Bill Maher Probably Wouldn't Have Finished His First Book Without Cocaine| Joe Rogan

Listen, man, I've been a fan of yours for a long time. I bought True Story. And I have you. Wow. Yeah, I bought that book way back in the day, man. I was living in New York. It was a great book. Thank you. I appreciate it. That's a very underrated book on standard comedy. Yeah, it's a novel. You know, it's a novelization of my early life. Very accurate, though. You could feel like you lived the life, and the names were hilarious of the characters you chose. No, I worked probably harder on that than almost anything I've ever done. I would never write another novel. Well, just to make every sentence, every paragraph funny or telling, no extra words. To me, that's the kind of... What year did you write that? It's funny. I started it in the early 80s when I was still almost living it. I would get busy and put it aside, not to look at it for years. And then I did a... This is my old life. In 1985, in December, I went down to Zuantonejo, Mexico to do the memorable TV movie. There's a phrase that dates you. The memorable TV movie Club Med. I think we all remember it. No, we don't. Linda Hamilton was the star. I think I do remember it. I hope you don't. I remember Linda Hamilton in a movie with you. Now I'm picturing it. It was a TV movie, and we stayed at the Club Med. I was in... It was kind of a low-budget thing as far as the people in the cast and crew went, because we stayed at the Club Med, which was not... Club Med is not a luxury hotel. You know what Club Meds are. You give up your money, you pay everything in beads, but you don't really need money. For people who just... You're going to enjoy the outside. That's why you're in Mexico. So the room is monastic, right? There's no TV, because you're out all day. You're just going to be in the waves, and then you're going to fuck and go to sleep and whatever. So I had a lot of free time, because I wasn't in the shot every day, but I was in Mexico. Eventually I got fucking cabin fever down there. I couldn't wait to get home. But I was there a long time, and I had nothing to do, and I wrote a lot of the novel there. I put it away again, and then I was in a real career slump in the early 90s. I had finished with acting mostly. I didn't want to do that anymore. I had done a few sitcoms, and I didn't want to be the office creep forever. So I was just like nowhere, and that's when I finished it. And also, that's like the year I did cocaine. Which I probably would not have finished it without that. It was only one year? It was one year. I was never meant to do cocaine. When everyone was doing it, I never wanted it. You know me, I'm a pothead like you. It's not my drug. But you know, if you really insist. You can get into any drug. And I just happened to be at this point in my life where I was vulnerable to anything. I had nothing to do all day. I wasn't working. And it helps you write. It's a productivity drug. It's a productivity drug. It was never a drug that I liked because I wasn't social on it. But I used to like to have sex on it. Really? I did not. I loved that. And write. But I didn't want to talk. Some people are like, you know, that guy, I was never that guy who'd cook and talk a blue streak. No. But it helped me, you know, concentrate and organize and that kind of stuff. And you know, and then I was probably smoking pot too. I was smoking cigarettes. It was not a healthy year. That was not a healthy year. I remember, you know, because cocaine, which is kids, that is the worst drug. It really is. Because you get a little honeymoon period. And then that quickly goes away. And then you're chasing that high. And you know, it's not healthy. And then you know, you're trying to at the end of the night, take the edge off. You know, you're into that. Put the edge. I got to put the edge back on. I took it off too much. Drinking Jack Daniels. Damn. Now I got to take it off again. I put it on too much. It's that was... I never touched it. I got lucky. You're very smart. I would have probably really enjoyed it. I think I would have really enjoyed it. That's probably why I didn't do it. Again, at the beginning. It's very much like a relationship cocaine. Good at the beginning, you know, I think... Trails off. I always say... That because resentment towards the end. There is a time when relationships are good. Spoiler alert, it's the beginning. For a lot of them, for sure. Now, when you put that book out, is it still in publication? Another great question. I'm finding so much about my own life here. I didn't know politically incorrect was being redone. Comics from my era, like guys who grew up and got to hold that book when we were just starting out. It was huge. A lot of guys pass it around. A lot of guys talk about it. Hey, you got to get this book. Yeah. No, I mean, and I tried to make it into a movie. There was many scripts written. I mean, it's my own fault for not pushing that through, I guess. But I thought at the time it really would have made a good movie, but it's probably too late now. Well, you definitely have to change the names now. It's very hard... Yeah. I did in the script. It's very hard to depict stand-up comedy in a movie. In fact, one of the original impetus to write the book was that no one was doing that well. I remember that movie came out with Tom Hanks. Remember that? Punchline. Punchline. Okay. And Tom Hanks was good. I mean, Tom Hanks could have been a stand-up comic. He did it as good as you can. Passable. Passable. But they just never capture the whole essence of it. And also, when you're trying to have someone... I see this on... Maisel. No, I haven't seen that yet. Some show... Oh, the one... I think it's Jim Carrey's show on Showtime about... Oh, I'm dying up here? Thank you, yes. And I like the show, but whenever you're showing a stand-up comic and it's acting, you're acting as a stand-up, and then the audience has to laugh. There's something about it that isn't... It's just you can tell it's not real. It's like a boxing scene in a movie. Same thing. A little bit. Yeah. Rocky. Right. But that's sometimes purposely over the top. This just comes off as fake because one thing we love about comedy is that laughter's involuntary. Yeah. It's in... You can't... As any giant comedy star knows, you can walk out at a comedy club and you'll get the biggest ovation in the world. Two minutes later, you can be dying because it's involuntary. Yes. They're thrilled to see you, but then if you don't say something funny, they can't... They're not gonna laugh. It's also a very uniquely live thing. It's like you have to be... I always say that if you watch a special on TV, you're getting 60% of the funny. You're right. You have to be there live. If you're there live, you'll get 100% of it. So not only that, not only are you watching it not live, right, because you've got a recording of it, but now it's also a fake recording. So it's a guy pretending to be on stage and an audience pretending to be an audience, and the whole thing's a disaster. Yeah. So maybe it's a blessing in disguise that it never got made into a movie. They do a pretty decent job of capturing, the marvelous Mrs. Maisel does, of capturing the early scene in clubs, of her going up drunk and talking shit, and then people telling her, you could probably do comedy. It seems chaotic and real, but it gets a little less realistic as time goes on. So you watch that show and you like it? Yeah. I like the first two seasons. The third season, I'm like, I hope they're not losing me here. And it takes place in the 50s? Yeah. Yeah.