Nate Bargatze

"I don’t mind opinions and stuff. I get it. But I don’t try to drive anything home; I’m just trying to be funny. I’m not here to change anybody’s mind."

– Nate Bargatze

Guy MacPherson: Hello, Nate?
Nate Bargatze: Hey.

GM: Guy MacPherson in Vancouver.
NB: What’s up, man?

GM: How are you? I’m good.
NB: I’m good. I’m in West Palm Beach, Florida.

GM: Visiting or performing?
NB: Performing. We’re doing some shows for the troupes again. We went to Greenland, then El Salvador, Honduras. We have a day off here then we go tomorrow to the Bahamas and I fly home Saturday.

GM: What’s in Greenland?
NB: It’s pretty amazing. I thought nothing, so you’re thinking what’s the point of people being up there? But it’s a first response. If there’s ever an attack, like a nuclear attack or a bomb or something shot at America, they’re the first ones to know. Or for Canada, too. So if one comes over this way, they’re the first ones.

GM: Then we all escape to Greenland if we’re attacked because no one’s there.
NB: That’s the plan!

GM: How many of these type tours have you done?
NB: This is, I think, my seventh one now. They’re pretty awesome.

GM: So you’ve been all over the world.
NB: Basically. There, Bahrain, Djibouti, Africa, then Iraq and Kuwait. And Guam.

GM: You’re a family guy. You’ve got a wife and kid.
NB: We just had a kid, yup. She is four months old. July 8th.

GM: Now are you thinking twice about going on things, potentially putting your life at risk when you’ve got a kid at home? Or is it more like you want to make some money for your kid?
NB: You wanna go make some money. But I still want to go do this stuff because it’s important. But now when I go, I do miss being at home. This is like ten days and I don’t want to be gone ten days if I don’t have to. I don’t mind doing clubs and stuff on weekends. Like Vancouver’s like Thursday, come back Sunday. That’s fine.

GM: How long have you been married?
NB: Seven years.

GM: To a civilian.
NB: To a civilian. We’ve been together since I started comedy. I was 21 when we got together. I’m 33 now so almost 12 years.

GM: She’s from Chicago?
NB: No, she’s from Alabama.

GM: Oh, but she was in Chicago when you were there?
NB: No. We met in Nashville, then I moved to Chicago to start comedy and we just did long distance for about four years.

GM: Interesting. You were in a relationship then said, ‘Hey, I gotta go try this’ and she said, ‘All right.’
NB: Yup. Yup, she’s been very cool about the whole thing and luckily it kinda worked out where I got some stuff where it at least looked like I was doing what I should be doing.

GM: It’s nice that you can share your success with someone.
NB: It is. It’s great. And we both got to do it all from the beginning, the same thing. It’s not like I was a comic and met her at a club; it was all from the very beginning when I wasn’t funny.

GM: You were always funny, just not professionally. It’s a different thing being funny professionally, isn’t it?
NB: It’s very different. Sometimes you get people come up to you and talk to you. Most people are very polite but then occasionally you get people that’ll be drunk and they’re like, ‘I can do this. You’re not funnier than me.’ But there’s a complete difference. It’s easier to be funny with your friends because they know you. It’s tough when you have people that don’t know you because you’ve got to make them get you and laugh at you and have fun. So it’s a completely different thing, yeah.

GM: Is one more enjoyable than the other? Because there’s nothing better than sitting around and making your friends laugh, right?
NB: No, no, it’s the best. Especially hanging out with comics, it’s so fun. You just die laughing with each other. But there is something great about making strangers… Like, sometimes you do a show and you hear strangers really dying laughing and it makes you laugh. It’s almost like you can’t believe they’re laughing that much. That’s a pretty amazing thing. I’ll be doing a show and it’s going really good but I’ll hear like a few people laughing harder than the rest and those are the times you’re like, those people get me completely. There’s like a couple a show so I gotta go find them and get them all to meet up in one place and record something with those people. Just those, no one else.

GM: Does your wife have a good sense of humour?
NB: She does. She’s very funny. When we first met, she made me laugh. She does little stuff that’s very funny to me. And she’s funny on Facebook. All her friends talk about stuff that she says that’s really funny. But she’s scared to death to talk in front of people so hopefully she won’t take over my job.

GM: So she’s like one of the obnoxious people who say, ‘I’m funnier than you.’
NB: Yeah, yeah. That’s what she tells me every morning.

GM: It’s an interesting thing. You must know people, like your wife, who you think are really funny but they just don’t have the urge, or the balls, to go up on stage.
NB: Yeah, yeah. There’s plenty of people. That’s the weird thing: Everybody can be funny. Everybody’s been funny. I had a friend who was not funny but he would make me laugh at just how unfunny he was. So it is the one thing that everybody can do and everybody does do with each other. So it’s just a matter of doing it. I tell a lot of people the difference between me and most people is I did it. For whatever reason you do it or you don’t go do it.

GM: It’s like sports. I play basketball but I couldn’t turn pro.
NB: Yeah, but there isn’t that much of a leap. Like, when you see LeBron James, you’re like, ‘Well, I can’t do that because I’m not 6-9.’ It’s a freak of nature how big some of those guys are. We don’t have that.

GM: I was at your show last year at the Comedy MIX.
NB:  Yes, I remember meeting you.

GM: I’m trying to remember. During that show, was that when there was that screaming fit in the back with women fighting?
NB:  Yes. They lost it. And they went to the back area by the green room and they just kept yelling at each other. There was another fight, too, but it was after the show.

GM: Oh yeah? Is this a common occurrence at your shows?
NB: Not really. You know what’s funny, talking about heckling, I don’t think I really get heckled much . It doesn’t happen as much as people think, like the typical what you think heckling might be where someone yells, ‘You suck!’ That doesn’t always happen. What happens is just people are talking. They just don’t pay attention. They’re talking and they’re being loud and then it has to be addressed. That does happen quite a bit. Usually it’s going to be a Friday or Saturday show when people are drinking. Usually Friday late shows are the worst. Steve Martin said he quit comedy because of Friday late shows.

GM: I don’t know if that’s true because he was playing arenas by that point.
NB: Yeah, well that’s just like a quote. But on Fridays, people work so they’re tired, then they drink a lot and it doesn’t pan out. So people talk and they get drunk. It’s annoying. I try to not talk to them. I don’t try to draw any attention to them. As much as I can. I’d rather just move on. It’s hard sometimes because I can hear everybody on stage. Sometimes I can hear people that other people can’t hear. Sometimes it gets to a point where you have to address it because it messes up… I can’t even think. All you’re doing is hearing them just chatting away. And that’s usually when they sit up front. That’s the worst.

GM: When that happened, I was impressed with how in the moment you were. You weren’t in a hurry to get to your stuff, you just let it ride. Is being in the moment something you had to learn or has it come naturally to you?
NB: I’ll try to plow through if it’s little. I’ll try to talk louder and hopefully, if they’re good people, they’re realize they’re talking loud. That way you don’t have to disrupt the show and mess everything up. But in a situation like that one, there’s no way… That’s all anyone’s looking at. If you don’t draw attention to that, people are not going to pay attention. I don’t think I’m the best at crowd work. I just have to rely on instincts, so if it happens naturally, just go with it.

GM: Even if there’s no heckling or situation in the crowd, you’re in the moment in that you’re relaxed and if you hear or see something, you’ll let it soak in rather than going by rote. You have a nice, relaxed speaking pace. When you were starting out, were you more panicky? It takes a lot of confidence to have those pauses.
NB: Yeah, definitely I was. I’ve always talked slower than everybody. Growing up in the south, we have a slower pace. Some people speed up and have to slow down but I’ve never had that problem because I just naturally talk slower. Even when I think I’m talking fast, no one ever goes, ‘Man, you were flying.’ In my head, it’ll be faster than I normally talk but it’s still not as fast as I think it is. But the pausing, sometimes I’ll go on stage and I’ll start kinda weird and slow down at the very beginning because I’ll follow people that are very funny or very fast so I need to get everybody into my rhythm so it’s like, ‘Alright, we’re making a change.’ If I try to match whatever they do, I can’t do that. It won’t come off right. So you just do a nice pause. And I’ve been doing this almost ten years so I have jokes that I know are 99% going to work. And they’re quick jokes and they just kinda work with everybody. It’s not a long story or something. So I have confidence I’m not going to lose them. That’s when you can pause, like, ‘I can get you back. Everything’s fine.’

GM: When did you start to headline and tour?
NB: I think my first headlining was actually in Canada. It was in Montreal. It was about 2008. Then I would do it here and there after that but never a lot. So I think consistently it has been the past couple years where I’m pretty much now just headlining. If I open for anybody, it will be a big act.

GM: I heard you on Maron’s podcast.
NB: Oh, awesome, yeah. That was awesome to do, for him to let me do that.

GM: I’m curious to know about the Maron effect. Like back when Johnny Carson would have somebody on and it would boost their career, or not. Did you notice anything significant or different after doing the show.
NB: I did. I told Maron that exactly, that idea of saying it’s kind of like a newer version of Carson.

GM: Oh, was that you? I listen to them all and they all blend together.
NB: Yeah. I feel like Carson got everybody. Because everybody watched Carson. There were like three channels so that’s all anybody watched. So now with Maron, obviously it’s not everybody but it’s the people that want to watch comedy. So even though it’s smaller, he’s the guy right now. He interviews everybody, from Jud Apatow to me. The range is so far. I think it helped. My name got out there more. He has so many listeners so I guess people just knew my name more. And it helps with other comics. I think it gives you some credit. It’s more clout with other comedians. And it’s great because it’s not like stand-up; it’s your background so people are going to learn about you. It’s not like no one knows you. I think they really get to know who you are, in a sense.

GM: Carson used to give his sign of approval with an invitation to the couch or an okay sign. You kind of got that with Maron because he kept talking about how funny you were, even beyond that episode, and how much you make him laugh. So there was that added boost, too: “Wow, Maron really likes this guy. I’m gonna check him out.”
NB: Yeah, yeah. That was enormous. He’s been so nice to me. It’s funny how comedy works in the sense where I just randomly did a festival and he saw me and was nice enough to tweet about me and has been very complimentary. Yeah, it was amazing. That could be the most helpful thing that I’ve had in comedy. Because all the other stuff is kinda great, but to really get vouched for is a big deal.

GM: You guys talked a bit about your dad, the magician. Magicians kind of get a bad rap but I have a soft spot for them, probably because I liked them as a kid. Are you a big defender of magicians?
NB: Oh, yeah, yeah. My dad’s been doing it for 35 years. He was just in London. They got back yesterday. He was ranked as one of the top funny magicians in the world, voted one of the top 30 funniest. I mean, my dad’s really good. If magic was bigger than it is, where you’re famous, he would be very famous. But there’s like five who are very famous. So I do defend ‘em. I’ve met a lot of them and it’s amazing stuff that they do. And my dad is very funny. It’s funny to grow up with it. It’s never been anything out of the ordinary to me after seeing it regularly my whole life.

GM: Is he based in Nashville?
NB: Yes.

GM: He must be thrilled with your success.
NB: Yeah, very thrilled. That’s what’s so great, my parents are so supportive the whole time I’ve done it. My dad’s completely on board with it and has been from the very beginning. And they get it. My mom has been there and watched my dad, now she’s watching me. It’s awesome and it’s exciting and it’s very fun to get to call him and tell him when stuff happens to me.

GM: Does he offer advice?
NB: Yeah. He’ll give me tags to jokes and stuff. Or ideas. And I’ll ask him advice about the road, like booking stuff or whatever. But we started in different times. When he started, it was the ‘70s and there was the comedy boom. But he always told me to do standup instead of magic because he has to carry around so much stuff everywhere he travels. If we’re ever together, I’m just walking around with nothing and he has suitcases of magic tricks.

GM: When you were in your early twenties and reading metres, or whatever you were doing for work, was he giving you guidance then?
NB: I think he was happy I was working. I was already out of college, already flunked out of college. So the job I had there was a good job. The benefits were good, the pay was fine. But then when I said I wanted to do comedy, he was like, ‘Aw, that’s great.’ And they just let me do it the whole time. He never pushed us in any way. Just very happy with whatever. Whatever we were doing, he just wanted us to be a normal person growing up, not some lunatic.

GM: Your material is clean but it’s not overtly so, where you immediately pick up on it.
NB: That’s exactly how I want it to be. I don’t want you to think about it. It shouldn’t matter. Same with the dirty comics. It’s not about the dirtiness. I shouldn’t be. It should all be about funny. It doesn’t matter how you say it; just make it funny.

GM: The last time I wrote about Brian Regan, I didn’t even mention that he’s clean because I’m sick of it. I’m sick of hearing about it. When it’s mentioned, I don’t like either outcome: either people will like you because you’re clean, or they won’t like you because of that.
NB: If somebody’s like, ‘He’s not dirty enough for me,’ that doesn’t even make sense. The ideas are the same.

GM: Was it a conscious decision to work that way?
NB: We grew up in a Christian house and were never really allowed to watch anything. I watched clean comedy growing up. And my dad’s clean. So it’s just what I grew up around. So it just went that way. I don’t really come up with dirty stuff. When you start, whichever way your mind goes could be the way you’re going to write. It’s kind of the way you’re going to be the rest of the way.

GM: Do you curse in real life?
NB: Yeah, yeah. I just don’t do it on the stage. Or in front of my parents.

GM: I interviewed Jim Breuer a couple weeks ago and he’s recently made the switch to family-friendly stuff because his daughters were looking him up online and he realized, ‘I can’t let them watch this!’
NB: Yeah. I like when my wife’s family – her brother’s a pastor, her dad’s a pastor  – so it’s nice that they can watch stuff. But I have a joke about prostitutes and I’ve done that joke in front of my parents. So some of it’s darker but all in all it is nice that everybody can watch it.

GM: You grew up in a southern conservative Christian house. Are you still that?
NB: Uh, yeah.

GM: But we don’t see that on stage. Is that too dividing?
NB: Yeah, especially in New York. You say that kind of stuff and people think you’re an animal. And I’m not the most political person. And I don’t try to force it. I was raised like that. If you watch comedy, I never been in the type of comedy where it’s like – I don’t mind opinions and stuff; like, I get it. I don’t try to drive anything home; I’m just trying to be funny. And I’m not a celebrity, but I like when you don’t know who big celebrities vote for. It’s like, who cares? You don’t want to end up not liking someone that you did like because now you find out they’re way against whatever you believe in. I’m not here to change anybody’s mind.

GM: So you voted for Romney is what you’re saying!
NB: (laughs) Yeah, long story short.

GM: (laughs) Could you have become a southern comic?
NB: Well, I moved up north. I guess I could have stayed down there. I would love to do all the southern stuff but when I moved to Chicago it all just kinda happened. I’m really glad I did. When I look at it, I’m a New York comic just because that’s where I got all my chops. I think the best comics end up going to New York. You just can go on stage so much and you can get so good just watching other guys. It’s just a faster pace. I’d like to go back to the south but I’m glad I went to New York so it’s not like what people think of southern comedy.

GM: We think of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour.
NB: Yeah, exactly. I don’t want to not be associated with it. I’m very pro-south. I’m from the south and I love the south. I don’t like when you see southern comics go up in the north and just make fun of the south. I don’t like to talk down about it, like, ‘Down in the south they’re a bunch of redneck idiots.’ No, they’re not. I’d imagine there are probably Canadian comics who leave Canada then trash Canada. Why are you not happy where you’re from? Same way about being clean, it’s an afterthought.

GM: I like that you are who you are, in that you’re saying you’re a southern conservative Christian, you’re clean, and I read that you have a fondness for Sinbad. There seems to be in a lot of the comedy circles a sort of groupthink about who or what’s acceptable to like, and who not to like. I like that you just say you think Sinbad is great, when many wouldn’t.
NB: He’s amazing. I remember watching Afros and Bellbottoms. It was one of the first stand-up specials I watched. It was the most unbelievable thing I remember seeing. It was so funny. And you know what’s funny? People will say that about Sinbad until they work with him and then they see how funny he is. I haven’t seen him. I saw his last special and I haven’t even seen him live; I just always have liked him. But I’ve seen guys who’ve worked with him and then they change. They’re like, ‘Oh. Nevermind. He’s the real deal.’

GM: I’ll tell you, that was my experience. He was a guy I saw on TV all the time and I couldn’t stand him. Everything about him I didn’t like. I didn’t like the way he dressed, I didn’t like the way he talked, I didn’t like his jokes. And then he came to Vancouver a few years ago and he blew me away. I thought this is why the guy is famous.
NB: Yeah, incredible. It’s ridiculous. I think it’s like the idea of people liking Bill Hicks. Not that he’s not great but they’re like, ‘Bill, he was saying something.’ Everything’s got to be about saying something. How about just being funny? Brian Regan’s about the only one I feel like that does get respect across the board. I don’t know if I’ve heard anyone say anything bad about him. He’s so funny that no one can say anything. Too many comics are concerned with saying something. Who cares?! You don’t even have to say something; just be funny. I can laugh at anything if it’s funny. If you get into a thing where you’re preachy, then you get in that crowd that agrees with you so you’re just with people that agree with you. It’s just like a rally: ‘Am I right everyone?’ And they’re like, ‘Yes, you’re right.’

GM: Now that you mention it, Regan may be the beneficiary of that kind of groupthink, too, because the leaders in the community all say how great he is so everybody goes, ‘Yeah, he’s great.’
NB: Yeah, yeah, that’s true. That’s true. That’s what I always thought with Hicks. Young comics will come up and be like, ‘Yeah, Bill Hicks was great.’ And I’m like, I bet you haven’t seen him. Not that he’s not great. But no one wants to say anything that’s going to be weirdly different. That’s the dumbest thing, like if you say you like Sinbad, that’s so weird and stupid.

GM: My nephew is around your age and he’s a hip-hop guy. And two days ago he posted on Facebook about liking Jay Leno’s Headlines. And I’m not a Jay Leno fan but I appreciated that he was brave enough to say he liked him because all his friends responded how Leno sucks. Because that's—
NB: Yeah, the thing to do.

GM: And he responded, ‘But Headlines is funny.’
NB: I agree with you completely. I love little stuff like that. I agree with you. I love when, especially like a kid, that’s what I want to tell my daughter: just be yourself. If you say you like stuff… Like, I’m a huge Taylor Swift fan. The music I like is the music everybody hates for whatever reason. I like Nickelback. I’m not into music because I know a lot about it. I just listen to whatever people hate. I don’t know. But just enjoy what you like and if you do that, you stand out more than anything. And then you realize, too, that everybody else likes it. The stuff people hate is famous so someone likes it. So I agree, I love stuff like that, like your nephew saying that. That’s awesome.

Jim Breuer

"SNL and Half-Baked worked for me big-time. It made me money, got me out there in the public eye. However it watered down my standup. So I had to get back to who I am as a standup and get back in there."

– Jim Breuer

Jim Breuer: Hey, how are you?

Guy MacPherson: Hi, Jim. Good, thanks. How are you?
JB: I’m great, thank you.

GM: Where are you calling from, Jim?
JB: I’m calling from New Jersey, in my home.

GM: You’re touring Canada. Have you been to Vancouver before?
JB: The only time I’ve been to Vancouver was just to kind of warm up the crowd for Metallica about a month or two ago.

GM: Oh, right, I heard about that. And that was your first time?
JB: Yeah, that was my first time in Vancouver. Vancouver has an amazing reputation and I understand why now. I got to rent a bike and I rode around each day. It’s absolutely beautiful there and the people are great. I really enjoyed Vancouver.

GM: Well, you’ll be here in November so who knows if any of that will happen again.
JB: Yeah, it’ll be a little colder but that’s alright.

GM: You’re used to it. You’re a hardy soul.
JB: I’m used to it.

GM: And now touring across the country.
JB:  From east to west.

GM: I would assume if you’ve only been to Vancouver once, you’ve only been to Montreal, maybe Toronto.
JB: Correct. I have not toured Canada and it’s something that I’ve been really pressing to do for the last couple years. So finally when this happened, it made all the sense in the world. I think by the time I’m done with this tour I’ll have a really good Canadian following to the point where I can come out and tour on my own.

GM: I would think you would have that anyway, don’t you?
JB: Um, I don’t think so. I don’t think so. Unless you’re on TV a lot, people forget about you quick. I’m still at that stage where people go, “Wha-, what was he doing? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, the Goat guy. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, the guy from that thing. Oh yeah, I know him.” So I have to establish where they go, “Oh my gosh, yes, that guy. Great comedian.”

GM: One of the top 100.
JB: Oh boy.

GM: Who was directly ahead of you in that?
JB: I have no clue. I don’t get into lists and all that nonsense. Like, I know where my best pizza place is in town; I don’t need to vote for it. I don’t ever refer to that list. It doesn’t change who comes to see the show. The only list I care about is who’s in the audience.

GM: I just thought maybe you’re really competitive and want to take them down a notch.
JB: No, no, that’s crazy.

GM: On this tour, with essentially four headliners each doing a shorter set than they normally would, will it be harder to quell the yahoos that will surely be there yelling out Goat Boy or Half-Baked stuff?
JB: No, not at all. That’s expected. If that’s what they’re a fan of and that’s what brings them in, well then that’s why I got in this industry. So I don’t have a lot of problems with people yelling and shouting out stuff. What I usually do is I hit them pretty hard with the standup and it stands on its own and keeps their attention. If I wasn’t able to pull it off, I’d probably have a real problem with them shouting stuff out. But I haven’t had a problem with them. What I usually do is when I’m finished with my set, I’ll ask, “Did you come here to see anything specifically?” And then if it calls for Goat Boy or Party in the Stomach or whatever they were really dying to see live, then I’ll give it to them.

GM: That’s a good healthy attitude to take because some performers maybe resent a past success.
JB: Oh, yeah, some do but you know what? I’m also a fan and when I go to see my favourite performer, they need to know what I’m coming to see. I’m a metalhead and I went to see Iron Maiden and they didn’t play any old stuff. I literally walked out, I was so aggravated and mad. “We’re doing new stuff tonight!” Well then I’m going to bed because that’s not what I came here for.

GM: So you’re still a metal-head?
JB: I am. I am. It’s like a fine wine. It’s the only thing that gives me a good buzz.

GM: It’s funny. You’re on the Relationship Show tour and the traditional image of a father or relationships is kind of old and safe, but of course metal-heads are fathers and husbands and any type of person is, too.
JB: I consider myself a modern-day dad where I still got the rock and roll in me, but yet I take being a parent and relationships very seriously in life. And on stage. I’m married going on twenty years, I have three daughters. My father, who’s 89, lives with me. My mom is close by, she’s 85. So I take family very seriously. But on this tour and elsewhere I’m putting out there that I’m tired of the image of the father as a fat, overweight, beer-chugging stupid guy because it’s not in real life and that image has to change.

GM: And you’re changing it one city at a time.
JB: I’m changing it, baby, one city at a time!

GM: I saw a video of you hitting your dad over the head with a newspaper.
JB: (laughs) He needs to play. People forget when you get older you still gotta play. He loves to play and he likes the busting-chops type of play.

GM: You could see the real warmth between you guys but I would imagine some people look at that and go, “Hey, you shouldn’t do that.”
JB: That’s people who have a stick up their rear end. That’s people who can’t see comedy. Those are the people I don’t want showing up.

GM: Did you finally get the ramp built?
JB: Oh, that’s funny, yeah. I built the ramp. It came out great. But then we had to sell the house. So I had to take down the ramp about four or five months later. Hence why he lives with me now. In my house, I don’t need a ramp. I’m on the ground level so I don’t have to worry about that.

GM: How old are your kids?
JB: 13, 10 and 7. All girls.

GM: Are you constantly embarrassing them?
JB: (laughs) There’s a fine line, yeah. There’s a little bit embarrassment. When they get a little too serious, yeah, definitely I whip out the embarrassment card.

GM: I, like most people, first saw you on Saturday Night Live but I don’t know about your standup before then.
JB: I started in 1985 and I dabbled in it for a couple years. And then I got serious in 1989 and I never looked back. It was my standup comedy that led to everything. Every work, TV, film, commercial, it was all from standup comedy. In the very beginning, Comedy Central held me as one of their up-and-coming stars to watch out for. I was starting to make a name for myself and then I hit Saturday Night Live. Saturday Night Live and Half-Baked and all that, I wouldn’t say derailed me but it took me off course of what I was becoming as a young comic. So I’m kind of taking back that threshold when I started really refocusing back in 2008.

GM: Did you stop performing live when you got Saturday Night Live or just less frequently?
JB: No, no, no. But what would happen was the crowd that was coming out was a Saturday Night Live crowd so they wanted to see the characters. So it became more of trying to describe the characters. The standup was working but I also wasn’t able to work as much and work on the standup as much. You’re putting all your time and energy inSaturday Night Live and then boom, they send you to a college. And really, when you’re on TV everyone’s just there to see the star, the guy: “Ah! It’s the guy!” So thank God I worked my way up as a standup so I could hold court for years, but after a while, getting back to that original standup where it’s a set-up and a punch and a story and I set the story up here and I have a call-back and I really work the act the way I originally used to do it, that was kind of losing its sense for a while. Like I said, SNL and Half-Baked worked for me big-time. It made me money, got me out there in the public eye. However it watered down my standup. So I had to get back to who I am as a standup and get back in there.

GM: Is standup ultimately the most rewarding?
JB: Yeah, hands down. Because I control the writing, the directing, the editing, and whether I fail or succeed, I’m the one in control of it. And I can handle that. The most frustrating thing is when it’s not in your destiny; someone else is in control of how you’re put out there and you don’t like the way you’re being put out there. It’s very frustrating. Standup, I see right there and then what they like and what they don’t like.

GM: You changed recently to be more family friendly?
JB: Yeah.

GM: Does that mean you cut out curse words?
JB: Yeah, basically. At the end of the day, it’s not to be confused with soft comedy. I think if you look online and look up any of my current bits, there’s nothing soft about it. I just take being a role model with my kids and as a father and as a dad and as a family man – a real family man – I take it very seriously. And I want to be that role model. Being on stage is a big part of that. And that’s a major mission of mine. But I work on it to be hilarious. I don’t want it to be nice and soft and “Oh, he’s the nice family guy.” No. I want to be hilarious, really funny. It just so happens, oh yeah, he’s clean, by the way.

GM: Like Brian Regan.
JB: Correct. If I had to put an idol ahead of me, then that’s the guy.

GM: It’s a big responsibility being that role model.
JB: Not if you’re living it.

GM: With some performers who have kids, I wonder if they let their kids hear them.
JB: And that is one of the reasons why I went in that direction. Once I realized how powerful the internet was, when my kids started looking me up online, I’d see these routines where they weren’t filthy but I was cursing. And I realized, “Aw, man, I can’t let my kids watch this. That’s stupid. Why am I cursing so much? Who am I trying to appeal to?” And trying to write funny instead of just ending it with a curse word. And that major reason was I want my kids to be able to watch it, I want their families to be able to watch it, and I want them to go, “God, that guy is so good, so funny.” Just like you said, like Brian Regan. I really respect what he does.

GM: If we in the media didn’t even mention that you’re doing family-friendly stuff, people probably wouldn’t even notice.
JB: And that’s what happens. I’ve noticed that, too, where people leave and they don’t even really realize it. It’s more of an afterthought and they go, “You know, I don’t think he… I don’t think he said anything nasty.” I want that multi-generation show. I love watching families at a show.

GM: Your kids know you so they know you were an actor in Half-Baked.
JB: They don’t know that. They don’t know anything about that movie. (laughs)

GM: But they will eventually.
JB: Of course.

GM: I never understand if fans really don’t get it or they just don’t want to believe that you’re an actor doing a role.
JB: It’s a little bizarre. I can’t tell you how many people come up to me and they’re like, “You got me through my teenage years and I was just like you.” And I’m like, “No, dude, you were like the character. You’re not like me. That’s not me.” Yeah, a lot of people attach themselves to that character but it’s a character.

GM: I think Harland Williams told me he doesn’t smoke pot at all.
JB: And that’s the crazy thing, is I did. I have no qualms about that. However, Harland didn’t whatsoever. It’s pretty funny, he started getting this following but he’s like, “I can’t keep up with this because I don’t do this stuff.”

GM: Who did you come up with in standup?
JB: Uh… Wanda Sykes, Chappelle, Joe Rogan, Jeffrey Ross. We had Keith Robinson, Jay Mohr was around a lot, Wanda Sykes, myself. Ray Romano was a little ahead of me. Those were all guys I used to see all the time. Dave Attell, Jim Norton.

GM: In New York.
JB: Yeah.

GM: It seems every comic now has a podcast but you’re old school. You’re on radio.
JB: I am on radio. I started a podcast and Sirius Satellite Radio was like, “If you do the podcast, we’re not giving you a cheque.” And a cheque is really nice. I don’t plan on walking away from that one.

GM: Yeah, that’s the thing with podcasts: everyone has one but three people are making any money from them.
JB: Yeah, not too many people make money. Maybe Marc Maron, maybe… what’s his name? The original guy… Carolla. I think besides those two, no one’s making money. Unless it’s driving their audience to come see you, maybe.

GM: There’s always that. What format is your radio show?
JB: It’s talk comedy. I have standup comics. I do characters. That’s where I get to do more… People say, “Do you do impressions on stage?” And I don’t really do impressions on stage but I’ll do them on my radio show. Sometimes it’s just real heart-to-heart real-life subjects, which is what’s great about satellite radio is no limits.

GM: Is it a weekly? Sorry, I should know this.
JB: Yeah, every Friday, 4-6 pm Eastern.

GM: There’s a great public appetite for comedians talking to comedians these days.
JB: Yeah. I’ve been doing it for about eight to nine years now. It’s funny because pretty much everyone that came on my show turned around and started a podcast.

GM: Exactly. I’ve been doing one on the radio and podcast for eight years and I had Maron on before he had his show so I like to think he stole my idea.
JB: (laughs) It’s a good possibility.

GM: Of course everyone listens to his and not to mine. When you were here a couple months ago, it was for Metallica, right?
JB: Yeah, they were filming a movie and the movie producer asked if I could go out and do seven minutes of warm-up. Five to seven minutes to warm the crowd up, get them excited, get their energy way up and then bring out Metallica. So I flew to Vancouver thinking I’m doing five to seven minutes and no standup, no show. The day of the first concert, Metallica’s people tell me, “Listen, it’s a Metallica crowd. You don’t need to warm them up. Go out and do 40.” Four-zero?! “Yeah, do 40. They’ll love you.” Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is not a standup comedy crowd. They don’t know I’m on the bill. You don’t just walk out in front of a raw metal crowd and just start doing, “Hey, I’ve got kids. Who’s got kids and who’s married 20 years?” Thank God I’ve been around long enough so when I did go out there, I believe I succeeded. It was the hardest… It was a hard thing to figure out because the entire floor was a stage, you’re constantly in the round so if I was faced in one area, 90 percent of the audience was to my back. And God knows what they were doing: drinking, smoking, whatever. So it was a little bit of a challenge but I conquered it and I succeeded both nights in a row. Was it phenomenal standup pieces? Absolutely not! But did I pull off the crowd control and amp them up? Yes. So my mission was accomplished but if you came to see me do standup comedy that night, I beg you please don’t judge that event.

GM: And if you were in the audience for that show, would you have wanted to see a comedian come out?
JB: Dude, I would have started throwing things at me right away. Right away. There’s no way if I was 19 years old and I was in the parking lot, or wherever I was, and I was putting whatever in my system and I think Metallica’s going on at 8 and some yo-yo goes up who’s going to try comedy, I’m looking for everything I can to throw at him.

GM: They know you, though. You know that now.
JB: That’s the good thing. They do know me. And I will say to not get booed off the stage, to be able to walk off the stage two nights in a row after blindsiding a Metallica audience, I felt pretty good. That’s going under my belt as a huge success.

GM: You have high standards! You didn’t get booed off the stage.
JB: (laughs) That’s right. I did well both nights and I stood up there 40 minutes both nights so I feel good about that.

GM: I look forward seeing you here doing your normal set.
JB: Yeah, me, too. (laughs)

John Pinette

"I’ve gotten things in my career that tell me to keep on with the journey. But you look at me with Mr. Sinatra, me on the last episode of Seinfeld, I kinda feel like Forrest Gump popping up in different places."

– John Pinette

Guy MacPherson: Are you on the road now?

John Pinette: Nope. I am at home until, I guess, Friday, the 24th. Then I go to Albuquerque, which is quite a journey from here.

GM: Where’s here?
JP: I’m at my house in Pennsylvania. I have a house in Pennsylvania and I have a little place in L.A.

GM: Are you Amish?
JP: You know what? We live near the Amish. I actually like living near the Amish. I do some self-deprecating stuff in my act and I talk a lot about my own journey. I don’t like to make fun of people, but I can make fun of the Amish because it doesn’t get back to them.

GM: (laughs) Exactly.
JP: They don’t know.

GM: Do you ever have any interaction with them? They fascinate me.
JP: Oh, absolutely. We went to Lancaster a few weeks ago. There’s outlets there so I took the ride. Yeah, in the area they’re at all the farmers markets and they sell their actual crops and they sell prepared foods and stuff. And they actually do a lot of construction work in the area. I mean, you couldn’t get better fiduciaries to put on your roof or anything. I mean, they are slow. They come by buggy.

GM: Well, you get what you pay for.
JP: Actually, they have the Mennonites drive them. Mennonites are Amish but with a license.

GM: They’re modern Amish.
JP: Yes, exactly. It kinda sounds like an oxymoron, modern Amish. But they’re very good people. It’s a completely different culture. Sometimes when you’re in the midst of the world you go, ‘You know what? Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.’

"I tell jokes. It’s a common ground that people share: everybody eats. And everybody has an opinion about food."

– John Pinette

GM: You say you don’t like to insult people. So we’ll never see you on a Comedy Central roast, I take it.
JP: You know, I doubt it. I watch them once in a while. It just seems too easy to just stay up there and insult people. I have a bit about the Cake Boss. And, you know, he’s the boss of cake. Listen: I started in 1998 with the album Show Me the Buffet. And everybody said, ‘Oh, you’ve got so much food stuff in your act. It’s all about food.’ Yeah. Well now we got the Food Channel, we got Andrew Zimmern and Anthony Bourdain, Adam Richman, and food, food and food. So I kind of consider myself ahead of the curve. Or the curves, if you will. We have a show about cake. I just think that it doesn’t really evolve because what’s gonna happen next week? They’re gonna make a cake. Now they have Cupcake Wars. They’re battling over cupcakes. You can use a cupcake like a hand grenade. I did a Cake Boss bit on my last DVD and I actually got to talk to Buddy from a radio station in New York and I was glad to hear it was something that he could laugh at, that he didn’t think was mean-spirited or anything. Because I don’t think that’s what I’m on stage for.

GM: I think he’s coming to Vancouver.
JP: He does a tour! He’s a rock and roll star.

GM: So are you.
JP: Oh, listen. I tell jokes. It’s a common ground that people share: everybody eats. And everybody has an opinion about food.

GM: Have you tried to move away from food jokes and found the audience won’t let you?
JP: Oh, no. No. And I think it has evolved at its own pace. I think I brought a lot more of my life to the stage. I go by a text of talking about something but there’s a bit of the show that’s extemporaneous. So I do go up there and work on my feet.

GM: You say you started in ’98…
JP: No, no, no. That was the first CD. I started in ’86. I’ve been doing it 26 years.

GM: Ah, that makes more sense because I interviewed Maryellen Hooper in 2000 and she cited you as one of her favourites.
JP: Oh, that’s nice. She’s a really nice gal. And funny, too. She lives in Orlando.

GM: Yeah, and she married some sort of explosives guy?
JP: No, he’s, like, imagineering. You know, that subsection of Disney that does all the stuff for the park. But she has to live at that Disney place, you know, where there’s a piece of paper on your front lawn and the Disney police come. They have Mickeys but they have, like, batons and pepper spray.

GM: You’re a bit younger than I am. I certainly remember Sinatra, but in my mind he’s from an era from our parents. Does it blow your mind that you worked with him?
JP: You know what, when I look at some of the things I’ve done, like opening for Mr. Sinatra off and on for about a year and a half – my last date with him was at the old Desert Inn in Las Vegas and it was a grand time and that was his second-to-last gig at the Desert Inn. But I look back at getting a call while I was in Vegas doing a show. I’m supposed to go to Wisconsin and my manager says, ‘No, you’re going to do the last episode of Seinfeld.’ And I said, ‘Well what about Wisconsin?’ You know, I’ve gotten things in my career that tell me to keep on with the journey. But you look at me with Mr. Sinatra, me on the last episode of Seinfeld, I kinda feel like Forrest Gump popping up in different places.

GM: Good analogy! And did you have a sign a paper saying you’ll forever call him Mr. Sinatra?
JP: No, actually he was cool with Frank. I just always called him Mr. Sinatra. He thought I was Gleason; they didn’t tell him. He called me ‘The Kid’.

GM: Do young comics today get similar types of experiences or do they have to be in it a lot longer?
JP: I think it’s harder in a way because I came along at the last of the old school of Las Vegas, where you had a musical act but you had an opening comedian. Or you had a comedian open for a comedian. There were a lot of opening venues in Las Vegas still. So I did Caesar’s with the Pointer Sisters, I opened for the Temptations, I opened for the Four Tops a lot, the Oakridge Boys, which I do not wish to speak of. If I hear Elvira one more time, I’m going to kill myself. But I see great young comics, I really do. It does take a lot of time, but I don’t think they have the opportunities. I don’t think they have the TV opportunities. When I was younger, we Evening at the Improv, we had Caroline’s, we had Comic Strip Live. Obviously Just For Laughs was a huge thing for me. And I don’t see them having those opportunities anymore and I wish they did.

GM: Opening for all these musical acts, that was show biz.
JP: Absolutely. That was old school Vegas. And things change. Everything pretty much became a four-wall and people kinda pick their own acts. You couldn’t be a guy that gets a call that says, ‘Okay, you’re opening for Julio Iglesias in Connecticut.’ It just doesn’t happen much anymore.

"Believe me, it absolutely started out as a defense mechanism. Without question. Then it turned into much more of a craft and something that I really love to do. There is a craft to it. You not only have to say funny things, you have to say things funny. And I think I’ve worked on that quite hard."

– John Pinette

GM: Who did you start out with in Boston?
JP: Oh, goodness. Well, Louis C.K. was there, Nick DiPaolo, David Cross, Janeane Garofalo, of course Denis Leary. Denis had a few years on us all. Billy Martin was there. Billy Martin’s now the head writer for Bill Maher. And quite a few more. It was kind of a magical time. I didn’t know it because I was young and stupid but it was a magical time upon reflection.

GM: A lot of those names you mention are heroes of the alternative scene. Do you feel you get respect from that corner of the comedy universe?
JP: You know what? Sam Kinison once said if you’re funny, you’re funny. Everybody has a piece of the rainbow. I think I can laugh at their stuff. And when I meet them, they’re really nice. At one time, we all did a gig together here or there so there’s always something to talk about. I wish them all the best.

GM: There are some comedians who work clean and you don’t even realize it until somebody points it out. I was thinking yesterday about you: you don’t necessarily work clean, but you don’t even realize it.
JP: I try to work clean but once a show I’m gonna say ‘fuck’. And do you know why? Because I find, as I grow older and as I grew more on stage, the more I was the John that sat around the table at dinner or at college and people really laughed. The more I become that guy on stage, the more I can bring to my audience. And once in a while I say ‘fuck’. So that’s why I may say it once a show. Unless it’s a corporate show, then I will not get the cheque. (laughs) I think it’s clean as far as not being graphic in nature. I think I’ve been fortunate enough to have a pretty wide range of an audience, a pretty wide demographic. And I gotta tell you, I was in Tarrytown, New York, and I had this nice couple with their two little kids come to see my show and they tell me that it’s nice to listen to comedy with their kids. It certainly makes you feel good. Louie Anderson taught me that, actually. Louie Anderson said, ‘You know, you should work cleaner.’ Because in Boston it was kind of a free-for-all. Second show Friday night in Boston with 400 drunk people in the audience, you pretty much had to keep their attention any way you could. I didn’t want to come off strange and go, ‘I can’t believe I said that.’

GM: What’s your profile like in Canada compared to the States?
JP: I’m actually going to be working on a show here. I really can’t talk about it because I don’t know what the deal situation is. But I can’t ever give back what Canada has given to me as far as the experiences of working every city with just full auditoriums. To go to Charlottetown, PEI, on a Monday and have a thousand people in the audience, which in PEI that’s pretty much everybody. I mean, if somebody has a heart attack, you see two people leaving the show. Canada’s just been very good to me. It’s my favourite place to play, as far as doing one 90-minute concert.

GM: Did you have much knowledge of the country before you started touring here?
JP: I did not. And now I have a full knowledge of Canada. At what point do you make me an honorary Canadian?

GM: As soon as you get a show.
JP: There you go. Exactly. It’s just been a great ride and I look forward to this fall. I do like the fact that this is in the fall so we won’t have to fight the… We were in the maritimes in January and February and what I like about Canadians is they come out. They don’t care. If there’s three inches of snow outside, people in Pennsylvania hide in the basement and clutch canned goods. Canadians put their stuff on and they go to the show.

GM: They have to otherwise they’d never go out.
JP: Yeah, exactly! We did Ottawa in February and walked to an Italian restaurant in two feet of snow. And it was pretty fun.

GM: Were you funny as a kid?
JP: I think so. My family doesn’t seem to think it came really into life until high school.

GM: You hear a lot about kids being funny to offset teasing from other kids…
JP: Oh, believe me, it absolutely started out as a defense mechanism. Without question. Then it turned into much more of a craft and something that I really love to do. There is a craft to it. You not only have to say funny things, you have to say things funny. And I think I’ve worked on that quite hard.

GM: I’ve read you develop your act on stage. Is that for a paying audience or do you go to clubs to work on it?
JP: I always have a set amount of material. What I do is I start out with a little bit of a story, and the story can’t grow until I bring it to the stage and it grows kind of organically on stage. So what you may see two minutes of in one city, by the time I get to the fifth city, it may be ten minutes long.

GM: And Vancouver’s later in the tour so we’ll be seeing the developed stuff.
JP: You’ll be seeing the whole nine yards.

GM: Is there a name for this tour?
JP: The DVD is Still Hungry so I guess it’s the Still Hungry tour. Which is kind of a double entendre, the fact that I like food. But it’s really about the fact I’ve been doing this 26 years and I can still find new things to talk about and still love doing it more than I ever have. I mean, I loved doing it when I was younger but part of me was a scared kid.

GM: And maybe when you’re younger you take it for granted?
JP: Oh, without question. Absolutely without question. And I certainly don’t think that way now.

GM: Are you still a comedy consumer? A fan? Or is it more like when it’s your job you just want to get away from it?
JP: No, I watch comedians. I did a comedy cruise with Lewis Black and Dom Irrera and Kathleen Madigan and Vic Henley. We did a comedy cruise a couple years ago and I watched every show and I had a great time. Ordinarily we wouldn’t have the chance because, as headliners, we’re all ships that pass in the night. I go to a venue and I hear, ‘Oh, Kathleen says hello.’ Or ‘Lewis says hi.’ So it is very nice.

GM: Will you be bringing an opener?
JP: Yes. I don’t know who yet but I think it’s going to be Darren Rose.

GM: Oh yeah. From Toronto.
JP: Actually he’s from Oshawa.

GM: Ah, same thing to us westcoasters.
JP: Yeah, exactly. I believe Darren’s going to do the tour and we get along quite well. He’s very funny.

GM: John, thanks a lot. I know you gotta go.
JP: Well, I hope you got some stuff. And thank you so much for your time. Have a great day.

Russell Peters

"I think a lot of comics get to a certain level then expect that their next outing should be the exact same as the last one, as far as attendance and venues and stuff goes. And then they may not want to go work it out in the clubs. They may feel they’re above it. There’s no time in the comedy game that you’re ever above anything, you know? Except for maybe a comedy competition. You might be above those."

– Russell Peters

Russell Peters: (heavily accented) Yo, Guy!

Guy MacPherson: (heavily accented) Hey, Russell! (normal) How are you?
RP: Hey, what up, Guy?

GM: You having a good day so far?
RP: You know, it’s a bit busy but it’s good, yeah.

GM: You’re always busy, busy, Russell.
RP: I’m trying, buddy, I’m trying.

GM: How’s fatherhood?
RP: Fatherhood’s great!

GM: How old’s the little one?
RP: She’s 18 months now.

GM: How often do you see her?
RP: Uh, when I’m home I try to see her every day. I go to her mom’s house and hang out with the baby. And then I usually leave around six o’clock.

GM: Oh, are you not together anymore?
RP: No, sir. I’m what they call happy now.

GM: (laughs) I didn’t know that. How long has that been?
RP: Since November, kinda. Yeah. I managed to keep it under wraps for as long as I could.

GM: It’s tough being in the public eye.
RP: Yeah, you know, you want to make sure it’s done before you make an announcement.

GM: I haven’t seen you since last time you were here. I don’t even remember when that was.
RP: Three years ago, I guess.

GM: Is your daughter now fodder for your act?
RP: No, I’m da fodder of her.

GM: Heh-heh.
RP: But no, she’s in there. My whole life is in there. So I talk about fatherhood and all that kind of good stuff.

GM: So that’s a new wrinkle.
RP: There’s new wrinkles and then there’s the old wrinkles I’m ironing out.

GM: There’s the Louis C.K. model, which is to shit on your kid.
RP: I’m not shitting on her so much but I’m more shitting on myself for not really knowing what I’m doing. I went from my perspective. You don’t want to copy anyone else, either.

GM: Norm Macdonald’s playing at Yuk Yuk’s the weekend you’re here.
RP: I did not know that. What an odd twist. I love Norm. He’s hilarious.

GM: Is it still a rush playing arenas or is it just old hat by now?
RP: Of course it’s still a rush. I mean, the fact that I can still do it. This is my third arena tour. People are lucky to get one arena tour ever in their life. So to be on the third one is pretty incredible for me.

GM: I’ve heard that Kevin Hart is the new biggest guy in comedy. And I go, “Who’s Kevin Hart?”
RP: Kevin Hart’s hilarious, actually. I would say Kevin Hart is the new Eddie Murphy, you know? He’s in movies, he’s on TV, he’s selling out around North America, white people like him. He is very funny, though, so that’s the good news about Kevin Hart is that he’s very deserving of his success so I’m very happy for him. He’s a good guy, too.

GM: I know you work some clubs in the States when you’re developing material. If the money were equal, would you prefer to play in clubs? Is there a venue that suits you best?
RP: I love playing clubs. The only problem is it takes its toll on you because you have to do so many nights and so many shows a night. You’re trying to service all these people and it’s just easier to knock it out all in one night in an arena, you know? Being in the clubs is like being in the gym, you know?

GM: I was surprised when I saw you at how intimate it seems.
RP: Yeah, that’s your job as a comic is to make people feel like… It’s up to you to make them feel how you want them to feel, and I want them to feel like, look, we’re not in this arena because I’m trying to be an arena comic; we’re in this arena because I just want us all to be together at one time, you know? And I sew it together with the cameras.

GM: We’re attracted to the big screens so it’s kinda like watching TV. Is there a different reaction when people are watching the screen as opposed to watching you?
RP: Um, I don’t know because… That would be a good audience question since I’ve never really watched myself from the audience. I’ve tried, but it’s just hard to do both.

GM: I heard you on Marc Maron’s podcast. Did that get a good reaction?
RP: That did a lot, actually. A lot of people who didn’t know who I was, learned who I was. And a lot of people knew my comedy but didn’t know anything about me, got to learn a bit about me. I think it was beneficial for everybody: Marc won, I won, we all won. Yay!

GM: Yay! It’s neat seeing the progression you’ve had in your career. Canadians have seen you growing up whereas the rest of the world just sees you now. I remember you on a David Frost special with comedians from different countries.

RP: Probably. I’ve done a bunch of those things. But I forget half of them. Especially the TV ones. I forget a lot of them.

GM: It was early on, before you broke. I went, “Hey, there’s Russell Peters!”
RP: I think I remember that. That was at the CBC here in Toronto.

GM: You’ve achieved way more than you---
RP: Than I deserve? (laughs)

GM: That’s what I was going to say! No, probably beyond anything you imagined. Do you still have goals?
RP: I don’t really think about that. I just think about coming up with the material. I just want to make sure I’m able to do my job for as long as I can do it for.

GM: And how do you do that?
RP: Well, you’ve just got to stay out there, you’ve got to stay working. I think a lot of comics get to a certain level then expect that their next outing should be the exact same as the last one, as far as attendance and venues and stuff goes. And then they may not want to go work it out in the clubs. They may feel they’re above it. There’s no time in the comedy game that you’re ever above anything, you know? Except for maybe a comedy competition. You might be above those.

GM: It’s a matter of keeping it fresh and not trotting out your old hits.
RP: Yeah, no, you gotta keep writing. I stay writing all the time.

GM: But then there’s that faction who want to hear the old stuff, right?
RP: I think eventually I’ll possibly do a greatest hits tour but artistically I can’t bring myself to do that yet. Maybe when I do a Vegas run or something, if I ever get booked to do Vegas and I’m there for an extended period of time, maybe a year or two, I’ll possibly do a greatest hits show. But until then I’m going to keep writing.

GM: My brother-in-law is an Indo-Canadian—
RP: I’m sorry about that.

GM: --who loves you, but he says sometimes he gets the feeling that white people are laughing for the wrong reasons, laughing at who you’re representing, rather than with you.
RP: You know, everybody’s laughing for a different reason. Everyone is connecting with it on whatever level they’re connecting on it with. I mean, I can’t guarantee that you’re going to understand the joke for the same reason that the people are laughing beside you, you know? Who knows? I mean, that could be his own sensitivity. He may feel that people are just laughing at him. That’s also a personal thing, like, “Oh, they’re laughing at us.” No, no, no, you’re missing the point here. They’re laughing with us.

GM: And an artist can’t really be concerned with how somebody is reacting to their work.
RP: Yeah, it’s all subjective. It’s what you take away from it.

GM: Have you done the Louis C.K. model, not that you want to copy him in this, too, but a lot of comics are doing it now where they’re selling their own special—
RP: Now, see, here’s the thing. This is the only reason it bothers me that everybody making a big deal out of this and calling it the Louis C.K. model is that I have been spending my own money and producing my own specials since ’06. And I never made a big deal out of it. I would spend all my money on videoing it, editing it and putting a dvd out and I would collect all the cash myself however way I did it. And all of a sudden Louis does it and he’s a more marquee name as far as the mainstream goes, and people are like, ‘Oh, how fresh and ground-breaking!’ I’m like, ‘Uh, I’ve been doing this for years.’

GM: But isn’t it that his isn’t a physical product? It’s a download.
RP: No, no, he did the $5 download and do what you want with it, but the difference is my fans found me on the internet so it’s going to be difficult for me to get them to all of a sudden pay for something that they were trying to get for free all this time. I don’t know how successful it would be for me. And because somebody else did something makes me not want to do it. I need to be the guy who comes up with his own ideas and does something out[side] the box.

GM: I was thinking you could do it his way and blow him out of the water.
RP: Um… No, because I don’t want people to be like, ‘Oh, he saw what like Louis did?’ And I’m like, ‘Ugh, no, not like what Louis did.’

GM: ‘Like what I did first.’
RP: Yeah.

GM: Okay, I’ll say it’s the Russell Peters model from now on.
RP: You bet your ass.

GM: So this is all new material in the Notorious World Tour?
RP: Yes, sir. All 100% new.

GM: Is it harder to relate now? You’re kind of living the good life.
RP: I mean, yeah, I’m successful and I got a lot of good things going on, but my personal life… Russell Peters has changed, but Russell the guy is exactly the same. All my friends are exactly the same and the things I do are exactly the same. Sure, some of things may be better than what I used to be able to do, but as far as I go, I manage to stay the same. People’s perception may have changed but I feel I’m still the same guy. I’m still the same goofball who’ll want to go to the mall and just hang out, and my friends are like, ‘What are you doing?’ And I’m like, ‘I dunno, let’s go to the mall and hang out.’

GM: As Newhart said, though, there got to a point where he didn’t take the bus anymore so he couldn’t do his old routine about bus drivers. He can’t relate to what a lot of his fans are doing.
RP: Yeah, there are certain things that I probably never did that people do every day but that doesn’t mean I can’t comprehend it; I just don’t talk about it if it doesn’t make any sense to me.

GM: So do you go to the mall and hang out?
RP: I do go to the mall and hang out. I put on a baseball hat and hang out. My friends that go with me always hate it because, ‘Oh, dude, we’re gonna get mobbed in there.’ I go, ‘No, we’re not. We’re fine. I’m wearing a hat.’ They’re like, ‘Yeah, you think people won’t know that’s you with a hat on?’ I’m like, ‘Nah, they don’t know.’ I try and kid myself. But I don’t care, you know what I mean? Like, what’s the worst that could happen? Somebody wants a picture or an autograph? The downside of that is nobody wants your picture or autograph and that sucks worse.

GM: That’s a good attitude to have. Do you read the internet about you?
RP: No. You know why? Because the internet is one of those places where people can put anything out there. They can fabricate. They can say what they want about you. And everyone’s an internet tough guy. And I don’t have the patience to read what some dork sitting in his bedroom says or what his opinion is or what he thinks I may be like. Until you’ve met me and we’ve had some sort of interaction, you can’t really say. People speculate. And people never speculate somebody’s nice; they always speculate that somebody’s a dick. Especially with me, they see the persona on stage and they just automatically assume I’m this cocky guy. And that’s not who I am at all.

GM: That’s true for any performer. We only get a really small window into who they are and people extrapolate from it that’s how they are all the time.
RP: Absolutely.

GM: So are there misconceptions besides that you’ve heard about you?
RP: No. Again, I don’t really look for it at all. I’ll give you an example. I have something like 230,000 or 240,000 followers on Twitter. Ninety-nine percent of the time people are saying nice things and then there’s that one person who says something fucked up and that’s what sticks in my head the most. That bothers me more than all the compliments because I’m like, ‘Well, what’s your problem?’ Not like, ‘Why can’t you go along with everyone else?’ but ‘What have I done to you that you’ve decided to be this tough guy on the internet?’

GM: So were you always the guy when you were working the clubs to focus in on the one person sitting there not laughing with his arms crossed?
RP: I think that’s every comic. That’s what we do. Our job is to focus on the people that aren’t laughing: ‘Why aren’t you laughing? What can I do to make you laugh? How can I make you happy?’

GM: You’re a pleaser.
RP: I’m a pleaser. Russell Pleasers.

GM: Your Wikipedia entry says Canadian comedian, actor and disc jockey.
RP: That is correct.

GM: Disc jockey, really?
RP: Yeah, I used to deejay. Since 1985.

GM: Professionally?
RP: Yeah, I used to play clubs and parties. I even entered a few deejay competitions back in the day. Scratching and mixing, yeah.

GM: You bring deejays on tour with you, right?
RP: Yeah, I bring Starting from Scratch and DJ Spinbad with me. They’ll be on tour with me all over the place.

GM: Who opens for you?
RP: On this leg of the tour, it’s Ryan Stout.

GM: That sounds familiar.
RP: He’s an up-and-coming kid out of LA. Really funny, though. You should YouTube him. He’s been on some things. He’s on Chelsea every now and then. Very funny guy.

GM: I see you on the sides of buses here in town.
RP: See? Huh? Who says I don’t take the bus?!

GM: (laughs) Nice callback. Good job. Alright Russell, you’ve got a million other press things to do today?
RP: Yeah. It’s pretty hectic today.

GM: I thought I had the scoop but I guess not.
RP: You do. You have the Vancouver scoop.

GM: Perfect. Okay, see you in a couple of weeks.
RP: You bet your ass, you will.

GM: There’s that cocky Russell Peters.
RP: (laughs) Are you coming to the show?

GM: Yeah, I am.
RP: Okay, great.

GM: Thanks.
RP: See ya, buddy.

Norm Macdonald

"Probably people thought I was a very sardonic person. But none of it really matters because I understand it. People don’t like to be pigeon-holed but you can’t go around fucking trying to figure out a guy’s whole fucking life; you may as well just pigeon-hole him, so you go, 'Yeah, that’s the guy with the red hat. He always wears a red hat.' Because it’s an easier way to go through life."

– Norm Macdonald

Guy MacPherson: Hello, Norm.
Norm Macdonald: Oh, hi, Guy, how are you doing?

GM: Good, how are you?
NM: Good. I spoke to you a couple years ago. I don’t know if you remember. I was doing the River Rock.

GM: No, I don’t remember that… Of course I remember that, Norm! I’m surprised you remember that. You must do a lot of these.
NM: Oh… no.

GM: It was six years ago.
NM: Goodness gracious, it was longer than I thought.

GM: And it remains to date the longest phone interview I’ve ever done.
NM: It was a long one, I remember! (laughs)

GM: It was about 90 minutes. I was just re-reading it last night. It was pretty good… So now you’re coming back to a club, which is perfect for me; I don’t know if it’s perfect for you. But I love seeing comics in comedy clubs.
NM: Oh, me, too. Yeah, yeah. I much prefer it, yeah.

GM: Do you? Money being equal… Obviously if you get paid more in a bigger venue, you’d go there.
NM: No, but you don’t really get paid more unless you’re one of those few people that do arenas and so forth. But I found if you do a theatre, first of all you only do one or two shows compared to, like, five. I’d kind of rather do five, you know, in a way.

GM: Oh really? Why is that?
NM: I don’t know. Just I’m there, you know, and I’d rather do more shows. And then in the theatres you don’t make as much as you’d think because there’s like 30 people… There’s union guys, the guy that pulls the rope to open the curtain. There’s all these people. But mostly it’s because I’ve experienced, like you, comedy in a comedy club setting rather than in a theatre setting. I remember every time Brian Regan came – he’s one of my favourites ever, so I’d always take people to see him at The Improv, you know? He hasn’t played clubs for a long time; he just plays theatres. And then in theatres, you’re kind of disconnected and you end up talking to the guy next to you a lot. It’s completely different. And also it’s way too big for the likes of me. Unless you’re Robin Williams or someone that can fill a stage with movement and energy or something, it just looks like a small man on a big stage, you know? Completely different.

GM: You’re here the same weekend Russell Peters is playing the arena.
NM: Oh, yeah, Russell plays arenas. It’s amazing.

GM: You talk about 30 people at a theatre, I can’t imagine the cost of renting an arena and all the people that work there. Plus he’s on the sides of buses, so there’s advertising.
NM: I know. Yeah, it seems like no matter how much money people make, they end up getting a retinue – I don’t know if that’s the right word; what do you call it?  – an entourage with them. Everything seems to become more expensive as they make money but my God I wouldn’t know what to do. I don’t even know how an arena… I’ve never seen a comedian in an arena. I remember Steve Martin, who was maybe one of the first arena comics, used to come out in front of like 50- or 75,000 people. He’d do a magic trick. He’d go, “I hold in my left hand a dime.”

GM: (laughs) Although I went to one arena show skeptical like you, but they have huge screens and everything is televised. So it’s like going to watch it on TV.
NM: Yeah, but I don’t like that, either, because even at big clubs they’ll put up screens and what happens is people will watch the screen, because you always watch the screen rather than the person. One time I saw Springsteen and I was like only eight rows back and I started watching the screen, you know? In comedy I find that if people watch the screens they don’t laugh. It’s like they’re watching television, you know? It’s a whole different thing.

GM: Yeah, so I’m thrilled you’re going to be playing in a club. It’s the new club in town.
NM: Oh, it’s a new one? Oh, cool.

GM: I was at the competing club on Saturday night.
NM: There’s always that big Yuk Yuk’s rivalry that’s been going on even since I was there. I remember when I was starting out, I felt like I was in Hoffa or something with all the fucking union talk all the time. Jesus Christ, we’re making fifteen dollars a set, who fucking cares about… (laughs) Like, I was always very grateful to Mark Breslin because he started comedy and if it weren’t for him I never would have found it, you know? Just all the way through my career I realized that the owners make the money. In everything. Like, Lebron James doesn’t make as much money as whoever owns the fucking team. What’s the competing club called?

GM: It’s called the Comedy MIX.
NM: I remember there was another club, but I can’t remember the name of it, in Vancouver.

GM: Punchlines.
NM: Punchlines, yeah.

GM: The last time we spoke you said you were rededicating yourself to stand-up. We tend to forget your roots in Canadian stand-up even though we all know you’re Canadian. You were a Yuk Yuk’s guy, right?
NM: Yeah, absolutely. It’s been one of my tougher things. I never really stopped doing stand-up but like you say I rededicated myself strongly to it I guess six years ago or whatever. But it was always a little odd to me – although I understand it… I thought for a long time, well, people know I was a stand-up because I was a stand-up way more than anything else. But they don’t know that. They have weird expectations of you, you know, depending on what they know you from. But you think of yourself as a stand-up because that’s what you do and you are what you do, kind of.

GM: Do you have good memories of your time on the road in Canada starting out?
NM: Oh yeah, certainly. They were my best memories. It sounds like I’m doing PR for Mark, but it was great how Breslin would do it because he would send the feature, the middle and the emcee on the road together. So he’d send you on the road. You’ve only been doing it like six months and you get to go with two guys who were real good, so you weren’t lonely and you’d learn from them. It was awesome. And when I came to America, my God, the emcee’s driving their car for hours to get to a gig and then they can only do three minutes. They’re treated so badly. But we were all kind of treated equally. And even the money was very close to each other. So it was great camaraderie and there wasn’t a lot of competition because we weren’t really competing for much.

GM: Very socialist.
NM: Yeah, yeah.

GM: Congratulations, by the way, on being the new face of Safe Auto.
NM: Oh, good Lord. Where’d you see that? Was that in the newspaper already? (laughs) Yeah, no, that’s good. Listen, if you want good auto insurance and you want safe, you can’t do better than Safe Auto.

GM: (laughs) I see why they hired you… Your website is a wealth of information.
NM: (laughs) Did you actually look at it?

GM: Yeah, I was looking for something. There’s nothing. There’s a good picture.
NM: All I’ve done is just paid people money once in a while and then I never look at the computer and then I just stop paying them after a while. I’ve been told I have a weak web presence. (laughs)

GM: That’s accurate, I think. So then I went to Wikipedia and they lifted a lot from the interview I did with you six years ago.
NM: Oh yeah?

GM: So I’m just reading what I already know about you. Is there any misconception out there about you that you’ve heard? Last time we cleared up the fact that you’re not an American citizen.
NM: Yes, I’m not.

GM: And that was the common knowledge out there, that you had become an American. With a lot of people in the public eye there are misconceptions so I always like to clear them up. But you say you’re not on the computer a lot so you probably don’t even know what’s out there about you.
NM: I’ve heard things about myself that are not right. Not facts as much. But some people think I’m crazy (laughs) and then some people think I’m hard to work with and stuff like that. Or some people think I’m mean or something like that. But it all comes from certain specific things they’ve seen or something. Like I think looking back, Weekend Update I did in a certain specific way. Probably people thought I was a very sardonic person or something like that. But none of it really matters because I understand it. Like, people don’t like to be pigeon-holed but you can’t go around fucking trying to figure out a guy’s whole fucking life; you may as well just pigeon-hole him, so you go, “Yeah, that’s the guy with the red hat. He always wears a red hat.” Because it’s an easier way to go through life. But I guess I’m not that misconceived.

"I’m not political. But if I was going to be accused of being either, I would rather not be [conservative]. That one really bothers me a lot."

– Norm Macdonald

GM: There’s also a perception that you’re conservative politically.
NM: Yeah, that one bothers me a lot. I don’t like that one. I don’t like that misconception. Yeah, I don’t like that at all.

GM: Because you’re not political or because you’re not conservative?
NM: Because I’m not political. But if I was going to be accused of being either, I would rather not be that one. But no, that one really bothers me a lot.

GM: Well, haven’t you done spots on O’Reilly?
NM: I did an interview one time with Bill O’Reilly and then Dennis Miller had me guest host a number of times. But Dennis Miller gave me my first job, you know? And his show is political. It’s not when I’m guest hosting it because I don’t know anything about politics. I can’t even interview anyway, but I just talk to actors or comedians and when they force some political guest on I just ask them who the Ayotollah is or something, I don’t know. I have no viewpoints. So I’m sure, yeah, that’s where that started. But I’ve had people in Hollywood ask me about that: “How could you support…?” I don’t support anybody. I’m fucking not even American. I don’t know what you’re talking… I don’t know what anything’s about. Just because I’m so apolitical and I’m supposed to be a comedian, I hate political comedy so much that that one really bothers me a lot.

GM: And also when you said to vote for Dole.
NM: Ah, it was a joke.

GM: Yeah, it was clearly because you wanted to keep doing the impression.
NM: Yeah, of course. It’s so ridiculous.

GM: People are so literal. Especially these days with comedy. A comedian says something on stage and you see it making the news.
NM: I know, it’s silly. My goodness. It’s funny, like Tracy Morgan was accused of homophobia because of something he did in his act. But the interesting thing was no one had recorded it or anything and a guy went home and blogged what Tracy Morgan had said, or tweeted it or whatever. From memory! Then that became the truth of what he said. And then Tracy was forced to apologize. I don’t know what he said but it wasn’t on camera. And even sometimes when it is on camera it’s out of context because you don’t see the entire act. It’s all silly.

GM: If you were in that position, would you apologize?
NM: No, I would not apologize. I’d apologize if I said something wrong but I wouldn’t apologize for the sake of apologizing. And also I don’t even believe apologies should count anyway if you say something bad. Like there’s this crazy idea that if you immediately apologize… There are all these rules now so if you say something evil you can just apologize the next day in the vaguest of terms, you can say you “misspoke”, you “made an error in judgment”, an Orwellian phrase, and then it’s all forgotten. Most people, of course, if they said something terrible would immediately deny it – that’s the human thing to do – and then later apologize. But there are all these stupid rules they have now. Another big thing they do is they go to rehab for alcohol and then that absolves them from all their, you know, sexual misconduct and abuse of power and all that. They go, “Oh, I was a drunk. I was a different guy.” It’s sort of a silly time we live in. And with racism and stuff like that, it seems to me if someone says a racial epithet in public, he’s probably not racist. Because when I see the Ku Klux Klan guys and the Aryan Nation guys on TV, they don’t even say it. So the actual racists have code words. So whenever I hear it said really blatantly, I always think there must be quotation marks around that. Unless a man’s insane, even a racist wouldn’t go on stage and yell this racism. Guys in the Klan will never say the n-word in public. He talks about whites and protecting them and stuff like that.

GM: You’ve got a new talk show coming up, is that right?
NM: Well, they call it a talk show but it’s not really a talk show. It’s just like a 30-minute show every week. It’s called Trending Now. We just take whatever’s trending on the computer and do jokes.

GM: So you’re going to have to look at a computer.
NM: Ha! Well, I’m going to hire one of those computer experts.

GM: You’ll have your big entourage, I guess.
NM: Yeah. Hobos…

GM: When’s it airing?
NM: I don’t know. We’re doing a pilot; I don’t even know if it’s going to go on but I firmly suspect it will. We’re taping the pilot in the middle of July.

GM: I liked your sports show.
NM: Oh, thanks, man. I liked that a lot, too. It was funny, it didn’t work because – I mean, I’m making excuses, but I think that one was actually a good show. But I was trying to say this to Comedy Central and it turned out I was right. I was saying I don’t think any women will watch this because it says “sports” in the title. They had tested it and women liked it, you know? But when they test it, they forced the women to commit to the room to watch it. But on TV, if you’re not interested in sports or if you’re a woman, then you won’t watch anything that says sports in it. So we were getting really good numbers but I think if we didn’t have sports we would have doubled the number.

GM: You got really good numbers so what was the reason they gave you for cancelling it?
NM: Well, I don’t think they were quite as good as they could have been. Still, it was such a cheap show to make. I mean, Comedy Central is great, but they don’t wait too long. They’ve had a number of very talented – not me – but they’ve had a number of very talented comedians have shows on that network and they just go away. It’s very strange because everybody wants to do a show on Comedy Central because they can be dirty, I guess that’s why they want to do it, and it’s called the Comedy Network but— I mean, it’s called Comedy Network in Canada but it’s called Comedy Central—but for some reason… Like, I loved Sarah Silverman’s show and then they just killed it. It was bizarre.

GM: So this new one is going to be on TBS.
NM: TBS. Yeah, it’s very funny.

GM: Oh, good.
NM:  No, that’s their thing.

GM: It’s what?
NM: That’s their catchphrase: “TBS: Very Funny”. Do you guys get TBS?

GM: We do, yeah. I think.
NM: It’s interesting what TBS did. I don’t know why nobody else thought of this, but they just got a whole bunch of good sitcoms. Took all the best syndicated ones and all these kids started watching. My kid watches TBS all the time. Because kids don’t give a fuck about networks. But me, I’m more like my grandmother: I just watch like three networks. My grandmother actually only watched one. She had three, but only one had The Edge of Night or whatever the fuck it was. So she would freak if you turned the television channel because she would think she would never find it again (laughs). So it always had to be on the one channel.

GM: Right, because there were twelve other channels it could be on.
NM: It was less than that. I’m older than you.

GM: No, you’re not. You’re a year younger, buddy.
NM: (laughs) Oh. You had a better system.

"I was so happy when they stopped internet poker because it freed up all this time for me. I didn’t even understand what Twitter was and some fucking guy put me on it and told me to do it. And then I just became addicted to it. So I’m trying to not do it as much, find a happy medium."

– Norm Macdonald

GM: You’re not on Twitter as much as you used to be.
NM: No, not as much. I was a little addicted to it for a while.

GM: So did you consciously say, “I’m going to step away”?
NM: Yeah, yeah, because you know these indulgences can become crazy that you can get, you know? I don’t go out. I never go out, you know? And I don’t drink or do drugs or anything so sometimes I’ll get fixated on something else to waste time with. Like, I was so happy when they stopped internet poker because it freed up all this time for me. I didn’t even understand what Twitter was and some fucking guy put me on it and told me to do it. And then I just became addicted to it. So I’m trying to not do it as much, find a happy medium.

GM: Well, I asked my 180 followers if they had any questions for you and I got one response.
NM: (laughs)

GM: I got several that weren’t usable.
NM: That’s another thing about the fans. I love that they’re fans and they’re like, “Fuck you!” That was the other thing about… You know, I’d post like ten jokes a day on Twitter for a while and then I go, “Hey, by the way, I’m doing this date.” And they go, “Fuck you. I just want to hear jokes. Stop shilling for your…” And you’re like, “This is my fans?” and you get all depressed, you know? What is the cyberspace question?

GM: “Which Saturday Night Live cast member did you hate the most?”
NM: See, everybody’s negative.

GM: This guy’s bet is that it was Chris Kattan.
NM: (laughs) Well… hate the most means I hated more than one. No, it means I hated more than two. Uh, I don’t know. I didn’t really care. I didn’t hate anybody because I was doing Update and I was just completely separate from everybody else. And I came from a culture of stand-up where everybody was constantly making fun of everybody else, as a friendly thing. When I got on Saturday Night Live, I was working with people that came from a world of improvisational acting and stuff and they were very generous toward each other and helpful. And if something went wrong or bombed, they’d hug them or something. But as I say, that’s not the culture I came from. So me and Sandler and Rock and guys like that would just savage each other all the time. Because that’s just how we did it because we were men and this was our little terms of endearment. When I got mixed up with actors, I started doing that with them and they took it very personally because that’s not the way they operate. They’re more womanish, you know? So it wasn’t my fault! (laughs) But I didn’t hate any of them.

GM: They hated you.
NM: Yeah! I’m sure they hated me! (laughs)

"People are always shocked that comics aren’t complete fucking idiots, you know? So if you say anything that’s not entirely frivolous, they probably take it as a little deeper than it actually is. A normal person is much more in depth than me."

– Norm Macdonald

GM: You were on Marc Maron’s podcast not too long ago.
NM: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

GM: That created quite a stir. People were amazed that you were so sensitive.
NM: What? It created what?

GM: A lot of people were talking about it. They just said it was the most amazing interview…
NM: Oh, I thought you meant a bad thing.

GM: No, no. It was positive. They were surprised that you had this depth of emotion.
NM: Yeah, well he asked me stuff about other stuff. Yeah, I don’t know, I think he caught me unawares that day. He has a set-up kind of where you forget you’re on radio. You do it from his garage and stuff and you think you’re just talking to him so you just talk. People are always shocked that comics aren’t complete fucking idiots, you know? So if you say anything that’s not entirely frivolous, they probably take it as a little deeper than it actually is. A normal person is much more in depth than me. People do tell me and I listened to it again and thought, well, it seems like a normal conversation. I’m not being funny all the time but it didn’t seem there were any deep revelations or anything. It was just a conversation that I would often have with another person that I knew and was a friend of mine. Probably because I know Marc and stuff, you know.

GM: You don’t regret saying anything then, do you?
NM: I don’t really remember what I said. Why, did I say something bad?

GM: No, not at all. You said you kinda forgot it was being recorded so I wondered if you would have held back some?
NM: No. The only time I’ve ever heard anything was with Stern. Stern does this thing where he’s so insanely honest about everything and then when he asks you a question it kind of compels you into a… Like, you don’t have to say everything about everything. There’s this new thing in comedy that happened recently that’s to me a little flabbergasting but I’m sort of an old man. It’s this sort of new style of almost confessional comedy where the idea is you go on stage and you say how when you were young you blew a priest or some fucking thing. I’m old and my dad taught me you don’t have to say everything of whatever happened to you. A person has dignity and doesn’t have to expose everything to the world and leave nothing. There’s a difference between being provocative and being outright pornographic about something. And I don’t think that pornography can ever be art. But I have noticed this ultra-confessional new type of comedy that’s supposed to be very shocking but it doesn’t shock me. It’s just kind of unseemly.

GM: Maron is a big proponent of that style.
NM: Yeah, yeah, he does. (laughs) To me, it’s rather uninteresting when it becomes so indulgent. Like, if your subtext to everything is, “Look at me, I’m real smart” or “Look at me, I’m real honest”, if this is your only reason for saying anything, then I don’t want to hear it. It just seems to be wallowing, in my mind. You have to pick and choose and first and foremost make some comic point.

GM: In this atmosphere of confessional comedy, does your act get mixed in with it. Like when you’re talking about killing a woman and burying her. Do people think, “Oh God, these are his thoughts! He iscrazy!” And maybe you’re thinking, “No, these are jokes. This is what comedy is.”
NM: Yeah, well it is funny because I did a special for Comedy Central. I don’t really like doing specials but because I did the sports show, I did a comedy special for them. And it was funny because it was often described like, “And then Norm described how he would murder.” I wasn’t describing that! I was saying, you know, if I was in that position what I would do. It was obvious, ridiculous. That was a very difficult piece to write and I had to insert myself into it to make it work. It would not have worked had I used a third person omniscient voice. That just wouldn’t have worked. I had to be the person at the centre of that bit. So that’s the reason I chose to do it.

GM: I thought it was clear that it was a conditional; it was an ‘if’ thing.
NM: Yeah, there was an ‘if’ there!

GM: And in this culture of media reporting on everything a comedian says, that kind of gets lost.
NM: (laughs) I did a lot of interviews for that special and I got all these crazy questions. People forget it’s comedy. There was this one line that I really liked and a lot of people asked me about it in horror because I said, “Even in today’s enlightened society, there still remains a stigma to being a psycho-sexual sadist.” I like that line.

GM: It’s a great line.
NM: And people go, “Really? Was there ever a time…” I go, “No. That’s the point.” (laughs)

GM: That’s the joke!
NM: It’s hard to say that’s the joke. I’ve always found if the joke doesn’t work… Like, if you try a joke on a person and they’re like, “What? That doesn’t happen.” So if a joke doesn’t work, it’s just a lie, basically.

GM: But that’s not true across the board because it works with lots of people. It’s just the ultra-sensitive ones or ones who don’t get irony that don’t get it.
NM: Yeah, it’s critics. It’s—

GM: Hey, I’m one, too.
NM: Yeah, I know, but you’re a fan, too. I’ve found with critics and I’ve also found with comedy writers that some are incapable of laughing. I’ve worked with head writers on comedy shows and stuff and they won’t laugh. They look at it purely from craft. They don’t understand the magic of it. And to me, if you don’t laugh, you don’t know anything about comedy. I don’t know if they’re doing it out of power or why they’re doing it.

GM: Can I say, as somebody who’s not a big laugher, that it’s not out of power. I was like that as a kid.
NM: Okay, well maybe I shouldn’t say laugh. Because I don’t really laugh that much, either. But I smile. I appreciate. I like comedy. And I think some people have it right down to where they’re just critics of the exact craft and they try to figure it all out and they don’t enjoy it. Of all the different arts – I don’t want to say it’s an art, but it’s a certain type of vulgar art – that one requires a gut appreciation that goes beyond intellectual surgery, you know? Some things can’t be explained in comedy. Sometimes I try to figure it out. Like, I really laugh at Gilbert, and I really laugh at Brian Regan, and I really laugh at Bill Cosby. It’s not my job like it is for you but I find it a lot better if I don’t try to figure out how a guy did it. Like one time I asked Shandling. Just out of craft I couldn’t figure out how he did this one particular joke. He used to do this joke. He’d say, “So now I’m going out with Miss Georgia. Alright, it’s the former Miss Georgia… Okay, it’s George Foreman.” I couldn’t understand how he came up with the joke. You know what I mean? Like how the fuck did he… Did he start with George Foreman and work backwards? How the fuck do you do that? So I asked him. Like an idiot I fixated on this one joke that really made me laugh. And then I asked him and he didn’t remember. And I was like, “Why do I care where it came from?” It’s funny because it was so mysterious to me as another comic how that joke came into existence because it doesn’t fit a paradigm of usual jokes.

GM: It’s kind of like a reverse pun of some sort, isn’t it?
NM: Yeah. But I don’t know how he went from Miss Georgia to George Foreman. It had to have come from the name George Foreman somehow. Yeah, it had to have been a reverse-engineered pun.

GM: The former Miss Georgia/George Foreman. Anyway, I had Gilbert on my podcast.
NM: I love Gilbert. He’s great. That guy’s a funny motherfucker. That guy’s so funny, always trying to sell his stupid merch and shit.

GM: I drove him back to his hotel after and I asked if he still enjoys getting out on the road or if it’s a grind. He said it’s a grind. “I feel like Willy Loman.”
NM: (laughs) And it’s almost unbelievable that he has children.

GM: Have you asked him about his children?
NM: He talks like a regular father and stuff. But it’s so bizarre. You know, the last time I was in his apartment, you know he never spends money so in his apartment he had a little TV that had rabbit ears (laughs) – and this was only like fifteen years ago – and then lawn chairs. He had six lawn chairs. You had to sit in a fucking lawn chair. (laughs) So I don’t know, his wife must be a functioning human being.

GM: I asked him about his kids and he didn’t seem that close to them, but maybe that was part of the schtick. So I’m glad to hear that he talks like a regular father in real life.
NM: Well, I mean a little bit. But he’s certainly the strangest comic ever, I think, if you don’t know him at all because he seriously takes nothing seriously. At all. And that’s why it was too bad about the Aflac thing and everything because Gilbert sees the whole world as ridiculous. He’s sort of this existential guy. He’s very interesting. You know, art has a sort of criminal nature to it in the first place and his is almost like psychopathic. But harmless. I mean, he’s the most harmless person in the world but just the way his mind works is the joke comes before everything else. Almost like Groucho Marx or something, where everything is secondary to the joke.

GM: He’s another great example of the media going overboard with comedians’ words. As he said, everyone was talking about his “comments”, framing that way instead of saying his “jokes”. Because comedians make jokes.
NM: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

GM: He didn’t make comments about the tsunami; he made jokes.
NM: Yes. Yeah, that’s a good point. Is that what he said?

GM: Yeah.
NM: Yeah, that’s a very good point. He did not make a comment. Yeah, you’re right.

GM: Maybe had he made a large point about it as a comment, then maybe he would deserve to be fired.
NM: Yeah, I would agree with that. Since he’s never made a comment about anything in his life (laughs), everything with Gilbert is an act. His entire life. It’s almost like a piece of performance art, his life. Whereas Janeane Garofalo is the exact opposite, you know: everything’s a comment. It’s a good point, that he never makes a comment; he just makes jokes. And the world is his set-up.