Bill Maher Reflects on Politically Incorrect, Starting Real Time | Joe Rogan

What season are you guys coming into? Oh, fuck. I don't know. Seasons, it's hard to... I could just go by years. We started on HBO in 2003, but then we used to do... For the first few years, they had us do two seasons. They took them a while to get the idea that this is not like The Sopranos or any other show. This kind of show is a habit show. It has to be on most of the year. We used to do a season from February to like May, and then we'd be off for four months and come back for a few months in the fall. That's not the way you can do it when you're following events, a live show. So, finally, somewhere in there, they just... Okay, so then it was one long season as opposed to two, so I guess they counted the early years as two. We've been on HBO since 2003, but of course, I started... You were on the old show, politically incorrect. Somebody sent me a clip of that. Wow. I couldn't even bear to watch it just from the way we looked. It was too sad. Time is cruel. It's... Actually, we look better now just because we look douchier. Younger, of course. I mean, that's the trade-off in life, is that you're douchier when you're younger, but you do look more pristine, shall we say. You're less beaten down by time. Yeah, but that started in 93. So, I've already passed my... We did a 25th anniversary show about a year and a half ago. Yeah, in the fall of 18, it aired. I couldn't believe that. Do you know they're trying to bring back politically incorrect? Who is they? Whoever the fuck they are, they came to me. That's so funny because I suggested that a while ago, not with me hosting it, of course, but with somebody else hosting it, but I'll have to ask my manager about that. I thought we... I guess we sold it. I think that's true. When we moved to ABC, it must be ABC. When we moved to ABC, I think we probably sold them the rights to the show, which was probably stupid, but at the time it made sense, and well, good luck with it. I'm not doing it. It was one of those questions that my manager calls me up and says, you're not going to want to do this, but I'm obligated to tell you. Why wouldn't you want to do it? It just doesn't seem like something I'd want to do. Now I'm insulted. No. I would never want to take over your show after you did it, and then you got it stripped away for saying something. The whole thing was, once someone does a show, leave it alone. Leave it to them. If you left and they started doing real time with Adam Carolla, which is exactly what they will be doing. You just come up with a new fucking show. Do you feel constrained by the time, by the hour format? Sometimes. I was on with Howard Stern recently, and I was saying that to him, and I feel the same sometimes when I watch or listen to you. It's funny. I don't get America. People's attention span is either seven seconds or three hours. Yeah. There's no in between? Well, there's a lot of us. That's what it is. A lot of people. Yes, exactly. Yeah, they're playing to the people with the shortest attention span and say, this is all they have. Right. This is all that's there. That's not true. No. But it takes a big risk to play it in the three hours. I mean, there are virtues and vices to both of them. I mean, I do like being forced to condense, and for people, I always think of the person watching my show as the person who is interested in current events, but doesn't have the time to follow it during the week. They've got kids and jobs and lives. They are going to watch me to catch them up, and it's my job to obviously entertain them, but also to point out what's important. What happened this week that you should know about? Somewhere in that live hour, whether it's in the monologue or in new rules or the editorial I do at the end or in the panel, somewhere I want to cover everything I think you should know. It doesn't necessarily mean it's the things that the newspaper or other outlets thought was important. What I think is really important, that's what I'm going to cover. So there is something to be said for condensing. There's also a lot to be said for letting it breathe. You know, I mean, letting it breathe, I do miss that sometimes. I wish I could, and very often we're in the middle of a discussion and I have to move on. But I feel like the way things are going now with streaming, like I know HBO has their new streaming service. Right. Maybe they could just give you an option to let some of those conversations lengthen out. It just seems like some of them you're just getting started and you have to cut them off. You're right. And again, sometimes people just want the headlines. Very often I'm reading something and it's too long. I just think, you should have given me, the New York Times starts every article, not just tell me what happened. Don't give me the background and on a rocky road in Afghanistan, as Fran Liebowitz once said, and just get to the part I care about. Movies are too long. Lots of stuff is too long. People need editors. But these kind of conversations lend themselves more than most art forms to just letting it happen. And yeah, it's more natural. I mean, I like the fact that unlike my early days when you sweat backstage and you'd hear the Tonight Show band playing and it's like, you know, Johnny's going to ask you this and then you're going to say that and you're going to do this and don't fucking veer from this. You get in trouble and this is good. I didn't prepare anything. Yeah. You know, obviously you didn't prepare anything. No. I'm kidding. I did. Really you have no list of questions. No, no. I know you. I like you. I'm sure I'm not going to run out of things to ask you or talk to you about. But that's a talent in itself that you could do that off the top of your head. I think you think it's not that much of a talent, but trust me, a lot of people could not do that. I don't know if I would trust myself if you said you have two hours with this guy. I would, I would be in the back of my mind like shit. What if an hour and 10 minutes in, I'm like, fuck, I can't take one more thing. I can't imagine if you and I were at dinner together. Right. For two hours we would run out of shit to talk about. That's probably true. So that's this. Okay. It's the same shit. Followed by dead air. Why? Complete dead air. Yeah.