#2564 - Chuck Lorre

the joe rogan experience train by day joe rogan podcast by night all day so explain that again explain the show that you saw it was at the singer bowl in 1969 jimmy hendrix was the headliner the experience right after monterey and um janice joplin in the holding company big brother in the holding company was the warm-up act wow what was that like well for starters we bribed a little security guard to get in me and my friends i think we gave him two dollars a piece and we walked right up to the stage wow yeah and watched like right there and and that was my first my first went oh i i guess i gotta stop start drinking southern comfort because she's making it look pretty good when i work with phil hartman on news radio one of his favorite stories was he was uh like a stage hand uh at the whiskey and hendrix performed and it was his job to stand with his hand on the speaker because he was worried that hendrix would knock the speaker into the crowd and so i guess it was just not very stable so he said he was literally standing there with his hands on the speaker with hendrix two feet away from him playing guitar early on he he would destroy his equipment like the who would do as well they tear up the amps he set the guitar on fire you know and you know i'm i'm 15 16 years old going oh man don't don't set the oh give me the guitar don't set it on fire don't smash the guitar smashing guitars back then yeah yeah it was it was an expensive way to end the show but that's what was happening it just was a i guess it was just a wild rock and roll thing it was amazing rebellion thing it was an amazing time to be a kid watching that stuff well it's such a crazy time in human history i mean it was one it's one of the weirdest times in all of culture if you take the difference in the culture of the 1950s to the culture of the late 1960s it's like a just an insane shift yeah like one of the most insane shifts that was so radical and so big it happened so fast it was a response to the 50s yeah it was that and the vietnam war and drugs all the above all of them psychedelic drugs everything all together and the birth control pill yes that changed everything yes yes very good point yeah very good point yeah gave women freedom as well it did the same for men oh yeah yeah everybody could just do whatever the fuck they wanted and and they're doing drugs at the same time it's everything just boom just all came together yep your story is awesome the book is great it really is it's very compelling you know uh one of the things that bums me out the most about the the internet and streaming is that we've lost the multi-cam sitcoms it's a very weird thing like first the first thing that killed it i think was reality shows right that that sort of took a lot of the wind out of its sails but a few remained and um during covid me and my family watched big bang theory i had never watched it watched it from episode one we we just binged it all the way to the end i fucking loved it i felt like when i was like a comic in the clubs in in la you never heard about big bang theory it didn't get it was like there was other shows that people wanted to you were cool if you liked and the big bang theory was like you know family sitcom you know just like real clean and it's a really well written show it's very funny it's a really good show man thank you we worked hard i bet you did we worked really hard it was it was a general attitude that every episode had a kick-ass everyone well it was also so unusual you have this like super autistic genius guys your head head character well the way i entered the show because i'm clearly not a physicist or by any means a genius they were outliers they were guys that couldn't figure out how to behave in the real world right that i got yeah you know the physicists quantum physicists and and all that stuff that was you know i'm college dropout that was never my thing but being on the outside looking in that i understood right and i understood yeah your story is awesome dude it really is it's it's it's very uh it's such an american story you know because it's you trying to figure out how to make it in show business and trying to be a musician and all these different things that happen to you and the whole scientology thing and then eventually you know starting to write on big sitcoms and the roseanne story and it's fucking great man because it's like it's such a huge part of television history what you've experienced you really have it's like if you think about television history in america a big part of is defined by its sitcoms you know because sitcoms whether it's all in the family or seinfeld or friends there's something about those sitcoms that like cement us in this place of comfort and happiness and like laughter like there's those are our almost like our extra family is these people on tv that we've become attached to watching every thursday for me it was characters nobody remembers the plot of a sitcom right they were great plots especially on seinfeld and stuff larry david nobody can plot a comedy story better than mr david but the the secret sauce was you wanted to hang out with you wanted to hang out with these people you wanted to sit at the bar with norman cliff yes and woody and sam you wanted to have a cup of coffee with jerry you know and and and and the same thing uh held true with uh friends was a sort of a surrogate family that you wanted to be part of but you don't remember the stories the stories were secondary the it was the characters and perfect casting on these shows as well yeah perfect casting why do you think that i mean in 94 when i first came to la sitcoms were the thing that's where everybody came to la in the first place yeah if you're a comic you came to la hoping you were going to get a deal so that you could be the next roseanne or jerry seinfeld or fill in the blank tom uh tim uh tim allen brett butler there was all those people were like yes to cosby stand up yeah it was all you wanted the network to develop a show around you and all these people were scrambling for that yeah and that for the most part doesn't exist anymore well we're trying with leanne morgan you know we you know leanne's you know remarkably successful stand up right now and the show we're doing with her on netflix is doing pretty well netflix you can do it yeah they have the freedom young sheldon worked on netflix that was great it's amazing thing about a young sheldon on netflix was a whole generation of kids watch that show and had never seen the big bang right they didn't and what's wonderful too is when you get to talk to them they don't know what cbs is how weird it's it's but the the show stood on its own which was that was our dream come true that it wasn't standing on the shoulders of the big bang theory it was its own show right no definitely was we binged that too after we binged big bang theory we binged young sheldon which is a great show too but different right single camera highly different vibe yeah the the thing about the multi-cam thing is like you're kind of in on it you know there's a crowd they're watching this it's like you're watching a it's like you're watching a play as much as you're watching a comedy it is a play this episode is presented by paramount plus on october 16th the king returns sylvester stallone is back as mob boss dwight manfredi in the paramount plus hit series tulsa king with new enemies closing in and his empire on the line dwight and his crew prepare for the biggest fight of their lives tulsa king new season streaming october 16th only on paramount plus this episode is brought to you by squarespace if you're thinking about building a website you should try squarespace i know because i use it that's right joe rogan.com is powered by squarespace it has all the features that you need to create a standout website like an ai enhanced website builder seo optimization tools and seamless checkouts with 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Try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Rogan. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash Rogan. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. Yeah. It is a play with four cameras rolling around in front of it. Right. And if somebody makes a mistake, you do it again. Yeah. Or something stinks, you rewrite it or you cut it, but you don't put it on TV where, you know, as I've always said, if it stinks in front of the audience, if you put it on TV, it's going to stink forever. Right. Right. So it is a little bit of theater. I think it started back in the 50s as theater. That's what they, you know, and it started as radio plays. Right. You know, and then television happened. What was the first sitcom on television? It wasn't The Honeymooners, was it? There had to be something probably before that. Well, it was always, you know, Lucy, but I think even before that there was Phil Silvers and George Burns. Right. I don't know, I don't know the deep history of it, but it all came out of vaudeville and theater. Yeah. One of the more interesting things about this taste for the laugh track, we've never used a laugh track, never. Been for 40 years, been accused of it, but never used it. And I remember one time I had a reporter on the set of The Big Bang Theory who went and sat in the audience and watched us tape a show in front of a live studio audience. Takes three, three and a half hours. And then he writes an article complaining about the laugh track. You know, it's sort of like, okay, there's no getting away from this. He sat in the stands with 200 people laughing and he wrote about the annoying laugh track. That's interesting. Do you think they just do that because controversy? Cells and negativity sells and they just have a narrative in their head? It diminishes the show. They want to diminish it. Yeah. I think I made that pretty clear in the book. Yeah. That the word sitcom, it made sense when you married a fucking witch, you know, or you came back from outer space with a genie. Right. And you don't want to get laid, you know. But it makes no sense when it's a family show like Archie, you know, all in the family. That's about a family. What's the situation? He's a bigot. He's, you know, he's, he's, he's racially insensitive. That's not a situation. That's life, you know. Well, the whole sitcom thing, I just don't feel like you talked about this in your, in the book as well, like you wouldn't even say that you wrote for sitcoms. I'd say I wrote a TV comedy. Yeah. Yeah, because I'm embarrassed. Isn't that interesting? Like sitcoms were dismissed. I was very insecure. And, uh, and. And I, the word hurt me, it physically hurt me. That's crazy. Yeah, it's because it's. In Hollywood, it just didn't get the respect that a film did. No, of course not. Not even close. Not even close. So much harder though, in so many ways, to make 200 people laugh every week for 22 weeks. It's, it's almost impossible. It's very difficult to pull off. It's ridiculous. And if you watch the writer scramble and you know, every week you have to have some new scenario and you've got five cast members, you have to juggle around at the scenes and network executives and T and company executives and the managers of the, of the actors and the actors and everybody's, you know, feeling like we live or die. We, uh, depending on whether the audience laughs or not, there's no grace period. And if you're a writer, you also have to listen to the executives and their ideas. Early on. Horrible, early on, early on before the show gets successful, they want to tell you, you know, I started to, you know, my testicles dropped at a certain point and I stopped saying, saying. Yes, sir. No, sir. I just, you know, I said, no, this is the way it's going to go. But that was predicated on having had success. That was all. This, uh, the sitcom on Netflix that you were talking about, is this going to be multicam or single cam? It's multicam. It is multicam. Oh, that's awesome. We just finished our second season. I didn't know. Yeah. The only one that I know that's doing it right now is Miss Pat. She's got a very funny show, but it's, uh, it used to be, there were so many of them and it's such a good genre. There were 40 or 50 a week. That's crazy. Now there's maybe three. That's crazy. Seriously. Maybe three. Could you have a magic? In front of an audience, maybe two. Do you feel, first of all, boy, did you get out at the right time, you know, like with network stuff, like all your gigantic hits, you know, they were all like perfect at the right time when everybody was watching sitcoms. Timing wise, I've been blessed. Oh my God. There's no question about it. It's the greatest timing of all time. Yeah. You know? And I mean, I just don't understand why they can't come back. It's such a good art form. It's so fun to watch. When it's done really, really well, it's extraordinary. And I've seen the eulogy for it many times over the last 40 some odd years, and I'm hard to buy into the eulogy because one great show changes everything. Yeah. It's still fun to watch. That's what doesn't make sense. And this is what I got when we were watching Big Bang Theory. Like it's fun to watch sitcoms. It's a very different experience than watching anything else. Mm-hmm. Like you said, it's a half an hour. You know all the characters. You know, oh, this guy's going to say something stupid, and this guy's going to do. It's a very interesting art form that is very. People enjoy it. It's very comforting for people, and it doesn't make sense. Like it just shows you the mismanagement of television that sitcoms were allowed to go away. It doesn't make sense to me. I don't understand it either. Tastes change. The culture changes. I don't know. I think that's what it is, though. I don't know. I don't know. I don't think that's what it is. I don't think they've changed that much. I think there's a. Comedy has certainly changed, I believe. I think laughing out loud is frowned upon. Really? I think there's a vulnerability to laughing when you let yourself laugh. And I mean, look at what gets feted as a comedy these days, and they're great stuff. You know? I mean, they're really wonderful stuff, but you're not laughing out loud, you know? When I watch something like White Lotus, and I talk to people about it, they love it. And it's extremely well done. Mike White's brilliant. You don't laugh watching it. It's enjoyable. It's extraordinarily well-written and well-produced, and casting is great, but it doesn't cause out loud laughter. You think people don't want to laugh? Really? I think when you laugh out loud. First of all, laughter is not something self-generated. It happens to you. Right. Right? It's a surprise. It should come as a surprise when you laugh. Sure. Right? It's not, "Oh, I'm going to laugh now." Laughter happens because you've been surprised by what you're watching or listening to. Yeah. And there's a certain. You have to be vulnerable enough to let yourself react. You've seen people watch comedy like this, with their arms folded. Yeah. And they're rejecting you before you've opened your fucking mouth. You know where that happens the most? Is Los Angeles. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe you need to move. Because you're saying all these things, and I respect you deeply. And I'm hearing what you're saying, and I don't agree at all. I think people love laughing. I think they enjoy the shit out of it. It's one of their favorite things to do. Maybe I am experiencing. Maybe I am a victim of Los Angeles. Los Angeles is an insanely self-important place where people are constantly judging each other's social status. Mm-hmm. And they would love to be able to dismiss you. And they love to look forward to the opportunity to dismiss you. Not everybody. Not everybody. A lot of cool people there. Yeah, yeah. But there's a percentage of people that come there with a hole in their soul that they're trying to fill that will never get filled. And so they always have this weird way of interacting with people. It's this constant dick-measuring contest. And it's exhausting. So where would I go? I don't know. Somewhere else. Somewhere else. I mean, even New York is way better in that regard. Because it's not tainted by show business. New York is insanely congested and there's too many people and it's just nuts. But other than that, it's a great metropolitan city filled with everything. All the greatest restaurants and there's comedy clubs and all these. It's not tainted. There's a thing about Los Angeles where the spirit of the city itself is tainted by people that want attention. And it always will be. It's impossible to avoid. They go there because that's where the auditions are. And that's where the plays. And some of them are fantastic people. Don't get me wrong. But there's a larger percentage that aren't fantastic. And they are a mess. And they're exhausting. And those are the people that cross their arms. And that's why you think people don't want to laugh because they do everywhere else. Well, clearly, the shows that I've spent my whole life working on do really well all over the world. But maybe. But I'm in a bubble. You're in a bubble. I live in a bubble. I'm in a bubble. Yeah. That bubble's a little bit of a problem. It's crazy. I mean, sometimes you see the Big Bang Theory, huge hit in Germany. In Germany. Astonishing how it. Mexico, Brazil. Wow. They're the Beatles down there. It's remarkable. Maybe not so much in Brentwood. Right. It's like. That's crazy. That's the thing about it. It's dismissed. And it was dismissed in Hollywood. I remember I was working on a sitcom. And I was dating this girl who was an actress, and she was unemployed. She literally told me, I wouldn't do a sitcom. I want to do film. I was like, okay. All right. I don't know what to tell you. The secret, too, that people don't know unless they've been there, it's really hard. It is hard, but it's— It's really hard to put on a play every week. Yeah. It's really hard, and it's anxiety-ridden. It's nervousness. It's stressful. It doesn't always go well. Right. When a joke fails at the Burbank Warner Brothers lot, and the audience doesn't respond, you can hear the 134 freeway. Right. I mean, it's crickets. Yeah, it's not good. But it's an extraordinary teaching device because you learn some humility. Oh, I'm not as smart as I thought I was. Yeah. That joke died. I thought it was great. Yeah. It died. But we got to fix it, you know? And that's how I spent the last many decades, you know, rushing around trying to fix it. This episode is brought to you by The Terminal List Season 2. Chris Pratt is back as Navy SEAL Commander James Reese, and this time he's fighting for redemption. Nine months after finishing his list, Reese is hiding in Mozambique with a terminal brain tumor when the CIA pulls him back for one final mission. Hunt the terrorists behind a wave of attacks devastating the West. But what starts as a manhunt turns into a globe-spanning fight for survival. With practical effects and real-world military experience behind every scene, the action this season is the real deal. Watch The Terminal List Season 2 on October 21st, only on Prime. It's also often a wild thunderstorm of creative people getting together. Mm-hmm. Working on something, trying to figure it out. Everyone throwing ideas at things. It's really exciting in that regard. Like, every week you're creating this thing, and you're putting it on its feet throughout the week. Right. You get a table read. You sit down. Everybody fake laughs. You have to figure out what's real. What's real. You put it together. When I was on Roseanne, it was huge. Every week, maybe 40 million people were watching in real time. No DVRs yet. Crazy. Basically, just the start of the VCR. And, you know, great writing staff. I was really blessed to be part of that staff. But we learned very quickly, John Goodman would walk into the kitchen and say, Rosie, I'm home. The audience would go berserk. And we'd be going, yeah, I wrote that line. They were just glad to see him. Right, right, right. They were so excited to see him that the response was not genuine. It wasn't a comedy. There was no comedy in Honey, I'm Home. Right. But they were so thrilled to be in the same space as John Goodman, who they loved as Dan Connors. And, you know, you have to start learning that those are not the laughs that you hang your hat on. Those are the laughs because the show's become part of people's lives. You know, it's become visceral. Right. People respond to the Big Bang characters. I tell this story in the book at Comic-Con early on. And thousands of people were camping out at night to come in and see the panel at Comic-Con for the Big Bang Theory. And I was sitting next to Jim Parsons at an autograph line, you know, where people come up with a cast picture and they sign it. And this girl comes up to Jim and her hands are shaking. And she hands him the picture to sign. And she's crying out of joy to see Jim Parsons, to be this far away from Jim Parsons. Wow. And I remember thinking, I've been doing this a while. People are always happy to see John Cryer and Charlie. Nobody ever cried. Nobody ever cried when they saw Roseanne, you know, or anybody like that. But she was crying out of sheer joy to see these guys. And that's when I went, something's happening here that we didn't plan, that we couldn't have planned, that these characters have hit a nerve. And, you know. Well, I think it is the misfits thing, you know. Yes. I think that's a giant part of it. And they become a surrogate family. Yeah. They support one another. Yes. They're losers in a life raft. Right. You know what I mean? Right. And they hold each other up. And all odd in their own unique way that's endearing. And I think for a lot of people, you know, you look at friends, you're like, those fucking people never hang out with me. What's the point? You know, they're all good looking. They're really cool. Hanging out together. They're too cool. Everybody's cool. And you're like, fuck, I don't fit there. But they'd watch Young Sheldon and they'd watch that show and they'd think, all right, well, these people are just weirdos just like me. One of the things I loved about Young Sheldon we discovered as we were doing it was the show really became about his family. Right. Here's this cuckoo. Right. Cuckoo's nest. You know, this odd child. With normal parents. With normal parents. His dad's a football coach. His mom's deeply religious. He's got a twin sister who's just a twin. It's just a kid. And an older brother's kind of a knucklehead. You know, means well, but, you know, it's how they have to accommodate this remarkable human being. It really became watching them, how much love and protectiveness went towards this little boy. Yeah. Who was oblivious. Right. At how caustic he was. He was really an asshole. And so was the grown Sheldon. He was. He was really a dick. He treated his friends horribly. And it was one of the magic tricks of young Sheldon was an eight-year-old being a dick is not acceptable. Right. You know, 25, 30-year-old Jim Parsons, you can be caustic. But when it's coming out of a child's mouth, not so pleasant. So it really shifted to becoming how his parents and his brother and sister and eventually his grandmother. And they just took care of him. They just they excused him for being the way he was and allowed him to be that way. That's a love story. It is. And it's completely unique to the original show. The Big Bang Theory, you know, obviously Sheldon's older, but it's just a different thing. There's the whole story is a different thing. The concentration is a different thing. It's really about the family and this extraordinary kid. Yeah. But it's great. Thank you. When you talk about the Roseanne. Yeah. Those are my favorite days. Those are some of my favorite days because, you know, I'm friends with Roseanne and I know how crazy she is. And, you know, she talks about a lot that you know better than I do. But she talks about how crazy she was during those days. That's nice to hear. Yeah. That's nice to hear. She's like, I was a tyrant. Yeah, that's a good. That's the nicest word I can think of. Well, you know, her whole story, how she got hit by a car when she was young. Yeah. A lot of people don't know. Yeah. And I thought it was really important to have her on after she got in trouble and got fired from her new show to have her on and explain like her history. She had legitimate mental illness, like not like I need attention, mental illness, hit by a car when she was 15 years old, was in the hospital for a long time, was in a mental health institute for nine months after that. She was a grade A math student after the accident. She could not count. Like she had a legitimate brain injury that changed her personality completely. And it's responsible for a lot of her erratic behavior and a lot of the chaos that you see. Also, maybe some of the brilliance in her comedic timing. Absolutely. She was just so didn't give a fuck. She was so different than any woman comic before her. Absolutely. No, she was groundbreaking. Yeah. That initial act that she and her sister. I don't know if she talked about her sister much. But they wrote that act and it was like nothing that we'd ever seen before. It was entirely original. Yeah. Entirely original. And now I know why children, why parents eat their young, why animals eat their young was the keystone of that act. Now I know why animals eat their young. Yeah. She was a force. But just hearing the stories like the Tom Arnold. They made you put his name as a writer on the scripts. You'd have to change the scripts and write his name in. Easy for you to laugh. That kind of shit. The reason why I laughed is because I'd heard stories, not about Tom Arnold, but about people doing that. That was a real thing. It was almost like a union job that you got with the mob where you didn't really have to show up. Oh, yeah. The no show gigs. Yeah. People got writer's credits when they weren't writing at all. It was a lot of money. A lot of money. A lot of money. A lot of money. Yeah. I know many stories. I remember complaining to a then agent who, I might have included this in the book. I don't remember. He said, "Chuck, you got to let them fuck you a few times so they know they love you." Yeah. That's in the book. Yeah. It's a weird business, man. It's a weird business. All your stories about just dealing with crazy actors and the civil shepherd thing. She made you change the joke. And then it didn't work, and then she got mad at you for that. And it worked for Baranski. Baranski could read the phone book. I mean, that was one of the great gifts I've ever been close to watching her work. But that whole weirdness where people get upset if someone else got a joke. Yes. Even if it was, like, that person's character to say that line, and not your character. It was all about who gets the lines, who gets the good lines. Given how successful those shows were and how much money was being generated by them, it's hard to defend how much cruelty, you know, and malice went into the making of it. It was so unnecessary. It should have been a constant celebration. It should have been an ongoing party. Look what we did. More often than not, though, in those situations, for whatever reason, when someone is the head, the big star of those shows, you hear nightmare stories. When someone is, like, the lead actor, the show is written about them. It's all about them. It's like there's something about the intoxicating power of being the top person on the show. Your picture is six feet high on a fucking billboard outside the place. Your name's painted on the wall. They can't help themselves. So they just get crazy. It makes me think of it was my great good fortune to get to know Bob Newhart. Ah. And to call him. And to call him a friend. And he did a bunch of Big Bang episodes. And he taught me something I've never forgotten. He goes, I'm not the funny guy on the show. I react to the funny guys. You know, Larry Darrell and Darrell and Tom Post and those crazy characters would come in in the show. When he was a psychiatrist, even that one. Crazy people would come in. And the comedy was in Bob reacting. A raised eyebrow. I get an enormous laugh because he becomes the audience reacting to the crazy people. And I was begging him for years to come and do any show I'd worked on. I'm such a fan. And I remember he finally, he watched the Big Bang Theory and he said, all right, I'll do this one. But I have three demands. Go. He goes, it has to be in front of an audience. I don't do anything. I said, that's all we do. We only work in front of an audience. Done. Number two, I want my character to have an arc. I want it to be over a few episodes. Done. Number three, I want to win an Emmy. He'd never won an Emmy for his show. That's crazy. Isn't that nuts? That's crazy. And he did on the Big Bang Theory. He won an Emmy for best supporting actor, best guest actor in a comedy. And it was one of the genuine. Joys of my life was I got him the Emmy. That's amazing. He got it. He got the Emmy, but we delivered on all three. That's amazing. I can't believe he never won an Emmy. Isn't that crazy? That's crazy. That's literally crazy. I went to the Emmys once and it was after Phil Hartman had been murdered and he was nominated for an Emmy. So we all won. And he didn't win. And when he didn't win, Dave Foley looked over at me and goes, what the fuck does a guy have to do to win? In that moment, first of all, we were all so broken. We were so sad. It was so, not that he didn't win the Emmy, just that he had just recently been murdered. It was just, it still was so hard to believe and so painful that Dave just came in with a banger. Dave Foley was like one of the secret producers of news radio. The news radio, Paul Sims was so brilliant that when he created the show, he allowed. All these creative people to come up with alternative lines. And Dave was from kids in the hall. So he was just a fantastic writer on top of being very funny. And so he would come up with better lines all the time. And Paul would owe you always use them. It was just, there was no ego there. It was such a great place to be. And so when, when Phil got killed, it was like, we were just broken. We were just like, what? And so for Dave to say that at the Emmys, it was like, I'm like, okay, no one's top in this. I've never come. I've never come back to the Emmys again. Let me get out of here. No, that's the high note. Yeah. You could come up with that. I can't believe Bob Newhart never won an Emmy. That's insane. He did on the Big Bang Theory. Yeah. But I mean, before that for the Bob Newhart show, that's bananas. That's bananas. It was such a good show. It's, uh, he seemed like a lovely guy. I wish I got to meet him. He truly was. Back when I, uh, when I was getting started, I, when that, when that set me up, I was like, that was, I, I worked on the, on the same lot as the, uh, as the show, the bread and Beckford, Brett, the second show. And, um, when they were down, when the stage was dark, I'd go sit in that little lobby set in the dark, just kind of drink it in, you know, tiny little set where he'd stand behind the counter and Larry Darrell and Darrell would come in and just sit there in the dark and just take it in, you know, shit, this is where they make this show. Wow. Wow. And later on, uh, we would, a bunch of us on two and a half men would sneak into the West wing set and sit in the, uh, uh, oval office. This is as close as we're going to get to the oval office. We were sitting there, you know, late at night. That's awesome. Just bringing up two and a half men. Like you have gone through some of the fucking craziest actors. Like you have worked with some of the craziest people of all time. Charlie, when he was here, he did the podcast. And he's like telling me about those days when you hear all those days, like, how did you function? Like, how are you showing up and doing a sitcom when you were living like that? Like, it's kind of amazing that he kept it together the way he did. Like, that's one thing that he really deserves credit for. The guy did good work while he was out of his fucking mind. We did six, seven years in the clear before it all went to hell. We had like 150 something. I'm on 60 episodes before it started to go down. And was he heavy using during those times? Not to my knowledge. Oh, so. If he was, he was managing it and kept it to himself. But as far as I was concerned, we had a great partnership. We were having a lot of fun. The show was insanely, you know, successful. It was, you know, we had we had something in common. You know, we were all on the same kind of. I thought. We were all on the same road, you know, keeping it clean, staying sober and stuff. And the show was killing it. It was just it actually the success of that show is what granted me the freedom to go, you know, and go and do a couple of tries to get the Big Bang Theory right. I mean, we failed at first. You know, we made a lot of mistakes, but to an event was so successful. CBS granted me unbelievable leeway. To make make decisions, do shit over again, like the pilot. Nobody gets a do over. We got to do over on the Big Bang pilot. Wow. It never happens. We got one and it worked out. The football season is heating up and every week feels bigger with DraftKings. The DraftKings sports app is now live in all 50 states. So that means every fan is in on the excitement. Follow every drive, touchdown and game changing moment across the biggest. Matchups of the week. No matter which team you follow or which game you're watching, you're always connected with one app, one app, every sport, all 50 states. 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So I didn't know that Charlie was supposedly sober for most of that time. As far as I know, he was. But you talk to him now, right? You guys are friends now? Yeah, he has a blurb on the back of the book. So he says he was sober for the beginning, and then eventually he just— I don't know at what point it went off the rails. Did you notice, like, a change? Well, in the eighth season, it was clearly we were in trouble. It was—you know, when his manager calls me and says, Charlie can't come to run through today at rehearsal, his Bic lighter blew up and he has no eyebrows. Now, I'm somewhat naive to some of this stuff, but I know Bic lighters. They don't blow up. Wow. Maybe they do when you're cooking Coke with them. Maybe that's what happened. But there was a lot of—the behavior became more and more around. A lot of mist stuff. And, you know, the sad truth about my part of it was I was determined to stay in denial. I just didn't want to know. I wanted to believe it was all okay. I was absolutely, you know, forcefully, you know, oblivious. I just wanted to believe it was all going to be okay. Just because the show was doing so well? It was doing so well. Well, and— It was fun. I mean, we kick ass. We worked really hard. My partner on that show, Lee Aronson, and I, we were ruthless. We, every second, had to kick ass. We were absolutely determined to make it the best possible show we could. Every week. No bad shows. You know, I liken a bad show on television to going to a restaurant and having a cockroach come across your table. You don't go back to that restaurant. Never again. Ever again. And that's how I felt about situation comedies. You make a bad show, people are going to maybe never come back. You're going to lose a bunch, for sure. You're going to lose a bunch. You know, I—just my own experience, I love Cheers. I was devoted to Cheers. It was a couple of years there where, you know, you had to get through Cliff going home to his mother. I wanted to be in the bar with, you know, Woody and Sam. And he would tolerate. You know, some of the dips. But then they'd come roaring back with great writing and, you know, stuff. But more often than not, if a show fails on a few occasions, even a show you love, there's a likelihood you may move on. And it's usually something happens behind the scenes, like a head writer leaves or someone new gets hired and they have new ideas about stuff. That's generally how it goes, right? There's a weird, delicate chemistry. To write these things when they work. Yes. You know? And, you know, it's really obvious when you think you can spin something off. Do you remember Archie's place? No, I don't. And he tried to spin off Archie Bunker. I remember the name now that you brought it up, but I don't remember it at all. I think he ran a bar. Wow. And it was a new show with Archie Bunker, but without Meathead. Yeah. And, you know, and Edith. I remember he went on to do a cop show. And I was very upset. I was like, how is he playing a cop on TV? The miraculous chemistry of all in the family was gone. Yeah. It was gone. The same thing happened, you know, with Joey off of Friends. The miraculous chemistry of that cast. Right. You just can't just, you know. Right. I think I learned a lesson watching those things going, don't. Don't think this thing travels. Right. You know? Right. Yeah. And the characters and their relationships with the other characters are the heart and soul of this thing. It's, you know, you can't just pluck something out and go here, be successful over here. Well, that's why Young Sheldon is so impressive. Because you didn't, it is kind of a spinoff, but it's not, and everyone's new. The only inkling of the Big Bang Theory is Jim Parsons' narration. Right. You never see him. Right. His off-camera, him telling the story of being a child in East Texas. That was the only link. Yeah. Yeah. But it's just amazing that you pulled off that chemistry in two completely different environments about the same character. Yeah. That was a roll of the dice, wasn't it? Yeah. Oh, yeah. But it worked. If we didn't find Ian, then we would not have made the show. Yeah. There's things about certain sitcoms, like Seinfeld's a great example, where those people just work together so well. Yeah. You couldn't imagine a new person being put in the mix or someone going away. Like, what? You would ruin the whole thing. Absolutely. And again, the characters and their relationships with each other are why you watch. Yeah. You know? You know. I can't tell you one plot, but I never missed an episode. Right. You know, I never missed an episode. Thursday night was gold because of Seinfeld. Yeah. I mean, the entire country was watching because of Seinfeld and because of Friends on Thursday night on NBC. That was the night. Yeah. Yeah. And Bochco shows at 10. The Bochco shows were impeccable. Right. Right. I mean, one after the other. You know, Hill Street, L.A. Law. Yep. You know, NYPD Blue. Mm-hmm. It was an incredible run of sophisticated cop shows. It really was. It's like, it's amazing how many cop shows there have been. It's like, boy, do we like watching cop shows. Again, they were character shows. Yes. I mean, Bochco understood that as well. That, you know. It wasn't the crime of the week. Right. Which is, you know, solving the crime is more the Dick Wolf approach to dramas. Bochco was about the characters, about the cops, about their heartaches and the torments of being a cop in Los Angeles. Also, if you're going to write a show about drama, who experiences more drama than cops? Every day. It's the perfect genre. Yeah. Yeah. Because you're always going to have chaos. You could write in any kind of chaos. Whereas, if it's one person who's a plumber who's experiencing that much chaos in his life, you'd be like, what the fuck are you doing with your life, man? How are you involved in so many murders? How are there so many armed robberies when you're around? But if you're a cop, it makes sense to write it in like that. I can't remember the name of the guy. He was a New York City cop who wrote a whole bunch of books that I think were a big factor in the Bochco lore. I can't remember his name. He wrote, gosh, damn it. I'll remember it tonight when we're done. But he wrote about cops as people. People in untenable work. Yeah. Work was, you know, this incredibly destructive work environment. And it starts with an M. Yeah. Cop genres, sitcoms. It's just, to me, the cop genres are still around. Whereas the sitcoms have, I mean, what, they've been reduced by 80%? More. 90? Yeah. Again, back when I got started, there were four sitcoms on every network five nights a week or four nights a week. So what is that? That's, you know, 16 a night. And then the hour dramas were at 10 o'clock every night. For years. For years. I don't believe that's because people don't like them. I really don't. I think it's just a mistake in broadcasting. I think they fucked up. And I think if they came back with some good ones. The problem is, it's a hard job. It's a hard job. And I was, one of the blessings of my career was I got to have a journeyman period where I was learning, but I wasn't in charge. I wasn't the guy. I didn't. I didn't have to, you know, say that way. Right. I had maybe seven, eight years before they said, here, your show. And I wasn't ready. I still was overwhelmed. Merle Miller? No. Nope. All right. We give up. We can't figure out how it is. But that first show. Yeah, I was the keys to the kingdom. I got a show on TV. Right. And so this is a show after you leave Roseanne. Yeah. And now you're working on your own show, but they put it on like Saturday night. The owners of the Roseanne show had an idea for a show that was strangely like Roseanne. You know, this heavy set, unhappy housewife with a domineering husband and problems with her kids. And they went to my then boss, Bob Meyer, and asked him if he wanted to develop that into a series. And Bob quite rightly saw that they were just trying to, you know, rip off Roseanne and do it again. Have another hit show with an unhappy housewife. And he very wisely or whatever said, no, I don't think so. I don't like this idea. So they went, all right. They came to me. And I thought, this is a rip off of Roseanne. I'm in. Because what I was thinking is these two people. owned The Cosby Show and Roseanne. They were gigantic 8-million-pound gorillas in television back then. I want to work for them. Somehow, I'm not saying no, even though I see it for what it is, and I worked my ass off on it. This lovely lady, a British actress named Miriam Margulies. Margulies? Margulies. And she was a terrific actress, and she tried so hard. She tried so hard to be an unhappy American Staten Island housewife. And the show, you know, to credit how powerful Marcy and Tom Werner were, the network couldn't bring themselves to say pass. They couldn't say pass, and they ordered six episodes, and they put it on the coveted time. It was the worst time slot of 8 o'clock Saturday nights. For people who don't know, that's the worst time slot you could ever get on network television. It's like making the show and using it for landfill. Yeah, everybody's out. Everybody goes out. In the old days, before the Internet, people would just leave the house on Saturday night. If you go back far enough, Saturday night had some huge stuff. How far you got to go back? Back into the 60s. Really? Saturday night was a big night. Yeah. Interesting. Was that because television was fairly new? It was like a crazy thing. To stay home and watch TV? Yeah. That makes sense. But anyway, they ordered six episodes. They couldn't, they aired five, couldn't bring themselves to air the sixth one. You know, like it would have hurt. And I thought, you know, okay, that's the end of my career. I'm done. I had my shot. I blew it. And Tom Werner came into my office a few days after they canceled the show and said, he said, Noble failure. Let's try again. I had never put noble and failure together in the same sentence. Did you think the show was good or do you think it didn't have enough time to get good? Here's the problem with writing a TV and producing a TV comedy is you don't have perspective. You lose perspective. You're working so hard. Right. You don't really have the big picture as to either. You think it's working. You can ask anybody on any. You can ask any staff on any sitcom back in the day. We're doing great work. I think it's just impossible to own the fact that it might be mediocre given how hard we're working. Right. So I don't know that I really had a clean perspective on whether it was quality television or deserved to go on or not. I just know I worked really hard and I was heartbroken that it failed. That's a very honest perspective. I appreciate that. And then he said. That's true. That's true. That's true. That led to them saying, we want to do a show about a single mom. And I was like, wait a minute. I wanted, Franny's turn, the character, the thing that just feels, I wanted her to leave her husband and try and be single and live with her daughter. And you said, no, she has to be married because Cosby's married, Roseanne's married. They wanted another married show. But what turned out was ABC was looking for a single mom show. So now they wanted a single mom show. And I said, where do I come in to, what sensibility can I bring to a single mom show? And to their credit, they sent me to Elgin, Illinois to spend a few days. The Chamber of Commerce took me to a women's shelter, YWCA, hospitals where women were either on welfare or working two jobs, killing themselves to support themselves while raising children. And I got this walkthrough. I went, oh, this is great tragedy. These women are, they're heroes. I mean, at the time, the single mom was Murphy Brown. Murphy Brown had endless nannies. Right. About her life. And there was a kid. But a woman raising children by herself without a safety net, that hadn't been done. And I came back from that trip going, okay, I want to write this. I want to write this because this is, I get it now, it's a hero's journey. It's, you wouldn't think it, it's a sitcom. It's four cameras in front of a live audience. But for me, it was the hero's journey. It was this woman against all odds, caring for her children after a horrible divorce and having to work her ass off to just feed them. And then it went a little south when they said, okay, we found the perfect actress to play that part. And that's how I met Brett Butler. Sure, you laugh. Well, that's a similar situation to what we were talking about before where people would just become tyrants when they have their own show. She was. Very unhappy. Yeah. Out of the gate, day one. Seems crazy. You'd think we should have been celebrating because the show was an instant hit. There was Home Improvement with Tim Allen and then they put it on right after it and it did great. And she was on the cover of magazines and she was on all the talk shows and she's a truly funny woman. She had a great stand-up act. Oh, she was hilarious. Yeah, no questioning. And she took to acting immediately. You know, I've watched, I've watched people try and do this. Not everybody can do it. Brett could do it. Brett could do it. But it didn't go well for me. It just seems so insane that someone would get an opportunity that if you're a comic, that's the opportunity. That's it. It's your own sitcom. How could you be upset? It's weird. I think if you're damaged in this certain kind of way that actors in comics can be damaged, and you succeed, and you learn that horrible, horrible, two o'clock in the morning, horrible truth, I'm still unhappy. Right. I'm still not whole. This was supposed to make me happy and whole. Success was supposed to solve my problems. That's certainly what I was taught when I was a boy. If you make something of yourself, you'll feel, you'll be good. People, people, people, people will like you and admire you, and you'll, you know, you'll be a man of substance. Yiddish was a mensch, right? And, and then you learn that horrible truth. Only can happen with success, which is, oh shit, I'm still a miserable fuck. Now what? Now what? Right. That's not going to solve that, that hole inside. And generally that's where the drugs come in. That's where the drugs come in. With rock stars. Rock stars and gangsters. You can't fuck your, drink your way, drug your way, gamble your way out of that. That shit works temporarily, and then it doesn't work. And when it stops working, you're truly fucked. Yeah. You're truly fucked. You're trying to find a solution that, the best I understand it, nothing on the outside is going to heal the inside. This episode is brought to you by Call of Duty. Modern Warfare 4 is coming, and they're going all in on this one. The kind of missions that make you go, dude, did they really just do that? Set during a full-scale North Korean invasion of South Korea, expect a real boots-on-the-ground experience as young South Korean recruits fighting to protect their homeland and North Korean forces, hunting traitors, interrogating civilians, and more. Modern Warfare 4 launches October 23rd, pre-ordered digitally for early access to the campaign, or pick up your physical disc on day one. Visit callofduty.com for more. Rated M for Mature. It has to be an inside job to get well from that stuff. It's also, for people's perspective, if you're talking about, what was Grace Under Fire, it was 93? In 1993, there was only four channels, and then cable, and nobody was watching cable, not like that, not like sitcoms, and there was maybe 100 famous people on Earth. Nobody was famous back then. There's way more famous people. So if you're a damaged person, and then all of a sudden, you're one of the most recognizable people in the world who Brett Butler was when that show was number two. I mean, that was a huge show. She was on every magazine. You saw her everywhere. Like that kind of pressure, and that kind of, for a person who's already like struggling to keep it together, that can be devastating. Yeah. I often threaten to write a screenplay, The Perfect Murder, The Perfect Murder, of an actress who is malicious and destructive, is to make her famous. It'll ruin her. So I've yet to write that story yet. But you want to do something hard. harmful to somebody who's, you know, damaged in that way, make them famous. It'll absolutely destroy them. Isn't that nuts? Yeah. It's nuts. Did she afterwards, I think she really fell apart after that show was over. I'd heard at one point in time she was homeless. I don't think she is anymore. I heard those stories as well. I don't know. I don't know. It's such a sad turn of events, you know, because people wanted to love her, especially when she was on that show. They were rooting for her. Yeah. Yeah. She was a spokesman for, a spokeswoman for, you know, millions of women. Yeah. And men loved her too, because she had balls, you know, she suffered no fools. Yeah. She worked in an oil refinery. Yeah. On the show. It just sucks that so many talented people have that, whatever the fuck it is, that self-sabotage gene, you know, that makes them not. Not be able to ever change course and enjoy this fortune that they've been given. Making an audience laugh temporarily fills the hole. Temporarily. Right. Yeah. And you go home and you're still that guy. Yeah. Yeah. That's the problem. Yep. Yeah. Okay. What are we going to do about this? Right. I don't think there's anything you can do about it. I mean, it's just a, it's a tale as old as time, you know, and you talk about it in your book about if, if happiness and success cured you of all your problems, you would see so many dead rock stars, you know, and I think you, you're dead on. I mean, that's, they were all drugged out of their fucking mind and they're all, like we were talking earlier, had you had seen at one point in time, you saw Morrison, you saw the Doors play for like 20 minutes before you tried to pull his dick out. That was the shortest concert I've ever been to. It was an outdoor, it was a singer bowl. It was an outdoor kind of arena. Yeah. And cops came. They came in on horses, hitting people over the head with sticks, right? Because he pulled his dick out. And they, to stop the show, because he'd already, I think it was after he did it in Miami and he got arrested in Miami. That was his new move. It was like Bert Kreischer taking his shirt off. I was 16 years old or something like that. And I'm standing there with my friends, smoking a joint going, this is terrific. This is fantastic. We were watching these horses go by. This is fantastic. We were happy. Well, yeah. Okay. It would have been nice to maybe hear a second song. They opened with Light My Fire, never finished it. Really? End of show. Oh my God. Yeah. That's crazy. This is cool, man. This is a great show. Let's get out of here before we get hit. Who did you say he was performing with again? The warm-up act was The Who. Wow. It was, you know, before Tommy, they were a warm-up act then. Wow. Great. So like My Generation, I Can See From Miles, they had great stuff before Tommy. Yeah. Once at the time. When Tommy hit, they never wore a warm-up act again. But this was just prior to Tommy. Wow. Dude. But again, I mean, how many of them died at 27? Morrison, Hendrix, Joplin. Although the Hendrix one's very weird. There's a lot of very interesting conspiracy theories about the Hendrix murder, or the Hendrix death, rather, that it was perhaps a murder. He was leaving his manager. His manager was a shady mob character. His girlfriend, after the murder, or after his death, rather, she gets thrown off of a roof. They said it was a suicide. It doesn't, seems a little sketchy. But his former bodyguard wrote a book about it. And apparently, you know, if Hendrix left, you know, his manager would lose out on all that money. But if Hendrix was dead, then he would get royalties from all those songs forever. He probably contractually would have had them anyway. I mean, most managers, those, back in those days, it was so corrupt. It was really predatory and corrupt. He would have had a piece of his publishing no matter what, live or dead. You know, listen, the idea of asphyxiating on his own vomit is heartbreaking into a generational superstar. I mean, he had a big impact on me. Oh, my God. He was like, unlike anyone before him. His sound was so completely unique that. I mean, Eric Clapton famously said, like, he felt he wanted to quit playing guitar when he saw him. It was just like, and Eric Clapton was insanely good. Yes. For a guy like Eric Clapton, you know, go listen to the Derek and the Dominoes, Layla. Layla, with Dwayne, Dwayne Allman. Oh, my God. That's good. Passing back. How remarkable. Oh, my God. That back and forth with him and Dwayne. Yeah. Layla, and Have You Ever Loved a Woman? My God. Listen to Eric Clapton and Cocaine. Just that. Oh, my God. That, yeah, but that story is just, the story of his death is like, oh, it's really, it's a weird one. Whereas some of them do seem like normal drug overdoses, but the Hendrix one, there's a lot of weird stuff to that one, where it does seem like it's possible that he was murdered, unfortunately. But oh, there's just a huge number of those guys died so young. And it's because of what you're talking about, that whatever fucked up thing that makes them so brilliant at performing. And it's like almost an attempt, the more brilliant you get, it's, the more you can fill that hole temporarily, the more love you get in these big bursts. And then the crowd goes away, and then you're by yourself, and it's just back to the darkness. And then the drugs, and then the alcohol, and then the chaos, and then ripping your life apart. And then there's another show, and there's another burst. And you're feeling good when you're on stage. Then you get off stage, it's the same fucking thing, and it never heals. It never heals from the outside. The outside stuff is glorious as it is. Fame and adulation and fancy cars. It's great. It's wonderful. There's no reason to denigrate it. It's just, it's not the real solution. The real solution, you know, I'm going to say it and then regret it, but the real solution is a spiritual solution. You have to find something beyond this world. Why would you regret that? Because you live in LA? Because you're in your bubble? Because it's part of my life. Right, but why would you regret saying that? Because it might seem like flaky and hairy fairy and, you know, woo-woo new age bullshit. But I don't know any other way. I just don't. And I do know that in my own life, seeking a spiritual solution, not finding it, but the act of seeking it, there's some salvation in that. No, I think there is as well. I don't think there's anything silly about it. And I think the problem is the term has been co-opted. The term spirituality has been co-opted by people that you do consider to be flaky. That's the problem. You know, it's like, is it possible that you could preach the word of Jesus in front of a sold out stadium and really be sincere? Yeah, sure. It's possible. But how many people who are preaching in front of, sold out stadiums and giant arenas, how many of those are actually sincere? Well, it's a small percentage. It's not the same thing. You know, it doesn't mean it's not possible. No, it just has a bad name. It has a bad name. And spirituality has a bad name because it's just, it's attached to a lot of people that, you know, through no fault of their own, they're trying to find their own way. And they're using that kind of lingo. And maybe some of them are just still really fucked up. And that word now gets attached to people that are claiming. To be on a path to try to fix themselves. But you just associate it with people who are unsuccessful in the act. And they're just like, it's like performative. They're like performatively being spiritual. Whereas I know some people that are like legitimately spiritual. Some of the nicest people that I know that are like, I know this guy who's a Christian and all he does is build houses, like small homes for homeless people and help them and get them jobs and teach them skills and help them get clean. I know people like that too. They're real. Yeah, they're real. And they're role models. Yes. I want to be like that guy. Yeah. Yeah. They exist. Yeah, I've been fortunate enough to know a few in my life. And they've had a deep impact giving rather than taking. Yes. And yeah, yeah, no question about it. That was not my nature. I didn't go out to Los Angeles a giver. No. No. I wanted, give me. Well, it was also the culture back then, right? It was all I knew. You know, the first page of the book was, if I could have been better, if I could have done better, I would have. That was the best I could do, you know? Which is real. Yeah, the selfish, self-centered, you know, dick. That was the best I could, that was the best I had early on. It took a while. Yeah. Well. It's a work in progress, basically. We all are. Yeah. That's part of being a human being. You're a work in progress. If everybody's held to the thing that they said when they were young and stupid, oh, my God. If that's who you are forever, some shit you said when you were 20 years old, like, good Lord. That's insane. It's insane. It's insane. It denies the fact that we change. Of course. We do change. Yeah. You know, I, you know, one of the coolest things about this book was me going, "Oh, what an idiot. Who is that guy? Who is that?" "Who is that guy? What a horrible human being. What a selfish, self-centered, Jesus Christ." she just left her you didn't say thank you what is wrong with that man and that man was me you know it's wild and uh yeah there's a therapeutic kind of cathartic quality to doing something like this to try and write about your life and i i'm an absolute laugh horse so i wanted to make it as funny as i could because otherwise it's just boring who gives a shit about your life chuck but if i can make you laugh then maybe it's worth reading um but um beginning with my childhood you know when i was a kid working for my dad you know those things that's that's me but that's if i were to be held to what i said in 1969 it wouldn't go well for me for anybody yeah yeah um it's great that you're reading the audiobook too was there you know i jokingly said in the book that i'd asked idris elba or brian cox to read it and they passed brian cox it would be great to have some sonorous kind of really a baritone a beautiful you know i that didn't happen i made that up but i didn't really see how someone else could read my memoir it didn't make sense to me i how do you how does that make sense no it makes no sense um one of the things that you talked about that i think is very interesting is the scientology angle um and the reason it's interesting is because when i was when i first came to hollywood in 94 scientology was everywhere there was so many successful scientologists that a lot of people were thinking about joining scientology as a strategy to further their career absolutely like people need to understand that like it's hard for people of 2026 to wrap their head around the environment and they're not going to be able to do that of california los angeles 1994 and the impact that scientology had because you had tom cruise yeah jenna elfman was that around that time darman greg yeah you had uh i mean there was a ton of people kirsty alley there's a ton of people paul haggis super successful scientologists who always seemed to have their shit together and they were like really focused and they were career oriented and there were so many of us on the outside like wow maybe i should be a fucking scientologist seems like that would help that was they listen they built that thing called the celebrity center on franklin yeah for the very purpose of uh hubbard even wrote about it people admire celebrities they'll want to do what celebrities do let's make an environment that attracts celebrities it was a pr gesture he understood positioning which is i think a marketing term where you know that's why famous people do tv commercials you know yeah you know peyton manning says buy this buy geico and peyton must know he's a quarterback right no he doesn't know anything about but but you're paying attention because he's famous and he's really good at what he does and now he's telling me how i should insure my car makes perfect sense right um and hubbard understood that early on that celebrities position scientology in a way that will draw people in and he was right you know i thought it would give me an edge i thought that if i went down this road it would give me an edge into the career that i wanted what was it about it that you felt was going to give you an edge was it the philosophy behind it like the way they structure their lives because i bought dianetics on a late night television commercial i didn't even know what it was right i didn't understand that that was scientology kind of a psychotherapy yeah i thought it was just a self-help book yeah digging up um past trauma and releasing the trauma freeing up you know your life force because you're releasing the trauma of past experiences yeah it wasn't that far off the charts well that was what l ron hubbard did for the most part he borrowed from but he was a science fiction writer he was a science fiction not only that he wrote more fiction than any human being that's ever lived ever right up there he did he wrote the most even king he wrote more than anything he wrote more than anything he wrote more than anybody anybody because he never wrote a second draft everything was like a first draft it was all horrible it was pretty shitty it was the worst yeah uh but funny in that regard like that battlefield earth movie is fucking fantastic just because it's so goofy have you seen it i have it's terrible it's amazingly bad yeah but it's but it's good bad it's it's bad to the point where it's like what the fuck am i watching like oh my god when you're 21 22 year old me and you're scared to death the world is big right it's threatening yeah i don't know what's going on i don't know what's going on i want to be in music i want to have a career in music as a songwriter these people promised me they knew a way for me to do that and i was so vulnerable to that promise how did you get introduced to it this episode is brought to you by chime and i know people don't usually get excited about banking but chime is doing something different and 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lifelock it may be hard to believe but identity theft is the number one crime in america right now millions of people are dealing with stolen accounts fraudulent loans and the exhausting process of proving who they are to banks creditors and credit bureaus lifelock helps you fight back they monitor your personal and financial information alerting you when something looks suspicious and if identity theft does happen lifelock has live u.s based experts who step in and fix it guaranteed or your money back don't fight that battle alone get lifelock identity theft protection visit lifelock.com and save up to 30% your first year with promo code jre that's promo code jre or go to lifelock.com slash jre for 30% off terms apply i was playing in a band i was traveling around the country cover band and playing bars nightclubs around the country and the sax player was a scientologist and we were in columbus ohio and uh we had a day off from the gig and he said i'm going to the to the scientology uh center in columbus ohio you want to come with me i didn't know what scientology was i had just toiled my car in iowa so i had nowhere to go i was going to be sitting in my room so i said yeah fuck it sure i'll go and uh wouldn't you know there were pretty girls there so i'm in there's pretty girls here oh they're very smart very smart about that yeah and uh i bought a thing called the communications course which promised to improve my ability to communicate what could go wrong with that what could go wrong with that obviously i'm in i'm a musician and i'm trying to you know become a songwriter that's that's a communication issue you know anything in the arts is communicating i could get better at that perfect why wouldn't i do that you know anything in the arts is communicating i could get better at that why wouldn't i do that and uh and what he was doing he had these drills called training routines and the first one tr zero was you would sit like we're sitting right now in front of each other and just be in front of each other no twitching no laughing no giggling no uh no getting creepy no no getting lost in thought just just sit there what i didn't know i got really good at it too what i didn't know was it's just meditation it was just meditation it was just learning to be still which is meditation just learning to be still and not being tossed around by every fucking thought that comes screaming through your head like you know a tree full of rabid monkeys and that first time i did it opposite a pretty girl the the it was a woman who was running the classroom the communications course i said i have this feeling like i'm up in the corner of the ceiling looking down at me and she yelled out chuck has gone exterior i didn't know what that meant but it was an extraordinary experience i i i have a very vivid memory of being up near the ceiling looking down on me sitting in front of this this woman doing training routines so it worked it worked i had i popped out of my head and i had an out-of-body experience i didn't know what was happening i didn't understand what exterior i know the word meant, but I didn't understand this as, but it felt good. The only other time that happened to me, having that experience, was when I flipped my car over at 70 miles an hour in Iowa, and I remember seeing the accident from up in the sky, looking down at it. That was more like a near death experience. That was a near death experience, but it was also a very calm, huh. Wow. As the car is flipping over down this embankment, and so the experience, that's a powerful experience, and I wanted to pursue it. I wanted more of that. Well, that makes sense. I mean, what's interesting is, if you get a kid, a young guy, or a young woman, in a very suggestible state, and this heightened moment where they really believe there's some real significance, to them sitting there and doing this exercise, and that something big is going to happen, your brain can trigger endogenous states that actually are real. So it's like, what they're saying is kind of true, even though it's kooky, like a lot of it is very kooky. Like, some of these methods of just doing that kind of stuff, it can have powerful, transcendent results. Nobody told me this was going to happen. It just happened. You know, I was just told to sit there and just be relaxed, and just be there in front of another human being without, you know, getting uncomfortable. Or if you get uncomfortable, just deal with it. Just sit there. That's all I was told. That was the entire instruction. Nobody said you're going to be up near the ceiling watching. Did you try to recreate that experience, and it never happened again? On occasion. Did you ever try to recreate it with the same woman? No. Maybe it's her. Maybe that's it. Maybe it's like being there, with a beautiful girl, and her looking into your eyes, you're looking at hers. Maybe that triggers the thing. I don't think it had anything to do with her. No? No. It was just, you were in that suggestible moment? I just, but who was suggesting what? No one suggested anything. It remains a mystery, and I'm okay with it being a mystery. But it certainly, it's not one that I've forgotten. There's a documentary called Holy Hell, and it's about this cult leader, that used to live in Austin for a while. And one of the weird things this guy did, he was a yoga teacher, and also he was a hypnotist, and a gay porn star. So the documentary's crazy. Right. But in one of the things that he would do with this cult, is he would do a thing called the knowing. And they had to be ready for it. He had to decide they were ready for it, and they'd have the ceremony. And when they had the ceremony, he would touch their head. He would put his hands on their head, and they would experience this unbelievable, like psychedelic moment, where they contacted God, and they all talked about it. Because the anticipation of this moment was so heightened, and they were so suggestible. And he was an actual professional hypnotist. And when he would put his hands on them, whatever it was inside their brain, it would just release. And even after they talked about him being a fraud, if they all left the cult, and they said all these terrible things that he did, they still said that moment was the most powerful moment of their life. Is a powerful mechanism. Yeah. It really is. Yeah, I think that's, I don't know, I've not heard of this, but that's a story of a hypnotist. Yes. Yes. Yes. A hypnotist that really can give you the greatest moment of your life, even though everything else he's done is terrible. Yeah. Like, even though he's taking everybody's money, and fucking everybody, and it's always the same story, he did make them see God. That's what's weird about it. And so many people are looking for something to take them out of their life. Their state, the state they're in now. And if it's Scientology, if it's being a Mormon, if it's Catholicism, whatever it is, like people are trying to find something that gets them. Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels, cocaine, ecstasy. Yeah. But for you, so I never actually went to a Scientology meeting or anything like that. I just got the book, but they never stopped emailing me, or mailing me, rather. Every day, I had one of those UPS boxes, and every day, it would be some new invitation to some Scientology event. Yeah, you got on the mailing list. I didn't realize that it was even Scientology when I bought the book. Sure. I thought it was just, oh, Ron Hubbard's going to teach me how to kick ass. Yes, absolutely. I always call it, you know, this is going to give me an edge on the universe. So when you first started doing it, when did you start thinking maybe this is a little wacky? My entire community of friends, everybody was in. Wow. Everybody. And I. I couldn't help notice, my life was shit. And these other people who I admired and I looked up to, they were getting in car accidents, getting divorced, catching colds, basically being just human beings, dealing with whatever shit was coming down the road. Not the evolved, you know, spiritual titans that they were, that Scientology was promising. You know, the exalted. You know, spiritual, enlightened beings. People, you know, you know, you weren't supposed to get a cold. You were supposed to be, you know, the promise was you were going to rise up above all these human minutia, you know, dilemmas and problems and whatnot. And you were going to have this remarkable insight into the world and you have power, power being very powerful. Being a real hook. Because if you're a young, scared guy like I was, power was missing. Right. There was no power. I was just scrambling to try and get my foot in any door that would open. And so here these people come in, promise you the one thing you don't have as a young, stupid man is power. And it was an easy sell. And I, you know, and I. It took. It took me 10 years to realize, wait, this isn't working. It took 10 years? Yeah. This isn't working. And my wife at the time, she was in Scientology as well. We both kind of went, had a moment alone one night going, this is bullshit. You know, 10 years, 10 years it took to wake the fuck up. And we bailed out. And we lost all our friends. We were excommunicated. Did they fuck with you at all? No, because I had no money. Nobody chases you if you have money. Right. You weren't successful enough for them to miss you when you left. Goodbye. Yeah. See ya. And it really began the turn into my life that we're talking about here, which was I decided that I'm not going to look for some outside element to help me go where I want to go. I'm just going to work my ass off. And for the next 10 years, I worked like a dog until I scrambled in and eventually, you know, got on a show where I'm, you know, getting yelled at by Roseanne Barr. But I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. So it didn't hurt you to leave. It hurt you in terms of. It was imperative for me to leave because I finally took responsibility for my life. It's on me. Right. It's not on what this guy says. It's on me. It's what I believe. What I perceive. And a lot of that perception and belief was bullshit. I was still, you know, a frightened young guy trying to find his way in the world. But it was on me. I wasn't going to. I wasn't looking for some outside wisdom to give me leverage. I was just going to. I was going to work until I dropped to get where I needed to go. And, you know, the funny ending of that story was I succeeded. I succeeded. I had the career I couldn't have dreamed of. And I still couldn't. And it still didn't solve the hole, the dark hole in the soul that we were talking about. Right. You know, which, you know, led to the other change in my life, which is. Was it 27 and a half years ago I stopped drinking? So. And that's been a massive change, you know. So. Because, again, you know, I keep saying over and again, I'm not sure I'm saying it clearly, but the one thing that is clear is the outside, the outside stuff, whether they be experiences or stuff or relationships or, in my case, marriages, it doesn't. It's a Band-Aid. It doesn't heal the wound. The wound has to be dealt with in some other way that's personal. The spiritual path of your own, you know, your choice, you call it, doesn't matter. If it's Christ, if it's Yahweh, if it's the Koran, if it's Latter-day Saints, or if it's Eckhart Tolle, it doesn't matter. Pick one. Pick one. That's your best shot out of that darkness, as far as I can tell. I think you're probably very accurate. I think you could probably do it on your own, but I don't know very many people who have. It's really hard. It's hard. We're community animals. You know, I think we thrive in groups. I think that's how we're wired. I think the world. The worst thing that could have happened a million years ago in a tribe was to be thrown out of the tribe. You're going to die. Right. You get kicked out of the tribe because of misbehavior. I don't know what misbehavior is in the place to scene error in Neanderthals. But if you got kicked out, you're dead. Whitney Cummings told me that's why people have stage fright. That's why they have a fear of public speaking. She said because when we were in tribes, if you had to speak in front of the public, you were defending yourself. That's probably very true. And you probably were going to get kicked out of the tribe. Kicking out was a sentence of death. Yeah. And so we're desperately in need of one another. And that's not good, bad, or indifferent. It's just the way we are. Right. Right? That's the way we are. Which is what makes people so prone to ideologies, to religious cults, to all sorts of different things. We want to be part of a group. Yeah. Even if the group is wrong, it's a group. Right. It doesn't matter. Right or wrong is irrelevant. I'm in this group. Yeah. Look it. I got friends. And people will do wrong things to defend the group. Yeah. We fight to the death. Yes. We go to war over these groups. Yeah. Yeah. It's a weird thing. It's just for a lot of people, it's finding a good one. Just find one that works. Find some sort of a spiritual path that gives you some sort of peace of mind. And it doesn't hurt others. It doesn't hurt others. Yeah. That's it. It's not really complicated. Yeah. Yeah. But we don't live in a culture that pursues that. We live in a culture of consumption. Yeah. I think there's more people aware of that now today. But it's just there's no guidebook. There's no operator manual on how to be a person. That's very effective. And even religions, like you're kind of figuring it out on your own. It's not as laid out as I'd like it to be. You know, like very clearly from the beginning to the end, this is how you're supposed to behave. This is what's wrong. This is what the greater spiritualism. The greater spiritual path. This is why it exists. I was raised in a Jewish household. No one ever talked. Ever. No rabbis. My parents ever discussed having a connection with God. Pursuing God. Seeking God. What's my reason for being here? Why am I alive? How did this happen? It was never discussed. It was just do this and shut up. Hear the rules, do the rules, and moving on. And that was how they were raised, too. So, you know, it's not like there's no malice. It was just here are the rules of our tribe. Do the rules. And at no point was there a connection made with this could be the most important thing in your life. This could actually solve the whole dilemma of being a Jew. Being a human being. It had nothing to do with that. It was a rules-based religion. It honored some wonderful things like education. You know? And there was a great deal of goodness to it. Societal goodness. You know? I think I mentioned in my book that my father was one of 11 Republicans in the country. 11 Jewish Republicans. 11 Jewish Republicans in the country. I left out the key word because, you know, he believed in his heart, each man for himself. You know? Pull yourself up by the bootstraps and stuff. And he believed that dearly. But I lost my train of thought. Well, we were just talking about having some sort of a connection with God and a spiritual connection and that this is what helped you become sober and get out of the darkness. This is the roundabout way of it. So, did you do Alcoholics Anonymous? Like, is that what. Let's not talk about that. Okay. But I just wanted to know, like, what. Let's focus on the word anonymous. Okay. Okay. I got sober. You got sober. Yeah. But through that, you started exploring spirituality? It was inevitable. It was a part of it. It's inevitable. It's inevitable. You know? And, you know, the most. Extraordinary thing. It's hard to do this and retain anything like anonymity, but. There is the encouragement to pursue a God of your understanding. Not someone else's. Yours. That was remarkable. That's a remarkable insight for me. Really, I get to choose. Huh. Wow. Wow, this doesn't. This is not a ritualistic, here, do this, do that, you know? It's not about, don't eat fish on Friday or pork ever. It's about finding something greater than yourself. It's not that hard to do, given, of your understanding, that could be the ocean. It could be whatever you choose it to be. It could be a fucking doorknob, but it's, it's critical. It's critical. What was the path, like, so you, you go from becoming sober and this idea of worshiping something or looking at some. No. No worship. Okay, what's the word? The word worship is. Respecting something as a higher power? I don't understand that word. No, it's just recognizing, it's just recognizing that there's something else going on here and it ain't me, that's it. There's no worship involved, there's no genuflecting or, you know, there's service, it's how can I be better in this world? There is that, there is that, you know, and for somebody like me who was gimme. All the time, it was always gimme. Gimme I need, I need more. More is not enough. Yeah. Right? I need more. And when that ceases to work, when you finally wake up and go, there is no more, more is never enough, when you, when you finally give in to the reality is that that will never do the job. I will always be empty if that's the way I'm trying to go about it. There's a possibility that's the bottom and the bottom is where you decide to stop digging and the bottom is where you go, okay, let's try something else. Do you, do you have a negative connotation with the word worship? This episode is brought to you by Ethos. Life is unpredictable. That's why you need life insurance. It helps give your family financial stability if the worst happens. So they can continue living the life you've built. With Ethos, you can get covered in minutes. All online, no medical exam, just a few health questions. With policies as low as $30 a month. Get your free quote at ethos.com/jre. That's ethos.com/jre. Application times and rates may vary. This episode is brought to you by Visible. As fall hits, we enter another season of change. Time to shift gears, drop the dead weight and upgrade the wardrobe for the drop in temperature. One thing that doesn't need to change, your phone. The smartest upgrade this season isn't a new phone, it's a better wireless plan. Switch to Visible, the ultimate wireless hack. You get unlimited 5G data and unlimited hotspot powered by Verizon for just $25 a month. That means keeping the phone you already have, ditching your overpriced phone bill and pocketing some savings for yourself. All the perks of big wireless for half the cost. Switch today at Visible.com. The Visible plan starts at just $25 a month or get the premium Visible Plus Pro plan and save $10 on your first month with promo code Rogan. Terms apply. See Visible.com for plan features and network management details. Not really, it's just, it's not, it's not what I recognize. What do you think worship is like in your mind? What do you, is that being subservient, you know, being subservient, you know, uh, the thing, you know, all powerful, you know, thing that's gonna, you know, punish and whatever, you know. Right. The Old Testament stuff. Right. Okay. You know. I don't know if they have to be connected though. I don't think of worship in that way. I think, um, I think a lot of people do though, and I, especially when you get into the Old Testament stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I just, for me. What I've been doing for the last many years, it worked. What can I tell you? Right. I don't truly understand it. I really don't. It's so much of it is counterintuitive, but it worked, you know, now I'm by all means, if you read the book, this is a guy who's got some serious issues. I haven't, I haven't, you know, I haven't cleared that. I haven't cleared that hurdle by any means, but it's better. It's a better life than the one I had. And is this an, was this an arc? for you or was this a quick realization upon getting sober slow was a slow slow process to get to where you are now yeah slow and do you define it like what you're serving or what you're what you worship not bad words sorry what you appreciate about the higher power or you don't have to define i don't think language is really equipped for it I think language, the very act of putting a word on it limits it. The very act of saying this is a thing, a noun. I don't know if this is going to sound strange, but I think it's a verb. I think it's a process. It's action. It's not a brick. Right. It's moving, whatever it is. Whatever greater power it is. Whatever that is. It's not a static thing. I think that's a better way to describe it. Yeah. And again, language wants to solidify it. Language wants to name it. This is this. Right. And language is a beautiful thing. Language is one of my favorite things. Words have been good to me. Making up words and putting them together in sentences. This has been terrific for me. I'm really grateful for words and language. But there's a limitation to what words can show you about what's going on. Yeah, most certainly. And I think that's an important point. Like what you're saying is that it's moving and that it's alive. And this is not a, you know, that's I think one of the problems that secular people have with the term God. They think of a guy in a robe that lives in the clouds. And it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous instantaneously. We see a man in the fucking moon. We anthropomorphize everything. We see our images everywhere we look. Yeah. Right. And it's kind of a, it's amusing when it's not, doesn't cause war. Right. Good point. It's also connected to a lot of the ancient depictions of it, unfortunately. You have to think about like ancient depictions of God and Moses and all these biblical pictures. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of figures who are painted in the garb of the day in which that painting was made. Remember, these people were looking up at the night sky going, what the fuck? Yeah. Exactly. What the fuck? Who's making the lightning? What's happening here? The gods are fighting. Yeah. No. They hadn't come up with a story. We are, you know, I mean, have you ever read any of the Yovel Harari books? Yes. He makes it really clear. That's our superpower. We tell ourselves stories and we believe them. Right. And we congregate around them and we're able to mobilize millions and millions of people around a fiction. Yeah. It doesn't even have to be true. We just need to believe it and we're all moving and we're all marching in the same direction. It's monkeys don't do that. Right. Monkeys don't have a monkey God. Right. They're just monkeys. Hey, pick these mites off of me. Thank you very much. You know, but they don't. They don't organize. They don't organize around what is essentially a belief. It's not true. Either you want to call it true or not. It's an organizing element that no other animal does. It's, you know, so we get to, we get to rule or and or ruin the world. And we want to define the structure of whatever that thing is that we want to, we want to, even if we're pretending, we want to give order to it. Absolutely. I mean, this order is too scary, too scary, too scary, too crazy. It's fucking look at this, you know, also you can't have people running around making up their own order. That'll fuck everything up. You can't have a bunch of people. Well, God's been talking to me. You know what he tells me? Pork is awesome. Well, you can't have that guy. Yeah. And listen, you know, in, you can see where, uh, when civilizations or cultures that took God out of the picture, they replaced it with the communist party. Yeah. Right. With a fascist dictator. Yeah. You know, it's same idea. Organize around me. Sure. Right. It doesn't matter if I'm right or not. Organize around me and people will. And if you take that away from them, they get angry. Yeah. It freaks them out because it's like a tent pole, a tent pole moves, the tent comes down and everything, you know, if you believe that this is the truth and someone says, no, it's not, it's bullshit. Everything else you believe is in, is in fair play. Everything. Right. Right. The tent collapses. So people will fight to the death to keep the tent pole up. It doesn't matter if it's true or not. It's the tent pole. I have a friend of mine who grew up Mormon and she left the Mormon church. And when she left the Mormon church, she said, I'm so susceptible to believing anything. Because I believed everything they told me for so long that I didn't critically think about anything. So she's like, any spiritual people, healers, all that stuff. She goes, I'm so susceptible. I believe everything. Yeah. I think, I think growing up the way I grew up, I was a vacuum. I was wide open. You got, you've got, you know how to get out of this, this madness, this world that's so frightening. Right. Show me. Yeah. I got nothing. I ain't got nothing. I'll go, you know, I was. I was, uh, absolutely, uh, fragile, stupid, fragile. Like most people. Yeah. And, uh, you know, that's, I got to write down, I got to write it down. Yeah. Well, that's the beauty of it. That fragility and that emotion and all that chaos, it comes out in creativity. And the, the, the added benefit that Scientology has over everybody is that they've got all these successful celebrities. That was the big one for me. Back in the day. Oh my God. That was the big one. I was like, I fell. I felt like they knew something I didn't know, like whatever they're on. I, and I didn't really know the whole story. I didn't really know the whole story until much, much, much later. I had heard versions of what they believe. And it wasn't until, uh, going clear, Lawrence Reitzberg book, great book, great book. I was like, holy shit. Yeah. Once it wasn't until that, until I really kind of got the grip of what it's all about and how. And the big part of it was secrets, you know, institutionally held secrets. They glue you. Oh, I want to know the secret. If I stick around, I'll find out the secret because we were all looking for, you know, we're all looking for a secret. Like the knowing. The knowing. Yeah. Yes. And, and keeping that stuff secret, purposefully secret. And we were told that some of this higher level stuff could conceivably kill you if you're not ready. I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding either. It was that those words were used. If you're not ready for these higher level spiritual things, it will destroy you, drive you mad. When I bought my first house in, uh, 96, my next door neighbor was a Scientologist and there was a piece of land. We were just talking in front of the house and there was a piece of land next to his house that he was going to buy, but he had to put it off because his wife was going clear. And I go, what does that mean? He goes, well, it's this, uh, ceremony. That she undergoes and, uh, afterwards she will no longer be affected by outside influences. I was like, Whoa, how are they going to do that? And he explained to me, I go, well, why do you have to put off the sale? He goes, cause it costs $50,000. They sent her to flag in Florida. Is that what it is? Yeah. There's a, there's this own thing. And I guess in clear water, it's incredibly expensive. Go clear and clear water. Incredibly expensive. 50 grand. This guy was a construction guy. He had a construction business. He's probably a million dollars now. Ooh. Yeah. It's 96. I don't know. But, um, and there was a very purposeful thing. Putting a high price tag on it made it important. It's smart. Yeah. It's smart. It's, you know, it's marketing one-on-one. If you give it away, it doesn't have as much value as if you say it's worth $50,000. I think Paul Haggis was the one in the documentary who was discussing when he first got a hold of like one of the ancient stories. That is like super secret. And he read it. It was like, what the fuck am I reading? Right. Cause it was just kooky L. Ron Hubbard. It was science fiction stuff. Oh. Yeah. Oh. Yeah. But, you know, I mean. Hey, whatever floats your boat. One of the gifts of this, of writing a memoir was, uh, I found my way to be able to forgive myself. You know? Rather than be embarrassed, I would never tell people that I spent 10 years in a cult. It's humiliating. What a dope, right? I would, you know, I, I was so frightened of being wrong, right? Um, and in writing this thing, I was wrong. It's okay. It's okay. I was wrong. I was young. I was frightened. I made some bad choices. I got, I got through it. I was blessed to have some angels come along, along the way to help me through it. A lot of that stuff. But I got through it. got through it and and i don't have to be humiliated by being a foolish young man anymore you know well that's part of the maturity of age you realize being a foolish young man is almost inevitable there's no getting around it agreed we're all foolish agreed and that's uh i you know i was i was watching an interview you did um the other day because i wanted to learn about what i was sitting down in with tim robbins and he said something that struck me as worth repeating which is um a remarkable insight i thought and it was it was a remarkable insight for me it came very late in life but it was simply the power of saying i don't know what a relief yeah to not pretend i know right what a relief to not you know to not act as if i i am i have a handle on this right i don't and what's great is when you're sitting in a room full of people and making a tv comedy a sitcom and they all look at you you know because the second act doesn't work and everybody looks at you and it's a great feeling to go i don't know it stinks anybody anybody you know i'm i'm open to anybody having a solution to this shitty second act but i i actually don't know and i'm okay with that in the past i would have gone on some long diatribe trying to convince everybody i knew what i was doing it's exhausting yeah i don't you know i don't i'm doing the best i can and when i don't know it's freedom to say i don't know it's freedom oh your shoulders go down you exhale and you seek to collaborate so many people need to learn that lesson because it's a burden that you don't have to carry you're carrying around an unnecessary burden that's propped up by your own ego and it's it's with your consciousness i think it's how we're raised too you know i don't think you know we're not taught as children to admit to ignorance right you know it's just it's not how we're it's not it's you know man right does the right thing he knows what to do he's he's he's the leader he's he's john wayne in my generation you know i was more steve mcqueen but okay a little later yeah but you're certainly not taught to say to have humility and say i don't know and humility has a bad taint to it because it it's it's it it smells of weakness but it's not it's the opposite of weakness right oh my god you know to be able to say i don't know help me is is actually an incredible strength and it's much more admirable it's uh for for people on the outside watching they they recognize it as being true it's a this is a yeah authentic moment rather than someone bullshitting you well you know they're bullshitting you and they know that you know and everybody just goes through this stupid fucking dance one of the questions i get asked all the time now that i'm in the twilight of my career is what's the secret sauce you know what's what's you know what if anything carries through all the different tv shows and whatnot and the word that comes to mind is collaboration i i didn't do anything alone you know i you know you come out of the comedy world you know that writing comedy with others is really a gas and it's far more effective a hundred percent i learned so much by being in a room for 25 years with great writers and one of the things i talk about in the book which is really meaningful to me was when i got the chance to do the kominsky method with michael douglas i decided i want to write it alone to see if i still could write alone because i'd been in a room with people yelling at each other for years no this is funny this is funny no do it this way and it would get volatile you know comedy writers right you're fucking nuts what are you you're fucking nuts stupid it got mean right but when i sat down and write wrote those scripts by myself i realized all those guys were in the room with me they're in my head you know really you think that's funny it's you know it's a fucking pun you moron you know that guy's right guys in my head he was part of me now and i wasn't i was writing alone but i wasn't alone all those guys and you know when you watch a great stand-up it gets in your head you don't copy yeah that guy but his insight can change the way you perceive things a hundred percent yeah yeah this episode is brought to you by trager food cooked over real wood is just on another level and that's why trager is such a game changer their grills run on real hardwood pellets so everything gets that legit wood fired flavor whether you're grilling steaks smoking ribs cooking chicken or even baking a pizza you just set your temperature put your food in and let trager handle the rest it's simple if you like food that tastes like it came off a real fire without all the work check out trager grills this episode is sponsored by better help if you've thought about trying therapy with our long-term partner better help insurance options may now be available nationwide with an average copay for eligible members of just twenty three dollars per session and with world mental health day on the 10th now's the perfect time to give it a try in fact don't even wait until the 10th because all that stress you feel it's not waiting around so instead of letting it build up sign up for a therapy session and unload at any time not just on world mental health day if you've been waiting to start therapy better help works with more than 125 health plan networks and eligible members have an average copay of just twenty three dollars per session and with world mental health day on the 10th now's the perfect with insurance don't have insurance or live outside the united states you can still get ten percent off your first month visit better help dot com to explore your payment options that's better h e l p dot com stanhope always says that he writes uh and he thinks about himself as a defense attorney defending the bit as he's writing it who is this doug stanhope hilarious great stand up hilarious guy but he he looks at it like he's uh like that bit is uh being tried how does he defend this bit and he makes sure that he lays it out in that way that's great yeah that's great but it's the same thing like having someone in your head that's a critic that's gonna look at it and go hey what the fuck is this part you know and you're like the scene isn't that's not in the scene all right let's fucking work together here and fix it right yeah you know and and uh what a gift you know and so uh you know again going back to that word humility is a strength i i i i succeeded because i counted on other people 100 there's no if you've been on a set of a sitcom in particular there's no way to do it on your own it's like every you need to have a lot of brilliant people working together for it to work out well have you interviewed this guy uh taylor sheridan yeah he's a good friend of mine wow yeah okay that's that might be the uh the anomaly because you know i i love that stuff i love all that stuff i watch everything you know i'm just he's a freak he just turns them out i feel so fucking lazy when i'm such a just just i'm driftwood he wrote it and directed it and then he had time to write that great feature and holy shit yeah he turns them out i just and i'm just like oh my god this is a great movie and it's good yeah it's one thing to turn it out and it's one thing to turn out quality you've seen hell in high country yeah hell in high water right now is that what it is yeah that's a fucking great movie and uh i just um the sicario stuff yes and then 1883 in 1923 with helen mirren and harrison ford wow no he's he creates banger after banger lioness i've that's incredible it's fantastic land man land man's incredible you know um billy joe thornton billy bob billy bob yeah unbelievable great stuff yeah man it's like it was funny the pitch for that show was he was gonna do bad santa but on an oil rig and he's like fuck yeah i'm in bagged santa as an oil man i got to work with him once billy bob he his people his representatives called me and said billy bob wants to be on the big bang theory i'm sorry what it was an oscar winning you know sling blade guy wants to be on the big bay theory i said i'm sorry you're gonna have to give me more he goes his mother loves the show and as a gift to his mother he wants to be on the show oh wow and we did it that's awesome and we loved it we had a great time that's so cool he played a 50 year old version of them who lived in his mother's basement after all these years and all these shows um what look what keeps you doing it now like what do you enjoy about the process now i'm a laugh whore making people laughs fun you know and and sitting in the writer's room is fun sometimes you want to tear your hair out because it's hard but every once in a while you know you hit something and you go oh this is good this is really good and uh what the fuck else would i do well you could kind of do whatever you want that's why i'm asking okay so i'm asking you i can do whatever i want what am i doing i can travel that's a couple of weeks now what right okay um i'm gonna garden uh no i don't see me in the i don't see me in the tulips keep going what am i doing i get a chance to make people laugh that's not a bad way to spend the day you know you know so no it's an awesome way to spend the day but some people the the stress of continuing continuing to create and continuing to produce things like it eventually gets to them where they just like i want off the ride what i've done and you really hit on something there is the stress of it at a certain point is intolerable it's just intolerable i just i find myself becoming the course the short-tempered curmudgeon right the old guy who has no patience i don't want to be that guy so i'm i've been gradually pulling myself back into more of a consultant role where i'm not if i'm on the stage at a rehearsal and the actors play out a scene and the scene ends everybody looks and says looks at me and goes is it okay so my very presence suffocates the process i am the plastic bag from the dry cleaners right i kill small children so i have this extraordinary writing staff wonderful cast and crew and sometimes my presence can be um i don't want to say destructive but it doesn't encourage people to step up and go what about how about if right i think this joke doesn't work can we beat it you know it doesn't it doesn't invite collaboration um and the sad truth is they think i know i don't know i'm guessing we're all you know you in the comedy business it's a game of guessing i think this is funny i guess wrong right when it does when it dies right let's fix it no harm no foul i'm not a horrible person because it died i'm just it just died they just feel less likely to take chances when you're around i think i suck up a lot of oxygen at this time in my career makes sense you know i remember one time norman lear came to the set because he was going to go back into he made a a a a version of uh one day at a time and he was executive producing a remake of one of his shows from the 70s and he asked can i come and watch you guys work to uh see how it's being done now this is 35 40 years after his day of course you know geez norman lear's gonna come watch his work which i was a nervous wreck after every joke i'm looking is norman laughing is norman laughing but i asked him i remember this really vivid moment when i said are you gonna write the pilot for this new sitcom you're gonna make and he went are you crazy now if i give if i write the pilot nobody's gonna give me notes nobody's gonna give me any constructive feedback i'm all by myself i'm not gonna write it if it says written by norman lear who's gonna do the punch up right right now i'm not saying i'm norman lear he reinvented television i carried on you know i i've been keeping it going but he really changed the game so i don't want the same effect it's the same effect at a certain point in my career i've noticed i have a the word stultifying comes to mind effect on the process and the people i love working with could give a shit about my opinion and i love that because then there's back and forth then then there's arguments there's you know there's uh there's collaboration you know yeah that and it has to happen that way to do it right that's fun that what's it's also great that you recognize that your presence that can make them nervous and fuck it up yeah and you want to go no no you don't understand i actually don't know what i'm doing right i'm just guessing i'm guessing based on a lot of experience but i'm still guessing and uh and that's just your reputation precedes you you've had too many hits you've you know it's a beautiful problem yeah it's the best problem it's better than certainly better than the opposite problem when i started the big bang theory i had and i could barely do one show two and a half minutes it was 60 hours a week easy and when i started the big bang theory i called norman's office cold call said i'm chuck lori i got a show on cbs i'm about to have a second show at one point he had seven shows on television simultaneously simultaneously i said would he be available to talk to me maybe give me some tips and he i'm very graciously invited me over to his office and i sat down and i said i'm about to start production on a second show i can barely do the one and now i'm gonna do two what can you tell me and he said you're not gonna like the answer and it boiled down to he said you go where the fire is burning the brightest and you try and put it out that was his management technique that was it the fire of chaos or the fire of creativity he had seven shows in production either the script didn't work they miscast the bad fire put out a fire the director wasn't working the second act didn't work the uh you know some of them are small some other huge problems right you know so and so's you know ill should we shut down you know uh you know do we wait a week do we push a week what if we miss an air date oh my god what if you miss an air date the problems could be big or small but his solution was engaging his response basically you know nothing nothing nothing oh that's a crisis i'll go there how did that guy have time for anything in life i don't know he's a good man though he was really he was a generous and good man i was very it was a real privilege to spend a little bit of time that's amazing yeah was there any time ever any time when you were doing both shows simultaneously where you went i don't think i should have done this this is too much always the entire time always but there was a moment around the third season of two and a half men and i know i wrote about this where i had a weird epiphany i was sitting in a room full of comedy writers great writers superstar comedy writers and we were arguing about something i don't remember what it was some scene in an episode that we were working on and it dawned on me that i could trust myself and it was a really striking experience everybody was yelling and complaining and no not this do that do this and i just thought i i think i know how to do this scene and everybody's going no i went no i i think i know how to do this scene and and we're going to do it not angrily defending it just i felt calm you know i felt this calmness going i think this can work let's do this and i also there was a moment in that calmness where i went if i'm wrong we'll fix it nobody's going to die you know we're not going to get drummed at a show business it's a joke in a scene right and i realized that i could be wrong and survive being wrong well that's the benefit of being very successful and that's that's also but it also goes back to the i don't know thing i don't have to know but we did it and and it was a turning point for me you know where i i loved working in a room full of writers but i wasn't bound by consensus anymore i was i was able to to have trust intuition which is a weird thing it's not thinking you know this right comedy you just you have this feeling it's an it's it's it's inchoate it's not it's not something you could express in words you just know i think this is going to work and that feeling grows that feeling grows episodes you've done yes and you also know when you're bullshitting yourself this is lazy yeah we can do better i know i know yeah this will work but it's it's not great it's okay and okay why are we doing this if it's just okay let's let's at least try for great right if we fail we tried for great but if you fail for if you fail trying to do OK, you know, go home. Go home. You're done. So, you know, that's about shoot for the moon, settle for a low orbit. That's a great message. I think it's a good way to wrap this up. Thank you. I really appreciate it. I'm stunned. I thought for sure I maybe I could talk to you for 20 minutes and I'm going to go running, screaming out of the room going this. I know you're saying that at the beginning. I mean, you're going to be fine. Well, you're a delight to talk to. And you are, too. Thank you very much. Thank you. I really enjoyed it. I get it. I get it. You have, as I'm sure you well know, you know, you have an aura about you, a myth, a mythos. What's the myth? You're powerful. You're a powerful man. And what you've achieved is remarkable. Oh, thank you. Thank you. You know, as we say in the comic book world, use your powers for good. It's all an illusion. It's just me talking for years. But I appreciate it. The 10,000 hours are clear. Well, thank you very much. You're awesome. Your book's great. And this was a lot of fun. Thank you very much. All right. Bye, everybody. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.