Is This the Least Funny Time in American History?

Also, and this must be a personal thing for you, but isn't this the unfunniest time in American history? Like, humor is no... Yes and no. Yeah? Because you're rewarded for stepping outside of the box. That's true. In a big way. Mm-hmm. Like, yeah, you mean Dave Chappelle gets attacked, but guess what? He also gets rewarded in a huge way. Right. And he goes on stage now, people go ape shit. That's true. The reason why they go fucking bonkers is because they know that this guy doesn't give a fuck, and he's one of the rare ones who doesn't give a fuck. So when he goes up there, you know if he thinks something crazy about whatever it is, whatever protected group or whatever idea that he's not supposed to explore, that's not going to stop him at all. He's going to tell you exactly what he thinks about those things, regardless of all this woke blowback. He's not... He doesn't care. Right. And so because of that, he's rewarded even more. And same thing with Bill Burr. Same thing with a lot of comics. I experience it with my own jokes. Sure. The more controversial bits get people more fired up now. They love it because everyone's smothered. They're smothered by human resources and smothered by office politics, and you're smothered by social discourse restrictions, and you just don't feel like you can express yourself anymore. That's true. And all people also don't have a... They feel like they're being watched all the time. Yes. That's another thing, so they feel like they kind of can't let it all hang out anywhere. Right? And so that's... Yeah, they do feel incredibly repressed and under the gun. Yeah. I think that's true. Yeah. I just... I feel like... I mean, I'm not a comic, but I just imagine it must be a more challenging environment. It's more challenging, but more rewarding, too. My friend Ari said it best. He said, this is a great time for comedy because comedy is dangerous again. Right. That's true. Yeah. That's true. Yeah. It kind of goes back to the Lenny Bruce era, right? Right. Yeah. I mean, I've seen people out with a couple... saying a couple of things. Sure. Yeah. For good or bad. For your prior. Yeah. Well, you saw it with Louis CK, right? Louis CK is under the microscope now. That joke that he made about Parkland is absolutely a Louis CK joke. If you followed him throughout his career... What was the joking in him, sir? The joke was, why am I listening to these Parkland survivors? Why are you interesting? Because you pushed some fat kid in the way. Like, see, you're laughing. Right. That is a Louis CK joke. He's saying something fucked up that you're not supposed to say. That is, throughout his goddamn career, he's done that. Of course. That's what he's always done. But after the jerking off in front of women, all that stuff, and him coming out and admitting it, and then taking a bunch of time off, now he's a target. Right. So now he does something like that, and they're like, oh, he's all right now. Like, no, this is what he's always done. Right. He's always taking this sort of contrarian outside the box, fucked up, but hilarious take on things. And that bit, unfortunately, because it was released by someone who made a YouTube video of it, he didn't get a chance to ... He was gone for 10 months, and he had only done a couple sets when he was fleshing these ideas out. I guarantee you, he would have turned that idea into a brilliant bit, but he never got the chance. Because it was just, it was set out there in the wild when it was a baby, and it was mauled down by wolves. It needed to be ... It needed to grow. Right. Yeah. I mean, that's what a bit of these bits, they grow and they develop. And that was a controversial idea that we're supposed to think that someone's interesting just because they survived a tragedy. And his take is like, no, no, no, no, you're not interesting. Right. You're fucking boring. You're annoying. Get off my TV. And a lot of us have felt that way. Sure. He just ... The way he said it was easy to take and put in ... Out of context, put it in quotes, and turn him into an asshole. Well, yeah, but that's what comedy is, right? It's taking what people ... The thoughts that everybody has and vocalizing that thing, that forbidden thing, and in a way that people can kind of come together over. Right? I mean, I think that was a lot of what Richard Pryor's humor was about. He took a lot of the sort of uncomfortable race problems, right? And he just kind of put them out there, and both white people and black people laughed at it. Yes. Right? Together. Yes. You can't ... If people are afraid to vocalize those things, if they think it's going to ruin their career ... I mean, I guess that makes it more interesting, right? It does. It's more high stakes. But if you can navigate those waters and get to the promised land of the punchline, it's even more rewarding. Right. But you just have to explain yourself better. You have to have better points. You have to have a better structure to your material, where while the people who may find your idea objectionable, you coax them. Like hold my hand, I'm going to take you through the woods, we're going to be okay, follow me and boom, isn't that funny? Right, right, right. But you have to navigate it skillfully, and you have to navigate it thoughtfully, and you have to really have a point. You can't have a half-assed point. But you can have a situation where it's fatal to be off by a little bit. Right. There was a writer that I love growing up, a Soviet writer named Isaac Babel. Stalin ended up shooting him. But he gave a speech about ... I think it was in 1936 to a Soviet writer's collective. And he said, people say that we don't have as much freedom as we used to, but actually, all that the Communist Party has done has prevented us from writing badly. The only thing that's outlawed now is writing badly. Right? And everybody laughed, but he was actually saying something pretty serious, which is that you can't write well unless you can screw up too. On the way to being creative in a good way, you have to miss. Yes. And if missing is not allowed, and there's high punishment for missing, you're not going to get art. Yes. You're not going to get revelation, you're not going to get all these things. In comedy, it's particularly important because you have to work it out in front of people. Absolutely. I used to sit at a comedy club in Manhattan when I was in college. They would try out their material on a Wednesday early. And that was always the most interesting time for me. They're trying stuff out, and a lot of it wasn't so good, but it was interesting. And you just can't have a situation where people feel like one wrong word is going to ruin their careers. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.