#78 Paul Provenza Left His Set List In The Green Room

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All right, Andy, thank you so much for that amazing introduction. You get the show going each and every week and this week was no exception. Welcome, everybody, to Episode 78 of live from Detroit, the Jeff Dwoskin show. As always, I am your host, Jeff Dwoskin. Great to have you back board is promising and shaping up to be the greatest 78th episode of this podcast ever produced, though get excited. I'm excited. Our guest today the legendary Paul Provenza. That's right. actor, writer, comedian, filmmaker Paul Provenza is here, creator of comics only, the greenroom, setlist, author of sataristas, co-director of the aristocrats. That's right, Paul Provenza is here. And we have a conversation on comedy for the ages. You're gonna love it, and it's coming up in just a few minutes.

So many great episodes lately. John Heffron, last week winner of Last Comic Standing Canadian comedic legend Ron James and episode 76 Christine Blackburn, host of the amazing podcast story were they in Episode 75 and Eric Peterson Kevin himself from Kevin can F*** himself, Episode 74 Billy Van Zant talking Jaws 2 in episode 73. And it just goes on and on and on. You're like Jeff, was that a collection of some of the greatest podcasts ever? You're just reading guests from no as my podcast, check it out. And it just keeps going and going and going. If you want to discover all the podcasts, go to Apple podcast, Google good pods. Wherever you love your podcasts where they're live from Detroit, the Jeff Dwoskin comedy show, check it out searches up tell all your friends follow like the podcast, you can head over to Jeffisfunny.com on the web. You can find all the links you need there, including to our YouTube channel. Follow us on YouTube and you can watch our live show every Wednesday at 9:30pm. Eastern Time crossing the streams are now also live on the fireside app.

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And now it's time for the social media tip! All right, this is the part of the show where I share a little bit of my social media knowledge with you. I've been very active in the social media space ran a billion dollar company social media for a while and I'm here to share some of my knowledge with you some of the 411 I pick up on the street, jot this tip down and we can all raise our social media game together today. Instagram, I know Jeff, you're usually called Twitter. I'm like I know today's Instagram because they announce something really cool. And I want to make sure everyone knows when you go to make a story now on Instagram, and you click story and then you choose the photo or choose Create always choose Create. Now when you hit the little sticker icon at the top, that's a little smiley face that looks like a post it there's a sticker there that says link. And if you click on link, you can pop in any link you want. So on your story, you could say hey, check out the latest episode of live from Detroit, the Jeff Dwoskin show. And then here's a link right to Apple podcasts and you can click to it. Why is this a huge deal? It's a huge deal because linking to stuff used to be only for people who are verified or had 10,000 or more followers. Now it's open to everyone. So go take advantage of stories on Instagram, go take advantage of that link sticker and start driving some amazing engagement. And that's the social media tip.

I do want to take a quick second thank everyone for their support of the sponsors week after week. I can't thank you enough when you support the sponsors. You're supporting us here at live from Detroit, the Jeff Dwoskin show and that's how we keep the lights on this week's sponsor Rosalind cafe for all the fans out in Alaska, Cicely, Alaska to be exact Roslyn's cafe is open for you and waiting for you to enjoy their indoor dining outdoor seating and takeout orders. And since no one really ever knows what time it is, and Alaska breakfast is served all day, so head on and the cafe features such famous dishes as pulled pork sliders and their world were now salmon. Made with House smoked sockeye salmon so fresh, you'll be sure you said hello to it in the parking lot on the way in. So if you're hungry, if you're a fan of live from Detroit, the Jeff Dwoskin show and you just happen to be in Alaska, head on over to rosins cafe, catch him on the web, the Rosalyncafe.com and tell them live from Detroit, the Jeff Dwoskin show sent ya, sounds delish. I got to say I don't mind saying hello to my food before I eat it. Something delicious about that. Anyway, enough about that. I think it's time for me to share my conversation that I had with Paul Provenza. With you, you're gonna love it. Enjoy.

Alright, everyone, so excited to introduce you to my next guest, actor, comedian, producer, director, author, ladies and gentlemen, Paul Provenza. Paul, welcome to the show.

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I can't hold a job.

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It was really hard for me looking at your resume, where to focus all this? Because you've done everything you've done a little bit of everything.

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I know that's been that's a career problem right there.

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Where would you want to go? Like, if you could pick one thing? Would you want to be a full stand up comedian? Would you just wanted to be a director? What would you want to do

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all of those things, that's always been the problem. But right now I'm focusing on a couple of dock projects that I'm really enjoying working on. And I find them really challenging in their own way. One in particular is sort of, as my producing partner says, it's your magnum opus, it's taken forever. You know, I've kind of backed off from stand up live performance a little bit, because, well, a number of reasons. Number one is that in my life, life and comedy, which has been many decades at this point, you know, I never got the traction that you need to really write your own ticket as a stand up to where you can, you know, play a theater or you know, clubs and your crowd comes to see you, I never had that kind of traction, probably because I went off and did so many other different things it makes being at this point in my life getting up in front of an audience that doesn't know who you are at this point. So that means it's it's essentially a blind date every night. And it's exhausting. And these are times that I really don't know what the hell to talk about anymore. So I'm really liking, kind of putting myself behind the project that I'm working on and let the project speak for itself and do its own thing. I'm digging that a lot. I think that's a great approach. It's not like there's any sort of void in the world of comedy or entertainment. I mean, Jesus every I just never seen so much. There's so much out there to distract us that I don't even know what they distracting us from anymore. I mean, there's so many opportunities to entertain yourself, which is fantastic. But you know, again, as somebody who just my whole life has sort of been plugging, I never got to the place where tons of shit came to me. And so it's a hard road to hoe every time you start a new project, or every time you want to do something new, starting from square one. And that just gets exhausting. So I've sort of backed away from show business, and I'm just doing my little projects, they're like my little pieces that you know, maybe somebody liked, and maybe somebody want to take the idea of a linear career off the table many years ago, because it was just all over the map. I mean, I've done some stuff that I'm really, really proud of. And I've done some stuff that I've really, really grown from and that people have really responded to. But none of it's been linear off directing a play or starring in a play or doing some acting roles here or there and some TV here and there. And even the TV stuff I did none of it ever got got traction. So again, it was always starting from square one. So I'm liking just being pulling back a little bit and letting the work speak for itself. And the work is actually it's very much about comedy. It's very much of comedy. It's comedy. It's just not performing stand

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up. It's funny, because from my point of view, which I know means nothing. It's funny to hear you say that because I'm when I think like I remember the first time I got retweeted by you on Twitter, I turned to my wife and like holy crap pop events is just retweeted me and she looked at me and said, Who? Exactly? No, no, but seriously, like but but it was a big deal for me. Like I was like I people know Paul Provenza you've always been part of the comedy world forever. One way or another. You know, you were with Comedy Central before it was Comedy Central, right? I mean, you've been after you've been made famous famous movies with famous comedians. It just seems like you've just always been at the pulse of it. You are on Johnny Carson. How many times a bazillion times. I mean, it's like you've done a lot. I'm surprised to hear from your point of view that

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the business of comedy or show business in general is very odd. Where and again I you know, I have to say that I did Take a lot of tangents that interested me creatively or artistically, you know, that just never got traction, but I'm not sorry I did them. It was, you know, they were all great phenomenal experiences with amazing people involved. About 15 years ago, I started working on the International Circuit. So I was out of the out of the eye of show business. I mean, over that 15 years I did some of the work I'm most proud of, you know, I was making the aristocrats when I started working overseas, and I would go overseas for three, four or five months and then come back for two three months and work on a movie and then go away for another three, four months. And that went on for like 15 years, and I developed the greenroom. at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I developed a series called setlist, which was created by a brilliant comedian artist named Tory Conrad, I hooked up with him to take that show around the world. That's a phenomenal format. Basically, we write a setlist and the comedian gets it while they're on stage. And they have to improvise the set that goes with it. Great little, little live show. We do it a lot here in Los Angeles. But we also took it around the world. We took it to dozens of countries, and we sold it to TV in in the UK, and we did 14 episodes for UK television, but haven't been able to sell it here. I've done all this, you know stuff that I'm really proud of. And that's really great stuff. It was just out of the view of showbusiness. So when I stopped traveling non stop after 1516 years of that, and I'm back in showbiz, and people like, oh, wow, where have you been? I thought you were dead. That has a lot to do with it too. But really, I just like to do things that are real challenges to me. There's one doc that I'm working on right now is this magnum opus, a real challenge. I mean, to me, it's like climbing comedy Mount Everest. It's a story of Andy Andrus, who is a comedian. Are you familiar with Andy Andrus?

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I not,

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he was one of the unbuckles the Doug Stanhope crowd there. He was one of the unbuckles and he's a beautiful guy and a really funny comedian. In fact, I directed a special that we shot at Doug Stanhope 's place in Arizona. He has a little room there called the funhouse. And sometimes he does live shows there. So we shot Andy there, what the dock is about is about Andy with the help of Doug Stanhope and a couple of other people set about to confront on camera, his childhood molester. I'm doing a doc about everything that what happened to Andy, and then tracking down and actually confronting the guy. And then what happened after that, the results of that, and it was mostly stuff that was shot by Andy and a few friends. Nobody professional in terms of filmmaking was involved. And so I got all this footage, and I was like, this is an amazing story. So I've been working on telling his story. What's fascinating about it is it's very real. I mean, this incident, which happened repeatedly over a lot of his youth really fucked him up. And nobody really understood how it fucked him up, because it was so funny about it all the time. And when he started talking about it on stage, you know, it's one of the as Chris castles, who's involved in the project says, he goes like, you know, it's a joke. You know, when a comedian tells a joke, you don't actually sit and think about the reality of it. But for Andy was real. Suddenly, this group of friends were just like, let's, let's help you deal with this. And it's an amazing journey. And it's a story about confronting your past, and kind of finding healing. And it's a story of friendship, how friendship can change everything and help you through all that. It's a story about comedy in that Andy's real life is the source of so much of his comedy, which is all pretty challenging stuff. He you know, he's not for the faint of heart. But it's all rich and real. And it comes from a really, you know, a personal place. So movie, it's about a lot of things. You know, every time anybody, any media about something like child molestation is, and rightly so morose. But that's not how everybody can deal with everything. And so this is a sort of a paradigm for a different way of dealing with that kind of thing. Because it's hilarious. So this is a movie about this, like really intensely heavy stuff. But Andy is so funny, that it's actually a funny movie. That's why it's taken forever.

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That sounds intense. How do you get a child molester to sign off on that

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he fucked up is what happened. That's what the third act of the movie is about. After this all came down. He sued them to try and keep the footage from seeing the light of day. And when Andy was talking to the guy, he told him, I'm filming this for a documentary, which was a dream he had, and the guy sued to get an injunction against doing anything with this footage against the diver going public, and how that case played out ends up being the real victory in the whole thing. I mean, obviously, it worked out in Andy's favor. But the journey to that was really intense.

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Wow, that sounds amazing. We didn't have to

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sign off because he put it all in public record by taking them to court.

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Interesting.

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Yeah, really interesting. That's a really a really intense project and working on a couple others. But I also want to tell you about Andy and juristes special which is available now you can get it on Vimeo or directly through nature jack.com self distributing it because Andy's not for everybody. So, you know, we didn't, we didn't expect to go to Netflix or anything like that. It's a really, really interesting special a he just, he there's so much material that makes you feel like wow, I don't know what to think or feel about this. There's a reason why he's Doug standups favorite comic. All right. Well, I'm

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off to check that out. That sounds Yeah. Last shot. Sounds good. I'll link to it in the show notes for sensitive ears.

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And the audio is being distributed across a million platforms. So you can you can hear it from a million places. But if you want to see the video, it's Vimeo basically or nature. jack.com. Paul,

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you mentioned like a lot of projects that you've done that didn't catch fire, but I feel people still talk about to this day, right. So your comics only, which evolved into the green room. The setlist show. Let's go back to comics only for a second. So this was on Ha, right. This is what you were you were before even Comedy Central.

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We signed a deal to do this show comics only with a network called hot. It came about around the same time that HBO started the HBO comedy channel, but they had different sort of premises Hi was going to do traditional programming, half hour hour programming all original comedy. Eventually it started off obviously with like reruns of classic sitcoms and things. The HBO comedy channel was doing more like what at the time was an MTV format with like VJs and clips. They ultimately both HBO and MTV Networks, which owned ha they both realized they were cannibalizing each other's audience. And for two startups, that was pretty dangerous. And so they ended up just merging and that became Comedy Central. But we were already in production before it became Comedy Central. In fact, I think our first round of shows actually were on half. So we ended up doing about 165 episodes of that. And that was like late 80s, early 90s, late 80s. So it's a time capsule of the comedy boom, because it was one of the first original shows, comedy shows to have this kind of format, which was the premise was I when I was coming out when I was a kid, I would watch the tonight show for the comedians. I care who the other guests were sometimes I liked them. Sometimes they didn't. But I don't care. My whole reason for watching The Tonight Show was to see the comedian. So I thought what if we do the tonight show without anybody but comedians, and that became comics only very interesting that you mentioned that it kind of evolved into greenroom because it did have the same impulse. The impulse that I had with comics only was I wish that people could feel what it's like hanging out with comedians, because it's a very particular rarefied thing. And it changed my life. It made me feel like wow, I am not alone on this planet, just hanging out with comics. So you can have the most interesting, fascinating conversations, you can have real conflict, but it ends up being funny. And you can just keep talking and keep getting your points out and you could just like real conversation, real thoughts real you know, comics sit around thinking a lot. I don't care who you are, how busy you are, if you're a comic, you sit around thinking a lot. And so just found some of the most fascinating times in my life, were just hanging out with other comics, offstage, comics only was an effort to try and somehow feel that it wasn't really that it didn't really work out that way. Because a I was very green. I'd never done a talk show before or anything like that the network was very green. There was no real audience yet. There are a lot of reasons we were just sort of finding ourselves for most of the most of the show the episodes, but I knew that I wanted certain things like I wanted it to feel like comedians are hanging out there all the time. So we did a lot of things where like, if Sam Kinison was in doing a segment with me, then we shoot a bunch of little rowland's and stuff that we can air across other shows. So whenever you watch a show, you never know who's gonna pop up and what sketch or what behind the scenes thing or whatever, when I was working overseas, and I had the opportunity to do the show at the Edinburgh Fringe, which is basically just a hole in their schedule, which has 10,000 shows. I mean, it's the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is just crazy. You know, there's so much going on. But this one particular venue had this one particular hole in their schedule, late night thing, and I thought we try something like this. And let me see what it's like is this is the time the time slot was probably about midnight or so somewhere in that vicinity. And I was like, this is a time slot where comics are all finishing their shows, and they're just hanging out. Can I do that on stage with an audio and so that's what I did was I just started having comic friends of mine come and hang out for this show. Never knew who was going to be on whatever the case may be until down the line all of a sudden people started wanting to do it and we could actually schedule things. But as I was doing this live show I was getting like oh, this is the feeling that I wanted and it was the right kind of audience because they knew what they were eating for. And then I brought some people with me Cameras, some friends of mine to just start seeing how can I put this on camera? If I wanted to do this on camera? Like how can I do that because it's not a You can't shoot this like a talk show. And we learned all the stuff we needed to ultimately what became the greenroom on Showtime. The key to it really was I always used to watch television, I used to watch comedy on television all the time, and I would get frustrated. I would think watching comedy on television is like the best part of comedy is like stripped away the spontaneity there. You know, when you go on a talk shows, you know every word you're going to say and, and the way they shoot things are like, you know, you have to stand here because the cameras over there. But what happens if the production conforms to the comedy, I told the line producers make sure that whoever's behind the camera has done sports and news, because that's what we only want them to follow the ball, we have no idea where it's going and where it's coming from. And that's why we had that sort of dynamic shooting style. And that real intimate kind of put the camera in the audience and all that sort of stuff that was all done from experimenting with it at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, a much closer accomplishment of what the impulse was even way back in the late 80s. When I started comics only was just people need to see what it's like to just hang out with a bunch of comics

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for comics only. I watched a few episodes, or at least a few half episodes of watch Bill Hicks and Drake Sadler and Tom Wilson.

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Oh, yeah, cool. Well, you know, we also had another funny thing on that show was we had a real mix of old and young because that's the thing that I feel is missing from television now, because when I was coming up, you'd watch The Mike Douglas Show and they'd be like, you know, this hot young new comic Freddie Prinze on with Alan King and Gore Vidal or whatever. It was always a mix of old and young. So you could see the classics, the greats, the people who had established themselves and become icons and comedy. And you could see, you know, Cheech and Chong the new up and coming, you know, comics, and that's missing, because music, nobody questions, music, nobody questions about the fact that James Taylor is working with this band, that's, you know, the oldest members 23. You know, nobody questions that kind of makes intuitive sense that, of course, the old music she was in the young musicians, they would get to get to same with comedy. And so Steve Allen used to come on the show all the time. Rip Taylor came on the show, we did a whole episode with Phyllis Diller. So I was always into bringing comedy and regardless of demographics, and that was another weird thing is Comedy Central didn't care because they didn't really have an audience yet. They basically let us do whatever we wanted. They weren't really paying attention. And here actually, here's a really funny story. We did a lot of darker sketches on the show, because my head writer and my co host on the show was Fred Wolf, who some of your listeners know I don't know if you know, but Fred went on to write for Saturday live and he's, you know, written Chris Farley and David Spade movies. And he's, he's always working. And he's a hilarious, brilliant writer. Many years before I got the show, I was working with Fred. And I said to him, once I said, Man, if I ever have a talk show, I'm calling you the first call I'm making. And then you know, 70 years later, I get this deal. And they called Fred and he can't believe it. He's, I can't believe you're actually doing this. And I brought him on. So a lot of the stuff was dark. A lot of the stuff was Fred getting his head blown off. And you know, it's a really, really violent, weird dark stuff. But of course, you know, we'd come back and you have a, you know, cartoon bandaid on and go like, yeah, just go ahead and come okay. You know, the funny thing was, I was working with a producer at the time, his name was Jerry Kramer. And he was at the offices at Comedy Central in New York, when Ha became Comedy Central. Like I said, we were already in production, it became Comedy Central, they moved offices. So when he goes up to from some meetings at some offices, and he goes through a door and realizes it's just this kind of weird storage space, I guess, during the move during their transition, it was just this weird storage space, and he notices a fax machine. So he goes over to and he writes down the number the fax machine. So every time we had to deliver a script for approval, we would send it to that fax machine. And when we delivered the first batch of like 15 or 20 shows they were like we can't put this on the air. This is you out of your minds we never approved this and we said what we sent you the material we didn't hear back so we assumed you signed off and sure enough, they find the fax roll you know way back behind the machine we all our faxes had been there so we were legit. And it actually came down to the conversation of Well look, you already have the shows in the can Aram see what happens if it's a problem stopping area. And then there was actually was such an incipient network at the time that they were actually like, okay, they're these shows with all of this really dark, dark sketch material. But again, it was all in between, you know, comics just hanging out. I gave the comics the option at the time I said, we could just wing this and just really have a conversation, or you can do material. Yaki set you up for material. And most of the comedians wanted because that was the sort of that was the convention at the time. If you do it, let them any during the Tonight Show. You worked out the material for your panel shot what they call when you're talking to the host. Most of them opted to do that, but not everybody. Not everybody hits half and half. A few people flew in between those two, but that's the big difference between that and the green room. Was it when we did In the Green Room, I sort of issued everything of conventional talk show, the show starts in mid conversation, you know, it wasn't shot in a studio shot in a nightclub space. We didn't adapt to the production, we made the production adapt to these, the audience was sitting everywhere, anywhere they wanted. And somebody at one point was like, you know, we need to pass through the cameras. I'm like, no, no, the cameras have to figure out the path. That's what we want to see. Yeah, it was a very similar impulse, but a really different execution.

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I watched also the Louis C K episode of comics only, I did notice very specifically with him, he was doing material, right. And then once you evolve to the green room, where once a show of off to the green room, it's much more what it's like for comics before they go on stage, shooting the shit and be just real with each other and even just non PC, which is what what you do to kind of Rev yourself up to kind of get yourself going before you get on stage. Yeah,

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I wanted the green room to really be organic. It was zero prep for the show. I mean, I knew they were because I knew who the guests were, you know, there were a couple of things that like I knew I wanted to talk about a particular I knew with Roseanne Barr, I want her to talk about this controversial photo that she had done. But other than that, there was no prep and there was no format. In fact, there's a couple episodes where people go, what do we do on this show, Bobby Slayton in particular, you could hear from, what are we doing on this show? And other people going, This is it. We're just sitting and talking and it was like shocking, even to the people who were doing the show. The real prep for me was putting the groups of people together. That was really there's a lot of science behind it. I mean, I really, like I scrapped entire shows, because one of the four people dropped out. It wasn't the kind of thing we just go with was available. It wasn't that it was all about the chemistry and the connections or the lack of connections that people had putting Roseanne and Patrice together was a major, major thing. I don't know if you're familiar with Patrice O'Neal. A lot of people know Patrice O'Neal from like the Opie and Anthony show and Colin Quinn's Tough crowd and Patrice will dominate but by putting him on the show with Roseanne now I knew Roseanne Roseanne had seen Patrice and she thought this guy's really good. But Patrice didn't know that. And I asked Patrice to come on the show. And I put Roseanne on it because I knew that Roseanne being a mega star, this is prior to her recent conflicts. I knew that it would keep Patrice in line that Patrice couldn't dominate, because how can you dominate when there's a mega star on the panel with you and Bob Saget, I knew that Bob Saget and Patrice had worked together in the past. And I also know Bob Saget. I've known Bob Saget since the mid 70s. And I know that it's impossible to get Bob to actually have a conversation. But I knew that Patrice doesn't allow people not to have a conversation. So I thought Roseanne will keep a treat in a certain place, Patrice will keep Bob Saget in a certain place. And I put Sandra Bernhard on because it gave Roseanne a level of comfort. She was happy that there was another woman on the show happy that somebody that she had a relationship with they had a lot of inside jokes. So that dynamic was very, very particular. And I think what came out on that show it certainly from Patrice and from Roseanne as well. And even from Sagat. At one point, I gave him crap on the show for you know, full house. And it's the first time in all the years I've known Bob Saget. It was the first time you ever actually address that wherever he actually explained why he made that choice. When at the time every comedian thought that was a sellout choice. It's just some great things came out of that. And it was a real deep conversation is so that was a much closer manifestation of the impulse that started both comics only. And decades later, the green room and the green room. You're right, it's I get I didn't get any traction. I mean, green room, you know, we did to see the 14 episodes, I think Showtime had a change in management, and they just, you know, decided we're not going to pick up a lot of the stuff that the old guy, you know, had bought. And so it went nowhere. But over the years people have caught on to it. And it actually I feel like you know if a network now so if Netflix said let's do this show, I think you know, there's a built in audience now because it's grown, because it's all over the internet, Showtime stopped policing it. When we were in production. Actually, one of the Showtime people told us that it has it was hold at the time, it was holding the record for the most illegally downloaded Showtime show. And I thought well, that's a dubious accomplishment. And over the years, all that stuff, they stopped policing it. So it's all over the place. And it's really grown an audience. And I mean, it's like 12 years later now, when people are writing, how am I just discovering this show now? That's one of those things that if it had stayed on for another couple of seasons, and somebody had gotten behind it, it probably would have gotten some traction, but it didn't.

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Well, it seems like the type of concept that could come back at any time you and yeah, I illegally watched it. I watched The Drew Carey, Larry Miller Eddie Izzard reginal T Hunter episode just before I continue and then one more thing I'm Patrice O'Neal. So in the latest documentary on him I think it's the killing is easy's the most recent one. He's performing at the Ann Arbor comedy showcase. I opened for him for that show.

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Nice. Nice. There's actually um, I interviewed him before the book I did with Dan Dion called sadder he says There's footage from those interviews that dock as well. For some reason Patrice used to really open up to me, I guess. I don't know, he liked to have real conversations he really did. Maybe it's just because I was so much older than he or whatever. He gave me a little bit more respect when we had conversations than he did with some other people. But I've had some fascinating conversations with Patrice and I think I think him dying. So Young, I think is one of the greatest losses to comedy because he was on a trajectory where he was just getting better and better and better. I loved him. And that was the other thing when greenroom came on, people were like, Oh, this is tough crowd to Colin Quinn. But there's a big difference between them, in fact, even had Cullen on on the greenroom, we shot one in Montreal. And the big difference was that a tough crowd is by its nature, but even in the title itself, it was about conflict, and we didn't want it to be a conflict and conflict happened. Great. But that's not what we wanted it to be about. We really wanted it to be about people just are opening up and talking and being funny with each other.

30:53

That's awesome. Yeah, Patrice. Here's the funny thing about me working with Patrice O'Neal. I didn't know who he was at the time. He was I didn't listen, Opie and Anthony. I worked with him. And I gotta say, he's offstage. He's the same guy. He's on stage as a huge compliment. That's true. After working with him. I started listening to Opie and Anthony. And I realized, oh my god, if I had known who Patrice O'Neal was, I think I would have been having panic attacks I would just like to be working with, like, you know, I mean, it would it would have been so nerve wracking for me. He said the funniest thing to me ever. We're in the green room in the back room. And he says to me, Jeff, where did you meet your wife? And I said, Oh, we met at summer camp. He starts laughing, huh? Yeah. He starts like belly laughing. And he says to me, Jeff, you are the whitest person I have ever met. He says I was gonna make a joke. Did you meet your wife at summer camp? Yeah. I told my friends at after I was like, it's like one of my favorite memories now. leukotrienes really? Well,

31:53

yeah. Bill Burr, Jim Norton. And you know that all those guys who do the annual tribute to him in New York, which is always a phenomenal show, you know, they all say they don't always agree with him. And you know, and they would have these arguments or whatever. And Patrice was, you know, conversationally, he was a bully. But I never had that experience with him. It was always a different thing. And I think that's why the producers that Doc responded so much to the footage, I sent them of this interview, because it's not a lot of Patrice not bullying people on camera, you know, but I gotta say that, you know, nine times out of 10 If I didn't necessarily agree with him, he certainly made me think a lot more about something than I ever had. He was real thinker. He was a real, not just a thinker. He felt stuff too. He was a fascinating cat. And he had a whole different actually, the first time I met him was was in, I think, Boston or New York. I can't remember. I spent a little bit of time with him. I didn't really know him all that well. Then, when I was overseas, there was one time when I was at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and a great comic from Ireland. His name's Andrew Maxwell. And I love this guy. He's great. I mean, he was great. We became friends and I would always watch him and go to school on Andrew Maxwell. He's so good. And I said to him, I go to your favorite American comedian Patrice O'Neal. Before he finished the question. Patrice O'Neal, Patrice O'Neal, Patrice O'Neal. You got to see Patrice O'Neal. And I was like I've seen Patrice and I don't remember him being the kind of guy that Andrew Maxwell would respond to in that way. Well, sure enough, the next time I saw Patrice his time overseas, his time working in the UK changed him. And he came back at a whole different level of artistry. And that was a beautiful thing to see, too.

33:28

It was mesmerizing to watch him. And because I got to work with him for a whole weekend. So I got to see him like five times like well, within three days, so yes, it was really, really awesome. It was funny though, in comics, only that I watched with Tom Wilson. That's Beth, from Back to the future for everyone who's listening.

33:43

I actually knew from my early days in Philadelphia, I used to go to a great club. Hello, Steve Young, a great club called comedy works calm was actually in a comedy team with his then girlfriend Judy toll who is no longer with us. She died way way too young. She went on to do a solo act as well as write and she'd like real casual sex, which was Jon Lovitz, and Andrew Dice Clay and Leah Thompson, I think a couple of movies and TV shows and things like that. So she was really brilliant as well. But Tom and she were in this comedy team and my first one ever you mentioned Tom Wilson, I imagined him with a sousaphone around him because he used to come on stage with a tuba and that's how far back I know Tom Wilson so you know, every chance I had to get him on on comics only I was a comic con Come on, because very funny guy and really personable guy and a guy just in conversation is just entertaining and charming. And you just love being with them.

34:36

Yeah, he was super funny. I remember it was funny. I actually didn't know he was a comedian, but I was matched up with him as featuring or I'm seeing for him for a weekend and Mark Ridley's comedy castle. My and my buddy's a photographer. He's done lots of famous people and he's always like, Jeff, when you talk to famous people, don't ask them the obvious questions. They you know, just always make sure you just you they'll respect you more if you kind of go a little deeper, right? So remember like medium couldn't have been nicer, nicest guy in the world just before the first show. I'm dying to ask him some questions. I don't I hold off. He goes on stage. He has an entire saw minutes long song of every ridiculous Back to the Future question that people ask him. Ah hilarious 90% of them covered when I was going to ask him going, Oh, thank God, this is a horrible way to start the weekend. Right. So I held off I waited a day pretty brilliant on Tom's part. Oh, brilliant. Yeah, it's a great band. It was a great pet. So waited a day kind of just, you know, hung out, you know, you know how it goes, right? Give it some time. And then I turn to Him. And I'm like, Tom, what was it like filming two and three, back to back? Because at the time, that was like a newer phenomenon, maybe Superman Superman had done it. But I don't think people really knew Superman had done it.

35:52

Whereas you when you say back to back, did they overlap? Were they like shooting scenes from two and then the next scene they shot might have been from three and then they went back to two or where they literally were doing two and then the next day we start three? I

36:05

don't know the order, but I know that there was well now they shot two and three at the same time. So I don't know if it was okay, you know, in order or not. But that was like the way to save money. They could do too. And then when two ended, they already could have the release date for three. Uh huh. So I asked him this question. He gives me a look like he wouldn't believe like, he's gonna kill me. And I just turned to him. And I'm like, Tom, it's not in your song. It's fair game. I was like, this is I would. This is no, come on work with me here. So but he was he was really great. I hope he wrote another verse. Just to shut me up if I ever showed up again. Too funny, too funny.

36:45

Yeah, well, you know, comics only. There are some clips online, very few full episodes, but there's a bunch of flow clips of some sketches and some interview things. But it really is a time capsule. I mean, Bill Hicks, Bill Hicks used to love to do a show, you know, like three times he used to love to do it because I would tell him to do on the show whatever material he was able to do on other shows, because nobody was watching our show. Nobody, nobody from the network came nobody knew what was going on. So we got away with a lot of stuff. So Bill Hicks is on Kinison. Stephen right, Jeff Foxworthy, one of the earliest TV appearances of Ellen DeGeneres, Jon Stewart's on it got to can't even so many people who went on to become huge stars who were just literally my peer group at the time, as well as a bunch of people who nobody's ever heard of, or people don't really know, like, Drake's either who was brilliant or, you know, Cathy lab man or to be told there were so many people and then I would have Phyllis Diller. And like I said, Steve Allen, and all those people.

37:38

Yeah, it's amazing. I found a lot of like seven eight minute segments like or like the bill hit Hicks interview, but it looks like you interviewed it, probably multiple people per show. True. I think like one of them. I was watching. And then when you came back, Steven Wright was sitting there also. But he wasn't part of the clip, I'll do a search on YouTube, put it in the show notes. So people can see comics only from the HA, I was doing a little research. I was reading that once you had a family act, you'd come out with your wife, having sex with your wife, the sun would come out and set your wife on fire. You're trained dog would then jump over your wife saving your wife from a fiery death by urinating all over her. Your wife would survive, but your dogs kept dying of smoke inhalation. What did you call yourselves?

38:22

Did you just shoehorn an aristocratic joke into this conversation? My segway was nice was nice. That's an act that would get traction. I should have been doing that act.

38:32

Man, let's let's talk about the aristocrats movie. That was a labor of love. Yeah, yeah.

38:38

And it was, what was great about that really was because it was this crazy idea that Penn Jillette and I talked about for years, we would always say it would be so funny to just see a tape of just, you know, a bunch of people just doing the same joke, the aristocrats joke, you know, How funny would that be? And we talked about it, it's like, you know, maybe someday we'll do it as like, you know, we'll just distribute it to friends or something goofy pre internet, of course. And we just would always come back to it. At some point in so many conversations, we just get back to, you know, the aristocrats thing. That's a really funny idea. One night, I was in Vegas, and I was hanging out with pan at the fabulous pepper mill. And he just stopped and he said, let me ask you, he said, if I commit to this, can you commit to this? And can we actually see if we can make this happen? As I said, I had started working overseas and doing a lot of international stuff. So I'd be gone for months and I'll be back for months. And in the time that I was back it was not really couldn't really book a whole lot of tours or anything, you know, so So I was like, yeah, if we can do it on this kind of a thing. So we decided that we would just start shooting and just collect material until such a point where we said, Okay, we have enough material. And we did that for like five, six years. We just whenever I was back, we go and interview a bunch of people or if he was off from his Vegas show, he come fly to New York and we do a bunch of people in New York. I go to Vegas with some people there and come to LA and you know, we have this thing where we just call people we knew that we thought would be really great to have in the movie. His name actually brought a lot of people in. But we call George Carlin together very early on in the process before we even because we said, so the joke we're gonna do is the aristocrats and Carlin went all all. He said, I want to do this, I want to do this. He goes, but you got to give me some time. Because I think I have a whole notebook about this joke. Somewhere. He was let me go see if I can find that. Let's do this again. Like in a month or so great. Time goes by and we shoot George Carlin. It's funny, because up until then, everybody that we had shot Penn would say to me afterwards, you're packing up the gear and in the car driving home, he go. So what do you think we have anything? I don't know. I don't know. And that would happen after every day of shooting. Do we have anything yet? I'm not really sure. I think I don't know. And we shot Carlin. And he said, What do you think we have anything now? And they went, yep. Because Carlin gave us the perfect spine. You know, he was so professorial with it, that it was like yeah, we definitely have something here for sure. Not sure what it is. But it's a thing for sure. So Carlin was a huge game changer for us. And with Carlin's involvement, a lot of other people came on board. It was funny, because I spoke to polarizer after the first screening, and he said, I, this might be the funniest movie I've ever been. And I went well, thanks. And he said, I gotta tell you something, if I thought for a second that this stupid thing would ever see the light of day, I would comb my hair,

41:26

you know, it's kind of response, he was a mess in that movie, wasn't he? He literally

41:30

just showed up from he just got out of bed. You know, that was the kind of the beauty of it is that nobody ever thought it would go anywhere. So they're really natural, a lot of people are real natural in it. And that gave me a taste for that kind of thing. You know, the fact that it wasn't the real film shoot, it was another instance where we just bought consumer cameras. And it was whoever was around that day that could hold a camera, we had come to hold the camera. I mean, it was nothing, you know, it was really completely DIY. And it's funny, because when when we got into Sundance, which was an amazing experience, we got into Sundance, there's all this press about. Okay, so this movie that's made by Penn Jillette. And this guy, Paul Provenza, who obviously has a career and he's been around this a while. Why is this because at the time, Sundance was still kind of, you know, not Hollywood. And they were like, you know, this doesn't seem to be the thing. And then after those same writers saw the movie, they were like, this is actually the most of that than any other movie. It really truly is just a couple of friends getting together and slapping this thing together. It just happens that the friends they have you know, major, there's a bunch of Oscar winners in this thing. I mean, like when I called Robin to do it. First of all, it was very hard to get Robins manager to connect me with him. And I would say to him all the time, and I've known David for years, I would say, David, just let me talk about something and we have a pitch to him. And he was clearly stonewalling us. Then at one point, I called him and I said, David, I said, I'm not trying to him run around you here I go, you stay on this call. But please, I'm begging you give me five minutes, five minutes on the phone comic to comic with robbing you on the phone as well. Not trying to do anything behind your back please. Five minutes comic to comic and eventually wore him down. And he connected me with Robin. And as soon as they told Robin the premise, he was like, Oh, he laughed. He did that. And was just like, Ah, it's so great. I mean, you know, David Steinberg, you get here, the sad trombone. I'm David on them, you know, three a couple more and immediately Robin was in and that's the thing I learned also is that you know, comics or comics, if you can get to the comic, and you could tell them what real part of it is with the real core of it is you know, that's why setlist works so well. And why comics all around the world. We're doing setlist because the core of it is so organically about being a comic. And people like Robin Williams, people like big stars, their worlds aren't filled with that anymore. That used to be all their worlds were were that in the comic impulse. And now it's filled with show business and PR and you know monetization and all that sort of shit. But if if a comic talks to a comic about the comic impulse, it's a different ballgame. And a lot of them sort of come alive, because it's been so long since they've engaged that purely with themselves. So that was an interesting thing. And the other great thing about the aristocrats was after about like I said, five, six years, you know, we had about 100 people in the can pen was like, I think we're done. I think let's do this. Let's do this. If anybody else comes along, we can always shoot them and add them if we want to. But for now, let's just say this is our material. And let's do it. And then for the next 18 months, Emery Emery and I just locked ourselves into an editing room what his house actually said, let's see what's here. And we just played and sometimes we get into real arguments because they'd be long 48 hour things, you know, we'd be just pumped full of sugar and we get into arguments and he would just throw on Billy the mind and we would how refresh all over again. He'd throw in Billy the mind or Otto and George and we would laugh our asses off and everything was fine again.

44:58

I read you had 300 turned 50 hours of jokes that sound about right easily 350

45:03

hours of material. Yeah, yeah, not all jokes. A lot of you know a lot of it's conversation because like I said, we didn't have a film crew going and so it was me and pan and a couple people holding our small little consumer cameras. So it was it was none of this pressure of production. And a lot of it was just real conversation, some of which, which is great. But we never really used any of that footage because we felt like well, that's not what people signed on for. They didn't sign on to, you know, end up with this footage being wherever we felt like putting it so we never did that. But yeah, there's lots of hours of great conversation with great comedians. Yeah, it's kind of a nice thing to know. You got a

45:37

side note and Otto and George unrelated to the movie specifically, I saw them during the virus tour. That was an opening and Anthony tour. We were on a hill so it was an outdoor auditorium. He said something I can't remember what it was I you ever laughed so hard. You can't believe and you can't stop laughing. You're not talking about Yeah, like and everyone's staring at you and you can't seven the second you stop is like your breath. And you just Yeah. Oh my god. I just every time I hear his name, I think about that

46:03

article, George. We're so funny. Do you know the story then? For anybody who's listening who is not familiar with auto? Auto is the guy George is the dummy. He's a ventriloquist, and X rated ventriloquist he was really, really rude and vile is a ventriloquist that made it hilarious. But he really he didn't just stop it that it wasn't just the premise that the dummy saying filthy words, it was a thing. It was a character in a relationship between them. And you know, that whole thing about you know how the dummies speaks the truth of the ventriloquist and all that stuff that was never more evident than with auto in Georgia. At one point, I saw them do a very, very late night show in Vegas. And it wasn't going that well just because it was a drunk rowdy crowd, George says something profane. And auto pulls the dummy back. I always think it's funny, that ventriloquist they create a character that they don't get along with. I always thought that was really funny. I missed right off the bat. Your guy? Why are you constantly arguing? But he pulls the dummy back and he was like, stop that. Don't stop using that kind of language. I told you you keep using language like that we'll never get on Letterman dummy whips his head around. It says to us no, that's not why we're never gonna get on Letterman. We're never gonna get on Letterman, because you're a crackhead. Which was the truth when we tried to get a hold of him to do the aristocrats we couldn't for months and months and months because at some point he had sold his answering machine the bike rack. So I when George were an amazing act, just hilarious, just whole area. And Billy to mine, who of course is he's a brilliant artist named Steven banks. And Billy the mind has, you can go and see a billy the mind show if you're lucky, I helped. I took it around the world with actually I brought it to a few of the international festivals. He decided at one point he went, you know, he was like, I hate mine. He goes, How can I make fun of mine in a way that's not obvious. And he realized if I commit to really being a machine, and I just choose the subject matter, that's completely inappropriate for a mine, but I really commit to it, because I think that might be the best way to make fun of mine and his shows unbelieva So he's a mine who works in a very conventional Marcel Marceau style, you know, he comes out with a card introducing, you know, each piece and but he does things like, you know, the short tragic life of JFK, Jr. He does World War Two, he does. The priest and the altar boy, he knows all this really, really dark, dark material, but he commits so fully as a mind. It's absolutely brilliant. And again, it's one of those things. This is the kind of comedy that I gravitate towards this stuff that's kind of in this weird miasma of, I don't know how I feel about this. I love that. I love that space.

48:40

And so funny. I've read one other thing is in the very beginning of the movie, they talked about how one of the origins or one of the things that would go on is Chevy Chase would have parties and they would do this joke. And I read in a trivia section IMDb, he actually when Chevy Chase did a joke, and then when sign off for it to be in the movie,

49:01

that is true. But Chevy was going through some of his bipolar period, it was very clear that this guy was not in the best of health. First, we had like three people say that he used to have these parties, right. And when we spoke to him on the phone, he was like, yeah, uh huh. And then when we went to it, he denied ever having any of those parties. He denied even knowing the joke, and then proceeded to do it. And it went on for like 30 minutes or so 40 minutes, and he was completely forthcoming. And then we gave him a release. He drew it in our faces, and so outside of that, like what the fuck so we obviously couldn't use his piece. The movie gets to Sundance, he happens to be at Sundance, I run into him in a restaurant, and he goes, Hey, why are you in that movie? And I was with Pat and Pat and I looked each other. You didn't want to sign a release? He goes, Oh, he goes like, wow, that was a mistake, man. I really like to be part of that. So he's like, Can I can I do that? This pen and I went off and talk to McCain back and flat out said to him, he said, We will send you a release to sign you have no say in any of the editing, you have no say in this, you have no saying that if you want to be in the movie, we will open it up again and include you. But these are our terms. And he said, Yeah, no problem, because I think at that point, he had seen the move. And he goes, Yeah, no problem. So it gives us his manager or agent or lawyers name. We call them we tell them what happened. We fax it to them, we get a note back on certain chases, not consign this, I have no idea. So I basically have somewhere hidden. We have footage of Chevy Chase breaking down. It's actually pretty ugly at one point he talks about so who else is in this movie, and you know, who's really funny, and I mentioned a couple of people and I go and we just did recently, Bob Saget, who was so funny. It's painful how funny he is. And Chevy Chase was like, one of the things he said when he threw the release in my face was I won't be a part of something with bots sag. It's the funniest thing and it gets fucked up. The guy was fucked up. It was very clear that he was not a well, man. And this has been corroborated by several polls pretty messed up. It was completely like what Chevy is, are we talking to this particular minute? It was crazy. Oh, yeah. So he dragged us out forever. It was a joke, man. You have people like Martin Moe who we got hours to him just telling jokes. He was just having the greatest time and it was great fun. And it was great fun hanging out with some of the unexpected people.

You know, like Phyllis Diller and I had been friends. We were friends for many years. At that point, the way we became friends is another cool story. I got booked to do a comedy cruise cruise ships are notorious for being just awful, awful gigs. A the crowd is generally not a comedy crowd B they're, you know, generally older. You see, they're just they're just a weird, eclectic group of D. They're people who think going on a cruise. It's like a big deal. So it's just not really most comedians, crowds, so normally hate them. But this was a comedy themed cruise and the entertainment on the ship and everything around the entertainment on the ship was comedy based. So people actually chose to go on this cruise because it was about comedy. Primetime entertainment was on Monday night, the primetime show like eight o'clock, right, Phyllis Diller. Tuesday night, a midnight show, late night show for the younger people on the cruise ship. Richard Janney, Wednesday night primetime show eight o'clock for the older folks, Jerry Van Dyck, who's unbelievable, by the way, a perfect act from start to finish. 45 minutes of perfect act. He never changed the word. He can do it for centuries. And it's brilliant and hilarious. Thursday night, midnight show me Friday night primetime show norm Crosby. So it's quite the mix of comedy for different kinds of people during the cruise. Obviously, the comedians gravitate towards one another. We don't want to really hang out with anybody else on a cruise ship. And that's one of the things that makes cruises so hard for a comedian because if you don't do well, you're stuck on the ship seven days with these people. And you're seeing them at buffets, and you're seeing them walking on the decks. And you know, cruise ships are really, really, really frustrating for comics, except for the people who tailor their accent. You know, there are people who do that who are great comics, but they know exactly what the audience is. They know what's required of them. They don't have any issues with it. They do it and they enjoy it. But for most comedians for whom it's not a mainstay, it's a pain in the ass. we all gravitate towards each other. Irish Jenny does the first night and I don't Richie for years. So we immediately connected and started hanging out. I got tighter with rich then than I ever had before, because we were stuck on the ship for 10 days. And then the next night was Phyllis Diller. And once her show was done, she was ready to just party and let me tell you, Phyllis Diller can drink any of us under the table. She was amazing, too amazing. At four o'clock in the morning, Jenny and I like I gotta get some sleep. And she's like, Okay, see you later. And she's playing the piano with a bottle of champagne, too, is great. So Phyllis, and I became really close then. And Jerry Van Dyck and Norm Crosby before your show, you don't really want to hang out so much. It's like you really focused on I got to do this thing. And for two or three days, you're like agonizing over I got to do this show. So once Jerry did his show them we started hanging out with Jerry van Zeig for a couple of years after that he would invite me to his dick mandates birthday parties and stuff is amazing. Right? Norm Crosby didn't hang with us much because he's the last of the primetime shows. He was neurotic all week, because everybody was killing. And you know, the pressure was on. So we didn't hang out too much with Norm. But Phyllis and I and Richard Jenny hung out so much. I just fell in love with Phyllis. And so for years after that, you know, we would hang out she'd send me a Christmas card every year a hand drawn Christmas card every year and she would call me sometimes and she say let's not get invited to this charity thing. I don't want to go alone when you come with me. And you know, limo would come and pick me up and me and Phil us would go to this charity event and we should be choosing all these people and she turned around to me to go I hate that morning. She's a real loser. I hate that woman. And it was really fun. It was fun just hanging out with Phyllis Diller and being in the home of a woman that used to watch when you were a little kid and you still watch and go God I want to do that someday. And I love she's one of my favorites. It was just wild with blue personal Oscar just having a friendship with Phyllis Diller. So she came on comics only and she came out you know She must have been in need well into her 70s At that point, but she came out with this was not long after the movie 10 had been a monstrous hit. And she came out with those Bo Derek dreads with the beads and everything and it was just hilarious. She was great.

55:14

That's awesome.

55:15

So that's how I got to know Phyllis Diller.

55:17

You mentioned your book earlier, Saturday says interesting thing about your book that I noticed is on Amazon, the paperback is $1,057.60. That's what we call in the industry priced to sell. Yeah, that's an impulse buy. That's an impulse well,

55:32

because it's not a legitimate paperback. It was never released in paperback. Now the rear frustration I have, we did this book. As you know, I co authored it with Dan Dion, who did all the photography in the book, which is beautiful. Dan Dion is a brilliant portrait artist. So we did this book together, you know, the plates for his photography, they're pretty expensive. So when they released the book, they released it at a $30 price point, which is what you expect when you have a book with all those plates in it, but we knew that we wouldn't make any money on a $30 price point. That's just too expensive. So we were anticipating a paperback release, maybe an oversized paperback so that would put you know, pricing at 1499. But at $30 it didn't sell enough for them to do the paperback release. So we got screwed again.

56:15

Oh, man, that's horrible. It looks like a pretty cool book. I saw some of the photos. Yeah, like really?

56:21

His work is beautiful. It really is. Yeah, so you've never read it. Let's see if I can dig up a copy to send

56:26

you that'd be so cool. Back to setlist for one more second because I recently had Rick Overton on the show and he just did a hall setlist special.

56:34

Yes, he did. He did, which I wasn't involved in the production of but gave him my blessings and Troy Conrad was involved into doing the actual format with him. Rick Overton is one of those people who the day he dies, the entire industry is gonna go fuck, how did we not do? How did we not appreciate Rick? He's just a genius. You know, he's the guy who back in back in the show's heyday, you know, he tested for Saturday Night Live like eight times or something ridiculous. And you know, it's just like, he would have been absolutely perfect. He would have been one of the biggest breakouts ever on the show, because there's nothing he can't do. He does impressions. He does voices, there's characters. He's an actor. He's a stand up. These concepts are off the wall that come out of left field. He's just brilliant. And I've known Rick Rick was one of the first people Rick was a young kind of new comedian. I mean, he had it was clear that he would he had respect, he had been around long enough to have have respect of the comedy world. But when I was starting out, he was a young, basically just starting out half of a comedy team. And when I showed up at the New York improv, and I had those feelings that ultimately generated the greenroom, which is like oh my god, this is a world I can't I have to be a part of this. Rick was one of the first people I met and he took me under his wing he was just like going you know, going around town where this kid is really funny and just we became fast friends immediately and we're still really close friends to this day. I Three decades later more and Rick's talent has always awed me. He just there's nothing he can't do. It's just so great. And with setlist it's like setlist was made for him because he likes the challenge of you know, the weird thing about setlist is because the topics you're given are not anything in your own frame of reference. It's why they even Robin Robin Williams love doing it because he said when I get up and I improvise it goes it's all stuff that's already in my head but you guys give me stuff to stick in my head and that I would never have thought of in 10 million years as a Rick loves that and Rick has a way to approach it. It's like watching it's like a comedy Grad School watching Rick Overton do setlist you get to see the gears turning and you get to see him thinking and fit and you get to see him sort of taking steps here or there and then realizing this is the road and it goes down that he commits and it's really cool to watch. But you know, I have to tell you everything I'm doing in the latter part of my career for lack of a better word is basically for me at 14 I just at some point decided you know what, I'm never going to be the kind of stand up that's going to change anything I say it's going to move the the art form forward. I just don't I'm not that gifted. I'm not a Dave Chappelle. I'm not a bowburn I mean, I'm just not me. I'm not going to do anything for comedy by just continuing to do stand up. So I thought I'm going to do projects for people like me when I was 14, who loved comedy, and that's what setlist is. That's what the aristocrats is what the greenroom is what salaries This is all stuff that when I was 14, if I had found that I would have been coming in my pants,

59:24

I love your current martra To make 14 year old Paul Provenza happy I think you do a lot for comedy I think if you take all these things we need to do is get centerpieces into paperback. We need to bring back the green room so maybe you combine the green room with

59:40

the setlist. I mean seriously, it's not a perfect show for Netflix.

59:43

Can we get the green room and then at the end one of them gets packed and then they have to do a setlist did I just make myself an executive producer? You

59:52

know what we actually talked at one point about trying to marry the shows we do setlist and then we have four or five people on setlist. Then those four or five people in the green room setting deconstructing, we actually did think about doing that. And you're like maybe this is where we can start. Because what happened was when when a lot of when we brought setlist to a lot of American networks, we had a lot of interest from a couple of them, but they all ultimately wanted it to become a competition. And that's the exact antithesis of what setlist is about we did. We're not competing, you're competing against the list. You're not competing against the other comics. It's about the joy of creativity and the spontaneity of it all and being free of judgment, and just letting yourself go. And so we're like we just couldn't really, we absolutely didn't want to do that. So we we walked away from a couple of situations that might have been major scenarios for setlist because it would have had to compromise too much. And part of the reason that we got so many amazing people to do setlist is because there is none of that pressure. There is none of that they did know that they trusted me and Troy and Barbara Roman, my other producing partner, they trusted us to not make them look bad if things don't go well. One of my favorite times, we're doing a show at a festival in Vienna. And Eddie Izzard did the show for the first time. And I always thought Eddie would just love this anyway, this be you know, a no brainer for Eddie. But it's not it's it's deceptive in that it's actually much more challenging than you would think even for people like Edie or Robin Williams or Rick Overton in the middle of his set and he was doing great. But in the middle of his set, he looked at a topic and he turned around and he just went, he said to the audience, this is fucking hard. And the audience how old I was just like that's got to go on poster somewhere.

1:01:35

That's a great tagline for the show, when you bring it back

1:01:39

in to mention who had just done a bunch of shows at the auteur arena, and we were doing setlist at the Soho Theatre in London in his little basement room seated about maybe 90 People 80 People and he had just finished doing like five shows at the otoo arena and from the green room before going on a setlist he goes, I'm about to do the most frightening thing I've ever done in my life. It's really trippy Matt Kirshen, a great British comic. He lives in America. Now people might have seen him on Last Comic Standing yet quite a run on that. But Matt Kirshen said, it's the closest you'll ever come to the first time you were ever on stage, which is a cool thing.

1:02:12

And it's a good feeling. Well, I'm looking forward to all of these amazing things that we didn't even get into your relationship with Blair and the facts of life. But we'll have to get into next time. You're on the show. Paul, thank you so much for hanging out with me. Well, it's a good place for people to keep up with you on the social medias. Well, I'm

1:02:27

not involved with Facebook, I have a page there. But I don't really go to it because it's basically the destruction of the world as we know it. So I don't really want to be part of it. But you gave me a Twitter at Paul Provenza although I posted frequently, you can still get in touch with me there and I'll respond but also there's a salary that is feed at salaries this which is like satire within Easter's at the end. And that's a news and information thing. And sometimes some comments on there. Also, funny people do and funny shit about the news on their law at aristocrats film, which is a feed of some of the most vile things that you can find on the internet. Some of the most vile tweets out there. It's just a long string of offensive tweets. That's all the aristocrats film is and there's an ad setlist show or one word for updates on when and where we're doing the show again. And there's an ad comics only also on Twitter, which is it's up and down pending on on my mood and whether or not something's going up on on YouTube. And I'm on the Jeff Dwoskin podcast. Yeah.

1:03:31

Awesome. This was so much fun. Paul, thank you so much. I can't thank you enough.

1:03:35

Thanks for having me. And please go check out Andy Andrus, last shot. It's a really if you like interesting comedy man. He goes down some roads, it takes you to some really, really interesting places. And it's all really darkly funny. It's great.

1:03:49

That's it? Well check it out. I'll put links to everything in the show notes that we talked about. So you can find it real easy. Thank you so much, Paul. can't thank you enough.

1:03:57

Thank you. I hope we get to chat again. For sure.

1:03:59

All right. How awesome was that? Paul prevents everyone. Everything we talked about. I'll put links in the show notes so you can track it down that way just head over to Jeff is funny.com Click on the episode and all the show notes are there. They're also in every podcast app as well but sometimes they don't show up as well in every podcast app just the way it is so if you want to clean the show notes go to Jeff as funny.com Especially for all the links and such well here we are at the end of episode 78 Can you believe it but we're not done yet. That's right everyone knows it's not over do we do trending hashtag from the family of games at hashtag or round up follow hashtag round up on Twitter at hashtag round up download the free always free Kostya nothing hashtag round up app. receive notifications to your phone every time a game starts play along and one day one of your tweets may show up on live from Detroit, the Jeff Dwoskin show fame and fortune Oh HQ this week. Hashtag inspired by Paul Provenza and Penn Jillette movie The aristocrats we have hashtag bad talent show videos brought to you by taki tags a weekly Game On hashtag around up I'm gonna read these to you, but most of them you got to head over for full hilarity to add Jeff Dwoskin show where I've retweeted them all because they all have videos attached to them. I'll try and paint the picture but then head on over to get the full laughs at Jeff Dwoskin show. So without further ado, hashtag bad talent show videos, Richie posted an amazing video of his dog drinking beer. Don't miss that miss playing Jane expertly shows how to walk and chew gum at the same time while fighting off a cat. Another Jason in Texas showcases his talent of open heart surgery master Paul mixing coke with Mentos hilarious results head on over to at Jeff Dwoskin show on Twitter. Check out the video Robin Davis expertly showing how to do CPR between two cats. Master pop also amazing us with a wiggling moustache video again, the hilarity must be seen at Jeff Dwoskin show and the final one hashtag bad talent show videos Mario Speedwagon juggling one item, head on over Whoa, do not miss it. Do not miss it. What do you call these bad tanjo videos? There is regrets. That was horrible. Okay, so anyway, have fun on Twitter folks. Go show those folks some love at Jeff Dwoskin show, as always play along with the Twitter hashtag games. It's super fun. And with all good things that must come to an end. Here we are wrapping up episode 78 of live from Detroit, the Jeff Dwoskin show thanks to my amazing guests, Paul Provenza. Thanks to all of you for coming back week after week. I can't thank you enough. It means the world to me, and I'll see you next week.

1:06:58

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Jeff Dwoskin show with your host Jeff Dwoskin. Now go repeat everything you heard and sound like a genius. Catch us online at the JeffDwoskinshow.com or follow us on Twitter @JeffDwoskinShow and we'll see you next time

Transcribed by https://otter.ai