog, Lulio, and trying to kiss him right on the fucking mouth, and I've had a little bit of pot, and the dog's like, stop!
Pot's not good for me. Of course, don't ever blow pot into your dog's face.
That's a small comfort.
I guess that's a handful of things.
No, that moment painted, that was like a little painting.
What about you? You're not supposed to do this.
I will. You're not supposed to do this.
That's a good question. Yeah, it's a tough question.
Yeah. I would say programming robots.
There's bringing to life, actually programming at all, so I don't know how familiar you are with programming, but you write some text on a page, right, on a screen, and it's brought to life, like it does something. That's a really tiny version of maybe having a child.
You created something that is now living in some small or big way with embodied robots that are legged robots that's especially clear.
For some reason, that's a source of comfort for me.
The power of programming, but also the elegance of programming, just the whole thing.
It's a source of happiness.
There's so many things. I've been very blessed with enjoying anything.
That's part of the struggle I have in life is that the simple stuff is a source of a lot of happiness for me, which leads to a lot of laziness.
So I have to give myself artificial deadlines.
I have to be freaking out on purpose in order to be productive in this world at all.
You seem like an extremely dutiful, busy guy.
No. No? No, I am, but because I'm constantly creating artificial stress and deadlines and all that kind of stuff.
Otherwise, I would just sit there looking at a tree, happy.
I'm truly happy with everything.
That's awesome. Yeah.
Gee whiz. That's not.
That's the line of coke in the whiskey in the morning.
That's the thing that does the trick.
Evie Ray Vaughn, Breakfast Shake.
By the way, one of my most favorite guitars.
I play guitar, too. That's a source of comfort.
Oh, yeah. I have seen you play some guitar.
That's awesome. Who's the greatest wrestler of all time?
Greatest in-ring performer of all time is Bret the Hitman Hart.
What's the difference in-ring versus...
Well, there's many facets to the art form.
A lot of people are great on the mic, but they're not so great once they get in the ring.
A lot of people have all the showmanship and stuff, but then they're not necessarily...
It's a wonderful package, but then they get to the ring or they open their mouth and there's nothing going on.
So who's the greatest in-ring performer?
I think the greatest in-ring is Bret Hart.
I don't think there's anyone better than Bret the Hitman Hart.
What makes him so good?
I think I had an action figure of him in Russia, and we didn't know what the hell that was.
Sure, yeah. It was just a guy in pink tights.
Everything makes sense. Every single thing is rooted in the thing that just happened, and everything that he does is to set up what he's going to do.
They call it, and I'm just a wrestling nerd, but the wrestlers, I guess, call it ring psychology.
The things that you have to do to make it seem like you're suffering or you're coming from behind or whatever.
And then also just the physicality of it.
He would do it at 100 miles an hour and never hurt anybody.
Although, you know...
I also love the greatest wrestler of all time, everyone says, and they're right, is Ric Flair, Nature Boy Ric Flair.
Everyone says this? Yeah, I think if you know what you're talking about.
Because he's the best on the mic, he's also incredible in the ring.
And then for me, the sentimental favorite, which we've actually, on Dudesy, Chad had sort of a...
Charlie Rose-esque interview with me about this, my fascination with Hulk Hogan.
Because to me, just he was Superman.
I was a little kid and I saw him and that's imprinted.
But yeah, see, this is like asking me who my favorite child is.
Right, so...
The Rock, when The Rock was...
I mean, The Rock's The Rock.
Yeah, I mean, Hulk Hogan is...
He's the weirdest one, right?
For me, from the outside.
Super weird. I don't know what that is exactly.
Everything's weird about him.
Yeah. He's got the bald head.
He would proudly have this bald head with long hair, the handlebar mustache, and this ketchup and mustard tights.
Which he says, he credits McDonald's with the tights.
He literally does?
He says that the red and yellow came from Angelo Poffo, who's Randy Macho Man Savage and Lanny Poffo's dad, who was a wrestler and a promoter.
He said that he saw him wearing yellow, and he's a Tampa guy, so he had that brown skin and the hair and everything.
So he's like, oh, that's what I want to do.
And also the brand recognition of like, well, I should do it like McDonald's.
Literally. And he's a big, you know, swollen, muscular guy with tan brown skin screaming at me to eat my vitamins and stuff when I'm eight years old.
That was extremely, yeah, he's like Superman.
But I know there's a person behind that guy.
Yeah, what do you mean?
Well, he's Terry Bollea, the dude who, you know, does whatever the fuck he does with his life, you know what I mean?
Yeah, complicated life.
Yeah, I guess. To be him, yeah.
Maybe you should change the dudesy colors to yellow, right?
Red and yellow. It's currently orange and, boy, sky blue.
Yeah, it's like a nice sky blue.
What advice? Since you're wearing a suit, I feel like you're qualified to give advice.
What advice would you give to young people?
High school, college, about how to have a career they can be proud of, or how to have a life they can be proud of?
I mean, you have to listen to your gut all the time.
That's the compass that we have, is listening to your gut.
What did your gut tell you?
Was that originally the dream of being an actor?
Yeah, for me. Do your parents support that at all?
I had the advantage of having parents who were immigrants, so they didn't really know a lot about what you...
So you just made shit up? You just made shit up?
Yeah, of course I'm studying and I'm skipping school to go do auditions and stuff.
No, I just kind of feel like, you know, and I know it was different for my older siblings because my parents had just shown up in Canada.
I was born like 10 years later.
You can get away with some things and you can actually, you know, I think my parents...
They didn't have a whole lot to tell us about what to do.
They weren't going to do that with us because they're in this brand new world and there's all these possibilities.
But there was something that I feel like they had to do, which was tell us to do what we love.
If you love doing it, do it.
And I feel like that's really served me.
And what I would tell young people is, if you can find something you love, and nowadays with the internet and finding other people that, you know, it's not like you need to find a lot of people anymore.
You just need to find the people that dig what you dig.
And if you can make a career out of doing something that you love, it's been said, it's a good thing, you know?
How long did it take you to figure out that you really love...
Because sometimes you have a dream and the dream meets reality, right?
Yeah. And then the reality might be much less pleasant and much darker than the dream.
Well, the reality is less pleasant, you know?
And there are things that happen during an experience of shooting something that you could take or leave, right?
But the part where you're on set and you...
You know, you've rehearsed for a minute or whatever, at least you know where you're supposed to stand, and you know all your lines show up knowing everything, knowing what you're going to do, and what you aim to do.
And those moments make it all worth it when you're, you know, not to sound like a douchebag, but between action and cut, that's the stuff that is...
That makes me, that has me continuing to do what I do.
Aside from the fact that it's like, I don't know how to do anything else.
You think you'll ever do like a dramatic, like a mob movie?
Yeah. Like the one, the inside game I was just talking about.
This is this other movie I just did a little while ago called American Woman that was very heavy.
And I love doing dramatic work.
I love it.
I love it. Yeah, and I played that in Inside Game.
It was kind of a, you know, there was a mob element.
The fella was, well, you know, the story's here or there with regard to how deep into the, well, he was a bookie.
He was just running money.
You know, he was making a lot of money for a lot of people, and he figured out how to, you know, cook it with this dude who was an NBA ref.
And It's a very interesting documentary, the thing that just untold, under the untold series, they cover it.
But getting to play that guy, that was a gas for me, because he's like a, you know, there's a lot of unsavory stuff, and he's definitely the guy, the character in the movie, who is the wild card, and you don't want to necessarily mess with him.
And I got this, I remember this fellow, who is a real guy, and Speaking to him, it was just bizarre to hear, like I said to him, he was a little concerned about this and that.
Like, hey, you know, you say whatever the fuck you want in your movie.
I got my book and I got this other fucking deal.
But he goes, you know, I didn't do this and I didn't do that.
And I'm like, yeah, all right, I got you.
And he goes, yeah, I'm telling you.
Like, I'm talking to you one-on-one.
I did not do this. I did, okay?
I'm just fucking telling you, do whatever the fuck you want with your movie, but this is what's up.
And I said, you ever seen Goodfellas?
He's like, yeah, I fucking love that movie.
Because he, like I said, he did some unsavory shit.
And I go, you remember the scene where, you know, the guy, the neighbor, Lorraine Bracco's neighbor was, you know, made her uncomfortable and was touching on her and she goes to Ray Liotta and he goes, where the fuck does this guy live?
And then he goes, and remember, and he walks across the street and pistol whips the dude?
Mm-hmm. You touch her again, you're dead!
You hear me? Yeah, good scene.
Don't shoot! Fucking great scene.
He goes, I love that scene.
I go, that's you. So you're doing shit that we know is terrible, but we love you.
He goes, alright, I got it. And then I said, there's this one scene, I explained this scene to him where one of the mobsters, tough guys, was in the window of the car and Jimmy, my character, is very coked up at the time, and he's hemorrhaging money here and there and making bad bets because he's getting sloppy.
And this guy wants to bug him about some Jets-Giants bet or something.
I'm like, telling you, fucking asshole, don't fucking do it.
He's like, yeah, whoa, the fucking Giants.
And in the scene, Jimmy, my character, grabs him by the lapels and just smashes his face against the roof of the car.
And I say this to Jimmy, and he goes, oh, yeah, I would have done that.
That's not a fucking big deal.
I wonder also the interaction.
I wonder what the filming of...
Probably my favorite gambling movie is Casino with Joe Pesci and De Niro.
When they're out in the desert yelling at each other.
I wonder how many takes that is.
I don't know how scripted that is.
It probably is a little bit, but I don't think you can script the performance that Joe Pesci does.
Don't make a fuck out of me, Ace!
Yeah. Like, I fucking brought you here!
Yeah. He's just like pointing at that energy, and they're standing there.
And their friendship is...
And De Niro's like, that whole thing, and then in the pet...
Yeah, like that energy.
What is that? I mean, they must...
They somehow find it together.
Yeah. You could tell me that that was one take, and I'd believe you.
You could tell me that that was seven takes, and I would believe you.
I bet you all the takes had that energy.
Oh, yeah. Like, they were playing with it, right?
Sure. They were playing with that.
Yeah. I mean, they took on a real personality in those scenes and really carried them forward.
I mean, it's just a brilliant, brilliant performance.
It doesn't get, like comedies, like mob movies probably don't get enough credit either.
Yeah. Because it's seen as like...
Mob movies don't get enough credit?
In the Oscars, I mean.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Because it seems like a trope.
It's like giving a Western...
It's got to be a hell of a Western or whatever because it's like an old Hollywood trope.
Yeah, no, I... That scene is so great.
Because they're at the height of their friendship, in a way, and they're also pretty much about to let go of it and become enemies.
And both things are happening at the same time.
And Pesci drives them out to the desert.
And if I remember correctly...
De Niro's character, Ace Rothstein or Rothschild, he says, I gave myself 50-50 whether I'm coming back.
Yeah, it's such a good scene.
Usually my prospects of coming back from the desert would be 90 to 10 or something like that.
But now, this time I wasn't sure.
And there's the car driving really fast.
And then Joe Pesce is like, you motherfucker, you.
Whatever he was doing. A Jew, of course, is anti-Semitism.
Or not, between friends.
Who gives a shit? All that kind of stuff.
Yeah, I mean, brilliant, brilliant performances.
So yeah, I can understand why you love the art and putting it all out there.
Yeah, man, it's fun. And it's still fun.
It's still crazy fun.
If I go a while without...
Getting a gig, you know, if I go a minute, then I end up and I work on something, I'm like, it's like, oh, I've been thirsty for this.
Like, I actually am really so happy.
Even if it's something where it's like, You know, the things where this was a pain in the ass and that or whatever, you're on the road doing something and, you know, anything, whatever, you lost your luggage or whatever the heck you've got going on in your day-to-day life that everyone brings to work and tries to let go of, once we're doing the scene, oh man, it's the best.
But, you know, that said, you're a great actor, but I just think I speak for a lot of people that you're also, there's a charisma to you that's great to reveal in raw form in different podcasts.
Oh, cheers, man. In Dudesy, 10-Minute Pod, just as a guest in podcasts, it's always really fun to watch you.
Cheers! The way you have fun, the way you think.
The raw, the raw Will Sasso, which is a nice compliment to your kind of acting style.
That's really sweet. Yeah, cheers.
Well, you know, look, you said, you know...
You're making that face.
I'm making that face. I'm making that after the take face.
No, I love doing stuff off the cuff.
That's kind of you to say. And I dig...
I really do dig doing stuff in front of an audience because I love seeing...
I don't give it to myself very often.
If I'm doing... Even if I'm...
You know, I've done a bunch of multi-camera sitcoms and stuff.
Mad TV was shot in front of a live studio audience.
You like that energy? I love it, but I can only hear them.
You can't see them because of the lights, like it is in a lot of performances.
And I would imagine with stand-up, you see the first couple rows.
I do this character that does stand-up, and I used to take him out and do things with him and do little bits here and there.
I haven't done it in like four or five years.
I think, did Bobby say that character opened up for Bobby?
Yeah. But he said, I have to do it as myself, too.
I think in that podcast, he's like, okay, you're going to come with me and open for me in Brea, but you have to do it as yourself.
Did that ever happen? It did.
And I did the character, you know, who's the character I came up with on 10 Minute Podcast.
He's just this comedian, right?
He calls himself an open mic veteran.
You know, he's been doing open mics forever.
And so I did it, opening up for Bobby, and he's like, you have to do some of it as yourself.
So I just kind of did this bit where I would do some of his jokes, and then I would take, you know, silly, I got a fucking wig on, and I'd take the wig off, and I'd go...
And as myself, I start explaining it.
Hello, my name is Will. See, the reason that it's funny is because Arnold Schwarzenegger is in these movies and he's got the thick Austrian accent, but he's like, my name is Ben Williams.
I'm a cop from Colorado.
No, you're not. And it doesn't make sense as the comedian character that I'm doing because that character doesn't do impersonations.
Okay. Okay.
Carrying on. And then I put the wig back on and go back into this dumb thing.
And I don't think it was very good, but Bobby required it in order for me to open for him.
He's like, you're not fucking doing it.
So I'm not going to get up on stage and not do.
We agreed. I'll do it.
But having been up there just in, you know, whatever.
I've done it like a dozen fucking times.
Not a bunch of times, right?
Like nothing. And, you know, these comedians that go up every night, sometimes two times a night.
I will say, I love performing in front of people when I get the chance, but it's...
It's a specific thing that I just...
I don't know.
I got to go back to this.
It's like the providing value.
I think great stand-ups are fucking incredible.
I'll go... When I've gone and watched stand-up, there's your friend you're going to see, but then there's this other person who really speaks to you.
You know what I mean? And if you like one comedian a night...
That's a lot. Because a comedy club is like a fucking crazy restaurant where there's no menu.
And it's like, what would you like?
There's nothing else like that.
You don't go to a music place.
What do we got here? We got Christian metal and there's some world music and then there's a reggae thing and it's all rammed in together.
Or you don't go to a restaurant I'd love a nice steak.
Cool. First, here's a bowl of Froot Loops, and then we got you a crudité, and then this is our sushi tower.
Well, what about the steak? Oh, the steak's coming.
And then blah, blah, blah. Oh, no, the steak got bumped, so there's no steak, but here's a fucking shitty store-bought cheesecake.
And that's what comedians are up against when they go into a place.
It's like, I don't pair well with the poached salmon.
You know, I'm chicken fingers.
I already am chicken fingers.
So... These great comedians that are able to go up on a night where poached salmon goes up, and then it's like, fuck, you were all so spicy?
I got some kick to me.
For me... Even going to open mics, it could be a wonderful escape.
Yeah. I mean, just laughing together with others.
It can make you, I don't know, it just feels really good.
When we've done like, you know, like, and I hope to do it with Dudesy, but like live podcasts are fun in front of groups of people.
And, you know, you talk to them afterwards and take some pictures, and man, they are...
They forgot what the fuck they got going on.
And a lot of them got to go back to work the next day.
It's a Wednesday or Thursday, you know?
No, it's a lot of value.
I'm fortunate enough to be busy doing my own bullshit.
What's the meaning of life, Will Sasso?
What is the meaning of life? Why are we here?
Why, why, why?
Was it The Meaning of Life?
Didn't they explain it at the end of Meaning of Life?
I think it was Michael Palin that said, try to get a walk-in, be nice to neighbors, eat enough fiber.
Wasn't that the... Fiber?
Fiber's part of it? Yeah, I think it's...
Nutrition. Have a bowl of bran in the morning and don't take yourself too seriously.
Yeah. Well, no one gets out alive, I think, is the...
Herman Hesse, one of my favorite writers, he's a Nobel Prize winner, in a book called Steppenwolf, says, learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest.
Oh, that's awesome. What's the percentage distribution on that?
So how much of life should you take seriously?
And then how much do you just laugh at?
Oh, man. If you can laugh at everything, you're winning.
But that's almost impossible.
I think that there's...
And also, it could be quite irresponsible to do that.
I take a lot of things way too seriously.
I know that. I do.
I do. I really do. People will be in part surprised by that, but I think that radiates from you.
Really? Yeah, I do.
I do. I take things way too fucking seriously sometimes.
But... You gotta do that.
You gotta loosen the neck up.
But... No, I think that's really good.
That's really good stuff.
I don't know what the percentage is to have a good life or a happy, healthy life, but, you know.
For me the meaning of life is getting to live it as long as you hope to.
That's nice.
And when you lose someone or perhaps you're faced with your own mortality,
I think that puts that into perspective.
And, but, you know.
Get lots of fiber.
Get lots of fiber.
Be nice to everybody.
And, yeah, don't take things too seriously is a good one.
Our minds are fucking big, weird...
It's a big, weird, shitty fucking bucket of shit that's trying to get you to think horrible shit about yourself all the time.
Yeah, shitty bucket of shit.
Shitty bucket of shit. I think there's a book I never read, but I read the title, and it's Good Words to Live By, which is Don't Sweat the Small Stuff, and it's all small stuff.
That's another way. Was that Dr.
Phil? It wasn't Dr. Phil.
I don't know, but I think the conclusion also has fiber.
That's part of it. I think that all ties it together.
And in the end, of course, just put love out there in the world.
I think that's a pretty good way to go.
What would you say is the meaning of life?
Put love out in the world? I would say love, yeah.
It's a long conversation on what that really means.
But I'm sure robots are involved.
Well, let me tell you, I feel a little safer knowing that someone who has a hand in Bringing these robots to the masses, as you do, has that opinion of love and how important it is.
I think that's great, because otherwise it's going to be that fucking scene from T2 where Linda Hamilton's holding onto the fence and getting all of her flesh blown off of her skeleton before the rest of her is wiped away.
Because this Skynet shit.
Anyway, I'm just terrified of Dudesy all the time.
That's why I think that they will...
Dude seeing the wrong hands can do a lot of damage.
That's why Chad and I need to do our best to control it.
We need to travel back in time and murder Chad.
I think. Yeah. That's...
That's the only way.
It's been said... I don't know why you need to travel back in time, but you could just...
You could murder him today, but I think I'll be very suspicious.
My nefarious plans for Chad involve going back to tomorrow and planning for yesterday, and hopefully Dudesy will give me the answer there with what it is to do with Chad's frozen body.
If I got to drive it out to...
If I got to take my...
If I got to get a hold of one of those Tesla mom vans and shove my garage freezer in it and plug it in and shove Chad in there and drive out to Arizona and deliver him under a mountain or wherever the fuck this place is and say, here's his dog tag.
What does this get me? And I'm like, ah, it's going to be $300.
Do you take Amex?
No. And I'll be like, ah, shit.
And I'll just dump them somewhere, Breaking Bad style.
Well, I would like to thank you and the, what is it, the Canadian International...
Agency apparel. Canadian and national apparel.
I can't wait for the sneakers from Dudesy.
I can't wait for all the podcasts that AI can and all the trouble it can get you in.
So I'm a huge fan of yours.
It's a huge honor that you would talk with me today.
Well, this has been amazing.
Cheers, pal. Likewise.
And I'm happy to be here, man.
Cheers. Bam!
Three hours. Holy fuck!
What?! Thanks for listening to this conversation with Will Sasso.
To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
And now, let me leave you with some words from John Candy, one of Will's favorite actors.
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