The Doug Stanhope Podcast - Ep.#434: When We Were Kings with Dane Cook

Episode Date: February 17, 2021

Doug invites Dane Cook on to the podcast to discuss the decades old "feud", acting vs. standup, best advice and plenty more.  Doug's new book, "No Encore For The Donkey" available exclusively at Audible.com - https://amzn.to/31uwvO0 Check Out Doug's Weekly eBay Yard Sale listing - https://www.ebay.com/usr/stanhope_podcast?_trksid=p2047675.l2559 Recorded Feb 12th, 2021 at the FunHouse in Bisbee, AZ with Doug Stanhope (@dougstanhope), Dane Cook (@DaneCook), Chad Shank (@hdfatty), Tracey (@egglester), and Ggreg Chaille (@gregchaille). Produced and Edited by Chaille. We have no idea what the future holds so get on the Mailing List at https://www.dougstanhope.com/. When we know, we'll let you know. LINKS - Visit the Stanhope Store - http://www.dougstanhope.com/store/ Closing song, “The Stanhope Rag”, written and performed by Scotty Conant for Doug Stanhope and used with permission – Available on Soundcloud - https://soundcloud.com/scottyconant Photo Credit - ChailleSupport the show: http://www.Patreon.com/stanhopepodcast

the old pound for pound, like throughout the years, Attell, I wouldn't want to live Attell's life to be as funny as him. He's a sad fucking old man that's always self-guessing him. Yes. I always picture Attell goes home at night, puts his hat on a hat rack.

And then when he takes off his coat, he's just a skeleton. But he's got a purse of coins, gold coins. I fucking love that guy, man. I love it. When I was in New York watching his hell work was like just fucking unbelievable.

You're listening to the doug stanhope podcast hey welcome everyone to the uh to the uh to the show uh we have a very special guest uh not only my uh as i call him uh my long-term nemesis. It's a one-way rivalry, really, is all it was. But probably the only comedian other than Dave Attell that doesn't have a podcast. So it's a get. Yeah, it's more fun popping in than having to do it on the daily. Are you enjoying it? What, the podcast or the pandemic? I, the, the, the, what the podcast or the pandemic?

Yeah. The podcast. No, I, now that it's all I have, I wish I started out, you know, really trying hard at it. Right.

Now everyone is either tuned in and there, there are few fans or it's too late to get them back. I think I, I peaked too soon with all the digital stuff with myspace and all that shit and just doing that all day every day and even though i dug it when it finally became in vogue and everybody like burr and all these dudes started like getting this great success from podcasting i was like i'm fucking tapped out of that, man. I'm done. I did it because where I live, there's no club. So it was a way to, well, at least once a week, we'll get on a microphone and talk.

But now I wish I had to put more effort into it. Then I could just quit on a podcast. Wait a second. Hold on. How many years in are you now, Doug? Seven. Seven. I had to look at Chaley to find out. Seven. Seven podcasting and how many years of standing up?

30. 30. We're both at 30. We're both at 30. Before we get into everything, there is a chance our friend Bobby Caldwell will call in. He's in prison and he usually calls around this hour. And if we're podcasting, we always take his call for 15 minutes, his allotted 15. But he's really funny. He has notesfromthepen.com.

And one of the things he's done is he rates comics on their survivability in prison. We both got a 6 out of ten, you and I. And so, wait a second. What's he doing time for? He accidentally killed his wife. Okay. No, the story adds up. And he's a really funny guy.

He's a great writer. He's in for manslaughter? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. He's a great writer. He's in for manslaughter? Yeah.

So he's, I think, seven years in on a 12-year stretch or something. But he's a great guy. So if we do have to cut to him. I would love it. Yeah. We'll find out. You can guide him. He can rate your brother-in-law's, your brother and sister-in-law's survivability. Why can't I say survivability?

Anyway, so that might happen. It's not scheduled, but we always have the phone on in case he calls. All right. Yeah, whatever. We'll roll with whatever. Whoever wants to call in or come in on the podcast, I'm down. Well, let's start with the the rivalry that I have with Dane Cook. This started. Everyone knows the San Francisco comedy competition story in 1995,

where Barry Katz kind of goaded me into a bet between you and I. So it turned into, and it was a great story, and it turned into you and I neck and neck through the whole thing. But I developed, I never had a personal beef with you at all, which my fans had a hard time understanding after the years. My fault, probably, because I talked way too much shit about you, just because we have different styles and and i did make sure to put that in my book that i i told him i would hang out with dane cook or any other comic whose comedy i don't like before i'd hang out with my

biggest fan because i have shit to talk about with any other comic regardless of their style i remember listening to uh henry rollins doing uh spoken word uh it was when napster was dying right i remember those yeah and he started out just viscerally trashing edie burkell and you too and you know they use the same chords and shit i don't know anything about music i just viscerally trashing Edie Brickell and U2. And, you know, they use the same chords and shit. I don't know anything about music. I just like U2, and I certainly don't listen to fucking Henry Rollins. And I like Edie Brickell. I fucking love Edie Brickell.

Like, he was just bashing. But that was the thing. We had completely different styles. Yeah. But you were always there at that time so like 95 you were in like your dog town z boys looking era you looked like every character from clerks at the same time sometimes on certain nights and i was in like a nostalgia fucking blazer rolled up uh mullet you remember that remember that who remembersullet. You remember that?

Remember that? Who remembers the Magic 8-Ball? Remember that? That's right. We were kind of like the goofus and galant from Highlights Magazine of that fucking, of that time, right? Here's when I knew I was fucked.

Here's when I knew that you guys did not like me during the comedy competition I don't remember this we went to Reno and we were in like the third to last week and we walked into the lobby and I threw a buck in like a fucking uh uh slot machine and I hit for like 500 dollars and you walked by me and you were like, fucking congratulations. And I just knew it. I was like, I'm dead.

I'm dead. What I remember about that, and now it's even worse that you had $500, was when we got done with the stupid show and I said, you want to go to the strip club with us? And you said, no, I'm going back to my room to work on my act. I'm like, this guy's a fucking dildo. He won $500 and he doesn't want to go to a strip club.

Oh, dude. It's crazy because I had so much social anxiety. I used to do it with a lot of – and I kept it pretty under wraps. I kept my cool, but I would frequently go back to the room and just have fucking episodes of massive anxiety and panic attacks. I was only really comfortable on stage and not hanging with everybody. That was a rough era. That was a tricky time.

Yeah, I was still living out of my car. I didn't give a fuck about anything. The car that you gave away. I never actually gave it away. I gave the title, the wavy gravy. What the fuck am I supposed to do with this? I'm like, I don't know. I was caught up in a moment.

And that car got broken into that night that I won. I don't know if you know that story. No. Yeah, that night, the last night of San Francisco, I won. I don't know if you know that story. No. Yeah. That night, the last night of San Francisco, I won. We both called our mothers. We'll get to that later. And then I went to the punchline and I got laid. I stayed at a waitress's house, woke up so hungover, knew that I had to move my car from that theater by 7 a.m. Now it's 10 a.m. going, my car is going to be towed. It wasn't, but someone had smashed in the window and stolen everything I own from my car.

So I'm sitting in that cheap suit I was wearing from the thrift store. I had that, a check for $10,000, and a busted-in car, and all my possessions gone. And it was the biggest smile I've ever had in my life. I just remember, I think I bumped into you at the improv, and I think you were dating some sitcom actress or something. Yeah, Christine Hodge. Some girl that was way beyond who you should have been with at that time or any time.

And I just remember seeing you that night and it really was kind of like the origin in and around that moment. There was already people picking sides on us. Right. And it was like created a creative, a fucking Yankees, Red Sox kind of thing in my head. And I was so down for it because I thought I was just so boring.

I didn't think that I really brought a lot to the table in terms of conflict or anything that was uniquely uh uh dark and interesting for me at that time so the fact that i had a nemesis i was like all right i'll fucking lean into it yeah sometimes it hurts and your and your fans could be oh my god man they could be brutal i remember running into you at an airport once uh in at lax and you said man it was i think there's still smoking areas and i think you actually sat in a smoking area with me and i knew you probably hated it but you're like god damn your fans are fucking brutal like i i'm scared of them myself i had been wished every whatever the disease of the of the the de jure disease was your your fans were writing me and hoping i would come down with it or get it or and i gotta tell you even though

there were absolutely times when i was just fucking sitting at my keyboard or computer just laughing my ass off and wanting to reach out to you and being like, are you finding this funny or are you really like, get him? Yeah, that was the problem. I was, yeah, I'm sure there were times I was way too much of a douchebag where I was kind of, you know, accelerating. a douchebag where I was kind of accelerating. Not outright, but I remember someone emailing me that they went to your show and heckled on my behalf.

You don't need to do that, but maybe I didn't. Maybe I trumped the thing and didn't tell them in strong enough terms not to storm the Capitol. And then we was the, and then we were like in the man show mix for, to audition for,

you know, for that gig. Yeah. That's, that's what I was getting to. Cause ever since then, like I, my agent calls me,

Hey, you got nominated for you're on the cover of whatever varieties, top 10 comics to watch alongside dane cook they want you to audition as a new host of the man show with dane cook and then there was some comedy central premiere like it was robert evans party where it was you had a show or we were all there like dane cook he's always right beside me always doing better of course but i i just remember not getting the man the man show gig and and i was probably upset at the time i you know needed some scratch and then one night i was just flicking through the channels and it was on

and there was just that moment of relief where i was watching i was just watching you guys sell out and i was like oh, my God, thank you. Thank you, God. Thank you, Jesus. I thought I was going to have to twist your arm to make you admit you had to have some kind of schadenfreude about how bad that show sucked and it wasn't you. But, no, thanks for coming right out with it.

Oh, fuck. but no thanks for coming right out with it oh fuck yeah it was just a one thing after another and then but you know listen the thing that with you was like I definitely had my share of I see I came up understanding that comics used to do this thing like back during the Rickles days

whatever they'd say shit. They'd hammer you from the stage and then they'd send you a steak or they'd fucking send you like, right. Like you get candy to your room later and a nice card from fucking. And you were one of those guys that when we would see each other, we would fucking commiserate. And it was always like,

we stepped away from that versus there were guys, particularly guys that were just like, you don't even know me at all outside of the act you don't like. And they just never stopped with it. And that was boring. Those guys, I enjoyed our nefarious banter. Some of those other guys, I would not be on their podcast. You know who your biggest naysayer was? Oh, no. Who?

My mother. Because she didn't. I'd try to explain to her. I saw that Dane Cook just from that competition where we'd both call our mothers. If you don't know the listeners, you don't know the listeners you don't know the story after this three-week competition every night i'd see dane cook like like we were reporters from the 1950s rushing to a phone bank with breaking news on who won tonight who where'd you place and she just couldn't let that go so after that she, she's, I saw him on TV.

That fucking guy isn't funny. You're funny. And I'm like, Ma, it's not like that. It's like a sports rivalry. Don't you understand? Nah, fucking nah. Even though you won, she still held on to that? Yes.

She was out of her fucking mind. Even though you partied with the K-Pig fucking DJs? I have no doubt that I fucking won that competition because I partied with the fucking judges. Listen, second place, man. I knew the curse of that fucking competition. I was very happy with second place. James Inman still doesn't realize that he won because I was a judge. I completely tainted the jury pool.

Oh, fuck. And then let me think. Dwight Slade? Yeah. He came in third? Wait. Oh, wait. No, James, yeah.

They brought me back to be a judge in a subsequent year so i'm like yeah i'm just gonna throw this to my friend james inman he's fucking ridiculous okay right yeah but that year it was paul nardisi uh jr brow you me and oh no no jimmy door was not in there. No? No. Not in the end, but he was somewhere along the way. He was in the beginning. Oh, yeah. And it was that we were, our week, there were two, like, opening rounds.

So there was a first week, and if you made it on, you had a week off. So Jimmy Dore didn't make it. I was in love with some girl I had pooned once and she didn't want to see me again. But I didn't know that yet. So I drove back from the last night of prelims with the angriest Jimmy Dore that you can fucking imagine. Just motherfucking the competition, all competitions, every other comic. And I was like, I was kind of in love with some girl and i'm happy i moved on but i had to sit on a fucking six hour drive listening to him

fucking i don't think he's changed after that contest yeah it was like uh the world changed for me because originally i was going back to new york and i thought i was going back to new york which i was i was really miserable in new york in which I thought, all right, I'll probably end up going to New York and then maybe just moving back home to Boston. And then while we were doing the contest, somebody from a Betty White sitcom saw me back when we were doing the finals. And that's what pulled me down to LA. And I honest to God never thought I would stay here more than a year. I can't believe that I finally just fucking just lived here it's it's kind of crazy that contest led to pretty much everything else after that because I didn't know what I would have done if I'd gone back to New

York and just been back it certainly did that whole year was good for me because I'd done the veil thing and I got some shitty like $14,000 development deal. But for a guy living out of a fucking 84 cut list, 14 grand was quite a bit of money. Oh, fuck yeah. And you know who got cut out of the preliminaries of that competition in the same was Hedberg. Bitch. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, fucking.

And I don't think anyone's looking back on. Yeah, I beat him fair and square. No, Hedberg was funnier than fucking most of us combined. Oh, yeah, I remember watching him. He was one of the few people in my early career that I remember watching and being like, oh, this guy is fucking on another, he's just operating on another level. Chappelle, when i first moved in new

york and he was like 15 and i was like 19 i remember seeing that but i remember seeing mitch and i'd never seen it before then and being like oh this is fucking just just so good so fresh yeah so so worth voting him out of the contest so so original he can't be here i remember when he was mathematically eliminated but still had shows to do because he had like seven minutes like they give you the the light at two minutes and as soon as the red light went on he'd stop mid-sentence and leave like in the middle of it you You know I hate not having friends because sometimes... and then just leave. Didn't finish

the fucking joke. Oh my God. He was so fucking ahead of his time. He still is. I called my mom on one of those shows and she said... She goes, so now what's the... what happens next? And I go, well I'm so now what's the what happens next?

And I go, well, I'm going to do another show with Doug. And she goes, Doug, is he the one that does the jizz, the beer jizz? But she liked you. I was like, yeah, I go. It kills every night. And she's like and she was like, do you think he's going to do that every night? Is that going to be a big closer? Oh, sorry.

Sorry to interrupt. I just told that going to be a big closer oh sorry sorry to interrupt i just told tracy get me a beer bottle i'll close the podcast on this but i forget we're only putting out audio so i'll prime the voice up and do speak and spell for six minutes at the end oh jesus that's right yeah speak and spell there's still bits and i i always hated when i liked you because like i can't like him i can't there's still bits that fucking when i'm the microwave bit it's just a quick joke but every time i'm in like how impatient people are and in the future you're gonna be standing in front of a microwave going, nine seconds. I don't have nine seconds.

I have to be to work in four seconds. And I probably did that a disservice. But I still think of that joke when I'm fucking being impatient in front of a microwave. Or any time I tip a fucking cunty waitress. Do you remember that bit? That's right. You had something about this fucking Denny's waitress. I'm not giving her fucking shit.

And then you'd. All right. I'm just going to give her 15%. Right. Because you don't want to leave the table and have them see nothing. Yeah. Just scream. Whatever.

She yelled some shit at me as I was running out of the restaurant. Oh, my goodness. It's crazy because that some of that early stuff, you know, ultimately, when you're first starting comedy, that whole goal is like, man, if somebody will quote my shit someday down the line. Right. Somebody just, you know, when you're first starting comedy that whole goal is like man if somebody will quote my shit someday down the line right somebody just you know i'm listening to old cosby stuff and fucking carlin and new heart albums i grew up with a lot of albums and just being like how cool would it be to fucking have people someday quoting your stuff and then not realizing like i better say fucking things that i want to hear for the rest of my life right because like i right around that 95 era i started to realize something in media

and with comics uh comics who are characters and we came up loving guys that were probably like dice and fucking you'd watch emo phillips or judy tududa like people that would like and then you started seeing like the the backlash when people when it with that song was over right and then it was like oh wow if you're in a sitcom and your name is fucking weird if you're urkel or potsy or fucking uh cockroach if you have a weird fucking name or say a weird thing you're that forever and it was like it was in that time where i was like okay i don't want to be identified for just these things and it was a good challenge because i wanted to be able to grow as i grew right the comics we loved carlin went from silly and absurdist and then it was like political and smart and then rants then tangents then evil

then fucking dark and i was like wouldn't it be cool to be able to just as i get older do whatever i want without exactly right and if somebody caught something from back then you're like oh that's good i did used to love doing that when i was that guy but i hope you're listening to something more contemporary now or not me. Yeah, I hated early Carlin, the wordplay. And then when I was getting dark, I found the dark Carlin. And yeah, he was a role model later in my career. But in all seriousness, now that we're able to really talk about this, not in fragmented tweets,

I always really looked at you and look at you as like a very prolific guy that also had the ability to fucking hang with sailors and pirates. And right. Like Doug could, Doug could fucking be Doug could, could talk any language. That's how I always looked even early, even like when people would say like,

oh, but he's just dirty. And I'd be like, no, you don't fucking, you're not hearing some of the words in between and you're not, he knows what he's fucking doing. The awareness that you had then and then as you continued in comedy, I just never, I never not respected you, even though I sometimes I hated you

because your fans were just fucking minions at that time. You went through this because on some level you became this. There was always maybe not anymore. But for our early years, there was always a comic that comics could hate. And it started with Carrot Top and then it became Larry the Cable Guy. Right. And I remember writing an open letter on my website to his fans, not to him. Right.

It's not my sense of humor. But I don't know if you went through it because you were big enough that you probably didn't. The rest of us in clubs, get her done. People are just yelling, get her done. Your fans are so fucking stupid. Right. I was always hoping to stay one step ahead of the catchphrase stuff. Listen, when I tore my fucking shirt off and poured water and did a T-Rex,

you know how many times I did that? Once. I said, I'm not going on the road and fucking being that guy because nobody wants to see me at 50 years old fucking ripping a shirt off. And so I had the wherewithal even then to be like, I don't know if I'm going to get funnier. I don't know if I'll ever do something that I think is as interesting as what I did or people will zeitgeist me or not. I don't know. But I know one thing. I'm not going down in flames doing it. Right? Yes.

It took me a long time to stop jizzing in my face and write something that is possibly important or I feel proud of. Oh, you didn't retire that with a win in San Fran? I probably did it. I probably did it a few more times. Yeah.

No, I fucking, I closed my first DVD on that in 2004, nine years later. I mean, I wasn't doing it regularly, but I thought, oh, this is the first time that I, like i'd put out three cds but oh i have a visual medium i'll do the old gist in the face so yeah nine years later still did it still killed fortunately is a lost dvd now you look back here's how we know we're aged it was a bottle of schlitz i don't think Schlitz ever came in bottles, did it? I was always a Miller Light guy. You would know that

Schlitz didn't come in a bottle. I was going for the funny word. That was one of the reasons I found to hate you was early on when you were doing, hey, you ever been so drunk that you look at the taxi cab meter and you think it's the time?

And I'm like, he doesn't even drink! I drink! He doesn't drink! Motherfucker! That's fucking great. Oh my God. This is Chad Shane. And when I'm at Stanhope's, I drink plastic jug vodka. Because there ain't no other option. Plastic jug vodka.

What's your favorite brand? Tweet me at at Doug Stanhope or tweet Chad Shank at at HD Fatty. That's HD Fatty. Hyman Doberman Fatty with a Y. Hyman Doberman? I don't know. But as this is OK, that's what i was talking about is uh when i hated liking you uh the turning point much like justin timberlake back when he's just some fucking pop star like why do i have to know that fucking guy's name when he's dating britney spears or whatever and then when i saw him in that movie uh alpha dog yeah and i'm like fucking this guy's great i've loved justin

timberlake since when i saw you in windy city heat i'm like yeah the one of the most brilliant movies ever yeah uh and i'm like i fucking like, but I'm not going to say it out loud. I remember watching that movie, and I'm not in the scene, but I think one of the funniest scenes in any movie ever is in Windy City Heat. And I'm only in a little piece. It was the scene with the red bat, blue bat moment, where he didn't know which bat was the stunt bat, and they told him one bat was soft and the blue bat

was the real one and they switched it and perry saw it and he was scared they were going to hit him with a real bat and they let him sit in the chair for like two minutes torturing him with the blue bat it's so brilliant i i made everyone until i finally loaned out the DVD and someone never returned it. I made every comic or even not comic that hadn't seen it. You know, you're going to sit and watch this. You come to my house and you haven't seen Windy City Heat. You're going to see it. I just have you done their podcast, The Big Three?

No. Oh, you've got to do. I just did it last week. And you just fuck with Perry and wind him up just like we do with james inman uh yeah yeah i'll talk to him we should probably do it together again uh but uh yeah that was brilliant you were fucking brilliant on louis and i need i didn't i want to know the backstory of how they approached you yeah did you have were you reticent oh, I was so ready for that because that little era of what happened with CK and me, where I was in that moment before he called me to say, do you want to do it?

It was like he kind of, I described it like he had like a boot on my neck for a little while. It really felt that way because he'd gotten so much power that he had an ability to kind of keep me from doing some cool shit that I was wanting to do in this career. Just simply because where Louis was, suddenly I couldn't be in that moment. And I understood that because I had that moment. But it was still like, oh, fuck, I wish that there was a way to put this to rest. oh fuck i just i i wish that there was a way to put this to to rest so he called me and he was like hey i wrote a i wrote a episode about our thing because i don't know if you're getting sick of hearing about it from you know morning djs or whoever's it's always being written about when they're i think he was actually probably wanting people to just write about him and he

was sick of a part of his interviews being like having to at all bring me on the ride i'm sure rogan got tired of talking about mensia at some point right so it's like he called me he's like let's i wrote an episode he's like when can we when can we get together and i literally i had nothing going on that it was like a wednesday and i said i'll i'm gonna i'm gonna get on a red eye tonight and i'll beat your office tomorrow. That's how much of my anxiety was starting to finally rest of like, oh, I might actually be able to get back in a stride. This business is fucking brutal and hard enough. I got to get these little fucking thornies from this bush out of me.

So I flew to New York, sat with Louie in his office. And it was the first time we'd sat since everything went down and i thought it was going to be contentious but he had a picture of his kids there and i was like you got beautiful kids and he's like oh i'm you know sorry to hear about your your your family because he you know he heard some stuff had gone on there so suddenly we were like we were just fine you know we were like two fine guys having a fine conversation and he's like so i wrote this thing and and i remember he said to me he goes he goes so i wrote an episode about kind of like our thing and he goes but two things that stand out he goes i wrote your character's name is cane duck and i was like my name is cane duck and he goes yeah you're cane

duck and he was like in that louis like when louis telling you something not like offering up he was like you're cane duck i was like okay so i just was like for a moment i was like okay what's what's the other thing and he was like if you don't if you don't do this, I'm just going to put somebody else in it and do it. He just was like, either say yes or I'm going to put somebody in there to be you. And I was like, okay, first of all, Louis, I go, I want to do this. I said, you good? I'm going to tell you my story after. Okay.

I'll give the cliff note version no no go go you're the guest so he goes he goes um he goes uh so take this you know take a read he goes let's read it and i thought i was going to go to the hotel and read he goes i go am i leaving to read it and he goes no let's read it now i was like you want to read it together here for i've never even read it and and you wrote it so my words are what you, it's like, what the fuck is happening here? It was like bizarro world,

but I'm like, I want to get this done. So I read it and we're, I wish we filmed reading it. Oh my God. It was like, there were literally moments where I was saying a line and I was like, are you fucking kidding?

I'm saying that. But I was like, Doug, I swear to God. I was like, even if the line is not something true to me I was like I will I'm gonna figure out a way to do it I'm gonna say it I'm gonna I'm gonna put me into something even if it's just his perspective of me and I read it and I go Louis I'm in I said

on one condition I just let me be Dane Cook I don't want to be Kane Duke let me let me be me let me fall on the sword or however people want to chew this up and spit us out. At least let me be me, not hiding behind a name. He was like, you got it. Went to set a few days later or a few weeks later, whenever he set it up. I got to tell you, man,

straight up, I just loved working with Louie as a creative person. All that bullshit when it was like, okay, now that's we're going to do it in the scene bullshit when it was like okay now that's we're gonna do it in the scene but like now we're talking about cameras and we're talking about and i'm like this is what we're kind of simpatico this is what we should have fucking been the whole time yeah is is feeding each other somehow or challenging each other but not with something that we could have taken care of at the back of a fucking club over the course of a couple of you know a couple of weeks did the scene and i knew when i left i took a picture with louis i don't

think i've ever put it up nobody's ever seen it with our arms around each other and we're shit-eating grins we're both because we knew we'd created a moment that we knew we had created something that was going to be a hold your breath moment when you watch that fucking scene we knew it we knew it and so i left there and i i felt like the boot was gone i felt like no matter what people said or thought or did after that it was like i felt uh recalibrated after that so you never thought to put that picture out and say uh louis made me uh take a picture with his arm around me uncomfortably because of the power dynamic. I had to pose for this, and now I'm coming to terms. No, I did not. Thank you for paraphrasing that. A lot of other people might have said, hey, I could capitalize on this.

My Louis story is he called me, hey, I wrote this thing and i i'm not like you i'm the opposite of you i i don't go i'm gonna give my best performance i said uh i can't act i'm he's like but i think that if you read what i wrote i think you're the perfect person to, and I go, but I'm telling you up front, I suck at acting. And he says, would you try? I'm like, I'll try. I'm just telling you, I'm terrible. And I am. And if it weren't for Louis B, but here's what happened.

I lived in Bisbee at this point. Okay. So you can audition via Skype or whatever it was back then. Right. And I go, okay. So I'm just like pacing around my yard, trying to memorize lines. And a guy who does local theater is acting, coaching me. And when I did the audition, every note that that guy gave me,

Louie said, don't do it like that. note that that guy gave me, Louie said, don't do it like that. But so, so I did a few times over a couple of days, the audition over Skype and then he goes, okay, I'll get back to you. And then for weeks I didn't hear back. And I'm like that fucking guy didn't even have the fucking balls to fucking call me back and say no. So I had a Howard Stern coming up and I go, what I'm going to do now that I have all these lines

stuck in my head like cancer, I'm just going to insinuate all of those lines into a Howard Stern interview subtly. And that way, when he hires someone else to play the part I was supposed to have, they're going to go, you stole all this dialogue

from a Howard Stern interview with Doug Stanhope. And I go, this is a brilliant fucking gag. And then he finally called me and said, hey, sorry, I didn't get back to you. You got the part. When can you? And I'm like, fuck, I'd rather do the Howard Stern prank

than the show at this point. It's way funnier. And you're a killer, man. You were really great. You're really great. I didn't see any acting in there at all. I mean, I'm not like fucking Johnny Thespian, but I was watching going,

I think this is one of my favorite things on that show, and I think it's one of your best performances. I said, if I ever need to cast a surly neighbor who just says shit from his porch to my son, I'm going to write that part for you well he wrote the part about an alcoholic fucking washed up comedian living out of his car it wasn't as stretched but i still if i had to if anyone else but louis was directing that i i would just i don't know what to do with my hands guy uh but like he like hollywood people that was great but i want to try it again maybe you do it more like no louis would go that sucked do it like this and i go okay good yeah i needed a comedian to make me an actor well i hope you

get more opportunities like that man because that was fun to watch you in there. Yeah, I'm fine. I'm fine not doing it. I hate acting. I fucking hate it. You also did well as the surly taxi cab dispatcher in Henry Phillips' movie. You're definitely typecast, Stan Hope, but I think you do a good job at it, too. Committedly lazy. Stand-up comedy where I can drink and talk for an hour.

Fucking acting is an actual job. That's why we left Massachusetts. So we didn't have to do 16-hour fucking shifts at a fucking – I don't like it. I like it. I actually – I mean, nothing is going to ever beat live performance. I just – you know, I adore stand-up. I like it. Nothing is going to ever beat live performance. I adore stand-up. I miss it every fucking day. This whole pandemic thing has been probably the worst in terms of just

anxieties and all that. I really like it because as a kid who as a lonely kid, all I wanted to do was collaborate. Once I made it in stand-up, it was lonelier. Because then it was just like, either people don't relate to me or they don't get it. Because now I'm like this guy with a few fucking dollars to my name.

And they're struggling. And all my friends are like... And so it was lonelier. It was actually, in some ways, it was like great with the fans that those moments, I don't have one moment in my career on a stage or around comedy that I look at, even if I was in a period where I wasn't very funny or things weren't coming together, I still enjoyed, even if it was breaking, I was like, but I'm a comic and it sucks. And maybe I'll be better. And maybe I won't. But acting was like, you was like, but I'm a comic and it sucks and maybe I'll be better and maybe I won't.

But acting was like, you felt like part of a community. You show up. It's not your vision. You're a piece of a puzzle. You got to come through for other people. You got to volley. And I kind of like that probably more as a social thing than even just performance. I like the performance, but I like the social game. I think the difference, first of all, starting out in Boston,

Boston has always been known as the most insular, fuck outsider kind of comedy scene, where I started out doing triple gigs with one headliner, and I'm a drunk too so yeah on the road when you're in fucking billings montana it's you and the other comic against the world where in boston you probably had oh it's every comic hates each other and you have to fight your way in yeah like i was at the fucking alamo when i started so even if you hated the comic you worked with you're you're that that's the cop that's got your back right

right right yeah it was man it was like uh that early those early boston years uh well i look back at them actually fondly probably now because it's like my graduating class was some you know guys that i bill burr and fucking patrice o'neill and we just we had guys that came out of that year rogan was uh i kind of like a one graduating class or two years ahead of us but he was destroying just fucking i remember we used to perform on a place called uh dick doherty's light It was a, it was a ship in the Harbor that never fucking floated anywhere. It was just cemented there. Like a,

like a riverboat casino. Yeah. Like that's exactly it. And I, I remember like walking in one night and hearing Rogan where on the Lido deck, whatever the fuck they called it. And it was just like, I never heard somebody smashing like that. And he had the leather jacket on and he was just fucking doing it.

And so I felt like, even though, like you were saying, some of the old timer guys did not want us in there and they made it tough. Our guys were really game and really kind of like looked out for each other so I look back now fondly even though when I remember how I actually felt I was fucking mortified I was scared every day hang on I gotta look at my notes because you just said something I I I fucking actually prepared for this like I have a real podcast uh no oh yeah that was it because uh i i don't know any like uh you're you're a posse uh like a lot of guys rogan obviously has a posse he's got his crew uh i have my you know andy andrist and you know uh people that are associated with me uh Atel, Big Jay Oakerson was kind of an Atel posse guy,

and now he has got his own posse. I know the guys that I see that I go, if you don't hang out with them, they're definitely influenced by you. I know early Gary Goldman special, I go, sounds a lot like Dane Cook, the same way Big Jay Oakerson sounds a lot like a tell. Even back to the tough crowd days. When you hang out together, you have similar, if not Cadence's words,

you fucking chinless zero, fucking Colin Quinn and Jim Norton. So who were your guys? It was like Patrice. I remember being one of the first guys to do the whole thing well it was like it was like patrice i remember being one of the first guys to do the whole thing where it was like shut up everything was like that yeah shut up what shut the fuck up and and i heard that started kind of that cadence was in in with a lot of the the guys that we started with but i remember for me there was a guy named kevin knox who passed away some years back and kevin i think inspired a lot of us to have there was just whatever they call like the musicality the certain thing that you have in the voice yep and he kind of had that thing

where it was like oh fuck i don't know how to describe it but kind of a rat tat tat thing but story the lpms the last per, but he's still a storyteller. And I felt like guys like myself and a few people that you mentioned, we all watched him every night. He was one of the guys that was out there on shows that we wanted to be on. We'd be watching him every night. So I feel like a lot of us kind of absorbed that. But later on, later on in your career as an L.A., you know, as that started, did you have comics you hung out with? Did you have a group of comics that you hung out with?

Yeah, I remember when I first came out to L.A., it was like there was a few guys. There was my buddy Wayne Previty, who sadly just passed away. He was one of the first Boston comics who landed out here. He was at the factory. Bob Marley was a white comic. Oh, yeah, yeah. Remember Bob? Yeah. Sweetest guy ever. Yeah, yeah. He was out here it was at the factory bob marley was a white yeah bob yeah yeah yeah he um he was out here he was one of the first guys he was the other dwight slade that's right they were both uh portland guys basically but uh different portlands and they both had albums that

were just like local references for maine or oregon and it Oregon. So there was a couple of people while back east there was like the Jaymores and yeah, like Chappelle's and that gang with Jim Norton, those guys that were coming up out here, I didn't really

I was hanging with Shirley Hemphill from fucking What's Happening. I still have a picture with her. Yeah, it's like I'm at Greenblatt's. I'm at Knucklehead's in Minneapolis. I'm at Greenblatt's with like A.K. Pablo and fucking, you know, nine people that were just hanging out at the club who wanted to be comics. So there wasn't really a crew when I first got here,

but certainly it was like the you know the year into the 2000s then i started to find like for me it was always east coast people that were transplants out here more than like just la la guys or girls uh yeah i didn't i your influence exists elizas schlesinger has to be influenced by you uh fucking sebastian maniscalco i just see because you see influences now we're fucking we're kind of old men i don't know if you lie about your age or not no every time i'd look up your age i'd go how can he be that much younger than me wait oh wait that's something on i i looked at your wikipedia page oh no i hate anytime i do an interview and someone's only did you do ecstasy in 2005 i

don't know is some random fact on my wikipedia page but it did say that in, you started dating someone who's 24 years your junior. Right. That would make her 18 years old. That is my girlfriend to this day. She's 22, but I started dating her when she was 19. All right. Okay. I didn't know if that was Wikipedia had that wrong.

Wikipedia. What was funny about Wikipedia when it first started to pop, probably fans of yours or people that were like, wanted to fuck with me, they would like, they would like mob congregate in there and just they would like uptick false information. You know what I mean?

Like, cause that's all Wikipedia was. It's like somebody puts a lie and then if 10 of your fans come in and go yeah, they had my dad was a potato farmer for fucking like 11 years on there oh they they my own fans had me on wikipedia as i was a born a hermaphrodite and i'm a current cast member of abc's the view or whatever as before wikipedia started actually going, we should regulate some of this shit. Yeah, my fans do that to me.

Don't take it personal. Oh, yeah. Well, now you learn, we learn at this point, you know, it's pretty much all false information. The only thing that's interesting is false information. Real information and real facts about people are very mundane and boring. Fuck, I lost my thought.

Anyway, all right, I'll move on. I'm going to dismiss that thought. What are your G-team, Jimmy Fallon? Oh, my God, Jimmy Fallon makes me crazy. I still have people I just hate for no reason. You hate Jimmy? Oh, Jimmy's a good dude. I know, he's a great dude.

Do you remember when he became big in la and all he was doing was that troll doll shit right i remember sitting with becker in the back of the improv and jimmy fallon's like a new flavor and he'd go up and he'd do that troll doll shit with no punch lines and he's just he could imitate you two and counting crows and he just instead of mr jones in me it's troll doll and me and white middle-aged fucking affluent people are doing deaf comedy jam rolling out of their fucking chairs and i'm going what is but he was this sweetest fucking kid in the world uh he had a manager a girl named randy uh i remember so and this is when he's you know the new kid on the block and we went to some party down on some after party for something on santa monica boulevard and me and uh becker i guess it was

we're just talking shit about the lack of fucking punchlines in this kid's act. But we love him so much. But I don't get it. And we're talking with Randy, who's this manager we know from the improv, not knowing that it's his manager. And he's at the same party. And she came back over to us she goes i just told i just told jimmy fallon what you said about him because i've been trying to tell him the same thing he has to increase his writing i go why would you tell him that you don't tell him that no so you know we snuck out a side exit

actually no actually i saw him later at the party and he goes, I go, yeah, he's like, I understand. I get it. I felt like such a bag of shit. It's so much easier to be an asshole on the internet now. It's right. I know. Especially since you can have your regular

daily account and then you can have some fucking 4chan or whatever they call it like subreddit dark web existence but you know what's funny man like i when i first started you know doing stand-up in new york i guess that's when i first really saw like you know the part of comedy that could be so you know clicky but and this is like a I'll give you hopefully an interesting version of a boring answer. But I just love comics so much because they were so daring for me growing up. So even if you were like kind of like where I'm like, the fact that you could get up on stage and perform in some capacity for me, it was always like I guess i was a little pie-eyed at first of like

and and so that then when it came back on me where it was like people took sides a i thought it was interesting because i was like i just i don't think i'm very interesting because i'm not a combative person or i'm not like a person who leans into controversy so the fact people embroiling me in controversy and i could sit there and reap the rewards of like fucking wealth and packed crowds. I was like, I just was like this for years. Like, all right. All right.

And then, of course, as time goes on and you get a little bit older, I remember like one day back in like 2002 or three, just finally being at the back of the room and looking at somebody on stage and being like, what the fuck is this? and looking at somebody on stage and being like, what the fuck is this? I've done the opposite. I was always the what the fuck is this guy, or at least at some moment when I moved to L.A., when I realized, oh, we're not all in the same foxhole

like we are in fucking buttfuck Wyoming. I didn't ever realize there were clicks on the road road comedy starting out how i started yeah it's us against them and i didn't understand that uh yeah i i just i'm reading uh i'm almost done with bonnie mcfarland's book uh i don't know if you uh were uh straight back then this is a joke uh but when we moved to la bonnie mcfarland and sarah silverman were the ginger and marianne of the the funniest hottest young comics like who would you fuck like sarah silverman but i always thought oh they're cooler than me They're in that fucking alt crowd.

And in Bonnie McFarlane's book, she goes at length talking about how she had to learn how to fit in with the cool people. And it's just like brilliant to think, oh, I thought you thought you're cooler than me. I thought I was just all you all people hated road comics and right oh dude it's after i did therapy for my parents and my brother and all that shit i just it was like a whole a whole new language of like understanding how much people project in fucking you know it was like i started reading the room so much differently that i really got to a place in probably in the last 10 years where it was like, oh, I can I can. Somebody could be in front of me and literally just telling me everything wrong with me and like just tearing me to shreds.

And I really appreciate it because I'm actually seeing their process play out. And that's so it's it's like everybody's on their on their journey or whatever that some boring metaphor is. When we set this podcast up, I said to you, like, I see that in so many young comics now. Just take, well, now it's way worse with, oh, what you can joke about. And, you know, what's off, you know, like the infighting has become so bad. I'm like, I fucking can't wait to do this podcast with you. It's all bullshit. Yeah, really.

When your mother died, I fucking sent you an email and said, hey, listen, I remember. I know it's important. And all the shit talk I do behind your back, it's just part of the game. Oh, yeah. It meant the world to me too and it was you know you and it's funny because you just in the moments of like either finding a moment of uh success or in a catastrophic moment you really start to find out who gives a shit right of course there's some people that give a shit because they want something right there's

those people that are like i'm here for you every step of the way but then somebody like yourself comes along and like there's a sentiment and there's some some something it's steeped in something really fucking real and it was like uh all i can say to you is i've been looking forward for a long time whether we saw each other in person and again not in a fragmented i wrote this at 11 o'clock and you saw it and wrote me back four fucking days later to be able to like say to you man like i appreciate that i i never uh you know i would never um be able to be disparaging towards you because i know your heart you're you are a good dude yeah yeah yeah i i i at my at my worst days i would Yeah, I'm not always a good dude. I've not always been a good

dude to you. I looked up some shit that I wrote. I'm like, oh, I'll just ignore that I ever wrote that. You should have read them. You should have brought them on. And we could... Like mean tweets, but even fucking worse. I don't think I ever mean tweeted you because I might have mean MySpace you because you blew up MySpace or blew up on MySpace.

Right. Mutually beneficial. I remember comics. I get talked into doing MySpace and comics wouldn't do it. I'm not doing the Dane Cook route. I'm going to do it the old-fashioned way by just being funny. I'm like, yeah, but MySpace actually, I realized, helps people find out you're funny. Right.

People were so against MySpace. It's like all MySpace is the want advertiser and I'm just putting more ads up than you so people actually check in. And if they like the show, maybe they'll come back. If they don't, fucking they don't. And it's funny because so many people rejected it. I remember talking to comics all the time early on being like, hey, I'll walk you through it, man. I'll help you set up a page. You should be doing it.

And a lot of comics were like, no, no, that's pandering. I feel like I'm pandering. Yeah. But there was that sentiment was out there. And then when I get on it, I get fucking hooked like everyone else. And it bucking up my ticket sales. And it wasn't until that failed, which I still, I long for MySpace days. I would trade in everything else.

I would trade in email for MySpace. But when I get on Twitter, and I don't know how it went down, but when I get on Twitter, you reached out to me and said, hey, if you want to get verified, I can show you how to do it. For anyone listening, those were the old days of Twitter. Dane Cook is not going to get you verified. But yeah, you did. And you got me verified. And I have a blue check mark. And I'm still happy with that. I was like, Doug's going to hate me. I'm going to reach out. I'm going to get it verified. And I'm going to give him another reason. Every time he sees that blue check, he'll be like, God damn it! This motherfucker! He did

something out of the goodness of his heart. Why? What is that? The same way you liked kind of poking at me, like my way of getting under your skin was to do something that you should be

grateful for but you don't know that feeling yet oh but but i would do that to i would do that to hate mail and go you fucking sucked when you played saint louis and you fuck and then i if you if you reach out with the tender hand and go hey i'm sorry i i i tried my best at that show and i don't know what you you didn't like but you know sometimes and they always write back i can't believe you read this and and go back to me i'm sorry i was just i didn't like the one joke because you said something about diabetes and my sister has diabetes you're really good. Yeah, you do one good thing to a fucking asshole and they fucking buckle. They're fucking buckle.

Being a decent person really is almost a martial art. Just being friendly in the face of adversity can diffuse a situation so much. Sacks! Ah!

Rulers of the underpants universe! Sacks! Ah! Keep your balls off your legs and such! Sacks underwear. Don't have sweaty balls. Was that good? I don't know.

Hang on. Chaley just gave me the fucking we're at an hour mark because I have nowhere to be, but I have fucking 18 other questions. You know, Dan, I didn't you if you had an out or something. No. I kept a good chunk. I kept till at least 4.30, figuring if we either were trying to

patch up something for an hour and a half, or maybe actually reliving glory days. So I'm good. I'm good. A lot of my notes are really well i want to get to fast times how you pulled that off the brother thing i don't think we need to cover you've talked about that yeah yes it's weird i wouldn't change a thing though it would it's it

sounds so fucked up and it was it you know, if my whole life was Star Wars trilogies, that era was Empire Strikes Back. It was just this fucking, I talk a lot in Star Wars because I'm kind of a geek, Doug, I don't know if you know that. But it's weird because I don't, you know, that almost killed me that time.

Literally, almost fucking like it took everything from me to put my brother in jail for people who don't know don't care you can find it somewhere online but it was like he stole my money i loved him he was looking over my my funds and he just fucking buried me alive and he was he was stealing for years and years i put him in jail and yet everything that happened to me from that point every every standing on my own two feet kind of moment and what I wanted to do next, it was like getting that cloak of negativity out of my life. He was there my whole life, a negative fucking cloak around me going, I love you.

I'm protecting you. But he was evil. And once he was gone, it was like it led to so much good stuff, personal growth. So I don't look back in any way except for the fact that I do sometimes wish I had a fucking brother. You know, I miss that. But the things that happened to me, it's why when people do hit me up and they're like, oh, man, I'm I want to you know, I'm in the worst place in my fucking life and people will tell me what and I'm always like no this is the moment that's fucking

this is the groundwork to a skyscraper if you do the work that's the foundation so I know you mentioned you went through some crazy shit I don't know that story but like no it's not mine's not crazy my brother and I had

issued about a family issue, his family, that he just immediately took a side of a story from his fucking ex-wife that was at that point his ex-wife. That was a contentious. Right. Why would you not even ask what I... I've been on your side against your wife for this whole time, and you just send me this shitty text. How fucking dare you talk to... And I'm like, if you don't trust me, I'm too old to have those relationships. And I just stepped out.

And I haven't talked to him in five years almost. Yeah, I had a brother, but I'm not keen on bloodline. That's fucking something that you have no control over. I have a great family of people I've met in my life, not the ones that I had to share a bed with when I was three. Right. I have that same belief. That's, you know,

my family and the people that have, you know, meant the most to me. And, you know, I was fortunate enough once I got out here to meet fucking Jerry Lewis, who was like my comedy hero

growing up, right? When you talk about like antics and some of the stuff that went into my early standup. They love you in France. I don't know. Sorry, is it Jerry Lewis? No, he's huge.

I know. But it was like you finally meet these people and you're like, oh, this is what it feels like to have a real fatherly type of presence or brother type of. So it's like your family is who you fucking find along the way that is assertive with you and tells you when you're being fucking stupid or isn't afraid to tell you good job because they're not going to be in any way intimidated by it. Tell me, because I only know this superfluously. I fucking said that word right.

I couldn't get the other word out, but superfluously. The laugh factory. Yeah. Like that had to be something akin to fucking losing family. Yeah. Two years I wasn't in there. I fucking hate that guy. Yeah.

Two years. Two years after being there for like 16 years. And I'm back there. I mean, of course. Oh, are you? But, you know, Doug, by the time that happened, and I'm not like. It's what happened it's oh i got i got supposedly banned for life for a reason that to this day i still don't even know nobody told me it was just like you're out you're done you're your billboards off the side of the building

and i was just done and i talked to masada who owned the place at the time and even he didn't really know why it was just this moment he doesn't to Masada, who owned the place at the time. And even he didn't really know why. It was just this moment. Oh, he doesn't own it anymore? No, he does. He does. But when I went to him, I was like, what's going on? He was like, I just need a beat.

There's a lot of people in my ear. And instead of fighting it and being like, but no, I want to. At that point in my life, honestly, it was like, I went through this stuff with my parents. I went through this unbelievable moment of success. I've had success, failure. I was a welfare kid growing up from Boston. Suddenly, I got fucking some money. Then I lose it, my brother.

By the time that stuff happened at the factory, I didn't give a fuck. It was like that's life. That's okay. I'm not meant to be there. The universe just went, get the fuck out of there. This isn't your spot anymore. Go. And I was okay with it.

I was like, I just took, I never asked. I never fought back. I still, they asked me back two years later, and I never, I just walked in because I wanted the stage time. I didn't even give a fuck. I didn't go like, why did you do that to me? This is like the Joe Rogan, Carlos Mencia story without you a carlos mencia that got you kicked out and then brought back is just maybe it's the laugh factory that's haunted it was some ghost that got got you kicked out uh yeah honestly it was like who the fuck cares that's life sometimes life doesn't want you in a certain place and if you go but i i was here for 16 it doesn't fucking nobody cares nobody

cares you just i i took those two years i hadn't had a friday night off in fucking 28 years ever that's i i went on a date with a girl on a friday fucking night it was like it was great this is that's why i love pandemic i haven't slept in the same bed for a year since I was 17 years old. Oh, my God. So, yeah, there's a lot of upsides. I'm going to fucking beat through these. Okay. Like lightning round questions here?

What's going on? I feel like because Chaley just shoved a fucking time stamp in my face. Like, we're bothering you. Oh no, no, no, no. I'm not.

Hey, listen, I would let you know. I'm not like hard out. Uh, yeah. When it, when it starts to Peter out and,

and feel like we've overstayed our welcome, just go, uh, anyway, that's it. I have this note that I hope would just bleed in naturally. Every time a comic, not every time, but every time a comic asked me for advice, the best advice I ever got in comedy was like I was at upper echelon open mic, but still not a good. But I was giving some younger open mic-er advice,

and Joey Scazzola was the big shit when I lived in Phoenix, big shit in the open mic. He's the best open mic-er that actually works as a feature act occasionally. And he said, don't give that kid advice. Anytime you give someone advice, you're just trying to tell them how to be like yourself. And I go, yeah,

you're right. Now, rather than just repeat that, when someone asks me for advice, I go, don't ask for advice. I would have told Dane Cook to fucking quit comedy and sell shoes. And he's a fucking billionaire.

So don't ever ask. You know who actually gave me the best advice? I, i want to say i hate to admit it but at the time he wasn't a monster but cosby fucking cosby i was backstage doing letterman letterman had bypass surgery on a date that i was booked to do stand-up it was my third time doing the his show and when i got there i was like well dave's not here who's the host they were like cosby and i was fucking excited because i you know grew up loving his stand-up and and uh bill cosby himself was like the comic i wanted to be once i grew up i kind of was like oh that'd be cool to be a storyteller but but funny and he came into my dressing room i was in there by myself just putting my suit or whatever the fuck and cosby comes in and he was he was nice i'd heard things about him that he wasn't like a very nice guy not not the stuff we heard later but like and he came in he was just about to leave and

he turned back and he was like he's like uh i don't know what the key to success is but i know the key to failure and that's trying to please everybody true it was like it was like that moment where you kind of go like oh fuck okay i guess i should just only do what i think is funny it also uh reinforced thank god i don't drink i might have drank that drink that he brought me and then he raped me it's a new 15 minutes i could have uh the on your your Wikipedia page, which I know is silly. They talk about, oh, he had controversy under Dane Cook. Controversy.

Oh, Jesus. It was like just a throwaway, not Columbine. What's the shooter, the theater shooter? Right. That's right. Robert Colorado the shooter? The theater shooter. Right. That's right. Robert Colorado. Yeah, the Batman shooter. Yeah, I made a remark at the Laugh Factory six days later.

Twitter was writing shit 40 minutes after the shooting that was like funnier than I was and also more fucked up than I was. Yeah. Somebody filmed it and it ended up on CNN that night and CNN showed only the clip and CNN goes, is Dean Cook funny? Is this funny? But that's what I wanted to ask you about. That is how many times have you found yourself in a position because of your

notoriety, because you're that famous where you go, Oh, where you go, I want to riff on this, but I can't because I fucking haven't CNN because I'm golden. I say whatever the fuck I want and no one notices. You know how fucking you know, twisted our brains are. You know, my thought was. All right. My thought was just hold on to the shooting jokes for a couple of weeks shooting shooting jokes need fucking 14 days before we get it was like yeah it was like okay this is you know people just looking for a reason to

come at you but i when i was i hate seeing fucking comedians material out of a club anywhere. I hate seeing it on even comedy channels. I just fucking hate it. That's for the moment in the synergy in the air that's happening right with you and them. It's that moment. Everything after that, replays or the news or sneaky fucking videos you don't fucking get it if if they if they had filmed green rooms for the last 30 years oh you would have every comic would be canceled every single comic true that's why that show the green room was so good yeah uh paul provenza yeah provenza's show that

was so fucking good and now it's actually being recreated on zooms across the country yeah and it's it is a different world man it's like that whole you're right that whole backstage banter yeah i was at the store whatever months before the pandemic and stuff and i was just thinking to myself this is the funniest stuff anywhere uh you you must remember uh when you do terrestrial radio you had to before you did a club we you had to go on the fucking morning zoo crew yeah and they you all the best shit was at commercial that's right okay we're going back on the air don't say any of that funny shit we were just all laughing at and you'd have to go into the benign yeah hey what do you want me to set you up with that you could do a bit about

yeah well you know now once the algorithm you know once in once the internet stopped being um uh fucking some kind of pirate radio and it started getting monetized and the algorithm knows where everybody is and everything's tapped into like an advertising link it just the fun stopped right it's uh back to the green room i i i keep thinking about uh like because i i always said well you as long as you're not beholden to a sponsor or a network yeah you can say whatever the fuck you want uh but there's always there's always that argument and what people don't get is when people will say and we've been in these conversations and i'm sure you've had a thousand of them like how can you say what how could you laugh at that thing and it's like because because things that fucking hurt you so bad feel great to own and laugh at that and if you weren't hurt by that you don't fucking get it you're sensitive to somebody else's experience

okay uh conversely people who use like some kind of victimhood to get the attention that they can't get because they're not funny are are deflated if if you were molested and a lady in the audience has gotten all the attention for don't say that in front of sarah because she was molested and a lady in the audience has gotten all the attention for don't say that in front of Sarah because she was molested. And now a comic that was molested is owning it and making it funny. All of a sudden, Sarah feels like you stole my thunder. Everyone was treated me with kit gloves about that subject. And now I don't know how to be funny about it. So you fuck you.

You're canceled that's right that's right and you know what else i've learned from this conversation done all sarahs were molested have you noticed that it's always sarah who's been molested in a comedian's i was gonna ask you because i i'm I'm reading Bonnie's book right now, and I read a lot of punk rock, junkie books. I like nonfiction, and I like road stories, and there's not enough comics who write books about their life in comedy.

Comics write books about their life in comedy. Comics write books about, you know, whatever. Like, it's a funny book about self-help. Right. I love reading road books. Yeah. I love that. And then I was going to ask you, why don't you write a book? But I just read an article where you did.

You are writing a book. I finished it during the pandemic. Yeah. I wanted to write for 30 years it was supposed to be my victory lap until we all got fucking you know uh put on time out but it's like i wanted to do a book that was yeah i had some of this stuff in there about like okay well how did i figure it out and what was my roadmap but more than anything i wanted to talk about the stuff with my brother and all the the turmoil that came success. Because the way I describe it in the book, somebody read it recently and they said, this is like Confessions of a Dangerous Mind with comedy, because it's really dark and people don't realize that like, there's some stuff that happened to me in that period that was really fucked up, like really, really scary.

really fucked up like really really scary and the way i describe in the book is like i was i was uh between two storms the storm of success which was more a storm than anything razzle dazzle and then the storm of like my brother and of course cancer with my mom and dad so i think my book is going to be definitely uh it's funny there's funny shit but it's not it's not just for the sake of uh it's not brain droppings for sure it's not sign language oh yeah yes yeah no it's it's gonna yeah it's self deprecating there's a lot of you know i take the piss out of myself a lot which is always fun but it's just really more of uh but do you do it as well as all my fans i might need you to punch some stuff up no i'm actually i'm writing a blurb for your book uh in my head i might come for you uh for that i'll punch it up but it's uh basically i remember dane cook and i rushing to phone banks to call our mothers

after the 1995 san francisco comedy competition the difference between dane cook and i is uh dane cook was upset when his mother died and i helped assist my mother's suicide. Oh, my God. What brings us together, takes us apart, brings us together. Something to that effect. But I'll write it for you, and you don't have to use it. Fair enough, fair enough. The fucking last thing that I really want to know about is, how the fuck did you put that Fast Times thing together?

Oh, man. So I knew Sean... Explain. You explain what it is in case people were on something else during the pandemic. All right. I'm going to piss really good, but I have a good prostate.

I mean, piss fast. Please explain to him. All right. So here's basically what... He left, but I actually don't know what it is. I'm hijacking the show. Doug in his

curious George hoodie leave me to take a piss. Okay, so before he gets back, so a live read, you know, people go to see the people do like interpretations of scripts and you go and you see a bunch of actors, contemporary actors reading a piece of work. And I'd done a few of them. And once we were in the pandemic, I was like, there's nowhere to go. There's nothing to fucking do. I wonder if I could put some of the actors that I love together to do a live read of one of my favorite scripts because I love Fast Times at Ridgemont High and I knew Sean Penn for a few years he'd been to my shows we were kind of buddy buddy and he was one of those guys that like I didn't think he would do it but I still

know that he loves his uh foundation core his um you know they do all like the uh the the vaccine stuff and the testing. I knew if I brought him a great idea that we could probably make some donations for CORE that he maybe might do it. So I went to him and I was like, hey, listen, why don't we do a live read of Fast Times at Ridgemont High? And he was like

immediately, he was so enthused. He was like, yeah. Wow, okay. Well, who would you want to play Spicoli? And I'm like, you? And he's like, yeah okay well who would you want to play Spicoli and I'm like you and he's like yeah no I'm not doing that and then he's like and then immediately he right away he's like Shia can play uh Spicoli I was like wow that's fucking great because he's probably going to come in and be like be Spicoli he's probably going to like just be method or something. And then one after the other, I reached out to Aniston,

Jennifer Aniston, and then Julia Roberts was on board. And then Brad Pitt in right before my eyes. And by the way, the two months leading up to us doing it was like, I was just miserable. I was literally like, fuck,

I'm so bored. I don't know. I'm writing the book, but other than that, it's like, I'm not performing. And so know i'm writing the book but other than that it's like i'm not performing and so when that came together and finally we were on the day doing it putting it out there it really was it'll forever be one of the fucking coolest things i got to be a part of that's uh yeah first of all the i'm afraid to reach out to my comic friends to do a podcast the fact that you would go i have two

famous friends and they're both probably in court right now and one of them one of them's spewing q anon the third one is spewing q anon conspiracies from her macadamia nut farm in Hawaii. I have this thing, man. It's like I grew up with an alcoholic dad, but a loving guy, but an alcoholic dad. And that's why I love you. I think it's a thing of like I love alcoholism. I'm an adult child of an alcoholic. And what you get with a great alcoholic is you get, you get the, um, the parts of the,

the stuff that nobody will ever tell you because people are just too like noodle spine, to be honest, when a person gets drunk, they'll tell you those things. And usually it's only from a drunk person that will call you on your shit but unfortunately because they're doing it in a angry fucking scary way you just want to like repel from them when in truth they're like the ultimate therapist right so people that are intense and scary like jerry lewis during your like every morning where I wake up and I'm like, oh, I shouldn't have said that. I just met that new neighbor and I called him out. I shouldn't do that. And now you're reinforcing that I should do that.

Yeah, I feel like I've always had a again, like Jerry Lewis was a dark guy. There was a lot of darkness in him. But that makes me comfortable. I'm comfortable around uncomfortable situations weirdly. And so to go to somebody like Sean Penn, who I know, I know he's intimidating and he is, he fucking is. But I get my love from waiting for a scary person to go. Yeah.

Okay. If they say no, that's okay. Then I don't have to fucking do anything. Right. The best part of somebody saying no is then you can go i tried now i get to do nothing for a month right no where's us what do you got oh here it is what do you got now you can't see this i can see it yeah yeah i see yeah well you could if you were here and looking at it you couldn't see it but that's me and tracy and chaley in the local paper from behind at a distance at the

new farmer's market and that's how excited i got hey we're in the paper i set my sights so fucking low that I see the back of my head at a distant shot this big in the local fucking rag of 5,000 people. And I go, we're in the paper. I still have that joy about low levels of, I think it's a Massachusetts thing kind of, Oh, he was on the local news. He's in the background. Someone put it on VHS. Let's watch it.

I think that the greatest part about being a kid who felt like a fucking loser that felt like I was just kind of like a wallflower loser was once I started to meet people in this career, it was like, fuck it. If I I started to meet people in this career, it was like, fuck it. If I, if I, I was more scared back when people say like, what's it, are you ever scared on stage? I'm like, no, I'm scared when I think of the kid in high school who wanted to die because

I was so fucking lonely. So it's like, yeah, I'll roll the dice. I'll call somebody like i met sean penn a few times he was really nice to me he's a fan we exchanged numbers i'm gonna fucking ask if he's like are you fucking kidding me then whatever it's okay but he said yes and fortunately we got to do something that i thought was just like really really just really cool man it was really uh brought a lot of joy and we made some good money for his foundation. It was just cool, man. It was just fucking cool.

I have my depth to your pen. He's usually as drunk as I am when I talk to him. Rarely. We should do something one day. We probably should. We should do a table read. No, I'm talking about my conversations with Depp are different than your conversations with Penn. We talk about, yeah, we should probably do something someday.

Yeah, all right. They never happen. I think I'm – Sean Rouse, I had that down, but that's Wade. That's right. Sean was on the Atel thing, the Insomniacs thing with Greg Giraldo. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember that was back when my vitriol about you was at a height. Yeah, that's right.

That was like your most toxic. Oh, I remember. I remember talking to Attell, and you'll appreciate this. It's not a compliment, but it's Attell. I go, well, you have Dane Cook on your tour? He says, Dane Cook, yes. He's the perfect comedian for a 16-year-old girl who just had an abortion and needs to smile. And needs to smile.

Oh, fuck, I'm crying. I would prefer an insult from David Tell versus a compliment from any other comedian. Okay, do you have a favorite comedian of your generation other than you? It was Patrice. It was Patrice, man. I fucking, I just loved watching him, man. Any night that I got to bring him with me somewhere or see him in New York, like once Patrice died, it was like, fuck.

I just felt like he was one of those voices that on any given night, you just sit back and you knew he was going to bother people and piss people off and make people feel angry and get people be laughing. I love that kind of comedy. I miss that guy. I've never been more afraid of a comic than Patrice. I didn't know him well, but when we were all auditioning

for the Man Show, for the listener, when we did the Man Show auditions, there were ten of us, and they would just keep switching us up. So, when okay, now you and Dane are going to do it as co-hosts, and we would sit in a room, and okay,

write a monologue, write a sketch, and we did that fine. But when they hooked me up with Patrice, who was one of the 10, he just looked at me. He goes, I just got to tell you, I don't work well with other people. Well, this will be a difficult writing process. You're like, this is a two-hander, Patrice. You know this, right? But again, he was one of those guys that, yeah, a little scary.

I'm comfortable around scary people. And yet, once you knew him and once you were within arm's length, he was the first person who ever called, like really called me on shit that I didn't even know I was doing that was fucked up. And he did it in such like a blunt force trauma kind of way. I used to call Patrice, he would sometimes be honest, hurtful, honest, but then I would call it, he was like whole crush depth honesty, where you'd be in bed later that night remembering what he said or what he accused you of being. And you just felt like your whole chest was going to implode. But you're like, oh, wow, he had the balls to fucking tell me some real truth.

And he could do that in a coarse way and a way that was scary, but I just loved watching him. I miss him on stage. I don't really know who else. I'm trying to actually, like, I'm drawing a blank. No, I just drawing a blank. I know. I just, I asked for one and a tell is my, the, the,

the old pound for pound, like throughout the years, a tell, I wouldn't want to live a tells life to be as funny as him. He's a sad fucking, it's always self guessing him. Yes. I always picture a tell goes home at night, puts his

hat on a hat rack, and then when he takes off his coat, he's just a skeleton. But he's got a purse of coins, gold coins. I fucking love that guy, man. I love it. When I was in New York, watching a tell work was like just fucking unbelievable. I would walk out in my adult life stunned by what I saw and not be able to remember a single bit of me just crying, laughing at everything.

And I could not quote a bit because I was so removed from, i should have thought of that there's comics where they do a bit and you're like fuck why didn't i think of that there's a tell where you go i would never think of that i couldn't possibly think of that not only that but it tell has has and had that ability to i don't know when he's making shit up, and I don't know what was the fucking piece of prime material that I – I don't fucking know, man. He's so good that it was all blurred in greatness, and you'd be like, I can't fucking tell if this is just all off the cuff. Are these all things he came up with?

It's just – it's awesome. The guy's un-fucking-believable. You already put together the uh the fast times thing put together a a fucking zoom thing where you get a bunch of comics to do other comics material or has that already been done like just get a bunch of fucking comics and we all do other people our favorite bits of other comics that are on the line i think that'd be brilliant you know why because then do it because you're the guy that has business sense and follow through you call sean penn and he answers the phone you think sean

penn if i call him up and say hey listen we're gonna get a bunch of comics through other comics material he's gonna be like yeah sign me up no no i'm saying if you can do the sean penn thing you can fucking get caa or whoever your agent is that that is a good idea though it's a fucking pandemic isn't over we can still do that i would love to do a zoom with just i had this uh fantasy i call them i stopped calling them ideas when i stopped writing them down going you'll never follow through with this but do you remember the delta bar at montreal how fun that was yeah after the montreal festival when it's just comics yeah yeah let's do a fucking massive Zoom thing with just comics and, alright,

I'll do my favorite Bill Burr bit and I'll destroy it and then he can correct it. I think that's great. I know, but I have no follow through. You are sober and you actually wake up with the same thought and don't wake up thinking, everyone hates

me. I went too far. I did the wrong thing. These aren't my pants. These aren't my pants. You know what I say when I wake up in the morning? Ready? I wake up and I go, I think I'll swim. That's literally what I

say most mornings. It's so far from that little rant, whatever. I literally am like, I'm going to take a swim. I think I'll take a swim. That's why I love you as a nemesis. I will never let it go.

The exact opposite of me. And I love it. It's healthy in every way that you're not. It's fucking, I love it. That's what it is. I really appreciate you doing this. And for fucking young comics who have a beef with other comics,

it's just sports, really. It's like politics. It's like everything. Fake wrestling. That's right. Everybody who signs up for this gig, there's no dental. There's no fucking health care. We're all sacrificing.

We're all giving up our entire 20s at least. So be kind to each other. And kill your brother. Kill it before it grows. Seriously, though, Stan Hope, thank you so much for asking me to be a part of this, man. I have wanted to break bread with you in some regard for a very, very long time. though seriously though stanhope thank you so much for asking me to be a part of this man i i have wanted to break bread with you in some regard for a very very long time so this was fucking cool that's why i had the chinese invent a disease that was gonna make us be friendly on a podcast

i i've worked the long con it got a little out of hand. Are we ending with our closers from 95? Oh, well, mine is visual. Oh, that's right. I forgot. I forgot. People are going to see this. They're not going to see it.

We can see each other. All right. You've aged way better than me. But they'll never know. It's called happiness, Doug. I only had to bury two parents and a brother to get there. Oh, man. I don't have my reading glasses on and you look like Tom Brady. Oh, what a fucking, what a guy. Oh, my God. Don't even get me started on the fucking Tom Brady. What a guy. Oh my god.

Don't even get me started on the fucking Tom Brady of it all. We're closing out. We'll save that for, hopefully we'll do a follow-up chat at some point. I would love to all the time. If you ever have a follow-up, you can text me.

I feel like Mark Maron, didn't he start that podcast like trying to make up with people he's been cunty too wasn't that kind of the beginning of what the fuck podcast like he well my episode my episode he was cuntier well he can't help that it's part of his nature in fact being cunty is eventually going to be one of those things listen he's a cunty person he can't help it and you can't make fun of cunty people i don't know i'm afraid of mark maron for different reasons than patrice because i see mark Mark Maron and myself where I secretly seethe about some people uh but uh yes uh we've had Nickelback on Mike Mike the bass player from Nickelback like talking about like he like is so good with all the fucking hate he's had over I don't know music but I know everyone hates

Nickelback and you can't say you like Nickelback. Well, I only know two songs. I like them. They're catchy. Yeah, that's right. I don't know music. And what was the other one? You know how much energy it must take to hate Nickelback?

Yeah, it was the hip thing to do. Dave Matthews and Nickelback. I go, I love Dave Matthews. I mean, I don't hear it, but when I do, I don't hate it. That's right. I don't hate many things. It's pretty tough to actually be like, I'm going to listen to a song and

go, I fucking hate this. I do. All right. We're getting into another podcast, which we will do. All right. All right. A lot of my fans are probably going to be at the end here oh dr drew that was the other one what like dr drew i have never put more vitriol in a personal hatred bit on a special than i did about dr drew and then

burke kreischer hooked us up and i yeah, Dr. Drew and I are friends now. And he wrote the Ford for my last book, the other book before this one. And he's like, are you punking me? Right? Yeah, it's fucking nice to be old. They go, yeah, that was stupid. Well, you start to realize as you get older, oh, wow, all the people that I hated, I actually really think are cool. And the people I kept close to me suck.

And I really don't want them in my life. And so I've been disassembling and reassembling for 10 years. And finally, I get to sit with somebody that I genuinely like, but I don't know at all. Who's writing the forwardword for your book? It's still available. We don't know yet. He's waiting to see who gets Me Too'd when it gets

close to coming out. My first book, I had Louis C.K. as a blurb. I had two Me Too victims. that could be taken out of context we'll edit that out well no no fucking you know johnny depp definitely that he's the only one i went to fucking bat for because i i was there i fucking knew the relationship i watched the shit happen but other people like other than joey diaz

where you go okay he wasn't like me like we all know joey diaz it's just he's saying shit that you he's like ralphie may he didn't believe a word he said but he was hilarious saying it that's right that's right uh but uh yeah no you should get uh you have Sean Penn options but you should get someone alright now I'm just fucking I'm done thanks man that was fucking great

for every person who ever wrote either a fucked up thing to me or a loving thing like all the people through all the years to finally hear this, to just be able to sit back and go, oh good, I don't have to carry either of their shit with me anymore. It's fucking brilliant, man.

This was really great, dude. Thank you. Yeah. I'll see you on the Twitter. Alright, man. Bye, guys. Bye, guys. I love you, Dane Cook Twitter. All right, man. Bye, guys. Bye, guys. Cheers. All right. I love you, Dane Cook. I love you, buddy.

Bingo, take us out of this. Okay. Bye-bye now. Bye-bye now. Bye-bye now. Bye-bye now. សូវាប់ពីបានប់ពីបានប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប�នបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបវាប់ពីបានប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់� Thank you.