The Three Questions with Andy Richter - Jason Mantzoukas

Episode Date: March 30, 2021

Comedian and actor Jason Mantzoukas joins Andy from his extremely organized closet. Jason shares why the pandemic has been his “second childhood,” reflections on the most influential years of his comedic growth, and how his failures have shaped a career he’s proud of. Plus, Andy and Jason reminisce on the joys of watching cable TV, in what might be the most Dad conversation in the history of this podcast.

oh god oh god oh boy i watched him collapse we were we were just starting and he just collapsed imagine if that were if you like, I saw him die. I heard Manzoukas was the guest on the episode. Yeah. He really didn't want to talk to him, apparently. No, no. Andy was saying beforehand how much he wanted to get out of that episode. Well, we've started.

Hi. This is the three questions. I'm talking to Jason Manzoukas. How are you, Andy? I'm good. How are you? I'm well, thank you. You are in your closet.

I'm in my closet where I've spent conservatively, I would say the majority of the last year in this closet. Had I known that I was going to spend this much time inside of this closet, I would have changed things. I would have done things much differently. And if you weren't podcasting from your closet, would it be so neat? It would be. I am a very cluttered person in that I've got a lot of stuff,

but I'm pretty well organized. And tidy. Yes. It's easy. I also, to be fair um inside of um quarantine i only wear essentially the same handful of things yeah so it's not like this is getting disrupted that much i'm like down i wear it's like the i wear the same eight shirts pants and underwears and socks and i use the same you know probably eight dishes bowls bowls, spoons, and glasses.

And so it's like, that's been my whole year. See, I'm very much the same way. Although like the socks, I think I've worn socks three times since this thing started. Just because, you know, it's like- You're one of those barefoot boys. No, no. I just, I, you know, I wear like kind of like slippery shoes. See, but I wear, I also wear like comfortable house shoes i wear like um like a birk a birkenstock clog uh-huh but i wear socks

with it oh wow yeah i wear socks with it i don't like my bare feet like just walking around being around outside i don't like it i think you may be an an NPR listener. I'm on record. I'm on record as both being an NPR listener and as being like a non-foot person, even my own feet. I'm like hard pass. But you know what? Hey, listen, people are out there. They're running around. They're loving those feet. So more power to them. Let them do it. Let them do it. People, you know, there's probably a lot of stuff I'm into that would make people very upset yeah i mean i'm just looking around your house and i'm just seeing so much of the so much of the erotic art you have hanging on your wall erotic art yeah and a lot of it seems to be you

paintings of yourself you know what i never noticed that but they do all look a lot like you commission these you commission erotic i mean i just you know i sort of describe what i want to and it's all the same artist it's my neighbor yeah i love the idea that your neighbor just like looks at you through your windows with like binoculars and just paints portraits of you from your normal life right using his own feces that's the real thing oh yeah i forgot your neighbor is like super cool yeah um so you are uh i heard this from somebody that you've been home a lot like this pandemic has really sealed you in yeah because i have uh i am i shut it down i shut it like march i think ninth last

year yeah i i was like you know i'd already been like like i'll be honest pandemic is my like worst case scenario personally like if if everybody has their some people are like i'm afraid the plane i mean is going to go down yeah yeah. An irrational fear, I'm going to be in a terrorist attack or whatever. Pandemic is mine. So I was clocking COVID-19 even like at the end of 2019 when it was kind of, you know, moving around in Europe and Asia. So I was like, oh, fuck. and and in asia so i was like oh fuck and then we did a we did a how did this get made live in vancouver at the end of february last year that i was like should we cancel this show yeah uh but we went and just to travel internationally like whatever it was february 28th or something was

sketchy yeah just to be in the airport just to be in the line, like already an enormous amount of people were wearing masks. And I was like, oh, fuck, this is, I made a mistake. I should be at the very least wearing a mask. So I shut it down and have been pretty much with the exception of like running a few, like I basically leave the house once every couple of weeks to run a few errands. Wow. Otherwise, otherwise that's it. You know, I go outside in my, like in

my back on my back porch, but I don't like, um, I'm not an, I haven't been like hanging out in the backyard with somebody with people or, you know, we're all gonna get together for a socially distanced, you know, like blah, blah, blah. No, I haven't done, I haven't done any of that. Well, now, since this is sort of your uh your you know your phobic sweet spot is there something about it that you're enjoying like is it's kind of like is it like rewarding to you in some way you know what i've you know i don't know if it's rewards like i would say in a very sad way it's validating yeah because Yeah. Because, like, all of the things that, like, in my mind, I, like, I'm very much like I was ready for it.

You know what I mean? Like, I had stuff. I had stuff ready to go. I got stuff I didn't have. What does that mean? What does stuff mean? You know, like, masks and gloves and disinfectants. And baby chips.

Yeah, yeah. No, no, that's, I and disinfectants. And baby chips. Yeah, yeah. No, no, that's, I don't have that level of stuff. But I mean, like, I felt like, I didn't feel like a lot of people I know and friends of mine, I didn't feel like caught off guard. Yeah. You know, but I did feel, I do, I did and probably still do feel a much larger than normal people's sense of dread and doom. Like, I think there's a lot of people who are still, have been able to see, see the light at the end of the tunnel, see the bright side, see, you know, like, whatever. I'm like a real doom and gloom person on this front. Now, to answer your question a little bit, like, there has been kind of wonderful elements of it that is, that are, that I really am, like, not exactly grateful for, but, like,

there is a way in which, and this is, this is, this is really a funny and weird thing. There is a way in which being stuck at home, trapped in my house, which by the way, I'm very lucky. I have a beautiful house. I can stay here and live and it's lovely. I have outdoor space that's private. That's very lucky. And I am still able to, as we are doing now or as I do with How Did This Get Made, I'm able to work from home to within a certain amount of what I do for work. So it is a luxury that I have been able to like not leave my house in a year in a lot of ways. But by being home alone this whole time has been a lot like weirdly a second childhood almost where I feel stuck in my house like I can't go out.

where I feel stuck in my house, like I can't go out. And so it's been a year of like consuming a tremendous amount of content. Oh, a lot of it, like stuff that like feels like I'm watching TV and movies and reading comic books, also stuff that I did when I was a kid, you know? So there is a way that one of the positives has been like i feel very creatively inspired simply because i've been processing so much good stuff you know which which has been kind of lovely to be able to be like oh i'm gonna watch or re-watch all of you know deadwood or far the fargo uh seasons yeah yeah you know or new stuff like devs and patriot and lodge 49 or old stuff like i said deadwood or sopranos or whatever there is something quite nice about engaging with all this stuff and and kind of not having to um not having to, um, not having to obey or, or go along with all of the kind of what is normally a

very busy life for me, you know, whether it's like most of the year prior to this, I was on the road to some degree or another, either for work or touring the podcast or something like that. So there is a bit of, Oh, as to juxtapose a very busy, like, year, nomadic year to have like a like the exact opposite, a deeply isolated alone year, though very stark, is kind of a weird has been interesting and kind of, I don't know, satisfying in some way. But lonely, I would think, you know, outrageously so. I would say my greatest struggle in all of this genuinely is just psychologically loneliness, you know, is just really not having touched another human being, you know, even for like a hug or to be to be close to someone else in a year is deeply unsettling, especially a year that's been very tumultuous

you know yeah oh absolutely forget just the pandemic it's like also you know the state's on fire and the oceans are boiling and you know the lead up to the election yeah and there's you know and there's racists you know burning things in the street and attacking the Capitol. Yeah. No, there's been a lot of like very emotional stuff. A lot of stuff that I would have wanted to process with someone or with people that I would have processed at dinners with friends or with my family or

whatever. So, you know, now I do all of that, you know, over Zoom with, you know, all those people, which again, like great, you know, it's great that I can, you know, pop up and see all my family and my nieces and da da da da da. But there is definitely, it is not the same as being kind of soothed or comforted during tumultuous emotional upheaval by the presence of other people. You know, if that makes sense. Do you have any pets? I don't, I don't. Um,

it makes a huge difference. Huge. And I've, I've really been, I've, I've already now been like going to a specific rescue organizations, um, adoption page like yeah weekly now so i feel like that is i'm putting energy into that i feel like it's it's only a matter of time yeah i have um i got a dog well i got a dog in august of 2019 and uh lar i mean i wanted i i like dogs and I wanted to get a dog, but it was also too, because being recently divorced, I wanted to just make it a little bit better for my kids, for my daughter specifically. Like to have my, you know, I worked really hard to not have like a sad divorced dad apartment, like, you know, like an apartment that's just like a couch and a tv and you know and socks laying around you know and like tv dinners yeah so i got the dog i mean for myself too because i wanted to have a pet but with the pandemic here and i mean i still see my kids so i have that you know and and i and now that i get to go to the Conan show somewhere, as opposed to just doing it at home, that was a huge difference.

I bet. But the dog is a huge thing because, you know, because it really is like it gives you that intimacy. It gives you that connection. There's just some another living thing there, you know, with you. So you're not alone. Yeah. And that's a huge thing. Yeah.

I think that would be gigantic. And I actually have had a couple of friends offer to like loan me their dog just for like for the day or, you know, whatever. Exactly. If you want, or just to spend time with their dog,

just to have time spent, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Which is very sweet. I do think there is likely a dog in my future. Good. Good. Cause okay. We can stop the podcast. It's going to be your dog. A dog. I do think there is likely a dog in my future. Good. Good.

Because, okay, we can stop the podcast. It's going to be your dog. A dog intervention. I'm stealing your dog. Yeah, yeah. Actually, I'm looking to get rid of this fucker. Jesus Christ. Annoying.

Oh, God. I got this dog. I made a big show of it, so now I've got to keep it. I can't just leave it somewhere because I'm on TV and someone will notice. And I can't fight it it somewhere because I'm on TV and someone will notice. And I can't fight it. Nobody does that. We can't do that.

Yeah. Well, Al, you're one of three kids, is that it? No, two. I've got a sister. I've got a younger sister who still lives East Coast. I grew up in New England. I grew up in new england i grew up like suburban boston um and she lives you know my whole family lives in the same in boston in and around massachusetts new hampshire maine you know all new england and um and you were a drummer or still

are a drummer right i was i was a drummer i mean i was like a i studied drums i was like a I studied drums. I was like a in my mind, like I I was I wanted to be a drummer. I was like in bands and in marching band and all that stuff. And I will say during this pandemic another, again, like kind of weirdly another throwback to feeling like I'm living a second childhood, which is I just will go upstairs and play drums for an hour. Yeah. You know, and I bought all of the old, I repurchased all of the old like books, exercise books and practice books that I learned on so that I could kind of get, even I can still play drums fine. But like, I was like, no, no, there is, it's almost like when you learn a language and then you go to that country 20 years later and you're like, I understand what people are

saying, but I no longer have the facility to speak it. Right. You know? And that's how I felt. I felt like my brain understood how to play drums, but my limbs were like, wait a minute. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm not sure I'm finding the right words. Yeah. So it's been fun to just kind of practice and play drums. And that's been kind of a blast, you know, and also a good like I feel like I construct my days in blocks, you know, exercise block. I got a Peloton. Great. Boom. Exercise block, you know, block i got a peloton great boom exercise block you know play drums boom you know whatever you know we're doing this now great okay you know everything is in like 60 to 90 minute blocks right is that something that you have a natural facility for do you force

that on yourself i force it on myself because i am to not i I it's, I am like, otherwise my default is just amorphous mush. Yeah. You know, I'm just kind of like, you know, like kind of improvising my way through a day. Yeah. You know, so I have to really be proactive and be like, no, I'm going to do this. And then this, otherwise I'll get nothing done. Yeah. See, that's, I have the problem because if I have a structure imposed on me, I get a lot more done. Like I, and I, and that's just kind of like the nature of me, you know, it's like the nature of, you know, as I've said, I've said many times, like, it's not a coincidence that I'm a talk show sidekick. It's like, I'm good at, well, what are you guys doing? Okay. Let me pitch in, you you know let me do this but

like when i'm left to my own and you know hey andy here's your day do whatever you want i'm like um get high and watch watch uh old phil donahue clips yeah you know sure like and that's like that does not that does not put brioche on the table. That is exactly what I would do. Yeah. And, and that's what, frankly, in this last year I've done, I've lost a lot of days to that. I've lost a lot of days to, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to get stoned and watch all the Harrison Ford movies from the eighties and nineties, you know, or I'm going to watch, you know, like I've done like a lot of like, Oh, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to watch all the Tony Scott movies that I you know or i'm gonna you know like i've done like a lot of like you know what

i'm gonna do i'm gonna watch all the tony scott movies that i like or i'm gonna like i'll go through a director or go through a tv show or or just like what you said go down a youtube wormhole yeah if i'm gonna watch every joni mitchell performance on talk shows the dick cavett show this show and that show like Like, I'll just like, get it all. I want to watch everything, you know? Yeah.

Which I love. I love, I love that, you know, and then you look up and three hours have disappeared. Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

Can't you tell my loves are growing? And it's, and it does, it does get hard when you have kids and you're kind of like you know you really do need to get a structure to your life and you need to like keep up with your work because and then here i am like you know pile of emails unanswered and like you know and and especially now you know the the Conan show on TBS is winding down and I mean, truly nobody knows what's going to happen. So it's like, really after, you know, 10 years of employment as of June, I'm out of a job.

It's what it seems like. Oh yeah. And, uh, you know, and I'm, you know, like everybody, all the, all of team Richter is like, you should got it. You should develop something. I'm yeah, I'm going to do'm yeah i'm gonna do that but it's that thing where it's like that is not and that's not a muscle you've been exercising it's not at all you know at maybe a one time it was and i wanted to like for because we come out of similar

backgrounds in terms of you know when we wanted to do comedy we didn't go out and do stand-up or at least i don't think you did. I did not. Like, you know, our, our thing wasn't, I should be the only person on stage and it should all be about me. We both sought out, uh, ensemble based comedy support group based comedy, where it's not just me. I'm here making you look good. Theoretically, you're helping me look good. And it's not all about like, I have to do every piece of this, you know? And that's what's, that's what in many ways, kind of what you're describing, you know, to be a sidekick or to be an improviser, to be somebody who is good in the ensemble is not necessarily the person who's like driving the bus you know no it's um

it definitely uh it it suited me very well because i i uh i was in film school i was in chicago there's improv in chicago if there you know if there hadn't if i'd been in i don't know milwaukee or if i'd been in la i don't know, Milwaukee or if I'd been in LA, I don't know that I'd ever would have done improv. Oh, that's interesting. So you hadn't gone to Chicago in order to. You grew up there and went to film school there. I grew up there. I went to film school and I started working as a production assistant on television commercials and then you know progressed in in a freelance

film production career on on commercials and i was doing props i kind of ended up in props like mine and uh but then i started nowhere in this so at that point you must be in your early 20s yeah and then no way are you like somebody who like you do you go to Second City as a fan or are you like engaged in that world as a like are you turned on to that at all or is it like really an epiphany like you find it you see it and you're like that. is I was in film school. I had film school friends, funny friends. We'd shoot videos. I was doing film acting in film school because one component of film school is that nobody that wants to make short films in film school knows any actors. And if you're in one film and you can remember lines, people come to you and say, I'm a film and which it's really good experience but ultimately you know i found that like a lot of weekends i was spending you know 12 hours at a forest preserve with somebody that didn't know what they were doing of you know yeah and and that would

that got kind of frustrating but a friend of mine started working at improv olympic at uh with charlotte helping is dell there at that point yeah he is he is like i took classes with dell yep and um and she was doing this and i thought hey you know i went and saw her and some stuff and i was like oh this is good and the real key for me because you know i you know like in film school i i had a a focus in screenwriting but i'm a terrible writer not in like i i i can write things but sitting down to a blank page is yes add kryptonite you know like i just i had trouble with it so what was really important to me was the compromise of performing and writing and the immediacy of it. I couldn't think about it. I had to do it. And, and so I didn't have, I didn't have a chance to

second guess myself. I didn't have a chance to write a line and go, Oh, that's stupid. And go back. I just was on stage with other funny people, which loved doing that like performing in show business is kind of secondary to getting to live when be with showbiz people you know i get like i go to the conan show and i'm with literally like some of the funniest people on earth oh my god those those writers those producers you know since the you know, like have been some of the greatest. Yeah. And continue to be some of the greatest comedic minds. You know, it was just as like a, you know, my early New York UCB comedy days, you know, there was a fair amount of my, I think the first time I was ever on television, I believe, was in a sketch on the Conan show, the late night show.

And then was on subsequently a number of sketches. But there was like such an incredible thing to just being, when you were in a sketch, you got to watch the rehearsals of the other sketches, the other things, the notes on those sketches, how a sketch would go. You know, it would go up. You hear people get notes and see what was happening. And then they'd mount it again half an hour later with changes. And that was like super informative to like me, who at that point was just doing like Herald Night at at UCB was very kind of at the very beginning of doing shows and being a part of a group and all that stuff. It was fucking cool, you know, and, and super, um, educational I'll say. Yeah. And, uh, and also too, for a lot of us,

um, we were learning as we went, you know, like we, conan had done snl and conan had done the simpsons and robert smigel had done snl and robert smigel had done the simpsons and that was it yeah all of that was just we had to make that up going out and doing remotes you know like robert's i would did the first remotes and robert's like would you go do this at this event and it's like and all of a sudden here's me from improv class yeah out at like the miss america pageant making comedy for tv and being like i don't have any fucking clue i don't that's amazing i'm just doing it so yeah well we should okay let's talk about you know my guest today andy richter one of the greats no boy i've got as you know i've got i've got five questions for him you guys are fans of

the pod you studied religion i did you're a drumming religion guy like and you know with a beard oh my god i can smell the patchouli from my beard is bigger than it's ever been i think right now now tell me about that you went to school and you studied religion, correct? I did. I did. I mean, you know, this is now, you know, so long ago. But yeah, I went to like just a kind of traditional liberal arts college. I went to Middlebury College in Vermont.

When was this? What year? This is, I graduated in 95. Okay. So this is, I was, you know, I went in in 91. So right around, so in that, like early 90s, I spent in college, you know, the nirvana smashing pumpkins. Yeah, yeah.

And, and, you know, it's like, it was so it was a, I was like a comparative religion department. It was not like a theological school or anything like that. I didn't study religion thinking I was going to be a priest or anything like that. I studied religion in the sense that I studied all of the world's religions. And that's kind of what it was about. And it was I found it the it was very interesting. And I really was I found it very compelling. And it just so happened that my school had a very good department. So the classes were great. It didn't come from like a personal passion or, or anything like that. I just kind of kept liking the classes and liking the professors. So kept doing more. If I'm being honest with myself, like at a certain point,

I had more credits in that department. So I was like, I might as well major in this. Oh, okay. Because what I really spent, I would say the majority of my time doing was the comedy group that I was in and the radio station that I ran. Those were the two, if I could have majored in the comedy group or the radio station, absolutely. I would have, but you know, it was, and, and the things that were close to that, like there was no communications department at Middlebury and the theater department at the time was okay, but not great enough that I wanted to like dig myself into that, you know? Right. Right now there's somebody, a Middlebury grad from that time, a theater grad, who's like, fuck you. Oh, yeah.

I'm going to tell those professors that you slagged them off. Who said that? When I get off work from Starbucks. Because it's a British person who says slag them off. slagged them off. When I get off work from, cause it's a British person who says slag them off. Um, well that, so, so you knew you were kind of like in your head,

what are you going to do with yourself? I mean, are you, you know, I mean, what do you, in my mind, I was either going to be a drummer or a comedian, you know,

like at that point I was playing in bands, but I was also in an improv group, you know, um, you know, and at the, you know, like at that point I was playing in bands, but I was also in an improv group, you know, um, you know, and at the, while I was in college, when I arrived, there was a short form group, um, that was like a, you know, traditional improv short form games. Um, and then it was during my period there, uh, one of, one of our of our uh rodney rothman do you know rodney rothman i know the name and he was a letterman writer um and he he was one of the writer and directors of into the spider verse a couple of years ago he's like uh you you i'm certain you've met him along the way yeah yeah um he was he I went to college with him. He was in the same comedy group with me, along with Jessica St. Clair and some other folks.

And he, during one summer, got a hold of Truth in Comedy, the book. It's Sharn's book. Sharn Halpern from ImprovOlympic. Exactly, who you mentioned earlier when you were monopolizing this interview with your with your background and how you came up in comedy. Look, you asked me, Jared. So he brought back that book and that book had a description of long form, obviously long form improv and specifically the Herald. Yeah. So a group of us from our larger improv group splintered off and started a second group, which was a Herald team doing Heralds to the book. We'd never seen it done before.

Yeah, yeah. But we did it because it was described in the book. So, but it was like, when I think about it now, I get like so uncomfortable because we would perform in, instead of in like the big assembly hall where we did our short form shows that could fit a couple of hundred people. We would do heralds in the coffee shop, which was a cool, small setting. Yeah, yeah. The show would be like an hour. And we would strictly adhere to what they outlined in the book so the pattern game the opening was a pattern game which is a free associative kind of

improv uh formatted kind of way to get out a bunch of information quickly so it's yeah but it's most frequently used as a warm-up yes yeah but we did it as like we did it for probably 10 to 15 minutes of like breakfast pancakes captain crunch like at this pace i think about those audiences and i'm like they must have been miserable it was we were terrible yeah but it was electric it was so exciting um i loved it i loved i loved improvising i found very much that the i found it very much scratched the same itch that I got performing in bands, but I liked being on stage with, uh, in an ensemble of comedians better because there was no perceived hierarchy. You know, we were all in it together rather than, yeah, rather than there being like exactly songwriters or front men or, and I'm just in the rhythm section or anything like that.

There really was like improvising felt like being in a jazz band or something. It felt like we're all feeding off of each other. We're all kind of riffing and such an important part of improvising on stage, both whether you're playing music or doing comedy is about listening. And those were already kind of skills that I'd built up a little bit so I felt like a little bit like uh I had a little bit of like a history there so it was it was very easy for me to get into improvising comedically and I and I was and still am like obsessed with it you know like I still do in normal times you know here in la i still do like two to three shows a week at ucb you know

wow that's really that's something it's it's admirable to me because uh doing just straight up long form improv it's stressful and like i don't i don't leave the house to go get stressed out i leave the house to go have fun and it is fun. But it's like, but if you're out of the, it is, I, I, I always liken it to, it's a muscle that you have to keep exercising. Absolutely. Otherwise it's the equivalent of if I right now was like, you know what I'm going to go do?

I'm going to go play a full soccer game. Yeah. Like I would 100% be injured in 10 minutes. Absolutely. I haven't played soccer in years. You know, um, I used to be good at it. I used to feel very comfortable playing soccer, but not anymore. So to me, it's the same thing. The part of the reason I love doing love improvising so much is I've been doing it consistently nonstop. Yeah. You know, this is the longest this year is the longest i've ever gone not getting on stage and improvising and in many regards i've been improvising with some version

of the same like 30 people for years you know like my the my harold group that existed in new york existed for nine years the group that i've been doing a show with here for 10 years is pretty much the same group of people. Like there's like the people that I did Ask Cat with. Those casts, there's so much overlap. So I'm also like, it's also like hanging out with my friends. Yeah. You know, it's almost like the equivalent of people who have like a regular card game or something. Except ours is like we do a show on stage and then we go have dinner and catch up

and it's like quite lovely see i i also just kind of even in the early days i like the hanging out part way better than the doing shows part and like i said you know i and today you know i go we go to largo and we do a show and this you know doing the show now it's like it's so weird and so kind of short and truncated and there's only so much we can do sure uh you know a lot of like well we've got a new sponsor who answers that question and then there's like a tape that we can't see sure you know and but the fun part is the fucking around and there's so many times the bits we're just sitting around yeah and just like conan being mean to people like just being and but in a fun you know like in a funny way like he plays like his off screen persona bit character that he's been doing for years is the genius surrounded by incompetence. Sure.

You know, and so it's, you know, like a Mr. Burns kind of almost without the voice. And he's so fucking funny doing it. And he's so observant and so quick and like, you know, like something that happened 10 years ago, he'll remember it and bring it up and it'll be like, oh man. But that's also like testament to the fact that like, your show is also a show that has had people that have been around 10 15 20 years like it's not like your show has a

tremendous amount i mean there's certainly turnover but right there's something kind of lovely about how consistent the voice of the show is both because it's conan but also because you're there because sweeney's there because so many people who have been there for so long are still there absolutely and i mean you know there's people there's people who have like kids out of college who have only worked for conan o'brien yeah like that was their first job in television and that's where they've worked the entire time. And that's, that's rare. Yeah. It's very rare.

It's very rare. And it's, it's very nice. And there's, there's people on that show that feel like family to me, you know, like literally like cousins or, you know. Yeah. Well, I mean, you really have, you've spent all, look at this, like this won't really exist anymore. Really things like this won't really exist anymore really things like this like i don't think you know i don't think that and no this is no shade to the current crop of uh talk show hosts but i don't think jimmy kimmel is going to want to be around in another 15 years doing his show

you know yeah i think he wants to be doing other stuff in a way that i think is you know like i think i don't know that like a career in late night talk shows having the kind of longevity that you guys have had is in the cards anymore no i don't think you know i don't even know if late night talk shows are in the cards much longer you know yeah well it is yeah you're right. Well, everything's changing. That's like a whole different like head spinning conversation of what's TV going to be? Kimmel, Fallon, Seth, all of these, these are the last shows. And then you could say the today show. Good morning, America. These are the last shows that are tethered to time to the times that they're on. Right. Yes. Everything else just exists.

Freestyle. Yeah. You know, but with the exception of sports, I guess, you know, like if you want to watch the game, you got to watch it when it's on. You can't just right. Because otherwise you're going to find out who whatever you're going to get spoiled. Yeah. Yeah. You know, like when, if you want to watch the game, you got to watch it when it's on, you can't just, cause otherwise you're going to find out who, whatever, you're going to get spoiled, you know, for sports. But you know, I don't, I'm not a sports person, so that doesn't impact me. But those two polls, the morning shows and those late night shows are the only things that are still really tethered to a time that they come on and feeling like I got to watch that.

It's at the end of the day and people have their people have their hosts that they feel, you know, is their favorite or speaks for them or gets their point of view or their sense of humor or whatever. I think all that goes away. I think I don't think my you know, I don't think your kid I was gonna say my nieces, but your kids to that age. I don't think any of them give any shits about that. About those those kind of

shows that happen at the end of the day as a way to wrap up the day's events they're processing the day all day long on the phone and yeah and and there it is it's already happening like it doesn't people aren't you know what's what's a really good rating for Colbert or Fallon or Kimmel now is an awful rating for, from 10 years ago. Yeah. 10 years ago, if you'd getting the rating that they're getting now,

it would be like, Oh my God, what are you doing on the air? Yeah. Because there's just not many people doing that anymore. They don't. And I mean, and I don't,

I don't watch them, but then again, that's for me. It's different for me. Cause I it's, but the weird thing is, but then again, that's for me. It's different for me. Cause I it's. But the weird thing is, if anything, people like us should be like older people should be the people that are like, of course I still watch, you know, Colbert. Of course I still watch the tonight show or whatever is your show.

Of course. That's how, you know, like somebody laughed at me recently. Cause I told them I, I have cable and they were like, wait, you actually still pay for cable? Yeah. And I was like, wait a minute. Has things have things tipped now so hard that to still have cable is preposterous? And the answer was yes. It is perceived of as something only for old people. Well, sorry.

I know. It's over. I sailed and I still watch TV and it kind of bugs my kids i put on the tv and then i put on the guide and flip around and see what's on and that's and you discover great stuff yeah or just whatever honestly there's there is still and it still matters to me it someone else is playing that somewhere yes i am making a connection to someone in real time like whether it's just somebody put on a you know pushed a button on a computer that made you know house hunters international play at this particular moment but this is happening right now well if yes

to speak to that exact point it feels like you are living present tense yes you know like i'm discovering this other thing that's happening right now as well we both me and this show are living in at this moment in time not like me calling up anything i want to watch because i can that seems like a closed circuit you know it's just me deciding right now I want to watch Letter Kenny on Hulu or whatever, you know, so I'm going to watch it and I'm going to love every episode because it's absolutely genius and hilarious. But there is something wonderful about flipping through channels and catching on Nat Geo some show about a guy who's like, you know, I'm going to using only primitive tools. I'm going gonna survive in the pre-saharan desert for a week and i'm like yeah i want to watch this yeah okay i wouldn't have known this but go let me see yeah or like you know the giant monster fish that that roamed early you

know prehistoric waters like okay this is. This is just dad TV talk. Oh, it's all dad stuff. Dad TV talk. You with your ancient monsters and me with my survival shows. My daughter insults. She's like, oh, she was talking about,

it was some like kind of domestic drama movie, you know, like some sort of, you know, poignant family story that touched on truths and i was like no thanks and she's like she's like well i'm sorry that it isn't braveheart 2 and i'm like what is that and she's like she goes that's all you watch is stuff like that and i'm like that is that is not true. It is not true. But Braveheart 2 is a great pitch. Can't you tell my loves are growing?

But I'm the same way with radio. I flip through. I listen to MSNBC. I listen to Howard. I listen to one of my favorites on Sirius XM is the old timey radio shows. Sure. Like I love listening to these old radio mysteries, you know, with the old commercials. It's like talk about old man. I was just going to say this just went to a whole other level. You know what I love? I love the old radio dramas where you can really hear the Foley work.

I mean, no, honestly, honestly very sad i just like to me it's like a it's a i like stories like i like if i gotta drive at night and it's like i i don't want to listen to a whole audio you want to turn on the radio and have it be like yeah yeah that's enough lorraine i've had enough from you precisely what are you doing with that gun oh no i love that shit i love that shit because and also too i just love like there's things like like whenever i've noticed in them like whenever anybody says like you know you know wilbur i want a divorce like that woman's gonna die like that like once you say like i want a divorce or wilbur's gonna die like one or the other of them you can't mention divorce on an old-timey radio show divorce in the olden days is not allowed was somebody somebody or both have to

die yeah they have to be punished for that transgression i actually had an idea i had an idea for a movie script that was set and it was like it was a bigger than just this but it just happened to be set in like the old time radio world and i told it to my agent and he's like i don't think anybody wants to see that okay it's so true thank you that is so true yeah because well it's like it's like westerns nobody wants to see westerns there's fucking great westerns that get made and no one sees nobody's interested in westerns yeah like like well to be fair like i think to be fair um i think our version of westerns now is superhero movies yes you know like superhero movies are for all intents and purposes because westerns in that for the previous generation from the tv westerns like rawhide and Bonanza, the pulpy kind of Westerns,

to like the, you know, John Ford, you know, incredible, beautiful, you know, like tremendous cinema, John Huston, John Ford, like those Westerns, Nicholas Ray. And then you get into like the Sergio Leone. There's so many different versions of Westerns, all the spaghetti Westerns, all that stuff.

That's kind of, you know, this is maybe going to sound ridiculous, but that's kind of what's happening now with superhero movies. No, absolutely. It's their formulaic escapes. You know, it's the same thing. Like, I love samurai movies and I like and it's they're all the same sort of elements. You know, it's like Mexican food. There's about eight things and you mix them up in different ways and you get 12 different dishes. You know what I mean?

It's yeah. And I, and there's something satisfying about that on a very like biological level. We obviously like that. We like coming back to slightly different versions of something we've seen before. Well, there's also like,

I mean, I, I, I think there's also a finite number of stories and how we tell them is what's interesting. Yes. You know, and so, and I think the same thing with songs. Yeah.

You know, it's not that I think that some, it's that like, you know, like everybody does a love song. some it's it's that like they're you know like everybody does does a love song i just happen to love the love songs from the artists i love the most because they speak to me yeah that doesn't mean all those other bands and love songs like people who like the eagles a band that i legitimately despise i'm like i'm like great i like that you like the eagles because they resonate with you they they do not with me yeah that's fine and that's kind of what it is i think is everybody kind of has a different in i think everybody's taking inspiration from the same kinds of stories and then putting them out into the world and everybody we especially live now in a world where so much stuff is being pushed

at us like an overwhelming amount of content between music and TV and film and like, you know, and then also not to mention social media and like stuff that is now on our screens, whether it's TikTok or Snapchat or in the past Vine or things, small platforms that were also places where creative people could kind of put stuff up that was whatever, funny, informative, kind of put stuff up that was whatever, funny, informative, whatever version of it. They're now people are able to curate a playlist of all of these elements that hits their sweet spot. Yeah. You know, there is no longer or very little is there.

Every single person watched MASH last night. Yeah. You know, or whatever, you know, whatever. Or like Happy Days. Sure. night yeah you know or whatever you know yeah whatever or like happy days sure the number one show on tv try and watch a fucking happy days oh my god and when you think about the fact that like you know on a weekly basis like 50 million people watched happy days yeah compared to like an episode of parks and rec that you know or or 30 Rock where they got like a million people to watch it, you know? And that is such a wide gap, you know?

We're just in an environment now where it's like so, the audiences for everything are so small so that when something does break through, breakthrough like a game of thrones or something that feels like it has some stab at creating a monocultural experience that everybody is like around the water cooler kind of talking about it those are now what used to be very ordinary parts of our week kind of sharing our thoughts about the show we all watch has now turned into like we're all watching different everybody's trying to instead of everybody being like did you see blank last night everybody's trying to turn each other on to the shows they like yeah that they assume nobody else knows about yeah yeah well what do you what do you want to do with the rest of your career you know i want to keep running this podcast i want to keep you know i've got i've got i feel like i've got another couple of years doing this show. Right. Yeah, which is all just getting people to know me.

Yes. Yeah. It's like, it's do you know Andy? How well do you know Andy? You know, I'll say, I'm pretty happy with my career, with the exception that this year was a real step back. This year just is a fucking wild card that throws everything. Yeah, exactly. But like I feel really, really like even to that point, like even inside of a year in which I have not set foot on a set of any kind, I haven't worked on camera in any way.

been able to do like a tremendous amount of work, whether it is animation voiceover that I've been able to do from home or whether it is the podcast, you know, the How Did This Get Made podcast that I host with Paul Scheer and June Diane Rayfield or being a guest on your podcast or other people's podcasts. That's in and of itself. It's not like this is a career. I don't make money off of this, but there is certainly something very satisfying about participating in these conversations that i enjoy you know and that i see as part of work i guess you know um and the fact that podcasts you know my podcast has not been around for 10 years that podcasts have inside of that time gone from like, you know, when we started our podcast, I gave it the same weight that I give a show at UCB, frankly. You know, like, oh, we're going to do this show. It's going to be fun. I'm going to talk to Paul and June and someone else. And it's

going to be a blast. You've been on it. It's, it's a chat amongst friends. You know, maybe we do it live at Largo or someplace else, or maybe it's just in the studio with us. It's great fun. To now, just, you know, we did a live stream of our podcast over the course of the pandemic and sold something like 10,000 tickets. Wow. Which blew my mind. I was like, oh, this podcast now reach a level of audience that is wild and incredible. And so, so that's really a huge component of like, what I really like about my career is that like, I get to do the podcast and reach people

that way. I get to get up on stage and do improv and improv shows and exercise that muscle. I'm still, I still write and sell scripts and develop stuff that sometimes gets made and sometimes doesn't. Under normal circumstances, I still get to perform on some of the shows that I absolutely love, many of which I was a fan of before I even got an opportunity to be on them. keep moving that ball down the court or whatever i want to i want to keep you know like i like my career has been all about i feel like incremental progress i'm not like trying to dunk you know i'm just trying and that was never like you didn't think you didn't set it and i don't mean i don't mean but you didn't set out thinking like i'm gonna be on snl and then i'm gonna be the star i did think that i did think that when i moved to New York, I was very arrogant in this, in the sense that I was like, oh, I'm going to be on SNL in like three years. Yeah. And that was not the case, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I never saw you on there. No, you never, no, never. Uh, I couldn't know the two shows I wanted to be on

very deeply, like from childhood SNL, you know, know just because it it was so much of my first exposure to sketch comedy and you know and and especially during years when those casts were strong yeah you know and if you're a particular kind of person with comedy ambitions and they are of a particular kind that's the place to go. Oh, absolutely. Because, you know, kids in the hall isn't hiring, you know. Exactly. Yeah, there are very few.

And when I was growing up, there wasn't Mad TV. There wasn't In Living Color. There weren't other sketch shows that had a revolving cast. I mean, Fridays, there was Fridays, but it was short-lived. Yeah, yeah. You know, so really SNL felt like both a comedy institution, but also like a continuing concern. It wasn't like it felt like it was it was something meaningful from the past, but also still relevant at the present tense. Right. And then also when I moved to New york and was coming up happened to coincide

with the rise of the daily show um yeah with john stewart taking over the daily show and that and turning that into an incredibly relevant show and the i really was i really was gunning for one of those kind of corresponding roles on that but couldn't i could never get really any traction with either show frankly yeah um and so you know yeah i came in really hot and arrogant thinking that's my that's how i'm gonna get this um but very quickly was disavowed of that yeah yeah um and so then it just became the work of you know uh genuinely i feel very lucky like i started ucb at the beginning of, you know, genuinely, I feel very lucky, like I started UCB at the beginning, so had years in which I just was able to get better, do shows, write shows, put up shows, like that kind of Malcolm Gladwellian 10,000 hours, because the UCB scene was so kind of in its nascency, we were able

to kind of get stage time, we were able to like just do shows tear them down put a better version of it back up without without people really looking you know it was years before agents or managers ever came and saw us yeah we were just running around for years you know making shows just making stuff and that was very i feel very lucky that we got that time you know because i think we got to do stuff and get better while no one was looking versus now i think you know there's just such a sense of immediacy you know like i don't know that that people coming up in these scenes get a chance to be bad for a while and get better without people looking or without now people are putting everything they do online and everything then lives forever. And it's like,

there's a period in which like, you have to get better. You have to like, you know, and that I, you know, that is what I feel like those years are the years that I feel very nostalgically for the years where we were just doing bad shows and then going to the bar afterwards and being like, why did that not work? Yeah. You know, why does this show, like we did a show Besser directed me and a bunch of other people of my

generation in a show. The show was meant to be a, so in Chicago they had done the movie form, you know, which was an improvised movie. Yeah. So you improvise both the plots and the characters of an archetypal kind of rom-com or action movie. Right.

But then you also have all the lexicon of like, we fade in and you do the filmic language as improvisers on stage. So he wanted to do a similar thing in New York where we were doing, but it was all animated like Saturday morning cartoons. Yeah. So he wanted to do like an improvised cartoon show. So it was poppy, bright colors and crazy. And it never worked. We like, we were, it was very hard. We couldn't crack it. yeah and we just we would go up every week and just eat shit um and what was but i recognize it now is like one of like the most influential years of my comedic growth both because it was such a hard show to figure out and how hard we worked to try and figure it out right like how how comfortable we got at failing yeah was so important but also like how we would continue to kind of try and

fix it and come at it from this and what if we just what if we just redid it this way or or looked at it through this lens or what if it had a macro structure that we could kind of keep coming back to like all of that stuff we never wound up with a functional show right the process of doing it made us all way better improvisers way better you know and you also then learn the lesson of uh quitting like it's like get like okay this isn't gonna work this isn't gonna work you know there's just something in here that is kind of like impossible to kind of land yeah um which is fine because there's there's there are like that's the the nature of an improvised show i feel like is sometimes the idea is un-executable

but is itself compelling yeah you know the show we were funny. We were funny people being funny on stage, but like the, but the movie format, the thing we were kind of always chasing was so satisfying to watch as an audience. It was a, it was an incredibly powerful and satisfying form. Right. And we were always chasing that, that level that at the end of the show, people wouldn't be just like, oh, that was funny would be like wow that was cool yeah you know it felt like a complete thing and we saw it yes we saw its birth and yes you know its existence yeah yeah we saw them build something out of nothing and like it became like a magic trick yeah versus i think we always ended up with pretty funny show that was maybe not quite as as as great as it could have been. Yeah. But,

but the process of doing it really, the process of doing it and failing at it really made us all very good improvisers, which I think is something that I don't know that is, I don't know that people are allowed to do as much anymore, which is get up and fail a bunch. Yeah. You know, um, that's, you know, that's the kind of thing that, that we got to do a lot of in like the early days, uh, when I was coming up. Yeah. Well, um, is there, is there anything like, is there any kind of ongoing disappointments, you know, like things that you wish you'd done differently or done better or like you know it's it's interesting um i think i've i think i'm of the opinion that

i think because of because i'm pretty pleased with where i am i have to acknowledge that my failures were part of it you know know, like there are certain projects, like pilots that I wrote that didn't get produced. I was at the time devastated, you know, because it would have been a really a game changing move in my career at that point, which was I wasn't acting at all. I was like a medium successful writer. Like I was, so I sold scripts. I developed a acting at all. I was like a medium successful writer.

So I sold scripts. I developed a couple pilots. I was at the beginning of a writer's career. And had that show gone, I think it really would have triggered a level of success or a potential level of success that would have been transformational for me in that moment, like 2009, 2010 type of time. But had it been successful, I suspect I would not have become an actor, really. I would not have been available to be on The League or Enlightened or those first couple of shows that really kind of put me into the world as an actor, where people then started to see those shows and be like, oh, I want to use you on Modern Family or I want to use, can you want, I like you on that thing. But all of those things, I likely wouldn't have been given those opportunities because I would have been doing my other thing. So I really like my career. So even the mistakes or the things that I look

back on now and I'm like, oh, should I have moved to LA earlier? Or like all the kind of things that could have gone differently. I kind of am like, no, I'm comfortable with them. Even the disappointments, even the heartbreaks, the missed opportunities, the things that I poured, you know, blood, sweat and tears and years of time into developing pilots and shooting pilots and writing scripts that don't get made and all that stuff, all that stuff is devastating. Uh, but all of it kind of was necessary to get me here. And, and I kind of like being here. So, so I don't mind it. I don't look back. I don't really have regrets or I don't look back feeling like, oh, if only this or, oh, if I'd only gotten

that, I wish I'd gotten that part in. I should have gotten that part in The Office or whatever, all the things I auditioned for and didn't get, you know? But that wasn't what was happening, you know? And I'm very grateful for the fact that inside of those failures or missed opportunities or whatever, I continued to build and make stuff on my own, you know, and always having, I will say as a safety or as a thing, there was always something about knowing that I could still, and would still be getting up on stage, writing shows, improvising shows at UCB was like always made me feel like that part was always going. You know, like I never was reduced to nothing. You know, I always still had that avenue, which I found and still find very rewarding, you know, and very compelling. Like

I still love doing shows and love that I can still do shows. Um, and so if my TV script doesn't get produced, that's a super bummer. It's a lost year in a lot of ways, but even, but almost always I look back on those things and it brought either somebody into my life who then later hired me to work on something else, or I still work with in some other capacity. I don't know. There's, I think there's, I don't look back with too much kind of like regrets or bad feelings about any of it. Right. If that makes sense. I wish I had like a clip package of all your failures just so i could run it right now oh my god not you mean not this oh what about yeah oh my god

it would be so long all of the all of the pilots that i wrote that didn't get produced all the pilots i wrote that did get produced that didn't get picked up the series yeah i mean come on it's like you know it's it's also footage from like bad relationships and oh okay yeah where you hurt people wait is this the part is this the part where you just play clips from ex-girlfriends who are like yes exactly what a piece of shit now that's a podcast submarining somebody with their exes oh i gotta cut that that out. Why are you making a note? Submarining X's. And I'm dad,

you know, later that I'll just think like, I wanted to do a show about submarines. What? Yeah. Why did I do? What is this? Well, Jason,

thank you so much. What a delight, Andy. It's been wonderful. Yes. You are, you are one of the, you know,

now one of the cavalcade of of greeks i've had on the show oh nice you've got your galifianakis yeah calamities okay two sederi as they're great yeah yeah great and you and me great a lot i mean you're the only people you're missing i believe are dimitri martin and um neoardalos. Oh, all right. I got to get people booking them right away. Right away. Telly Savalas is dead, so I can't. I mean, and you can interview half of Tina Fey

and half of Jen Aniston. Yeah, you're right. You can do mini episodes with each of them. Well, Jason Manzoukas, thank you for spending some time with us. Thank you, Andy Richter. I appreciate it. I look forward to you leaving your house and actually being able to see you out in the world. What a delight.

It's always a delight to run into you in the world. So I look forward to the next time it can happen. Me too. And you out there, you come back next week and listen to more of The Three Questions. Goodbye. I've got a big, big love for you.

The Three Questions with Andy Richter is a Team Coco and Your Wolf production. It is produced by Lane Gerbig, engineered by Marina Pice, and talent produced by Galitza Hayek. The associate producer is Jen Samples, supervising producer Aaron Blair, and executive producers Adam Sachs This has been a Team Coco production in association with earwolf