Eddie Izzard

"It’s also a pissing contest between us and rock ’n’ roll. I mean, why should rock ’n’ roll be able to play not only arenas but stadiums whenever they want to and we have to ask permission if we’re allowed to play arenas? It’s all kind of odd."

– Eddie Izzard

Guy MacPherson: Hello, Mr. Izzard.
EI: Hi, how are you?

GM: Good. Finally we connect.
EI: Yes.

GM: I’ve interviewed you a couple of times. I hear your name pronounced ‘IZ-ARD’ and ‘IZ-erd’. I’ve always said ‘IZ-erd.’ Which is correct?
EI: Most people in North America find it easier to say ‘IZ-erd’ but my father, when he picks up the phone, says, ‘IZ-ARD speaking.’ That’s exactly what he says. Not ‘Iz-ARD’ because a lot of people in North America want to hit the second syllable really hard, but ‘IZ-ARD’ hitting the first syllable. But I don’t really give a monkey’s between that one and ‘IZ-erd.’

GM: Okay. Got it. I’ve talked to you twice before and this is the first time I’ve learned, reading the notes, that you spent time as a teen in Canada. Why didn’t you ever mention that to me before?
EI: I’ve mentioned it to everyone I could. I thought it was getting a bit long in the tooth. It’s not like every time I talk to someone I’ve got to mention this. It revolves around I almost died in Lake Ontario. A woman called Alex – she was Alex Christmas back then and she now lives in New Brunswick. I was hoping she was going to come and see me when I was in Halifax, but I realized it was quite a long way away. But anyway, yes, they’re coming to the gig on Friday night. Ralph and Sally and Val Christmas. They have this crazy family. But yeah, two months when I was nine I was a Canadian kid. And that was long enough that by the end of it to feel like you’re Canadian. I mean, I was playing baseball and doing paper rounds, and swimming in the loch and fishing. The only time I’ve ever done fishing in my entire life and I got really into it. It sort of started from nowhere and stopped after two months.

GM: What brought you over?
EI: Two of my dad’s school friends emigrated to Ontario; one to Toronto, and Val and John Christmas had moved to Cambleford, just north of Belleville. They had six kids and they were up for taking on two more. Dad was working for BP and had to be in Montreal for a month. So it was a big summer holiday. He worked out this thing that he would go to Montreal for a month and we would live with the family for a month, just on our own with them, and then he’d turn up and it would be him and us with the entire family for the second month. It was just a wonderful, wonderful time.

GM: Who knew?! You’re one of us!
EI: Yes, I have this strong link to Canada. Normally British people get known in Canada quite well and they struggle to get known in America. And I’m playing Madison Square Gardens and the Hollywood Bowl in America and I’m still having to hack my way up the mountain in Canada. So it’s slightly back to front. But it’s good. I’m touring and I’m playing four nights at Massey Hall in Toronto. It’s getting there. I’d like to play everywhere so people go, ‘Yeah, that English guy. Yeah, we know him.’

GM: I find that surprising, because we’ve always embraced British culture. I think we watched Monty Python before the Americans fully embraced it. But you’re playing big theatres here, let’s not kid ourselves.
EI: I know what the difference is. It’s that Monty Python was on television so people could get it, they could watch it, and it would come around the next week and they’d pick it up. And in America my real breakthrough was when HBO endlessly played Dressed to Kill to death. And it got two Emmys and that kind of stuff. That sort of kicked me through it, that one thing. And I’ve never really pushed it on television again. I didn’t want to because I wanted to do drama roles, like I’m now doing Hannibal Lecter, also filming in Canada, here in Toronto. The position I’ve got where I can do a dramatic role and then go and do a surreal comedy tour, one right next to the other, is because I haven’t pushed the comedy on television. I never had the big TV series. So in Canada, that’s my problem. It’s like an advantage and a disadvantage at the same time.

GM: You’re playing Hannibal Lecter?
EI: No, I’m in the TV series playing Dr. Gideon. Dr. Abel Gideon, who is the pretender to the throne of Hannibal Lecter.

GM: I see. And it’s a TV series for who?
EI: It’s NBC. It’s playing on a Canadian channel at the moment. It’s Mads Mikkelsen, Hugh Dancy and Laurence Fishburne and a bunch of really good people.

GM: And it’s already on, you say?
EI: Yeah, it’s in its second season. We’re filming the second season now. I just filmed another two episodes of season two.

GM: Wow, I should watch more TV.
EI: Yes. It’s dark and twisted. It’s just called Hannibal.

GM: You mentioned Madison Square Gardens and the Hollywood Bowl. Those are huge. I’ve seen a couple shows in arenas: I saw Dane Cook and Russell Peters. You’re on that level now where you can play those kinds of venues. Does it just become a big pissing contest among comedians as to who can play the biggest venue?
EI: Oh, yeah. Yeah, that’s exactly what it is. I mean, it’s got ego in there. But it’s also a pissing contest between us and rock’n’roll. I mean, why should rock’n’roll be able to play not only arenas but stadiums whenever they want to and we have to ask permission if we’re allowed to play arenas? It’s all kind of odd. And if you look at it, Russell Peters plays arenas, Dane Cook does – I’m not sure if he’s done a recent arena tour – I do. There’s about ten comedians in Britain doing it but there’s not many more in America doing it. There’s quite a number that could but they choose not to. And getting good at doing arenas, you have to do a whole bunch of them so that you can really have a sense of what the trick is to play it: how to play it so that you’re filling that space as opposed to just looking like you’re swimming around in it. I like playing really small venues. Like, after this tour, which is in theatres, I’m going to go to Germany and do standup in German in a 100-200 seater.

GM: In German?
EI: In German.

GM: I guess every type of venue has its pluses and minuses.
EI: Yup, that is true. The bigger venues you do have to arrive and have a presence. Smaller venues are like a speedboat and bigger venues are like an ocean liner. You have to sort of wait for the laughs; your timing has to be slightly different. But you can get in a speedboat and then get out of that and get into an ocean liner and do that. You can do both. I love the ability to do both. Because I don’t have a television series. Some people go, ‘Who is this guy? Is that toilet cleaner, Eddie Izzard? I don’t know what that does.’ But if you say I’m doing Madison Square Garden and Hollywood Bowl, they go, ‘Oh!’

GM: ‘He must be somebody.’
EI: That’s a nice little counter to put out because I’m not doing X Factor, Y Factor, this thing on telly, that reality show. I have to really bat above my weight and playing arenas is kind of handy for that.

GM: You mentioned rock bands. They have this wall of sound. You’re just one voice and one person.
EI: Yes, they do have the wall of sound. But really good sound people and the screen take everything to the back. At Hollywood Bowl, the best place to watch is from the back. It actually looks amazing from the back. I use regression of technology. If you’ve been to any rock concerts in arenas and especially stadiums, they do a lot of editing and vision mixing. They cut to the guitar, they’ll cut to Keith Richards, they’ll cut to this and cut to that. In the end, you might be essentially watching television in a big field. And what I do I call regression of technology: We take two cameras, one which is essentially a backup for the first one. So in essence it’s just the one camera and it shoots a full shot that is placed in the centre of the big vertical screen. So there’s a small me and a big version of me standing behind, just like in the iconic Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane shot. And on either side there are two half-versions of me. And the camera just stays with you and pans with you. So you choose what you’re editing. It never zooms in, it never zooms out. It doesn’t get wide, it doesn’t cut to the people in the audience or anything. It just shoots it. So if you’re at the back or the front, you see the same gig. And that way, you’re the editor.

GM: I see. But you don’t have that on this tour because it’s theatres.
EI: No, people don’t need to worry about that. In the end, I’d like to play arenas all around the world but I have to keep building it up in different countries where I’m known. So like in Germany, I’m hardly known, whereas in Canada I’m quite well known and in America I’m very well known, in Britain I’m well known, and Scandinavia I’m fairly well known. So it’s all different countries at different levels. So I just have to keep building it up.

GM: When a lot of British comics visit other countries, it’s usually to ex-pat audiences. But you’re going to Germany and performing in German so it’s not going to be for the ex-pats.
EI: No, I refuse to play ex-pats. I don’t mind if ex-pats come but it’s got to have a majority indigenous people. So I’m going to be playing Shanghai next year and Tokyo, Japan, Kathmandu, India… I don’t mind if some Brits or English speakers come along, like Americans or Canadians or Irish or Australians, but as long as the majority are locals, then that’s working. I mean, English is this lingua franca. It’s no longer our language that we own; it’s the language that we sort of started off with and then it’s been given to the world as the gift of the most simple communication that we can work out on its basic level. That’s great. It’s for everyone to play with and everyone to do business with and hopefully to make friends with. I’m already touring France in French and I’m playing Montreal in French.

GM: When you’re playing, say Japan or Shanghai, that it is a lot of locals in attendance? How can you control that when when you’re not performing in Mandarin or Japanese?
EI: It’s a little difficult up front. I played Russia – St. Petersburg – and that was about 100% Russians. We talk to the guys and say, ‘How much English is spoken out there?’ Because we want to be there. And they’d already had an Irish comedian, Dylan Moran, who’d played out there. So they already knew that the Russians were going to show up. So there were about a thousand people in St. Petersburg, 1500 in Moscow. So in Shanghai, what we do is we look for promoters, we see what’s going on on the ground. Like I know in Tokyo they’ve already got a lot of Japanese standups. And I was talking to a Japanese woman who was doing my nails yesterday, so she was, as I am a transvestite and I get my nails done. I said, ‘Do the kids speak English in Tokyo?’ I just ask people who I meet. I said, ‘What about in Tokyo University?’ ‘Oh, yes, they speak more English there.’ So that’s the first place you head; you head to the university. Or you find a promoter who says, ‘Yeah, I’m already doing that. And we estimate you can do this and you can do that.’ So we take their advice and then we go and do a look-see. Like, I was in Dubai and I went and saw a friend who was playing there, Al Murray, a British comedian, and it was 100% Brits there. 100%. And I thought I don’t want to do Dubai under that. Because I was born in Yemen. I wish to learn Arabic and play Cairo and then play Lebanon and then build it up from there: Morocco – Marrakesh – would be a good place to play. And if I learned the Cairo Egyptian Arabic, that’s the best one to learn because apparently they use it in the films. So I’m constantly meeting people, I bump into them in the street and I say, ‘What’s the situation? Can I do it in English? Will the locals come, if I go to the university, does that work?’ Because any university, the kids are just going to be grabbing English by the handful. They’re going to be ambitious – they wouldn’t have got to university if they weren’t ambitious. And they’re going to realize that English is the first language to learn as a backup and it can widen their horizons. So it’s just logic. You put it in there. The big thing is I know that comedy is international and not national. That’s my big theory. And I think I’ve proved this correct. The mainstream Canadian comedy will talk about Rob Ford, will talk about the mayors of Montreal and what’s going on politically and with the sports stars; the mainstream British guy would do the equivalent, and the American would do the equivalent. But the alternatives like us will talk about dinosaurs and God and squirrels with guns and helicopters that can play banjo or whatever it is. And you go to Russia and they go, ‘Yeah, this is stupid. Yeah, we understand it. We’ve got dinosaurs.’

GM: You talk about Star Wars but that’s universal now. But you’re also talking about Greek mythology and chaos theory. You just need to be a human to understand it. I also like that you don’t talk down to people who might not even know what chaos theory is or anything about Greek mythology. Obviously you make it palatable. Some comics have strong interests in some topics but think they can’t do it on stage because no one would get it. But you make it so they get it, or can at least enjoy it.
EI: Well, I assume the intelligence of the audience. And there was a logical self-policing of the public. And Python smashed the doors open around the world. And I’ve checked around the world. As I was playing Eastern Europe, I said, ‘You guys have Python?’ And they’d say, ‘Yay!’ And I was phoning Michael Palin and Terry Jones and saying, ‘They’re screaming for you guys.’ I mean, I’m in Zagreb, I’m in Belgrade. That’s it: Assume the intelligence of the audience and the bright ones, or anyone who’s autodidactic or been to university or whatever, and they like this kind of stuff and they’re progressive in politics, they will dig it. And they’ll say, ‘Freddy, you gotta come. Siobhan, you’ll love this.’ And they drag others to it. And that’s how it works. Whereas right wing extremists are gonna go, ‘That guy’s a liberal and he likes people; we like killing people. Let’s not go to that show. Let’s go to the I Want To Kill People show.’

GM: And the politics you’re talking about are not at a local or national level; it’s more sort of issues relating to any human.
EI: Yeah, exactly. Because in the end, we were 30,000 people, 10,000 people two-hundred thousand years ago. And now we’re seven billion. We’re all the bloody same. And just right wing press separates us out into separate things. But we’re all the bloody same.

GM: Did I read you wanted to be mayor?
EI: Yup. Not like the Toronto mayor. More in a different style.

GM: You’d get in your own trouble, though.
EI: (laughs) Well, they’ll say, ‘Aren’t you a transvestite?’ and I’ll go, ‘Yes’ and they’ll go, ‘Oh, that’s fine.’

GM: Yeah, as long as you own it, I guess.
EI: Well, that’s it but I think that’s what Rob Ford is trying to do in retrospect, saying, ‘Yeah, I smoke crack. And I’ll be in work tomorrow.’ And you go, ‘Well, hang on, no, you gotta do something else.’ So yeah, I’ll tell them I’m a transvestite and what else? There’s nothing else, really, to come out after that. I like running marathons and I’ll paint my nails and I can do things out of the box, I’m ambitious and I want everyone else to be ambitious if they want to and I’m a radical centrist. And they’ve already done polling on it, which is a great thing. The Evening-Standard in Britain put me into a poll with other Labour candidates and I came out pretty good.

GM: Is it going to happen?
EI: Yeah, I’m running in 2020. I’ve already stated this. For Member of Parliament or Mayor of London in 2020. But there’s an election in 2016 for the mayor and I’ve been put into that poll and I’d do pretty good if I run in 2016. And there’s a general election in 2015. So I’ll be an activist up to that point then I’ll go for election.

GM: I know you’re involved with Unicef. You’re a funny guy and you think absurdly and at times you want to be serious. Does that ever cause confusion among people?
EI: I think as soon as I told everyone I was a transvestite, that’s so bloody serious. Some people think British men always want to throw on a dress, which isn’t very true. Transgendered people get beaten up as in any other country. But we do have this pantomime thing, that I think in Canada you have as well. But as soon as I started telling people I was a transvestite, it was so serious, it was so crossing the line. I mean, Boy George didn’t say he was gay for ages.  But I was saying straight off the bat I’m a transvestite and I don’t look terribly girly, either, so it’s a bit of a struggle. So they could realize it was all kinda serious. And it wasn’t part of the comedy, either. I wasn’t doing transvestite comedy; I was just doing surreal comedy and I happened to be wearing a dress or whatever. So that helped me get a serious platform. And then I started talking about European politics, which is the hardest thing to talk about in the United Kingdom. It’s like an American going up and saying socialism is an interesting thing to have a look at. And I don’t know what the equivalent is in Canada. I suppose it’s like the French part separating or something weird. It’s such a difficult touchstone. So transvestite and then I started talking about Europe and that was a lot of seriousness in there. And I’ve been campaigning in elections since 2008 quite actively. So it’s only four different election cycles I’ve been through. So everyone knows I’m serious and that’s okay. They’ve allowed me to do that, along with running marathons. I’ve always stuck to my guns. I haven’t gone, ‘Hey, I’m into this! No, I’m actually into cheese now! No, free everything for everyone!’ And I don’t say I hate politicians; I think we’ve got to have politicians. There’s a lot of politicians trying to do some good stuff. So I’m trying to put a practical thing on it and see what I can practically do to try and help.

GM: Russell Brand will say don’t vote.
EI: I know Russell’s into that. And that’s cool for Russell to do that. And it’s good for him to have his say. I’m saying do vote. I’m trying to be practical on the thing. I don’t feel we get anywhere by everyone not voting. And I don’t feel all politicians are all trying to do terrible. I don’t think all businessmen are trying to do terrible things. So I’m trying to encourage ethical business and ethical politics. And try not to smoke crack.

GM: Good luck with that.
EI: Yeah, I know. He seems to be a barrel of laughs. Anyway.

GM: Once you get involved in politics, the crack is next.
EI: Yeah, I know. I was thinking to go into politics and I always had in my mind probably not a good idea to smoke crack.

GM: On your Twitter account, you say you think like an American. How does an American think?
EI: Well, if I analyze that down, what I was trying to say was I think like an economic migrant. I think America has a distillation of that. Canada could be the same. Australia could be the same. New Zealand… a number of countries. Well, maybe those three. But America really crystalized it in this, ‘Come, you can go for it. Anyone can go for it. Let’s go! Let’s build it! Let’s think out of the box.’ And that’s what I mean by it. But I also wanted to associate myself with Democratic Americans, as opposed to Republican Americans or, I suppose, the Tea Party Americans. So I put it down. I was thinking I should change it to ‘like an economic migrant’, someone who wants to go build it. Because I’m touring in France now in French and that is so huge because it’s 200 years since the Battle of Waterloo and a thousand years since William the Conqueror. And I’m touring France! I just think it’s so beautiful. It’s politics with an open hand; you reach out with an open hand. And the French are going, ‘This is really groovy! This guy’s doing it in our language.’ And again, it’s self-policing, self-promoting because the cool people are saying, ‘Hey, you’ve got to come and see this English guy. He’s doing it in French. It’s not brilliant French but it’s pretty damn good and he’s making people laugh.’ And my video is available online for $5 or €5. I loved it. And German’s going to be great, too, because of all the history: Second World War, First World War, all that stuff. German’s are now doing it in English. French have now started doing it in English. The Russians are doing it in English. And the Italians as well.  It’s all changing and it’s all happening in the UK at the moment, these language jumps. It’s amazing. It’s stunning. I just think it’s wonderful and such a positive human thing. The Russians are doing it in English! And the French! Less so for the Germans to do it in English, but for the French to do it in English. It’s just going to be beautiful.

GM: Do you know Sugar Sammy?
EI: No, I don’t know.

GM: He’s a Canadian comic. He’s Indo-Canadian, born and raised in Montreal, so he speaks and performs in English, Punjabi and French.
EI: Yeah, I think I have heard of him, actually. And he does standup in three languages?

GM: For different audiences, yeah.
EI: That’s excellent. That’s really good. Some people are bilingual or trilingual, and that’s good to a certain extent, but it’s even better if people hack their way into a language and not be a natural speaker because then you can really feel the sweat and you can feel the journey they’ve taken.

GM: You perform just in those three languages or are there more?
EI: No. At the moment it’s just English, I’m pretty good at French now so I’m touring in that, German I’m just beginning. January and February will be the German ones. Then once I get German, I’ll do Spanish. Once I’ve got Spanish, I’ll do Russian. Once I’ve got Russian, I’ll do Arabic.

GM: I read your biographical chapters on your website. Is this going to be a book?
EI: No, I think that was from a book. There was a touring book when I toured America big time in 1998, so I think that’s from 1998. So there is one book out, which is supposed to be a tour book and I think the book company turned it into an autobiography and I said, ‘No, no, that wasn’t how I planned it.’ And I talked to this really good journalist but then he took himself out of it and then it became like this autobiography. So it was a little bit weird but anyway that’s what that is. A real autobiography will come at the end of my days.

GM: You don’t know when that’s going to be, though.
EI: I know, but I’m going to do a US Grant at the end of it. I’ll do it right at the end.

GM: I read in there you have an older brother. What did he do?
EI: He teaches me the languages. He’s going to be there with me in Germany. He’s my tutor in French and German and Spanish, as he speaks those three. And then I’m going to drag him into Russian. We’re going to learn Russian together. And then we’re both, as we were both born in Yemen, we will learn Arabic in Cairo. It’s a beautiful journey to do with your brother.

GM: What did he do for work?
EI: Languages is his thing. A translator.

GM: So your family always got a kick out of watching you perform through the years and get famous?
EI: Not hugely. I mean, initially there was a distinct resistance. My dad was always kind of cool on it. My step-mother was less into it. And I was doing accounting and financial management so, ‘Do that, don’t do this. It’s crazy.’ And it wasn’t working, either. But once it started working, then everything’s been fine. And dad was always saying, ‘As long as you’re happy.’ And now my step-mother’s happy about it as well.

GM: You travel all over the world. Do you get to spend any quality time anywhere or is it all hotel rooms and onto the next place?
EI: It’s a little bit of hotel rooms and stuff, but we do try and do things in different towns and cities and look first at the history. I’m a big history buff so I do like looking into big chunks of history lying about the place. In Boston we were doing tours of Lexington and Concord. I was just saying to my promoter in America I’d like to play Gettysburg. He said, ‘I’ll look into it. I’ll find a venue.’ So that would be great. And we visited Shiloh when we were going down past Nashville. So I like looking around. The Eastern European countries are great to visit because there’s so much of that, hundreds of years of history.

GM: Not as much history in Vancouver. But you’ve got two nights here so you’ve got to get out at some point.
EI: Yes, I have to get in that speed boat and go up the river and visit those places that you can do. You’ve got speed boats.

GM: You did that in the ‘90s here, didn’t you?
EI: Yes, I know. I like doing it. It’s like the thing I do because I just can’t believe that you can say, ‘Yeah, I can drive a speed boat.’ ‘Okay, get in. Off you go.’ It just seems so weird. Because we have rowing boats in England and you have to say, ‘Can you row a rowing boat? Yes, I can. Alright.’ ‘Pedalo. Can you do a pedalo? Yeah, I can do that. Alright, you can go in that duck pond.’ Whereas in Vancouver you can say yes you can go in this huge river.

GM: It’s the ocean.
EI: Yeah, the one I went up was a river.

GM: Well don’t fall in like you did in Lake Ontario.
EI: No. Well, that was more just the rip tide pulling me back out. I was dragged out of the water. I screamed help. And initially I was thinking I can’t say help because of British embarrassment. It’s too embarrassing to say help. And then I was like, ‘Nope. Fucking help!’

GM: Yeah, it’s too hack to yell help.
EI: Now I think it’s funny. Not funny, but it was true. I was not in a good place and I was dragged out of the water.

GM: Did you keep in contact with that girl through the years?
EI: With the family. There was a gap and then I came back and started playing Canada and filming in Canada. And I’ve been in touch with them ever since. Me and my brother went back I think it was two years ago. We went back to the house up in Cambleford north of Belleville and we all hung out there. My brother brought his kids. So it was great. And they’re coming to the show on Friday.

Marion Grodin

"I still run into that – ‘Oh, she’s Charles Grodin’s daughter' – and I’m 53 now. It’s like, well, I am and I’m very proud of it and I’m very proud of him but it’s kind of like after that it should be … 'but mostly she’s her own person.'"

– Marion Grodin

Guy MacPherson: Where are you off to?
Marion Grodin: Oh, who knows, Guy? At this point, I just go where they tell me. It’s been such a hectic and great tour. I actually wake up in one state, I fly to some other state, often with multiple connections and different time zones. It’s been crazy but it’s awesome. All the events have been phenomenal, I have to say. We Jews are a fabulous lot.

GM: Are they all Jewish-related events?
MG: I’m on a Jewish book tour for the Jewish Book Council. Obviously the book is for everybody completely, but I got this book tour through the Jewish Book Council that meets in New York City I guess annually at the Hebrew College. A lot of them talk about very heavy subject matter, and while I have very deep stuff in my book, I’m a comic. So I got up and in my two minutes allotted just crushed. So I got a lot of bookings.

GM: Tell me a bit about what we can expect when you come here to Vancouver. You’ll obviously be talking about the book but will you be doing standup?
MG: I do standup. It’s not heavy-handed at all; it’s comedy. I think what’s amazing is, I’m doing a solid 30, 40 minutes of standup comedy and I’m a headlining comedian so I think they’re getting something that’s extremely unusual and phenomenal. People are having a great time. Basically I get up and I walk the room and do standup. I talk about the book and I do a very extensive Q&A so that it can be inclusive of the more substantive stuff in the book. You know, I’ve been through a lot of stuff, I’m a breast cancer survivor for ten years, I’m sober 25 years, gone through divorce and a bunch of stuff that people and women and people in general are relating with. So there’s more opportunity to get into that after the standup when I talk about the book and open it up to Q&A.

GM: So that’s what you’ll be doing here in Vancouver?
MG: Correct, yes. So people should come out and have a lot of laughs. I mean, I can’t even believe I’m going to Vancouver. It’s so amazing.

GM: Did you know we had Jews here?
MG: No, I didn’t! Not until I got booked. I’m hoping for more than one or two. That’s what I’m saying: Please tell the Jews in your article that I’m a New York City Jew. Where aren’t we? We’re everywhere. So I need Vancouver to have a really good showing to show this New York City Jew that Vancouver represents.

GM: You know Seth Rogan is a Vancouver Jew?
MG: I did not know that! I didn’t know that.

GM: Yeah. In fact, maybe his parents will be at your show.
MG: Well, I would love that. I would love to meet Mr. And Mrs. Rogan. In fact, maybe we can invite them in the article. But yeah, it’s going to be an awesome time. I’ll rock the house. We’ll have big, big laughs. And then I’ll also talk briefly about the book and open it up to Q&A, like I said where there’s more of an individual personal opportunity. A lot of people when we do the Q&A will say, you know, ‘I was just diagnosed with breast cancer,’ ‘I’m going through divorce.’ It’s an opportunity for a lot of wonderful connection and people to share about their own experiences with some of what’s in the book. There’s something for everybody.

GM: Or maybe ‘I am the child of a celebrity, too.’
MG: That hardly ever happens. It hasn’t happened but I would welcome it because there’s also that aspect of the book where I talk about growing up with a ridiculously charismatic, larger-than-life famous father who I didn’t grow up living with so it created a whole bunch of stuff, like longing for the parent who wasn’t there. It probably set up a lot of unrequitedness so I didn’t always make the best choices with men. I say in my talks that when you grow up with a famous parent, as a child there’s a very strange phenomenon where you feel like you’re famous, too. And it’s kind of a wildly rude awakening to discover that you’re not. And that you have to discover your own specialness and then go ahead and put that into the world. And so I write about that, I think very poignantly. There’s a line in the book where I got to the point where I realized even if my coat was raggedy, I had to rely on my own coat rather than be on someone else’s coat tails no matter how sparkly theirs were. By the way, just to say, I don’t think it’s unique to famous kids. I mean, I think there is a phenomenon with celebrity parents but I also think that’s universal for a lot of us. For whatever reason, having to grow up and understand that you really have to rely on yourself. For some people it’s the parents, for some people it’s their spouse. But I don’t think it’s a completely unique thing to celebrity children.

GM: Sure. Everyone’s parents are larger than life and a celebrity to the kid.
MG: That’s right.

GM: So they have to get out from under that shadow.
MG: And there’s also a lot in the book, just piggy-backing on what you just said, about co-dependancy. For a lot of us, I think this is very universal, the process of evolving into your own identity and feeling your own sense of mattering, your own sense of specialness, and trusting that instead of affixing to someone else’s. Just to get referred to your whole life, and I still run into that – ‘Oh, she’s Charles Grodin’s daughter' – and I’m 53 now. It’s like, well, I am and I’m very proud of it and I’m very proud of him but it’s kind of like after that it should be dot, dot, dot… 'but mostly she’s her own person.'

GM: I’m interested in your start in standup comedy in New York and when that was and who you came up with.
MG: Absolutely. When I was in my 20s, I hit a very, very severe bottom with drugs and alcohol. I got sobered up and my mother died. It was just a horrendous time in my life. I ended up getting sober and after I got sober, I met my husband, I got married and I knew I was a comic but I was terrified to, as the title says, stand up. I was terrified to stand up in my own life. I was very enmeshed with my father. I was very enmeshed with my husband. There’s the whole journey of my marriage in the book, which is very much about co-dependency. There was a lot of love but severe, severe co-dependency that really wrecked the marriage in a lot of ways ultimately. So after a few years of living in my father’s shadow – I was working on his show on MSNBC and I was a producer and I was mostly behind the scenes. Sometimes he’d have me on the show but mostly not. I mean, he wanted to, just, you know, if he had Seinfeld on as a guest, I wasn’t going to pop in and make an appearance. And after a few years of this, I was very depressed. I realized that I had this job and I had health insurance and I had a husband, but I realized I was depressed because my own light wasn’t really shining. And I was sitting in the studio one day and I was watching my father interview Sarah Jessica Parker, who was very much shining in her own light. She was so talented and so sparkly charismatic and just living in the joy of her immense talent and success. And there I was sitting in the dark audience, just me and a few other people. We’d go down to the studio at MSNBC, we’d tape, and we’d provide a little audience, and I thought, ‘Why am I cheering on everybody else’s business and neglecting and abandoning my own?’ So I quit the show, which was fairly radical because I didn’t have another job, and I went down the street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan twenty-plus years ago to Stand-up New York, which is still one of my home base clubs on 78th and Broadway. And in order to get up, you had to bring people. So I made my husband and my two best friends come down. You get five minutes. And I killed. I mean, I got huge laughs. I found it to be extraordinarily nerve-wracking, upsetting experience because I’m very self-revealing and it left me just feeling incredibly vulnerable and weird and naked. My father was waiting by the phone. After the thing everybody was, ‘Great, great, great.’ I was in like an altered state. And I went outside and called my dad. He went, ‘How did it go?’ I said, ‘Well, I got a lot of laughs but I sure hope my experience changes.’ He said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘Well, I thought like I was going to shit and have a heart attack but aside from that it was great.’ I mean, don’t quote the ‘shit’ part. That’s kind of raw. I mean, say whatever you want; I don’t care. I don’t care. I mean, that is how I felt. And I had to just keep getting up in order to get over feeling shell-shocked. Even though I was a huge performer in life, it was another thing to get on stage. And that experience left me and I’ve been doing it ever since. I think what really changes is your confidence and your comfort. When you’ve been doing it a long time, it just evolves to a place where sometimes you’re more comfortable on stage than off.

GM: So that feeling of panic left shortly after that?
MG: It didn’t leave quick enough. Definitely the first year of doing standup or even longer than that it’s pretty nerve-jangling. I think part of what changed was also in order to get up in New York City and perform, you had to do bringers. You had to bring people. That was the way the club would make money. Why would they put you, an amateur, on stage? No one’s coming to see you. So after doing bringers for a while, I thought this is just shit. I have to, like, everybody I’ve ever met. I have to join a cult. Where am I supposed to get these people from? I instituted my own show at the Duplex, which is an iconic spot in the Village where Joan Rivers and all these amazing people used to get up, and still get up, on Christopher Street and 7thAvenue South. I started my own show. We had to flyer to get an audience. Everybody who was on that show went on and did very well. It was a very hot group of people. People who’ve gone on to write books and had shows. In that group was the phenomenal Jessica Kirson, she’s amazing. Karen Bergreen, who went on to write a couple books. Demetri Martin, of course, who went on to have his own show. My friend Danny Cohen. Some people you’ve heard of, some people you haven’t. But everybody was really talented and we got amazing guests to come down. Great New York comics like Ted Alexandro, Judy Gold. And I basically, through having to get up, my friend that I co-ran the show with, Becky Donahue, the first night she saw me have to take care of myself on stage with a heckler and come out from behind the dialogue, she said, ‘Oh my God.’ I was like, ‘What?’ That basically gave birth to my style on stage, which is that I love improv. As with most things in life, it came about from a difficult experience because I was getting heckled and I had to defend myself.

GM: The street fighter came out in you.
MG: Completely. I mean, I’m a Jewish girl who went to public school. That survivor came up in me that was like, ‘Fuck you!’ It was this Spanish woman and she was like, ‘Why you talking to me? You don’t even have jokes? I have to write your jokes for you?’ And then she started attacking what I was wearing. She was like, ‘Slut, your clothes is crinkly. You couldn’t even iron?’ And after that night, something in me snapped and I was like, I will never let that happen again. And I haven’t. I love improv. And Judy Gold said, and she’s right, ‘You have to know two things when you’re a comic, and especially as a woman: You have to know who you are on stage, and you have to let them know that you are in control.’

GM: It’s amazing that exchange you had with that woman stays with you after all these years.
MG: Well, yeah. Because it was such a shift. Up to then I had been doing written material and it would go great or well enough, but I discovered I had this power which I’d been doing my whole life, which is why everybody in my life always thought I was so hilarious, just riffing. Just being in a situation and just riffing. Just going off whatever they were giving me. And that’s what I do on the book tour and people love it. I definitely do material but I also go into the audience and have fun with them, which they love because it’s immediate and it’s happening in real time, they’re involved. I can’t wait. I’ve never been there and everyone says how beautiful it is.

GM: You’ve got this brash style yet your dad was pretty subdued in his humour.
MG: Right, dry and understated. I have that, too. When you watch me do longer time. I am very edgy. I call what I do ‘edgy affection.’ Because I’m very affectionate with the audience but it’s comedy so irreverent is ground zero. I mean, of course you’re going to be irreverent. But people say this all the time when they see me live, I’m a lot like him. First of all, I look a lot like him. I also have a very dry, acerbic thing that I do and I look so much like him and I have mannerism like him. In fact yesterday I was in Virginia doing the JCC there and I was rounding the corner and a man who worked there stopped dead in his tracks and he looked at me and went, ‘Woah!’ I had no idea what he was going to say. And I’d never had this happen. He said it’s unbelievable. I was like, ‘What?’ He goes, ‘You look exactly like your father.’ I’m my version, he’s his version. But you’ll see. Hopefully you’re coming to the show. Are you coming to the show?

GM: I hope so.
MG: That’d be great. I’d love to meet you.

GM: Your dad was a serious actor first then did some comedies. But I first really noticed his comedy chops on Carson.
MG: He was under contract with Carson. That character was so impactful that Johnny Carson had my dad under contract to him, which was a huge compliment after he did The Heartbreak Kid. That whole acerbic sort of antagonistic, eccentric personality that he also became famous for on Letterman. People were just floored by it. It’s interesting because there’s a similarity between he and I because ultimately of course he has a good heart but he’s doing this thing where he’s completely giving you shit and that’s sort of similar to my thing on stage, too. So there is similarity there. I suspect if he were a comic, there’d be a lot of similarity because the whole thing he got famous for was being difficult. In essence when I’m on stage I’m giving the audience a hard time. I’m being difficult except that’s my job.

GM: Yeah, that persona isn’t foreign to comedy clubs but nobody had seen people act that way toward Carson before.
MG: I can’t even think of anyone who did or has. He was so ballsy. I can’t to this day even think of anyone who would come on and look at these iconic and beloved comic talk show hosts and say things like, ‘You don’t care about whether or not I have children. Why are you asking me that?’ It was so explosively funny. Talk about challenging authority to say that to somebody like Johnny Carson.

GM: I guess some people might have thought he was serious, but we saw what he was doing and there was respect and admiration there.
MG: I would go to school and he was so convincing. I’m getting high and smoking pot as a young teenager and I go to school and there was this one kid, Jesse, who was constantly challenging me, saying, ‘Why is your father so hateful to Johnny Carson?’ Or ‘Why did your father give Mia Farrow back to the devil in Rosemary’s Baby.’ Or ‘Why did your father leave his Jewish wife on their honeymoon for ashiksa?’ I’m like, ‘What is wrong with you? He’s not a documentary film maker.’ They’re crazy. He went on Carson talking about washing his cheese because he’s germophobic. I mean, no more than I am or most people. But he was joking. And Carson said, ‘You wash your cheese?’ The two of them, their timing and delivery were so impeccable it was so phenomenal, the next day everybody single person couldn’t wait to ask me if he washed his cheese. I couldn’t get over it. I was like, ‘Yeah, he’s washing his gouda. He’s home laundering his cheese.’ But it’s funny because I’m such a germophobe that I’m more likely to wash my cheese.

GM: I don’t know if it’s because I’m not Jewish and live on the west coast of Canada, but I never even knew Charles Grodin was Jewish.
MG: People don’t think he looks Jewish. And in the most stereotypical way he does not. And I don’t either. But we’re Ashkenazi. My grandmother, who was so Jewish, you wouldn’t know it until she opened her mouth and then you could not know it. She had blond hair and light skin and blue eyes. But it’s like anywhere. You can go to Italy and see people that look like that and you think they don’t look Italian. One of my favourite chapters in the book, which I’m dying for you to read, is I’m trying to lose weight, I’m fasting and I fly to Texas and it turns out I have landed inadvertently in a little pocket of anti-Semitism. And one of the things that happens is I get confronted by a woman at one point who said, ‘We didn’t know you were Jewish. You don’t look Jewish.’ And that really happened. It’s so offensive. I understand that, but to actually say that to somebody… I mean, are you going to say to a light-skinned black person, ‘You don’t look black’? I mean, it’s ridiculous. But I don’t mind you saying it but they were anti-Semites. But the minute I open my mouth, everybody knows I’m Jewish.

GM: I can’t believe his MSNBC show was twenty years ago.
MG: It’s crazy. Yeah, it was. Because I was newly with my husband and fairly newly sober. People loved it because it was super left to the left to the left. It was amazing. I was the field producer and I’d do these man-on-the-street interviews. I’d go out on the street during the OJ trial and all I had to do was constantly go up to black and white people and ask the if they thought OJ did it. It was ridiculous and not what I wanted to be doing. But it also helped me become a comic because I just thought I can’t ask one more person if they think OJ did it or I’ll kill myself. I didn’t give a shit if they thought OJ did it. It was like, what about my life? I wasn’t standing up in my own life. I was off to the side of my own life. And it felt bad, especially if you’re an artist and you’re not really pursuing your art. It feels lousy because you know you’re in the wrong life. You’re supposed to be painting and you’re not painting, you’re whatever, cleaning toilets. Nothing against cleaning toilets but it’s very depressing because you know your light isn’t shining.

GM: When did you write the book?
MG: I wrote the book a little over two years ago. I got a book deal because I was headlining Gotham Comedy Club and my publicist at the time invited columnist Cyndi Adams, who was blown away by me and devoted her entire column to telling people this girl should have a show, she’s unbelievable and blah, blah, blah. But she brought her very dear friend, who’s a huge literary agent and she took me on as a client and said, ‘That girl should write a book.’ I went into her office the next day, I performed my entire story in about 45 minutes. Everybody laughed and cried and at the end of it she said, ‘Where do I send the contract?’ The rest is history.

GM: What was the process?
MG: The process was excruciating and laborious and arduous and challenging on levels I had never experienced, as well as exhilarating and thrilling and gratifying and nourishing. It was just the most monumental, mighty process because the book is outstanding for it to be at the level it’s at, it took so much writing and rewriting and oftentimes having to hang in there with material that was really difficult. I led a monastic existence. I didn’t have a social life. I had to stop every form of how I earned money because I just needed the time to write. I couldn’t take a road gig and be gone for four days because that was valuable writing time. It was just an enormous opportunity and it had to be fantastic. And it is. I basically wrote in Starbucks and this cool vegan restaurant near my house. There was just a lot of writing and rewriting. The first draft of the book was twice as long. I have a really great editor. We worked meticulously. I’m just thrilled with what it yielded. The book is fantastic. I really just devoted myself to it and frankly, given more time I would have taken more time. I wouldn’t have needed it but it’s hard if you’re a perfectionist. At a certain point it’s diminishing returns. You’re not even making anything better; you just can’t leave it alone. It’s miraculous that at some point it’s done and it goes to print and it’s out there. And people are just loving it. I mean, deeply loving it.

GM: And is your dad? I read the funny quote he had on it.
MG: Yeah, he thinks it’s amazing. Interestingly, and uncommonly, my father is and has always been my biggest champion. He sees my talent completely, believes in my talent completely. He’s just proud of me. He thinks I’m a fantastic writer and all of that. I mean, he comes off great in the book. A friend of mine at one point actually referred to it as a tell-all, and I was like, ‘That’s ridiculous.’ It’s just not who I am. I confess so much about myself in this book but in terms of other people’s stuff, which everyone has, I’m not going to divulge that, about my ex-husband or my father. That’s not mine to do.

GM: It’s not a Daddy Dearest.
MG: No! You sell more books and then your father never speaks to you again. I’m not in touch with my ex-husband so it wouldn’t be a matter of him not speaking to me – we’re not in touch, not contentiously; we’re just not in touch – but I certainly wouldn’t want him to read it and feel like, ‘Oh my God, I wish she hadn’t said that or revealed that about me to the world.’ I mean, if I want to reveal stuff about myself, I can. And you draw your own conclusions. I mean, I don’t have to say that it was fucking horrible that he left after 16 years while I was still going through breast cancer treatment. I don’t have to say those words. You’re gonna read it and draw your own conclusion. The problem is if you vilify someone or you state the obvious… I don’t know. It felt base to me. I just didn’t want to do it. And things are complicated. I just told the truth in this book. I didn’t really make a lot of determinations or judgments, quote-unquote. I just really told the truth. My therapist gave me a very big compliment. She said, ‘the thing I like most about this book is it’s so frank.’ Like, it’s just no bullshit. But it’s also deeply funny and moving.

GM: Sounds like a winner.
MG: It’s a winner. It is! (laughs) I can’t wait to meet you.

GM: Likewise. What’s your dad doing now?
MG: He’s doing great. For the last chunk of years he’s been very devoted to working with things like the Innocence Project and is trying to and succeeding in getting people out of jail and in particular women of colour who shouldn’t be there or not as long as they are. He’s actually succeeded in getting a number of women out of prison, which is unbelievable. He does a lot of philanthropic work. He’s always writing, he’s always got a book. He had a book come out recently, I don’t even know the title of it. He’s very prolific so I don’t know the title of this one. But he’s also back in movies, which I think is fantastic because he’s so beloved by his fans. He’s actually coming out playing Al Pacino’s agent in the new Barry Levinson movie, so I’m sure that’ll be hilarious. He’s also playing Ben Stiller’s father-in-law in the new Ben Stiller film. He plays Naomi Watts’ father. And he’s also Michael J. Fox’s father on the Michael J. Fox show and will be seen on the Thanksgiving episode. So he’s definitely back. So that’s great. People love him and they miss him. He just did a Law & Order: SVU, which is very weird because he’s a comedic actor. But he’s a great dramatic actor. He’s playing a very serious role. But yeah, he’s on CBS radio multiple times a day and he also does an online article. He’s devoted one to my book, which is really really nice. He’s done a couple of things for the book.

GM: That’s great to hear. I didn’t know all that. I gotta get a copy of your book.
MG: You most definitely do. And you have to come to the show so I can sign it for you and thank you so much for your time.

GM: Definitely. Thank you very much.
MG: I wasn’t ending the phone call. I mean, if we’re ending it, it’s fine but I meant thank you for your time in the book.

GM: No, I think I got lots here. And we have to save some for the radio/podcast.
MG: Oh, believe me, there’s more where that came from. I never run out of stuff.

GM: Excellent.
MG: Okay, honey, thank you.

Orny Adams

"I think the one thing that has changed – and I think that being in Teen Wolf has given me great confidence in the sense of carried over into my stage act – is I feel very comfortable up there. I feel like what I’m doing is an extension of myself. I feel as I’ve gotten older I understand myself and I feel more connected to my material. I hope that comes through."

– Orny Adams

Guy MacPherson: Good morning, Orny.
Orny Adams: Hang on a sec. There’s gotta be a thing, an option, when the phone rings it mutes the TV. I shouldn’t have to run around the hotel room looking for the remote.

GM: (laughs) Throw a shoe at it.
OA: (laughs) You know, the other day the alarm went off in the middle of the night. I always say they need to make sure the alarm is off when people check out. I was up at 4 a.m. I hit it. I slap it. It goes off again 15 minutes later. I don’t have the time to figure this out, right? Unplug it! That’s usually game over. It’s got batteries in it! Okay? Now it goes off again! I get up, I open the door, and I throw it in the hall.

GM: So everyone can enjoy it.
OA: Get on that, hotel! I would have put it in the elevator. If I really thought about it, I would have put it in the elevator. That would have been funny.

GM: Yeah, those things are impossible to figure out, let alone in the middle of the night when you’ve just woken up.
OA: You’re like, “What is going on?” It’s just beeping.

GM: So how are you?
OA: I’m great.

GM: How’s Canada treating you?
OA: Canada’s great.

GM: Prior to this, I know you played Montreal, but had you played much in the rest of Canada?
OA: Winnipeg, Edmonton, Toronto. I did a whole tour of Ontario for Just For Laughs. I did the maritimes last year for Just For Laughs.

GM: You’re a veteran then.
OA: Yeah, I feel very comfortable up here. I do a lot of one-off shows up here: fly in, do a show, get out.

GM: Yet you’ve never done Vancouver.
OA: I’ve never been in my life. I’m excited about that. I love Seattle, so I feel it’s a similar cli-… climate. I almost said ‘clientele.’ So yeah, I’m excited about my first trip to Vancouver.

GM: It’s an oversight. You’ve played all these places but not Vancouver.
OA: I’ve never played San Francisco. Sometimes it’s just, for whatever reason in this lifetime it doesn’t happen.

GM: You’ve been at this how many years now?
OA: I’m gonna say twenty.

GM: Are you going to say it? Is it true?
OA: (laughs) I’m not going to back it up! Uh, I know I graduated from college in 1993.

GM: And that’s twenty years.
OA: Yeah, so that feels like twenty years.

GM: And no San Francisco. Yeah, that’s weird.
OA: For whatever reason, and yet it just seems like San Francisco would be a perfect market for me. But this is life.

GM: Now you’re busy being a football coach.
OA: No, lacrosse.

GM: Is it lacrosse?
OA: It is lacrosse.

GM: Well, who’s a lacrosse coach?
OA: Not me! That’s why they have a guy standing next to me telling me what a lacrosse coach would say.

GM: I gotta admit, I haven’t seen Teen Wolf but I saw the reel on you and it looked to me like football. That’s how out of it I am.
OA: (laughs) That should be the first line in the article, that you can’t tell the difference between lacrosse and football. In football, they don’t carry sticks. It’s a very aggressive sport that is sexually charged, that I’ve read.

GM: That nobody goes to.
OA: I still don’t know the rules, though. But I don’t think that’s important. I think you’ve seen the acting. I don’t need to know the rules.

GM: I imagine a lot of the fans of the show don’t even know you’re a standup comic.
OA: Yes.

GM: How does that make you feel?
OA: I don’t know who to blame: myself or MTV. I do wish that they would utilize those skills a little bit more in, I don’t know, going out to Comic-Con or hosting after-show stuff. This is my life.

GM: What’s the age demographic for the show?
OA: I’d say 12 years old and up. You’d be surprised: there are a lot of older people that are like comic book freaks. They get really into this show. And these fans are so hard core and so loving and generous. They come to my shows, the ones that do know, with pictures that they’ve drawn or engraved whistles or T-shirts they’ve made, baked goods for me. And on Twitter, nothing but positivity. And that to me is so different than a lot of my experiences with comedy audiences, which can be brutal.

GM: Not as kind and loving?
OA: Some of them are outstanding. I would say the majority are kind and loving but there are some comedy police out there that feel like they need to weigh in. In some cases it might be good, and in other cases it’s detrimental.

GM: Oh yeah, the comedy police love factions: this group is cool; this group isn’t. It’s kinda like high school.
OA: Oh, it’s worse than high school. High school was fun.

GM: But it’s that type of thing, right? You can do no wrong unless you’re outside the group, then you’re lousy.
OA: Yeah, I’ve always felt like I’m a comedy outsider. I’ve always felt like I wasn’t part of any group. And I never wanted to be part of a group; I just wanted to do my work and do good work and then go home. I mean, even after these shows, a lot of the comics socialize and go out for dinner. I tend to go back to the hotel room and get into my head and look at my notes and figure out what I did that I’m happy about and what didn’t go the way I wanted it to go. I feel very raw when I’m on stage so it’s hard for me to sort of shake that immediately. And I think maybe this is something I’m more aware of now that I wasn’t earlier on in my career and why I wasn’t so social. And I think absolutely not being part of a group has hurt my career in many ways.

GM: So still after twenty years you’re going back and checking the notes. Do you record the shows?
OA: Yeah, I record the shows, I have notes laid out before the show. You know, it’s just part of my process. It’s what makes me feel at ease. The more prepared I feel, the better show I’m going to put on. My entire day is about preparation for the show. I’ve never been the type who’s gone golfing. Sometimes I go to museums and stuff like that but for the most part I’m in my head getting ready for the show.

GM: We saw some of that in Comedian. Are you still essentially that guy even after all this time, insecure or obsessive?
OA: I wouldn’t call myself insecure. I would say I have a need to be loved and appreciated. And I think one of the greatest differences between Orny Adams pre-Comedian and current Orny Adams is I don’t feel the need to announce or proclaim my comedy to be anything great. I don’t enjoy talking about the art of standup comedy or the process. I do a lot of interviews and they want to know what my process is because of Comedian and I don’t think it really matters. I mean, I could sit down and I could go over for two hours what it takes for me to go up on stage but none of that is relevant. All that matters is when I step on that stage, the audience thinks I’m funny and when I step off the stage they still think I’m funny. Everything else is really not important. And the more aware I’ve become since Comedian when I watch actors or musicians, or any sort of person that’s expressing themselves, talk about what they do in this sort of mighty, exalting their art form, it just comes across as so pompous and off-putting. So for me, in Comedian I really felt like maybe standup comedy is something really special and people that are doing it right really deserve some sort of special recognition. I know people like to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and stare at paintings and go to museums all over the world and look at a Renoir and say, “Look at the strokes he used and the paint colour for mood” and try to get into his brain. I wish comedy was respected on that level but it just isn’t. And it’s not my duty to sort of be the spokesman about it. I just want you to look at me on stage and think, “He’s funny. That’s clever. I’m enjoying what he’s doing.”

GM: Well if you ever played Vancouver, we could have done that.
OA: (laughs) I’ll be there in a few days and I hope you’ll come out to the show.

GM: I’m less interested in the process, too. Especially now with reality TV we see how some people get a bad edit. I’m wondering about how you felt about your edit in that movie. The critics painted you as the antagonist or somebody set up against Seinfeld, who was the hero.
OA: Seinfeld was an executive producer on this documentary. I think he was in a better position to protect his interest. I know that there was an earlier version that I saw that I liked better where there was more of my humour in there, more of my jokes, and more balance to me. But listen, this is what I signed up for, unbeknownst to me. I was unaware. This is before reality television took off and I can see how things are edited. You know, I did it, it’s out there, I’m not embarrassed, I’m proud of everything I’ve done. We’re gonna get knocked down, and that’s beautiful; the question is how do I get up and how do I handle it. And I think being in Comedian has made me a stronger comedian, which is really what I want in the end.

GM: In the movie you seemed to really want the fame. Maybe every comedian does, but you were more out there with it. But it’s funny, if you had hit back then like you wanted to, we might not be talking today.
OA: Absolutely not. My act wouldn’t be where it’s at and I definitely wasn’t ready. And who knows if I’m ever going to be ready? Somebody asked the other day if I’ve finally found my voice and I said, “No. And I hope I never do find it.” Because the minute you find your voice, it’s over. It’s over. You have to keep searching. Like Leonard Cohen, 78 years old and he’s singing that song Halleluhah like it’s pouring out of his heart and soul and it’s unlike any other way he’s ever sung it. It’s like, this guy’s really found himself and it took until he was 78 years old. And it’s beautiful in that he kept going. You know, I think a lot of people would be surprised how privately supportive Jerry Seinfeld is of my standup comedy. I think that’s the one thing I wish was more clear. Not that I need his validation but the fact that people think that Seinfeld was against me. He’s not against me. He’s a huge supporter and he’s said, “Listen, everything you’ve said on tape, I’ve said before; I just never got caught.” And after my last Comedy Central special aired, called me and went over almost every bit, was excited to talk about it, and said, “I’m proud that our names are linked forever.”

GM: Talking about factions in comedy, there’s a popular young comic in Vancouver who’s laid back and alternative. He was in Montreal and saw you and was blown away, you’re this powerhouse on stage.

OA: Huh. That’s really kind. Where was that?

GM: Montreal. At Just For Laughs. Not sure if it was this year or last year.
OA: I was there last year and the year before.

GM: I think it was last year then.
OA: Yeah. You know, the one thing I’m not good at is handling compliments. It’s the one time I’m sort of like, you know… I guess I’m so used to being kicked down and I’m so used to fighting back that when somebody compliments me, I don’t even know what to say. So that’s very touching. Thank him for me, please.

GM: I’ll just insult you from now on.
OA: (laughs) It’s easier for me to just … Like Seinfeld said, “When I watch you do standup, it’s as if they cut off all your oxygen and you had to fight your way out.”

GM: I saw you on The Tonight Show say, “The next five minutes will determine my mood for the next five months.” An exaggeration probably but talking to enough comedians it always surprises me how one show can really bum them out. To me, if you know the material works with most crowds, so what if you have a lousy audience one time. Why does it stick with you?
OA: Because we work so hard and here we are in front of five million people. We want it to work right. And there are so many circumstances that are just foreign to us. You know, you’re coming back from a commercial, you’ve got some guy out there throwing t-shirts or whatever it is. You know, you just want it to work. Take surfers: They surf every day. They catch waves. But sometimes you catch that perfect wave and you take it all the way to shore. And that’s what you want your comedy to be like.

GM: And you don’t want to be sucked under.
OA: No, you don’t. And you don’t want to catch half the wave. Some nights you catch half the wave. I think the one thing that has changed – and I think that being in Teen Wolf has given me great confidence in the sense of carried over into my stage act – is I feel very comfortable up there. I feel like what I’m doing is an extension of myself. I feel as I’ve gotten older I understand myself and I feel more connected to my material. I hope that comes through. What’s interesting about what you said about that young comedian that sounds like is more alternative, is that he related to my act, which is really high energy and really over the top. Because I would study the Rolling Stones and Mick Jagger and I thought you could say, “Meh, I don’t like that music,” but you have to admit something’s going on up there. And I like the spectacle. I like to put on a show. The other night I came so close – this is gonna sound crazy – but I came so close in Ottawa to doing the show with my shoes off. Barefoot. And I can’t tell you why except, well, it was my birthday and I just wanted to be connected to the stage that much.

GM: Like a drummer.
OA: I don’t know what it was. I just felt like, and I thought, “I wish I had the courage.” Everybody back stage was saying, “Don’t do it. This is one of the biggest theatres we’re going to play. Do it in a smaller theatre.” But then it might feel forced. When I’m on stage, I do whatever I want to do. I have that freedom. I don’t have that freedom off-stage, I don’t have it in Teen Wolf, I don’t have it in relationships, but when I’m on stage, I feel a sense of control and I really enjoy the output of what I’m saying and connecting to people.

GM: Are you in a relationship?
OA: No.

GM: Okay. Because it must be hard.
OA: It’s difficult. And as you get older, it becomes more difficult. But I will eventually, I think, when it’s time.

"I’ve always felt like I’m a comedy outsider. I’ve always felt like I wasn’t part of any group. And I never wanted to be part of a group; I just wanted to do my work and do good work and then go home."

– Orny Adams

GM: Did you meet Obama? He was on The Tonight Show right before you.
OA: I did and I was so stupid. I tried to entertain him rather than just having a moment. I told him that I’m from Massachussetts. I said, “I’m so liberal, I’m actually for gaystem cell research.” Because those were the big topics at the time: stem cell research and gay marriage. I’ll tell you something: you can see why these people are successful. They just know how to look you in the eye, they know how to make you feel special in that moment. It’s quite a skill. I’m the complete opposite. I can be quiet and upset people. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what my energy is. At some point I’ll figure it out and I will discuss it on stage. But I have noticed, you know, I can be quiet and it upsets people.

GM: Were you quiet before you were in comedy? Because I picture you as being the class clown, a cut-up.
OA: I was more obnoxious than anything else. But some things still carry on. I got great grades and it just upset the teachers that they had to give me A’s. To this day I still like going after authority in that sense. I go after MTV on Twitter, I go after them in articles. Letterman would do it. He’d go after the network.

GM: Sure, yeah. And Carson would do it.
OA: Yeah, and I think that it’s all in good fun. I like to poke in that sense, cause a little bit of trouble. I don’t like when everything is going right in life. It makes me very suspicious. All the lights are green going home, I go, “Uh-oh, this is a sign. Something’s coming!” Conflict to me is good. When things are so good I always think it’s not going to last. My life is not meant to be this smooth.

GM: I see you studied philosophy in college. Is that an interest of yours or just something to study in school?
OA: I think I signed up for classes too late so I had to take a philosophy class. The books were cheap. But then I really got into it. I really like examining life and human nature. My dad was a philosophy major at Brown. I sort of got into it by accident but it really was right for me. I like to examine human nature like most comedians or most people that are – I hate to say artists , but expressing themselves. I’m fascinated by what moves people. I’m fascinated as a species we can run into burning buildings and save people and it’s the same species that goes into schools and shoots people.

GM: You’re a thinker.
OA: I am what I am.

GM: I studied philosophy, too. I don’t really know much about it but I love it.
OA: Yeah. I remember Descartes. All these guys. And still the books that I read are very on that level. Examining. Examining. And then you bring it into comedy as much as you can. The psychology of life, the philosophy of life. If I could talk about what I really wanted to talk about, that’s when I know I’ll have arrived, when I can talk about the things that… you know, more metaphysical, which can’t be discussed now. It’s too scary.

GM: On stage or anywhere?
OA: I think any time you talk about mortality, any time you talk about abstract subjects… I have an 8-minute bit right now on time, how abstract time is. And yet, at the same time – it’s hard to say the bit without saying ‘time’ because ‘time’ is the most used noun in the English language – it’s also the only thing we human beings agree on! You go anywhere in the world, you go, ‘What time is it?’ ‘I don’t speak your time. I speak a different time.’ We agree on time and the universal headphone jack. Those are the only two things in the world we agree on! And it goes on and on and on. It’s very George Carlinesque. It uses phrases: Time will tell, time heals all wounds, there’s no time like the present, if you have spare time you have time to kill but if you do kill you’ll do time, it might even be a hard time, a rough time, then you’re away for a while and it’s long time no see. It goes on and on and on like that for six minutes.

GM: So you’re close to talking about metaphysical stuff if you can find a way to make it palatable to the masses.
OA:  Yes, that’s the goal.  That’s a great point you bring up. The goal is to talk about important things or things that are important to you, like the third amendment to the constitution, which was my last special, and make it accessible. That doesn’t mean taking the low road, that doesn’t mean adding swears or making it more about sex. But making it so it touches everybody on a human level. I’m fascinated by things like how is Greenland not a continent? Do they have a horrible continent lobbyist? It’s almost as big as North America! They call it an island. Japan’s an island! So these sorts of things, you know, continental drift, this is what fascinates me. To me, it’s personal. I’m starting to do stuff on Stephen Hawking and aliens but I do it only in the hour when I can wrap it around the stuff that I know is gonna work with high energy. And then within the hour I’ll sit down on a stool. That’s my only contention with this tour: we’re doing twenty minutes and I go out there and it’s from start to finish it’s one level for the most part. I bring it down a little, sitting on a chair talking for a second, but then I gotta build it back up. I just don’t have the time to play with the nuances, the ebbs and flows, bringing it up and down like a symphony. That’s my only thing about the difficulty of doing twenty minutes. In the hour, I’m going to get into Stephen Hawkings and continents and aliens and stuff like that, that I think is ripe.

GM: There’s that word again: you just don’t have the ‘time’. You know who else is really into metaphysics? Tim Allen.
OA: Oh, really? I wouldn’t know that.

GM: If you ever talk to him…
OA: Yeah, that would be interesting. I just don’t think time is linear… I will say this, and I never complain about it, that I’m so lucky that I love what I do, that I found what I love and I’m doing it. On a day-to-day basis, I feel very fortunate. Do I wish I was doing my own solo tour? Of course.

GM: After you finish here, they’ll be clamouring for you.
OA: Let’s hope!

GM: Tonight you’re playing the Burton Cummings Theatre. Do you know who he is?
OA: No, who is he?

GM: You don’t know Burton Cummings?!
OA: Oh no! I didn’t know I’d have to Google! Hold on. Who is he? A country singer?

GM: He was the lead singer of The Guess Who. You know,American Woman?
OA: Oh, and he has his own theatre?!

GM: They’re Canada’s Beatles!
OA: Wow. That’s interesting. All I know is we don’t have to leave the hotel because there are tunnels that just take us everywhere.

GM: Because it gets so cold.
OA: It’s freezing. It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. I have four different jackets for this trip. Now, are you going to come to the show in Vancouver?

GM: I come every year and this year I cannot.
OA: No! What is your interest in comedy? Because the publicists were so excited that you even wanted to talk to me. Were you a fan of mine? Were you off-put byComedian prior to this?

GM: I wasn’t off-put. I’m fascinated by all types. I haven’t seen it since it came out in 2001 so this is all sort of hazy memory.
OA: Same. The last time I saw it, I was sitting next to Seinfeld in a movie theatre. So I feel the same way. To me it’s like a whole nother lifetime. It’s a part of my legacy but it’s like talking about high school: I have to think that far back.

GM: People keep bringing it up with you. I guess you’ve got to until you’ve done enough interviews. Like, the next time I speak with you, I won’t talk about it.
OA: Brooke Shields came up to me and said, ‘It’s yourBlue Lagoon.’ It’s my legacy. I guess the part that was most interesting was the comedians that turned on me because of it. I think that was unfortunate.

GM: It’s those cliques again. You can’t watch somebody on TV or in a movie or something that’s been edited and make a final judgment on them.
OA: Right. You and I get that. But for some reason other people…

GM: Until it happens to them.
OA: I’m still shocked, when we were in New Brunswick, a guy walked up on the street and said, ‘Orny Adams.’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘Man, I loved you in Comedian!’ I’m shocked that, 1) he recognizes me, 2) knows my name. Usually it’s, ‘Are you the guy from…’ When I was in Maine over the summer with my parents, a guy came up to us and he said, ‘Were you in Comedian?’ And I said, ‘Yeah.’ And he said, ‘I thought so.’ And then just walked away. Not ‘I loved you,’ ‘I hated you.’ My dad was standing next to me. He said, ‘That is just so bizarre.’ It’s strange.

GM: Maybe they just rented it. Because surely you’ve aged in the past 12 years.
OA: Yes! Absolutely! I’m hoping someday I’m high enough profile that people will understand more of me inComedian. There’s a point where I walked out to the car and I said to the driver, ‘I have to open my own door?’ That’s my sense of humour. That’s what you’re seeing inTeen Wolf and they’re utilizing. That’s what I’m getting better at conveying off-stage and on stage. But in Comedian it wasn’t a clear and concise character for people to go, ‘Oh, I got it.’ Like Shandling, you go, ‘I get it.’

GM: That’s right. Perception is a big part of understanding if someone’s funny or not.
OA: You’ll like this story. Three weeks ago I wrote a line in my head. ‘Life is so difficult,’ – because I was reading an obituary – ‘When you die, everybody else you’re survived by. Those people are still surviving life.’ Like that sort of thing. It was very rough. But before I developed it, I sent it out to a few comedy friends to see if it’s been covered. Like, I sent it to the head of Montreal [JFL]: ‘Has anybody done a bit about when Canadians say “sorry” it actually sounds like they’re sorry. Like a ‘sore-y’, like the tone.’ So I like to investigate before because I don’t want to bump topics with anybody else. Tom Ryan, who’s a tremendous comedian, sent me a link and said, ‘Watch this first.’ And it was Alan King doing a bit called ‘Survived by my wife.’ Have you ever seen this bit?

GM: I don’t think so.
OA: I could talk about this bit for two hours. The nuance of this bit, how he delivers it, you can tell this is a bit he’s been doing for 25 years. It was so well performed. It was just such a pleasure. It had me laughing out loud. He would have people read obituaries. It was always like, ‘She was survived by…’ What does it say here? [reads] ‘These women always live longer. What do they hear?’ And the person would read it and go, ‘Survived by his wife.’ And he’d go, ‘Survived by his wife.’ Then the next obituary. What does this one say? ‘Survived…’ And he would interrupt, ‘Survived by his wife.’ And it would build like a symphony: ‘Survived by his wife.’ And by the end he’s like, ‘That bitch lived longer than him.’ It comes down to the last one and it’s building and can’t get any bigger. We’ve seen it. What do you have left? This guy is 102 and she still beats him. And this one guy is going to leave his wife at 90 years old and upon hearing the news, his wife threw herself out of the window, only to land on her husband walking away, who died immediately. He goes, ‘The bitch survived there, too!’ It’s just such a wonderfully presented comedy bit.

GM: And you were asking your friends if this had been done before?
OA: Yes, I always float the topics out there because you’d be surprised…

GM: Could you still do it with your own take on it?
OA: He does it so well, I’m out. I’m out! I’m not gonna touch it because he nailed it. Other topics, yeah, if I feel I can put my unique spin on it, and I feel like I come in and out of topics differently than a lot of people, then I’m fine by it. But when I did my first Letterman, there was a bit I did about farmers getting subsidies to not grow crops. So I go, ‘Well, I’m a farmer. I’m not growing crops in New York City.’ I did the whole thing and it was really a funny bit and I was going to do it on Letterman. Somebody came up to me the week before the show and said Brian Regan does a bit like that. I contact Brian’s manager, they send me a transcript, I call them back and said, ‘Thank you so much. Please tell Brian not only is it the exact same bit,’ – and he had done it before me – ‘but his is so much better than mine.’ And Brian still tells that story to this day, that I’d called and contacted him. I think that’s part of the research. I don’t want to be doing stuff up there that other people are coming up with.

GM: That’s happened to him, too. He told me he did a bit that turned out to be Dennis Wolfberg’s so he immediately stopped doing it.
OA: Yeah, I mean, right now I’ll talk about gluton – or as I call it, ‘glutton’ – and if someone came up and said, ‘You know, there’s other comics that do glutton,’ I go, ‘Well, I would hope so!’ But hopefully mine is different enough. And it’s very personal. I think a good comic can tell you exactly when they came up with a bit: where they were and what inspired it. We all live in the same world, we’re all exposed to the same stuff, we’re all bumping topics. It’s gonna happen. It makes you write harder.

GM: There’s the comedy police you talk about. They’re going to go, ‘Hey, he’s doing this!’
OA: Somebody left up a comment under my ‘Orny Adams Takes the Third’ video on YouTube, which came out in 2010. They said, last year, whenever Louis C.K.’s last special came out, ‘This guy is a hack. A lot of this stuff Louis talks about on his new special.’ I pre-dated it by three years. Louis admits that he turns material over. And by the way, I don’t think that’s even the case. I saw Louis’ special. People just want to say stuff. They want to start wars on Twitter: ‘Hey Joe Rogan, did you know so-and-so’s doing this?’

GM: I know Louis and Joe have their army out there scouring the internet for joke thieves. Nobody can touch them; they thought of everything first.
OA: Right. Right. Now why aren’t people writing about that? That they’re untouchable. That they would have thought of it first. They’ve been deified. And believe me, they’re both great comedians. We’re all going to think of similar stuff.

GM: They just don’t get there’s all these universal topics that people touch on.
OA: Right. It’s a shame.

GM: Andy Kindler, who’s kind of a comedy cop, is now taking shots at Louis.
OA: That’s a start. And I’m not saying they should be shot; the masses shouldn’t just think that these guys are the only ones coming up with this material. Listen, I’m really happy that Louis C.K.… His mind works in wonderful ways, so I’m glad he’s out there representing comedy. But, you know, he’s not the only one. I’ve seen him do topics that other people or myself were all talking about. And people should just go, ‘Yeah, but you know what? Orny’s up there doing it but he’s slamming the mic into the ground and shit’s flying all over the place. He’s running all over the place. He’s nuts; he’s crazy.’ So it’s a different perspective. You know, Robert Kelly, who was on the tour early on, did a bit and he walked off stage and I said to him, ‘Here’s my version of that bit.’ And it was completely different. And that’s what’s kinda cool about comedy.

GM: It’s getting different perspectives on the same thing.
OA: Yup. From who we are in essence. A really good comedian, you get their essence. You get who Garry Shandling is, you get who Louis C.K. is. Because these guys have done a really good job conveying their essence. And hopefully I will get to that point where I can convey my essence and have a bigger audience.

GM: It’s not that you’ll change but more people will get a chance to see you and then understand your essence?
OA: Yeah, I haven’t been exposed at that level as a standup. Even the movie Comedian, not that many people outside of comedy really saw it. And my standup special only aired once or twice. You’d think with the democracy of the web, I could do it myself but it hasn’t happened, for whatever reason.

GM: But you’re making a living.
OA: And I’m not getting bitter or any less enthusiastic about how much I care about standup comedy.

GM: That’s the main thing, the standup. The work.
OA: Absolutely. I’ll be interested to see what you come up with for this article.

GM: Yeah, me, too.
OA: Feel free to keep in touch if you have any other questions or if you’re ever in town and I’m in town, let me know.

GM: Remember me.
OA: Oh, for sure. I do really enjoy… You know, if we had an off-the-record conversation, I would really talk about what goes into creating comedy. I just don’t think regular people care that much. They just wanna know that it’s gonna be funny.

GM: I think you’re probably right. And yet there are some of us that are fascinated by it.
OA: I agree. And that’s what Comedian was made for. And probably wasn’t the way I would have done it but fortunately most people don’t care.

GM: When you finally return to Vancouver, as I know you will, we’ll have that off-the-record conversation.
OA: I’d love to. Any time. Send me an email.

GM: Thank you very much.
OA: Okay. Have a great day.

Tommy Chong

"I never really thought I was that good of a guitar player. My talent was doing ensemble work with other people. I was always looking for a partner. And when I found Cheech, everything was very easy after that."

– Tommy Chong

Guy MacPherson: You’re playing God in a movie?
Tommy Chong: Yes, I am. Typecasting, but it works out.

GM: I thought only black actors got to play God.
TC: Yeah, well we sort of broke the mould there.

GM: This is your first movie in a long time, isn’t it?
TC: About 30 years. Tell me about it! I forgot how much fun and how hard it is.

GM: A lot of standing around.
TC: I wish! No, not for me. I’m in almost every scene. I got dialogue up the yin-yang. Oh God, it’s a hassle.

GM: All that memorizing.
TC: Oh, shit, yeah. And you gotta listen to other people. And you gotta do that thing called acting. It’s tough.

GM: You’re coming back to town to play with Cheech. Since the reunion in 2008, have you been doing much together?
TC: Yeah, we’ve been kind of on the road with War and Tower of Power. And sometimes just with War. The band, you know? And we’ve been doing casinos and a lot of good venues, a lot of good outdoor venues. So we’ve been working almost off and on since ’08.

GM: Playing with War, but no more war with Cheech, though.
TC: Not really, no, no, no. We’re old; we can’t remember that shit. We’re like The Sunshine Boys. We can’t remember anything to fight about. We can barely remember what we used to do in the show. No, we get along.

GM: When I saw your show, it looked like you were having a helluva lot of fun on stage.
TC: Oh, we were. We were. It’s what we do the best, you know? Movies are a lot of fun but working live, there’s nothing like it.

GM: Will there be a Cheech & Chong movie?
TC: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely. That’s coming.

GM: Is there one in the works?
TC: Yes, there is, as a matter of fact. I can’t give you any details yet because we haven’t signed any… There’s no money coming in. We’re still dicking around with the…  But we definitely will be doing not just one but we’ll probably be doing about three.

GM: You had a bout with cancer last year.
TC: Almost two years ago now.

GM: And how’s that?
TC: It’s all gone. There’s no cancer there now.

GM: That must have been scary.
TC: It was annoying.

GM: Just annoying?
TC: It was annoying because I’ve kept myself healthy all my life then all of a sudden I got that. So I had to change my diet and treated it with a lot of good hash oil. It’s prostate cancer so it wasn’t that serious to begin with. But cancer’s cancer, you know? And I just changed my diet and I do a big exercise routine. I’m keeping it pretty well in check.

GM: Did you also use some traditional treatments?
TC: Not really. I started but I found out that medication they give you can give you Alzheimer’s so I quit. I don’t do any traditional. It’s all naturopathic and a lot of pot-based stuff. But it’s mostly diet.

GM: It’s interesting that Cheech & Chong started in Vancouver and now one of the most popular comedic actors is Seth Rogan, also from Vancouver and does a lot of pot-based movies.
TC: Vancouver’s a very special place. Always has been. It’s like Hawaii, there’s a lot of good energy in Vancouver. And a lot of knowledgeable energy. I got turned on to acid. I got turned on to everything in Vancouver. It’s a special place.

GM: You still live here, right?
TC: Yeah, I still have a home there.

GM: You told me about your urge to make it big time, and Cheech had that while other Canadians didn’t. Did it matter to you what you made it in, whether it was music or comedy?
TC: I knew it wasn’t going to be music. When I heard Gaye Delorme play guitar and watched him, I knew that I was not going to be famous as a guitar player. I’ve always known that. I never really thought I was that good of a guitar player. My talent was doing ensemble work with other people. I was always looking for a partner. And when I found Cheech, everything was very easy after that.

GM: But you wrote songs, too, didn’t you?
TC: Oh, yeah. I am a songwriter, but not dedicated enough. And I don’t have enough musical knowledge to carry me. But I’ve got a knack for comedy. It was the path of least resistance to the top. And that’s the secret of my success.

GM: Henry Young said you taught him some licks on guitar and he ended up with a pretty good career in jazz.
TC: I inspired Henry more than taught him. I was the first half-Chinese guy that Henry met. And him being half-Chinese, when he saw me, he adopted me right away. Because I was on stage and performing with a hot band. I showed him that you could do a lot with a guitar. Boy, did he ever become a good guitar player!

GM: He also said you used to watch a lot of comedy on TV, like Dick Van Dyke. So you were really into comedy from a young age.
TC: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I loved comedy. I got it from my dad, I think. My dad loved to laugh. And he loved to drink and he loved to have his buddies over and they’d tell stupid jokes and laugh and laugh and laugh. And dance. The two things they did: they danced and they laughed. And that’s the two things I do now: I dance and I laugh.

GM: Joi de vivre.
TC: That’s what it is.

GM: Lots of people in everyday life have feuds or fallouts with lifelong friends, as you did with Cheech. Do you ever encourage them to let it go or do you let them find it out for themselves?
TC: I found the best way to live life is to be in the present. Be totally in the present. Holding grudges means you live in the past. And anticipating good or bad means that you live in the future. I do neither. I like to live in the present. When I’m with him, when we’re playing golf, we just play golf. Every once in a while we’ll talk a little bit about the good times but never the bad times. It’s the grandmother approach I take now: I see no evil.

GM: So with friends who may be feuding, do you preach to them to let it go?
TC: I try not to preach to anybody. I try to change the subject. My wife has a real nice touch with babies. I study her a lot. A baby will be crying and she’ll pick him up and within two seconds it’s quiet. Because she diverts his attention. And that’s what I try to do with people around me. There’s a book called The Golden Key. It’s a book by Emmet Fox, a spiritualist in the ‘50s. He put a book out called The Golden Key. The way it works is that if you want to change somebody, you change yourself. And by changing yourself, the other person will automatically pick up on the vibe and change with you. And it works all the time. For instance, if your plane gets delayed, instead of going up and telling the ticket agent your problem, you go up and flirt with them or ask them how they’re doing and joke with them, the next thing you know you change the vibe and you change the whole sequence of events just by being positive and nice.

GM: Very Zen.
TC: Yeah, yeah, totally. In the moment.

GM: Is the show you’re bringing here different from the one in 2008? Do you guys update or write new sketches?
TC: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we change. I just read a review about a show we did in New York, which I thought wasn’t the best show we did, but the reviewer thought it was. The reviewer just loved our show. In fact, I’ve got to show this review to my wife. We don’t get the same kind of applause or laughter as when we perform in LA but people just enjoy it just as much. They just express themselves differently. And so our show in Vancouver will be pure Cheech & Chong. You never know what to expect with us.

GM: How do you collaborate when you’re apart? Do you send ideas back and forth to each other?
TC: Not at all. Not at all. You see, you have to be in the moment. You wait until you get on stage. You open the floodgates then. Like, I’m shooting a movie, you know? You can’t do one scene if you’re doing another scene. You have to do one scene at a time. And that’s the same as comedy, you know? There’s no preparation. Comedy is much like preparing a meal. You just have to prepare yourself to be in the mood to be funny. And that’s how you prepare yourself. It’s not about remembering or doing this bit or that bit; it’s about getting yourself in a very good mood so when you walk on stage all the stuff will come to you. It’ll come to you when you need it. That’s what happens with comedy.

GM: What about the choice of sketches? Surely that’s prepared ahead of time?
TC: Yeah. We do sketches that grow, that have a life inside the sketch itself. He doesn’t know what I’m going to say at certain times. He’ll ask a question and he won’t know what the answer’s going to be and I don’t know what the answer’s going to be. So the audience picks up on that. It’s one big, wonderful party.

GM: So there’s an improvisational element.
TC: Totally. Totally. And that’s why Cheech & Chong are still alive today. Because everything grows with the times.

GM: You’re not the same young characters on stage.
TC: Yeah, exactly. And we joke about it. We joke about everything.

GM: When you said the show in New York wasn’t your best, was that just based on the audience reaction?
TC: Well, to begin with, it was in the round. We were with two other bands. We went on kind of late. And the stage is going around in circles while we’re performing. So it kind of throws you off because you can’t get your legs under you. But the reviewer in the audience loved it. They loved it. They loved every moment of it. That’s one thing about being judgmental, that’s why you have to stop being judgmental at all, because we’ve done the show a million times. Of course there are a lot of parts that are the same and if we don’t get a laugh in the same area it bothers us only, but it doesn’t bother the people in the audience. And you always have to realize that.

GM: Are you performing with bands in Vancouver? Or will there be an opener?
TC: No, no. It’s just Cheech & Chong. And Shelby. Always Shelby. Shelby is part of the show.

GM: And there’s a part where you play the guitar in it, too, right?
TC: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A couple of parts. Cheech and I will come out and play a little medley of our songs, and I’ll do Blind Melon Chitlin and he’ll do Elvis Boy. There’s a lot of music. A lot of different things in the show.

GM: Do you play music by yourself at home?
TC: Oh yeah. Yeah, I play the guitar. I’ll smoke up and then I’ll go down to the basement and get the guitar and run through my repertoire and jam a little bit. And then I’ll try to sing. I’m learning how to sing.

GM: Was there a period where you didn’t smoke up?
TC: Well, I had to when I was in jail. I had no choice. Okay, they’re calling me back on the set.

GM: Okay, thanks a lot.
TC: Okay, man.

Brian Regan

"Clearly I’m a comedian and I know that there’s a thing called comedy clubs and stuff like that, but it just seems odd that people would walk into a building and go, ‘We’re going to sit in chairs and laugh.’ And they’re not even really interested in what they’re going to be laughing about. ‘We’re just going to go there and we’re just going to laugh.’ It would be like a club where, ‘We’re going to go to this place and cry.’ ‘What are you going to cry about?’ ‘I don’t know. I just feel like crying.’ I don’t think anyone would ever do that."

– Brian Regan

Brian Regan: Good morning, this is Brian Regan calling for George MacPherson.

Guy MacPherson: No, it’s Guy MacPherson.
BR: Guy MacPherson?!

GM: You got it.
BR: I apologize, man! They wrote ‘George’ on my itinerary sheet and I apologize.

GM: Aw, man, you can’t get good help.
BR: (laughs) Man, I just woke up. My first sip of coffee and I’ve made a mistake already. I feel bad.

GM: Oh good. I’m glad you just woke up, too.
BR: But happy to talk to you, Guy.

GM: We’ve done this a few times now. You’re becoming such a regular to Vancouver.
BR: Well, I enjoy coming back. It’s a beautiful city.

GM: Not that you do anything when you’re here, right?
BR: Well, I don’t get a lot of opportunities to do much but from looking out the hotel room window, it sure looks beautiful out there.

GM: Do you ever travel for pleasure? Or do you travel so much in work that you don’t bother?
BR: Oh, wow. Good question. Usually we might attach a few days onto a work week or something. I had a couple of shows in Hawaii this year. I’d never done that before. And I stayed, like, five days after that to just enjoy it. So that was really cool.

GM: I’m glad you said ‘good question’ because after talking to you a few times, I run out of questions.
BR: We’ll get into some real introspective stuff, I guess, right? The meaning of life, and things like that.

GM: You’re going to be here one day before Doug Stanhope. Are you familiar with him?
BR: Sure.

GM: You’re the anti-Doug Stanhope in every single way, right down to interviews. His manager asked if I could make it as late in the day as possible. I said I could do 2 o’clock and he got back to me: ‘How about 6:30?’
BR: (laughs) That’s hysterical. Yeah, I like to do them, knock them out, then start the day. But I guess we all go to the beat of a different drummer.

GM: It’s surprising you like to do them early considering your nickname used to be Rip.
BR: Yes. Yeah. Rip Van Winkle.

GM: When did you start to appreciate getting up?
BR: Well, yeah, I appreciate the need for it on given days, but I’ve never lost my love affair with slumber. My mom and dad have eight kids. My mom and dad are still around, fortunately, and my brothers and sisters are still around. We call it the Regan sleeping gene. We worship sleep. They used to say the sun never set on the [British Empire]; well the sun never rose on the Regan family. There was always a Regan asleep somewhere.

GM: Did you pass that on to your kids?
BR: Yes. Well, my son for sure. My daughter, she just woke up, which is a little unusual. Up until about a year ago, she and my son would just sleep until we woke them up. Now my daughter’s starting to realize there are things in the world that she wants to get up for and put clothes on for. So she might have only half of the Regan sleeping gene.

GM: Do you listen to much standup?
BR: You know, I go through periods. The only time I really listen to standup is on satellite radio. They have the comedy channel so it’s pretty convenient to put a station on. When I’m driving up to the supermarket or something like that, if I’ve got some time to kill, I might listen to some comedians here and there just to hear what some people are doing. But it’s more for work, just to hear what people are doing as opposed to being entertained by it. I don’t know how to put this, but if you enjoy comedy, from a comedian’s perspective you’re enjoying someone’s craft moreso than the surprise of the comedy. It’s like you’ll listen to somebody’s routine and go, ‘Wow, that was good. That was really well done. It was well put together. They came from an angle I had never really thought of. A good choice of words. The brevity was right on.’ And that sort of thing. Sometimes I miss when I was in college and I would laugh at my friends without looking at what they said through a microscope.

GM: I’m pretty much like that, too. People think I’m not enjoying something, but I am, only in my head.
BR: There was a club in New York City and the door man/manager would stand off to the side of the club, but he was under a light and I don’t think he realized that. And I don’t think I ever made that guy laugh in about twenty years! (laughs) Every time I’d look over, he’d have the most stoic expression. I’m like, ‘Wow, this is a comedy club and I just can’t seem to crack through that guy.’

GM: You kept going back hoping to one day make him laugh.
BR: Yeah. One day. One day I’m going to put a smile on his face. That’s my quest.

GM: I know you’re in your own comedy world, but do you feel the comedy resurgence?
BR: Uh, well, just this last week a person at a hotel – a room service person – knew I was a comedian and was all upset that the local comedy channel on the radio. He said, ‘They’re thinking of taking it off the air and everybody’s in an uproar.’ And I was like, Wow, I had never heard of such a thing. It was the funniest comedy radio station around and the fact that people are up in arms when their comedy is taken away… Now it’s like a 24-hour right. So yeah, there are people out there who are liking it in an increasing way. I’ve always found it weird that comedy… Comedy is not supposed to be a thing. To me, comedy is a how. You know, you make a movie with a comedic tone to it. But to come out and say, ‘It’s a comedy!’, like that’s the most important thing is you’re supposed to sit there and laugh, that almost feels like there’s supposed to be a story first, right? And you might laugh a lot during the story. But the fact comedy is a thing is kind of strange to me.

GM: Even in the standup form?
BR: Yeah. I mean, I’m splitting hairs here. Clearly I’m a comedian and I know that there’s a thing called comedy clubs and stuff like that, but it just seems odd that people would walk into a building and go, ‘We’re going to sit in chairs and laugh.’ And they’re not even really interested in what they’re going to be laughing about. (laughs) ‘We’re just going to go there and we’re just going to laugh.’ It would be like a club where, ‘We’re going to go to this place and cry.’ ‘What are you going to cry about?’ ‘I don’t know. I just feel like crying.’ I don’t think anyone would ever do that. ‘Well, we know great-grandpa Ed passed away and we’re probably going to cry at his funeral.’ But the comedy thing, it’s like people don’t even care what they’re laughing at. It’s just, ‘We just wanna laugh! We just want our bodies to shake!’

GM: There’s way more media coverage of comedy than when I started covering it. But I would imagine it’s a double-edged sword for the comics because more people are into it so there’s greater chance for them to perform and be seen, but on the other hand it’s harder to stand out because there are so many comics.
BR: Yeah, it’s sort of like an Amway salesman. You wanna get in early so all the other salesmen are working for you. They’re down below on the pyramid. I have been fortunate in that I got my big toe in the water a while ago so I’ve been able to develop a little bit of a following out there. I don’t know if it would be as easy now. If I wanted to get into comedy now, I don’t know how hard it would be to break through. But I’m not saying less people should do comedy. I love comedy and I think if somebody wants to gravitate that way, I applaud them. But it’s like anything in life; you’ve got to really want it, though, man. You’re gonna have to really go after it, and go through possibly some difficult periods.

GM: Did you go through those difficult periods?
BR: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It was only like once or twice my entire career where I looked into a mirror and said, ‘Am I out of my mind? Why don’t I stop?’ It was a fleeting moment and I didn’t. I remember a two-week period, almost three weeks out on the road, where all my shows were not good. In a row! Part of it was because I was new and green and was playing on different stages and not yet used to how to handle different atmospheres and environments. And part of it was just the luck of the draw. I wasn’t consistent yet. But after about two weeks in a row, you go, ‘Am I delusional? Why do I want to make a living making people laugh when clearly I don’t know how to do it?’ But then you have that good show and you’re back on track. You go, ‘Oh, okay, I know how to do it. It’s just a question of making it more consistent, I guess.’

GM: And figuring out what you did wrong in those other shows?
BR: Yeah. You know, thinking of the funny thoughts is only part of it. It’s figuring out how to be on stage and command a room and handle loud noises and people coming in late and there’s a blender going off. There’s just all kinds of stuff happening that, in addition to being a comedian, you’re like a master of ceremonies at a circus sometimes. And you have to learn how to do it. And until you start getting those skills, it can be a bumpy ride.

GM: I think it would prove you’re not delusional just by asking yourself if you’re delusional. Because there are some comics who do weak sets and think they did great. So you at least recognized when you needed work.
BR: (laughs) Well, I think so. In fact, I’m so used to being a comedian that it makes my off-stage world more awkward. I’m so conditioned to laughs equals success that if I’m just meeting people in a social situation and I don’t make them laugh at some point, I feel like I’m not connecting. I’ll throw something out there in a small talk conversation with some people who might not even know I’m a comedian and instead of getting a laugh, they’ll go, ‘Oh, really?’ Like they thought I was serious. A laugh to me is a very objective thing that you can check off. You can say they laughed therefore I communicated. But anything short of a laugh, you don’t know if you’re communicating with someone so it’s harder to trust human interaction without laughter.

GM: I know you don’t like to be a comedian 24/7 – you like being just a regular guy – but you’re saying even when you’re a regular guy, you’re still partly comedian because of that.
BR: Sometimes, yeah.

GM: You’re looking for the laugh.
BR: At times. Not constantly, but there are times when you’re just chatting with somebody and you throw something out there and if they don’t laugh, then you think they don’t get me on this level, so maybe they didn’t get anything I said.

GM: Are you in Vegas right now?
BR: Yeah. I’m actually holed up in a bathroom in my condo while workers are coming in. I’ve got some flooring issues. So it’s kind of hard to feel like king of my castle when I’m all wedged up inside a bathroom here. But yes, I’m at home.

GM: You’ve got a nice echo going anyway.
BR: Yeah, I want to feel like I’m on stage even in an interview situation.

GM: Right now I’m in the interior of British Columbia and every day it’s around 35. I’m wondering how people live here. And you’re in Vegas, where it’s probably 40, 45 degrees. I guess you never go outside.
BR: Uh, it’s pretty hot here. But I go out occasionally. But when I go out, it’s running to a car and then cranking it up and getting the AC on and then driving to a parking space and running into a building. I kind of avoid the heat. But occasionally I’ll go out and golf, oddly enough. If you live here, you go out very early as the sun’s coming up to avoid the brutal part of the heat. But it’s hard to avoid it altogether.

GM: Another reason to get up early. What’s a typical non-comedy day for you? Is it just driving around getting coffee with other comics?
BR: (laughs) Yeah, that’s what we do! And one day it happened to be filmed. I don’t know. Some people ask me, ‘Hey, what are you gonna do today?’ And then I feel like I’m grasping for answers, yet somehow I seem to fill it up. I’m very organized. I’ve heard other comedians say that they think comedians are very meticulous. I don’t know if it’s an across-the-board kinda thing, but I’m that way in my regular life. Like, this very interview: I keep track of it, I put my notes down, I put them in a computer, I have a data base. If I spend $2.45 on ice cream, that’s gonna be written down on a piece of paper. So it’s like there’s my life and then there’s a record of my life. So I only have time to live half my life because the other half I have to record!

GM: What kind of notes do you need for an interview?
BR: Oh, man, I keep track of my interviews. In fact, I don’t want to blame my assistant, but I keep track of past interviews so I can go back and see what was discussed and what wasn’t discussed. And for this interview, I have my itinerary sheet but I should have consulted what my assistant sent me. And she made the correction. She put, ‘Your first interview is with Guy-slash-George MacPherson of Georgia Straight. You’ve interviewed with him several times before. The media sheet and latest articles are attached.’ But she forgot to attach them. So I wasn’t able to read them. So I’m sort of like kicking myself. I’m going, I’m doing all this recording and all this record keeping so that I can review these things before and I didn’t even get to review it. So if I’m going over stories I’ve told you, I apologize.

GM: I went over them to make sure I didn’t ask you the same things. I guess that’s the confusion: the Georgia Straight and George.
BR: Aaah! You know, that makes sense.

GM: The Seinfeld thing was great.
BR: Thank you.

GM: Have you watched the whole series?
BR: I don’t know if he does them by year or whatever, but the first group he made – he made about 12 or 15 of them – I watched all of those. And then I’ve heard that he has a new batch of them coming out and I haven’t seen any of the new ones yet. I will probably check them out.

GM: You’re the first person I’ve spoken to since doing one. Can you answer some questions I have about it?
BR: Sure.

GM: When you’re in a coffee shop with Jerry Seinfeld, and people are just eating beside you as if it’s nothing special, are they told to act normally or do they not care?
BR: I believe they are prepped. Well, it’s a combination. That one was done in LA and people in LA are kind of used to not talking to celebrities and things like that. But I also believe – because they’re not all done in LA; some are done in New York and stuff like that – but I also believe, at least in the one we did, that the people are prepped. I think they’re just actual customers and stuff like that but I think they’re told, you know, that Seinfeld is coming in. In fact, our table had a reserved thing on it. The coffee shop was packed and we had a perfect table. Like, wow, what a great way to get coffee: Film it and you’re going to be guaranteed a table in LA, you know? So we walked in and sat down at a table that obviously had been chosen for lighting and video purposes and stuff like that. And so for the most part everyone knew to just kind of let us have our conversation. There was a film crew in there. But they’re not extras. These are actual customers but they were just, I guess, being courteous and chose not to come up. There was one woman, and I think she did make the thing, who complimented his shirt as she was walking out. An older woman. She was very pleasant. Other than that, everybody kind of left us be.

GM: Ah, I was wondering if there were small remote cameras all over the place or if there was a crew.
BR: Yeah, I mean it’s not an obtrusive film crew like they’re making a movie. There’s a person huddled down by the booth with a camera. You try not to look. There may have been a couple of cameras for cuts back and forth and that sort of thing. But it’s as unobtrusive as they can be in that atmosphere, I guess.

GM: I like the back and forth. Do those sorts of conversations, whether it’s that particular one or you’re just out with friends, give you ideas for bits in your act later or are they just their own thing?
BR: Sometimes they do. Sometimes when you’re with a comedian, hanging out with a comedian friend, and you come up with something funny, there’s this moment where the two of you are looking at each other like, ‘Who owns this?’ Usually a discussion will be had around it. And usually it’s the person who had the original thought or idea. You say, ‘Hey, that’s yours.’ And then the stuff that went back and forth goes with the idea, which would be to the person who came up with the original idea. But yeah, there are times when things pop up, you know? And you find yourself, too, sometimes having a conversation and you think of something and you go, ‘I don’t want to do this now because I don’t want there to be any confusion as to whose this is. So I’m just going to store it in my comedy brain and write it down later.’ It’s weird, ownership of material and stuff like that. I remember being on the road years ago and I had this joke about Pop-a-matic games, you know with the dice and the bubble? I was working five nights in a comedy club and after three nights I had done the joke and then the fourth night the comedian in front of me does a Pop-a-matic dice bubble joke. It was different from mine but it sure is an obscure topic to bring up and it’s hard for me to bring it up after that, you know? I talked to him afterwards and he said, ‘Aw, no, no. My joke’s completely different from your joke. Because I heard your joke and my joke’s different.’ I remember thinking, ‘It’s different enough for you to do next week with another comedian! You don’t have to do it right in front of me! You’re kind of trampling my topic here.’ Anyway, so there are some moments like that where it gets a little murky as to who can do what and when and where.

GM: It’s just comedy etiquette, right?
BR: Yes.

GM: You need a Miss Manners of comedy.
BR: Mm-hmm. We should have our own Amy Vanderbilt.

GM: You know when Seinfeld tours, he doesn’t do interviews. Do you ever consider that?
BR: Well, I have backed off on radio interviews because, I don’t know, there’s different skill levels and it’s hard for me signing up for a comedy team when I don’t get to rehearse with the other person. As far as the actual performance, I like doing that by myself and it’s hard sometimes when you’re trying to do a bit and the person on the other line doesn’t know whether you’re in the middle of a bit or not and they might jump on you right before the punchline. It just gets a little challenging sometimes. So I understand some people backing away from interviews occasionally.

GM: Put in a good word for me next time you speak to Jerry.
BR: You got it.

GM: You’re guesting on more podcasts, which is great. Are comics better interviewers?
BR: I think because they’re a comedian, they’re going to ask questions that might come from a perspective of someone who’s stood on the stage. As long as you have a kinship, a camaraderie with other comedians, those interviews can be fun. But that doesn’t mean that somebody who doesn’t do comedy can’t also give a great interview. But there’s just, I guess, a comfort level, you know, of being with somebody who you know has been on the stage. It’s sort of like watching football on TV and the sports analysts have been on the field. You have that little extra feeling of, I know they know what they’re talking about because they’ve been out there.

GM: Unless it’s Rush Limbaugh or Dennis Miller.
BR: (laughs) I actually enjoyed the Dennis Miller experiment, if you will. I like when people take chances in anything, whether it’s show biz or sports or whatever. And I thought that was a gamble that they took. It was a gamble that he took and it was a gamble that the network took to put him on there. And it didn’t quite work but it’s easy after the fact to go, ‘Why did they do that?!’ Well, you don’t know if it’s going to be successful unless you try.

GM: You’re playing a different venue in Vancouver this time. You were here last year. Is this a new act or do you just change venues and hope for a different crowd?
BR: I forget. They told me the reasoning for going to the other venue. I don’t know what the deal was. I don’t want to speak incorrectly. But I just gradually turn the material over and hopefully when people come out, they’re gonna go, ‘Hey, a lot of that stuff is new from last time.’ I made the mistake years ago. I had two hours of material and I said I can do two different shows. So I split it into two different shows and I would go to a club for a month and I would have a calendar on the table. And I called the two shows The Idiot and The Oddity. It was two completely different hours of material. And it worked great for a while. People would come out, see a show and the emcee would go, ‘Hey, if you liked what you saw, he’s got another hour of material. Tonight was The Idiot. So come back and see The Oddity. Check your calendar and you can come back and see that.’ So people would come back. I was like, Wow, I got a good thing going here. And then at the end of the month, people were coming up to me and saying, ‘Well, we saw The Idiot and The Oddity. Next time we come back, are you going to have two completely new hours?’ And then I’m like, ‘Geez!’ I realized once you title something, it’s something people can check off and that’s not necessarily a good thing. Now I just like the philosophy of gradually turning the material over. And if somebody hears a bit that was in the previous time they were here, that’s okay. But you’re also going to hear a bunch of stuff you didn’t hear.

GM: You probably have four hours of material now, at least.
BR: Well, I don’t know, I’ve got five one-hour things recorded and doing another hour of stuff now, so that’s six. Plus stuff that comes and goes over the years. But I’m less bored if I’m doing stuff that is not as overly done. I get bored with stuff if I keep doing it over and over again. I gotta move on.

GM: When the audience calls out at the end for their favourite bit from the past, do you ever just forget them?
BR: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And it can be embarrassing, you know? One time somebody yelled, ‘Strong man competitions!’ And I couldn’t remember the bit. I just remembered little bits and pieces of it. And sometimes you go for it. You figure, ‘Oh, I’ll start it and I’ll remember as I’m doing it.’ But on that particular one, I didn’t remember the funny part! All I remembered was that these guys were screaming in the bit. So I’m on stage going, ‘You ever see these strong mans, they’re lifting stuff, Aaaahh!’ And I’m thinking all I’m doing is screaming on stage. I haven’t said anything funny. And I did about 45 seconds worth of screaming and I just kind of stopped and said, ‘Alright, any other requests?’ I hope somebody doesn’t request another bit where I just yell! (laughs)

GM: Was that the original bit or did you forget the words?
BR: I had forgotten the set-up. There was something that led up to the screaming. And all I was doing was the screaming. And I’m like, This isn’t comedy; this is just a madman on stage screaming at the top of his lungs. The audience was nice; they were chuckling but I’m thinking this is absurd, man.

GM: I heard David Cassidy say he was once playing with John Lennon at his house. They were playing an old Beatles song that Cassidy grew up listening to and Lennon had to ask him how it went.
BR: (laughs) That’s cool.

GM: Okay, I better let you go. Get out of the bathroom.
BR: Alright, Guy. Thanks for the interview, man.