Show full transcript 0:34 What was that like? 0:36 Well, for starters, we bribed a little security guard to get in, me and my friends. 0:41 I think we gave him $2 a piece. 0:43 And we walked right up to the stage. 0:46 Wow. 0:47 Yeah. 0:47 And watched, like, right there. 0:50 And that was my first, my first, went, oh, I guess I got to start drinking Southern 0:55 Comfort. 0:57 Because she's making it look pretty good. 0:59 But when I worked with Phil Hartman on news radio, one of his favorite stories was he 1:04 was like a stagehand at the whiskey and Hendricks performed, and it was his job to stand with 1:13 his hand on the speaker because he was worried that Hendricks would knock the speaker into 1:18 the crowd. 1:19 And so I guess it was just not very stable. 1:21 So he said he was literally standing there with his hands on the speaker with Hendricks 1:26 two feet away from him playing guitar. 1:28 Early on, he would destroy his equipment, like the Who would do as well. 1:34 They tear up the amps, he set the guitar on fire, you know, and I'm 15, 16 years old 1:40 going, oh man, don't set the, oh, give me the guitar, don't set it on fire. 1:45 Don't smash the guitar. 1:46 Please, no. 1:46 No, he's smashing guitars back then. 1:48 Yeah, yeah, it was an expensive way to end the show, but that's what was happening. 1:54 It just was a, I guess it was just a wild rock and roll thing. 1:58 It was amazing. 2:00 A rebellion thing. 2:00 It was an amazing time to be a kid watching that stuff. 2:03 Well, it's such a crazy time in human history. 2:05 I mean, it's one of the weirdest times in all of culture. 2:09 If you take the difference in the culture of the 1950s to the culture of the late 1960s, 2:14 it's like just an insane shift. 2:18 Like one of the most insane shifts that was so radical and so big, it happened 2:23 so fast. 2:23 It was a response to the fifties. Yeah, it was that and the Vietnam War and drugs all the above all of them psychedelic drugs 2:31 Everything all together and the birth control pill. Yes, that changed everything. Yes. Yes. Very good point 2:37 Very good point. Yeah gave women freedom 2:42 As well it did the same for men. Oh, yeah 2:45 Yeah, everybody could just do whatever the fuck they wanted and and they're doing drugs at the same time 2:50 It's everything just boom 2:51 just all came together. Your story is awesome. The book is great. It really is. It's very compelling. 2:59 You know, one of the things that bums me out the most about the internet and streaming is that we've 3:06 lost the multi-camp sitcoms. It's a very weird thing. Like first, the first thing that killed it 3:13 I think was reality shows, right? That sort of took a lot of the wind out of its sails, 3:18 but a few remained. 3:20 And during COVID, me and my family watched Big Bang Theory. 3:24 I had never watched it. 3:25 Watched it from episode one. 3:27 We just binged it all the way to the end. 3:29 I fucking loved it. 3:31 I felt like when I was like a comic in the clubs in LA, 3:38 you never heard about Big Bang Theory. 3:40 It didn't get, it was like there was other shows 3:42 that people wanted to, you were cool if you liked. 3:45 And the big bank theory was like, you know family sitcom, you know, just like real clean and it's a really well-written show 3:53 It's very funny. It's a really good show man. Thank you 3:57 We worked hard. I bet you did. We worked really hard. It was it was a 4:02 General attitude that every episode had a kick-ass 4:06 Everyone was also so unusual. You have this like super autistic genius guys your head head character 4:13 Well, the way I entered the show, because I'm clearly not a physicist or by any means 4:19 a genius, they were outliers. 4:22 They were guys that couldn't figure out how to bathe in the real world. 4:27 That I got. 4:29 The quantum physicists and all that stuff, that was, you know, I'm college dropout. 4:36 That was never my thing. 4:37 but being on the outside looking in, that I understood. 4:42 Right. 4:42 That I understood, yeah. 4:44 Your story's awesome, dude. 4:46 It really is. 4:47 It's very, it's such an American story. 4:51 You know, because it's you trying to figure out 4:53 how to make it in show business 4:54 and trying to be a musician 4:56 and all these different things that happen to you 4:58 and the whole Scientology thing. 5:00 And then eventually, you know, 5:03 starting to write on big sitcoms 5:05 and the Roseanne story, and it's fucking great, man. 5:08 Cause it's like, it's such a huge part 5:10 of television history, what you've experienced. 5:14 You really have. 5:15 It's like, if you think about television history in America, 5:18 a big part of it is defined by its sitcoms. 5:22 You know, because sitcoms, like, 5:23 whether it's all in the family, or Seinfeld, 5:26 or Friends, there's some about those sitcoms 5:28 that like cement us in this place of comfort 5:32 and happiness and like laughter. 5:34 Like there's a those are our almost like our extra family is these people on TV that we've come attached to watching every Thursday 5:43 For me it was characters 5:46 Nobody remembers the plot of a sitcom right they were great plots especially on Seinfeld and stuff Larry David 5:52 nobody 5:53 Can plot a comedy story better than mr. David? 5:58 But the secret sauce was you wanted to hang out with you wanted to hang out with these people 6:04 You wanted to sit at the bar with Norman Cliff and Woody and Sam. 6:08 You wanted to have a cup of coffee with Jerry and the same thing held true with friends was 6:16 a sort of surrogate family that you wanted to be part of, but you don't remember the 6:20 stories. 6:21 The stories were secondary. 6:23 It was the characters and perfect casting on these shows as well, perfect casting. 6:28 Why do you think that I mean in 94 when I first came to LA sitcoms were the thing 6:36 That's where everybody came to LA in the first place 6:38 Yeah, if you're a comic you came to LA hoping you're gonna get a deal so that you could be the next 6:42 Roseanne or Jerry Seinfeld or fill-in-the-blank 6:45 Tim 6:47 Tim Allen bread Butler there was all those people were like yeah, I could Cosby stand up. Yeah 6:54 It was all you wanted the networking to develop a show around you and all these people were scrambling for that 6:59 Yeah, and that for the most part doesn't exist anymore 7:04 Well, we're trying with Leanne Morgan 7:07 You know, we you know Leanne's you know 7:10 Remarkably successful stand up right now and the show we're doing with her on Netflix is doing pretty well Netflix 7:16 You can do it. Yeah, they have the freedom young Sheldon worked on Netflix. That was great 7:20 Right. 7:20 His amazing thing about Young Sheldon on Netflix was a whole generation of kids watched that 7:26 show and had never seen the Big Bang Theory. 7:30 And what's wonderful too is when you get to talk to them, they don't know what CBS is. 7:39 How weird. 7:40 But the show stood on its own, which was, that was our dream come true, that it wasn't 7:46 standing on the shoulders of the Big Bang Theory. 7:48 It was its own show. 7:49 Right. 7:49 No, it definitely was. We binged that too after we binged big bang theory. We binged young Sheldon, which is a great show, too 7:57 But different right single camera highly different vibe 7:59 Yeah, the thing about the multi cam thing is like you're kind of in on it. You know, there's a crowd 8:05 They're watching this it's like you're watching up. It's like you're watching a play as much as you're watching a comedy 8:11 It is a play this episode is presented by paramount plus on October 16th 8:16 the King returns. Sylvester Stallone is back as mob boss Dwight Manfredi in the Paramount Plus hit 8:24 series Tulsa King. With new enemies closing in and his empire on the line, Dwight and his crew 8:30 prepare for the biggest fight of their lives. Tulsa King, new season streaming October 16th 8:36 only on Paramount Plus. 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It is a play with four cameras rolling around in front of 10:33 Right. 10:34 And if somebody makes a mistake, you do it again. 10:36 Yeah. 10:37 Or something stinks. 10:38 You rewrite it or you cut it, but you don't put it on TV, where, you know, as I've always 10:42 said, if it stinks in front of the audience, if you put it on TV, it's going to stink forever. 10:46 Right. 10:47 Right? 10:49 So it is a little bit of theater. 10:51 I think it started back in the 50s as theater. 10:54 That's what they, you know, started as radio plays, you know, and then television 10:59 happened. 11:00 What was the first sitcom on television? 11:01 It wasn't the honeymooners, was it? 11:04 There had to be something probably before that. 11:06 Well, it was always Lucy, but I think even before that, there was Phil Silver's and 11:14 George Burns and I don't know the deep history of it, but it all came out of Vaudeville 11:23 and theater. 11:23 One of the more interesting things about this taste for the laugh track, we've never used 11:34 a laugh track, never, been for 40 years been accused of it, but never used it, and I remember 11:43 one time I had a reporter on the set of the Big Bang Theory who went and sat in the audience 11:48 audience, and watch this tape a show in front of a live studio audience, takes three, three 11:55 and a half hours. 11:57 And then he writes an article complaining about the laugh track, you know, it's sort of 12:03 like, okay, there's no getting away from this. 12:06 He sat in the stands with 200 people laughing, and he wrote about the annoying laugh track. 12:13 That's interesting. 12:14 Do you think they just do that because controversy sells and negativity sells, and they just 12:18 have a narrative in their head? 12:20 It diminishes the show. 12:21 They want to diminish it. 12:22 They want to diminish it. 12:23 Yeah. 12:24 I think I made that pretty clear in the book that the words that come, it made sense when 12:30 you married a fucking witch, you know, or you came back from outer space with a genie 12:35 and you don't want to get laid, you know, but it makes no sense when it's a family 12:42 show like Archie, you know, all in the family. 12:45 That's about a family. 12:46 What's the situation? 12:48 He's bigot. 12:50 He's, you know, he's racially insensitive. 12:54 That's not a situation. 12:55 That's life. 12:56 You know? 12:58 Well, the whole sitcom thing, I just don't feel ... You talked about this in the book 13:05 as well. 13:05 Like, you wouldn't even say that you wrote for sitcoms. 13:08 I'd say I wrote a TV comedy. 13:10 Yeah. 13:10 Yeah. 13:10 Because I'm embarrassed. 13:11 Isn't that interesting? 13:12 Yeah, I was very insecure. 13:19 It physically hurt me. 13:21 That's crazy. 13:22 And Hollywood just didn't get the respect that a film did. 13:26 No, of course not. 13:27 Not even close. 13:27 Not even close. 13:28 So much harder though, in so many ways, to make 200 people laugh every week for 22 weeks. 13:34 It's almost impossible. 13:36 It's very difficult to pull off. 13:37 It's ridiculous. 13:37 And if you watch the writers scramble, and you know, every week you have to have 13:42 some new scenario, and you've got five cast members, you have to juggle around 13:46 at the scenes. 13:46 And network executives and tea company executives and the managers of the actors and the actors and 13:54 everybody's you know 13:55 Feeling like we live or die 13:57 Depending on whether the audience laughs or not 13:59 There's no grace period and if you're a writer you also have to listen to the executives and their ideas early on 14:05 Harp early on early on before the show gets successful 14:08 And once you begin to tell you, you know, I started to you know, my testicles dropped at a certain point 14:14 And I stopped saying saying yes, sir. No, sir. I just you know, it said no, this is the way it's gonna go 14:21 But that was predicated on having had success 14:24 This the sitcom on Netflix you were talking about is this gonna be multi cam or single cam? It's multi cam. It is multi 14:30 Oh, that's all just finished her second season. I didn't know. Yeah 14:35 The only one that I know that's doing it right now is miss Pat. She's got a very funny show 14:40 but it's 14:41 Used to be there were so many of them and it's such a good genre. There were 40 or 50 a week. That's crazy now 14:47 There's maybe three. I seriously maybe three in front of an audience maybe two 14:53 Do you feel first of all boy? Did you get out the right time? Hmm? You know like with network stuff like all your gigantic hits 15:00 You know, they were all like perfect at the right time when everybody was watching sitcom 15:05 Timing wise. I've been blessed. Oh, God. It's the greatest timing of all time. Yeah, you know and 15:10 I mean, I just don't understand why they can't come back. 15:13 It's such a good art form. 15:14 It's so fun to watch. 15:16 When it's done really, really well, it's extraordinary. 15:21 And I've seen the eulogy for it many times over the last 40-some odd years. 15:28 And I'm hard to buy into the eulogy because one great show changes everything. 15:34 Yeah, it's still fun to watch. 15:36 That's what doesn't make sense. 15:37 And this is what I got when we were watching Big Bang Theory. 15:39 Like it's fun to watch sitcoms. It's a very different experience in watching anything else 15:44 You're aware that it's a half an hour, you know, you know all the characters 15:48 You know all this guy is gonna say something stupid on this guy's gonna do 15:51 It's like it's a very interesting art form that is very it's very people enjoy it 15:57 It's very comforting for people and it doesn't make sense 16:00 Like it just shows you like the mismanagement of television that sitcoms were allowed to go away 16:07 It doesn't make sense to me. 16:10 I don't understand it either. 16:13 Taste change, culture change? 16:15 I don't know. 16:16 Do you think that's what it is though? 16:17 I don't think that's what it is. 16:19 I don't think they've changed that much. 16:20 I think there's a... 16:23 Comedy has certainly changed, I believe. 16:26 I think laughing out loud is frowned upon. 16:29 Really? 16:30 I think there's a vulnerability to laughing when you let yourself laugh. 16:34 And I mean, look at what gets feted as a comedy these days. 16:41 And they're great stuff, you know? 16:44 I mean, they're really wonderful stuff, 16:45 but you're not laughing out loud, you know? 16:48 When I watch something like White Lotus, 16:52 and I talk to people about it, they love it. 16:54 And it's extremely well done. 16:56 Mike White's brilliant. 16:58 You don't laugh watching it. 17:00 It's enjoyable, you know? 17:02 It's extraordinarily well-written and well-produced and casting is great 17:07 But it doesn't it doesn't cause out loud laughter. You think people don't want to laugh. I think when you laugh out loud 17:14 First of all laughter is not something 17:17 Self-generated it happens to you right right? 17:20 It's surprising it should it should come as a surprise when you laugh sure right it's not oh 17:26 I'm going to laugh now laughter happens because you've been somewhat you've been surprised by what you're watching or listening to 17:32 Yeah, and and there's a certain of all you have to be you have to be vulnerable enough to let yourself react 17:37 You've seen people watch comedy like this with their arms folded. They're rejecting you before you've opened your fucking mouth 17:44 You know where that happens the most is Los Angeles. Yeah. Yeah, maybe you need to move 17:52 You're saying all these things that I respect you deeply and I'm hearing what you're saying. I don't agree at all 17:57 I think people love laughing. I think they enjoy the shit out of it. It's one of their favorite things to do 18:02 Maybe I am experienced, maybe I am a victim of Los Angeles. 18:05 Los Angeles is an insanely self important place where people are constantly judging each 18:10 other's social status and they would love to be able to dismiss you and they love to 18:16 look forward to the opportunity to dismiss you. 18:18 Not everybody, not everybody, a lot of cool people there, but there's a percentage of 18:23 people that come there with a hole in their soul that they're trying to fill that 18:26 will never get filled and so they always have this weird way of interacting with 18:30 people. 18:31 It's this constant dick measuring contest and it's exhausting so where would I go? 18:36 I don't know somewhere else somewhere else 18:38 I mean even New York is way better in that regard because it's not tainted by show business 18:42 You know New York is insanely congested and there's too many people and it's just nuts 18:47 But other than that you like it's a it's a great 18:50 Metropolitan city filled with everything all the greatest restaurants and there's comedy clubs and all it's not tainted 18:57 There's a thing about Los Angeles where the the spirit of the city itself 19:01 is tainted by people that want attention 19:05 and it always will be. 19:07 It's impossible to avoid, they go there 19:10 because that's where the auditions are 19:11 and that's where the plays, 19:12 and some of them are fantastic people, don't get me wrong, 19:15 but there's a larger percentage that aren't fantastic 19:19 and they are a mess and they're exhausting 19:22 and those are the people that cross their arms 19:23 and that's why you think people don't wanna laugh 19:25 because they do everywhere else. 19:27 Well, clearly the shows that I've been spending my whole life working on do really well all 19:35 over the world, but I'm in a bubble. 19:40 You're in a bubble. 19:41 I live in a bubble. 19:42 Yeah. 19:42 That bubble's a little bit of a problem. 19:44 It's crazy. 19:45 Yeah. 19:46 I mean, sometimes you see the Big Bang Theory, huge hit in Germany, in Germany. 19:52 You know? 19:54 You know, I was astonishing how it—Mexico, Brazil—they have the Beatles down there. 20:03 It's remarkable. 20:05 You know, maybe not so much in Brentwood. 20:10 Right. 20:10 It's like—that's the thing about it. 20:12 It's dismissed. 20:13 And it was dismissed in Hollywood. 20:15 I remember I was working on a sitcom, and I was dating this girl who was an actress, 20:19 and she just—she was unemployed. 20:20 She literally told me I wouldn't do a sitcom. I want to do film. I was like, okay 20:25 All right, I don't know what to tell you like the secret to people don't know unless they've been there 20:32 Oh, it's really hard. It is hard, but it's really hard to put on a play every week 20:36 Yeah, it's really hard and it's it's 20:42 It's anxiety written. It's it's nervousness. It's it's stressful 20:46 It doesn't always go well when a joke fails at the Burbank at the Burbank Warner Brothers a lot 20:52 And it in the audience doesn't respond you can hear the 134 freeway, right? I mean it's crickets 20:59 Yeah, it's not good and but it's 21:03 It's an extraordinary teaching device because you you learned 21:07 You learn some humility. Oh, I'm not as smart as I thought I was yeah, that joke died. I thought it was great 21:14 He died. 21:17 Oh, we got to fix it, you know? 21:19 And that's how I spent the last many decades, you know, rushing around trying to fix it. 21:25 This episode is brought to you by The Terminal List season two. 21:30 Chris Pratt is back as Navy SEAL commander James Reese, and this time he's fighting 21:35 for redemption. 21:36 Nine months after finishing his list, Reese is hiding in Mozambique with a terminal 21:42 brain tumor when the CIA pulls him back for one final mission, hunt the terrorist behind 21:48 a wave of attacks, devastating the West. 21:51 But what starts as a manhunt turns into a globe-spanning fight for survival. 21:56 With practical effects and real-world military experience behind every scene, the action 22:02 this season is the real deal. 22:04 Watch the terminal list, season 2, on October 21, only on Prime. 22:09 time. It's also often a wild thunderstorm of creative people getting together, working 22:17 on something, trying to figure it out. Everyone throwing ideas at things. It's really exciting 22:21 in that regard. Like every week you're creating this thing and you're putting it on its feet 22:26 throughout the week. You get a table read, you sit down, everybody fake laughs. You 22:31 have to figure out what's real. What's real? You put it together. 22:34 When I was on Roseanne, it was huge. 22:38 Every week, maybe 40 million people were watching in real time, no DVRs yet, basically just the 22:46 start of the VCR stuff and great writing staff. 22:51 I was really blessed to be part of that staff, but we learned very quickly, John Goodman 22:56 would walk into the kitchen and say, Rosie, I'm home. 22:59 The audience would go berserk and we'd be going, yeah. 23:03 I wrote that line, they were just glad to see him, they were so excited to see him that 23:10 the response was not genuine, it wasn't a comedy, there was no comedy in Honey I'm Home, but 23:17 they were so thrilled to be in the same space as John Goodman who they loved as Dan Connors. 23:24 And you have to start learning that those are not the laughs that you hang your hat 23:30 on. Those are the laughs because the shows become part of people's lives. You know, it's 23:35 become visceral. You know, people respond to the Big Bang characters. I tell this story 23:41 in the book at Comic-Con early on. Thousands of people were camping out at night to come 23:51 in and see the panel at Comic-Con for the Big Bang Theory. And I was sitting next 23:55 to Jim Parsons at an autograph line, you know, where people come up with a cast picture 24:00 and they sign it, and this girl comes up to Jim, and her hands are shaking, and she hands 24:07 him the picture to sign, and she's crying out of joy to see Jim Parsons, to be this 24:15 far away from Jim Parsons, Sheldon. 24:18 And I remember thinking, I've been doing this a while, people are always happy to 24:22 see John Cryer and Charlie, nobody ever cried. Nobody ever cried when they saw 24:29 Roseanne, you know, or anybody like that. But they were, she was crying out of sheer 24:35 joy to see these guys. And that's when I went, something's happened in here that 24:41 we didn't plan, that we couldn't have planned, that these characters have hit a 24:45 nerve, you know. Well, I think it is the misfits thing, you know. Yes. I think 24:50 That's a giant part of it and they become a surrogate family. They support one another. Yes, they're losers in a life raft 24:56 Right, you know to me right and they hold each other up and all odd in their own unique way. That's endearing and 25:04 I think for a lot of people, you know, you look at friends. You're like those fucking people never hang out with me 25:10 What's the point? You know, they're all good looking they're hanging out together. Yeah, they're too cool 25:15 Everybody's cool 25:16 fuck. I don't fit there. But they'd watch Young Sheldon and they'd watch that show and 25:21 they'd think, all right, well, these people are just weirdos, just like me. 25:24 One of the things I loved about Young Sheldon, we discovered as we were doing it, was the 25:30 show really became about his family. Here's this cuckoo. Cuckoo's nest. This odd child. 25:38 Normal parents. 25:39 With normal parents. Dad's a football coach. His mom's deeply religious. He's got 25:44 a twin sister who's just a twin, just a kid and an older brother's kind of a knucklehead, 25:49 you know, means well, but you know, it's how they have to accommodate this remarkable 25:56 human being. 25:58 It really became watching them, how much love and protectiveness went towards this little 26:07 boy who was oblivious at how caustic he was. 26:11 He was really an asshole, you know what I mean? 26:13 And so was the Grome Sheldon. 26:15 He was really a dick. 26:17 He treated his friends horribly. 26:20 And it was one of the magic tricks of young Sheldon 26:23 was an eight-year-old being a dick is not acceptable, right? 26:30 25, 30-year-old Jim Parsons, you can be caustic, 26:35 but when it's coming out of a child's mouth, 26:37 not so pleasant. 26:39 So it really shifted to becoming how his parents 26:41 and his brother and sister and eventually in his grandmother took care of them they just they 26:49 excused him for being the way he was and allowed him to be that way that's a love story it is and 26:56 it's completely unique to the original show the big bank theory you know obviously Sheldon's older 27:03 but it's just a different thing this the whole story is a different thing the concentration is 27:07 It's a different thing. 27:08 It's really about the family and this extraordinary kid, but it's great. 27:14 When you talk about the Roseanne days, those are some of my favorite days because I'm friends 27:19 with Roseanne and I know how crazy she is and she talks about a lot that you know better 27:25 than I do, but she talks about how crazy she was during those days. 27:29 That's nice to hear. 27:31 That's nice to hear. 27:31 She's like, I was a tyrant. 27:36 Yeah, that's a good one. 27:38 That's the nicest word I can think of. 27:40 Well, you know her whole story, how she got hit by a car when she was young? 27:44 Yeah. 27:44 That's what a lot of people don't know. 27:46 And I thought it was really important to have her on after she got in trouble and 27:50 got fired from her new show, to have her on and explain her history. 27:55 She had legitimate mental illness, not like I need attention, mental illness, hit by 28:01 a car when she was 15 years old, was in the hospital for a long time, was in a mental 28:06 health institute for nine months after that. 28:10 She was a grade A math student. 28:12 After the accident, she could not count. 28:15 She had a legitimate brain injury that changed her personality completely, and it's responsible 28:22 for a lot of her erratic behavior and a lot of the chaos that you see. 28:27 Also, maybe some of the brilliance in her comedic timing. She was just so so didn't give a fuck 28:34 She was so different than any woman comic before her. Absolutely. No, she's groundbreaking 28:39 Yeah, that initial act that she and her sister. I don't know if she talked about her sister much 28:44 But they wrote that act and it was it was like nothing that we'd ever seen before. It was entirely original 28:51 Yeah, entirely original and now I know why children why why my parents eat the young white white 28:57 animals eat their young was the keystone of that act now I know why animals eat 29:04 their young yeah she was she was a force with just hearing the stories like 29:09 the Tom Arnold they made you put his name as a writer on the scripts you'd 29:16 have to change the scripts and write his name in easy for you to laugh that 29:23 kind of shit. The reason why I laughed is because I'd heard stories not about Tom Arnold, but about 29:29 people doing that. Like that was a real thing. Like it was almost like a union job that you got 29:34 with the mob where you didn't really have to show up. You know what I mean? Yeah, it was almost 29:39 like that. Like people got writer's credits when they weren't writing at all. It was a lot of 29:44 money. A lot of money. A lot of money. Yeah, I know many stories. I remember complaining 29:51 to an agent who, I might have included this in the book, I don't remember, he said, 29:58 Chuck, you got to let them fuck you a few times so they know they love you. 30:03 Yeah, that's in the book. Yeah, it's a weird business, man. It's a weird business. And all 30:09 your stories about just dealing with crazy actors and the civil shepherd thing, she made 30:16 you change the joke, and then it didn't work, and then she got mad at you for that. 30:20 And it worked for Baransky. 30:22 Baransky could read the phone book. 30:23 I mean, that was one of the great gifts 30:27 I've ever been close to watching her work. 30:29 But that whole weirdness where people get upset 30:31 if someone else got a joke. 30:33 Even if it was like that person's character 30:35 to say that line, and not your character, 30:38 people get, it was all about who gets the lines, 30:41 who gets the good lines. 30:42 Given how successful those shows were 30:45 and how much money was being generated by them, 30:48 It's hard to defend how much cruelty, you know, and malice went into making of it. 30:55 So unnecessary. 30:57 It should have been a constant celebration. 30:59 It should have been an ongoing party. 31:01 Look what we did, you know? 31:03 More often than not, though, in those situations for whatever reason, when someone is the head, 31:08 the big star of those shows, you hear nightmare stories. 31:12 When someone is like the lead actor of the show is written about them, it's all 31:16 about them. 31:17 It's like there's there's some something about the intoxicating power of being the top person on the show 31:24 Your your pictures six feet high on a fucking billboard outside the place your names painted on the wall 31:31 They can't help themselves 31:33 They just get crazy. It makes me think of it was my great good fortune 31:39 To get to know Bob Newhart and to and to call him a friend and he did a bunch of big-bang episodes and 31:47 He taught me something I've never forgotten. 31:51 He goes, I'm not the funny guy in the show. 31:53 I react to the funny guys, you know? 31:57 Larry Daryl and Daryl and Tom Post 31:59 and those crazy characters would come in the show 32:02 when he was a psychiatrist, even that one. 32:05 Crazy people would come in 32:06 and the comedy was in Bob reacting. 32:10 A raised eyebrow would get an enormous laugh 32:13 because he becomes the audience 32:15 reacting to the crazy people and he I was begging him for years to come and do 32:23 any show I'd worked on as I such a fan and I remember he finally he watched the 32:31 Big Bang Theory and he said all right I'll do this one but I have three demands 32:39 go because it has to be in front of an audience I don't do anything I said 32:43 That's all we do we only work in front of an audience done number two 32:49 I wanted I want my character to have an arc. I want it to be over a few episodes done 32:54 number three I 32:56 Want to win an Emmy? 32:59 It never won an Emmy for his shows that's crazy in that nuts that's crazy and he did on the big bank theory 33:05 He won an Emmy for a best supporting actor get best guest actor in a comedy 33:10 And it was one of the genuine joys of my life was I got him the Emmy. That's I mean I he got it 33:17 He got the Emmy, but we delivered on all three. That's amazing. I can't believe he never won an Emmy. They're crazy 33:22 That's crazy. That's literally crazy. I went to the Emmys once and it was after Phil Hartman had been murdered 33:27 and he was nominated for an Emmy so we all 33:31 and 33:32 He didn't win and when he didn't win Dave Foley looked over me goes what the fuck does a guy have to do to win? 33:42 in that moment beautiful we were all so so broken we were so sad it was so not 33:51 not that he didn't win the Emmy just that he had just recently been murdered 33:54 it was just it was still was so hard to believe and so painful that Dave just 33:59 came in with the banger Dave Foley was like one of the secret producers of news 34:05 The news radio, the Paul Sims is so brilliant that when he created the show, he allowed 34:12 all these creative people to come up with alternative lines. 34:16 And Dave was from Kids in the Hall, so he was just a fantastic writer on top of being 34:20 very funny. 34:22 And so he would come up with better lines all the time, and Paul would always use them. 34:26 It was just, there was no ego there. 34:28 It was such a great place to be. 34:30 And so when Phil got killed, it was like, we were just broken. 34:34 We're just like what? 34:37 And so for Dave to say that at the Emmys was like I'm like, okay, no one's topping this 34:41 I've never come back to the Emmys again get out of here. No, that's a high note 34:45 Yeah, you could come up with that. I can't believe Bob Newhart never won an Emmy. That's insane. He did on the big bank 34:51 Yeah, but I mean before that for the Bob Newhart show. That's bananas 34:57 That's bananas. It was such a good show. It's he seemed like a lovely guy 35:02 I'm I wish I got there really was meet him it really was back when I when I was getting started I 35:10 When that when that set was I worked on the on the same lot as the as the show is a bread and back for the second show and 35:20 When they were down when the stage was dark 35:22 I'd go sit in that little lobby set in the dark just kind of drink it in 35:27 You know, it's a tiny little set where you'd stand behind the counter and Larry Daryl and Daryl would come in 35:34 Yeah, I just sit there in the dark and just take it in, you know shit. This is where they make this show Wow 35:41 Then later on 35:43 We would bunch of us on two and a half men would sneak into the West Wing set and sit in the 35:49 Oval Office 35:50 This is as close as we're gonna get to the Oval Office. Yeah, we were sitting there, you know late at night 35:58 That's awesome 36:00 Just bringing up two and a half men like you have gone through some of the fucking craziest actors 36:06 You've worked with some of the craziest people of all time 36:09 Charlie when he was here. He did the podcast and he's like telling me about those days 36:14 When you hear all those days like how did you function? 36:17 Like how are you showing up and doing a sitcom when you were living like that? 36:22 Like it's kind of amazing that he kept it together the way he did mm-hmm 36:27 Like that's one thing that he really deserves credit for. 36:30 The guy did good work while he was out of his fucking mind. 36:33 We did six, seven years in the clear 36:37 before it all went to hell. 36:39 Ah. 36:40 We had like 150 somewhat 60 episodes 36:42 before it started to go down. 36:44 And was he heavy using during those times? 36:48 Not to my knowledge. 36:49 Oh, so it- 36:49 If he was, he was managing it and kept it to himself. 36:52 But as far as I was concerned, 36:53 we had a great partnership. 36:56 We were having a lot of fun. 36:58 The show was insanely, you know, successful. 37:04 It was, you know, we had something in common. 37:09 You know, we were all on the same kind of, 37:11 I thought we were all on the same road, 37:13 you know, keeping it clean. 37:15 Right. 37:16 Staying sober and stuff and the show was killing it. 37:21 It was just, it actually, the success of that show 37:25 is what granted me the freedom to go, you know, 37:28 And go and do a couple of tries to get the Big Bang theory right. I mean we failed at first 37:34 You know we made a lot of mistakes, but two and a man was so successful CBS granted me 37:41 unbelievable leeway 37:42 To make make decisions do shit over again like the pilot nobody gets a do-over 37:49 We got a do-over on the Big Bang pilot 37:52 Wow never happens. We got one and it worked out this episode is brought to you by squad 37:58 Squarespace. If you're thinking about building a website, you should try Squarespace. I know because I use it. That's right. 38:06 JoeRogan.com is powered by Squarespace. 38:09 It has all the features that you need to create a standout website like an AI-enhanced website builder, 38:16 SEO optimization tools, and seamless checkouts with mobile paylinks. 38:21 head to Squarespace.com slash Rogan for a free trial. 38:26 And when you are ready to launch, 38:27 use the offer code Rogan to save 10% off 38:30 your first purchase of a website or domain. 38:33 This episode is brought to you by the farmer's dog. 38:36 Here's a fun fact. 38:37 Research shows that dogs who maintain a healthy weight 38:40 can live up to two and a half years longer 38:42 on average than dogs who are overweight. 38:44 Isn't that wild and also kind of obvious 38:47 at the same time? 38:48 So why is feeding vague scoops of ultra-process kibble still the status quo for most dog owners? 38:56 Healthy alternatives exist and trust me. I know I buy one the farmers dog. I use it for both my dogs 39:02 They love it. They eat it up quick. It smells good to them. It smells good to me 39:07 It's human-grade food the farmers dog makes fresh food for dogs and my dogs love it 39:12 Their recipes are made with real meat and fresh vegetables that are gently cooked to retain vital 39:18 nutrients. They also portion out the meals to your dog's nutritional needs, which helps avoid 39:23 overfeeding and makes weight management easier. And isn't getting more time with our four-legged 39:29 best friend something every dog owner wants? The answer to that is yes, obviously. So try 39:36 The farmer's dog today and get 50% off your first box of fresh healthy food 39:42 Plus get free shipping. Just go to the farmers dog.com slash Rogan. This offer is for new customers only 39:51 Boy did it work out boy. Did it work out? Yeah, so I didn't know that Charlie was supposedly sober for most of that time 39:58 As far as I know what he was 40:01 And but you're taught you talk to him now, right? You guys are friends now 40:04 Yeah, he's a blurb on the back of the book. 40:07 So he says he was sober for the beginning 40:08 and then eventually he just... 40:11 I don't know at what point it went off the rails. 40:13 Did you notice like a change? 40:15 In the eighth season, it was clearly we were in trouble. 40:19 It was, you know, when his manager calls me 40:23 and says, Charlie can't come to run through today 40:25 at rehearsal, his big lighter blew up 40:28 and he has no eyebrows. 40:35 Now, I'm somewhat naive to some of this stuff, but I know big lighters, they don't blow 40:39 up. 40:40 Wow. 40:41 Maybe they do when you're cooking Coke with them. 40:42 Maybe that's what happened. 40:45 But there was a lot of ... The cave became more and more erratic, a lot of missed stuff. 40:52 And, you know, the sad truth about my part of it was I was determined to stay in denial. 41:02 I just didn't want to know. 41:03 I wanted to believe it was all okay. 41:05 I was absolutely, you know, forcefully, you know, oblivious. 41:12 I just wanted to believe it was all going to be okay. 41:15 Just because the show was doing so well? 41:16 It was doing so well, and it was fun. 41:20 I mean right we kick-ass that we worked really hard my partner on that show Learonson and I 41:27 We were ruthless we every second had a kick-ass. We were absolutely 41:34 Determined to make it the best possible show we could 41:37 Every week no bad shows, you know 41:40 I like in a bad show on television to go into a restaurant and having a cockroach come across your table 41:46 people, you don't go back to that restaurant ever again, ever again. 41:51 And that's how I felt about situation comedies. 41:55 You make a bad show. 41:56 People are going to maybe never come back. 41:59 You're going to lose a bunch, for sure. 42:00 You're going to lose a bunch. 42:01 Just my own experience, I loved Cheers. 42:05 I was devoted to Cheers. 42:06 It was a couple of years there where you had to get through Cliff going home to his 42:11 mother. 42:11 I wanted to be in the bar with Woody and Sam, and he would tolerate some of the dips. 42:20 But then they'd come roaring back with great writing and stuff. 42:24 But more often than not, if a show fails on a few occasions, even a show you love, there's 42:30 a likelihood you may move on. 42:32 And it's usually something that happens behind the scenes, like a head writer leaves 42:37 or someone new gets hired and they have new ideas about stuff, 42:42 and that's generally how it goes, right? 42:46 There's a weird delicate chemistry to one of these things when they work. 42:50 Yes. 42:51 You know, and it's really obvious when you think you can spin something off. 43:00 Do you remember Archie's place? 43:02 No, I don't. 43:03 And they tried to spin off Archie Bunker. 43:05 I remember the the name now that you brought it up, but I don't remember it at all 43:08 I think he ran a bar Wow, and it was a new show with Archie Bunker 43:12 But without me head. Yeah, and you know and Edith and I remember he went on to do a cop show and I was very upset 43:19 I was like, how is he playing a cop on TV? 43:22 Miraculous chemistry of all in the family was gone. Yeah, it was gone the same thing happened, you know with 43:30 Joey off of friends the miraculous chemistry of that cast 43:35 You just can't just, you know, I think I learned a lesson watching those things, going, don't 43:44 think this thing travels, you know, the characters and their relationships with the other characters 43:50 or the heart and soul of this thing, it's, you know, you can't just pluck something 43:55 out and go here, B-6612 over here. 43:57 Well, that's why Young Sheldon is so impressive, because you didn't, it is kind of a spin-off, 44:03 But it's not and everyone's new the only inkling of the Big Bang Theory is Jim Parsons narration, right? 44:09 You never see him right his love can't him telling the story right a child in East, Texas 44:15 That was the only link 44:16 Yeah 44:18 It's just amazing that you pulled off that chemistry and two completely different environments about the same character 44:25 Yeah, that was that was that was a roll of the dice wasn't it? Yeah 44:28 Oh, yeah, but it worked we didn't find Ian 44:30 and then we would not have made the show. 44:33 Yeah, there's things about certain sitcoms 44:35 like Seinfeld's great example 44:37 where those people just work together so well. 44:41 You couldn't imagine a new person 44:43 being put in the mix or someone going away. 44:45 Like what? 44:46 You would ruin the whole thing. 44:48 Absolutely. 44:50 And again, the characters and their relationships 44:53 with each other. 44:54 Oh, why you watch? 44:55 Yeah. 44:55 You know, I can't tell you one plot. 45:00 But I never missed an episode, you know, I never missed, Thursday night was gold because 45:07 of Seinfeld. 45:08 Yeah. 45:09 I mean, the entire country was watching because of Seinfeld and because of Friends on Thursday 45:16 night on NBC. 45:17 That was the night. 45:18 Yeah. 45:18 And then Bochko shows at 10. 45:20 The Bochko shows were impeccable. 45:22 Right. 45:23 I mean, one after the other, you know, Hill Street, L.A. Law, you know, NYPDU. 45:30 blue. It was an incredible run of sophisticated cop shows. 45:36 It really was. It's amazing how many cop shows there have been. It's like, boy, do we like 45:41 watching cop shows. 45:43 Again, there were character shows. I mean, Botchko understood that as well. That wasn't 45:50 the crime of the week, which is solving the crime is more the dick-wolf approach 45:57 to dramas. 46:00 Boczko was about the characters, about the cops, about their heartaches and the torments 46:08 of being a cop in Los Angeles. 46:11 Also, if you're going to write a show about drama, who experiences more drama than cops? 46:14 Every day. 46:15 It's the perfect genre because you're always going to have chaos. 46:20 You could write in any kind of chaos. 46:21 Whereas, if it's one person who's a plumber who's experiencing that much chaos in his 46:25 life, you'd be like, what the fuck are you doing with your life, man? 46:27 And how are you involved in so many murders? 46:30 How are there so many armed robberies when you're around? 46:34 But if you're a cop, it makes sense to write it in like that. 46:36 It was, I can't remember the name of the guy. 46:40 He was a New York City cop who wrote a whole bunch of books 46:44 that I think were a big factor in the botch gold ore. 46:49 I can't remember his name. 46:51 He wrote, gosh, damn it. 46:55 I can't remember his name. 46:58 I'll remember it tonight when we're done. 47:02 But he wrote about cops as people, people in untenable work. 47:10 Work was incredibly disruptive work environment and starts with an M. 47:17 Yeah. 47:18 Cop genres, sitcoms, it's just to me, the cop genres are still around whereas the sitcoms 47:25 I mean, what have they been reduced by 80%? 47:29 More. 47:30 90, yeah. 47:31 Yeah, again, back when I got started, 47:34 there were four sitcoms on every network, 47:37 five nights a week or four nights a week. 47:39 So what is that? 47:40 That's, you know, 16 a night. 47:44 And then the hour dramas were at 10 o'clock. 47:46 Every night for years, for years. 47:50 I don't believe that's because people don't like them. 47:53 I really don't. 47:54 Think it's just a mistake in broadcasting. I think they fucked up and I think if they came back with some good ones 48:00 The problem is it's a hard job. It's a hard job and then and I was one of the blessings of my career was I got to have a journeyman 48:11 Period where I was on I was learning, but I wasn't in charge 48:15 I wasn't the guy. I didn't have to you know say that way right I 48:21 I had maybe seven, eight years before they said, 48:26 here, your show, and I wasn't ready. 48:30 I still was overwhelmed. 48:33 Murrell Miller? 48:34 No. Nope. 48:35 All right, we give up. 48:38 We can't figure out what it is. 48:44 But that first show, 48:47 I was the case to the kingdom. 48:49 I got a show on TV. 48:50 Right now, so this is a show after you leave Roseanne, and now you're working on your own show 48:57 But they put it on like Saturday night 49:00 Owners of the Roseanne show had an idea for a show that was strangely like Roseanne 49:08 you know this 49:10 heavy-set unhappy housewife 49:13 with a domineering husband and 49:16 Problems with her kids and they went to my then boss 49:21 Bob Meyer and asked him if he wanted to develop that into a series. 49:25 And Bob quite rightly saw that they were just trying to, you know, rip off Roseanne and do 49:32 it again. 49:33 Have another hit show with an unhappy housewife. 49:36 And he very wisely or whatever said, no, I don't think so. 49:40 I don't like this idea. 49:42 So they went, all right, they came to me and I thought, this is a rip off of Roseanne. 49:48 I'm in. 49:51 Because what I was thinking is these two people owned the Cosby Show and Roseanne. 49:58 They were gigantic eight million pound gorillas in television back then. 50:04 I want to work for them. 50:07 Somehow I'm not saying no even though I see it for what it is and I worked my ass off 50:13 on it. 50:14 We, this lovely lady and British actress named Miriam Margolies, Margolies, Margolies. 50:21 And she was a terrific actress, and she tried so hard. 50:27 She showed so hard to be an unhappy American Staten Island housewife. 50:33 And the show, you know, to credit how powerful Marcy and Tom Warner were, the network couldn't 50:43 bring themselves to say pass. 50:45 They couldn't say pass and they ordered six episodes and they put it on the coveted time 50:51 slot of eight o'clock Saturday nights. 50:53 For people who don't know, that's the worst time slot you could ever get on network television. 50:57 It's like making the show and using it for landfill. 51:00 Yeah, everybody's out. 51:01 Everybody goes out. 51:02 In the old days before the internet, people would just leave the house on Saturday night. 51:07 If you go back far enough, Saturday night had some huge stuff. 51:11 How far you got to go back? 51:13 Back into the 60s. Really? Yeah. Saturday night was a big night. Yeah. Interesting. It went away. Was that because television was fairly new? 51:20 It was like a crazy thing. Yeah, stay home and watch TV. Yeah, that makes sense. 51:24 But anyway, um, they ordered six episodes. They couldn't they aired five couldn't bring themselves to air the sixth one. 51:32 You know like a you know, like it would have hurt and I thought you know, okay, that's the end of my career 51:39 I'm done. I had my shot. I blew it. 51:43 And Tom Warner came into my office a few days after they canceled the show and said, 51:50 it's a noble failure. 51:52 Let's try again. 51:54 I had never put noble and failure together in the same sentence. 51:58 Did you think the show was good or did you think it didn't have enough time to get good? 52:04 Here's a problem with writing a TV and producing a TV comedy is you don't have perspective. 52:12 perspective. You lose perspective. You're working so hard. You don't really have the 52:17 big picture as to whether you think it's working. You ask anybody on any staff, on any sitcom 52:23 back in the day, we're doing great work. I think it's just impossible to own the fact 52:31 that it might be mediocre given how hard we're working. I don't know that I really 52:36 had a clean perspective on whether it was quality television or deserved to go on or 52:42 not. 52:43 I just know I worked really hard and I was heartbroken that it failed. 52:47 That's a very honest perspective. 52:49 I appreciate that. 52:50 And then he said, a noble failure, let's try again. 52:53 And I was like, I get another, I get a do-over, I get to try again. 52:57 Great. 52:58 You know, because when you're indoors, they bring you lunch, you know, they feed 53:02 you, you know, you have a parking spot. 53:05 It's pretty cool. 53:06 That's pretty cool. 53:07 That led to them saying, we want to do a show about a single mom. 53:16 I was like, wait a minute. 53:18 I wanted the Frantise turn, the character, the thing is just, I wanted her to leave 53:22 her husband and try and be single and live with her daughter. 53:27 You said, no, she has to be married because Cosby's married, Roseanne's married. 53:32 They wanted another married show. 53:33 But what it turned out was ABC was looking for a single mom show. 53:38 So now they wanted a single mom show. 53:40 And I said, where do I come in? 53:45 What sensibility can I bring to a single mom show? 53:49 And to their credit, they sent me to Elgin, Illinois to spend a few days. 53:54 The Chamber of Commerce took me to a women's shelter, a YWCA, hospitals where women were 54:05 either on welfare, working two jobs, you know, killing themselves to support themselves while 54:13 raising children. 54:15 And I got this walkthrough, what I went, oh, this is great tragedy. 54:23 These women are, they're heroes. 54:29 I mean, at the time, the single mom was Murphy Brown. 54:33 Murphy Brown had endless nannies. 54:36 Right. 54:37 She just went about her life and there was a kid. 54:40 But a woman raising children by herself without a safety net, 54:44 that hadn't been done. 54:46 And I came back from that trip going, 54:48 okay, I wanna write this. 54:50 I wanna write this, 54:51 because this is, I get it now, it's a hero's journey. 54:56 You wouldn't think it, it's a sitcom. 54:59 It's four cameras in front of a live audience, 55:02 but for me, it was the hero's journey. 55:05 It was this woman against all odds 55:08 to caring for her children after a horrible divorce 55:11 and having to work her ass off to just to feed them. 55:16 And then it went a little south 55:20 when they said okay and we found the perfect actress to play that part and 55:26 that's how I met Brett Butler. Sure you laugh. Well that's a similar situation 55:33 what we're talking about before where people would just become tyrants when 55:36 they have their own show. She was very unhappy. Yeah. Out of the gate. Day one. 55:41 Seems crazy. You'd think we should have been celebrating because the show was 55:45 an instant hit. There was home improvement with Tim Allen, and then they put it on right 55:52 after it, and it did great. She was on the cover of magazines, and she was on all the 55:57 talk shows. She's a truly funny woman. She had a great stand-up act. 56:01 Oh, she was hilarious. 56:01 Yeah. No questioning. She took acting immediately. I've watched people try and do this. Not 56:13 I could do it, but it didn't go well for me. 56:15 It just seems so insane that someone would get an opportunity that, if you're a comic, 56:21 that's the opportunity. 56:22 That's it. 56:23 It's your own sitcom. 56:26 How could you be upset? 56:27 It's weird. 56:29 I think if you're damaged in this certain kind of way that actors and comics can be 56:37 damaged, and you succeed, and you learn that horrible, horrible two o'clock in the morning 56:46 horrible truth, I'm still unhappy, I'm still not whole. 56:53 This was supposed to make me happy and whole. 56:56 Success was supposed to solve my problems, and certainly what I was taught when I was 57:00 boy, you know, if you make something of yourself, you'll feel, you'll be good, people will like 57:08 you and admire you, and you'll be a man of substance, Yiddish was a mensch, right? 57:15 And then you learn that horrible truth. 57:18 Only can happen with success, which is, oh, shit, I'm still the miserable fuck. 57:26 Now what? 57:27 Now what? 57:28 That's not going to solve that 57:30 That hole inside and generally that's where the drugs come in that's where the drugs come in with rock stars rock stars and gambling 57:38 And yeah, you can't fuck your drink your way drug your way gamble your way out of that 57:44 Shit works temporarily, and then it doesn't work and when it stops working you truly fucked 57:50 Yeah, you truly fucked you trying to find a solution 57:54 that 57:55 the best I understand that 57:59 Nothing on the outside is going to heal the inside. 58:02 This episode is brought to you by Call of Duty. 58:05 Modern warfare 4 is coming, and they're going all in on this one. 58:10 The kind of missions that make you go, dude, did they really just do that? 58:16 Set during a full scale North Korean invasion of South Korea, expect a real boots on the 58:21 ground experience as young South Korean recruits fighting to protect their homeland 58:26 and North Korean forces hunting traders, interrogating civilians, and more. 58:31 Modern Warfare 4 launches October 23rd, pre-order digitally for early access to the campaign, 58:38 or pick up your physical disc on day one. Visit callofduty.com for more. 58:43 Rated M for Mature. 58:46 It has to be an inside job to get well from that stuff. 58:49 It's also for for people's perspective if you're talking about what was Brett 58:55 Grace under fire was 93 58:58 In 1993 there was only four channels 59:01 Okay, and then cable and nobody's watching cable not like that not like sitcoms. No, and there was maybe a hundred famous people on earth 59:08 There's nobody was famous back then. There's way more famous people 59:12 So if you're a damaged person and then all of a sudden you're one of the most recognizable people in the world 59:17 Who Brett Butler was when that show was number two? I mean that was a huge show 59:22 She was on every magazine. You saw her everywhere 59:24 Yeah, like that kind of pressure and that kind of for a person who's already like struggling to keep it together that can be 59:31 Devastating. Yeah, I often threatened to write a screenplay 59:35 The perfect murder the perfect murder of an actress who is malicious and 59:42 Destructive is to make her famous 59:45 It'll ruin her 59:48 No, I've yet to write that story yet, but you want to do something harmful to somebody 59:55 who's, you know, damaged in that way. 59:58 Make them famous. 59:59 It'll absolutely destroy them. 60:01 Isn't that nuts? 60:02 Yeah. 60:03 It's nuts. 60:04 Did she afterwards, I think she really fell apart after that show was over. 60:08 I'd heard at one point in time she was homeless. 60:10 I don't think she is anymore. 60:11 I've heard those stories as well. 60:12 I don't know. 60:13 I don't know. 60:14 It's such a sad turn of events, you know, because people wanted to love her, especially 60:20 when she was on that show. 60:22 You were rooting for her. 60:23 Yeah. 60:23 Yeah, she was the spokesman for, the spokeswoman for, you know, millions of women, and men 60:31 loved her too, because she had balls, you know? 60:34 She suffered no fools, and she worked in an oil refinery on the show. 60:42 it just sucks that so many talented people have that whatever the fuck it is 60:47 that self-sabotage gene you know that makes them not be able to ever change 60:53 course and enjoy this fortune that they've been get given making an audience 60:59 left temporarily fills the hole temporarily yeah and you go home and 61:05 and you're still that guy. 61:07 Yeah, yeah, that's the problem. 61:10 Yeah, yeah. 61:12 Okay, what are we gonna do about this? 61:13 Right, I don't think there's anything you can do about it. 61:16 I mean, it's just a tale as old as time, 61:19 and you talk about it in your book 61:20 about if happiness and success cured you 61:24 of all your problems, you would see 61:26 so many dead rock stars, and I think you're dead on. 61:30 I mean, they were all drugged out of their fucking mind 61:33 and they're all, like we were talking earlier, 61:35 Had you had seen at one point in time you saw Morrison you saw the doors play for like 20 minutes for you try to pull 61:41 Stick out 61:42 It was the shortest concert I've ever been to 61:45 It was an outdoor it was a singer bowl. It was an outdoor 61:49 kind of arena 61:51 Cops came in on horses hitting people over the head with sticks 61:55 Right because he pulled the stick out and they just stopped the show 61:58 He already I think it was after he did it in Miami, and he got arrested in Miami 62:03 I was a move. It's like birthright. You're taking a shirt. I was 16 years old or something like that 62:08 And I'm standing there with my friends 62:11 Smoking a joint going this is terrific 62:14 This is fantastic. We were watching these horses go by 62:19 We were 62:21 Yeah, okay, it would have been nice to maybe hear a second song. They opened with light my fire never finished it 62:27 Really? End of show. Oh my god. Yeah, that's crazy. This is cool, man 62:33 This is a great show. Let's get out of here before we get hit. Who did you say he was performing with again? 62:40 Uh, the warm-up act was the who? Wow. You know before Tommy 62:43 They were a warm-up act there. Wow. Great. So like my generation. Yeah, I can see from Miles had great stuff 62:50 Yeah before Tommy once Tommy hit they were they never wore a warm-up act again 62:55 but this was just prior to Tommy. 62:58 Wow. 62:59 Dude, that's it. 63:01 But again, I mean, how many of them died at 27? 63:04 Morrison, Hendricks, Joplin, 63:07 although the Hendricks ones, very weird. 63:09 There's a lot of very interesting conspiracy theories 63:11 about the Hendricks murder, 63:12 or the Hendricks death rather 63:13 that it was perhaps a murder. 63:15 He was leaving his manager, 63:17 his manager was a shady mob character. 63:20 His girlfriend after the murder, 63:22 or after his death rather, 63:23 other. She gets thrown off of a roof. They said it was a suicide. It seems a little sketchy. 63:30 But his former bodyguard wrote a book about it. And apparently, if Hendricks left, his 63:37 manager would lose out on all that money. But if Hendricks was dead, then he would get 63:43 royalties from all those songs forever. 63:47 He probably contractually would have had them anyway. I mean, most managers back in 63:52 those days, it was all corrupt. 63:53 Oh, they had very predatory. 63:54 It was really predatory and corrupt. 63:56 He would have had a piece of his publishing no matter what, live or dead, you know. 64:02 Listen. 64:02 But he wouldn't have anything to do with the future. 64:03 The idea of his fixating on his own vomit is heartbreaking into, you know, a generational 64:11 superstar. 64:12 I mean, he had a big impact on me. 64:15 Oh my God. 64:16 He was unlike anyone before him. 64:18 His sound was so completely unique that I mean Eric Clapton famously said like he felt 64:25 You wanted a quick playing guitar when he saw him just like an Eric Clapton was 64:29 Insanely good. Yes for a guy like Eric Clapton, you know, let's say go listen to the Derek and the Domino's Layla Layla 64:36 Jesus, you ain't right. Dwayne Almond. Oh my god passing 64:40 How oh my god that back and forth with him and Dwayne. Yeah, or have you ever loved a woman? 64:47 and listen to Eric Clapton in cocaine, just that. 64:51 Oh my God. 64:53 That, yeah, but that story is just, 64:56 the story of his death is like, oh, it's really, 64:58 it's a weird one. 64:59 Whereas some of them do seem like normal drug overdoses, 65:02 but the Hendricks one, 65:03 there's a lot of weird stuff to that one 65:05 where it does seem like it's possible 65:07 that he was murdered, unfortunately. 65:09 But oh, there's just a huge number 65:11 of those guys died so young. 65:13 And it's because of what you're talking about 65:15 That whatever fucked-up thing that makes them so brilliant at performing and it's like almost an attempt to the more brilliant you get 65:23 It's the more you can fill that whole temporarily the more love you get in these big bursts 65:28 And then the crowd goes away and then you're by yourself 65:31 And it's just back to the darkness and then the drugs and then the alcohol and then the chaos and then fall 65:37 Ripping your life apart and then there's another show and there's another burst. Are you feeling good when you're on stage? 65:42 Get off stage. It's the same fucking thing and it never heals 65:46 It never heals from the outside the outside stuff as glorious as it is and fame and adulation and fancy cars 65:55 Yeah, it's great. It's wonderful 65:58 There's no reason to denigrate it. It's just 66:02 It's not the real solution the real solution 66:06 You know, I'm gonna say it and then regret it 66:09 but the real solution is a spiritual solution. 66:11 You have to find something beyond this world. 66:14 Why would you regret that? 66:15 Because you live in LA? 66:17 Because you're in your bubble? 66:18 Because it's part of my life. 66:22 Right, but why would you regret saying that? 66:23 Because it might seem like flaky and hairy fairy 66:27 and woo woo, new age bullshit. 66:31 But I don't know any other way. 66:32 Right. 66:33 I do know that in my own life, seeking a spiritual illusion, not finding it, but the act of seeking 66:44 it is there's some salvation in that. 66:49 No. 66:49 I think there is as well. 66:50 I don't think there's anything silly about it. 66:52 I think the problem is the term has been co-opted. 66:57 The term spirituality has been co-opted by people that you do consider to be flaky. 67:01 that's the problem. It's like, is it possible that you could preach the word of Jesus in 67:08 front of a sold-out stadium and really be sincere? Yeah, sure, it's possible. But how 67:14 many people who are preaching in front of sold-out stadiums and giant arenas, how many of those 67:20 are actually sincere? Well, it's a small percentage. It's not the same thing. It doesn't mean 67:25 it's not possible. 67:26 No. 67:27 It just has a bad name. 67:28 It has a bad name. 67:29 And spirituality has a bad name because it's attached to a lot of people that, you know, 67:35 through no fault of their own, they're trying to find their own way and they're using that 67:39 kind of lingo and maybe some of them are just still really fucked up and that word 67:45 now gets attached to people that are claiming to be on a path to try to fix themselves. 67:51 But you're just associated with people who are unsuccessful in the act and they're 67:56 It's like performative, they're like performatively being spiritual, whereas I know some people 68:02 that are like legitimately spiritual. 68:04 Some of the nicest people that I know, they're like, I know this guy is a Christian and all 68:10 he does is build houses like small homes for homeless people and help them and get them 68:14 jobs and teach them skills and help them get clean. 68:18 I know people like that too. 68:20 They're real. 68:20 Yeah, they're real and they're all models. 68:23 Yes. 68:23 Yes. 68:23 I want to be like that guy. 68:25 Yeah. 68:25 Yeah. 68:25 They exist. 68:26 Yeah. 68:27 I've been fortunate enough to know a few in my life and they've had a deep impact giving 68:34 rather than taking. 68:35 Yes. 68:36 And yeah. 68:39 Yeah. 68:39 No question about it. 68:40 That was not my nature. 68:43 I didn't go out to Los Angeles a giver. 68:47 No. 68:48 I want it. 68:49 Give me. 68:49 Well, it was also the culture back then, right? 68:51 It was all I knew. 68:55 The first page of the book was, if I could have been better, if I could have done better, 69:01 I would have. 69:02 That was the best I could do. 69:04 Which is real. 69:05 Yeah, the selfish, self-centered dick, that was the best I had early on. 69:13 It took a while. 69:16 It's a work in progress, basically. 69:18 We all are. 69:19 That's part of being a human being. 69:20 You're a work in progress if everybody's held to the the thing that they said when they were young and stupid 69:25 Oh my god, if that's who you are forever some shit. You said when you were 20 years old like good Lord 69:32 That's insane. It's insane. It's insane. It denies the fact that we change of course. We do change. Yeah, you know 69:38 I you know one of the coolest things about this book was me going oh 69:44 What an idiot? Who is that guy? 69:46 guy. Who is that guy? What a horrible human being. What a selfish self-centered Jesus Christ. 69:54 You just left her. You didn't say thank you. What is wrong with that man and that man was 70:00 me. 70:02 It's wild. 70:04 Yeah, there's a therapeutic kind of cathartic quality to doing something like this to try 70:10 write about your life. I'm an absolute laugh whore so I wanted to make it as 70:17 funny as I could because otherwise it's just boring. Who gives a shit about your 70:21 life, Chuck? But if I can make you laugh then maybe it's worth reading. But 70:32 beginning with my childhood, you know, when I was a kid working for my dad, you 70:37 know, those things, that's me, but if I were to be held to what I said in 70:45 In 1969, it wouldn't go well for me. 70:49 For anybody. 70:50 Yeah. 70:50 Yeah. 70:51 It's great that you're reading the audiobook too. 70:54 Was there ... I jokingly said in the book that I'd asked Idris Elba or Brian Cox to 71:01 read it and they passed. 71:02 Brian Cox would be great. 71:03 It could be great to have some sonorous, kind of really baritone, beautiful ... That 71:09 didn't happen. 71:09 I made that up. 71:10 But I didn't really see how someone else could read my memoir, it didn't make sense to me. 71:17 How does that make sense? 71:18 No, it makes no sense. 71:20 One of the things that you talked about that I think is very interesting is the Scientology 71:24 angle. 71:26 And the reason it's interesting is because when I first came to Hollywood in 94, Scientology 71:32 was everywhere. 71:33 There were so many successful Scientologists that a lot of people were thinking about 71:37 Joining Scientology as a strategy to further their career. Absolutely. Yeah, like people need to understand that like it's hard for people of 71:45 2026 to wrap their head around the environment of California Los Angeles 71:49 1994 and the impact that Scientology had because you had Tom Cruise 71:54 Yeah, Jenna Elfman with us was that around that time Darman Greg? Yeah, you had I mean there was a ton of people 72:01 Kirstie Ali a ton of people all haggis 72:04 super successful Scientologists who always seemed to have their shit together and they 72:10 were like really focused and they were career oriented and there were so many of us in the 72:14 outside like wow maybe I should be a fucking Scientologist seems like that would help. 72:19 That was listen they built that thing called the Celebrity Center on Franklin yeah for the 72:25 very purpose of Hubbard even wrote about it people admire celebrities they'll want 72:32 to do what celebrities do, let's make an environment that attracts celebrities. 72:37 It was a PR gesture. 72:39 He understood positioning, which is, I think, a marketing term, where that's why famous 72:45 people do TV commercials. 72:49 Peyton Manning says, by Geico, Peyton must know, he's a quarterback, he doesn't know 72:56 anything about it, but you're paying attention because he's famous and he's really good 73:01 at what he does and now he's telling me how I should insure my car. Makes perfect sense, 73:06 right? And Hubbard understood that early on that celebrities position Scientology in a 73:14 way that will draw people in. And he was right. I thought it would give me an edge. 73:19 I thought that if I went down this road, it would give me an edge into the career 73:27 that I wanted. 73:28 What was it about it that you felt was going to give you an edge? 73:31 Was it the philosophy behind it, like the way they structured their lives? 73:35 Because I bought Dianetics on a late night television commercial. 73:40 I didn't even know what it was. 73:42 I didn't understand that that was Scientology. 73:44 Kind of a psychotherapy. 73:45 Yeah. 73:46 I thought it was just a self-help book. 73:47 Yeah. 73:47 Digging up past trauma and releasing the trauma, freeing up, you know, your life 73:54 forced because you're releasing the trauma of past experiences, it wasn't that far off 73:59 the charts. 74:00 Well, that was what L. Ron Hubbard did for the most part. 74:03 He borrowed from a lot. 74:04 But he was a science fiction writer. 74:06 He was a science fiction writer. 74:07 Not only that, he wrote more fiction than any human being that's ever lived, ever. 74:10 Absolutely. 74:10 Right up there. 74:11 He did. 74:12 He wrote the most. 74:13 He wrote more than anybody. 74:14 Anybody, because he never wrote a second draft. 74:16 Everything was like a first draft. 74:17 It was all horrible. 74:18 It was pretty shitty. 74:19 It was the worst. 74:19 Yeah. 74:19 But funny in that regard, like that Battlefield Earth movie is fucking fantastic, just because 74:25 it's so goofy. 74:26 Have you seen it? 74:26 I have. 74:27 It's terrible. 74:27 It's amazingly bad. 74:30 But it's good bad. 74:31 It's bad to the point where it's like, what the fuck am I watching? 74:35 Like, oh my God. 74:36 When you're 21, 22-year-old me, and you're scared to death, the world is big, the world 74:42 is threatening, I don't know what's going on. 74:45 I want to be in music. 74:47 I want to have a career in music. 74:48 It's a songwriter. 74:51 These people promised me they knew a way for me to do that, and I was so vulnerable to 74:56 that promise. 74:57 How did you get introduced to it? 74:59 This episode is brought to you by Traeger. 75:02 Food cooked over real wood is just on another level, and that's why Traeger is such a game 75:08 changer. 75:08 Their grills run on real hardwood pellets, so everything gets that legit wood-fired 75:14 flavor, whether you're grilling steaks, smoking ribs, cooking chicken, or even baking a pizza. 75:20 You just set your temperature, put your food in, and let Traeger handle the rest. 75:25 It's simple. 75:26 If you like food that tastes like it came off a real fire, without all the work, check 75:30 out Traeger Grills. 75:32 This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. 75:35 If you've thought about trying therapy with our long-term partner BetterHelp, insurance 75:39 options may now be available nationwide with an average copay for eligible 75:44 members of just $23 per session. 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If you've been waiting to start therapy, 76:07 BetterHelp works with more than 125 health plan networks and eligible members have an 76:13 average copay of just $23 per session with insurance. 76:17 Don't have insurance or live outside of the United States. 76:20 You can still get 10% off your first month. 76:23 Visit betterhelp.com to explore your payment options. 76:28 That's better, H-E-L-P.com. 76:30 I was playing in a band, I was traveling around the country, cover band, and playing bars, 76:37 nightclubs around the country. 76:39 And the sax player was a Scientologist, and we were in Columbus, Ohio, and we had a day 76:48 off from the gig. 76:50 And he said, I'm going to the Scientology Center in Columbus, Ohio, you want to come 76:56 with me? 76:57 I didn't know what Scientology was. 77:00 I had just towed my car in Iowa, so I had nowhere to go. 77:05 I was going to be sitting in my room. 77:07 So I said, yeah, fuck it, sure, I'll go. 77:10 And wouldn't you know there were pretty girls there. 77:14 So I'm in. 77:15 There's pretty girls here. 77:17 Oh, they're very smart. 77:17 Very smart about that. 77:19 And I bought a thing called the communications course, 77:23 which promised to improve my ability to communicate. 77:27 What could go wrong with that? 77:29 What could go wrong with that? 77:31 Obviously, I'm a musician and I'm trying to become a songwriter. 77:37 That's a communication issue. 77:41 Anything in the arts is communicating. 77:43 I could get better at that. 77:45 Perfect. 77:45 Why wouldn't I do that? 77:49 What he was doing, he had these drills called training routines. 77:54 and the first one, TR0, was you would sit like we're sitting right now in front of each other 78:02 and just be in front of each other. 78:05 No twitching, no laughing, no giggling, no getting creepy, no getting lost in thought. 78:11 Just sit there. 78:13 What I didn't know, I got really good at it too, 78:17 what I didn't know was it's just meditation. 78:20 It was just meditation, it was just learning to be still, which is meditation, just learning 78:26 to be still and not being tossed around by every fucking thought that comes screaming 78:30 through your head like, you know, a tree full of rabid monkeys. 78:33 And that first time I did it, opposite a pretty girl, there was a woman who was running 78:45 the classroom, the communications course. 78:49 I said, I have this feeling like I'm up in the corner of the ceiling looking down at me. 78:56 And she yelled out, Chuck has gone exterior. 79:02 I didn't know what that meant, but it was an extraordinary experience. 79:07 I have a very vivid memory of being up near the ceiling looking down on me sitting in 79:13 front of this woman doing training routine zero. 79:17 So it worked. 79:18 It worked. 79:19 I had I popped out of my head and I had an out-of-body experience. I didn't know what was happening 79:25 I didn't understand what exterior I know what the word meant, but I didn't know understand this is as 79:30 But it felt good 79:32 The only other time that happened to me having that experience was when I flipped my car over at 70 miles an hour 79:40 in 79:40 Iowa and 79:42 I remember seeing the accident from up in the sky looking down at it 79:46 That was more like a near-death experience. 79:48 That was a near-death experience. 79:49 But it was also a very calm, huh, as the car is flipping over down in its embankment. 79:58 And so the experience, that's a powerful experience. 80:04 And I wanted to pursue it. 80:05 I wanted more of that. 80:07 Well, that makes sense. 80:08 I mean, what's interesting is if you get a kid, a young guy, or a young woman in 80:14 And a very suggestible state and this heightened moment where they really believe there's some 80:22 real significance to them sitting there and doing this exercise and that something big 80:25 is going to happen. 80:26 Your brain can trigger endogenous states that actually are real. 80:33 So it's like what they're saying is kind of true even though it's kooky, like a lot 80:37 of it is very kooky. 80:38 Like, some of these methods of just doing that kind of stuff, it can have powerful, transcendent 80:45 results. 80:46 Nobody told me this was going to happen. 80:47 It just happened. 80:48 Yeah. 80:49 You know, I was just told to sit there and just be relaxed and just be there in front 80:54 of another human being without, you know, getting uncomfortable or if you get uncomfortable, 80:59 just deal with it. 81:00 Just sit there. 81:01 That's all I was told. 81:02 That was the entire instruction. 81:03 Nobody said you're going to be up near the ceiling watching. 81:06 Did you try to recreate that experience, and it never happened again? 81:11 On occasion. 81:12 Did you ever try to recreate it with the same woman? 81:16 No. 81:16 Maybe it's her. 81:18 Maybe that's it. 81:19 Maybe it's like being there with a beautiful girl. 81:22 And her looking in your eyes, you're looking at hers. 81:24 Maybe that triggers the thing. 81:27 I don't think it had anything to do with her. 81:29 No? 81:29 No. 81:30 It was just, you were in that suggestible moment. 81:32 I just... 81:33 But who was suggesting what? 81:35 no one suggested anything. It remains a mystery and I'm okay with it being a 81:39 mystery. But it's certainly, it's certainly, it's not one that I've forgotten. 81:45 There's a documentary called Holy Hell and it's about this cult leader that 81:50 used to live in Austin for a while. And one of the weird things this guy did, 81:55 he was a yoga teacher and also he was a hypnotist and a gay porn star. So the 82:01 The documentary is crazy, but in one of the things that he would do with this cult is he 82:06 would do a thing called the knowing, and they had to be ready for it. 82:10 He had to decide they were ready for it, and they'd have the ceremony, and when they had 82:12 the ceremony, he would touch their head, he would put his hands on their head, and they 82:17 would experience this unbelievable, like psychedelic moment where they contacted God, and they 82:23 all talked about it, like, because the anticipation of this moment was so heightened, 82:27 and they were so suggestible and he was you know an actual professional hypnotist 82:33 and when he would put his hands on them whatever it was inside their brain that 82:38 would just release and even after they talked about him being a fraud if they 82:42 all left the the cult and they said all these terrible things that he did they 82:45 still said that moment was the most powerful moment of their life hypnotism 82:50 is a powerful mechanism yeah it really is yeah I think that that's I don't 82:55 I've not heard of this, but that's that's a story of a hypnotist. Yes. Yes. Yes, a hypnotist that really 83:01 can give you the greatest moment of your life even though everything else he's done is terrible. 83:06 Yeah. Like even though he's taken everybody's money and fucking everybody and it's always the 83:10 same story, he did make them see God. That's what's weird about it. And so many people are 83:17 looking for something to take them out of their state, the state they're in now. And if it's 83:23 Scientology if it's being a Mormon if it's Catholicism, whatever it is like people are trying to find something 83:29 That's them Jack Daniels cocaine 83:32 Ecstasy yeah, but for you 83:34 So I I never actually went to a Scientology meeting or anything like that 83:39 I just got the book, but they never stopped emailing me or mailing me rather every day 83:44 I had one of those UPS boxes and every day it would be some new 83:49 Invitation to some Scientology event you got on the mailing list 83:52 I didn't realize that was even Scientology when I bought the book. Sure. I thought it was just L Ron Hubbard's gonna teach me how to kick ass 83:58 Yes, absolutely. I always call it, you know, this is gonna give me an edgy on the universe 84:03 So when you first started doing it, when did you start thinking maybe this is a little wacky? 84:11 My entire community of friends 84:14 everybody was in it was in wow everybody and 84:19 I couldn't help notice 84:21 My life was shit, and these other people who I admired and I looked up to, they were getting 84:30 in car accidents, getting divorced, catching colds, basically being just human beings, dealing 84:38 with whatever shit was coming down the road, not the evolved spiritual titans that were 84:45 or that they were at Scientology was promising, you know, the exalted, you know, spiritual 84:51 enlightened beings, people, you know, you know, you weren't supposed to get a cold, you were 85:01 supposed to be, you know, the promise was you were going to rise up above all these 85:06 human minutia, you know, dilemmas and problems and whatnot, and you were going to have 85:13 this remarkable insight into the world and you have power, power, being a very powerful, 85:20 power being powerful, being a real hook because if you're a young scared guy like I was, power 85:30 was missing. 85:31 Right. 85:31 There was no power. 85:32 I was just scrambling to try and get my foot in any door that would open. 85:37 And so here these people come in, promise you the one thing you don't have as a 85:42 young stupid man is power and it was an easy sell and I you know and I it took it 85:50 took me ten years to realize wait this isn't working took ten years yeah this 85:55 isn't working and my wife at the time she was in the pro in Scientology as 86:00 well we both kind of went had a moment alone one night going bullshit you know 86:10 Ten years, ten years it took to wake the fuck up and we bailed out and we lost all our friends. 86:18 We were excommunicated. 86:20 Did they fuck with you at all? 86:22 No, because I had no money. 86:24 Nobody chases you if you have money. 86:26 Right. 86:26 You weren't successful enough for them to miss you when you left. 86:29 No, no. 86:30 See ya. 86:32 And it really began the turn into my life that we're talking about here, which was 86:38 I decided that I'm not going to look for some outside element to help me go where I want 86:47 to go. 86:48 I'm just going to work my ass off. 86:49 And for the next 10 years, I worked like a dog until I scrambled in and eventually, 86:56 you know, got on a show where I'm, you know, getting yelled at by Roseanne Barr. 87:01 But I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. 87:05 So it didn't hurt you to leave. 87:08 It hurt you in terms of... 87:10 It was imperative for me to leave because I finally took responsibility for my life. 87:14 It's on me. 87:15 It's not on what this guy says, it's on me. 87:18 It's what I believe, what I perceive and a lot of that perception and belief was bullshit. 87:23 I was still a frightened young guy trying to find his way in the world, but it was 87:28 on me. 87:29 I wasn't going to... 87:30 I wasn't looking for some outside wisdom to give me leverage. 87:34 I was just gonna I was gonna work until I dropped to get where I needed to go and 87:41 you know 87:42 The hot the funny 87:44 Ending of that story was I succeeded I 87:47 Succeeded I had the career I couldn't have dreamed of 87:50 And I still couldn't hot and still didn't solve the hole mm-hmm the dark hole in the soul 87:57 We were talking about right, you know, which which you know led to the other change in my life 88:03 which is, was it 27 and a half years ago, I stopped drinking, so, and that's been a 88:12 massive change, you know? Because again, you know, what I keep saying over and 88:18 again, I'm not sure I'm saying it clearly. The one thing that is clear is 88:23 the outside, the outside stuff, whether they be experiences or stuff or 88:31 relationships or in my case marriages, it doesn't, it's a band-aid. It doesn't heal 88:39 the wound. The wound has to be dealt with in some other way that's personal. The 88:47 spiritual path of your own, you know, your choice. You call it. It doesn't matter. If 88:52 it's Christ, if it's Yahweh, if it's the Koran, if it's Latter-day Saints, 89:00 or if it's Eckhart Tolle, it doesn't matter. 89:03 Pick one, pick one. 89:05 That's your best shot out of that darkness 89:09 as far as I can tell. 89:10 I think you're probably very accurate. 89:13 I think you could probably do it on your own, 89:16 but I don't know very many people who have. 89:18 It's really hard. 89:19 We're community animals. 89:21 I think we thrive in groups. 89:25 I think that's how we're wired. 89:26 I think the worst thing that could have happened 89:29 A million years ago and a tribe was to be thrown out of the tribe. You're gonna die right you get kicked out of the tribe 89:35 because of misbehavior. I don't know what misbehavior is and 89:39 the play place the scene error 89:42 The ender souls, but if you got kicked out you're dead Whitney Cummings. That's why people have stage fright 89:47 That's why they have a fear of public speaking 89:49 She see she said because when we were in tribes if you had to speak in front of the public you were defending yourself 89:55 That's probably very true, and you probably were gonna get kicked out of the tribe kicking out was a sentence of death 90:00 Yeah, and so we're desperately in need of one another and that's not good better and different 90:06 It's just the way we are right right which is that's what makes people so prone to 90:10 Ideologies to religious cults to all sorts of different we want to be part of a group want to be part of a group 90:15 Yeah, even if the group is wrong. It's a group right it doesn't matter right or wrong relevant 90:20 I'm in this group. Yeah, look it. I got friends and people will do wrong things to defend the group 90:25 They just yeah fight to the death. Yes, we go to war over over these groups. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's a weird thing 90:32 It's just for a lot of people. It's finding a good one. It's just fine find one that works find some sort of a 90:41 Some sort of a spiritual path that gives you 90:44 Some sort of peace of mind and it doesn't hurt others and doesn't hurt others 90:48 Yeah, that's it. It's not really complicated, but we don't live in a culture that pursues 90:55 that. We live in a culture of consumption. 90:59 Yeah, I think there's more people aware of that now today, but there's no guidebook. 91:07 There's no operator manual on how to be a person. That's very effective. In even religions, 91:13 you're kind of figuring it out on your own. It's not as laid out as I'd like it to 91:17 be, you know, like very clearly from the beginning to the end, this is how you're supposed to 91:21 behave, this is what's wrong, this is what the, like, this is what the greater spiritual 91:26 path, this is why it exists. 91:29 I was raised in a Jewish household. 91:33 No one ever talked, ever, no rabbis, my parents, ever discussed having a connection 91:40 with God, pursuing God, seeking God. 91:47 What's my reason for being here? 91:49 Why am I alive? 91:51 How did this happen? 91:52 It was never discussed. 91:53 It was just do this and shut up, right? 91:56 Hear the rules, do the rules, and move a lot, right? 92:00 And that was how they were raised, too. 92:02 So, you know, it's not like, there was no malice. 92:05 It was just hear the rules of our tribe. 92:09 Do the rules. 92:13 And at no point was there a connection made 92:16 with, this could be the most important thing in your life. This could actually solve the 92:24 whole dilemma of being a human being. It had nothing to do with that. It was a rules-based 92:29 religion. It honored some wonderful things like education, and there was a great deal 92:37 of goodness to it, societal goodness. 92:41 this. I think I mentioned in my book that my father was one of 11 Republicans in the 92:50 country. 92:52 11 Jewish Republicans. 92:53 11 Jewish Republicans in the country. I left out the key word because he believed in his 93:00 heart each man for himself. Pull yourself up by the bootstraps and stuff and he believed 93:06 He's that dearly, but I lost my train of thought. 93:14 Well, we were just talking about having some sort of a connection with God and a spiritual 93:20 connection and that this is what helped you become sober and get out of the darkness. 93:25 This is the roundabout way of it. 93:29 So did you do alcoholics anonymous? 93:31 Is that what... 93:32 Let's not talk about that. 93:33 Okay. 93:34 Yeah. 93:34 But I just wanted to know what... 93:36 Let's focus on the word anonymous. 93:38 Okay. 93:38 Okay, just I got sober you got sober. Yeah, but through that you started exploring spirituality 93:48 It was inevitable. It was a part of it. It's inevitable 93:51 You know anything, you know the most extraordinary thing 93:57 It's hard to do this and retain anything like anonymity, but there is the encouragement to pursue a God of your understanding 94:10 Not someone else's 94:14 yours. That was remarkable. That's a remarkable insight for me. Really, I get to choose. Huh. 94:26 Wow. Wow. This is not a ritualistic here, do this, do that, you know. It's not about 94:36 don't eat fish on Friday or pork ever. It's about finding something greater than yourself. 94:44 It's not that hard to do given of your understanding that could be the ocean. 94:55 It could be whatever you choose it to be, it could be a fucking doorknob, but it's critical. 95:05 It's critical. 95:08 Trevor Burrus What was the path? 95:10 So you go from becoming sober and this idea of worshiping something or looking at 95:17 something. 95:17 Okay, what's the word? 95:20 Respecting something is a higher power word worship is I don't understand that word 95:26 Now it's just recognizing. It's just recognizing. Okay. There's something else going on here, and it ain't me 95:32 That's it. There's no worship involved. There's no 95:37 Genuflecting or you know 95:42 There's service. How can I be better in this world? 95:47 There is there is that 95:49 there is that you know and for somebody like me who was gimme all the time was 95:56 always gimme gimme I need I need more more is not enough yeah right I need more 96:03 and when that ceases to work when you finally wake up and going there is no 96:07 more more is never enough when you when you finally give in to the reality is 96:16 that that will never do the job. I will always be empty. If that's the way I'm trying to go 96:23 about it, then there's a possibility that's the bottom. And the bottom is where you decide 96:32 to stop digging. And the bottom is where you go, okay, let's try something else. 96:38 Do you have a negative connotation with the word worship? 96:42 this episode is brought to you by visible as fall hits we enter another 96:46 season of change time to shift gears drop the dead weight and upgrade the 96:51 wardrobe for the drop in temperature but one thing that doesn't need to change 96:55 your phone the smartest upgrade this season isn't a new phone it's a better 97:00 wireless plan switch to visible the ultimate wireless hack you get 97:05 unlimited 5g data and unlimited hotspot powered by Verizon for just $25 a 97:11 month. That means keeping the phone you already have, ditching your overpriced 97:16 phone bill and pocketing some savings for yourself. All the perks of big 97:21 wireless for half the cost. Switch today at Visible.com. The Visible plan starts 97:26 at just $25 a month or get the premium Visible Plus pro plan and save 97:32 $10 on your first month with promo code Rogan. 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That's promo code JRE or go to lifelock.com slash JRE for 30% off terms apply. 98:40 Not really. 98:41 It's not what I recognize. 98:43 What do you think worship is like in your mind? 98:46 Is that being subservient? 98:48 It's being subservient. 98:51 Punishing all powerful thing that's going to punish and whatever. 98:58 You know, the Old Testament stuff, okay, you know, I don't know if they have to be connected though 99:04 I don't think a worship in that way. I think I think a lot of people do though, and I especially when you get into the Old Testament stuff 99:12 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I just 99:15 For me 99:20 What I've been doing 99:22 for the last many years 99:25 It worked 99:27 What can I tell you right? I don't truly understand it. I really don't 99:32 it's so much of it is counter-intuitive, but it worked, you know. Now I'm by all means, 99:40 if you read the book, this is the guy who's got some serious issues. I haven't, you know, 99:45 I haven't cleared that hurdle by any means, but it's better. It's a better life than the one I had. 99:53 And was this an arc for you or was this a quick realization upon getting sober? 100:00 It was a slow process to get to where you are now and do you define it like what you're 100:08 serving or what you worship, not bad words sorry, what you appreciate about the higher 100:15 power or you don't have to define it. 100:18 I don't think language is really equipped for it. 100:21 Right. 100:21 I think language, the very act of putting a word on it limits it. 100:25 The very act of saying this is a thing a noun. I don't know if it's gonna sound 100:32 strange but I think it's a verb. I think it's an act it's a process it's 100:42 it's a 100:55 whatever greater power it is. 100:57 Whatever that is, it's not a static thing. 101:00 I think that's a better way to describe it. 101:02 Yeah, yeah. 101:03 And again, language wants to solidify it. 101:07 Language wants to name it. 101:09 This is this. 101:10 Right. 101:12 And language is a beautiful thing. 101:14 I love, language is one of my favorite things. 101:16 Words have been good to me. 101:18 Making up words and putting them together 101:20 in sentences has been terrific for me. 101:22 I'm really grateful for words and language, but there's a limitation to what words can show you 101:29 Yeah, about about what's going on. Yeah, most certainly and 101:35 That's a I think that's an important point like what you're saying is that it's it's moving and then it's alive 101:42 And this is not a you know 101:45 That's I think one of the problems that secular people have with the term God 101:48 They think of a guy in a robe that lives in the clouds and it's ridiculous instantaneously. We see a man in the fucking moon 101:53 Yeah, we anthropomorphic I anthropomorphic eyes everything we see our images everywhere 102:00 We look yeah, right and it's it's kind of a it's amusing when it's not doesn't cause war 102:08 right good point. It's also connected to a 102:12 Lot of the ancient depictions of it unfortunately you have to think about like ancient depictions of 102:18 God and Moses and all these biblical figures who were painted in the garb of the day in 102:24 which that painting was made. 102:26 Remember, these people were looking up at the night sky going, what the fuck? 102:30 Yeah, exactly. 102:30 What the fuck? 102:33 Who's making the lightning? 102:35 What's happening here? 102:36 The gods are fighting. 102:36 Yeah. 102:37 No, they hadn't come up with a story. 102:39 We are, you know, I mean, have you ever read any of the Jovel Harari books? 102:46 Yes. 102:46 He makes it really clear that's our superpower. 102:50 We tell ourselves stories and we believe them and we congregate around them and we're able 102:58 to mobilize millions and millions of people around the fiction. 103:02 It doesn't even have to be true. 103:04 We just need to believe it and we're all marching in the same direction. 103:09 Monkeys don't do that. 103:11 Monkeys don't have a monkey god. 103:13 They're just monkeys. 103:14 these, hey, pick these mites off of me. Thank you very much." But they don't organize around 103:22 what is essentially a belief. You want to call it true or not. It's an organizing element 103:29 that no other animal does. So we get to rule and or ruin the world. 103:40 And we want to define the structure of whatever that thing is that we want to we want to 103:46 Even if we're pretending we want to give order to it. Absolutely 103:51 This order is too scary too scary too scary too crazy fucking look at this 103:57 You know also you can't have people running around making up their own order 104:02 That'll fuck everything up. You can't have a bunch of people. Well. God's been talking to me. You know what he tells me 104:06 Pork is awesome 104:10 You can't have that guy. 104:11 Yeah. 104:11 And listen, you know, you can see where when civilizations or cultures that took God out 104:20 of the picture, they replaced it with the Communist Party, right? 104:25 With a fascist dictator, you know? 104:29 It's the same idea. 104:31 Organize around me. 104:33 Sure. 104:33 Right? 104:33 It doesn't matter if I'm right or not, organize around me and people will. 104:38 And if you take that away from them they get angry. Yeah, it freaks them out because 104:44 It's like a tent pole 104:46 The tent all moves the tent comes down and everything, you know 104:52 If you believe that this is the truth and someone says no, it's not it's bullshit 104:58 Everything else you believe is in is in fair play 105:02 everything, right? The tent collapses. So people will fight to the death to keep the tent pole up. 105:08 It doesn't matter if it's true or not, it's the tent pole. I have a friend of mine who grew up Mormon 105:13 and she left the Mormon church and when she left the Mormon church, she said, 105:16 I'm so susceptible to believing anything because I believed everything they told me for so long 105:23 that I didn't critically think about anything. So she's like any spiritual people, healers, 105:28 All that stuff she goes. I'm so susceptible. I believe everything. Yeah, I think I think 105:33 Growing up the way I grew up. I was a vacuum. I was wide open 105:38 You got you've got you know how to get out of this this madness that this world. It's so frightening right show me 105:44 Yeah, I got nothing. I got nothing. I'll go. You know, I was I was absolutely 105:52 fragile 105:54 Stupid fragile like most people. Yeah, and you know, that's 105:58 I got to write down. I got to write it down. Yeah. Well, that's the beauty of it that fragility and that emotion and all that chaos 106:05 It comes out in creativity and the the added benefit that Scientology has over everybody is that they've got all these successful 106:13 Celebrities that was the big one back in the day. Oh my god. That was the big one 106:18 I was like I felt like they knew something. I didn't know like whatever they're on and I didn't really know the whole story 106:26 I didn't really know the whole story until much much much later. I had heard 106:30 Versions of what they believe and it wasn't until going clear 106:36 Lawrence rights Burke book 106:37 Great book. I was like, holy shit. Yeah 106:42 Yeah, once wasn't until that until I really kind of got the grip of what it's all about and how 106:49 Big part of it was secrets. Yeah, you know institutionally held secrets 106:55 They glue you, oh, I want to know the secret. 106:58 If I stick around, I'll find out the secret. 107:01 We're all looking for a secret. 107:04 Like the knowing. 107:05 The knowing. 107:06 Yes. 107:07 And keeping that stuff secret, purposefully secret, and we were told that some of this 107:12 higher level stuff could conceivably kill you if you're not ready. 107:17 I'm not kidding. 107:18 I'm not kidding either. 107:19 It was that those words were used if you're not ready for these higher level 107:24 Spiritual things it will destroy you drive you mad when I bought my first house in 107:31 96 my next-door neighbor was a Scientologist and there was a piece of land 107:35 We were just talking in front of the house 107:37 And there was a piece of land next to his house that he was going to buy 107:41 But he had to put it off because his wife was going clear and I go what does that mean he goes? 107:47 well it's this ceremony that she undergoes and afterwards she will no longer be affected 107:54 by outside influences. I was like, whoa, how are they going to do that? And they explained 107:58 to me, I go, well, why do you have to put off the sale? It goes, because it costs $50,000. 108:02 They sent her to flag in Florida. 108:04 Is that what it is? 108:05 Yeah. Yeah. There's this own thing in, I guess, in Clearwater. It's incredibly expensive. 108:11 Go clear in Clearwater? 108:13 Incredibly expensive. 108:13 50 grand. This guy was a construction guy. He had a construction business. 108:18 He's probably a million dollars now. 108:20 Ooh. 108:21 Yes, 96. 108:22 I don't know. And there was a very purposeful thing. Putting a high price tag on it made 108:28 it important. 108:30 Oh. 108:31 It's smart. 108:31 Yeah. 108:32 It's smart. It's marketing 101. If you give it away, it doesn't have as much value 108:37 as if you say it's worth $50,000. 108:40 I think Paul Haggis was the one in the documentary who is discussing when he first got a hold of like one of the 108:46 Ancient stories that is like super secret and he read it. It was like what the fuck am I reading? 108:55 Because it was just kooky Elron Hubbard it was science fiction stuff. Oh 109:01 Yeah, but you know, I mean hey, whatever floats your boat 109:05 One of the gifts of writing a memoir was, I found my way to be able to forgive myself. 109:17 Rather than be embarrassed, I would never tell people that I spent 10 years in a cult. 109:24 It's humiliating, what a dope, right? 109:28 I was so frightened of being wrong. 109:31 right? And in writing this thing, I was wrong. It's okay. It's okay. I was wrong. I was young. 109:41 I was frightened. I made some bad choices. I got through it. I was blessed to have some angels 109:51 come along the way to help me through it, a lot of that stuff. But I got through it and I don't 109:57 to be humiliated by being a foolish young man anymore, you know. 110:02 Well, that's part of the maturity of age, you realize. 110:05 Being a foolish young man is almost inevitable. 110:08 There's no getting around it. 110:11 Agreed. 110:11 We're all foolish. 110:13 Agreed. 110:14 And that's, you know, I was watching an interview you did the other day because I wanted to 110:20 learn about what I was sitting down in with Tim Robbins. 110:25 And he said something that struck me as worth repeating, which is a remarkable insight, I 110:31 thought. 110:31 And it was a remarkable insight for me. 110:34 It came very late in life, but it was simply the power of saying, I don't know. 110:41 What a relief to not pretend I know. 110:45 Right? 110:46 What a relief to not act as if I have a handle on this. 110:52 Right. 110:52 I don't. 110:53 And what's great is when you're sitting in a room full of people making a TV comedy, 110:58 a sitcom, and they all look at you, you know, because the second act doesn't work, and everybody 111:05 looks at you, and it's a great feeling to go, I don't know, it stinks, anybody, anybody? 111:13 You know, I'm open to anybody having a solution to this shitty second act, but I actually 111:19 don't know. 111:20 And I'm okay with that. 111:21 In the past, I would have gone on some long diatribe trying to convince everybody I knew 111:27 what I was doing. 111:29 It's exhausting. 111:30 I don't. 111:32 I don't. 111:32 I'm doing the best I can, and when I don't know, it's freedom to say I don't know. 111:39 It's freedom. 111:40 Oh, shoulders go down, you exhale, and you seek to collaborate. 111:46 Right. 111:47 So many people need to learn that lesson, because it's a burden that you don't have 111:53 to carry. 111:54 You're carrying around an unnecessary burden that's propped up by your own ego, and it 111:59 fucks with your consciousness. 112:00 I think it's how we're raised, too. 112:03 You know, I don't think, you know, we're not taught as children to admit to ignorance. 112:10 Right. 112:11 You know? 112:13 It's just, it's not how we're raised. 112:14 It's not, it's, you know. 112:17 Man does the right thing. 112:19 He knows what to do. 112:20 He's the leader. 112:21 He's John Wayne in my generation. 112:24 You know, I was more Steve McQueen. 112:26 But, okay, little later. 112:27 Yeah. 112:29 But you're certainly not taught to say, 112:31 to have humility and say, I don't know. 112:34 And humility has a bad taint to it 112:36 because it smells of weakness, but it's not. 112:42 It's the opposite of weakness. 112:44 Oh my God, you know, to be able to say, I don't know, help me, is actually an incredible 112:53 strength. 112:54 And it's much more admirable. 112:56 It's for people on the outside watching, they recognize it as being true. 113:01 This is an authentic moment rather than someone bullshitting you, when you know they're 113:07 bullshitting you and they know that you know and everybody just goes through this stupid 113:11 fucking dance. 113:13 One of the questions I get asked all the time now that I'm in the twilight of my career is 113:18 what's the secret sauce, you know, what's, what's, you know, what, if anything carries 113:24 through all the different TV shows and whatnot, and where it comes to mind is collaboration. 113:30 I didn't do anything alone, you know, you know, you come out of the comedy world, 113:38 Well, you know that writing comedy with others is really a gas, and it's far more effective. 113:47 A hundred percent. 113:48 I learned so much by being in a room for 25 years with great writers, and one of the things 113:55 I talk about in the book, which is really meaningful to me, was when I got the chance 114:01 to do the Kaminsky Method with Michael Douglas, I decided I want to write it alone to see 114:07 if I still could write a loan, because I'd been in a room with people yelling at each 114:11 other for years. 114:13 No, this is funny, this is funny, do it this way, and it would get volatile. 114:17 Comedy writers. 114:18 You fucking nuts. 114:20 What are you? 114:20 Stupid. 114:21 It got mean, right? 114:23 But when I sat down and wrote those scripts by myself, I realized all those guys were 114:28 in the room with me. 114:30 They're in my head. 114:32 You know? 114:33 Really? 114:34 You think that's funny? 114:34 me. It's a fucking pun, you moron. That guy's in my head. He was part of me now. I was writing 114:46 alone, but I wasn't alone. All those guys, and when you watch a great stand-up, it gets 114:52 in your head. You don't copy that guy, but his insight can change the way you perceive 115:01 things. 115:02 100%. 115:03 Yeah. 115:05 This episode is brought to you by Chime, and I know people don't usually get excited 115:09 about banking, but Chime is doing something different, and it's worth paying attention 115:13 to. 115:14 In a recent survey, they ranked the number one choice for new checking accounts in America. 115:19 That means real people, millions of them are choosing this over traditional banks. 115:24 That's because banking at Chime is fee-free, no monthly fees, no overdraft fees, and 115:30 thousands of fee free ATMs. But here's the real kicker. If you get their chime card, it gives you 115:36 5% cash back on a category you actually pick yourself. Your savings rate, crazy high. It's 115:42 nine times the national average. They're calling it the most rewarding way to bank. Go to chime.com 115:48 slash rogan takes a few minutes to sign up. Chime is a fintech, not a bank banking services 116:05 This episode is brought to you by Ethos. 116:08 Life is unpredictable. 116:10 That's why you need life insurance. 116:12 It helps give your family financial stability if the worst happens, so they can continue 116:16 living the life you've built. 116:18 With Ethos, you can get covered in minutes, all online, no medical exam, just a few 116:22 health questions. 116:23 With policies as low as $30 a month, 116:26 get your free quote at ethos.com slash jre. 116:29 That's ethos.com slash jre. 116:32 Application times and rates may vary. 116:35 Stan Hope always says that he writes in, 116:38 he thinks about himself as a defense attorney 116:41 defending the bit as he's writing it. 116:43 Who is this? 116:44 Doug Stan Hope. 116:45 Hilarious, great stand up. 116:47 Hilarious guy. 116:49 But he looks at it like he's, 116:52 Like that bit is being tried. How does he defend this bit and he makes sure that he lays it out in that way? 116:59 That's great. Yeah, that's great. That's the same thing like having someone in your head 117:02 That's like a critic that's gonna look at it and go. Hey, what the fuck is this part, you know 117:06 And you're like, hey, mother fucking the scene is in the scene. All right. Let's fucking work together here 117:13 You know and and what a gift, you know and so 117:18 you know 117:19 So, again, going back to that word, humility is a strength. 117:29 I succeeded because I counted on other people. 117:32 100%. 117:33 There's no, if you've been on a set of a sitcom in particular, there's no way to do it on 117:37 your own. 117:37 It's like, you need to have a lot of brilliant people working together for it to work out 117:41 well. 117:42 Have you interviewed this guy, Taylor Sheridan? 117:45 Yeah, he's a good friend of mine. 117:46 Wow. 117:47 Yeah. 117:47 Okay, that's that might be the the anomaly because you know, I I love that stuff. I love all that stuff. I 117:56 Watch everything. You know, I'm just he's a freak. He just turns them out 118:05 Such a just just I'm just driftwood 118:09 He wrote it and directed it and then he had time to write that great feature and holy shit 118:14 Yeah, he turns them out. I just and it's good. Yeah, it's one thing to turn it out 118:19 And it's one thing to turn out quality you see in hell in high country. Yeah hell in high water, right? 118:25 Is that what it is? Yeah, that's a fucking great movie and I just 118:30 The Sicario stuff. Yes, and then 1883 in 1923 Helen Mirren and Harrison Ford 118:39 No, he's he creates banger after banger. I don't lioness. I haven't watched lioness, but everybody tells me that's incredible 118:46 It's fantastic. 118:47 Landman. 118:48 Landman's fantastic. 118:49 Billy Joe Thornton. 118:53 Billy Bob. 118:53 Billy Bob. 118:54 Yeah. 118:55 Unbelievable. 118:56 Great stuff. 118:56 Yeah. 118:57 Really great stuff. 118:57 It's like, it was funny, the pitch for that show was, he was going to do Bad Santa 119:01 but on an oil rig and he was like, fuck yeah, I'm in. 119:07 Bad Santa as an oil man. 119:09 I got to work with him once, Billy Bob. 119:13 His people, his representatives called me and said, Billy Bob wants to be on the 119:17 big bank theory. I'm sorry, what? Oscar-winning, you know, sling blade guy 119:25 who wants to be on the big bank theory. I said, I'm sorry, you're gonna have to 119:29 give me more. His mother loves the show and as a gift to his mother, he wants to 119:36 be on the show. Wow. And we did it. That's awesome. And we loved it. We had a 119:41 great time. That's so cool. He played a 50-year-old version of them who lived 119:46 than his mother's basement. 119:49 After all these years and all these shows, 119:53 what keeps you doing it now? 119:55 Like what do you enjoy about the process now? 119:58 Well, laugh whore. 120:00 Making people laugh is fun, you know? 120:02 And sitting in the writer's room is fun. 120:05 Sometimes you want to tear your hair out 120:07 because it's hard. 120:09 But every once in a while, you know, 120:11 you hit something and you go, oh, this is good. 120:14 This is really good. 120:15 And, uh, what the fuck else would I do? 120:22 Well, you can kind of do whatever you want. 120:24 That's what I'm asking you. 120:25 Okay, so I'm asking you. 120:27 I can do whatever I want. 120:28 What am I doing? 120:29 I can travel. 120:31 That's a couple of weeks. 120:32 Now what? 120:33 Right. 120:34 Okay. 120:36 Um, I'm gonna garden. 120:39 No, I don't see me in the tulips. 120:43 Keep going. 120:43 What am I doing? 120:44 and I get a chance to make people laugh, 120:51 that's not a bad way to spend the day, you know, so. 120:54 No, it's an awesome way to spend the day, 120:56 but some people, the stress of continuing to create 121:02 and continuing to produce things, 121:05 like it eventually gets to them 121:06 where they just like, I want off the ride. 121:08 What I've done, and you really hit on something there 121:12 is the stress of it at a certain point is intolerable. 121:16 It's just intolerable. 121:17 I just I find myself becoming the curse the short-tempered curmudgeon right the old guy who has no patience 121:25 I don't want to be that guy 121:27 So I'm I've been gradually 121:30 Pulling myself back into more of a consultant role 121:35 where I'm not if I'm on the stage at a rehearsal and the actors play out a scene and 121:46 The scene ends everybody looks and says 121:48 looks at me and goes is it okay? So my very presence suffocates the process. I am 122:02 the plastic bag from the dry cleaners, right? I kill small children. So I have 122:09 this extraordinary writing staff, wonderful cast and crew and sometimes my 122:15 presence can be, I don't want to say destructive, but it doesn't encourage people to step up 122:24 and go, what about? 122:26 How about if? 122:27 I think this joke doesn't work. 122:29 Can we beat it? 122:31 It doesn't invite collaboration. 122:36 The sad truth is, they think I know. 122:39 I don't know. 122:40 I'm guessing. 122:41 We're all, you know, in the comedy business, it's a game of guessing. 122:45 I think this is funny, I guess wrong, right? 122:49 When it dies, let's fix it, no harm, no foul. 122:53 I'm not a horrible person because it died, it just died. 122:57 They just feel less likely to take chances 122:58 when you're around. 122:59 I think I suck up a lot of oxygen 123:01 at this time of my career. 123:03 Makes sense. 123:04 I remember one time Norman Lear came to the set 123:09 because he was gonna go back and he made a version of 123:15 one day at a time and he was executive producing a remake of one of his shows 123:20 from the 70s and he asked can I come and watch you guys work to see how it's 123:26 being done now this is 35 40 years after he his day of course you know jeez 123:33 Norman Lear's gonna come watch this work which I was a nervous wreck after 123:37 every joke I'm looking is Norman laughing is Norman laughing but I asked 123:43 him. I remember this really vivid moment when I said, are you going to write the pilot 123:48 for this new sitcom you're going to make? And he went, are you crazy? If I write the 123:55 pilot, nobody's going to give me notes. Nobody's going to give me any constructive feedback. 124:00 I'm all by myself. I'm not going to write it. If it says written by Norman Lear, who's 124:05 going to do the punch-up? 124:06 Right. 124:07 Right. Now I'm not saying I'm Norman Lear. He reinvented television. I carried on. 124:11 You know I've been keeping it going, but he really changed the game so I don't want the same effect 124:17 It's the same effect at a certain point in my career 124:21 I've noticed I have a the word stultifying comes to mind 124:25 Effect on the process and the people I love working with 124:28 Could give a shit about my opinion and I love that because then there's back and forth then the then there's arguments 124:36 there's you know, there's a 124:39 There's collaboration 124:41 Yeah, and it has to happen that way to do it right. 124:44 That's fun, it's also great that you recognize 124:47 that your presence can make them nervous and fuck it up. 124:50 Yeah, and you wanna go, no, no, you don't understand. 124:53 I actually don't know what I'm doing. 124:56 I'm just guessing. 124:57 I'm guessing based on a lot of experience, 124:59 but I'm still guessing and... 125:03 That's just your reputation precedes you. 125:05 You've had too many hits, you know. 125:08 It's a beautiful problem. 125:10 It really is. 125:11 It's the best problem. 125:12 It's a glorious problem. 125:12 It's certainly better than the opposite problem. 125:14 When I started the Big Bang Theory, I could barely do one show, Two and a Half Men. 125:21 It was 60 hours a week, easy. 125:24 And when I started the Big Bang Theory, I called Norman's office, cold call, said, 125:31 I'm Joe Glory, I got a show on CBS, I'm about to have a second show. 125:36 At one point he had seven shows on television. 125:40 simultaneously simultaneously I said would he be available to talk to me 125:46 maybe give me some tips and he I'm very graciously invited me over to his office 125:53 and I sat down I said I'm about to start production on a second show I can 125:57 barely do the one and now I'm gonna do two what can you tell me and he said 126:04 He said, you're not going to like the answer. 126:10 And it boiled down to, he said, you go where the fire is burning the brightest and you try 126:17 and put it out. 126:20 That was his management technique. 126:24 That was it. 126:25 Oh. 126:25 The fire of chaos or the fire of creativity? 126:28 It's seven shows in production. 126:30 Either the script didn't work, they miscast a role. 126:32 The bad fire put out a fire. 126:34 The director wasn't working. 126:36 The second act didn't work. 126:37 work, some of them are small, some of them are huge problems, so-and-so is ill, should 126:47 we shut down? 126:49 Do we wait a week? 126:50 Do we push a week? 126:51 What if we miss an air date? 126:52 Oh my God, what if you miss an air date? 126:54 The problems could be big or small, but his solution was gauging his response basically, 127:03 nothing, nothing, nothing. 127:05 Oh, that's a crisis. 127:06 I'll go there. 127:07 How did that guy have time for anything in life? 127:11 I don't know. He was a good man, though. 127:12 He was a generous and good man. 127:16 It was a real privilege to spend a little bit of time. 127:19 That's amazing. 127:20 Was there ever any time, 127:21 ever any time when you were doing both shows simultaneously, 127:24 where you went, 127:25 I don't think I should have done this?
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