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March 11, 2025 12 mins
In today's episode, host Johnny Mac battles barking dogs to deliver the latest in comedy news. Bert Kreischer discusses bombing in comedy, alt comedy rooms, and touches on political comedy. He also shares insights into the rapidly changing landscape of Hollywood and comedy's renaissance. The episode also features comments on Nish Kumar's provocative approach to comedy, George Wallace's experiences with Johnny Carson, and Caleb Heron's perspective on politics as a marginalized individual. Additionally, there's gossip about Jamie Foxx's family and James Acaster's doomed Channel 4 pilot. The show ends with news about Starburns Industries' fellowship for aspiring screenwriters.

 00:36 Burt Kreischer's Insights on Comedy
02:25 Hollywood's Changing Landscape
04:31 Nish Kumar's Bold Comedy
05:51 George Wallace on Johnny Carson
08:34 Jamie Foxx Rumors Addressed
10:06 James Acaster's Show Failure
10:57 Starburns Industries Fellowship

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Callaroga Shark Media. Hey there, it's Johnny Mackets, some barking
dogs trying to tell you about today's daily coming news. Look, dogs,
I gotta record this thing. I'mount of time. I gotta
get move in here. It's a Tuesday, but there doesn't
seem to be a big Netflix special this week. I

(00:23):
think they've cleared the runway so John mulaney can have
all the attention and the PR team working on that
high dogsky. I wonder if you guys can hear them
or not the noise cancelation may or may not have
gotten rid of them. I'll find out by listening back,
just like you did anyway. Bert Kreischer is the Netflix
special next week. Friday did a big profile with Bert Krescher,

(00:43):
and they were curious, Hey, Bert, do you ever still bomb?
Where it said I don't have to bomb if I
don't want to. Sometimes it's good not to bomb, per se,
but to not lean on those little tricks that ensure
us to do well. Chris Rock's a perfect example. Chris
Rock works out new material. He doesn't do any of
the preaching on stage, the walking back and forth. Though,
let me tell you something, none of that he's really
he almost reads it off like a book to find
out if the material really works. I'll do a version

(01:04):
of that. There are jokes that don't work, there are
stories that don't work that I commit to you and
tell the whole thing anyway, just to see if there's
anything in it really, really insightful answer there, Bert, do
you ever go to alt comedy rooms and find it
more challenging? Bert said, yes, of course, I haven't done
it in a while. I always think I would have
done better in those alt rooms because I'm a storyteller,
and that's a more alternative approach to comedy. It feels
easier to swallow at the Largo or U se Be

(01:24):
or typewriter Dynastate, whereas at the comedy store you have
guys doing crowd work and set up punchline, and when
you tell stories sometimes it confuses the audience. I always
wondered how I would perform at those places, but I
didn't do it enough to be honest. A variety mentions
minor ish spoiler here, I won't ruin it for you,
but there is a political comment in the special, and
they asked Bert about that. I won't get into the specifics.
Bert explained, I don't have a problem telling you I am.

(01:45):
I don't want to alienate you if you come to
my show and preach politics. I also don't mind telling
you I have two little girls and a wife, and
I stand for women's rights, so I think that's undeniable.
I don't mind telling you I own a couple of guns.
I'm not going to preach my views on the NRA
on stage. I'll just tell you a story about having
a gun. I'll tell you my daughter thinks I'm a
misogynists and make a joke about it, or tell an
abortion joke. There should be a joke. If you go
out and start preaching politics, sometimes you lose me. It's

(02:06):
sexier when I don't know your politics. I like when
a comedian's politics are assumed. So I like to stay
away from political comedy, but I'm not afraid of it.
Interesting follow up here, Variety. I heard you send a
custom Berg Kreischer calendar to people around Hollywood? Is that true?
I do what's in there. It's all my sexy pictures.
Will get you one if you want, Variety. I'm intrigued anyway.
What's the vibe around Hollywood? These days. In terms of

(02:27):
pitching projects, Bert said, it's the gold rush right now.
Hollywood is re envisioning the way they make TV and movies.
You look like in a place like Netflix that invests
maybe two hundred and fifty grand on a special for
the majority of comics and sees a wild return on
that money. Hollywood's now going let's step it up a bit.
What if we allow them the freedom to say whatever
they want and maybe we could make a movie that
one day was thirty five million dollars, So let's see
if we can do it for seven million dollars. I

(02:48):
feel very lucky to be alive and working at this point.
TV and movies are about to explode in Hollywood in
a really fun and crazy way. It's going to be
a lot of streamers. I don't think we're going to
be going to the box office. But if you look
at Shane Gillis's show Tires that was made on a
minimum and it's a great show. Shane Gillis, without a doubt,
is probably the most talented comedic actor of our generation.
I think people are looking at him and going, if
Shane's there, then what about THEO Vaughn? What about Naper, Ghetzee,

(03:10):
what about Dan Soder. It's gonna be really cool to
see Ralph Barbosa's first TV movie or Renee Vakas first
TV show. Whatever they decide to do, they're gonna give
comics a lot more freedom. Us comics, we don't need
a ton of money. We can make money on the road.
We just want to make things for our fans. Look
what happened to radio and podcasting. Joe Rogan runs media.
In my opinion, he affected an election that was based
on an eight hundred dollars investment buying a zoomer corder

(03:31):
and two mics. It changed the media landscape, and I
think that's about to happen with movies and TV. I
don't think you're gonna be able to get a ton
of people in the movie theaters. You'll need ten pole
events to get people in the movie theaters. You're gonna
have to get Will Ferrell, Danny McBride, Shaquille O'Neil, and
Shane Gillis. I'm someone who had a movie at the
box office and even I'll wait until it comes to streamers.
I have a screening room in my house. I want
to use my stuff. Netflix is a great place to

(03:52):
release stuf because they're so hands off. Tom Sigre has
a project coming out I think in April. If I'm
not mistaken, that was untouched by Netflix. It's gonna be
wild as s sires as Shane and John mckeebrew's fingerprints
all over it. It does look like Network Notes. It
looks like a bunch of boys trying to make their
buddies laugh. I think that's the direction comedy's going in.
Brady said, do you think we're in a comedy renaissance? Burt? Oh? Yeah,
stand up comedy right now is where it was when

(04:13):
Steve Morton, Rich Pryor, Sam Kinnison Andrew Dice Clay were
making specials. That's two different generations, Burt, right before they
took over the box office. Look at all these great
specials that have come out recently. Hollywood producers are getting
younger and younger and every day, and they're enjoying these
comedic voices. They're gonna be like, how do I get
you to do your thing for me? From the New
York Times Turn of the show Jason Cinnamon under the
headline is this British flamethrower the comic best suited to

(04:34):
take on Trump, he went to go see Nish Kumar.
Jason writes, this is not comedy that's trying to change minds.
Here he attacks manosphere podcasters like Jordan Peterson, the Canadian
professor turned popular anti woke guru, as a radicalizing influence,
and comedians like Jimmy Carr who enabled them for going
on their shows. He also criticized the left for fixating
on the wrong questions like whether people can enjoy good

(04:54):
art by bad people. We all do, he says, with
a refreshing conclusiveness, which is why he adds, this is
very f I have preread this. We should all thank
Russell Brand for never producing anything worthwhile. No one heard
those allegations of sexual assault and thought, well, how well
I enjoy get him to the Greek That is very funny.
Zennaman says. What makes Kumar stand out meet the moment
is his lack of caution. His funniest material can be

(05:15):
appealingly reckless. His most virtue, also, bit is an elaborate
consideration of the assassination attempt of famous person who's on
TV a lot from New York City and own some casinos.
I don't need a visit from the fed types. I'm
just telling what Jason Zeneiman wrote. Chick it up with
that there's no doing it justice on the page, but
its rigorous justification of violent thoughts carried the spirit of

(05:37):
the ferocious comic Bill Hicks in a way that Jason
z Intimate hasn't seen in many years. Very interesting. If
feel listen to the show all the time, Niti's name
tends to come up. It tends to be a weekend items.
I usually moved the British stuff to the weekends, and
I see him breaking through over here. The Last Laugh
podcast caught off with George Wallace. I thought his comments
about Johnny Carson were very interesting. We'll get to that

(05:59):
in a second. George says, marketing is just another name
for BS. So that's why I knew Trump is a
bs er because it's what I do. All bs ers
know each other. We don't know each other, but we
know each other. You can see the BS coming from
around the corner. It's what we do. So Wallace talked
about being on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. He
killed the first night and was invited back on the
show three more times, but he said he never got

(06:20):
the wave over to the couch. As George tells it,
I never got invited over to the couch, but I
found out something. He recalls a story he heard from
the manager of band leader Doc Severnson. So, as the
story goes, Carson quote didn't get along with unquote people
of color. Wallace started to notice that he wasn't the
only black comedian who do not get called over to

(06:42):
the couch. He points out that Red Fox never guest
hosted the Tonight show to fight the fact that the
studio was next door, and shares a story about being
backstage with What's Happening star Shirley Hymnfel when she got
bumped from a scheduled appearance. She said f Johnny Carson
as loud as she could and chatted, I'll never do
this effing show again. Wallis recalled that with a laugh
in the shake of his head. Did it bother Wallace

(07:03):
when he realized he may have been treated differently by Carson?
Of course it did, because when you do in the
show and you get nineteen applause breaks, that warans you
to say hello. At least. I just find it interesting.
I have no idea what the breakdown of comedians waved
over to the couch is or not. Will reach out
to Mark Malcoffee, used to do the Carson podcast. I

(07:24):
will do that as soon as we're done recording here.
You know, out of one hundred comedians, did two get
waved over? Did five? Did ninety nine? I don't know
of the two, five or ninety nine that got waved over.
I don't know what gender they were. I don't know
their background. I don't know the religion. I don't know
what state they were from. I don't know if they
were British, I don't know if they were. Drew carry
with classes he got waved over, but so I don't know.

(07:46):
I also don't know, never mind getting waved over what
the booking look like. So that's a fair question. Caleb
Heern did a show at the University of Arkansas and
The Arc Traveler caught up with him. Caleb explained, the
politics came to me so early and so naturally because
I up fat, gay, and poor in Missouri. Casual racism
and homophobia made him political at a very young age.
Politics dictates the whole of our lives, especially if you're

(08:08):
somebody who has marginalized identities. He says he focuses on
causes rather than candidates. He works with housing and the
Kansas City Tenant Union here and explains, I think hopelessness
is a very privileged perspective. I don't really have time
for hopeless people. The people I know that of the
most hope are doing the most, and that's what you
need to do, especially if you have more privileged identities.
We get to this one. I've bounced this a few times.

(08:29):
The show's been so busy, and I just bumped four stories.
Right now, let's hit gossip corner. Apparently there was some
speculation regarding Jamie Fox, who I used to work with.
I'm not going to say we were best friends or anything,
but I clearly worked with him and in the room
with him. I had many conversations with him. Anyway, there
was speculation about an alleged illegitimate son. On March third,

(08:51):
Jamie's nephew p J Stick to his Instagram account and
shared a story indicating that Uncle Fox has no son.
Jay also added the decline this person of being called
a son would be him and no one else. I
don't remember Jamie having a nephew, but I have not
worked with Jamie in probably fifteen years at this point,
so PJ. I don't know how old PJ is, but

(09:12):
he could have been three. You know, is now eighteen
years old. So that I don't remember a nephew doesn't
mean anything. I'm just telling you my personal experience, because
if you listen all the time, you know that I
kind of sort of know Jamie a little bit. Anyway.
A man on Twitter had alleged Jamie to be his
father and accused him of not being a nurturing parent.
Now that I will speak to having been around Jamie

(09:32):
and family members, he's a family guy. Just trust me
all that. I'm not going to tell you things that
were probably private. I've seen it with my own eyes.
Jamie Fox, Eric Bishop is a family guy. PJ began
his video laughing over the rumors, suggesting they're all baseless,
but there's a twist. Currently, after pj's video, the accuser
took to his own YouTube channel, suggesting that Fox to

(09:55):
go over a month's respond to the claims, further adding
that he is grateful that PJ and Fox cleared this
up because he was joking about the alleged marks. He
shared a video of an apology for Fox and his family.
I don't know what's going on there. James Acaster has
confirmed that his Channel four show was axed after a
disastrous pilot and says everything went wrong. A castor hosted

(10:15):
a sixty minute episode of People Person. On that show,
a panel of comedians guess which member of the public
from a lineup is the answer to each question. A
castor said he did well on social media, but will
not be turned into a full series. He explained, it
was three hours of filming and I'd say everything went
wrong that could have gone wrong. At one point I
said to the audience, I think what they should do
is just take these three hours, cut them up in

(10:35):
a six half hours in real time, and put it
out as a series. He elaborated the pilot episode and
went from having four members of the public and four
panelists having twenty members of the public on stage behind
me as well. Several things went wrong, including wrestler breaking
a sugar glass vase too soon, which led to retakes
in the Need for First Daid that caused Phil Wang
to laugh with quote tears streaming down his face and

(10:57):
out of Austin The Adults comedy animated series Fellowship will
be presented by Starburns Industries. You know Starburns. They have
created things like Community and Rick and Morty. Starburns Industries
will provide the screenplay fellowship winner, industry guidance and an
inside look to Starburns Industry's development process through a six
month fellowship program. It's also a five hundred dollars cash prize.

(11:19):
That's an interesting number, right. I wonder if there's some
reason they have to do five hundred to five hundred
dollars cash prize and up to five hundred dollars an
airfare and up to five hundred dollars in lodging travel
allowance to attend the twenty twenty five Austin Film Festival
October twenty third through the thirtieth. Starburns Industries reps will
read the category's top scripts to determine the winner and
provide feedback on the winning script. Pretty cool. That is

(11:42):
your comedy news for today. If you enjoy the program,
tell a friend about it. They might like it too.
It's been busy lately, which is great for me. You know,
it's always good to bounce stuff from the script. Then
they have to go, all right, let me google Nikki Glanzer,
Bill Burndichappell. It's much easier to do it this way,
so I'm having fun. See Tomorrow.
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