Transcript of South Beach Sessions - Lewis Black

Hello and welcome to South Beach Sessions. I'm particularly excited about this one because this man is a giant, a titan in the comedy industry. You usually don't get to do it for close to 40 years. Usually, you age out. Something happens, and it's hard to keep up. But he's got his present tour, which he claims is the last one. I do not believe him. Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road, the final tour. You can find tickets at luisblack. Com. I want to see if some of these numbers are right because you have done in some years, 250 shows in a year?

Well, close to that, but 200.

Okay. If I say 40 plays, three best-selling books, 12 comedy albums, 14 specials, 2 Grammys, what am I missing? And about 20,000 shows in a lifetime?

I don't know what the number is, but all the other numbers were around the right place.

Okay, what are you proudest of in there? If I tell you you can only choose one of those things to hold up as the best part of your legacy, what do you assign the greatest worth to?

It would be stand up because I wanted to be a playwright, and I Along the way, because I was doing that and it was at a drama school, I learned from the actors there. I started to perform more and be in plays more. So it was I was writing plays and then acting in shows. I never wanted to direct, but that was the thing about stand-up. I was writing I was performing.

It was all of them? It was everything. Did you want to be a fespian or did you want to be like when... If you're going and studying drama and just deciding what your dreams are, are they written or are they performed?

I wanted to write. That's That's exactly what I wanted to do.

Why did you stop doing it in the traditional way of writing plays? Not that you have stopped, but somewhere along the path, you decided to go stand-up.

I was working my way up the ladder of theater. I started in I noticed more and more was like an abusive orphanage where you would go in and you should be treated awfully. It was like you'd send a play in, and then you'd send the play, and then they'd say, Oh, we didn't... You wouldn't hear for a year.

You poured your life into the fulfillment of writing in lonely spaces. You give it to the world and then there's no applause.

It takes them a year. I used to say about it, you'd be better off as a playwright. I'm talking to you playwrights out there now, that if you took the play, put it in a bottle, and threw the bottle into a large body of water, that someone would pick that bottle up faster and pull the play out and read it. It would all occur quicker than it ever did in any theater that I-So it would cross an ocean.

It would have to cross an ocean first because... You weren't getting the fulfillment that would come with just laughter, telling a joke to an audience, getting the immediate feedback of laughter. It's the opposite of that.

Yeah. I mean, it was you waited and waited, and then you had to work with people, which was great. I mean, all of it was really what I wanted to do and really kept thinking I was going to do it, and I was doing it until I was 40, and that was the turning point. I'd gotten to a Triple A Ball, which is like a repertory theater that's in the community that's really well known. So this one was in Houston, and there's the Alley Theater, and been there forever. And I thought, I made it. I finally made it, and that's the step I wanted. If I could get there and have my plays done at those types of theaters, great. Then I could maybe get some teaching work and all of this stuff. And so I go there to do this. It was everything they told me was a lie, and it was just this horrible experience. And I I've aspired. Now I'm finally getting to where I wanted to get. It was awful. I was supposed to stay on and work with people that worked with them on the play. I said, Well, you're going to put me up?

And I was broke. Okay, so now I'm like, we had to actually take money. My friend, it was a musical that we wrote. In order for us to get another actor because we wanted a number of actors from New York, and they did not hire the actor, the amount of actors from New York that we had requested. I had to take money out of my salary. He did, too, in order to pay another actor.

When you say broke, you're talking about from 20 to 40, you're broke?

Oh, yeah. I was making enough money that I was fine day to day, everything fine, moving along, but no health insurance, no nothing, ridiculous. It was like crazy. But I ran a space in New York City from about 30 to 38, 40, that was a theater that a ton of people worked at. Everybody worked at. It was a small downstairs theater, which was like, had a bar in it. That was the way we supported it. Had it was in the restaurant. The guy is a very close friend of mine and he's become it over time. We went downstairs and we just started doing Then people like Aaron Sorkin showed up because there was nowhere to get anything done when we were there. This was the '80s into the '90s. There was nowhere. People, very talented people, Edie Falco, Aaron Sorkin, Alan Ball, who wrote True Blood, he wrote that, a number of other successful pieces. We had all these people coming doing really great work.

But are you thinking at this point of giving it up because it's not really a career or you're making enough so this is good enough because this is this is Triple A and I'm not going to be a major league player, but maybe I can still keep fighting from here and become a playwright, become more of a playwright, a more successful playwright. But then you didn't, or then you chose another path. I think, correct me if I'm wrong on this, I don't want to be presumptuous, but in what I've read about you and what the producers of this podcast are trying to do. I lost my brother recently, and they've asked me to explore grief, and you tie your career change to the loss of a brother, correct? Yeah. You made that jump somewhere, spirit spiritually around whatever you learned about mortality and grief there, or he opened a spiritual door for you?

He literally, as far as I'm concerned, this will sound, unless you've gone through it, I'm minorly psychotic, but there were doors that were not opening. I had agents. I had all of the things in place that would say, even as a playwright or as an actor, I'd started to do little bits and pieces in performance. My brother passed away, and I was just got my foot into comedy. I mean, I was starting to... I had left theater and was committing myself to being a comedian. My brother passed away then. I found that all of a sudden, I got a one-man show in New York City. That came along. These stories just started literally like, bam, bam, bam, bam. And between whatever my attitude was, and I really believe it was him, he was pushing people around and going, give Come on, let him do it.

After life, you're saying. You're saying that he was doing this for you. Yeah. How close were you two?

We were really close. He had been really supportive of my career. Huge. I couldn't have survived without him.

I would think that most people would think you too cynical to be that spiritual about afterlife and your brother opening doors from the beyond for you.

It changed the way I looked at things, that in part. I wrote a book, me of Little Faith, in which I went through all of the experiences that I'd had in terms of religion. So I've always... In spirituality, I've always had that thing.

That's super interesting to me because I will tell you, and this part is hard, and it sounds like lunacy to speak it out loud, but there are times that I just feel something from my brother pushing me in a more joyful direction because it's what he wants for me.

That's the deal, I believe. I think because- The cynic in me doesn't want to accept it.

I know. The cynic in me does not want to accept that I know so little about the unknown that I can believe in something so syrupy. Yeah.

Well, it seems syrupy, but it's also like it's so obvious. If it happens-It can't be unfelt.

When I feel it, it can't be unfelt because it melts all the cynicism in me. It will make my eyes water to believe it. I want to believe it. I just have a lot of trouble with the trust of believing Yeah.

Because there's nothing… There's no… I believe that the sense of humor is a muscle. It's a muscle that we don't work the way we work on all our other muscles. No one really teaches humor in school. In the same way, in terms of whatever that… There's religion. You read either prayers, you read this, you read that. There's no one really opening that door for you. There's no one going, You know this might happen. You hear about it, and 60 or 70% of what comes out from people around is like, What? The dog spoke to you? No. And it sounded like, No. Your mother visited you in the form of a cardinal or a bird of some sort.

The silliness of it.

Yeah, but that's what we're generally exposed to. Then when it actually... Because I felt... I don't talk about this much. When my brother had passed away, I was at home. I just saw him. Left, went home, He had passed away. I went back on the subway to... I wanted to be there. The doctor had said, No, it's an hour he's passed or so. They had said to try to resuscitate him. I'm sitting there trying to resuscitate my brother and knowing it's... I'll do it, but this-Same.

I did this a couple of times with him. Did you? Yes. No, it's horrific. Perfect. And also out of body? Yeah. And out of body.

And then the thought that stopped me was, I went, If I wake him up, if I bring him back, he's going to be so pissed. And that's really what I mean. I felt him in the room, and that followed. Now, this is Almost 30 years ago he passed. It's about 30. I've lost that sense with him, that feeling of him being there. In part, I think, because he went, Okay, we did it. I'm done.

You can go be happy now or to the degree that you can be happy around all of our human dysfunctions. Exactly. Did you feel laughter in the room with him? Did you feel that while you're resuscitating him, he's going to be mad at me for getting the credit of resuscitating him? That's funny. That's one final joke from him at the end.

Yeah, there was that. Then there was also the sense of a blanket. He enveloped me in the sense that you talked about, that I could feel him inside me, and it gave me a sense of... And I had not had that sense before. I've thought about the fact that, is there someplace that we go This is your proof more than anything else?

More than anything else, the proof is the feeling that you would find fundamental and, No, I felt my brother's presence here from a different place. Furthermore, he changed my life path. People who hear that and say, he's crazy, what is he talking about? How do you dissuade them of that because you've lived it?

Fuck him. That's my feeling. I'm not going to argue it. I wouldn't argue it with you. I think if you feel it, you feel it. You and I are two people that no one would expect me to feel this.

I would stun my audience, I think, with the feeling, and I would say it with conviction, too. There have been some things that have happened that are so gentle, but I was extraordinarily close to him, as it sounds like you were extraordinarily close. Why did you lose after... You say you lose the connection because now why wouldn't he still be enjoying it with you if you're still enjoying the success and the fruits of your career at 76 when no comedian gets to do that?

I don't know. I think in part, where I can trace it to is my mother passing away. And this is what I thought immediately is now that she's there, she's chasing him around.

You lost your parents. They were both in their hundreds, right? Like your father at 101 and your mother at 104. When I read the things that you say about them, I can't believe how normal and loving your environment was. I expect comedians to come from something different than that.

No, that was really completely... It's not, were you this? Were you that? I was... And especially in terms of the playwriting, it was interesting. My mother was, If you're not going to be... Look, I know you're not going to be a doctor. Here's the next best thing. And this is before I'm going to grad school in terms of theater, and my mother says, If you're not going to be a doctor, so the best thing, the next best thing is, you should run. Get into health insurance. That's where the big money is going to come. What? I'm not going to do that. Oh, yeah, no, do that. That'll be a really… That's where she was coming from. My father… Safer? Oh, yes, much safer because She couldn't believe that I… The fact that I got into a major drama school. I went to the Yale School of Drama, so that had a big… That's a big hoohah. That didn't have any effect. She still didn't believe it. My My father was like, all in. Great. You want to do this? Do it. Don't worry about her. Basically, it's your life.

Mine was the reverse. My father's an engineer from Cuba, an exile. Is that right? Yeah, he wants me to go into engineering, and I'm coming and saying, I want to write. He's come and gotten freedom. He's going and sending me to a private school that he can't afford, and I want to write. It's like, What are you doing? My mom's like, You got to let him chase the stuff that he dreams about.

That's funny. My father was an engineer, a mechanical engineer.

Well, let me read to the audience here what your relationship was with them. So Sam Black, you say, A great father and an extraordinary man. I was very lucky to have him in my life for so long. He was everything a man should be, loving, considerate, humble, kind, giving a mentor, a man of fierce integrity, an artist with a vision. His smile was like sunshine, and it has sadly gone out. I am blessed. He was my father. He knew the path we should follow. The world is less of a place without him, and none of this is bullshit.

It's true.

What was he doing that would make him a man of fierce integrity?

This is a remarkable story. My father was a mechanical engineer. He worked for the federal government. When World War II came, he had just graduated from college. Instead of being drafted or conscripted, they took him into They wanted him to work for the Department of the Army designing or the Department of the Navy. He was going to go to the Department of Navy and design weapons, undersea weapons, but mainly sea mines. Then he did that and the war ended and he wanted to get into design of other, like even a washing machines, anything that we were producing. He would go to these places. At that point, there was, as your family may have experienced here, there was an anti-Semite Hematism. So he would go in for the interview because the name is not… Sam Black is not a… You don't go. It's not like Steinowitz. So there was no tip off. He would go He didn't do an interview. The interview would be great, and he wouldn't get the job. And he just went. It was the early '50s. It was a tough road to hoe then. He stayed with the government. He felt comfortable about sea mines because they were a weapon that defends you.

It's not an offensive weapon. He worked on defensive weaponry.

Protect instead of attack.

Exactly. So even in the war, he's finding the morality.

Yeah.

And so he comes out and we're involved in all sorts of things, and we would, the whatever wars were up. But it was about mining harbors for people to protect themselves. So he and my mother have a huge argument about whether the Vietnam War is Is this really a legitimate war? They keep referring to the Geneva Accords. And so my father sits down and it was the Gulf of Tonkin, resolution was based on the Geneva Accords that were signed and whatever. He says, I'm going to find out if this is legitimate. And so he reads this little... Nobody read it. Nobody read the Geneva Accords that I knew of anywhere. We talked about it in school, but nobody. Now I'm in college and he reads it and he closes it and he said, There's no legitimate reason in here. This is an immoral war. This is nonsense. This is bullshit. Then we mine high Fong Harbor. We take our sea minds and use them as an offensive weapon. I can't remember if I was there at what point, but we were sitting around and he said, I'm going to be leaving my job. I can't do this.

Just for moral reasons?

For moral reasons.

The shirt you're wearing is one of his designs, correct? Yeah, it is. And he became an artist. Yeah. And so was it a thing where he's going from something that's rigid, he's disillusioned, and then he goes into the arts, and that births the openings that would be there for you later in life to pursue the arts as well?

It really gave me the sense of, commit to the things that you care about. I mean, all of this stuff, I'm going to leave. I'm going to go to Canada. I'm going to do this. It was like, are you in my own house with somebody who said, no, we're not doing this. I'm not doing it. I don't have to do it. He goes and becomes, he works as a He was an apprentice to a guy who does stained glass, so he does stained glass for three or four years. Then he would make these things for my friends. I'm going, You spend in four months building a Victorian mirror, and you're charging them 100 bucks? What the fuck's the matter with you? I'm giving him the advice, I'll sell them. He did that, and at the same time, he started to go to the junior college where you could go as a senior, you'd go there and he took free classes. He took art classes for 20 years. The great part of the story there was that they did an exhibition about three or four years after he'd been painting there, and they did an exhibition of the students and put them up in some music museum that they had at the school.

Somebody broke in and took two paintings, my father's paintings.Stolen.They stole my father's paintings. I said, Does that make you feel better? He goes, No. He said, Finally, a criminal with taste.

Mr. Gattier, I want to tell you a story.

I'm serious here.

My wife and my two daughters, they beg me to buy a Peloton. So I bought a Peloton, and then I watched that Peloton sit in my office and stare at me.

You know what I did one day?

I looked at And so I decided to get off my ass and I jumped on the Peloton because no one else was using it and I paid for it.

I mean, so why not? Then I realized eventually that they bought it for me. And I got to tell you, way more challenging than I could have ever imagined. Peloton coaches are walking the walk. I love the coaches.

I do the Grateful Dead one. It's fantastic. They have a sub three-hour marathon runner, military-trained athlete, a former college basketball player, and so many other well-rounded coaches on their team. All this experience really shows in their classes, which are never short of challenging, especially for me. So I jumped on it that first time. It was challenging, more challenging than I thought, and then I wanted to beat the bike, and so I kept jumping on it, and I absolutely love it.

I mean, I'm the only one who uses it, but again, they got it for me. I mean, I had no idea. That's a little passive-aggressive, don't you think? Find your push, find your power with Peloton at onepeloton.

Com. You say of your mother, Jeanette? Yes. She died as she lived. It was on her own terms always. She was one of a kind. It will never be anyone like her. Fierce about her belief that the world could be a better place, that all children are our children. She was a brilliant teacher, wanted to be more than a teacher. She was hard on my friends because she didn't want the world beating us up. It didn't. She was a ferocious angel when I perform, you can hear her from time to time. Sarcasm was her sword. We were all lucky that she mothered us. I won't miss her. She's always here. I can't thank you enough for giving her your attention. It made her very happy. It took the sting out of her not living her dream. Through you, she was living?

No, it was in part, yeah, through me. I got her out there. I would quote her. I would gave her her do.

She was the one screaming at the television when you were young and arguing with the newscast or arguing with the state of the world?

The state of the world, the newscast, the news itself, whatever was. We sat there, That's that stupid joke. I thought that Walter Cronkite was a part of the family. It was night after night.

Because you're just yelling about the state of America. It's what you're doing now, is it not? It keeps getting worse somehow. It keeps giving you father. It keeps giving the family father. It's worse now somehow than it was 70 years ago.

Well, because I said people will heckle me from time to time. I go, You're acting like I have any effect on anything, you idiots. I said, The bottom line is I broke into this business and was doing stand-up for the past 40 years. And guess what? Not only has nothing changed, it's gotten worse. It's gotten all of this input that I've had, that you think I've had this extraordinary effect and changed things in my direction, no. No, it's just gotten worse.

Can you tell me about how it is that she influenced you and how they shaped love for you, relationships for you, because the world that you have chosen to work in is not a friendly one to relationships. It's not conducive to recreating whatever love it is that you That's what you had in your house.

I couldn't. My mother's effect on me was sarcasm. I really picked up a sense of humor. She had a great sense of humor. At times, though, her sense of humor is so dark. She went across so many lines. But my father had a real good sense of the soft and the gentle. I learned from her how to use your words as a knife. For my father, I learned that you don't stab someone with the knife. That's really what. Because my father's the one who said, in his effect on me, he was reading Catch 22. I couldn't have been more than 14. He was laughing. You don't really normally see your father laughing. And I said, What is it? He goes, This book, it's really very funny. I said, Should I read it? He said, Yeah, it'll tell you everything you need to know about working in the real world. And it was huge. It had a huge effect on me. All of a sudden, I went, Oh, this is why high school is like.

Well, you manage, though, somehow, usually angry comedy isn't something that doesn't have a knife that will slice somebody in the face. You managed to walk the line pretty well between anger and not being cruel. Yeah, I tried.

Also, it's because there's one thing about being angry, which I will at times flip out on stage and then I have to tell the audience, I think I've gone too far. But 95% of the time, I'm acting it. It's the only way you can do it. You have to act it. They have to have this sense that you're in part kidding, that you mean it, but you're kidding. Because it took me a long time to learn to yell on stage. I just thought, You can't yell at people. I be on stage, especially in the small club in New York City that we worked, where I was working. I would turn around when I was going to yell something. I'd turn my back to the audience and yell at the wall.

But you're not acting, right? I mean, you're just turning up your eight to a 10. That's the only thing. The anger is real. You're just turning up the character to make him the lovable comedian. Let's get back, though, to what I was asking you that I veered away from. What did love look like in the household to you, and as someone who doesn't have kids and has devoted himself to this lifestyle, where does love inform how difficult it is to have relationships with the career that you have had?

Well, it was... For them, there was a real bond. I mean, those two really had that real love thing. I mean, they were very much in love. I mean, it was and not syrupy, not just a... My father comes home and says he's going to leave his job, and my mother doesn't panic, whatever you want to do. She, I think, as I grew older, I began to realize that she had been... She would have preferred. I asked her, she had 60. I was 60. We were having lunch in Vegas. I said, I never I asked the question, I said, Which of you wanted kids? My mother goes, pointing my father, he did. She said, Because if it was up to me, I wouldn't have had children. I was like, Well, I'm glad you waited till I was 60. You didn't tell me that, but I was in love.

She could have had her own life and done big things outside of just raising you because of wherever America was in the '50s that made him the earner and put her in her place.

Exactly. She never got over that, I don't think. I think that was her She gives up her entire life for the kids and does it very well, it sounds like. Yeah, and gave it up more so in some ways for the kids in the neighborhood because as we've grown older, friends of mine have said, your mother saved my life. Your mother did things for me that were hugely important. Your mother, in a sense, was a surrogate mother. I mean, there were three or four good friends of mine who never... I knew that they really appreciated my mom. I didn't know her effect on them. She didn't have that with us. I think that in part, it was like, okay, I'll show you. I don't know where it came from, but it made me happy that I knew she had that distinct in Jesus.

Oh, it didn't translate as necessarily warmth or affection toward you guys? Well, it would make sense if she didn't want you.

I know. If she's dying of resentment because when she sees in your face is you get all your dreams, she doesn't get any of hers.

I don't know what she imagined being.

What was she denied? I think she wanted to be something in the doctor realm, or something within that.

Could have done it, sounds like, and probably would have done it, if not for the interference of you guys.

Yeah, and was enraged that she had what would have been by the end of it. She got into college at 15. By the time she was 21, she had started to amass master's credits, which she then at some point announced to us that she was going through something where she was going, Son of a bitch, I had enough credits. This should have been... If I had these credits now, it would be a doctorate.

That's why she's yelling at the television, right? Yeah, that's part of it. But you don't know it as a child because it's concealed from you, but it doesn't show itself necessarily in warmth.

The world was unfair.

How does this affect or illuminate your relationships going forward as someone- First thing was, I thought, and I've heard of other people where I thought, being in that household and your mother's yelling not only at this, but at you about stuff.

The level, the The basketball level in the house was high. My father was very quiet. She's yelling away. In one of the first relationships I had, I'm yelling. And I still, even now, I'll be yelling at somebody and they go, God, you're yelling me. I'm going, No, I'm not yelling. You don't even know what yelling is. This is what... Because I thought... I said, You know what? I always thought was because I was yelled at all the time, that yelling was love. That's so interesting. That you trust somebody enough that you can yell at them, and they're going to- That's love and communication because that's what you had patterned for you in your home.

Yes. But not just that. You're not merely yelling. Also, your character as a yeller is getting rewarded and getting identity in every corner of the place that you're measuring success. All your dreams are coming true because as your last tour, final tour, allegedly, I don't believe it, goodbye, Yeller Rick road. This became your identity and your career and a path to happiness as chosen through your late brother. Yeah.

And a path to happiness for me because it was something that gave me great satisfaction. Over time, I began to realize that... Because I couldn't... I was traveling so much and finally had a chance to really do I had a creative place where I could… Now I could write a book and now I could act in something, and people were coming to me to do certain things and all of that. All of a sudden, this career that just exploded and that I could really enjoy it and realized that I would be hard-pressed to share that with someone, and especially hard-pressed to share it with a child. It would be about… Because I felt it was about me.

Oh, it was feeding so many of your vanities and feeling so much like warm love that you didn't even need anything else.

It didn't feel like warm love. What I didn't realize until the last... Until I was in one of the last specials I did, where I'm standing in front of the audience and I went, You've been my primary relationship. I come on stage. It's more than just the laughter and all of that. People talk about that. When it's rolling, it is really quite something and really is an endorphin high.

Seinfeld says you don't feel your feet, right? You're hovering above fight or flight so much and you're killing it, that that is the most joyous creative space.

Yeah.

Most fulfilling. Just you're voyant. The laughter, it's the best that a comedian can feel. It's almost the best a human can feel, according to your definitions of feeling things.

Then at times, because I don't I'm writing on stage, there have been times that I'm figuring out something in my head and talking to them, and then they respond, and that gets me to another level, and then they respond again. Then it's this really weird, I don't know where I end and they begin or where they end and I begin.

The best feeling you've known?

It was... Well, sex.

Okay. Thank you. But I thought it was in the realm of that. I would think that if I gave you the choice of the next 30 years, you live as long as your parents, and what you get for the next 30 years is great sex the rest of the way, or that laughter the rest of the way for the next 30 years, I think you're choosing the latter instead of the former.

I'm going to have to cut a deal.

Because the way that you I always talk about that is the way that athletes talk about being in the zone, but you were married for 10 months in 1974, right? The reason some of this is so interesting to me is because I got great fulfillment from reaching what I thought were all my professional dreams and desires, but because I was doing it alone, it was a little bit lonely. I wanted to be sharing it in a way that had some depth and some connection, and not until falling in love in my late '40s did I realize that there was something else available to me other than the just feeding forever the selfish narcissism of, Isn't it great that everybody, whatever, applauds me or laughs at me? And then I get it to make a career this way. 250 Nights on a Road feels like a dream for somebody who's a performer, who's a thespian. I'm making a living performing and making people laugh. It seems like joy.

I was making up for time because I'll tell you, if I hadn't left because of general circumstances, what was happening in the club, and also that I was moving into doing stand-up, that I was as happy in that club making literally what would be $500 a week as I've ever been with the success that I've had.

Because it really is about the doing it and the feeling good of the instantaneous laughter, the money and all the other stuff, the fame, the specials, that stuff is nice. It's great to make a living, but it's not the reason you do it.

No, but the reason I did it was down in that basement, we had a remarkable community. You'd work with somebody, let's say, For example, like an Alan Paul who brought us, he shows up with this whole group of a sketch-comedy group is where he starts. You're watching his writing, but you're also... I get 12 other actors coming in with them. Then they show up with stuff, and you start to watch all these people expressing themselves. There was a real joy of being able to be the guy with two of my close friends, be the guy who says, Here's the space, use it, and then sit at the back and go, That's really good.

Which is the long-term relationship for you if you could only pick one? Is it with the audience or is it with the art?

Wow.wow. That's really... I need to think about that for a week. That's a really good question. I hate to say that because people say that all the fucking time now. Well, that's a good question.

I'm really glad you asked. It's a stall tactic, but you are thinking about it, and you've devoted your life to this thing. That relationship that you've had that doesn't make it lonely, that makes it shared, is both with the audience and the art. But you're saying you'll do it in a basement with the 12 people who are your friends who are your audience, but that's not really what you're talking about there. I'm asking you, I've made career choices so that I'm working with and around the people whose company I enjoy to make the things. But I'd have a hard time answering that question as well as someone who doesn't have kids and just recently fell in love, and by falling in love, because I want to talk to you about anger, gave me real access, lubricants that I needed to feel because I'd always repressed my anger. And so I've had anger over the last seven years in a way that has been surprising to me because there's been a flume release on my emotions since I've arrived at my 50s, and given myself over to somebody with all of those vulnerabilities.

So it wasn't just the fact that she irritated you and you snapped.

No, it's never that. But I have just done a real learning around some of the things that you're talking about. I'm interested in your anger because I just recently got access to it. I'm just now learning to treat anger as information, as data, as stuff that is informative to me that I don't have to react to emotionally if I can just observe that I'm doing it when I'm doing it.

That's tough, initially.

That's not the way rage works, generally. No, but you can learn. The consciousness of that has been a real learning tool. I'm still not good at it, but to see in retrospect where it is my anger has gotten me because I haven't treated it as information, and then I just spill over emotionally and then behave in a way I shouldn't. Wow.

Yeah.

But you've seen in But you've had a relationship with anger since you were a child. My parents always pushed that down. I never saw any of that. What Passed For Love in my house never had anger, and it was concealed from us. My parents had to show a unified front, so I didn't have... I I've told this story before. I was 30 something years old in the back of a car, and I saw my face in the rear view mirror the first time I saw my parents argue, and I just was reduced to a four-year-old. It was just funny to see my head shrink and become a child in the back seat because I didn't have any… It sounds like you had at least an honest appraisal of feelings in your household.

Well, it was a spectrum between my father who… My father was like Buddha. Some of my friends said, it's like he must be watching a dirty movie all the time.

But not because he's been beaten down by an angry woman, right?

No, he came to the table with it. I think that kept her calm and kept her focused.

Good teammates. All you saw was actually good teammates.

Yes. In the boot, she was coming to my school teaching. She was a substitute teacher. Now she's wandering around and people are coming up and going, You won't believe what your mother said in the class today. She's like getting rave reviews as a comic. It was the stuff that was coming out of her mouth.

Well, some of the stuff she could have been, if not for the time and the place, correct? Exactly, yeah. Do you feel them at all? Do you feel your parents in the same way that you felt your brother in the opening of doors, or is that different?

No, different. I feel them more as... I don't really feel... I never felt them. They were there for so long. It was almost really another land. In my act, I now say, it's the equivalent of... To get a sense of what it's like to have a parent live that long, and then and how come maybe I don't feel it as I say, I shouldn't have been having an argument with my mother when I 70 years old. Because I would say, remember the time, can we drop the act?

I'm already-She's 100 years old. She's 100 years old and still treating you like a child at 70.

Why aren't you retiring? What is the matter with you? You keep working. Even as she was drifting into the... At 102, she's screaming at me about this. I'm going, What are you doing? I don't need to argue with you about this. We had literally had an argument about when I should take Social Security. I'm going, this is not sane. There's nothing sane about me discussing when I take Social Security.

What is the answer to her question, Why aren't you retiring? Because you're alleging you are in this special, Goodbye, Yellow, Brick Road. I don't believe you. The final tour. That's fine.

I don't believe you. What I'm saying is I'm not touring anymore, which means I'm not getting on the bus and roaming from Village to Dell as I like to call it. I'm not doing that anymore.

You'll open when Kreischer's got a theater that's easy work. Exactly. Okay. You're retiring from having to carry the whole economy on your back, which can be hard for a comment.

Well, partly that. Then there's other Steph, when you asked the part of the answer to that question about art, what attracts me, the art or my relationship to the audience? Part of what it is, is that I feel like that relationship, I breached the conclusion of that relationship with with my audience. I mean, in terms of week after week after week. And so that I have freed up-time so that I can go back to just the art, just The best of sitting in a room and writing another book or writing a play. Where touring is, is that it used to be because I was one of the few people doing it back then. It was like George Carlin and that. Then they asked me, Do you want to tour the theaters? I went, Yeah, this is like my whole life now. Everything is coming together. I could be in a theater. That was huge for me.

I don't care how I get to the theater. I'll get to the theater however I get to the theater. Do I need to to see an open mic night.

Right. They gave me that opportunity to work in theaters, and I thought that was really... That really has always been a pleasure. But it's the mechanics of it. It's the going. It used to be we would pick, we're going to go to these three cities. But now we're finding that a lot of this past tour was as it would be, you'd go where we would go. A, like that running up and down was not going to be bad. That's easy. But we find ourselves doing we're going start in Fort Lauderdale, go back up to So you're just talking the logistics of touring have become a giant pain in the air.

They are huge.

It's much more problematic than it was. And then going into towns where I did it because part of the reason that I loved doing it was as I got to see America. I mean, and-Oh, what a great way to travel and see America.

It was. Sure. Like, funded by your art? Like, that's the dream. Well, that's the dream.

It was. It certainly was a dream. And it really was huge. And it was why the bus and I kept going and I can go to Bismarck. I can go to Boise. Are you kidding me? I went through Canada three times.

Do you have a pinch me gratitude moment or moments that are the landmarks of where it is you'd be most emotional because you'd be like, How is this my life? Or, Here's my brother with me providing something I'm sharing with him because I've arrived well beyond where my dreams resided. Yeah.

I still have it. I've I got it constantly. When I... Inside Out 2, that I did, became a blockbuster. I mean, it's like, I mean, come on. That was not even in the cards, okay? And that was like a complete and utter... This is crazy.

You were the voice of anger. You got to voice anger as a theater guy.

Yeah, and have kids love my character, which really made me happy.

You made anger palatable, not beyond palatable, lovable. Well, that's career legacy stuff.

Yeah, that's really...

I'm not going to say it's who you are, but it's who your character has been, no?

Yeah, it's true. It's making that... It is. And that comes, I hope, from something I think is important with any comic that I like is humility. There has to be a certain humility when you're up there. You're acting like you're in charge of everything, but you're also you can't be... You've got to be humble about it.

Well, can you help me see the separation between the real you and the costume that you have put on for 40 years because you are in character as someone who's always wanted to be an actor.

Wow. I'm going to buy it, but I'm sorry.

The real you? No, that's okay. The real you versus... I understand that on stage is the real you, but like I was saying, it's the eight turned up to 10. This character that you have of rage, bile, not cruel, funny, lovable anger, I don't know if that's what's in your kitchen at night eating dinner. You might get angry about thing X, but I don't know that the character's on stage who has had all the success you are is the you at home.

As I said, if I was like that all the time, I'd have been dead by the time I was 40. I mean, I'm not like that all the time, but it will start. I will pick up a paper. My comedy begins with anger. I'm funniest when I'm angry. That was the tip. That was when I figured it out.

I went, Oh, That's your muse.

Yeah. Turning around and yelling at the wall didn't help. I am funniest because I'm stumbling around looking for words. I'm like, as kids would say, you're You're like my father, only you're funny. I've got that ability to express that.

But all of that is refined. What I'm saying is your costume is very refined as a thespian. Jezelnick, I don't I don't know who you admire these days for wearing a costume and being a character. Well, because you're not that angry, but because you've gotten so much of your identity, profit, success, rewards from being on stage as if you are that angry, I could where your identity might get merged between the two human beings because one of them is bringing you all the rewards. It's the one on stage.

Yeah, but I don't... That's really... I've literally put on my sport coat and a nice shirt, and now I wear jeans and walk out on stage. That 50 feet from the time I make that cross, I've become... What's weird is, and this is what happens is once it's over, when they're applauding me, all of that drops and it's like there's that strange moment of like, the fuck is what's the big deal? I don't deserve this. He deserved it, but he left now. He said, Good night. The show ended and now I've got to do the applause thing. But I really does. It It goes away.

You've been doing it so long. The reason I asked the question the way that I did, you've been doing it for so long and done so many reps of it. You've got more than the 10,000 hours of expertise that I can imagine that the walk from the dressing room to going on stage is you putting on some armor that you've been putting on forever so that you can go do the thing that brings the intimacy between you and the audience that you might not be brave enough to do as the real you. You're the real you might have too many insecurities to connect with your audience there.

That's why it takes... The hardest thing is you get the person who you sit with. The guys you work with, they're guys who are extremely funny that you work with. People go, You should really do comedy. There's a big difference between the guy sitting here, and I've said it a number of times when I teach a bit about stand-up, that 10 feet to getting on the stage, you're funny here, but can you do it 10 feet and you're on stage?

The expectation of funny is totally different. I will tell you that throughout my career, one of the best producers I had, when he put me and my father on television, he implored the producers of that show. He was telling them, Do not place the expectation of funny on them. Let them be funny as human let them overachieve because there's not the expectation of funny. The reason I admire comedy so much is because the expectation of funny makes it that only 300 to 500 of you can make a career at it every year with it. Because the expectation of funny is a terrible burden.

It's brutal. That's what makes it difficult for many people to do that 10-foot walk because it's just by the time they get there, what the fuck would they think?

They paid for you to make them laugh. They expect to laugh. That's That's what makes you... You can fear it, if not in the costume, that you've perfected over the years that can tame it.

Yeah, but finding that costume, using that word, finding that persona is the roughest part, I think. There's some comics who are really have that instinctually. They just have it from the get-go. They know why they're... They may not understand yet why they're funny, but they are. It's part of their toolkit, and they've got it already. That's like 2% of the comics I've ever met. I did a lot of open mind. I've been in lineups with comics and gone, Wow, this person is really going to be good if and when. Watching Jim Gaffigan grow as a comic was great because it was like all All of a sudden he'd been rolling along, he was doing well, and then he found that little voice that comments on what he's doing. I went, Wow, he really... That's a huge breakthrough because it's finding those things. It's finding out how to go out there with maintaining the armor and not showing the armor and trusting. A lot of the times, what is the most personal to you is the thing that makes you the funniest. To say, Oh, I'm going to show this. I'm going to show my anger.

God, they're going to love this is crazy because what if they don't like it? Then they don't like me.

Well, this is what I wanted to ask you about how you carve likeability, how you curate it, how formulaic you are about knowing, as many stand-up comics do, what needs to be tapped into so that you can maintain the right side of likable, I guess. How After 40 years of doing this and sculpting this, how did you arrive at your comfort with voice around anger? Where was the breakthrough there? You get to it at 40 years old, and then how much stumbling around do you do before you realize, Okay, this is who my character needs to be. This is what my voice is.

Well, it was the first time was a comic that I named Dan Ballard, worked out of Michigan It came into the club I ran, and we would do... When I first started doing stand-up more regularly, it was on Saturday night, we'd have a free show, I'd host it. Hosting allowed that freedom you have. What hosting allows is that there's no expectation you're going to be really funny. I grew from that into being funny. Then he came up one night and he was just visiting. I hadn't seen him in a while, and he'd been performing. And he goes, When you go back on stage, I want you to yell everything. Just yell it. He said, You're angry, and you have reasons to be angry, and you're on stage. You should be yelling about it. He said, I'm yelling all the time on stage. Nothing that I say. Everything I say is goofy. I shouldn't be up there yelling. You need to go up there and yell. Just go do it.

How long had you been doing it at this point?

I'd been doing it off and on since I was 21, but not committed. Do it, forget about it.

But for 20 years, okay. And so now, how long are you in? You have now decided to dedicate. Some door is opened, opened by your brother, and you're now looking for what does the costume look like.

Well, what happens there to finish the... What happens when I go on stage and yell is I went, Oh, wow, this is it.

That obvious.

I was like, What? And it was like, How did it take this long. But I see it in everybody else that I've watched and really whose work I've thought is terrific. You watch them grow and I went, wow, that's the door. Then everything was about modulating it. Everything was about, how do I use this? How do I use what I've got here? How do I use this thing that is funny and that I know makes me funny? How do I do it? Then apparently for a while, I I had no idea. I'd come on stage full-bore yelling and then get louder. I mean, I was crazy. My friend Kathleen Madigan, who's one of my favorite comics on Earth, and we We've been close for a long time. She and I met on the road, and she said it was... After years, she said, When I first was watching you on stage, all I thought was, he can't possibly make it. I don't know how he's doing it. They're not laughing for seven minutes. They are scared to death of you. And she said, But I was afraid to tell you that because then after seven minutes, you finally broke them.

And then they started laughing. And I didn't notice it at all. I didn't know that people come up and go, How did you learn that? I didn't even know that I did the fingers.

So this is a bit out of body for you here. The entire experience... It's fascinating to hear you describe going to this place, visiting it, occupying it, living in it, and then leaving it. Yeah. What is that?

It's called... In sane cultures, it's called schizophrenia.

But this is just acting. It's one of the things that draws you to acting is the fact that you're performing as a robot whose features you're all controlling.

Yeah, and then Also that you're doing... You're going up there. I mean, 60% of what I do on any given night I've done before I did... I'm working on whatever my special is going to be. It's like 50 or 60% is coming. It's also stuff.

That's all stuff you know works, right? Largely from audience to audience, no matter where you are, that 50 or 60% is going to give you 50 or 60% of the confidence you need to try and push it to 100%.

That's exactly it. That 60%, what I found was that I was really able to put this, that I You have to... The one thing where your acting chops come in, and you see it with Seinfeld, but every comic does this, every great actor, that it's really literally I'm doing this, especially actors on Broadway. I mean, I'm doing this for the first time. You're the first people hearing this. It's got to be sound. It can't sound rote. It can't sound like you've said this a thousand times. It has to sound completely fresh.

Well, that's Seinfeld. One of Seinfeld's many gifts is that he is able to deliver it as if it is fresh and also conceal what is the very real disdain he has for just people in general. Yeah. That his anger is more substantive than yours and nobody knows it. That it's hidden behind an act that is just meant to conceal that he openly loathes you. And he's conquered comedy in a way that doesn't have a whole lot of precedent either. So who are the craftsmen and craftswomen that you most admired? I know you grew up with Prior and Carlin, and those are the guys who tend to formulate just about everyone's shaping about About your age.

But Bruce was really big.

Willing to get arrested for his work.

Yeah. Also, the level of his work was… I mean, you could see how it really affected George George in his work because George went down. I think George was there one of the nights that Lenny was busted and went with him to the police station. Lenny kept going, What the fuck is the matter with you? You don't need to be here. But Lenny really did that. There's a thing called, if anybody really, if you like comedy, there's a thing called the Carnegie Hall album, which is a double album that he did.

A Bible of sorts, a manuscript of scripture of sorts.

It is for me. I kept pushing it away because I knew if I really... Until I trusted whatever was, and this is way early. I'm like in my 20s, my early 20s. I was doing stand-up just because I was fascinated by it. I didn't really want it. I wasn't going to do it for a living at all. I always did it to get some writing out there and just to see how it worked. I was just looking at the mechanics of it, and I thought, if I listen to Lenny Bruce, I'm just going to imitate him. I waited to the point where I felt I'm on, I'm figuring out, but I mean, rudimentary. I listened to the Carnegie Hall thing, and that's just mind boggling. I read the books that he wrote and listened to the other albums. All the other albums are just clips of work this thing is.

You feel like you're looking at a sculpture by a foremost artist, and it's a masterpiece. Even now, you would look at it as such in your '70s. You used to look at it.

Oh, yeah. No, it's spectacular that he comes in there, that he's shocked. From the beginning to the end, and he shot him from the beginning to the end. He had a... Something that I've always been attracted to, I don't write my act. I basically work it out on stage. I am writing it.

You vent it a little bit. You summit it, You're forever crafting it on stage, tapping into the anger so that it fuels you.

Yeah, and then just to tell it, and to tell a story. Sometimes it's not angry. It's just, you won't believe what just happened to me. All of my specials I've always done in the hopes that I was telling a story through it, even if somebody didn't understand the through line, they essentially got it gut-wise. I've always been... But it's that writing on stage and having an audience. And that's, I think, in part that my relationship with the audience was so important because they're the ones who told me what was funny. They're the ones who were guidance.

You ended up going through a back door to get to all the things you wanted from the plays. You went a different route. You went through the back of the theater to get to all of the things that whatever it is you were he was doing about. It was more constipated the way that you were doing it before your brother ended up allowing for a laughter. You would phrase it that way, right? That your dead brother, your late brother opened doors for you to be happier so that you could have a more fulfilling existence with your work.

Yeah. And that he allowed people to... He gave me the opportunity to be seen, which I wasn't being seen.

How would this have all changed over the last four years, if not for the pandemic? What was the punctuation of your career going to look like? Oh, boy.

First off, ladies and gentlemen, and this is an important lesson that I must, the five-year plan is bullshit. Okay? Anybody says to you, What's your five-year plan, you take a shit on their desk.

Okay, very good. That seems extreme, but okay.

Wasn't it?

I mean, yes, but that's okay. It's not extreme.

Can we not say that?

Yes, of course you can say that. I was playing your straight man. Of course, I'm all for a shit on the desk. Desk.

I would have imagined.

That's how we're going to end this right here. But you and me are going to take a big shit on the desk, and we're going to be, Ta-da, South Beach sessions.

But it's nuts. That's where I was. I had a five-year plan before the pandemic hit. I was going to do two more specials. I was going to continue to tour, and about 4-5 years from the time the pandemic hit, I would be done. That would be it, and I would do a wrap up and I wanted to do the last. I thought I had two more specials in me, and the pandemic blew me out of the water. The pandemic was brutal for me.

Because of how alone the alone was? Yeah.

The alone was... It was not only that. I was 12 weeks alone, and I learned that there's a reason that we put people in solitary confinement, because it drove me crazy because your brain will only play with you for like... The brain gets really excited for a day and goes, This is going to be great. We're going to have so much fun. All the things we can do, this will be the best thing ever happened. Two days later, my brain is completely fed up and it's gone through everything 60 times, and now it comes after you. You blew this, you fucked up that, you completely screwed this up. Why didn't you have children? I've had this discussion with myself already, and I'm going, I don't need to discuss this again.

Oh, my God. That sounds like the comedy around deathbed remorse. If you can't be around the laughter and you're totally alone, isolated all the choices you make, soon before you just eat yourself up with ravaging doubt.

I know. It was the worst period I've ever experienced. I'd never experienced anxiety, never experienced depression. Now it was just fueling all the time. Where I really learned this was an amazing moment in terms of the last five years of comedy that I've done. I did a thing on stage where I talked about how I flipped out during the pandemic. I started after we had an all-clear signal, I went out, and I started talking in the audience. I thought as a placeholder, what I'll do is talk about how I react to the pandemic. I don't care what your choices were. These are my choices, which made some of the audience angry because you're not supposed to. It's like, this is me, you schmucks. Not you. I'm not telling you to do this. So I'm out there on stage I'm going through it, and I'm realizing they're really laughing at this stuff. I mean, obviously, everybody went through this in one way or another. Then I get to this point that I thought this will... The first night I did, it was about how I destroyed... I went through, then you had this relation, you've destroyed that, and you fucked this up, and I do a litany of how I screwed up all the relationships in my life.

What a piece of shit I am, and I just bombard myself for a minute. I do just take direct action, direct anger at myself, and I finish, and I think in my brain, I'm going, Well, we're going to have to cut this. And the audience is screaming with laughter. And I thought, Wow, I really thought it was just me. I mean, everybody gets this.

It was just a withering examination of all of the choices you have made in your life, including to not have children and to self-loathingly judge those just because you had the time in the pandemic to remove all the distractions and be alone with your lonely truth. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it sounds awful and not funny, but you made it funny. That doesn't sound terribly funny to examine your life with remorse and anger and then be really mean to yourself on stage.

And they went nuts. And I thought, Good God. And I realized then that-We're all We're all going crazy. We are all, and this is something I continue to tell the audience, we haven't come out of it yet.

Luisblack. Com. Let's shit on the desk right now together. The last tour, goodbye Yeller, Brick Road, the final tour, I don't believe it. Luisblack. Com is where you get your tickets. Thank you, sir. I appreciate the time. I appreciate the comedy. I appreciate the honesty.

Oh, thanks. It was really a pleasure.