February 27, 2024 • 56 mins
Meet Thomas Lennon, an American actor, comedian, screenwriter, producer, director, novelist and Craig’s good friend. He plays Lieutenant Jim Dangle on the series Reno 911!
Lennon is also an accomplished screenwriter of several major studio comedies, he wrote the Night at the Museum films, The Pacifier, Balls of Fury, and Baywatch. EnJOY!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Craig Ferguson Fancy Rascal Stand Up Tour continues throughout
twenty twenty four. For a full list of dates and tickets,
go to the Craig Ferguson Show dot com slash tour.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
See you out there, the.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Greig Ferguson show dot com slash Tour. My name is
Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast is Joy. I
talk to interesting people about what brings them happiness. Tom
Lennon is an American treasure. If you only know him
(00:33):
from his oiled legs, wearing shorty shorts and Reno nine
one one, then you probably know enough. But I know
a little more, and you're about to to have a
listen to this. We're gonna start talking about Tom Cruise.
That's how you know we started because we're going to
talk about Tom Cruise right away because I have something
(00:56):
to say about Tom Cruise and it's gonna happen.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
I'm not worried about it. You shouldn't be. Feel like
at this point, if I was going to get blowback
in my life from stuff I'd said and did, it
would have happened.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
I hope that for me. Nah, I think I mean
there's like two and a halfs late night over there.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
There's ship that I said, easily scrollable. There's gotta be
something in there. God gotta be.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Oh my god, it's fucking two and a half thousand hours.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Gotta be. Yeah, no, it is. I mean we did
two but at least luckily you never wrote anything down. Yeah.
I don't know, man.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
So here's what I was thinking, because we were we
You mentioned Tom Cruise because you and Tom Cruz are
the same height.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Identical, but yeah, we've hung out twice once with the
same height. One time we were definitely not How did
that happen? It was mid buckles my mind. I've thought
about it every single day since.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
You know what, Here's what I think about Tom Cruise,
and then we're going to get back to how he
can bend the laws of physics. All is that I
used to like, say, you like derisive things, but Tom
Hughes and Tom Cruise and Tom Hughes, Oh yeah, yeah,
Tom Hughes is the worst man. So I used to say, like,
naughty jokes about Tom Cruise.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Your live.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Naughty jokes is your is your that's my thing. I
would say your million.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
As they say in Quebec.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
But I have a theory about that, right, Okay, okay,
So here's what I think about Tom Cruise. He's a
goddamn American hero and I and I approve of him
one hundred percent. Same here, and here's why he's crazy.
Oh sure, But but he doesn't make anyone else's problem. No,
he uses it to provide top quality entertaining into whatever. No, no, no,
(02:50):
And I I also wondered why I haven't been asked
but he Yeah, well there is that.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
No, the best two times hanging out with that guy.
So what did you do hanging out with Tom Cruise?
One time? I did a table read with him, really,
which was neat What was the table read for? It
was a picture that never came out.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
I've made a bunch of those, most films I've been involved,
it's never happened.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
You wrote a couple of movies. I've read at least
a dozen that movies. I've been in a couple of movies.
I'm not positive I saw them just because I heard
they were so bad.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Yeah, I've got a collection of those. Yeah, Lady Wonder
Dog right there, off the top of my money, this
Landy the Wonder Dog is this a real picture. It's
a real picture, and I'm in it. I haven't seen it,
but it was.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Was it a theatrical picture?
Speaker 1 (03:38):
I was certainly, I'm going I'm for sure when I
listening to the diffic A big board is a huge
word video? Remember that straight to video? It may have
been that. Oh, I'm on a couple of straight videos.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Sure. I got a picture on Rotten Tomatoes that's at
a zero. Okay, that's tricky. That pretty bad. What's that picture?
It's called? It's called Ottersville. It's with Michael Shannon, Ian McShane,
some good actors. You're kidding me, Judy Greer, Christina Hendricks,
Ron Pearlman. What Uh it's maybe just nobody voted? Oh
(04:13):
it's no, No, they did. It's an atrocious film. How
can that happen? Yeah? And we're all kind of bad
in it. But it's got to be the director of that.
Let's say that. Do you know what the say?
Speaker 1 (04:25):
My worst results on I had on the Rotten Tomatoes
is I'm in that movie?
Speaker 2 (04:32):
And I wrote the movie? Oh is it? Oh? Is
it a I'll be there, Oh I'll be there. Yeah. Yeah,
And I did write that movie? What is it? How
about is it? It's I think it's like fifty something, batter
you're shitting. That's magnificent. Is there is My Museum which
I wrote, and I'm pretty proud. That's a great movie,
thank you. It's at thirty four. Fuck up, that's nuts.
(04:55):
That's the world we live in. That's a great movie.
And now my my, so oh this is great. My
son Oliver, whom I love you, I don't love him, can't.
He's turned this on me now, it's amazing. So like, well,
he'll ask if we can go see a movie and
I'll you know, he'll be like, let's go see you know,
the Nun two or three, or let's go see. He's
(05:17):
in a very into horror and lots of stuff like this, right,
And so I'll check the tomato meter and I'll be like,
oh boy, I'm like, this sounds this one sounds like
a real drag. It's at forty you know two, right,
which is a splat.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Right yeah, splots sixty or something, oh.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
Yeah, yeah yeah, And he's like higher than that of
the Museum. Bro, Oh my god, I'm like, oh that's cold.
Oh my, that's good that I raised this, you know,
but this is the thing.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Though, to be fair, he's got an interesting position to
be only because your Dad at Night in the Museum
is and he knows it because he's not an idiot.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
It's a fucking great movie. He's working the system. Yeah,
he knows that he can that the system is a
little bit rigged, and and that he can play that
against me.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Well, you know how you could prove that Night of
the Museum is a great movie. It's because Night of
the Museum too exists, right, and I wrote that right,
So if they don't let you do another one unless
the first one was totally awesome.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Or or anyway so that it was a table read
with Tom Cruise. So he did Night at the Museum
the table read. No, although he and still are very
close because they did Tropic Thunder, which I just let
that see. But uh so, if you want Tom Cruise
doesn't he won't read a script. Okay, it's not the
(06:39):
way it works. Well, he's dyslexic. Yeah, apparently it's dyslexia,
which I found very hard to believe because at the
table read of a script he's never seen. Yeah, he
gave an amazing performance. Yeah, I have movie star performance.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Yeah maybe, Yeah, you're sure he hadn't walked through it
with someone.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Here to my hand, to god. He everyone tells you,
they're like, he won't read it. He doesn't want to
read it, right, he wants to put a table together
and it'll they'll cast the best person for every part, right,
tru I believe it. I had a very small part.
I refuse to believe that. But uh Ian.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
McShane also with that one, Ian mc senat.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
He's a great actor. He's a great actor, not scary
in person as he as you think.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
He's like al swearing jing and oh god, he's so scary,
masterpiece dead would he's.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
One of the scariest guys. And then he's a real doll.
Yeah you know he's loving man.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Yeah yeah, but that happens he's acting.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
He's just it's just pretending to You should know that man.
Now there's people that are seem so scary and then
you meet them and they're a doll. And Nally Vincent
Price was like that doll. Yeah yeah, because you know
he he scared me when I was a kid. Then
there's big but you meete who are exactly a scary.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
There are people who are meant to be nice. Then
you meet them and they are fucking.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
It wasn't. It wasn't an asshole, but he's scared the
sh I met Kendal Fenian and Las Vegas. Right. He
yelled at me, what why it? It wasn't.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
It was a rough night for everybody, okay, and will
you you guys drink in non?
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Not together?
Speaker 3 (08:14):
No.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
But I'd taken his friend away for a little while
to go see George Lopez, and then I brought him back.
It was part of the big they'd moved the Aspen
Comedy Festival to Vegas, right, And uh, it was when
Sopranos is the biggest show in the world.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
I remember I wouldn't have any of the Sopranos on
my late night show because I loved the show so much.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
You don't want to ruin it. I didn't want to
break it. Don't want to ruin it. So Jenny and
I my my wife and are at Caesar's. We're doing
the festival, and we come down the elevator and who's
walking by with a foot long cigar and roll like
a thousand, one hundred dollars bills and that he's counting. Gandelphini.
I love this and I'm like, and my shows were
(08:54):
done on I'd probably had a glass or two of wine.
Am I do we just follow him to see where
he's going? Yeah, so we did. Maybe he thought you
were the Feds. He might have, but this was a
real trip. Speaking of how much you love the show,
don't Meet your Heroes. Followed Gandalfini through the casino to
where he was going to the high stakes blackjack area,
and the guy that he's meeting start waves hello to me,
(09:16):
and Jenny is like, Jenny Hi, And we forgot that
we had a mutual friend with Gandelfini. This guy, Gandelfini
is playing blackjack at a table with Michael Impiliodie, the
guy who is Johnny Sack, Johnny Sack, Polly Walnuts and
like little Stephen. This is crazy. Sure, this is an episode.
(09:40):
It was the HBO Festival, so they'd put everybody and
gave him a thing. YadA, YadA, YadA. It was really
insane to see all those guys together. Later on, I
had to go tell Gandalfini where his friend had gone to,
and I guess he'd had a really bad night at
the blackjack table and he was screaming at the concierge
(10:01):
at the Caesars really.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Yes, this is before smartphones, so yeah, yeah, like a
twenty something kid is that.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
He was like, oh, I mister, you know so uh gnafen,
he's yelling at the the concierge. Was he yelling at him?
I think he thought that the black jacks the table
was rigged.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
So he was a little toasted that as well, which,
by the way, black Chuck is rigged. It's it's I mean,
it's just the odds. Yeah, the whole thing is rigged.
You're going it is rigged.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
You're gonna lose. Yeah, that's just math. But so he
was yelling at the young employee at the thing about
how the blackjack table was rigged against him and his friends,
who happened to literally be literally the Sopranos. That was
just scared the ship. I was so scary. And I
see that he's yelling at the concierge, and I think
I'm worried that he's lost his friend who I had
(10:53):
taken to go see George Love You're you're the friend
is mysterious. The friend is real nice, He's just an
actor guy that we know. But yeah, but.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
You're keeping him out of it for a reason. Well
is he in the witness protection.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
All right? But so so I lean in. I'm like, oh,
the guy's name is Lenny, And I'm like, hey, yup,
So I lean into it. I'm going to back off
the mic, yeah, because what happened to the next was
so scary. So I lean into Gandolphin. He was screaming
at the guy at the desk, and I say, excuse me,
mister GANDELFHENI uh if Lenny went to go find you
with the nightclub called Pure James. Gandolfini turns to me
(11:32):
and says.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Yes, I don't know that.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
And that was scary my heart. Yeah, like broke. I
just got yelled at by my favorite TV character. He
was so mad at me.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Well, you know, you can look at it that way,
but you could also look at it the way as like,
because he yelled at Carmela and he loved her.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
He loved Carmela and and so I think it's okay,
and then but then he so I started, I like,
my lips started quivering, and I thought I was going
to cry. And I grabbed Jenny's hand and I ran
round the corner. I'm like, James Kendolphini just yelled at me,
and then he came around the corner a few minutes later.
Jenny's like, he's right behind you, and I'm like, oh
(12:15):
my god, he's gonna yell at me more again. Yeah,
he's gonna really yell at you this time. And he
tapped me on the shoulder and he said, yeah, you
do a show, Yeah, you have a show. I said, yeah, yeah,
I do a show called Reena and II one. He said, oh, yeah,
it's great, it's a great it's a great show, really good,
and then he walked away. And so then I went
back to the concierge and I'm like, what what happened?
(12:36):
He was screaming at you, and then he screamed at
me and he said, oh, he said that the blackjack
tables were rigged and he was super super mad and
he was screaming at me. And then he said and
then you came up to him. And I actually didn't
know who that was. I haven't seen the Sopranos. But
when you after you left, I said, the concier said that.
He said to Kendel Foinie, oh you're friends with Lieutenant Dangle,
(12:59):
said you were, Oh that's so funny, and Kendelpinia apparently said,
having just yelled at me, he said to the concierge, Yeah,
he's just great. He's a great guy, great guy. So
it was the scariest night anyway, meeting your Well, yeah,
I had this thing.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
I do have this thing about meeting heroes that like,
I never I wouldn't allow the.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Late night bookers to approach David boyd No. I don't
know if he would ever have done the show.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Of course he would have, but I would think he
would like, you're not allowed to even get in touch
with him because if he turns up and there's nothing
you can do.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
What if it goes badly? Right now?
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Yeah, And the reason why I want to because I
had heard through the great he likes you. Though I
know you were laughing at the show, I had done
a sketch yeah no, no, yeah, he does on his
sixtieth birthday, which is seriously how long ago it was,
because I'm sixty one now, But on his sixtieth birthday,
I did a sketch in the show where like I
sang as David Boy because I can do David Boy going,
(13:57):
I'm going down the shops to get some bin that's
it and some that's it.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
You know, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
And it was just like old guy stuff gets off
my and he apparently thought it was very funny. And
then I thought, but if he comes on, I don't
know I would I wouldn't be like that, No, I'd
be I was still I still believed in the myth
at that point.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
It's a bell you can't unring. Well that that that's right,
that is it's a bell you can't unring.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Like Morris is a big one for you. You ever
meet Mars.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Him a couple of times.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Disappointing, Okay, disappointing.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Yeah, no, it's it's very sort of very imagine Chili's
chili thinking about it's just so chilly dells and stuff.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
If only we could all think about that. Of course,
if we want washed in blood, you know, it's just
always a thing. So I had I had speaking of
your your bowie thing. I went to see the Springsteen's
Broadway show, oh yeah, and uh and it was amazing,
you know, and it was like Springsteen and you're sitting
(15:07):
right there, you know.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
And if I heard he had a peptic ulcer, I
was like, of course, of course that would explain it.
I've had that kind of ulcerated selfigus thing. It's oh
it has to be. I don't know how he could
sing for this long. Yeah, no, it's amazing.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
So I'm walking out of the theater to see Springsteen
and one of his security guys there's like guy kind
of wrangles the stage door area, keeps people just a
little bit away and stuff. And then there's another guy
like at the door, but there's another guy who's just
kind of like street guy, keeping it safe for the loss,
give it real. And he goes, oh, hey, man, are
(15:45):
you are you going to see the boss backstage?
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Because I guess he knows me. And I was like, no, no,
I wasn't going to.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Now I have to well, and the security guy's like,
go ahead, man, no, no, no, go go go on go
on back. Just say, Ronnie, just go ahead, go go
on back and meet the boss. And I'm standing there.
I'm standing in the street and I'm looking at this
guy and there's another security guy right, and there's probably
another guy after that.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Sure yeah, and then Bell and Jack Nicholson, and I'm.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Like, my next thought is okay, so let's say I
get past next Thanks security guy. Great, so I've made
it past two security guys who love me. Then I
get let's say I get to the boss. Yeah, and
his eyes don't light up. Yeah, he doesn't know who
you are maybe at all? Right, and that's lightly. I
mean you don't know.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
I mean you've done a lot of stuff in nine
one one is like everybody loves that show.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
You would think, but like, what if the boss didn't
care and didn't know and didn't care? Yeah, I think
you're overthinking it. Did you did you go? Did you
get through? I didn't go through because I was so scared.
I was like, if on the off chance that he
does and go like, what if I get through and
he goes.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Ronnie, you're you're fucking me?
Speaker 2 (17:05):
What?
Speaker 5 (17:05):
How are these randos? We got randos getting back here?
Speaker 2 (17:10):
What are we doing? Ronnie? But he wouldn't say that
in front of you? Then what if he did? He
wouldn't he's boss, Ronnie, you're fucking me.
Speaker 5 (17:21):
This is just back here, and he's got his fingers
in the seven layer dip and then of a bitch,
Ronnie get the get out.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
No, but then and then Ronnie loses his job. In
this scenario, it's horrible.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
This is a terrible and then I take Ronnie has
to live with me for a while eleven year house.
He's like, man, I really thought.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
The Boss Tom and the Roadie is recorded in front
of a live studio audience.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Yeah, anyway, I sent I sent him back to see
the Boss, and the Boss was just mat I Boss
probably pretends to know you. Well, that's so. I mean,
haven't you done that when you've been introduced to one
day long?
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Because I did this once once where I get introduced
the Costello backstage and I was like, and he said, hello, Craig,
nice to meet you. And I was like, knows you,
he knows my name. And then I saw a guy
literally a household name though.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
You know, there was a guy who it's a Craig Ferguson.
He got a handle, he's got handles. Get a guy
that goes it's Craig fergus.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Now, the problem is it doesn't work when it's not
Craig Ferguson, because the guy only.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Says the guy whisky works for you, exactly, Craig fergus,
Craig figus. It's a guy.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
There's a guy Coronie that used to work for Chris
fucked up till he fucked up and.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
He was letting Randos in. Rando's were back.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
The Craig Ferguson Fancy Rascals Stand Up Tour continues throughout
the United States in twenty twenty four. For a full
list of dates and tickets, go to the Craig Ferguson
show dot com Slash Tour.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
So you are there.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
You're on the road right now, right working with the State,
which is kind of a rock band situation to be in.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
And that's that's a cult outfit, very very very much
so in that Remember how the Clash never made any money. Yeah,
they had to live in like squad apartments and stuff.
Clash that was a lot to do with miss management, drugs.
Is that? Is that what you're sure?
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Yeah, we're too old for both of those. Well yeah yeah,
but no, it is a lot like being in a band.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Yeah, I mean, you get a band back together, do
you guys have like backstage antics?
Speaker 2 (19:30):
And like do we have antics too? We fight a
we fight a lot. We're still fighting. Absolutely. It's a
good lord. But it's always about the work, you know.
It's like never we never have personal stuff. We're all
you know, we the State the Comedy Group got together
in nineteen nineties eighty eight Shut the Front Door. So
(19:51):
we've been together since I was eighteen years old and
now I'm fifty three, so it's still God'm sixty one. Man,
it's fucking it's fucking bad. Yeah, when do we guess
we get to quit at some point? Yeah? I tried
it the way you did not try I know, and
then I noticed that. And then the next thing I
noticed is dates everywhere, and you got two podcasts and
(20:13):
you're on tour everywhere. Quitting my fuck, No, for sure,
of course, you know. So by the way, everyone said
that about you. As soon as you were like I'm
not to chill out for a minute, I'm like, Craig is, yeah,
I know, Chris got a chill out for seem like
the guy who improvises a twenty minute monologue.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Yeah, it was when you do that at home, Like
Megan's like, I think maybe you should go do this.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
I'm like, hey, hey, you know what, Megan, you know
what happened. But I came in through the kitchen door.
I came in through the kitchen door. Let me tell
you about the.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Kitchen door and She's like, you could be doing this
in Vancouver, Vancouver needs you yourself.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
County, Yeah, Merrillville. It's I'm playing all those places. Of
course you are. I see you get in the state.
You're right in the same gigs, right we uh yeah.
We've actually only tested the show out so far once
and then we've got a bunch a lot of dates
coming up and after November. So yeah, you excited about that?
I am. You know it. There is nothing like No,
(21:14):
it's nothing. It's great.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
It's really fun, and it's it's not replaceable with a
I no no, yeah, a little Abba.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Are doing a show which is holograms. There are a
K pop out. I think that the or the Japanese
I love singer who say I don't want to see
an alba Ai show?
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Oh you know you do want to see it, and
you want to see it with me, and you want
to bring Jenny and okay, and I'll take Meghan and
I have a written at the two Arena. I'm serious.
It's hologram. I'm from the nineteen eight I'm yeah. But
it's with their permission. Oh yeah, they're they're making money
from it. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean it's their
songs and they're you know, and it's them young.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Yeah, see this is a problem. This is where comes
a little bit of a black mirror episode for me.
The brunette sort of redhead from Abba. Yeah, let's see
it's Benny Bjorn and yeah, yeah, I think it's a.
I think it's a I might carry a crush for
her that has not died. I hear. Yeah, I'm kind
(22:18):
of the same. That's a tough it's it like I'm worried.
That's the same way I'm worried about. Like, I don't
know if my family is gonna let me just buy
tickets to the Taylor Swift movie because it seems dubious. Well,
his dad so excited to go see the Taylor Swift.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Are you excited to see the Taylor Swift noting?
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Damn it? I am. Yeah, see, I know unless I
get nothing.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
But I hear nothing but nice things that Jack Taylor Swift,
and certainly the music that I've heard is fabulous and
uh balpy and catchy and all the things.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
He's not for me, but no, no, everything is for
you know. I mean, it's it's but and.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Also she doesn't give six like guy, I like her
making music for me.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
I like her. I like her guitar playing actually a lot,
and she and I own an identical guitar. Because Taylor Swift.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Trying to make you and Taylor Swift kind of be
so mazed because you want the same. You're right, your
family shouldn't let you go. No, No, it's weird. Why
his dad want to go see the Taylor Swift movie
is just weird. Well, you're you're allowed to like what
you like. I mean, you don't like to go and
see the movie. Well, this is what you don't get
even weird about it.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Yeah, well, I actually think i'd be finding the Taylor
Swift movie. Yea, I do. I worry. You know, part
of my happy adult life is that the idea of
the young ladies from from But don't exist anymore. So
now these monsters with their no but they're holograms. No
they they they look really real. No, I don't think
(23:42):
this is good for me to go see. Oh, because
you've aged, I've aged, and somehow young Agoneatha from Abba.
But it's a good black mirror. It's a black mirror.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
It isn't interesting stuff I have I have. I thought
it was just you know I was in my age
because I actually am aging.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
And then I think, no, it's not that it's.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Because of robots, it's because of the it's because of
ai is. Other people are not aging, they're not And filters, Oh, yeah,
of course that'll fair.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Filters. You're on the social medias, aren't you. I am,
but I would yeah, I'd love not to be. Yeah.
I think everybody talks the same about it. It's funny.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
It's like living in La. Like when you leave La
and everyone around it, did you leave La? And you're like, yeah,
I'd love to do that.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Leave, but yeah, it's hard. You can't. It's hard you
and I have And then we're both sitting here.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Yeah, and I'm both sitting in a studio in La,
in the middle of La. You know what I think
it was some British film director said about La. I
think it's a It's the absolutely accurate description of it.
It said, La is a town where you turn up,
you get off the plane, you go to the hotel,
you put it on your suitcase, you go out, you
lie out by the pool, you have an app.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
You wake up later. It's twenty years.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
It's it feels a little bit because I was here
twenty three years, like eleven here.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
I come here to work, and I come here to
see friends.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
And I come here to to do business, but I
don't live here anymore.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
I was sort of thought that Los Angeles felt a
little bit like the way people describe like working on
an oil rig. You know, you go out and work
on the oil rig. You don't stay there for the
theater scene and for like the social times. You go
get the fucking oil, the oil out and get the
fuck and then goes somewhere lovely. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
But the thing is that the trick with California is
that plenty of it is.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Lovely, so lovely, yeah, so close to Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
I kind of like we left and now I don't know.
We're in New York a lot of the time, and
it's like, I love see New York is a good
city to get older.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
And it's great. That's actually my backup plan.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
It's I'm telling you it's great because you just walk
outside your show every day. And also you walk around
everybody's not like like everybody in La that Garrison Quila thing.
Everyone's in the mid thirties. Even the children are in
their mid very good point. But in New York, people
like it's just a smortgage boarder. Just everybody like people
with one bag, guy, one small eye, big hand, a
(26:14):
little hand, you know, one hundred years old, you know,
fifteen years old, and people are shuffling around really rich people,
really poor people, people without hats.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
I never thought I really leave New York. New York
was weird when I got to New York. Oh well,
I mean you worked at Save the Robots. I did, Yeah,
put you ever there? I probably was there. Yeah, I
probably worked there. Yeah, I've read that I worked there.
So we got I got to New York in nineteen
eighty eight. Yeah you would have been there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(26:43):
I stopped working there. But we didn't have any money
or anything. We were really poor. Yeah, but it was
the after hours club. I didn't know it, but until
two eight that was Can you imagine because two guys
who now have dinner at five, I would love to
have dinner at five. I'd like to have dinner out
of the way by five, a.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
Club, And we used to go to places, but the
afteros club thing that was going on then you could.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
You couldn't have that now. I'm like people were openly
doing drugs. We went to a place. There was a
place in the East Village that was an after hours
place called Brownie's. I can talk about it because there's
no weight with there. It was not Brownies the music club.
There was another place where it was owned by this
guy who had a cowboy hat and he had a revolver.
Was he English? No, he was an African American gentleman.
(27:25):
And the only things they sold were like cams of paps,
blue ribbon and dime bags of cocaine. I think I've
been there, Yeah, yeah, I think that was it. You
were not allowed to curse. You could do You could
literally sit and have paps and do cocaine with a
guy and a cowboy hat with a pistol. If you cursed,
which our friend of mine did at the pool table,
(27:46):
it was a real issue for the owner and he
was just like, fellas, I'm going to ask you one
more time with my pistol and my paths. Wow. New
York was it was? Fuck, It was a thing. There
was casinos that just were yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Remember, and I wrote about this, but I was in
a barcoll Murphy's and the Upper East sized. I don't
think it's there anymore. But I keep going looking for
it because I live in the Upper East now, and
I'm like, is it here?
Speaker 5 (28:13):
No.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
But we went out one.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Night and then we went over to the West Side
and it was during the troubles and there was a
lot of IRA stuff and these guys were there. I
got a shit kicked out me when we were out
for one night, and I mean, like, really, I go, like,
they're kind of beaten up that I'd probably go to
hospital now. I was hitting the face now you were still. Yeah,
well if I could, if I could be up now,
I don't.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Know if i'd recover.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
God, I go, yeah, I mean like I I turned
the wrong way, and oh my god, everything hurts all
the time. New York. I make clicking noises just standing up.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
We got as the state. We got beaten up twice.
At least. Did you get beaten up many times? For
the material? I got? No? No, no, just New York
in the eighties. Oh right, my first, my first getting
this shit kicked out of me in New York. I
only be it was eighty fall of nineteen eighty eight.
I was wearing it like a bright yellow bow tie.
I just come from you know what, you deserve it.
I actually deserved it. I was frolicking up Broadway at
(29:07):
three o'clock in the morning, singing, Pippin' got beaten, oh man.
But you know, getting beaten on the street in New
York used used to be a thing, used to be
a thing. Yeah, and here's a weird thing I'm going
to say about it that may not be popular. People
in New York, I think, have better manners and for
the most part, behave well because there's a solid chance
(29:30):
you're gonna get clocked. In New York and in LA
everybody's just bitching and moaning in their cars. You can't
hear them. Everybody's in a bubble, screaming profanities at you.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
I think this is that's not I don't think that's
I don't think it's unrealistic.
Speaker 5 (29:44):
Well.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
I had a friend from Texas who used to wear
a hat and carry a gun, and he used to say.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
In Texas in Los Angeles, yeah, and he used to.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Yeah, okay, but he would.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Say, an armed society is a polite society. I get
weird about that one. Yeah, but you say it. Yeah,
I'm not saying that. I subscribe to that notion, But
I do. I do think a society where occasionally say
their own thing, you gets like somebody gives you like
a real quick bop to the face. I'm pretty much
(30:21):
in favor of that. Well, you know, you're you're Irish.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
That said, you know, that's kind of what it is
to be fair, exactly what it is?
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Iris? What are you like just off the boat? When
did your people get I got to show you just
off the boat? Yeah? Did? I didn't show you my
twenty three and meters. It's ridiculous. Mostly potatoes. It's literally
it sent me a potato. It turns into yeah, I
mean because I mean nobody got iris. You know, everybody
has like a little bit of something else. Yeah, I
(30:52):
don't all iris. Yeah, I'm all. Well, but what it
says is it doesn't differentiate, which is crazy, but it's
it just shows the England, the British Isles and nothing else.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Right, Well, that's a lot of different influences there. But yeah,
it's I mean, because as the Irish and the Cats.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
And the you know, and then I don't know what
the Scotts had made.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
No Italians. I got no Italians. Is that's the important
part for me? That's the important part. I think I've
got a lot of Italian obviously. Look I've never done
it twenty Street me because I don't want your six
Look at your the gorgeous head of hair you have, crazy,
I've got to be Italian.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
This is not just the hair of a Scots No,
it's definitely an Italian. I think that is Well, not
that movies. The Scott's had great hair, but they're all
dead in battles too, though, yeah, you know they Well,
the thing is my family always had good hair.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Yeah, but there was alcohol involved, and I drank a lot.
About what I'm saying is that you're an alcoholic.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Your hair will be good. Your hair's fine, right, it's
doing right. What were we talking about New York and
the eighties getting beaten up? Yeah, well that's overnight. Yeah.
The IRA used to be a thing. People loving the IRA,
people in New York and Chicago just openly loving the IRA.
Speaker 6 (32:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
It was a little different where I grew up because
it was like doorsteps. Yeah. Yeah, and well that was
a weird, a very icky part about growing up in
the West Side of Chicago, which we never talked about
until we all got sort of publicly shamed by Bono.
(32:26):
Oh yeah, yeah, it was very interesting. You would go
to you'd go to I was at a YouTube concert
very early, yeah, and the Rosemont Horizon in Chicago, and
it's you know, all these Irish immigrants, you know, kids
of the Irish Diasthmir and you know you two's this
is eighty four eighty six something like that, very really early,
(32:48):
and Bono would you know, say in the show, like,
you know, there's a there's a war half none of
my country, and the Chicago audience would go would all cheer,
and I was probably part of that, and then he
would say no, he was, well, he was. He was
very cool about it. I mean, it'd be like award
that nobody wants that's killing children and you can't support this,
(33:11):
and this is some kind and where everybody was like,
oh shit, and we feel bad. Yeah, and then we
feel bad. But it took something like it took someone
like that to make everybody realize what a shitty thing
that we were, like like publicly just like we're right
ryeing this crazy thing. Yeah, and yeah, it was a
(33:32):
lot more. I don't know. I mean it's even now
I'm sixty one years old.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Then the you know, the good fight, the agreement has
happened that, you know, things have changed so much over there,
and I'm still terrified to talk about it because it's
fucking dangerous. Yeah, and when you're in a certain company
in Scotland and Ireland, for sure, it's still fucking dangerous.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
And I don't I can't. I kind of avoided it
when I was a kid.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
I avoided talking about it at all in the same
way actually that now when I do stand up, I
don't do any politics.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
I don't know anything. I actually think that's why the
state is still popular. Yeah, we never you never. We
never did like weird impressions of like anybody. We didn't
give a shit about. Like if we'd done like tons
of George W. Bull and what would we have done.
I guess it would have been Bush Senior or so
I don't know, you like, what would that would not be? Yeah?
(34:28):
So how long were you guys together? You did? Like
how many seasons? Like ten seasons? No? No, no, So
we did well, we got together in eighty eight. We
were we were just the comedy club at NYU, right,
and so we were doing like live theater shows and
things like that, and then we did a show with
John Stewart for MTV that was fucking awful show. It's
(34:50):
called You Brought It, You watch it. It was horrible,
but John Stewart was awesome in it. He got the
John Stewart Show and we got the State. Right. So
we did three seasons on MTV. Right.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
We got negative two stars in the New York Post
the first season negative. That's one of my first of
you in Late Night in the New York Post they
said it looked like he.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Was wearing a wake hate speech.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
Yeah. I was just like, you wouldn't be allowed to
that now. No, you can't just say they didn't like
the way I looked, and they just.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Went after me. Oh my god, I didn't think how
good you and you were really good at it? I no,
I have first I feel like I guess maybe I can't.
At first I think you were though, well, this is
a great effect. None of us remember stick out together.
We did three seasons there. We thought we were real badasses. Weirdly,
(35:41):
we did numbers that were awesome, like the ratings on
MTV were like, really you can good? Yeah? Uh, And
then we thought we were hot ship, which is a
great idea.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Always a great I think you are, but to be
it is a good thing to look back on.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
And then we we thought we were hot shit we
got instead of we had we had an offer to
do more shows at MTV. We didn't know how many,
but it was it maybe would have been good. Or
we had an offer from CBS for two specials and
if those went well, we would be like a CBS
(36:19):
like big show. That's print your own money. Though, That's
what everybody was really excited about. So we shot a
special for CBS, which got wonderful reviews. Okay, literally, no
one fucking watched. We all got together to watch it,
and I remember the most exciting thing that happened is
(36:39):
there was a thunderstorm warning came on on CBS during
our special. It was legendarily bad ratings. Alan King was
on it for some reason, and he was really kind
of mean to the whole thing sucked.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Yeah, and then I'm sorry here that well, and then
but then we you know, sort of we keep being
like we're like, I don't know, We're like Vince Clark
in depeche Mode, like so State sort of breaks up
half of us turns into a show called Viva Variety,
the other house.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
I love to do a show called Stello. Yeah, you know.
So it's like we we're still on tour. Everybody's been
on Reno nine one, We've all been in.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Michael in the frame, Michael and Black Lives and of
course in the frame for the in the late night show.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
It was me and he wanted that job so badly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I was on one of his tryout shows. Yeah, he
was good at it. I saw his tryout show. I
was like, Okay, he's going to get it. Did you
think so? Yeah? I did. Yeah, I totally thought he
was going to get it.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
I remember calling, uh CBS Michael, who was the producer,
You remember, Michael, this, this is the guy you think.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
I really love. I love I think he would love
to hear that.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
No. I thought he was I mean, I didn't want
him to get it for obvious reasons, but I thought
he was good.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
I did a bit with him when he went on
one of those shows, and I remember thinking, I, you know, like,
this is one of my closest best friends in the
entire world. And I remember thinking, I don't know if
he's good at talking to people like this. I'm not sure,
this is like I think I think I said it.
I think he would have done it. That's fine. But
(38:17):
he was just coming off of being the pets dot
Com sock puppet, so of course he was. He was
pretty pretty hot. Yeah, he was. He would be hot
share at that point. I would come sock puppet.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
That was two years out from being a banana on
the Drew Carrey Show. So I was also, oh god,
also peking, that's a good one.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Yeah. Nice.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
That's lost media now the Drew carry Show. You can't
see it anywhere.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
You can't see it all.
Speaker 6 (38:46):
No.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
I think maybe there's there's some kind of copyright this
shit going on with it with music or something, but
you can't see it on any of the streaming services.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
I've kept the State off of DVD for like fifteen
twenty years. Yeah, I think it must be a similar
was a music thing, so we actually somebody had to
go through and replace every single piece of the famous music.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
I think that's a situation.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
It's a bummer. Yeah, it's something like that anyway. D
Drake Beder knows about it. He Drake is a fascinating cat.
He lives bucks away from me. Yeah, yeah, he's an
amazing guy.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
He's one of the best actors I've ever worked with. Stunning,
He's an incredible actor. And there's a guy and I said,
he's been on this podcast and I said to him,
you really grew up.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
I mean because he was when I first met him.
He's a bit of a deck and he's I think
he can come off like that sometimes. And this is
I say this, I love this man and we are
very close. I wrote, I wrote his daughter's uh application college?
Is that one of those? Is that? By the way,
she didn't get it? Okay, so I blew it. That
(39:53):
was such a great letter. I'm a great college letter writer. Yeah,
I go, I go aggressive. Yeah, that's prob. No, weird. No,
it's actually worked a bunch of times. Really. Yeah, Like
I write a college letter that starts with like, look,
you do not want to go to war with me?
And you know what, it's mostly worked out.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
Yeah, but yeah, No, you write the letter for the applicant.
Aren't they meant to write their own? No?
Speaker 2 (40:17):
No, no, you got to you gotta go like a recommendation
left right, Okay, I've written a couple of them. Now,
I got a pretty good track record, right, Okay, well,
but I go funny. I mean, I go funny and
I go aggressive. Well, I've got one more to get
through college. So uh maybe for Liam's you can you
can do. Oh absolutely, I'll pull up big guns for
that one. Yeah, Liam, I know where we're going here.
(40:39):
My boy doesn't seem like college material and I love it.
I'm like, that's a million dollars I get to just keep. Yeah.
I don't know if Liam will go to college, but
they'll be statues. Yeah. I feel like, yeah, it's so funny.
Everybody's like, well, make sure the boy gets tutored and
really works hard and does these things. And I'm like, really,
(41:00):
because like to go where to go to like a
stuff you learn stuff on YouTube.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
It's it's an interesting thing because I you know, Megan,
as you know is my wife is is a very
highly educated, clever Area day believer in academia. I dropped
out of high school when I was just turned sixteen,
and so she can sell the college thing to the kids,
(41:28):
but I can't, unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
But there's a like, well you know about it, yeah,
and how's the castle? Yeah? Yeah, you sure didn't have
to do. But that's that was luck. It was a
little bit a lot of work at Did you go
to college? I did?
Speaker 1 (41:45):
I went to n YU.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Oh, yeah, of course you did, because that's for the
state thing.
Speaker 6 (41:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
But the funny, funny detail. I was accepted to college
on academic probation because my high school grades were not great.
What were you going to study a college?
Speaker 1 (41:57):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (41:58):
Well, I actually I started at the theaters school. It
was handy because n YU was nice. You could audition because,
like I.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
Seem that seems realistic for a theater skill idea.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
But like Northwestern, uh, which was my first choice, I
wanted to go to the theater school.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
There's no audition.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
He's a ship actor, but he's great.
Speaker 7 (42:17):
You just have to be smartest. You just have to
be smart, which how smart? Hope says, No, he don't know,
doesn't need to be I mean really a talking plant
a great actor.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
You just have to be able to read a little bit.
You don't even really have to really, you know. So
I got a bold rejection from Northwestern, right, and Northwestern
and n YU accepted me with the asterisk. If I
got a C in any class in my freshman year,
I would be kicked out. Oh my god, which you
obviously did great motivators. Great, you know, dick around. So
(42:52):
did you finish college? I did, actually did finish. So
you're not fully qualified. I'm a fully qualified bachelor of
the arts, right, So if you have some arts that
need to be a bachelor.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
I think that that could be a good show. It's
a dating show, Bachelor, and it's all the art Bachelor.
Do you ever go to the Met? Do you know
the Met when they have the French impressionists. That's really good,
(43:23):
isn't it. I really like that in there. So I
was in there the other day and they have I'm
looking at the French, which is the impression that you're
looking at somebody who likes specifically. Yeah, there was a
pretty I knew you were going to ask you this.
There was a Prisian street scene. I can't remember it,
and I love it. I just like going hanging out
near it. And I can't remember I who did it,
which I'm apologized, But you know what, it might be Renoir,
(43:46):
It might be I don't know sure. But I go
to the Van Go exhibit because the Van Go exhibits
on right now in the Met, and they have Starry
Night there and which is amazing.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
It's an amazing, stunning same person. It has its own luminescence,
it creates its own lene. It's unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (44:06):
But as I'm standing there, I have to pick my
moment to look at the picture because of everyone holding
their phone to take a picture. Just look at it, right.
But this is an interesting thing to me because I
think all performance, all human society is changing right now.
We're in a very odd place in human history where analogue, personal,
(44:31):
bionic personal memory is gone. Everything you will be remembered
like you can now make abba as they were when
you were a young man.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
This is a problem because then I go to the
show and then I'm like, hey, can I go meet
her after? And they're like, sir, you can't meet She
doesn't she doesn't exist. And I'm like, I demand I
meet her.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
And then you go there and it's the same roadie
that wouldn't let you in the.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
Killing me you.
Speaker 1 (44:58):
Want to go to see and yet you get through
there and.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
She's not there. It's just like a little box. It's like,
you know, I'm all of the memories of an armor,
you know.
Speaker 1 (45:13):
But it isn't a odd thing because memory is wonderful.
I like memory because I everybody remembers things a little
bit differently, but phones don't.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
Phones remember exactly exactly correctly. And you'll soften it for you.
I wonder, because you know, we have a great big
computer in the kitchen in the house that always runs
your photo life. And is it does it make my
memory better or worse? Makes it worse? It makes it worse,
I'm sure of it, because you're just like, oh, at
some point I'll think about let me rephrase that. I
(45:45):
don't know if it makes it worse, it makes it different,
it's too accurate. Yeah, it's not human.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
The human thing is that you create a story of
what happened. Remember that time we went to the pizza
place and you took your pants off, you know, and
your dad stuff the things.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
You can have a real fondness. I think I do too,
for you know, like there's so I have so many
ex girlfriends that I have one photograph of if or
if barely right, you know, and that's like such a
neat you know, in a way, it's like it's kind
of more interesting because yeah, yeah, yeah, and you have
(46:22):
to think about it. Yeah, I went to I went
to London with Susan for like two weeks and there's
almost no photos of it at all. It was just
like a I know, I have to think about it.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
And I wonder, though, I wonder what happens with that,
because no matter how much Quadure is like me and
you will approach quaduredom I'm very close. Well you get there,
it's not gonna change anything.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
It's not.
Speaker 1 (46:45):
You can complain about it, but it's not gonna it's
not gonna change anything. And I wonder if that's just
what it's like to get old. It's like just the
world starts to seem scary and alien, and it's not
really scary and alien.
Speaker 2 (46:57):
It's just this is a great question. I've wondered this
exact thing, because the world does seem pretty scary right now,
even walking here to this strange, a pretty sketchy area
of Hollywood. I mean, this is be scary for a
good fifty years were peg in the meter. But yeah,
like I wonder, am I just growing into the phase
(47:20):
where I bitch about everything? Yeah? You know, yeah, like
does everybody just do that at some point?
Speaker 7 (47:26):
I don't know it just like my Abba was better, Yeah,
she was a human, lady.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Human I prefer robots is not perfect. I would go
see album and sometimes they would mess up. No, come on, man,
you went to you.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
May have got a bet too fat at that point,
but I wonder, I don't, I don't know. It might be,
but I think that's okay too. Yeah, I think you
have to embrace the strangeness of aging. This is I'm
talking to myself because you're not at that point. I'm
getting real, real, real close.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
Yeah, fucking sixty one though, Tom, I mean, yeah, it's
on the age that my my grandfather, who basically was
my identical twin, dropped dead. So I just kind of, yeah,
you gotta make Hey what did he talk about, van
go make Hay while the sun shines? Yeah, a strange
experimental He had looked at me about a drug that
(48:25):
he was allergic to ended up killing him. Right, We're
not talking last week then, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
this is I was a child.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
Yeah, right, so but these things, you know, I think
that my dad when he was my age, had been
retired for a year.
Speaker 2 (48:41):
Yeah, but life of a glass Wigan.
Speaker 1 (48:46):
Yeah yeah, now yeah, come year, Brack was so outside
the it's a little different. But I started, you know,
you know, I fucking started brushing my teeth.
Speaker 2 (48:59):
That's what brush your teeth.
Speaker 5 (49:05):
For.
Speaker 2 (49:05):
God, brush your teeth brought last time I went to Ashole,
when I went to see you in Scotland a butter
t shirt that's there was such a great T shirt
that says says people make Glasgow and I love this
shirt and I wear it all the time. And then
I looked up the hashtag of people make Glasgow and
it's always the worst fights. It's a guy. There's like
a naked guy fighting a lady and he uses a
(49:26):
bike as a weapon.
Speaker 1 (49:28):
I know that.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
Have you seen under always under the hashtag people make Glasgow.
We do that in our family, so funny.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
Send each other things the worst use oh my god.
Speaker 2 (49:41):
But it's always got that upbeat hashtag.
Speaker 1 (49:43):
I can't remember exactly, but there was one about a
nurse who lost her lawsuit for an unfair dismissal because.
Speaker 6 (49:56):
She had a field come and see had claimed that
there was a ghost and in the hospital that was
farthing and blaming it on her and she got fired
because of that.
Speaker 2 (50:06):
People make Glasgow. People make Glasgow.
Speaker 1 (50:12):
I mean it's quite a place, but of course it's
a very odd hybrid of Ireland in Scotland.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
Glasgow. I really like Glasgow. Fucking old hybrid of Ireland
in America. I am mostly Ireland.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
I know.
Speaker 2 (50:25):
Last time I was in Glasgow, I want to go
see you. It was it was one hundred and two
degrees in Glasgow. Yeah, that's right, go weird there. It
was really intense. It's strange. It's not now it's very good, yeah,
because it was Actually Glasgow at one hundred and two
is not good because you know what happens. It's tough.
Speaker 1 (50:40):
People start coming out wearing what they think is the
appropriate clothing for hot weather, and it's.
Speaker 2 (50:47):
Not fucking pretty. Then I went to Garvin Beach where
with weird Al Yankovic and Weird Alan Allen's family, and
we went to a great little I'm not going to
say the name of it, right, we'll bleep it right
around the corner and oh yeah, and I decided to
try like the spicy wet pork. And I never eat
(51:09):
I don't meat meat hardly really. Ever, what I did
was doing a win in Rome thing. Right, So it's
one hundred and two in Glasgow. You had spicy web pork.
Oh oh was it good? No, car, it wasn't good.
It's a good buddy. Hadn't dealt with pork in like
a kind of a long time, and it was. It
was one of the roughest nights of my entire life.
(51:31):
Just a long walk because you're gurgling full of yeah, yeah.
I had that once in Paris. Actually I had.
Speaker 1 (51:38):
I had been vegan for four years, and I thought,
I'm having an ice cream. Oh, just the lactose dairy
ice cream colon, having not had dairy for four years.
Speaker 2 (51:52):
No, my tough to a bathroom in Paris, I'll tell you.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
I was accepting anything anything like a whole with foot
pads on either side.
Speaker 2 (52:01):
Tough.
Speaker 1 (52:02):
And there was a lot on the way home anyway,
you know. That's that's why I had a long walk.
Pooping through Paris.
Speaker 2 (52:09):
Pooping through Paris, you gotta you gotta do it once.
Speaker 1 (52:13):
See, that's how romantic Paris is, even when you've got
the trots, it's kind of romantic.
Speaker 2 (52:17):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (52:18):
All right, Well we're kind of done here, Okay, we
established what is joy for you?
Speaker 2 (52:24):
I will say, and it may seem silly. I would
write sketches every day for the joy of it. I
would sit for absolutely for no one, and I would
just I could, I could write every day for no
one but myself and love it and truly truly love it.
(52:48):
I think that's kind of nice. Yeah, I mean it's
a little bit cheesy, but it No, it's not cheap.
Sometimes I people will send me either they'll send me
their kid or something and be like, hey, you got
to tell my kid how to write movies. Yeah, you're
gonna take my kid. Kid. Somebody will be like, well,
you get on like a zoom and just tell my
kid what they do.
Speaker 1 (53:06):
So they don't like to send the kid around to
your house. No, God, No, that's kind of weird, you
know what. Yeah, But and then that's my my question
is always, would you do this every day for free?
Speaker 2 (53:17):
Yeah? Because mostly you will. I'm like, hey, yeah, mostly
you're gone. That's fucking true. Yeah, the paydays are sometimes.
Speaker 1 (53:29):
But you know what's weird about it, because I totally
agree with you. But the weird thing is is that,
like I I tried to retire and I couldn't because
I haven't been working since I worked in the fucking
bar in Glasgow. I haven't had a real job for
forty years.
Speaker 2 (53:46):
But you worked real hard yep, But it felt like fun.
It's kind of war. It felt like fun. Yeah, it's
kind of dicking around. It doesn't doesn't feel like work.
Doesn't feel like work.
Speaker 1 (53:56):
And then the times when I've tried to work, like
when I directed movies and stuff like that, they suck
because I don't like doing that.
Speaker 2 (54:04):
I don't like doing that either, especially I especially hate directing.
Oh it's awful. It's not my apparently, it's not my personality.
No mine, neither. I meet folks who have that personality
and they're great at it. They're still great at it. Yeah,
but it's a very different level of drive to be
that sort of person and I think I'm Once I
(54:25):
got over the idea of this want to direct notion
that everybody had. I had that once you get over it,
you're gonna feel better. I had it, you know.
Speaker 1 (54:35):
When I really knew it was over for me, I
had a conversation with Quentin Tarantino about now you can
direct like crazy?
Speaker 2 (54:40):
Oh sure?
Speaker 1 (54:40):
And so I was telling them that I didn't enjoy
the directing experience, and he said, well, didn't you have
the whole movie in your head before you shot it?
And I said no, and he went, well, I do
when I make a movie, of course. Well there, no,
there we go, there we go. That's why you're Quentin
Tarantino and I'm the cheeky monkey man l.
Speaker 2 (55:01):
But there you go. All right, Tom, Well you you
are a joy. By the way. The other thing that
brings me joy, I would say, is like I think
I came on your show. Oh gosh, oh are we
have fifteen twenty years ago now thirty something times? Yeah,
but that I still consider my friendship with you is
something that has brought me a tremendous amount of joy. Yeah.
(55:23):
It's knowing your family.
Speaker 1 (55:25):
Meeting and you're fucking weird, you know, and you're and
I like that because I've got some friends who aren't there.
You've also got some really cool friends with some fucking
great weird friends.
Speaker 4 (55:39):
I really do, not really do.
Speaker 2 (55:41):
My life is really a Wes Anderson movie. It actually is.
It really is live in a fucking Wes Anderson movie.
My own time. It's a good one. But if Wes
Anderson was to look at my life and be like,
it's a little yeah, yeah, it's down, Yeah, it's too much. Well,
I mean this is beyond royal tattle ball. All right,
(56:02):
we gotta go the best
The Craig Ferguson Fancy Rascal Stand Up Tour continues throughout
twenty twenty four. For a full list of dates and tickets,
go to the Craig Ferguson Show dot com slash tour.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
See you out there, the.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Greig Ferguson show dot com slash Tour. My name is
Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast is Joy. I
talk to interesting people about what brings them happiness. Tom
Lennon is an American treasure. If you only know him
(00:33):
from his oiled legs, wearing shorty shorts and Reno nine
one one, then you probably know enough. But I know
a little more, and you're about to to have a
listen to this. We're gonna start talking about Tom Cruise.
That's how you know we started because we're going to
talk about Tom Cruise right away because I have something
(00:56):
to say about Tom Cruise and it's gonna happen.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
I'm not worried about it. You shouldn't be. Feel like
at this point, if I was going to get blowback
in my life from stuff I'd said and did, it
would have happened.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
I hope that for me. Nah, I think I mean
there's like two and a halfs late night over there.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
There's ship that I said, easily scrollable. There's gotta be
something in there. God gotta be.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Oh my god, it's fucking two and a half thousand hours.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Gotta be. Yeah, no, it is. I mean we did
two but at least luckily you never wrote anything down. Yeah.
I don't know, man.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
So here's what I was thinking, because we were we
You mentioned Tom Cruise because you and Tom Cruz are
the same height.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Identical, but yeah, we've hung out twice once with the
same height. One time we were definitely not How did
that happen? It was mid buckles my mind. I've thought
about it every single day since.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
You know what, Here's what I think about Tom Cruise,
and then we're going to get back to how he
can bend the laws of physics. All is that I
used to like, say, you like derisive things, but Tom
Hughes and Tom Cruise and Tom Hughes, Oh yeah, yeah,
Tom Hughes is the worst man. So I used to say, like,
naughty jokes about Tom Cruise.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Your live.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Naughty jokes is your is your that's my thing. I
would say your million.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
As they say in Quebec.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
But I have a theory about that, right, Okay, okay,
So here's what I think about Tom Cruise. He's a
goddamn American hero and I and I approve of him
one hundred percent. Same here, and here's why he's crazy.
Oh sure, But but he doesn't make anyone else's problem. No,
he uses it to provide top quality entertaining into whatever. No, no, no,
(02:50):
And I I also wondered why I haven't been asked
but he Yeah, well there is that.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
No, the best two times hanging out with that guy.
So what did you do hanging out with Tom Cruise?
One time? I did a table read with him, really,
which was neat What was the table read for? It
was a picture that never came out.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
I've made a bunch of those, most films I've been involved,
it's never happened.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
You wrote a couple of movies. I've read at least
a dozen that movies. I've been in a couple of movies.
I'm not positive I saw them just because I heard
they were so bad.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Yeah, I've got a collection of those. Yeah, Lady Wonder
Dog right there, off the top of my money, this
Landy the Wonder Dog is this a real picture. It's
a real picture, and I'm in it. I haven't seen it,
but it was.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Was it a theatrical picture?
Speaker 1 (03:38):
I was certainly, I'm going I'm for sure when I
listening to the diffic A big board is a huge
word video? Remember that straight to video? It may have
been that. Oh, I'm on a couple of straight videos.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Sure. I got a picture on Rotten Tomatoes that's at
a zero. Okay, that's tricky. That pretty bad. What's that picture?
It's called? It's called Ottersville. It's with Michael Shannon, Ian McShane,
some good actors. You're kidding me, Judy Greer, Christina Hendricks,
Ron Pearlman. What Uh it's maybe just nobody voted? Oh
(04:13):
it's no, No, they did. It's an atrocious film. How
can that happen? Yeah? And we're all kind of bad
in it. But it's got to be the director of that.
Let's say that. Do you know what the say?
Speaker 1 (04:25):
My worst results on I had on the Rotten Tomatoes
is I'm in that movie?
Speaker 2 (04:32):
And I wrote the movie? Oh is it? Oh? Is
it a I'll be there, Oh I'll be there. Yeah. Yeah,
And I did write that movie? What is it? How
about is it? It's I think it's like fifty something, batter
you're shitting. That's magnificent. Is there is My Museum which
I wrote, and I'm pretty proud. That's a great movie,
thank you. It's at thirty four. Fuck up, that's nuts.
(04:55):
That's the world we live in. That's a great movie.
And now my my, so oh this is great. My
son Oliver, whom I love you, I don't love him, can't.
He's turned this on me now, it's amazing. So like, well,
he'll ask if we can go see a movie and
I'll you know, he'll be like, let's go see you know,
the Nun two or three, or let's go see. He's
(05:17):
in a very into horror and lots of stuff like this, right,
And so I'll check the tomato meter and I'll be like,
oh boy, I'm like, this sounds this one sounds like
a real drag. It's at forty you know two, right,
which is a splat.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Right yeah, splots sixty or something, oh.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
Yeah, yeah yeah, And he's like higher than that of
the Museum. Bro, Oh my god, I'm like, oh that's cold.
Oh my, that's good that I raised this, you know,
but this is the thing.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Though, to be fair, he's got an interesting position to
be only because your Dad at Night in the Museum
is and he knows it because he's not an idiot.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
It's a fucking great movie. He's working the system. Yeah,
he knows that he can that the system is a
little bit rigged, and and that he can play that
against me.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Well, you know how you could prove that Night of
the Museum is a great movie. It's because Night of
the Museum too exists, right, and I wrote that right,
So if they don't let you do another one unless
the first one was totally awesome.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Or or anyway so that it was a table read
with Tom Cruise. So he did Night at the Museum
the table read. No, although he and still are very
close because they did Tropic Thunder, which I just let
that see. But uh so, if you want Tom Cruise
doesn't he won't read a script. Okay, it's not the
(06:39):
way it works. Well, he's dyslexic. Yeah, apparently it's dyslexia,
which I found very hard to believe because at the
table read of a script he's never seen. Yeah, he
gave an amazing performance. Yeah, I have movie star performance.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Yeah maybe, Yeah, you're sure he hadn't walked through it
with someone.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Here to my hand, to god. He everyone tells you,
they're like, he won't read it. He doesn't want to
read it, right, he wants to put a table together
and it'll they'll cast the best person for every part, right,
tru I believe it. I had a very small part.
I refuse to believe that. But uh Ian.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
McShane also with that one, Ian mc senat.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
He's a great actor. He's a great actor, not scary
in person as he as you think.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
He's like al swearing jing and oh god, he's so scary,
masterpiece dead would he's.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
One of the scariest guys. And then he's a real doll.
Yeah you know he's loving man.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Yeah yeah, but that happens he's acting.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
He's just it's just pretending to You should know that man.
Now there's people that are seem so scary and then
you meet them and they're a doll. And Nally Vincent
Price was like that doll. Yeah yeah, because you know
he he scared me when I was a kid. Then
there's big but you meete who are exactly a scary.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
There are people who are meant to be nice. Then
you meet them and they are fucking.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
It wasn't. It wasn't an asshole, but he's scared the
sh I met Kendal Fenian and Las Vegas. Right. He
yelled at me, what why it? It wasn't.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
It was a rough night for everybody, okay, and will
you you guys drink in non?
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Not together?
Speaker 3 (08:14):
No.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
But I'd taken his friend away for a little while
to go see George Lopez, and then I brought him back.
It was part of the big they'd moved the Aspen
Comedy Festival to Vegas, right, And uh, it was when
Sopranos is the biggest show in the world.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
I remember I wouldn't have any of the Sopranos on
my late night show because I loved the show so much.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
You don't want to ruin it. I didn't want to
break it. Don't want to ruin it. So Jenny and
I my my wife and are at Caesar's. We're doing
the festival, and we come down the elevator and who's
walking by with a foot long cigar and roll like
a thousand, one hundred dollars bills and that he's counting. Gandelphini.
I love this and I'm like, and my shows were
(08:54):
done on I'd probably had a glass or two of wine.
Am I do we just follow him to see where
he's going? Yeah, so we did. Maybe he thought you
were the Feds. He might have, but this was a
real trip. Speaking of how much you love the show,
don't Meet your Heroes. Followed Gandalfini through the casino to
where he was going to the high stakes blackjack area,
and the guy that he's meeting start waves hello to me,
(09:16):
and Jenny is like, Jenny Hi, And we forgot that
we had a mutual friend with Gandelfini. This guy, Gandelfini
is playing blackjack at a table with Michael Impiliodie, the
guy who is Johnny Sack, Johnny Sack, Polly Walnuts and
like little Stephen. This is crazy. Sure, this is an episode.
(09:40):
It was the HBO Festival, so they'd put everybody and
gave him a thing. YadA, YadA, YadA. It was really
insane to see all those guys together. Later on, I
had to go tell Gandalfini where his friend had gone to,
and I guess he'd had a really bad night at
the blackjack table and he was screaming at the concierge
(10:01):
at the Caesars really.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Yes, this is before smartphones, so yeah, yeah, like a
twenty something kid is that.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
He was like, oh, I mister, you know so uh gnafen,
he's yelling at the the concierge. Was he yelling at him?
I think he thought that the black jacks the table
was rigged.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
So he was a little toasted that as well, which,
by the way, black Chuck is rigged. It's it's I mean,
it's just the odds. Yeah, the whole thing is rigged.
You're going it is rigged.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
You're gonna lose. Yeah, that's just math. But so he
was yelling at the young employee at the thing about
how the blackjack table was rigged against him and his friends,
who happened to literally be literally the Sopranos. That was
just scared the ship. I was so scary. And I
see that he's yelling at the concierge, and I think
I'm worried that he's lost his friend who I had
(10:53):
taken to go see George Love You're you're the friend
is mysterious. The friend is real nice, He's just an
actor guy that we know. But yeah, but.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
You're keeping him out of it for a reason. Well
is he in the witness protection.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
All right? But so so I lean in. I'm like, oh,
the guy's name is Lenny, And I'm like, hey, yup,
So I lean into it. I'm going to back off
the mic, yeah, because what happened to the next was
so scary. So I lean into Gandolphin. He was screaming
at the guy at the desk, and I say, excuse me,
mister GANDELFHENI uh if Lenny went to go find you
with the nightclub called Pure James. Gandolfini turns to me
(11:32):
and says.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Yes, I don't know that.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
And that was scary my heart. Yeah, like broke. I
just got yelled at by my favorite TV character. He
was so mad at me.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Well, you know, you can look at it that way,
but you could also look at it the way as like,
because he yelled at Carmela and he loved her.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
He loved Carmela and and so I think it's okay,
and then but then he so I started, I like,
my lips started quivering, and I thought I was going
to cry. And I grabbed Jenny's hand and I ran
round the corner. I'm like, James Kendolphini just yelled at me,
and then he came around the corner a few minutes later.
Jenny's like, he's right behind you, and I'm like, oh
(12:15):
my god, he's gonna yell at me more again. Yeah,
he's gonna really yell at you this time. And he
tapped me on the shoulder and he said, yeah, you
do a show, Yeah, you have a show. I said, yeah, yeah,
I do a show called Reena and II one. He said, oh, yeah,
it's great, it's a great it's a great show, really good,
and then he walked away. And so then I went
back to the concierge and I'm like, what what happened?
(12:36):
He was screaming at you, and then he screamed at
me and he said, oh, he said that the blackjack
tables were rigged and he was super super mad and
he was screaming at me. And then he said and
then you came up to him. And I actually didn't
know who that was. I haven't seen the Sopranos. But
when you after you left, I said, the concier said that.
He said to Kendel Foinie, oh you're friends with Lieutenant Dangle,
(12:59):
said you were, Oh that's so funny, and Kendelpinia apparently said,
having just yelled at me, he said to the concierge, Yeah,
he's just great. He's a great guy, great guy. So
it was the scariest night anyway, meeting your Well, yeah,
I had this thing.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
I do have this thing about meeting heroes that like,
I never I wouldn't allow the.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Late night bookers to approach David boyd No. I don't
know if he would ever have done the show.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Of course he would have, but I would think he
would like, you're not allowed to even get in touch
with him because if he turns up and there's nothing
you can do.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
What if it goes badly? Right now?
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Yeah, And the reason why I want to because I
had heard through the great he likes you. Though I
know you were laughing at the show, I had done
a sketch yeah no, no, yeah, he does on his
sixtieth birthday, which is seriously how long ago it was,
because I'm sixty one now, But on his sixtieth birthday,
I did a sketch in the show where like I
sang as David Boy because I can do David Boy going,
(13:57):
I'm going down the shops to get some bin that's
it and some that's it.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
You know, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
And it was just like old guy stuff gets off
my and he apparently thought it was very funny. And
then I thought, but if he comes on, I don't
know I would I wouldn't be like that, No, I'd
be I was still I still believed in the myth
at that point.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
It's a bell you can't unring. Well that that that's right,
that is it's a bell you can't unring.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Like Morris is a big one for you. You ever
meet Mars.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Him a couple of times.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Disappointing, Okay, disappointing.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Yeah, no, it's it's very sort of very imagine Chili's
chili thinking about it's just so chilly dells and stuff.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
If only we could all think about that. Of course,
if we want washed in blood, you know, it's just
always a thing. So I had I had speaking of
your your bowie thing. I went to see the Springsteen's
Broadway show, oh yeah, and uh and it was amazing,
you know, and it was like Springsteen and you're sitting
(15:07):
right there, you know.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
And if I heard he had a peptic ulcer, I
was like, of course, of course that would explain it.
I've had that kind of ulcerated selfigus thing. It's oh
it has to be. I don't know how he could
sing for this long. Yeah, no, it's amazing.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
So I'm walking out of the theater to see Springsteen
and one of his security guys there's like guy kind
of wrangles the stage door area, keeps people just a
little bit away and stuff. And then there's another guy
like at the door, but there's another guy who's just
kind of like street guy, keeping it safe for the loss,
give it real. And he goes, oh, hey, man, are
(15:45):
you are you going to see the boss backstage?
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Because I guess he knows me. And I was like, no, no,
I wasn't going to.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Now I have to well, and the security guy's like,
go ahead, man, no, no, no, go go go on go
on back. Just say, Ronnie, just go ahead, go go
on back and meet the boss. And I'm standing there.
I'm standing in the street and I'm looking at this
guy and there's another security guy right, and there's probably
another guy after that.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Sure yeah, and then Bell and Jack Nicholson, and I'm.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Like, my next thought is okay, so let's say I
get past next Thanks security guy. Great, so I've made
it past two security guys who love me. Then I
get let's say I get to the boss. Yeah, and
his eyes don't light up. Yeah, he doesn't know who
you are maybe at all? Right, and that's lightly. I
mean you don't know.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
I mean you've done a lot of stuff in nine
one one is like everybody loves that show.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
You would think, but like, what if the boss didn't
care and didn't know and didn't care? Yeah, I think
you're overthinking it. Did you did you go? Did you
get through? I didn't go through because I was so scared.
I was like, if on the off chance that he
does and go like, what if I get through and
he goes.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Ronnie, you're you're fucking me?
Speaker 2 (17:05):
What?
Speaker 5 (17:05):
How are these randos? We got randos getting back here?
Speaker 2 (17:10):
What are we doing? Ronnie? But he wouldn't say that
in front of you? Then what if he did? He
wouldn't he's boss, Ronnie, you're fucking me.
Speaker 5 (17:21):
This is just back here, and he's got his fingers
in the seven layer dip and then of a bitch,
Ronnie get the get out.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
No, but then and then Ronnie loses his job. In
this scenario, it's horrible.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
This is a terrible and then I take Ronnie has
to live with me for a while eleven year house.
He's like, man, I really thought.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
The Boss Tom and the Roadie is recorded in front
of a live studio audience.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Yeah, anyway, I sent I sent him back to see
the Boss, and the Boss was just mat I Boss
probably pretends to know you. Well, that's so. I mean,
haven't you done that when you've been introduced to one
day long?
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Because I did this once once where I get introduced
the Costello backstage and I was like, and he said, hello, Craig,
nice to meet you. And I was like, knows you,
he knows my name. And then I saw a guy
literally a household name though.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
You know, there was a guy who it's a Craig Ferguson.
He got a handle, he's got handles. Get a guy
that goes it's Craig fergus.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Now, the problem is it doesn't work when it's not
Craig Ferguson, because the guy only.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Says the guy whisky works for you, exactly, Craig fergus,
Craig figus. It's a guy.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
There's a guy Coronie that used to work for Chris
fucked up till he fucked up and.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
He was letting Randos in. Rando's were back.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
The Craig Ferguson Fancy Rascals Stand Up Tour continues throughout
the United States in twenty twenty four. For a full
list of dates and tickets, go to the Craig Ferguson
show dot com Slash Tour.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
So you are there.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
You're on the road right now, right working with the State,
which is kind of a rock band situation to be in.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
And that's that's a cult outfit, very very very much
so in that Remember how the Clash never made any money. Yeah,
they had to live in like squad apartments and stuff.
Clash that was a lot to do with miss management, drugs.
Is that? Is that what you're sure?
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Yeah, we're too old for both of those. Well yeah yeah,
but no, it is a lot like being in a band.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Yeah, I mean, you get a band back together, do
you guys have like backstage antics?
Speaker 2 (19:30):
And like do we have antics too? We fight a
we fight a lot. We're still fighting. Absolutely. It's a
good lord. But it's always about the work, you know.
It's like never we never have personal stuff. We're all
you know, we the State the Comedy Group got together
in nineteen nineties eighty eight Shut the Front Door. So
(19:51):
we've been together since I was eighteen years old and
now I'm fifty three, so it's still God'm sixty one. Man,
it's fucking it's fucking bad. Yeah, when do we guess
we get to quit at some point? Yeah? I tried
it the way you did not try I know, and
then I noticed that. And then the next thing I
noticed is dates everywhere, and you got two podcasts and
(20:13):
you're on tour everywhere. Quitting my fuck, No, for sure,
of course, you know. So by the way, everyone said
that about you. As soon as you were like I'm
not to chill out for a minute, I'm like, Craig is, yeah,
I know, Chris got a chill out for seem like
the guy who improvises a twenty minute monologue.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Yeah, it was when you do that at home, Like
Megan's like, I think maybe you should go do this.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
I'm like, hey, hey, you know what, Megan, you know
what happened. But I came in through the kitchen door.
I came in through the kitchen door. Let me tell
you about the.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Kitchen door and She's like, you could be doing this
in Vancouver, Vancouver needs you yourself.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
County, Yeah, Merrillville. It's I'm playing all those places. Of
course you are. I see you get in the state.
You're right in the same gigs, right we uh yeah.
We've actually only tested the show out so far once
and then we've got a bunch a lot of dates
coming up and after November. So yeah, you excited about that?
I am. You know it. There is nothing like No,
(21:14):
it's nothing. It's great.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
It's really fun, and it's it's not replaceable with a
I no no, yeah, a little Abba.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Are doing a show which is holograms. There are a
K pop out. I think that the or the Japanese
I love singer who say I don't want to see
an alba Ai show?
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Oh you know you do want to see it, and
you want to see it with me, and you want
to bring Jenny and okay, and I'll take Meghan and
I have a written at the two Arena. I'm serious.
It's hologram. I'm from the nineteen eight I'm yeah. But
it's with their permission. Oh yeah, they're they're making money
from it. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean it's their
songs and they're you know, and it's them young.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Yeah, see this is a problem. This is where comes
a little bit of a black mirror episode for me.
The brunette sort of redhead from Abba. Yeah, let's see
it's Benny Bjorn and yeah, yeah, I think it's a.
I think it's a I might carry a crush for
her that has not died. I hear. Yeah, I'm kind
(22:18):
of the same. That's a tough it's it like I'm worried.
That's the same way I'm worried about. Like, I don't
know if my family is gonna let me just buy
tickets to the Taylor Swift movie because it seems dubious. Well,
his dad so excited to go see the Taylor Swift.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Are you excited to see the Taylor Swift noting?
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Damn it? I am. Yeah, see, I know unless I
get nothing.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
But I hear nothing but nice things that Jack Taylor Swift,
and certainly the music that I've heard is fabulous and
uh balpy and catchy and all the things.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
He's not for me, but no, no, everything is for
you know. I mean, it's it's but and.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Also she doesn't give six like guy, I like her
making music for me.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
I like her. I like her guitar playing actually a lot,
and she and I own an identical guitar. Because Taylor Swift.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Trying to make you and Taylor Swift kind of be
so mazed because you want the same. You're right, your
family shouldn't let you go. No, No, it's weird. Why
his dad want to go see the Taylor Swift movie
is just weird. Well, you're you're allowed to like what
you like. I mean, you don't like to go and
see the movie. Well, this is what you don't get
even weird about it.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Yeah, well, I actually think i'd be finding the Taylor
Swift movie. Yea, I do. I worry. You know, part
of my happy adult life is that the idea of
the young ladies from from But don't exist anymore. So
now these monsters with their no but they're holograms. No
they they they look really real. No, I don't think
(23:42):
this is good for me to go see. Oh, because
you've aged, I've aged, and somehow young Agoneatha from Abba.
But it's a good black mirror. It's a black mirror.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
It isn't interesting stuff I have I have. I thought
it was just you know I was in my age
because I actually am aging.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
And then I think, no, it's not that it's.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Because of robots, it's because of the it's because of
ai is. Other people are not aging, they're not And filters, Oh, yeah,
of course that'll fair.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Filters. You're on the social medias, aren't you. I am,
but I would yeah, I'd love not to be. Yeah.
I think everybody talks the same about it. It's funny.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
It's like living in La. Like when you leave La
and everyone around it, did you leave La? And you're like, yeah,
I'd love to do that.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Leave, but yeah, it's hard. You can't. It's hard you
and I have And then we're both sitting here.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Yeah, and I'm both sitting in a studio in La,
in the middle of La. You know what I think
it was some British film director said about La. I
think it's a It's the absolutely accurate description of it.
It said, La is a town where you turn up,
you get off the plane, you go to the hotel,
you put it on your suitcase, you go out, you
lie out by the pool, you have an app.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
You wake up later. It's twenty years.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
It's it feels a little bit because I was here
twenty three years, like eleven here.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
I come here to work, and I come here to
see friends.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
And I come here to to do business, but I
don't live here anymore.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
I was sort of thought that Los Angeles felt a
little bit like the way people describe like working on
an oil rig. You know, you go out and work
on the oil rig. You don't stay there for the
theater scene and for like the social times. You go
get the fucking oil, the oil out and get the
fuck and then goes somewhere lovely. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
But the thing is that the trick with California is
that plenty of it is.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Lovely, so lovely, yeah, so close to Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
I kind of like we left and now I don't know.
We're in New York a lot of the time, and
it's like, I love see New York is a good
city to get older.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
And it's great. That's actually my backup plan.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
It's I'm telling you it's great because you just walk
outside your show every day. And also you walk around
everybody's not like like everybody in La that Garrison Quila thing.
Everyone's in the mid thirties. Even the children are in
their mid very good point. But in New York, people
like it's just a smortgage boarder. Just everybody like people
with one bag, guy, one small eye, big hand, a
(26:14):
little hand, you know, one hundred years old, you know,
fifteen years old, and people are shuffling around really rich people,
really poor people, people without hats.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
I never thought I really leave New York. New York
was weird when I got to New York. Oh well,
I mean you worked at Save the Robots. I did, Yeah,
put you ever there? I probably was there. Yeah, I
probably worked there. Yeah, I've read that I worked there.
So we got I got to New York in nineteen
eighty eight. Yeah you would have been there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(26:43):
I stopped working there. But we didn't have any money
or anything. We were really poor. Yeah, but it was
the after hours club. I didn't know it, but until
two eight that was Can you imagine because two guys
who now have dinner at five, I would love to
have dinner at five. I'd like to have dinner out
of the way by five, a.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
Club, And we used to go to places, but the
afteros club thing that was going on then you could.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
You couldn't have that now. I'm like people were openly
doing drugs. We went to a place. There was a
place in the East Village that was an after hours
place called Brownie's. I can talk about it because there's
no weight with there. It was not Brownies the music club.
There was another place where it was owned by this
guy who had a cowboy hat and he had a revolver.
Was he English? No, he was an African American gentleman.
(27:25):
And the only things they sold were like cams of paps,
blue ribbon and dime bags of cocaine. I think I've
been there, Yeah, yeah, I think that was it. You
were not allowed to curse. You could do You could
literally sit and have paps and do cocaine with a
guy and a cowboy hat with a pistol. If you cursed,
which our friend of mine did at the pool table,
(27:46):
it was a real issue for the owner and he
was just like, fellas, I'm going to ask you one
more time with my pistol and my paths. Wow. New
York was it was? Fuck, It was a thing. There
was casinos that just were yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Remember, and I wrote about this, but I was in
a barcoll Murphy's and the Upper East sized. I don't
think it's there anymore. But I keep going looking for
it because I live in the Upper East now, and
I'm like, is it here?
Speaker 5 (28:13):
No.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
But we went out one.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Night and then we went over to the West Side
and it was during the troubles and there was a
lot of IRA stuff and these guys were there. I
got a shit kicked out me when we were out
for one night, and I mean, like, really, I go, like,
they're kind of beaten up that I'd probably go to
hospital now. I was hitting the face now you were still. Yeah,
well if I could, if I could be up now,
I don't.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Know if i'd recover.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
God, I go, yeah, I mean like I I turned
the wrong way, and oh my god, everything hurts all
the time. New York. I make clicking noises just standing up.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
We got as the state. We got beaten up twice.
At least. Did you get beaten up many times? For
the material? I got? No? No, no, just New York
in the eighties. Oh right, my first, my first getting
this shit kicked out of me in New York. I
only be it was eighty fall of nineteen eighty eight.
I was wearing it like a bright yellow bow tie.
I just come from you know what, you deserve it.
I actually deserved it. I was frolicking up Broadway at
(29:07):
three o'clock in the morning, singing, Pippin' got beaten, oh man.
But you know, getting beaten on the street in New
York used used to be a thing, used to be
a thing. Yeah, and here's a weird thing I'm going
to say about it that may not be popular. People
in New York, I think, have better manners and for
the most part, behave well because there's a solid chance
(29:30):
you're gonna get clocked. In New York and in LA
everybody's just bitching and moaning in their cars. You can't
hear them. Everybody's in a bubble, screaming profanities at you.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
I think this is that's not I don't think that's
I don't think it's unrealistic.
Speaker 5 (29:44):
Well.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
I had a friend from Texas who used to wear
a hat and carry a gun, and he used to say.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
In Texas in Los Angeles, yeah, and he used to.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Yeah, okay, but he would.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Say, an armed society is a polite society. I get
weird about that one. Yeah, but you say it. Yeah,
I'm not saying that. I subscribe to that notion, But
I do. I do think a society where occasionally say
their own thing, you gets like somebody gives you like
a real quick bop to the face. I'm pretty much
(30:21):
in favor of that. Well, you know, you're you're Irish.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
That said, you know, that's kind of what it is
to be fair, exactly what it is?
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Iris? What are you like just off the boat? When
did your people get I got to show you just
off the boat? Yeah? Did? I didn't show you my
twenty three and meters. It's ridiculous. Mostly potatoes. It's literally
it sent me a potato. It turns into yeah, I
mean because I mean nobody got iris. You know, everybody
has like a little bit of something else. Yeah, I
(30:52):
don't all iris. Yeah, I'm all. Well, but what it
says is it doesn't differentiate, which is crazy, but it's
it just shows the England, the British Isles and nothing else.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Right, Well, that's a lot of different influences there. But yeah,
it's I mean, because as the Irish and the Cats.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
And the you know, and then I don't know what
the Scotts had made.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
No Italians. I got no Italians. Is that's the important
part for me? That's the important part. I think I've
got a lot of Italian obviously. Look I've never done
it twenty Street me because I don't want your six
Look at your the gorgeous head of hair you have, crazy,
I've got to be Italian.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
This is not just the hair of a Scots No,
it's definitely an Italian. I think that is Well, not
that movies. The Scott's had great hair, but they're all
dead in battles too, though, yeah, you know they Well,
the thing is my family always had good hair.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Yeah, but there was alcohol involved, and I drank a lot.
About what I'm saying is that you're an alcoholic.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Your hair will be good. Your hair's fine, right, it's
doing right. What were we talking about New York and
the eighties getting beaten up? Yeah, well that's overnight. Yeah.
The IRA used to be a thing. People loving the IRA,
people in New York and Chicago just openly loving the IRA.
Speaker 6 (32:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
It was a little different where I grew up because
it was like doorsteps. Yeah. Yeah, and well that was
a weird, a very icky part about growing up in
the West Side of Chicago, which we never talked about
until we all got sort of publicly shamed by Bono.
(32:26):
Oh yeah, yeah, it was very interesting. You would go
to you'd go to I was at a YouTube concert
very early, yeah, and the Rosemont Horizon in Chicago, and
it's you know, all these Irish immigrants, you know, kids
of the Irish Diasthmir and you know you two's this
is eighty four eighty six something like that, very really early,
(32:48):
and Bono would you know, say in the show, like,
you know, there's a there's a war half none of
my country, and the Chicago audience would go would all cheer,
and I was probably part of that, and then he
would say no, he was, well, he was. He was
very cool about it. I mean, it'd be like award
that nobody wants that's killing children and you can't support this,
(33:11):
and this is some kind and where everybody was like,
oh shit, and we feel bad. Yeah, and then we
feel bad. But it took something like it took someone
like that to make everybody realize what a shitty thing
that we were, like like publicly just like we're right
ryeing this crazy thing. Yeah, and yeah, it was a
(33:32):
lot more. I don't know. I mean it's even now
I'm sixty one years old.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Then the you know, the good fight, the agreement has
happened that, you know, things have changed so much over there,
and I'm still terrified to talk about it because it's
fucking dangerous. Yeah, and when you're in a certain company
in Scotland and Ireland, for sure, it's still fucking dangerous.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
And I don't I can't. I kind of avoided it
when I was a kid.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
I avoided talking about it at all in the same
way actually that now when I do stand up, I
don't do any politics.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
I don't know anything. I actually think that's why the
state is still popular. Yeah, we never you never. We
never did like weird impressions of like anybody. We didn't
give a shit about. Like if we'd done like tons
of George W. Bull and what would we have done.
I guess it would have been Bush Senior or so
I don't know, you like, what would that would not be? Yeah?
(34:28):
So how long were you guys together? You did? Like
how many seasons? Like ten seasons? No? No, no, So
we did well, we got together in eighty eight. We
were we were just the comedy club at NYU, right,
and so we were doing like live theater shows and
things like that, and then we did a show with
John Stewart for MTV that was fucking awful show. It's
(34:50):
called You Brought It, You watch it. It was horrible,
but John Stewart was awesome in it. He got the
John Stewart Show and we got the State. Right. So
we did three seasons on MTV. Right.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
We got negative two stars in the New York Post
the first season negative. That's one of my first of
you in Late Night in the New York Post they
said it looked like he.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Was wearing a wake hate speech.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
Yeah. I was just like, you wouldn't be allowed to
that now. No, you can't just say they didn't like
the way I looked, and they just.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Went after me. Oh my god, I didn't think how
good you and you were really good at it? I no,
I have first I feel like I guess maybe I can't.
At first I think you were though, well, this is
a great effect. None of us remember stick out together.
We did three seasons there. We thought we were real badasses. Weirdly,
(35:41):
we did numbers that were awesome, like the ratings on
MTV were like, really you can good? Yeah? Uh, And
then we thought we were hot ship, which is a
great idea.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Always a great I think you are, but to be
it is a good thing to look back on.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
And then we we thought we were hot shit we
got instead of we had we had an offer to
do more shows at MTV. We didn't know how many,
but it was it maybe would have been good. Or
we had an offer from CBS for two specials and
if those went well, we would be like a CBS
(36:19):
like big show. That's print your own money. Though, That's
what everybody was really excited about. So we shot a
special for CBS, which got wonderful reviews. Okay, literally, no
one fucking watched. We all got together to watch it,
and I remember the most exciting thing that happened is
(36:39):
there was a thunderstorm warning came on on CBS during
our special. It was legendarily bad ratings. Alan King was
on it for some reason, and he was really kind
of mean to the whole thing sucked.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Yeah, and then I'm sorry here that well, and then
but then we you know, sort of we keep being
like we're like, I don't know, We're like Vince Clark
in depeche Mode, like so State sort of breaks up
half of us turns into a show called Viva Variety,
the other house.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
I love to do a show called Stello. Yeah, you know.
So it's like we we're still on tour. Everybody's been
on Reno nine one, We've all been in.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Michael in the frame, Michael and Black Lives and of
course in the frame for the in the late night show.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
It was me and he wanted that job so badly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I was on one of his tryout shows. Yeah, he
was good at it. I saw his tryout show. I
was like, Okay, he's going to get it. Did you
think so? Yeah? I did. Yeah, I totally thought he
was going to get it.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
I remember calling, uh CBS Michael, who was the producer,
You remember, Michael, this, this is the guy you think.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
I really love. I love I think he would love
to hear that.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
No. I thought he was I mean, I didn't want
him to get it for obvious reasons, but I thought
he was good.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
I did a bit with him when he went on
one of those shows, and I remember thinking, I, you know, like,
this is one of my closest best friends in the
entire world. And I remember thinking, I don't know if
he's good at talking to people like this. I'm not sure,
this is like I think I think I said it.
I think he would have done it. That's fine. But
(38:17):
he was just coming off of being the pets dot
Com sock puppet, so of course he was. He was
pretty pretty hot. Yeah, he was. He would be hot
share at that point. I would come sock puppet.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
That was two years out from being a banana on
the Drew Carrey Show. So I was also, oh god,
also peking, that's a good one.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Yeah. Nice.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
That's lost media now the Drew carry Show. You can't
see it anywhere.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
You can't see it all.
Speaker 6 (38:46):
No.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
I think maybe there's there's some kind of copyright this
shit going on with it with music or something, but
you can't see it on any of the streaming services.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
I've kept the State off of DVD for like fifteen
twenty years. Yeah, I think it must be a similar
was a music thing, so we actually somebody had to
go through and replace every single piece of the famous music.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
I think that's a situation.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
It's a bummer. Yeah, it's something like that anyway. D
Drake Beder knows about it. He Drake is a fascinating cat.
He lives bucks away from me. Yeah, yeah, he's an
amazing guy.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
He's one of the best actors I've ever worked with. Stunning,
He's an incredible actor. And there's a guy and I said,
he's been on this podcast and I said to him,
you really grew up.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
I mean because he was when I first met him.
He's a bit of a deck and he's I think
he can come off like that sometimes. And this is
I say this, I love this man and we are
very close. I wrote, I wrote his daughter's uh application college?
Is that one of those? Is that? By the way,
she didn't get it? Okay, so I blew it. That
(39:53):
was such a great letter. I'm a great college letter writer. Yeah,
I go, I go aggressive. Yeah, that's prob. No, weird. No,
it's actually worked a bunch of times. Really. Yeah, Like
I write a college letter that starts with like, look,
you do not want to go to war with me?
And you know what, it's mostly worked out.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
Yeah, but yeah, No, you write the letter for the applicant.
Aren't they meant to write their own? No?
Speaker 2 (40:17):
No, no, you got to you gotta go like a recommendation
left right, Okay, I've written a couple of them. Now,
I got a pretty good track record, right, Okay, well,
but I go funny. I mean, I go funny and
I go aggressive. Well, I've got one more to get
through college. So uh maybe for Liam's you can you
can do. Oh absolutely, I'll pull up big guns for
that one. Yeah, Liam, I know where we're going here.
(40:39):
My boy doesn't seem like college material and I love it.
I'm like, that's a million dollars I get to just keep. Yeah.
I don't know if Liam will go to college, but
they'll be statues. Yeah. I feel like, yeah, it's so funny.
Everybody's like, well, make sure the boy gets tutored and
really works hard and does these things. And I'm like, really,
(41:00):
because like to go where to go to like a
stuff you learn stuff on YouTube.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
It's it's an interesting thing because I you know, Megan,
as you know is my wife is is a very
highly educated, clever Area day believer in academia. I dropped
out of high school when I was just turned sixteen,
and so she can sell the college thing to the kids,
(41:28):
but I can't, unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
But there's a like, well you know about it, yeah,
and how's the castle? Yeah? Yeah, you sure didn't have
to do. But that's that was luck. It was a
little bit a lot of work at Did you go
to college? I did?
Speaker 1 (41:45):
I went to n YU.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Oh, yeah, of course you did, because that's for the
state thing.
Speaker 6 (41:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
But the funny, funny detail. I was accepted to college
on academic probation because my high school grades were not great.
What were you going to study a college?
Speaker 1 (41:57):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (41:58):
Well, I actually I started at the theaters school. It
was handy because n YU was nice. You could audition because,
like I.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
Seem that seems realistic for a theater skill idea.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
But like Northwestern, uh, which was my first choice, I
wanted to go to the theater school.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
There's no audition.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
He's a ship actor, but he's great.
Speaker 7 (42:17):
You just have to be smartest. You just have to
be smart, which how smart? Hope says, No, he don't know,
doesn't need to be I mean really a talking plant
a great actor.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
You just have to be able to read a little bit.
You don't even really have to really, you know. So
I got a bold rejection from Northwestern, right, and Northwestern
and n YU accepted me with the asterisk. If I
got a C in any class in my freshman year,
I would be kicked out. Oh my god, which you
obviously did great motivators. Great, you know, dick around. So
(42:52):
did you finish college? I did, actually did finish. So
you're not fully qualified. I'm a fully qualified bachelor of
the arts, right, So if you have some arts that
need to be a bachelor.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
I think that that could be a good show. It's
a dating show, Bachelor, and it's all the art Bachelor.
Do you ever go to the Met? Do you know
the Met when they have the French impressionists. That's really good,
(43:23):
isn't it. I really like that in there. So I
was in there the other day and they have I'm
looking at the French, which is the impression that you're
looking at somebody who likes specifically. Yeah, there was a
pretty I knew you were going to ask you this.
There was a Prisian street scene. I can't remember it,
and I love it. I just like going hanging out
near it. And I can't remember I who did it,
which I'm apologized, But you know what, it might be Renoir,
(43:46):
It might be I don't know sure. But I go
to the Van Go exhibit because the Van Go exhibits
on right now in the Met, and they have Starry
Night there and which is amazing.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
It's an amazing, stunning same person. It has its own luminescence,
it creates its own lene. It's unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (44:06):
But as I'm standing there, I have to pick my
moment to look at the picture because of everyone holding
their phone to take a picture. Just look at it, right.
But this is an interesting thing to me because I
think all performance, all human society is changing right now.
We're in a very odd place in human history where analogue, personal,
(44:31):
bionic personal memory is gone. Everything you will be remembered
like you can now make abba as they were when
you were a young man.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
This is a problem because then I go to the
show and then I'm like, hey, can I go meet
her after? And they're like, sir, you can't meet She
doesn't she doesn't exist. And I'm like, I demand I
meet her.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
And then you go there and it's the same roadie
that wouldn't let you in the.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
Killing me you.
Speaker 1 (44:58):
Want to go to see and yet you get through
there and.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
She's not there. It's just like a little box. It's like,
you know, I'm all of the memories of an armor,
you know.
Speaker 1 (45:13):
But it isn't a odd thing because memory is wonderful.
I like memory because I everybody remembers things a little
bit differently, but phones don't.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
Phones remember exactly exactly correctly. And you'll soften it for you.
I wonder, because you know, we have a great big
computer in the kitchen in the house that always runs
your photo life. And is it does it make my
memory better or worse? Makes it worse? It makes it worse,
I'm sure of it, because you're just like, oh, at
some point I'll think about let me rephrase that. I
(45:45):
don't know if it makes it worse, it makes it different,
it's too accurate. Yeah, it's not human.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
The human thing is that you create a story of
what happened. Remember that time we went to the pizza
place and you took your pants off, you know, and
your dad stuff the things.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
You can have a real fondness. I think I do too,
for you know, like there's so I have so many
ex girlfriends that I have one photograph of if or
if barely right, you know, and that's like such a
neat you know, in a way, it's like it's kind
of more interesting because yeah, yeah, yeah, and you have
(46:22):
to think about it. Yeah, I went to I went
to London with Susan for like two weeks and there's
almost no photos of it at all. It was just
like a I know, I have to think about it.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
And I wonder, though, I wonder what happens with that,
because no matter how much Quadure is like me and
you will approach quaduredom I'm very close. Well you get there,
it's not gonna change anything.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
It's not.
Speaker 1 (46:45):
You can complain about it, but it's not gonna it's
not gonna change anything. And I wonder if that's just
what it's like to get old. It's like just the
world starts to seem scary and alien, and it's not
really scary and alien.
Speaker 2 (46:57):
It's just this is a great question. I've wondered this
exact thing, because the world does seem pretty scary right now,
even walking here to this strange, a pretty sketchy area
of Hollywood. I mean, this is be scary for a
good fifty years were peg in the meter. But yeah,
like I wonder, am I just growing into the phase
(47:20):
where I bitch about everything? Yeah? You know, yeah, like
does everybody just do that at some point?
Speaker 7 (47:26):
I don't know it just like my Abba was better, Yeah,
she was a human, lady.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Human I prefer robots is not perfect. I would go
see album and sometimes they would mess up. No, come on, man,
you went to you.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
May have got a bet too fat at that point,
but I wonder, I don't, I don't know. It might be,
but I think that's okay too. Yeah, I think you
have to embrace the strangeness of aging. This is I'm
talking to myself because you're not at that point. I'm
getting real, real, real close.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
Yeah, fucking sixty one though, Tom, I mean, yeah, it's
on the age that my my grandfather, who basically was
my identical twin, dropped dead. So I just kind of, yeah,
you gotta make Hey what did he talk about, van
go make Hay while the sun shines? Yeah, a strange
experimental He had looked at me about a drug that
(48:25):
he was allergic to ended up killing him. Right, We're
not talking last week then, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
this is I was a child.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
Yeah, right, so but these things, you know, I think
that my dad when he was my age, had been
retired for a year.
Speaker 2 (48:41):
Yeah, but life of a glass Wigan.
Speaker 1 (48:46):
Yeah yeah, now yeah, come year, Brack was so outside
the it's a little different. But I started, you know,
you know, I fucking started brushing my teeth.
Speaker 2 (48:59):
That's what brush your teeth.
Speaker 5 (49:05):
For.
Speaker 2 (49:05):
God, brush your teeth brought last time I went to Ashole,
when I went to see you in Scotland a butter
t shirt that's there was such a great T shirt
that says says people make Glasgow and I love this
shirt and I wear it all the time. And then
I looked up the hashtag of people make Glasgow and
it's always the worst fights. It's a guy. There's like
a naked guy fighting a lady and he uses a
(49:26):
bike as a weapon.
Speaker 1 (49:28):
I know that.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
Have you seen under always under the hashtag people make Glasgow.
We do that in our family, so funny.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
Send each other things the worst use oh my god.
Speaker 2 (49:41):
But it's always got that upbeat hashtag.
Speaker 1 (49:43):
I can't remember exactly, but there was one about a
nurse who lost her lawsuit for an unfair dismissal because.
Speaker 6 (49:56):
She had a field come and see had claimed that
there was a ghost and in the hospital that was
farthing and blaming it on her and she got fired
because of that.
Speaker 2 (50:06):
People make Glasgow. People make Glasgow.
Speaker 1 (50:12):
I mean it's quite a place, but of course it's
a very odd hybrid of Ireland in Scotland.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
Glasgow. I really like Glasgow. Fucking old hybrid of Ireland
in America. I am mostly Ireland.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
I know.
Speaker 2 (50:25):
Last time I was in Glasgow, I want to go
see you. It was it was one hundred and two
degrees in Glasgow. Yeah, that's right, go weird there. It
was really intense. It's strange. It's not now it's very good, yeah,
because it was Actually Glasgow at one hundred and two
is not good because you know what happens. It's tough.
Speaker 1 (50:40):
People start coming out wearing what they think is the
appropriate clothing for hot weather, and it's.
Speaker 2 (50:47):
Not fucking pretty. Then I went to Garvin Beach where
with weird Al Yankovic and Weird Alan Allen's family, and
we went to a great little I'm not going to
say the name of it, right, we'll bleep it right
around the corner and oh yeah, and I decided to
try like the spicy wet pork. And I never eat
(51:09):
I don't meat meat hardly really. Ever, what I did
was doing a win in Rome thing. Right, So it's
one hundred and two in Glasgow. You had spicy web pork.
Oh oh was it good? No, car, it wasn't good.
It's a good buddy. Hadn't dealt with pork in like
a kind of a long time, and it was. It
was one of the roughest nights of my entire life.
(51:31):
Just a long walk because you're gurgling full of yeah, yeah.
I had that once in Paris. Actually I had.
Speaker 1 (51:38):
I had been vegan for four years, and I thought,
I'm having an ice cream. Oh, just the lactose dairy
ice cream colon, having not had dairy for four years.
Speaker 2 (51:52):
No, my tough to a bathroom in Paris, I'll tell you.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
I was accepting anything anything like a whole with foot
pads on either side.
Speaker 2 (52:01):
Tough.
Speaker 1 (52:02):
And there was a lot on the way home anyway,
you know. That's that's why I had a long walk.
Pooping through Paris.
Speaker 2 (52:09):
Pooping through Paris, you gotta you gotta do it once.
Speaker 1 (52:13):
See, that's how romantic Paris is, even when you've got
the trots, it's kind of romantic.
Speaker 2 (52:17):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (52:18):
All right, Well we're kind of done here, Okay, we
established what is joy for you?
Speaker 2 (52:24):
I will say, and it may seem silly. I would
write sketches every day for the joy of it. I
would sit for absolutely for no one, and I would
just I could, I could write every day for no
one but myself and love it and truly truly love it.
(52:48):
I think that's kind of nice. Yeah, I mean it's
a little bit cheesy, but it No, it's not cheap.
Sometimes I people will send me either they'll send me
their kid or something and be like, hey, you got
to tell my kid how to write movies. Yeah, you're
gonna take my kid. Kid. Somebody will be like, well,
you get on like a zoom and just tell my
kid what they do.
Speaker 1 (53:06):
So they don't like to send the kid around to
your house. No, God, No, that's kind of weird, you
know what. Yeah, But and then that's my my question
is always, would you do this every day for free?
Speaker 2 (53:17):
Yeah? Because mostly you will. I'm like, hey, yeah, mostly
you're gone. That's fucking true. Yeah, the paydays are sometimes.
Speaker 1 (53:29):
But you know what's weird about it, because I totally
agree with you. But the weird thing is is that,
like I I tried to retire and I couldn't because
I haven't been working since I worked in the fucking
bar in Glasgow. I haven't had a real job for
forty years.
Speaker 2 (53:46):
But you worked real hard yep, But it felt like fun.
It's kind of war. It felt like fun. Yeah, it's
kind of dicking around. It doesn't doesn't feel like work.
Doesn't feel like work.
Speaker 1 (53:56):
And then the times when I've tried to work, like
when I directed movies and stuff like that, they suck
because I don't like doing that.
Speaker 2 (54:04):
I don't like doing that either, especially I especially hate directing.
Oh it's awful. It's not my apparently, it's not my personality.
No mine, neither. I meet folks who have that personality
and they're great at it. They're still great at it. Yeah,
but it's a very different level of drive to be
that sort of person and I think I'm Once I
(54:25):
got over the idea of this want to direct notion
that everybody had. I had that once you get over it,
you're gonna feel better. I had it, you know.
Speaker 1 (54:35):
When I really knew it was over for me, I
had a conversation with Quentin Tarantino about now you can
direct like crazy?
Speaker 2 (54:40):
Oh sure?
Speaker 1 (54:40):
And so I was telling them that I didn't enjoy
the directing experience, and he said, well, didn't you have
the whole movie in your head before you shot it?
And I said no, and he went, well, I do
when I make a movie, of course. Well there, no,
there we go, there we go. That's why you're Quentin
Tarantino and I'm the cheeky monkey man l.
Speaker 2 (55:01):
But there you go. All right, Tom, Well you you
are a joy. By the way. The other thing that
brings me joy, I would say, is like I think
I came on your show. Oh gosh, oh are we
have fifteen twenty years ago now thirty something times? Yeah,
but that I still consider my friendship with you is
something that has brought me a tremendous amount of joy. Yeah.
(55:23):
It's knowing your family.
Speaker 1 (55:25):
Meeting and you're fucking weird, you know, and you're and
I like that because I've got some friends who aren't there.
You've also got some really cool friends with some fucking
great weird friends.
Speaker 4 (55:39):
I really do, not really do.
Speaker 2 (55:41):
My life is really a Wes Anderson movie. It actually is.
It really is live in a fucking Wes Anderson movie.
My own time. It's a good one. But if Wes
Anderson was to look at my life and be like,
it's a little yeah, yeah, it's down, Yeah, it's too much. Well,
I mean this is beyond royal tattle ball. All right,
(56:02):
we gotta go the best
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