How Joe Rogan Would Improve Sitcoms

Excellent. Actually, you are working with me tonight. We have two sold out shows at the Hollywood Improv. I appreciate it. I'm excited to share. My pleasure. It's going to be fun. It's going to be The Machine, Burt Kreischer. I love Burt. And Cheeto Santino. Andrew Santino, you know Andrew? I know Andrew, but I don't know him personally. You just know him. He knows me. He's hilarious. Yeah. Yeah. Should be a good old fucking time. Yeah, I'm excited. Thanks for having me. My pleasure. How long you in town for? I leave tomorrow morning. I got here Saturday, actually. I stayed down Manhattan Beach. What are you doing? You're posh, hanging out with the people by the beach? It was night. I was down in the airport. My wife is here. I said, let's go down to Manhattan Beach for lunch. And we were enjoying ourselves. So we got a hotel and made love and walked on the beach. Whoa, you made love. Yeah. You must really love her if you made love. I do. Ooh. I went to a party once in Manhattan Beach, and the guy collected toasters. Oh. And I was like, what is this? And he was like, oh, I just collect toasters. I'm like, okay. From all different time periods. Like, he had an ancient toaster from like the 50s with all this patina on it. And then he had modern toasters. But I think he was trying too hard. You know, some dudes just wear bowling shoes and shit. They just try too hard to be wacky. Yeah. Was he like a hipster? Or was it like an old sage? He was a girl. He was a guy who was trying to fuck my girlfriend. Oh. And she wanted to go to this party. So I was like, all right. Wow. I think she was an actress, and I think he was in the movie business. Imagine getting cucked by a toaster. Yeah. Collector. Yeah. Almost did. Well, it wasn't like it was one of them squirrely deals where she was like, I'm so not interested in him. I just want to go to this party for networking. I was a young lad. I had just moved to Hollywood. I did not know the ways of this goofy fucking town yet. Yeah. I hadn't exercised myself from Hollywood in particular. Right. I was still doing the thing, acting, going on auditions and shit. Mm-hmm. So it was like, when you first get here, you're like, what is this? Especially in the 90s, it was super squirrely, because everybody was trying to get a development deal, and everybody was trying to get a sitcom. And they kind of let you think that that was the only way. Right. You have to get a sitcom. You want to be like, Roseanne, don't you want to be like, Tim Allen? What about Seinfeld? He got a sitcom. You should get a sitcom. Damn, I want to get a sitcom. And so everybody was out here just trying to do the acting thing. I did it for a while, and after a while, you're like, these people are not worth it. But you did get a sitcom, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got a couple of them. I was on a couple of them. It seems like fun. It's fun. Standups more fun. Yeah, it's not something I'd be interested in doing, but... If you could do a sitcom with all standups, that would be the shit. That would be the shit. Like, if you could do a sitcom with really good writers who are cool, and all the people on the show were standups, that would be fucking monstrous. Yeah. I'm not usually like that. No, and it seems very, what do you call it, corporate, and you got to do this and this, and a lot of rules and stuff. It seems like podcasts are... Well, they're trying to make money, you know? And they can't make money if people do things and get people in trouble, or they say things and get people angry, or someone calls up human resources, and Joe List was talking about his dick, and the craft service lady heard it, and now there's a lawsuit. I think with podcasts now, most of us comedians with podcasts have no chance of getting any corporate job. I don't think that's true. Really? I get offered shit all the time. I think that we don't need it, though. Right. I think it actually will get in the way. Have you ever written on a sitcom? No. Written on anything? No. When you write, there's a trap that comics fall into that are good writers. They get this sitcom writing gig, and it's a sweet gig. You get paid thousands of dollars a week. Your bills are covered, so you feel good. Right. But you're never going on the road. You're in town all the time. You're just doing sets around town, so you're pretending that you're still a comic. Right. But you're really a sitcom writer who kind of has a hobby of doing stand-up, and you never develop on the road. And there's a bunch of guys. Do you know Owen Smith? That's another guy I don't know. I've met him a couple times. Fucking hilarious. Yeah. He's one of the best comics in the world, and he's just been spending so many years doing these sitcoms. Like, I saw him one night at the comic store. I'm like, how the fuck is this guy not gigantic? Like, how does he not have a Netflix hour that everyone's talking about? How is everybody not trying to book in places? It's just because he's been doing this sitcom writer thing. He's trying to break out of that now, though. Tommy Johnigan's another guy. You know Tommy Johnigan? I've heard of him. He's one of the best comedians I think there is. He's a writer. But he's been writing on a TV show. He's happy. He likes it. He's got two kids, and it keeps him off the road. But to me, it's a bummer as a comedy fan because I'm like, ah, I want to see that new hour. But he still – I think he still works a little bit. Yeah. Mitch Hedberg had a really funny bit about that, about how comedy – like when you're a comedian, it's the only job, or someone asks you to do another job. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. There was somebody – when I first moved to New York, there was a guy that was like, do you do any writing? And I was like, well, I did all that writing. I wrote all that. But that's why I never liked writing other than stand-up, because stand-up, I can write all day and then go do it that night. Whereas when I'm writing like a movie or a TV show, I'm like, ah, I'm wasting my – this isn't going to get made, which is not – my therapist says that's not the way – that's not what should inspire you to write. Yeah, your therapist is right. You should be writing because it's a way to express yourself. Your therapist is right. But then again, if you are writing something and nothing happens, it is fucking stupid. It feels – it feels wasteful. It could be writing jokes that I do on stage. Yeah, you just get into that sort of thing where you're just like, what am I doing here? And then it steals your thunder. Yeah, I feel that way all the time. Unrelated. I feel like comedy. Just life. Yeah, what am I doing here?