Joe Rogan | Lenny Bruce Died for Freedom of Speech w/Eddie Izzard

So when you got into stand-up comedy, when you first started doing that, what is the scene like in England? Was there comedy clubs where you could go to an open mic night? How do you start your career? Yeah, we were copying you guys. I think Lenny Bruce set up the more alternative version. But I still think in America it's always stayed kind of mainstream, but Lenny Bruce was definitely doing alternative. I noticed you got a lot of Lenny. I love that guy. You know, and I played him on stage, and that was a wonderful thing to do. What did you play him in? What was it? Lenny. You know the film was from a stage play? The Dustin Hoffman film? Yeah. That was a stage play. Dustin Hoffman was fantastic in that movie. He was so close. And the guy who plays him in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is very good as well. I know. That's very interesting, isn't it? Because I'm watching that and I'm thinking, okay, now I've gone through the clubs myself, and I did mine in the 80s and into the 90s, and that's in the 50s. Wow. And I sort of take myself there. Then there's Lenny there, and I'm thinking, I know Lenny. And I play them. I used to die in there. Oh, God, that's me. Look at that. But I was doing the stand-up. See, that's the photo I put together. I put that together. Now, that was, and I call him the Jesus Christ of comedy, because as a Jewish guy, he died for us. For what? He died for us to give us the freedom of speech. He died for freedom of speech, because in the end, they caught a herald. A little bit of heroin, too. I know, but the mixture together, he shouldn't have completed it, too. But he meant that we could say what we wanted to and said. Yeah, the Mrs. Maisel thing makes it a little, it's a little homogenized, like him, like in even his struggle. It's almost like it's no big deal. Are you in the latest season? Yes. Is it three or two? Well, three hasn't released yet. They're filming it right now. I've gone through both of them. It's really good. It's not accurate. Historically, it's way off the mark. There's no woman who was talking like that back then. There was no Mrs. Maisel. No, I really liked it. It's interesting. She, yeah. Like Norm Macdonald got mad about it. He's like, there was no woman like that back then. I was like, who the fuck is the showman? The Hulk's not real either. There's no guy who becomes the Hulk. No. Can you enjoy it? I love them. Yeah. I didn't have a... She was swearing like a soldier on stage very quickly. Very quickly. Which that was, I found, I don't know how she ramped into that and then she ramped down out of it. It was, that was something. And then she went to France and did stand up, someone was translating and I thought, that was weird. I have done it in French and I don't think I could have got that. I don't know why they, that seemed just seemed to be a slightly shark. It's not jumping a shark, going up to the shark and swimming around a shark. It was artistic interpretation. It wasn't realistic, but it was still, it was, as a person who makes a living doing stand up comedy, I was willing to let that suspension of disbelief taste. And I liked the sexual relationship. It's always coming back. The husband's always coming back into the frame and his fight there. Cause, yeah, but now I did watch it. I binge watched it all. That's what I'm doing though. I just sit down and I just watched everything. And then I move on. But yeah, Lenny, how do we get into Lenny? We're talking about something else, but anyway, no, it's great. It's great playing Lenny. But oh yes, I was, I was doing the stand ups and I was just told by director Peter Hall, I'll leave the stand up to you. So I had no direction on it. So I just did it as close as I could to how Lenny would have done it. Did you listen to a lot of recordings? I did. It's very difficult for British kids, maybe even American kids of today to know, because he's doing a lot of hipster references, a lot of, you know, the Sophie Tucker references and there's a Lawrence Welk, is it? Welch? Welch, yeah. We don't know those guys. So when he was doing it, it was Sophie Tucker and they're going, I got to look up Sophie Tucker. I had to look up some of the punch lines or a number of the references because without the references, you can't get it. This is a trick I do in universal humor that I take either huge references or explain my references so that, you know, Caesar, everyone probably knows about Caesar and if they don't, well I, yeah, anyway. Well, as good as Lenny was, it's really hard for people to listen to that comedy today. It doesn't necessarily transfer. Well, he's talking about Nixon and you go, oh, Nixon, no, this is a vice president of Nixon. This is Eisenhower's Nixon, different thing. So he, I worked out that all my stuff is non-datable. I don't do any topical stuff. I don't do party political stuff. So it should not date. I do historical stuff because that never dates, you know. Caesar is not going to come back. Now Caesar's changed this whole thing. He's much nicer now. He's come back from the dead and he's cleaned up his act. So I've tried to do that and Python did this as well. You do stuff, it just doesn't really date. Most of it doesn't date, which is a handy thing so the stuff can stick on. But I did. Much stand up does. But also the culture is so significantly different between the late 50s and 60s where Lenny Bruce was sort of starting out and making his mark versus today. It's like the things that were naughty back then, the things that he could say that were controversial. They were nothing today. Literally it's a non-controversy. Well, there was one that still was when he said how many people using the N word, the S word, you know, he just went to all the racial epithets. How many are in the N word? And I did this. I used to do that on stage every night and that was still striking. Tense. Yeah. But the sentiment behind it was that these words only have power because they're forbidden. Because we give them power. And if you could use them again and again and again, and for the gay community, they taken the word queer, they reclaimed that so it doesn't have the force anymore. And that is a truth. He spoke, that was a true analysis that he did. Yeah. Yeah, it was- We had some. There was unfortunately accidentally a friend of mine stole one of his jokes and didn't know that he actually just thought of the same premise. Yeah. And the premise was that homosexuality in some places is illegal. And what do they do if they catch you? Well they lock you up in jail with a bunch of men who want to have sex with you. Like and that was Lenny Bruce's line. Like, dig, homosexuality is illegal, right? So what do they do? They put you in jail with a bunch of men who want to have sex with you. That was his whole, and that still would work today. Like if there was a place where homosexuality was illegal today and you did that joke, it's a good joke. It's like set up punchlines, it's all right there.