Transcript of Patton Oswalt Returns Again New

Hi, my name is Patton Oswalt, and I feel relieved about being Conan O'Brien's friend. Relieved? Relieved.

You thought you were just barely hanging on with me?

Hanging on by my fingertips? I know you got way bigger people you're hanging out with. Yes, I do. When everyone grabs the chocolate chip cookies, you learn to like the oatmeal. You learn to like the oatmeal cookies. Yes.

Fall is here, hear the yell, back to school.

Ring the bell, brand new shoes, walking loose, climb the fence, books and pens. I can tell that we are going to be friends. Yes, I can tell that we are going to be friends.

Hey there, welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. I'm Conan O'Brien, big surprise, joined by Sonam Sethian. Hello. Matt Gourley. Hi. Uh, and Very exciting show today, and I'm excited because this is a follow-up. You know, every now and then something comes up in a podcast and maybe it piques the listener's interest, and then we get to follow up with new information that changes the whole story. Do you know what I'm talking about here, Matt?

I do, yeah.

Why don't you take the ball?

Well, in an episode not long ago, we were talking about the epic time that Eduardo called Conan a little bitch.

Yeah.

Yeah, well, I don't know if it's epic time.

It was epic.

Maybe in the darkest hour.

One for the ages.

In the history of our nation.

Monumental.

Clutched my pearls.

Hero of mine. And actually, we were all reveling in it.

Yes. And just to make it clear, we were talking on a certain subject, and then Eduardo out of nowhere just called me a little bitch.

Out of nowhere? Out of nowhere.

I know.

Out of nowhere.

Yeah, I think—

Wait, we're going to litigate this again?

Because I'm talking about the time we were talking about that time, which was very recently.

But it didn't bother you at all because you don't— No, it's sort of—

It felt a little out of left field and not at all in keeping with my stature. But yes, we were discussing that time. Everyone here, of course, was doing the, "Haha, wasn't that great? Wasn't that great? Conan sure got his." And then, Sonya, you admitted something that kind of surprised us.

Kind of stopped us all.

Stopped us in our tracks.

Never—

I don't think I would ever— I don't think I could ever call you a bitch. It just feels like— And then you said you still have a little bit of professional fear, and I— I think I do.

And it was— It's so funny because you have kicked my ass to the curb in so many different ways.

I've called you a dick.

Sure.

I've called you an asshole.

Well, I am those things.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I don't know why bitch feels like it's a little too harsh.

No, but to you, it stopped you a little bit, and you were surprised that Eduardo said it.

Yeah.

And you thought, I couldn't go that far.

Yes.

Okay, well, some information has come in over the transom, and Matt, you were the keeper of this information. Care to tell us about it?

Well, as soon as we left that segment, Sam Curry, who handles all the wonderful social media, put a clip in all of our faces.

Let's just roll the clip.

We can talk shit, right?

The dreaded Sonam Sethian, who's terrific at cornhole. Yeah, um, I'm terrific.

Come on, you little bitch. Fucking can't throw, you little bitch. What wasted height. God, this is embarrassing for you, loser.

I didn't swear.

I'm not worried about this at all.

I can't get better at this. I mean, we did a competition where we built wooden airplanes.

You'd win, dork.

Yeah, someone's getting hurtful because he's losing. I don't think I've ever seen you throw anything.

Let's dial it back a little bit.

3 points for Conan.

Yeah, I do have a problem. Twice.

Twice you call him a little bitch.

Twice you call me a little bitch. And that's one of 700 awful things you said to me just as we're playing cornhole within like a 2-minute period.

Oh my God.

So you call me a little bitch twice.

I was brutal. I was.

So what? Explain. Yeah. How can you think you've never done it because you never in a million years You would. And then you said it twice within seconds of each other.

I legitimately thought that I had never called you a bitch. I really did. Right. And then I, the moment that that started, I was like, I remember that. And I think that, can I, can I say something in my defense?

Sure. I, please.

I'd love to hear it.

I had, I, at that point I was buzzed. I was buzzed.

Were you drinking? That was one of those, that was one of those summer s'mores. So you were drinking alcohol?

Yes, I was.

I don't even remember, but you probably made the cocktail.

I did, I think.

Yeah. Okay.

What was in there, do you think?

Liquid courage.

What was it? Yeah.

So you, the chocolate one? Well, no, I don't know.

Okay. I guess my point is your defense is that you were drinking.

Yeah.

And we all know that in vino veritas, truth comes out of drinking. So all that reveals is that you really do think I'm a little bitch.

Here's what I know. I know I get competitive. And I know we were competing, and I'm even more competitive when I'm competing against you. Yes.

And you'd been drinking.

And I've been drinking.

So you're trash talking.

And I love to just trash talk.

And you're a little bitch.

Yeah.

Well, I— yes. I mean, we'll get to that later. Whether or not I am a little bitch, we have—

I've—

I just came back from the doctor. The tests are in. We'll talk about that a little later.

I am. I think this also means I clearly don't have any sort of professional—

you don't. Also, if you remember, I demolished you in that cornhole game. I beat you and you were mad. You were really mad. And I think that's where a lot of this came out.

Yeah, that was like an uncomfortable day. I remember feeling like my parents were fighting.

Oh, I wasn't fighting back.

I don't know. You were smug as hell.

You So smug. You are the worst person to lose to.

Because I won in cornhole, which means that I'm the best person that ever lived.

No, you are an awful person to lose to. I'm already competitive and then when— look at your stupid face right now. Look at your stupid face.

Hey, if you want to see my stupid face, go to the video on teamcoco.com.

Oh, you're so smug. You're smug just thinking about it.

And remember how cranky he was? The whole thing started with you complaining about ducting for like 20 minutes.

So I was covered in ducting and conduits. And hey, get me started on conduits. And I need a drink. Uh, but the facts are, the facts are that you were shocked that Eduardo called me a little bitch.

I was.

You said I would never do such a thing. And then we immediately, thanks to Sam Curry, had footage of you calling me a little bitch not once but twice in rapid succession.

Right.

So what else have you done in your life that you think you probably walk around thinking, I didn't do that, I would never, I would never kill a hobo.

You guys never had those nights where you went drinking and you woke up the next morning, you're like, what was that? Are you kidding me?

What happened?

Yeah, I once had a rum-flavored lozenge and woke up in the library.

You're looking at two little bitches here.

Yeah, I'm a little bitch. And by the way, that's the big— that's the big reveal from my doctor is, yes, it came back.

No, I mean, when I used to go out and I would, you know, I would drink pretty heavily and then I would— sure, don't, don't add commentary. Okay.

Oh, sorry. I thought this was a podcast with my fucking name on it. We don't need your audio additions on Conan O'Brien's Quiz.

She does talk on this podcast.

Okay.

I do. I, and I, I think I would. It's not that I blacked out. It's that I was loopy doopy.

You went into a fugue state.

And I went into like, hey man, I'm, I'm like limber and loose and chill and we're competing against each other and you're a little bitch. And I was like, just shit talking.

Okay. So now.

It's what we do.

You know what? Now I think Eduardo's looking at you and he's like, game recognizes game. You two. That's true. You probably incepted it in my mind. Ah, you may be addicted. Now I know where I got it from.

Yeah. There's a little bitch virus going around.

Well, you know what? There's nothing I can say other than I probably had it coming.

We solved a lot here. We solved that you did indeed call him a little bitch and you are indeed a little bitch.

Mm-hmm.

And we did it.

Yeah.

Yeah, we did. We solved a lot of problems here and I think everyone listening can rest easy.

Yeah, and I drank too much. I don't even remember who won.

I don't even remember who won that game.

I think you won, Sona.

Yeah, sure, sure you did. Well, we have a wonderful show today, and I think we should begin.

Okay.

My guest today is a comedian and actor who's late. What's so funny to you?

I feel like sometimes in your mind you're like, is this an intro or are we ending the episode?

For sure. I don't know. My guest today is a comedian and actor whose latest comedy special, Tea and Scotch, is available to stream on YouTube. This gentleman is one of my all-time favorite people. I love it when he pops in. Patton Oswalt, welcome.

I'm on that one of those promo death marches. Yes, yes.

Special.

Yep. And listen, I'm flattered that anyone wants to talk to me, but it is nice to get to occasionally do a show like this where we're clearly just bullshitting.

Yes.

There isn't that, like, "It's coming out here, and push it, push it, push it." We're just— This interview, I'll be amazed if we even mention the special.

Yes.

We're gonna wander around everywhere.

We will, but it'll be a miracle when it happens.

It will be. It'll be like a little Easter egg that pops up, like, "Oh, that's right.

We're doing it." There's a reason he came by. Yeah.

But on the way, we'll somehow mention Marty Allen and the— The Treaty of Ghent. It'll be the most unforgettable. Oh my God. I can't believe I just said it. Oh God. Oh God.

That's how all kids who are like 14 and 15, all 14, 15-year-old girls know me as the guy that talks about the Treaty of Ghent. It's their favorite topic.

At the food court. Yeah.

At the— they're all eating Swedish fish and gummies and—

They know you as the man to stay away from because of that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

At the mall. Because I talk about the Treaty of Ghent. Oh, he's going to—

He's gonna quiz us again. Oh my God.

It's so funny you bring up this, the media death march, which most people aren't aware of because in this siloed world, they come across the thing that they like and, "Oh, great. You know, Patton's on." But they don't know that in order to reach a number of people to watch your special, they need— You had to do 107 of these. I swear to God, this is a thing that was said to me maybe 75 times on the old late-night show and shows after that. But over, like, a 28-year career of doing late-night television, many times, much more than you'd think, people said to me, "Oh, my God, I've been doing so much press, but this is the last stop." And they would say that without any sense that it's insulting. Yeah. Like, I did everything, and then, you know, we all know that at the very end— If there's time. If there's time, you do the Conan O'Brien thing.

Oh, Jesus. I swear to God, they said that so many times, and I was like, I would look out at my two-shot camera and go, "Why?

Why? That's being broadcast." Yeah.

People hear that. People hear that.

This is one of those things, like when I do Double Threat with Tom Schroppeng and Julie Klausner, "Oh, this is the dessert in the middle of all of the boom-boom." Because we were talking before we went on, when you're promoting things now, it is— you are doing a million— it isn't even talk shows anymore. It is— stunts.

Yes.

You just, you have stunts lined up all day. You're gonna go on this thing, you're gonna both be at a salmon hatchery, and, um, and you're gonna be following it. You're gonna be, you know, squeezing the thing to get the whatever, the roe. Yeah, the roe out. And then you'll be talking about— it's called All in a Row with, uh, with Mike Rowe.

Yeah.

And listen, it's 800 billion viewers. They love watching celebrities squeezing out salmon roe.

We were talking about this because I did this. I was telling you I did this movie with Rose Byrne last year, and they said, you know, you know, I've never— I don't do movies. And so I was new to all of this. And it used to be, oh, to promote your movie, you'd go on maybe one, maybe two late night shows. This is back in the day. It's all changed seismically since then. Yeah. So the next thing I know, Scientifically is a good way to put it. Yes. I am talking to— a young woman's interviewing us while Rose and I are finger painting. And then that would be over, and they'd say, "Get rid of the finger paints! Get rid of the finger paints!" And then they'd bring in a little blonde Austrian boy named Guterre. And his bit is you both have to put on Flemish armor while Guterre throws ping-pongs at you, ping-pong balls, and they have little questions, and you have to catch them and then answer the questions you catch. And 900 billion views. And you do these, and it's one thing for me to do it, 'cause people are used to me being humiliated all the time, but Dame Judi Dench has to be lowered into a giant toilet filled with hot caramel, and then the person asks her questions about her career.

And it's called, you know, "Schützenhausen." Yes, exactly.

We're promoting the movie "The Queen," and what better way to do it than on Royal Flush? Yeah, yeah. That's where we—

But okay, here's what she does.

Even weirder though, you're in a movie called If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, which is a very like kind of seri— it has funny parts to it, but it's a drama.

It's a very intense, it's dark drama, and you're doing finger painting.

Yes. So that's like having Willem Dafoe and Charlie Sheen like doing, um, playing Gnip Gnop going, go see Platoon. Yeah, um, it's a really dark movie about— oh, oh, you got through the loss of America's innocence, man's inhumanity to man.

Got it. My hippo beat your hippo.

I guess I was hungrier, Willem.

No, it is what's become. And so here's another thing. I'm going to be— I'm in Toy Story 5. It's coming out in June. Now, you did Ratatouille, and it was probably long enough ago that there was some of this, but now it's gone haywire. And already I've done things where I'm— they'll say, Now they don't even trust us to know the context. They don't even trust the comic or the performer to know the context. So they'll say, just say, "Ropa dope, squiddly dee." And you go, "Uh, ropa dope, squiddly dee." And they say, "Now say, 'Ropa dope, squiddly dee. Hello, Brazil.'" And then they get all these things out of context, and you do it, and they say, "Trust us, it all fits into a bigger thing because, you know, Tom Hanks has done it, and Tim Allen's done it, and, you know, Joan Cusack's done it." "when it all fits together and is shown around the world to 900 billion people, it's really funny." And I'm like, "How old are you?" "I'm 21." "Yeah, yeah, okay. I'm in charge of all Disney, Hulu, Pixar." And so it's amazing.

"I'm 21, and the success of this movie hinges on me getting to these outlets." "Yes." "All these online outlets, or you're screwed if you don't have me." "Yeah, yeah." Yeah.

It's just fascinating to me how— This is what it is. And I'm a big believer in— I'm not complaining about it. I'm marveling that it changed. It just all changed, and now it's this. And I'm an old white guy who's like, "Whoa, look what's happening!" You know, just losing my relevance fast, but I'm just enjoying all the changes.

Yes. And I'm enjoying— And I'm very anxious to see who is going to do the next great, like, producer's Dr. Strangelove-style satire on this moment. Like, how crazy this is. But it's going to be hard It's hard. I'm in a movie called The Goat, and it's a delightful animated movie. And so to promote it, a bunch of the actors, we all went and did goat yoga. They filmed us doing goat yoga. So there was a goat on my back, and it was— I don't want to get graphic, but it was spraying goat turds.

And apparently—

By the way, not graphic at all.

Well, yeah. I literally just said, I don't want to be graphic. It's like spraying. And by the way, what I found out—

It's on your back.

Well, goat turds come out like pellets. These were these little pellets coming out.

Sure. It's a giant Pez dispenser. It is.

But as I'm doing this, they went, "Okay, cut." And they're doing this, but I still have a goat on my back. And it stopped spraying for a second. And then somebody was on the phone and they went, "Oh, man, we just went to war with Iran." And then the goat started spraying pellets again. And I'm just like, so— Where was Hollywood when war was declared?

And they just cut to me like, "Go see Goat!" Well, Patton Oswalt was holding down the fort in America, doing his part for our boys overseas.

Hollywood answers the call!

But I'm telling you—

You're a regular Capra.

But you know what? You can't think of something you know You can't think of anything that's weirder or funnier as a comedian to parody this than what's really happening.

Yes, than what you're doing.

You with a goat on your back as it shoots pellets out its ass was a real thing. And that's what one— you know, and I accept it's Go Eat Hot Wings, you know, with Sean. Yeah, yeah. Go eat chicken on a chicken shop date. And those— their shows are really funny. The interviewers are great. I love it all. But it's fascinating that those shows now, you know, people talk about late-night TV and what's happening to it. And I think, well, obviously, there's a political component to it, and there's all kinds of stuff going on, all kinds of factors. But none of us can comp— No late-night show can compete with these shows that cost $2 to make.

Nothing.

And they're watched by, you know, hundreds of millions of people all around the country. It's kind of stunning.

I— Somebody— I remember I did a late-night talk show. I won't say which one, but they basically said, No one's actually watching this show. We hope that one of our clips goes viral tomorrow. That's where we get our viewers. That's where the promo happens, which is why there are so many stunts and craziness going on. They want the viral moments. And no one has the patience now. I just rewatched the— There's that Dick Cavett episode where they're— Remember they're promoting Husbands? So it's Peter Falk, Ben Gazzara, and John Cassavetes come out, and they are— so tanked. And it is— it's like a better movie than the movie they're promoting, is them drunk. And Ben Gazzara takes his shoes off at one point, and Cassavetes falls asleep, and it's such an event. And now that would have to be cut up into little 7-second things. You wouldn't watch the whole event anymore.

Yeah. No, I mean, it reminds you of the way things have changed, that Dick Cavett, could, you know, could have James Baldwin on, and they could talk about the state of being Black in America for like 35 minutes with one of the most celebrated authors of all time. And it's, you know— But now they would say, "That's great, Mr. Baldwin. We want to talk about that. But first, you have to hold this exploding pig. We've stuffed a lot of Starbursts into it." and they're timed to go off in 5 minutes. And then when it blows, you have to catch as many in your mouth as you can. But one raspberry and you get a goo goo point, which means you have to sit on the bonbon throne.

I would watch all of the things that you're describing right now. I would watch everything you're describing.

Mr. Baldwin, that was a really incisive take on the white liberal. Try the next hot sauce.

See how hot that is.

Are you feeling it yet? Is it that bad?

And then the second one. He's so busy screaming, eating the hot sauces. And at the very end, they just have to jam in, and remember, racism may be endemic in our society. Anyway, that's all the time we have. Let the record show he— the 7th sauce was the one that got him.

A little rough.

Whenever I talk to you, I'm reminded that you have this insane knowledge of history and also movies, pop culture. And all I will say is that there's a thread around that, that you are part of and a bunch of other really sharp, really funny people. And I rarely contribute because I have a knowledge of these things, but I can't keep up with you guys. I feel like someone who's got a single-shot Derringer and you all have these very sophisticated gas-powered Russian machine guns firing away. And I'll just keep it—

And a combination— The word insane. A combination of genuine knowledge of history, and then the most useless showbiz trivia you've ever heard. In equal amounts.

And this is one I want to bring up, 'cause we might as well go for it. There's this obsession that you and your cohorts have, and I think I have it a little bit too, but not as much as you guys, with— There was— Everyone knows Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. Lewis and Martin. And then at some point, it was decided there should be It was, guess, a ripoff or something, but it was these two guys who were supposed to maybe like, okay, Lewis and Martin are kind of winding down, so we've— it's a shameless— it's two guys. One is Sammy Petrillo, the other is Duke Mitchell. Mitchell. And, and it's not— it's Martin and Lewis, but it's not, not Martin and Lewis. And it's kind of horrifying, like when they replaced the Duke Brothers.

I mean, the Duke Boys. That is— and by the way, I'm not saying this to be That was subtle compared to what we're talking about. And like, this mutant amplified version of what Martin and Lewis were. They were a Nickelback, Sammy Petrillo and Duke Mitchell. And Sammy Petrillo was doing Jerry Lewis almost like it's body horror. It looked like his face was gonna come apart. It's so unsettling.

It's a real thing. And then they do these movies like Sammy Petrillo and Duke Mitchell meet—

They did one movie.

Uh-huh.

They only did one. Called Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla. Uh-huh. There's no Brooklyn gorilla in the movie.

There's—

I mean, a guy gets— Duke gets turned into a gorilla. I can't believe I just tried to qualify that. I just said, "Well, Duke gets turned into a gorilla, as you know." So there is a gorilla. It's Bela Lugosi at the height of his morphine addiction. It's these two, um—

And that goes on the poster too. "At the height of his morphine addiction!" "You've never seen him like this before!

Goofed to his eyeballs!" Um, We all organized a night to go see it at the New Beverly recently.

Yeah, I think I was doing a travel show. I would have gone to that. I was out of town, but I check in on this thread because you guys are going all the time. I mean, you guys are chattering away at 4:00 AM. And occasionally, when I'm up in the night to apply a cream or an ointment, I'll check in with you guys, and it's like, "Oh my God, there it is." But you guys have this endless fascination with this mutant version of Jerry Lewis, which is a funny sentence. Yes. Because you don't need a mutant version of Jerry Lewis.

No, you really don't. But they found one.

They found one.

And there they are.

Oh my God, it's in the face. Boy, they both look like them in a bizarro way.

Yes, yes. Exactly.

Yeah. But you can see it.

And it's like, you can tell how angry Bela Lugosi is being in this movie. Like, he is openly snapping at Sammy Petrillo. And unlike the Jerry Lewis movies where where when Jerry's doing his stuff, people are kind of laughing or enjoying it. All the other characters in this movie are openly hostile. It's like, "Shut up! Stop!" Like, they're just yelling at him.

You're not Martin and Lewis. "You're not—

No, stop this!" And then they— I could— Listen, let me tell you what this—

Listen. I like how you just said, "Listen," like this marriage is over.

No, no, no. I want to show you the essence of this thread. One night, Uh, we, for some reason, we started all, uh, texting and emailing back and forth about Soupy sales.

Soupy sales.

Yeah. And then you chimed in and it was, it is 3:00 AM. I'm in a tent in Africa. This is the one hour that I get Wi-Fi and you have me looking up Soupy sales videos on YouTube. Like you're literally in the cradle. He goes, I'm in the cradle of civilization and you idiots have— I'm watching Soupy sales videos. Videos on YouTube.

You know what's amazing is you guys draw me in. Oh, you know, and you were talking about the Ritz Brothers.

That was— that might have been it. I think it was the Ritz Brothers.

The Ritz Brothers, who were sort of a version, uh, you know, they, they—

mutant Marx Brothers.

Mutant Marx Brothers. And you were talking about one of the Ritz Brothers, and I, I am in Ghana and I'm shooting a travel show. That's right. And I'm shooting a, a travel show and I can't sleep, and it's 3 in the morning, and my phone goes, "Bzzt, bzzt, bzzt, bzzt." I'm like, "What the hell?" Maybe it's Liza contacting me to say that our house was just stolen. And I look at it, and you guys are all talking about Harry Ritz and what happened. Harry Ritz. Harry Ritz. He was the funny one.

They wanted him to leave his brothers. He wouldn't do it.

He wouldn't do it.

He was loyal.

But then he made this movie late in his career, and I don't know, it's kind of embarrassing. And I'm suddenly looking at clips of it, and then I come into Harry Ritz's defense. And I'm like, "Can I say this?" Click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click. And yeah, you're— again, I am in the cradle of civilization in a tent.

I should be on the veldt. You should be like connected to the— here's, here's what made me laugh so hard. I've always— I've never mentioned this to you. I— for when you, when you said I'm in a tent in Ghana and I'm looking at Rich Brothers videos on YouTube, I just picture like there's this, um, like a, like a cheetah or something like in the bush, like, looking over, and there's this all-silent tent. And suddenly, this little light goes on in the tent, and you hear, "Mr. Bantam and his hat, he went and away one day, ooh, ooh." And you hear these little Rich Brothers songs playing. This cat's like, "The fuck is that weirdo doing?" They're just trying to get away from it. But that happened at one point. There's a little glow went on in a tent, and that was Conan because of us. Oh my God.

I just love— But I had to bring that up because if you guys want to amuse yourselves, Semi Petrillo, Duke Mitchell are. And also, there was this feel— there was this almost sense— I remember reading an interview with Jerry Lewis where he blessed these guys. He was like, "I bless them." At first, he blessed them because he said, "Well, someone's gotta keep it going because we're almost— we're winding it down, and I'm tired. And so, I want someone to take over being Jerry Lewis." And I thought, I thought, "That's not how it works. We don't need someone else. Maybe you should go away for a while." I just love the idea that I would say, "You know what? I am stepping down. I can't step down yet because I haven't found someone else who can be that, have the funny name and the hair and the pitchy voice." I haven't found someone who would disconnect from the atmosphere of Africa to watch Soupy Sales getting hit with a pie at 3:00 AM.

And I'll know that I'll know it when I see it in his eyes. I'll know it. But I haven't found it yet.

And then I can rest.

Then I know.

Then I can retire to my ancestral manse and write my memoirs when I find another idiot to do this shit that I'm doing.

But I think one of the reasons that we are so obsessed with this stuff is because, you know, showbiz is a very rough up and— This is nothing nude, but showbiz is very up and down, and there can be extremes of up and down. And some people, they think the up will last forever, and it doesn't. And you still have to show up when you're not necessarily doing what might be the most glorious or looked-at work. And this past week with, you know, like, Netflix Is a Joke, I know that a lot of people are like, "Well, this guy's in an arena." I'm like, "But you get to do comedy. You still get to do it, and you get to show up." Like, Nicolas Cage has made some bad movies, but he was never bad in them.

He—

showed up and did something unique. And even with— when you watch Bela Lugosi meets a Brooklyn gorilla, as pissed as Bela is with Sammy Petrillo, who's literally hanging on him, and one time he openly yells at him, and it's clearly not in the script. He just is like, "Go close the cages!" Like, just screams at him. But he's still showing up and doing the work. Like, he's— and that always fuels me when I see it. That's why I'm obsessed with that level of show business.

It is. Uh, you and I have several things in common, I believe. Our height. Our height. Our brute strength.

Yeah.

Our, um, our Celtic blood. But, you know, like, one of the things that, uh, I think you've made this point and I've made this point, uh, which is that we weren't class clowns. I was never a class clown, and in fact, I never liked the class clown.

Class clown.

Not that I was jealous, I just thought he's making too much noise. It's— and I was very quiet and kind of shy about being funny.

I was— I wasn't the class clown, but I was in the class clown clique. In other words, we were the comedy nerds, but we weren't the, "Hey!" It was the, "We knew all the routines." We knew all that. I mean, we, like, went deep when other kids— when other kids were, like, quoting Money Python, my group could quote Derek and Clive. And like, we would always go for the even deeper stuff. Yeah. You know? Yeah, it was that. That's the kind of comedy we liked.

And so you would— you're not the kind of person that would get up in front of everyone else and do something when you're in high school or grade school?

I'd feel a little— no. Yeah. Not quite.

Yeah. So when you get into stand-up, did you have to fight through a reluctance to get up in front of people in order to do it?

Yeah, I had to. Well, it's weird. For the first thing that I did was because I was so reluctant to go up, I did this bigger version of myself to hide the fact that I'm not comfortable with myself being up here. So it was very much a stage persona and a stage presence. And it took me, like, 6 years to work through that. It wasn't until I moved to San Francisco, 4 years into it, I started seeing comedians like Brian Posehn and Margaret Cho and Greg Behrendt and Greg Proops that were actually themselves on stage rather than, "Hey, I'm talking to you now.

You're going on." I got to get into my stuff.

They, they could literally be mid-sentence and go, I'll be right back. And they would just go up and talk. And so now it doesn't really feel like I'm nervous when I'm on stage because I've become so comfortable just being up there and going, this is what's going on. And here, you know, and I, I've also got over the whole, let me point out what's stupid about the world and here's my cool take. Now my, my point of view is so much more, listen to this idiotic thing I did. You're not gonna believe this. Like, it, like, it's more insightful that way, but it's weird. I had to get over that. By first embracing that out of nervousness, and then, like, now I can just kind of be myself.

It takes years to grind that out of you to the point where you can go up and say, "I know who I am. You know who I am." Yeah.

That's one of the things— On the one hand, I'm so glad with a lot of the new online media and cell phones and social media that people have way easier access to— The gatekeepers don't quite have the power that they used to have. I don't think there are gatekeepers anymore. There's not really anymore. But— The one bad thing about it is what you just talked about, the years that it takes for you to get through that persona sometimes and become yourself. A lot of people, because they're immediately filming themselves as they start, they're not— they don't have those years in the wilderness that people like my generation had where you figure out who you are. And a lot of people are getting stuck in a very early persona that they're comfortable with. But as they grow and mature and evolve, they're like, "I don't want to do that anymore. I want to do this thing." You know, like, I just think of all of the— the, the, the rock stars that we know and love now, that what if they had been stuck in their early personas forever?

Well, I brought— I think my example was if the current world had existed in 1962. Yeah, everyone would have been sick of the Beatles before they even got to The Ed Sullivan Show. Yes, because they would have seen— I mean, no matter where you are in the world, you've seen thousands of hours of videos of them in the Cavern Club, and then British Beatlemania. They're touring over there in the Netherlands, they're in Germany, they're— and And they're coming to The Ed Sullivan Show. Yeah, we know. We know them. And you know what? I think their best work was their early work. To us, that was the big introduction after they had had their legendary—

Where did they come from? Where did this come from?

These haircuts. Yeah.

And we would've seen a version of The Beatles, and that's how we would've pegged them. They would've been the ones in the German strip club in Hamburg, in the leather jackets, lighting condoms on fire and throwing them into the audience and doing antics and being crazy. They're like, "That's the Beatles I know." And then by the time Brian Epstein got ahold of them, made them the ones that became— they're like, "I don't know. Put the lead beat. You guys are goofballs." Yeah. Yeah. We wouldn't have accepted it.

No, I think that's— it's weird to say, but it was a luxury.

Although now there seems to be a quiet rebellion against that where there does seem to be, whatever the generation after Alpha, a lot of them seem to be like, "You don't need to film me yet. We'll wait till I figure it out." Which is— 'cause they're learning from the mistakes of the ones that came before. Them. Yeah, a lot of the influencers that are now trapped in the— oh God, I gotta, I gotta mukbang again. That's what people are watching. I gotta eat 10 cans of baked beans if I want to sell my new book.

I don't know.

Anyway, my guest today is Conan O'Brien. Conan, you got a new show coming out?

Yes. Conan, why are you wearing a yachting cap? Uh, something I thought I tried in 1982 that I thought I should bring back out again. You look like an idiot. You know, one of the things that— Your fame and your success is not wasted on you because you get to do all these things that you're genuinely passionate about. You get to dip into these projects and these things, not just stand-up, but there are so many different ways that you have taken your, you know, natural ingrained obsessions And then you get to jump into— you're in this Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Yeah. And you're like, "This is—" I could picture you, if someone suggested this to you when you were 11 or 12, you'd say, "That's insane.

That could never happen." Right. And also the fact that I am in a show that is being made by people that grew up at the same time as me, that loved Star Trek, that also went, "But what if this thing hap—" Like, everything that you love, you will always then, "But then why don't they add this aspect to it?" So, the fact that, yeah, I'm playing a Vulcan, but it's a Vulcan who's obsessed with human culture and— His name's Doug. His name is Doug.

He's a Vulcan named Doug, which is my favorite thing.

But his parents were obsessed, so they gave him— It's the same way as people, like hippies, giving their kids names, like American Indian names, or first name turned into, like— Starshine. Yeah. Exactly. So, So, why wouldn't that happen in another culture? Why wouldn't they try to do that? And he, unlike Spock, who has kind of struck this balance, he's so clumsy with it. But because he really loves it. And that's a really real Vulcan thing.

So, Vulcan with an artistic edge.

With an artistic edge.

I love that. 'Cause is art even logical? How can you be a Vulcan who's like, "Well, that is—" I mean, I'm not— I'm just curious how it all comes together. "Uh, it comes together of—

I have to play it of all of my— the way that I usually am passionate about something, like a movie or something. But what if I have to— I am forced by my biology to always filter it through this calm logic, and what would that feel like?" So, it's always this kind of bubbling underneath. And you can see him wanting to, you know, kind of pop up a little bit, but he's like, "No, that's not what Vulcans do. I'm not capable of doing that, even though I'm feeling it." Does he wake and bake?

Is he—? He is constantly still very logical.

"I'm going to require a couple of days of bed rotting." Like, there's, you know, like, "I don't really know what a Vulcan artist would do like that." Or, "Yeah, how would he— I am not feeling this, which is strange because I should not be ruled by my feelings. And yet there is not— Oh, I never thought of it. Well, you know what? I'm doing some more episodes, so maybe they'll go into that." Just talking about that.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, it's a possibility. Absolutely. There's another obsession I've had, and my head writer, Mike Sweeney, has it as well. We're both obsessed with the show that ran pretty much at the same time as Star Trek called Lost in Space. Oh, boy. 'Cause Lost in Space is insane. So insane. And when you watch Star Trek, it is— It looks like the most— the highest art possible when you compare it to Lost in Space. And there are these clips on that you can watch on YouTube of— and, and the character to keep your eye on is Dr. Smith, Dr. Zachary Smith, for many reasons. For many reasons. He's played by Jonathan Harris, who doesn't just chew scenery, he inhales it into his lungs and, and then shits it out. It is amazing and truly incredible. And the storylines— I think everyone was on acid who wrote this TV show. But my— the other day I happened on one where an alien ray turns Dr. Smith into a hippie, and he's got long hippie hair, and he's dancing. And of course, you know, you're like— And there's a crazy, wacky— 'Cause clearly, the show is trying to get down with the scene.

Yeah.

It's a bunch of 51-year-old writers, probably at Renmar or Warner Brothers, like, "See this in the paper? Can we work this into the— work this in an episode, the hippie thing?" Yeah. "But how would there be hippies in space?" A ray? Just start with a ray?

No, everything's just a ray. Yeah, yeah. And then they would clearly, to come up with ideas, go to the prop shop at Warner Brothers or wherever, and they'd say, hey, I just found a giant Cleopatra uniform. Okay, there's a big puff of smoke and a Cleopatra alien shows up, and she has a ray that turns them all into mummies. Yeah. Like they just worked backwards from the costumes that were available.

What's available. Yeah. There— somebody pointed out there's a, there's an episode of The Outer Limits, uh, that is— was, was the basis of the movie The Terminator. It's written by Harlan Ellison called Soldier. And there's a helmet that this future soldier wears in his future soldier battles, and that helmet is the helmet that Robin Williams wears in the opening episode of Mork and Mindy when he comes to Earth. Same one. And again, it's same one. But there was like, we need— like Gary Marshall, he should wear some kind of outer space— what, can we use this? Like, they're just in the— like you said, they're in the warehouse. Put the— that's his alien thing.

Once, like, the famous guy in Empire Strikes Back evacuating Cloud City is carrying the space, uh, equipment, but it's actually an ice cream maker.

Yeah, yeah, you can hear it churning away.

And they've given him a name and a whole backstory. They've, they've written him into the thing. He's a guy, and, and that ice cream maker was an ice cream maker. Someone found out. If you look at it, someone matched it with— at the time it was— they just clearly just spray painted it white and go, here. Yeah, but then they worked that prop into the first season of The Mandalorian, right? It's a thing for transporting, like, biological matter. So they had to work that into the— yeah, so that's what they were.

But you know what, you could— I mean, we live in this world that's so So, I mean, you know, people decry, "Oh, the internet era, and are we losing our humanity?" Like, yeah, but think of the connections you can make. You could do an amazing documentary where you— someone could make an amazing documentary where they track a prop that's made in the 1950s for, like, a Goofy Movie, but then it shows up here, but then it shows up there because people didn't throw stuff away. No. And it went back into the prop room. And, um, I've been in some of the prop warehouses.

There's stuff like, oh, if you should shoot this from a different angle, this could work as this. Yeah. But all those— there's a, uh, Tom Sharpling, who I mentioned earlier, does the best show, does hilarious. Yeah, so funny. He did this thing, I, I think about it like once a week, and I didn't know this till he pointed out, you know the show The Munsters? Yeah, of course. Yeah, there's 73 episodes of that show. Do you know how many seasons they ran? 2. 2. Yeah, 2. Yeah. And they— so they were cranking that thing out. And Tom was like, this is a writing session on The Munsters. Have we put Herman in a, like, a baby bonnet holding a rattle yet? All right, write that in. I'm gonna go to Musso and Frank's, have 4 martinis and a steak, and then drunk drive home. I'll see you tomorrow. Like, that is how those shows were. What What can we use? We gotta do 38 of these.

But also, no one was thinking about reruns. No! No one was thinking about this being a body of work. Boxed set. Or boxed set. No one's thinking about that. Everyone's thinking, "Get this thing done, get it out, and then let's do another one. Let's get our check, and then we'll go to Musso and Frank's and drink at 1 o'clock in the afternoon. Oh, and there's Jack Webb at the next table, and he's completely smashed." And he's 6 martinis ahead. Yeah. Yeah. But you look at these shows, and you just see they weren't afraid to use all the same plots. Nope. There's an old— Same actors. Yeah. Over and over. And the same— the plots over and over and over again.

Same actors within the same show, different characters all the time.

Yeah. And one thing they did was— I don't know how many times when I was a kid growing up watching different TV sitcoms and reruns, I'd see the two people have a fight, fight. So it's like the Skipper and Gilligan on Gilligan's Island have an argument, so they paint a line down the middle of the, of the hut. And then it's, "You stay on your side, I'll stay on mine. But your side has the, has the door." "Then you'll have to use the window." You know, "But your side— my side has the food." "Well, then you could—" You know, it's— and, and then you'd watch The Munsters, and, and Grandpa and Herman have a fight, and they paint a line down the middle of the room. And then you watch The Monkees, and they do it. And you're just like, no one had any shame about—

"Number 17!" "Let's crank it up for this week." Yeah. "Let's do a number 9 on them. We gotta get— Listen, I gotta get my martinis. It's 12:30." And it always was a white line too, that even down to that detail.

Yeah. And, you know, yeah.

That kind of stuff is— And also, they didn't understand— Well, they didn't— 'Cause no one could predict it. YouTube, freeze frame, you know, being able to capture little moments where like, "Oh my God, look at this in the background." You know, there's an episode of that show, The Naked City, which was shot just handheld in New York in the early '60s. Which now it's so valuable because, A, it's all this stuff in New York that doesn't exist anymore that they just casually filmed. And also, it's all the first roles of people like Dustin Hoffman and Robert Duvall, and they're all in this. It's like day players. Um, but there's a— there's an episode with Burgess Meredith where he plays a Greenwich Village poet who wakes up drunk and there's been a murder and he doesn't know. Um, and he stops at a newsstand to look at the paper, like, "What day is it?" And behind him on the newsstand is copies of Amazing Fantasy #15, which is the first appearance of Spider-Man. Oh, wow. Oh, my God. Just hanging there. And anyone—

And the prop person just put those up?

Yeah. Or they went to that newsstand. "Can we just film here?" "Fine." Brrr. "Done." And then just walked. And you know when the comics came the next week, the guy was like, "Well, these didn't sell." Boom. Like, that's millions of dollars of props just hanging there in the background.

No one used to think there would ever be freeze frame available. So they— and more in line with what we were saying, which is people were just cranking this stuff out and moving on. No one ever thought that there'd be whole cults of people that love to hate-watch and then have the power of freeze frame. So recently, I was watching a documentary I think Matt O'Brien and I, or Sweeney and I, were watching one of the Death Wish movies with Charles Bronson. And there's a scene where Charles Bronson wants to kill these guys in a restaurant, and it's the most insane plot. He comes in pretending to be a wine salesman. He takes out— I'm not kidding. He takes out— You know, he should just go in there with a gun and kill the people who are sitting in the booth.

That's what he does in every other scene.

This one, he comes in, pretends to be a wine salesman, man, and he goes over to their table and says, hey, I got this wine here, you might like it, it's a good wine. And they're like, huh, well, we're okay. And he goes, that's spoken like a true wine expert.

And he goes, hey, it's red, you ever see red wine? You ever see red? Bet you didn't think that. See something new.

If you're red, it's wet and it's red, and it's wet on your mouth, you can sip it. And he says, I think he opens the bottle and he sets it down in front of And then he gets real nervous, and a guy says, who's sitting at the table with the other mob figures, says, "Hey, don't I know you?" And he goes, "I don't think so. I gotta go." And he's trying to get away because clearly something's up with this bottle of wine. And the guy goes, "I think I know you." And then Charles Bronson squirms away, and basically he runs off and runs into the kitchen of the restaurant, covers his ears like Wile E. Coyote, and there's a huge explosion. You cut back to the table, there's a huge explosion. Explosion. Freeze frame. You have freeze frame now. So what they did was— yay, here we go— they would cut to Charles Bronson running away and going to the kitchen, putting his hands over his ears. They cut back to the table, they replaced the mobsters with mannequins and put them in the same suits. It looks terrible, and it's just two frames, but you can freeze on it and suddenly these guys are mannequins.

And then I guess they tried a real explosion but it didn't work, so they just one of those things where they made smoke go in front of the film in some awful way.

Oh my God. No.

So you see these guys freeze frame, and then a cloud, and you're like— They were just trying to get through the day, and I'm watching it over and over. You have it? Yeah. Over and over and over again, and I'm just overjoyed. Do you want to see the whole clip or just the mannequins?

I want to see it all.

I can edit it down. Yeah, edit it down. Go ahead. Let it roll.

Let's have some fun. Oh, Chuck, to the beginning. By the way, headphones on.

What, a minute?

Oh, when they rigged this explosion, uh, Charles had already left. Yeah, like Mr. Bronson's already left. Just do this, he's not here anymore.

He starts by convincing him that he's really— he's got a good wine.

This is late Death Wish.

You can tell by his costume too. Yeah, exactly. Not bad. Let's see what your customers say. Uh, no, I don't I think that's a good idea. They'll love it.

Uh, I'm just gonna randomly pour liquor for you.

Yeah, I'm a guy off the street.

Lucky day today, bottle of wine on the house.

Hey, not bad.

Hey, don't I know you from someplace?

I don't think so.

Is that Danny Trejo?

Yeah, it's Danny Trejo. Whoa, I know your face. Did you ever live in San Francisco?

I'm from Idaho.

I got a brother in Idaho. What city? I'm from Idaho. Boise.

I'm thinking of opening up a donut place. I know you. I never—

Look! Oh wait, you got to go back and freeze. Oh my God, go back and freeze.

Okay, got it!

Wow, looks like a ride at Knott's Berry Farm. Oh my— Isn't that great? Why? Why?

You know, the sunglasses guy's not so bad, but the Danny Trejo guy— Danny Trejo, they didn't not.

I mean, that is— isn't that one of the great—

you want to put a mustache on this Gregory Peck mannequin we have, it's close enough.

I don't know what to tell you.

Look at the stains on the ceiling. Like, I know, I just, I just— but here's the thing, I always say there's good and bad in everything, and when people decry this new era we're in, I think of the joy that I have had on YouTube being able to freeze frame people just trying to get through the day, or they're making this TV show in the '60s. They're doing the best they can. They don't think anyone's ever going to look at it.

It'll air once. Who's going to watch it again? Why would you? They're never going to— wait a minute. Someone's going to— there's going to be a thing called DVDs. They're going to collect every episode and put it in a box. That doesn't make sense. Who would do that?

It's going to be on a cloud that anyone can see at any time. And people are going to have radio shows where they criticize it over and over and over again.

Yeah, yeah, people are going to have— hang on, a redheaded giant's going to freeze frame this? Him, he's going to, he's going to sit with a hobbit and they're going to laugh at our work? That doesn't make sense. That'll never happen. You're, you're in, you're in la-la land.

We'll be right back with more Redheaded Giant and the Hobbit. Uh, talk to me about tea and scotch. This is— you've done— is this your 10th? 11th.

11th is my 11th. But who's counting? Yeah, who's— well, I, I mean That's— I didn't even realize it was my 11th till we were— they were putting together all the promo materials and what— I was like, this is my 11th, right? So that's— yeah, that's, uh, I mean, at this point now, I'm not trying to think in terms of— I think that, like, uh, posterity, reputation, and cool are just traps that get, get in the way of you doing the work you're supposed to be doing. It's other people that, that sort out your legacy later. Do the work now. 100%. Yeah. And it— but it took me a little while. I, I was getting in my own head about stuff. And now I'm just like, no, I get to do comedy and people want to come see me, and I get to do venues that I really love. And this is me at a very, very small club. I did a club, uh, it's in, um, Madison called Comedy on, uh, Main— Comedy on State a couple years ago. And it was— I hadn't done a club in like years, and they're like, hey, I was getting ready for— do another special.

They went, why don't you do this little club to get ready? And the show was so electric, the audience is right there. And I was like, how do I shoot something in this space small. So that's what I did. I directed it. We set up the— you can see the other cameras, the lights. Like, I wanted it to look raw. I wanted it to be— I just— and I don't fault anyone being in big theaters and arenas. That's fine. But there's some— I just don't— it's like some rock and roll, it— when it gets too gigantic, it kind of loses the—

No, I've had the same thought many times, that that's why some music just sounds amazing in a small club, man. It's why some food just— I don't know what it is, but tastes better when it's a small restaurant.

Or a stand that you've grabbed, and now you're walking around like you're just right there.

Yeah. I had a small studio for the Late Night show. 6A was a very small studio. And I remember seeing it for the first time and thinking, "This is too small. We need something bigger because we got to do crazy ideas. We're going to have Triumph the Comic Dog, and we're going to have, you know, all these crazy characters, and we're going to do this big stuff." It turned out it was such a blessing to have this small space. And I think that's something that I now don't take for granted. I think it's really good for comedy.

Well, also, something like this is, even in that small space, you feel that clock ticking till the next commercial break. We can get at things that you can't get at on a TV panel segment because there's no clock ticking. We're going to talk and talk, and we'll cut out some of the rough spots, but we're actually talking. And there's a whole different way It's what you always said about SCTV. It's the least needy sketch show ever done. And this format is not needy. And doing this smaller club, there was so less neediness about it because we're all right here. I'm not like, "Oh, God, I got this big theater. I gotta make this count." This is like, "We're doing a few shows, this little club. I can be loose." And what I'm learning, especially from— I don't know if you've seen Josh Johnson, right? Incredible. The turnover now is so much quicker. I can shoot this stuff, get it up on— I'm on a new platform called 800 Pound Gorilla. I've heard of it. Yeah. Gorilla Comedy Plus. And get it up on YouTube so much quicker and be so much more immediate. And so that feels like, "Oh, one less gatekeeper." You know, now I can just— And I can set up the next one.

Like, once this comes out June 9th, "9th. I'll never do that material again. I'm working on the new stuff." And it just keeps me working, and there's just so much less pressure. It just feels so much better. Yeah. You know?

And the themes you're exploring, are they new themes?

Well, there—

Is there anything new in this that— I mean, obviously, your stuff is always— it's always fresh material, but is there a theme that has surprised you that's come along at this stage in your life?

Yeah, the thing that has surprised me is I'm becoming way more— And I was kind of— I was kind of touching on this a little bit in the last special, "We All Scream Too," is that I'm becoming way more comfortable with being overwhelmed and not having an answer to things. And I think that comes with— I'm a big believer in you got to know when it's time to let the next generation kind of come up, and maybe they have the answers that you don't. I think a lot of people white-knuckle their youth, and they white-knuckle their authority, and you got to go— And you can still— I'm going to do comedy. I love doing stand-up, but there will be this embracing of, "This is beyond me." Like, I do a whole thing about AI, and the whole point of the bit is, at one point, I'm like, "I don't have an ending to this because this is such a massive subject." But that is so much more honest, that I'm overwhelmed by the horror of this. And I think that's a thing that a lot of comedians are nervous to embrace, is that you will eventually come to a point where you're like, "I don't know what to say." I don't know what this is.

I don't know what is happening. Yeah, this is, you know, I, I did my part, you guys got to do your part. I'm going to talk about the weirdness now off to the sides.

When someone tells me they're not sure, I am immediately attracted to them. I like them and I trust them. Yeah. When someone tells me I know exactly what's going to happen, uh, and I know all things, I, um, I, I want nothing to do with them. And there's a kind comedy that I've never been a big fan of, which is, "I know and you don't." "Let me tell you how it is." "Yeah." "I'm here to tell you how it is." "I'm here to tell you how it is." And then I've always liked people that admit that they're down in the muck with me. "I'm in the muck.

We're all in the muck." "Yeah, help me find a way out here." It's what we talked about the last time I was on the show, that your term, "Wisdom Rock." "Wisdom Rock." It's that, "Let me take my hand." "No, you're 20." And there's a lot of that now in— stand-up. I think Marc Maron said, "There's some comedians doing comedy, there's some comedians holding rallies." Yes. And that was such a, "Mm, yes, that's kind of what's going on." And we need to get back to the confidence of someone that can get up there and go, "I have no idea. I don't know what is going on." Maybe we will get to that, but that's where I am, and I'm so much more comfortable being in that part. And also being able to look back back at some of my earlier stuff where I was doing the, tell you guys how it is. Oh, you're 23, that's why you're saying that, because, you know, which is a— that's also kind of real wisdom, is when you're like, let me tell you what an idiot I was. I used to say this kind of stuff. Yeah, if you can laugh at yourself at that period.

Yeah, so there's a lot of that, and there's a lot of just very raw, um, there's, there's a lot of My daughter, it's the relationship. She's a teenager now, right? She's a teenager. And so now it's becoming more about, oh, she's actually right about this and I'm not. And maybe I need to like, okay, you figure this out. It's also an interesting place to get to where it used to be like, oh, here's this goofy thing that my daughter did and we got to help guide her. Now it's like, oh, my daughter just explained this thing to me that I didn't understand and just completely laid it out for me. Me. So that's really interesting. The roles have shifted. How old are your, um, they're in their late 40s. Oh wow. Yeah, yeah.

So had my daughter when I was— I had my daughter when I was 9. Uh, no, I have a daughter who's 22 and a son is 20. And but you know what, they've been smarter than me for so long, and you will attest to that. Absolutely. They were— when they were kid, little kids and would come by the office, yeah, they were not having my bullshit.

Anything technology related, we'd just be like, ask Beckett. This was when he was like 6 years old.

I would— the times that I've handed my phone or iPad over to Alice and go, can you please help me?

Yeah, make it do the thing, make the screen go away.

I've handed that thing to her. Oh boy. Yeah.

Well, uh, Tea and Scotch is coming out. It's going to be on, uh, YouTube, and it's June 9th, and I'm really looking forward to it. Thanks. You're always, uh, fun funny and delightful. I just— I'm going to end with this. You were on my TV show 44 times. Oh my God. Yeah. I looked that up today, and even the computer was upset. And on this podcast—

That's too many. As many as anybody, right?

On this podcast, 44. I think you've been—

this is the 4th time. Yeah.

Which doesn't— But it's always funny. Like, when you were on the show on TBS, as long as I've been working for Conan, when we knew you were coming on, we knew we were going to laugh and that it was going to be just a really good interview.

When I came onto this show, I knew that, yes, we would do pre-interviews, but it was always like, it'll turn into just us going, "Oh, man, this thing." Yeah, yeah. And that's going to be better than anything.

That's going to be better than anything. It's the stuff that, you know—

It was dessert. It was like, "Oh, I can relax a little bit." Yeah. Yeah. So I was always very— And I know I speak for a lot of comedians who were like, "Oh, when you're on Conan, you're actually talking with someone else." else that understands comedy and is not looking for a— gotta get a punchline every 10 seconds. It's, right, right, hey, we can just, just chill, let's talk. And it was— and it always ended up being way more funny because of that.

Oh, good. Well, listen, uh, it's, it's a, a mitzvah, a blessing anytime you, you come by. Please come back for anything and everything.

My daughter and her friends watch old Conan clips, the NBC show, at like—

they're just freeze-framing.

Look, Conan's a mannequin just before you left. You didn't even I try to hide that stuff though.

No, you embrace it.

You embrace it the same way that like SCTV were like, we don't have any money, look at this. Yeah, yeah. But I just love the way that they will react to like whenever, um, they— I showed her Artie Kendall, the singing ghost. Yes. Yeah. And her whole thing was like, he just makes it worse and worse. Like every time he's like, well, let me do this one for the lady, and then it's 10 times worse. Like they just love that it just— he was a crooner.

Brian Stack is a crooner ghost who would come on the show and he was a ghost and then he would Because he died in the '30s, he would sing songs that were sexist, racist, you know, all this stuff that would be—

But also that he thinks are like, "You're welcome. Here's a nice little song." And it's always the worst thing you've ever heard.

He'd be like, "Oh, I got a little— Colonel, I got a little something about the Irish. Ooh, the Irish love to drink." And all this stuff that's not appropriate anymore. And then I think in one episode I said, "I'm surprised people stood for this." And he went, "Well, they didn't. I was killed by a mob." That's how he died.

Go, I'm, I'm sorry, I've watched that scene. He goes, I'm surprised you weren't murdered. He goes, I was murdered, a bunch of women threw me down a well. And then you're like, well, good. He goes, hey, you have a hot Irish temper, I wrote a little song about the Irish. And then it's the worst thing you've ever— and, and, and also, but like, that stuff of— by the way, and I remember I watched the very first Artie Kendall sketch. I was in a hotel room in New York. I watched it. It's the one, the very first one where you don't let him finish his third song because you're just like, nope, we're cutting away. And I had to rewatch it to, to say that, um, I— it's about the, the Irish, um, Irish people's brains are made of corn. Yeah. And, um, and I, and I texted Brian Stack. I was like, I am laughing so hard at this guy already. Complete— and now there's like collections on— it's like YouTube is like this mini Criterion Collection of great comedy sketches now.

No, I, I just, uh, always love— well, shout out to Brian Stack and shout out to. And also, my favorite conceit is that I was always supposed to be the host who would— but I would entertain. All our sketches were me saying, okay, what's that, sir? Yes, I'm a beekeeper. And I'd be like, well, uh, okay, you can have— like, I in no way say no. This is a show. I'm always saying, ah, well, okay, what are your 9 rules for living forever, mummy from the future? You know, I don't know why I came in off the street. Yeah, I'm I'm a crazy man off the street. Okay, crazy man, take your 10 minutes.

Yeah, it's like you're at the bottom of the decision-making ladder on a show that you're hosting, that I'm hosting, that has my name, it has my name in it.

Uh, Patton Oswalt, we salute you, we love you, come on back 44 times please. Oh, I will. Thank you.

Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend with Conan O'Brien, Sonam Avcesian, and Matt Gourley. Produced by Written by me, Matt Gourley. Executive produced by Adam Sachs, Jeff Ross, and Nick Leão. Theme song by The White Stripes. Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino. Take it away, Jimmy. Our supervising producer is Aaron Blair, and our associate talent producer is Jennifer Samples. Engineering and mixing by Eduardo Perez and Brendan Burns. Additional production support by Mars Melnick. Talent Booking by Paula Davis, Gina Battista, and Brit Kahn. You can rate and review this show on Apple Podcasts, and you might find your review read on a future episode. Got a question for Conan? Call the Team Coco hotline at 669-587-2847 and leave a message. It too could be featured on a future episode. You can also get 3 free months of SiriusXM when you sign up at SiriusXM.com/Conan. And if you haven't already, Please subscribe to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend wherever fine podcasts are downloaded.