Louis C.K. on Writing His First Novel and Returning to Stage | 2 Bears, 1 Cave

Alabama and South Carolina, what's up? This December, I'll be bringing my come-together tour to Huntsville on the 4th, and on Friday, December 5th, I'll be performing at the Alabama Theater in Birmingham. After that, on Saturday, December 6th, I'll be in Columbia, South Carolina, at the Township Auditorium. I can't wait to see you there. Get your tickets now at tomseguro.com slash tour. 100% Welcome to a special episode of Two Bears, One Cave. Live, not live, recorded from New York City with our special guest, Louis C.K., who has a new book called Ingram. Louis, welcome to the program. Thank you. Oh, by the way, I have another copy of that to give you because I signed it. Oh, fuck yeah. So that one's for you. Oh, thank you. It's dedicated to you. Thank you so much. That copy, it's not the book itself. Okay, great. Appreciate this very much. I very much enjoyed reading this. I actually visited you, and I was in your office. Yeah. I think you had already written this. It was going to be, it was like coming out soon, or yeah, several months later, and you were working on a different book. Yeah, I have another novel I just finished a draft of. A draft of? Yeah. And you are loving being a novel writer. I love it. So much. I love it. Writing every day? Yeah, every day. And that, what, did this? You had aspirations of this, right? Like, did you always want to write? When I was a little kid, I wanted to be a writer. Like, that was a dream to me. Yeah. Like, it was like being an athlete or something. Like, I wanted to be a novelist. Did you romanticize the smoking and the drinking? Oh, yeah. Yeah, of course. Because I got into Russian literature when I was a kid, like kind of young, you know? And I would put, I would open the windows in the winter of my bedroom. Uh-huh. To feel Russian? Yeah. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. I just loved the, being able to write how horrible things could be. And it, and somehow it was sweet to read that it was awful. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, sure. And the Russians are really good at that. Yes, and they're funny. They're funny. Dark. And they're not, and they're not trying to be funny at all. They just say how awful something is and you laugh. Yeah. And that's where I kind of, I learned that. Yeah, I had, I think I had a joke about it where I was in some Eastern European country and I was, I always ask like about, you know, I like to say, please, thank you, greetings. Yeah. And like, I try to learn in different languages. I've always just enjoyed it. And in one of them I was like, what's the whatever greeting here? And they told me that it translates to hopefully today is our last. And that was a straight face. I wonder where that was. I was like, huh. Well, yeah, I mean the best shows to me, the best shows that I ever, ever had have been in Eastern Europe. Really? And Bucharest. And Romania. Sofia. Uh-huh. Yeah, Romania and Bulgaria. Yeah. And Bratislava, one place I played that was torn down like a week after I played it. There's some Soviet feelings theater, but they really get into comedy there. And there, I've been to Russia and. I haven't been to Russia. It's really crazy. This book, the new book actually takes place in Russia. Oh, really? And I kind of went back to that romanticizing that. Yeah. When I did Budapest last, you know, my wife's, both of her parents are Hungarian. I'm Hungarian. I'm Hungarian on my dad's side. Yeah, on your dad's side. And so I've picked up phrases just from all these years together. And I, in Hungarian, said the only bad part. This is to the audience. The only part of this city that sucks, I said in Hungarian, were the rotten gypsies. And there was like a minute-long applause break. Oh, yeah. They hate their gypsies. They were like, this is a good guy. We like you. He gets us. Yeah, Budapest. Budapest is a pretty gnarly place. My grandfather lived there when he was, whatever, he grew up there. But, yeah, and I also just love, I used to really struggle with writing because I always felt like I was in trouble with it. Like I haven't done enough or I'm not, you know what I mean? And writing television and movies, it was always really hard to generate the scripts because work habits and ADHD or whatever, just like being constantly distracted. And wanting to eat all the time and other stuff that's not really helpful. And just hard to get my ass in the seat and to look at the fucking thing, you know? And so that kept me from really enjoying writing. And I would write to make TV or movies, like write something just so you can produce it. Yeah. So the actual writing wasn't that fun. And then I got into fiction, like writing short stories again. And also. I had a big change in my life of getting rid of a lot of distraction and kind of calming my spirit down, which actually worked. And then I took like a year and a half off of stand-up between the last four. This is a fascinating point. Yeah. For comedians. Yeah. Is that, like, I don't know if everyone understands that there's a general kind of feeling amongst comics is like a couple weeks away from the stage, you kind of got to get your sea legs back again. Oh, yeah. You're out. You're out. And you're like, I don't. Yeah. I remember, like, taking vacations and then coming back and doing it. Actually being scared to go back on stage. But, yeah. Yeah. It really is like being a ballerina or something. Like, it's that level of discipline, like, to really be that good at it. I remember talking to Greg Fitzsimmons, who I always think of as just such a. He's got such a great work ethic, and I love his comedy. He's so funny. He is great. Fitz is hilarious. And he's been a friend of mine for, you know, eons. But we were talking about a common friend we have. We have a comedian, and I was like, where has he been? And he said, well, his wife was ill, and he took a year off. And then he got out of line. He stepped out of line. Yeah. It's like you're waiting to order your coffee, and you step out of line. So he's having a hard time getting back on the road. And there's always that fear, because of how many years it took, that I can't fuck around like that. But the reason I was able to do it was because I decided I wasn't going to do comedy anymore. I just decided I was going to quit. You really? For real? Yeah, I was like, I'm done. It wasn't a decision like this. It was a letting go. It was like, I don't have to do this anymore. And so every day felt great, because I wasn't like counting the days to coming back. I was just like, fuck it. Fuck all of that. I did it enough. And every time I would remember being a comedian, and it felt great, I would say, yeah, that's why you did it for so long. But it wasn't drawing me back. Right. And so during that time, I took like sculpture classes and painting classes, and I just sort of let my life unravel. Yeah. And it created this space, and I started writing Ingram. And I found out, it felt like being a guy that come off of Tommy John surgery, that all of a sudden you have new capabilities. Like, I was able to sit down every morning and really focus and feel like, I'm just here with this book, and write every single day. How many hours would you make yourself write? It doesn't matter the time. No. As long as I sit down and I start, I have certain trends. I have certain tricks in terms of trying to get in when I don't feel in. I have a very basic ritual every morning of like, wake up, I have a little spiritual moment, and then I meditate, and then I make coffee. It's the greatest thing in the world to me. And my French press makes two good cups. The first cup, I read the newspaper and stuff. Second cup, I take it to my desk, and I sit down, and if I'm not in it, I go look back at the last couple of pages I wrote, and I just read them and make little tweaks, and then I'm working, and then I keep going, and I go until I don't want to. It's like a very gentle thing. I go until some moment I look up, and I go like, you know, it'd be nice just to go do something else or whatever, or I feel hungry. A trick I had when I'm upstate, I have a machine that makes my oatmeal. It's a rice maker, but it makes oatmeal for me. I set it to like two hours. So the smell of oatmeal, I go, let's go eat. Let's go eat, yeah. And then me and the dog go eat, and then we go walk. And the day, I'm done. I wrote that morning. So the whole day feels great. That's great. I love it. I love it. It makes my whole life better. When you write Ingram or this other book, do you do the, because there's different, obviously, approaches to writing different people have. Do you do an outline and know what you're doing, or do you just kind of see where the writing takes you? Yeah, not so far. I mean, Ingram was supposed to be, I thought it was a short story. I thought it might even just be a paragraph. I just got this voice in my head of this kind of like American kid. Yeah. And I just started writing a description of his life in his voice. Yeah. I just wanted to see what it would feel like, and he felt living to me. Yeah. So once I started describing his life, I just thought I would have him describe in the first chapter, and it might make the first chapter a little funny because it wasn't supposed to be the first chapter of a book. It wasn't like, how do I get people into this book? It was just like, here's this kid talking. So he's describing his life, and I feel like I'm just hearing it and taking it down. I'm helping him say it. And then he starts telling a story. He says, and then my father left. Yeah. And I'm like, oh, so you're telling me. something that happened and then his mother tells calls him to leave because she can't take care of him anymore yeah and i got really emotional i was like what the fuck's gonna happen to him and i sort of felt this sense of mission to take care of him so every day i would sit down and go like what's going on with you and i got scared for him and the only thing that was making me feel okay about it all is that it was in the past tense it's just the way it happened and i was like well at least i know he's alive yeah so i just kept following him through a really hard i couldn't make his life easier i didn't feel like i was deciding what would happen to him in terms of like how do i want his life to go that's what an outline would have been like yeah what do i want to happen so i just followed him chapter by chapter and did your new book have a same kind of yeah similar this uh that one is really fucked up it's really crazy and it's more closer to uh my other work in terms of that it gets really it's disgusting and some places oh nice and yeah and it's so i'll really consume this oh it's really fucked up i don't know if one person has read it and he said it made him laugh out loud sometimes and he said uh there's a few times he wanted to throw it across the room and i said to him he's not a guy i know well but i got him to read it i said uh thanks for reading it and he said i wish i could help you i wish i could thank you for writing it that's great yeah that's what he said that's great it made me happy it made me feel like it made his face hot yeah so it's good that's great it's good bad doesn't matter it's something it's something that has makes you react that's all i care about is you hit some kind of spike and yeah and every day i would write that book i'd be like you know there's these two characters meeting yeah that i had done so i worked so hard on that book it's like 450 pages jesus and it's on a type i wrote it on the typewriter so i was on the road and i was bringing this italian typewriter with me everywhere and typing the inevitable is inevitable one day you will not be here and you need to make sure your family is taken care of i know it's a horrible thing to think about you know me and you know i don't like thinking about that but you know what i do like thinking about the fact that when i am gone my girls are taken care of this show is sponsored by ethos ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance fast and easy to protect your family's future in minutes not months there's no complicated process it's a hundred percent online no medical exam required which is really nice you just answer a few health questions get a quote in as little as 10 minutes you can get the same day coverage without ever leaving your house you can get up to three million dollars in coverage some policies as low as two dollars a day build monthly i'm telling you have the peace of mind to know that when 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american original tasting great since 48 look for mountain dew in stores near you and when i'm traveling with the pages i get anxious because they're you know yeah i could lose them and uh but i would be there's one two characters and they meet in the woods and i work so hard and i'm not even sure i'm gonna keep any of it like some of it i'm like this does this is not good yeah but keep writing it because the great thing about writing fiction is that no one ever no one might read that book right besides that one guy i don't know yeah but i get to these two characters and then i was like uh oh they're gonna fuck i don't that's crazy they're gonna fuck but that's what it is that's what it is that's what it is that's what it is that's what it is that's what it is that's what it is described their sex and the jizz and everything like extremely as as literarily as i could like with as much i put as much into that as i would into like describing a woman dying with her son yeah crying next to her or something you know so i can't wait to read this i think you'll like that one i really enjoy i'll tell okay so i'll tell you yeah what man so i was it's in right away like i'm reading it and and just like following the story but when you read i think when you read literature or a script your mind has a has a tendency to cast you know you cast sure right and so sometimes when you read something your mind conjures up kind of a fictional face and a person sometimes you read something and you for some reason you cast like an actor like you somebody comes and you go that's you put like a real person in it and man, I, I couldn't help as I'm reading this. I, it just was, I cast it with my eldest son. Oh my God. Wow. And that was, it made it like, wow. I mean, I cried when I was reading it because I was, I was like picturing my, for some reason, like, you know, once that happened, you can't get it out of your, like I couldn't shift it to another person and he's, he's nine and he's lanky and sweet. And like, and I just was like, man, every time something was happening to him, especially like being a, you know, a band, like his mother telling him to leave and, and like alone and sleeping in these places. And like, you know, you just, you're like, he's hasn't eaten it. Like it would fuck me up. It was really hard. But also like every time he had some triumph or somebody takes him in, then you'd be like, and I just thinking of my boy the whole time. So it was, it was very emotional. I experienced like that writing it because I really got to love the kid. And because when he was met with hard things, he analyzed them and he'd have different feelings about them. He'd feel pain, but he'd also like learn from it and not in a wisdom way, but just like, I guess that's what that's like. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, a lot of feedback I get about Ingram is, is like, mothers really like the book and they really connect with the kid. They really, and they worry about it. It's a, it's a, yeah, of course it's a book that just makes you worry. Yeah. And that, I don't know, there's something, I guess there's something about worrying about a, about a character and it's makes you see them more clearly. It makes you see them and you, you worry is the right thing. And then there's, you know, something about worrying about a child is different. You know, it's different than worrying about an adult. It is. There's like this question. And I sort of, it's the second book is asked, asks this question is like, when does somebody go, go from being our responsibility as humans to being on the fuck them? You know what I mean? Yeah. Like when someone, a kid is born, people are so invested in the rights of a child or the, uh, social responsibility for a child is a big deal all the way back to, we want to make sure we know when they become, you know, with the abortion debate will go on forever and ever because everybody's wondering when does it become important? Yeah. When do we become, um, responsible for someone? Yeah. When does that responsibility start? When does it stop? being just their parents and become when do they become a protectorate or i guess the somebody to be protected but then where is that second line when do they fuck them when when can we actually kill them yeah when can when when is it okay to kill them uh because they're one of us or they're on this side of that line yeah and uh boy a boy is a really is a very tender part yeah of that spectrum a boy because boys start to flex their bodies a little bit more and boys can wreak havoc you know yeah oh for sure um but also that they're they're tender and they're vulnerable so it's a problem for everybody yeah and it's um no it doesn't definitely there's an emotional connection reading this book i think anyone you don't have to have a kid to feel it i think anyone just has empathy in them feels yeah worry is empathy so if you you know it's like uh there's a super version of every feeling do you know what i mean like um like anger if you don't work through it and maybe express it and deal with it becomes resilient resentment to me is like anger that didn't get addressed yeah so it kind of um caught it not codifies it cauterizes like a you know it gets yeah scuzzy and then it like sits in the person yeah that's resentment yeah sadness becomes like depression like sadness that doesn't get like okay i'm gonna feel this sad you know what i mean yeah um and then there probably there's something about if you're dealing with happy feelings they become like a a mania do you know what i mean like there's just these big versions big versions of the feelings of the feelings that and so worry is like empathy that just you know what i mean and i think a lot of literature movies and stuff is we we amp up you know you take love and you make it romance right now you take pain you make it torture yeah and so you you take empathy you make it worry it would have been interesting to write a book about a kid who nothing special happens to it's just that life is really hard by itself if you write a book about a kid who goes to school and he has some friends yeah and his parents are both home he's still gonna have a really hard time yeah and you could really empathize with that that's true so there's i always get a little suspicious of drama like and then there was a tornado but that's what i wrote yeah too bad i do i do think too one of the things you think about when you're reading uh ingram is you can't help but go like man that era that's not that long ago yeah was tough to live in you know what i mean like that was just like like when there's when they're he's running into people and they're like you know where are your folks like and he's like i don't know yeah and part of you goes like yeah this is a book that you wrote you also go oh that happened for sure all the time of course it's just kids around and people will be like i don't know i don't know and when you hear from anybody like i don't have anybody taking care of me yeah your inner feeling or mine is i'll just cop to it myself i go like okay yeah like when you see a homeless person yeah you might give them uh money and try to go like this but you want to keep them away from you right because they're they need too much and uh that's uh scary it's too much i'm gonna get dragged into that it's gonna drag me out of my ego it's gonna drag me out of my day yeah and a kid even more so oh my god it's like i fucking can't i mean if you go to another like i remember going to um being in mexico city once in uh the zocalo the the the um it's a big plaza where the government buildings are and a lot of tourists go there so children come there to get money from them they're kids that are just like street kids yeah and one of the things they do is uh they they blow fire so what they do is they have um these torches and they have like a milk gallon container filled with gasoline and they just take a mouthful of gasoline and they blow on the and they blow fire and they just do it and you just see that there's like this uh bad stain of dead flesh around their lips yeah and whatever is going i mean imagine all day doing this trick they're blowing mouthfuls of gasoline onto a and you see it lick back onto them a little bit and also whatever's happening their mouths i bet their teeth aren't great no and uh and they're wearing shit you know whatever sometimes it's like a t-shirt like philadelphia phillies or something you know what i mean yeah and uh uh you know whatever not them people adults just sort of watch and they're like oh my god i'm gonna die and they might throw them some dirty pesos or something yeah i mean yeah but they don't go like let me get you to somebody who can help you they don't like well the the get involved the volume of kids in that situation there is like so much more extreme that it's like stray dogs or something you know you just go whatever whatever man but every one of those kids is a whole profound experience of course they are a whole human being equal to you yeah and so uh i wanted to get in the head of a kid who's dealing with this kind of shit and the only the experience i had with it and when i was a kid um i was raised by a single mom and she worked all day so i was alone a lot and um we lived right near the massachusetts turnpike and i just walked next to it a lot and uh i walked a lot like along this fence for hours that had like shit like dirt i used to pick up can't like broken cans and i was like oh my god i don't know i had a weird childhood and we had times where like i remember saying to my mom that i'm hungry and she'd say drink a lot of water like there were times where there wasn't like a lot around so we touched that and i certainly wasn't like this and there's a trillion kids that have been poorer than me but i remember that feeling of like uh you know there's not a lot yeah and uh i'm on my own and um i was okay you know you didn't you didn't go like what's going on here you just went like okay what do i do now and sometimes we're better than others and my mom worked really hard and we went to a good school you know we we lived that way so that we could live near a good school good public school um but i remember seeing this documentary about kids riding the rails i think it's called riding the rails it was during the depression a ton of families told their kids to leave this show is sponsored by draft kings do you know the three t's of thanksgiving turkey for eating table for gathering and touchdowns for winning with draft king sports book an official sports betting partner of the nfl every touchdown could bring you closer to cashing in before dessert but draft king sports book all the action is in your hands first touchdown anytime td live bets every play every snap every game counts when the games get good the bets get better here's the best part new customers bet just five dollars and if your bet wins you'll get two hundred dollars in bonus bets instantly draft kings has 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like somebody has five kids and they go, we can't feed five. And this one guy in the documentary tells the story. He says, my parents told me my brothers and sisters are, he was the strongest one. So you go get out. Good luck. And, uh, so he just hit the road, but they found in that those times other kids, there was like gangs of kids and they'd camp together and they'd live on trains. And the, uh, the train companies weren't like, Oh, come. They were like, they'd beat the shit out of them. Yeah. Yeah. You know? So, uh, this guy, he did, but this guy telling the story, this is part of what got me to this book. He didn't talk about the violence or starving. He said, well, I guess the hardest part, he's just telling it like this. I guess the hardest part was like sometimes when it would just be me in a train car, uh, for hours and hours. And then he, he said, I got so lonely. And then he covered his mouth. And he couldn't talk anymore. And he's like 90 now. Like it's still hurts. The loneliness, how lonely he got. And that, that's the level I think of, um, that's a threshold. A lot of people can't handle. Yeah. Is if you're alone in it, I think the loneliness epidemic is one that's not discussed a lot. No doubt. Like, and, um, sometimes, you know, you meet people, you meet people in life and you, you, you kind of discover through knowing them that you're meeting someone who is lonely, who doesn't have a lot of friends, doesn't have romance. And it, I think it has, it's had an impact on me when I've like befriended someone. And then it occurs to me or I'm like, Oh, I think I might be this person's only friend. Yes. You know? And it really affects you. I think emotionally it does. And it can sometimes have the effect that it does to see a kid who, who's or a homeless person who needs so much that you can't even handle it. Yeah. And that can be like that emotionally. Like if I get to be your friend, you're going to swallow me whole. Yeah. Cause you got nothing. And, uh, Ingram keeps, um, um, meeting people that are feel bad for him, but they just have a limit on how much they can do. They give him a minute. They might give him a bed for the night. Yeah. But at some point they go, I can't do this. Dude. Yeah. And I mean, I've experienced that in life with different parts of my life where I'm really lonely, where I feel really isolated and where I realized that I'm a problem for other people where I realized that, yes, I'm the need, I'm the need. I'm too much in need for a lot of people. And I see people that are good people, uh, turn and go like, I can't, that's too much now. And because of how much you need, yeah, they need to do less. Yeah. And I, and, uh, I get it and I've done it myself. Sure. So, so he, he, he sees that a lot. And luckily he's a good thing about a kid is that they're malleable and that they can grow. They adapt. Yeah. Unless they're being like literally starved. Yeah. It's like there is no, there is, you know, this, all the things that we say to each other, like everything that might, nothing that kills you makes you stronger. Yeah. Yeah. But also it can give you like diseases and it can break your spine. Sure. It can really fuck you up. Yeah. Yeah. Life is not as a zero sum game for some people. That is so, dude, I remember when you're talking about Mexico that it hit, I just, the memory flashback that I used to spend a lot of time in Lima, Peru, right. Growing for my summers. And the, when I was like a teen, it's very, um, eye opening to see that the levels of poverty in like Latin American countries and other parts of the world too, where you're like, it's not like the poverty we see here. No. And I was out at some place in Lima somewhere with a cousin and I'm probably like 12, 13 and one of the street kids comes up tattered ripped clothes, filthy. And it's like a little girl, you know, she's maybe like five or six and she's like, like, you know, puts her hands out. And I was like, Oh my God, like, what do we do? And so I had like French fries we had ordered and I just give them to her and I have like some cash. And then my cousin who's Peruvian sitting across from me, he's like, Oh, he's like, good, very proud of you. And then he goes, George Bush would be so proud to feel what he's like, I go, we got a hell. He's like, and he's like turns and he shows me like this hillside of like, you know, tin roof shanty town. He's like, there's fucking 2 million of them here. Yeah. Like he had no reaction to it, you know? And he was like, yeah, you just got here. I get it. Like you're shaken by this, this is normal. You know, it's so weird. What are you supposed to do? Are you supposed to not give a shit? You're supposed to, they, they have, you know, it's, it kind of changes between men and women. I think the men kind of go like, yeah, this is what it is. The women are, you know, have a little more like warmth to it, but it is like, what are you supposed to do if you see it every day? Like how do you react? I remember seeing this like 60 minutes piece on, I think like the homicide problem in Louisiana might've been in like new Orleans or something. And the, how this really, you know, young, and sincere prosecutor, I think it was a prosecutor was talking about like how the first case comes and how much you feel and how you're going to do. And then she's like, then they just start rolling. You just go, huh? Yeah. Okay. Did it get another murder? And then they go like, yeah, a year later I was like, yeah, murders happen. Like I just, it's just what I do. Yeah. I was thinking once about how life is about like a seashores different things in life. Like that's, that's where we feel the most. Yeah. Is you know, the ocean is this is unthinkably massive. Yeah. And when you're in the middle of it, you're just in it. Like if you're on a boat or if you're on land, you're just living your life. But when you're on a seashore, you get this wild sense of this massive thing. Cause you're touching the lip of the thing. Yeah. And you're seeing that you're not in the ocean and that there it is. And it even can give you a sense of how big it is where, where you live. Or if you look at stars and stuff like that. So it's like these borders. So if you're like fully in, I live here, I see these people every day. And if you're fully out, you're like, I am. Yeah. But if you taught, if you, when you have those, those junctures, you freak out and your body, uh, shivers. And I mean, what you're supposed to do, I don't think is supposed to be based on how you feel. You're not supposed to just react to your, your sudden empathy by giving it's supposed to be something else. And I don't really know what it is. I don't know either. Yeah. Um, if there's always a part of me that thinks that if I was really a moral person, I changed absolutely everything about the way I live and then it wouldn't make any difference. Right. Yeah. I'd just be doing it as a big vanity. Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, what I try to do is be, um, sort of handle myself well with people around me. That's all I can do. I mean, I think that's with the society I've, I'm part of, yeah, that's kind of the best thing that I think most people can do. If you're trying, if everyone's trying to do that, it's a pretty good world. That is, it is. It's like a retail version of, yeah, you know what I mean? Yeah. Yes. Um, the big picture of like, what we're supposed to do is countries or whatever. Who fucking, who fucking knows? I mean, it's, it feels overwhelming in that whatever change someone tries to make, doesn't really have, it doesn't feel like anything really changed. It changes. No, not that much. But there is a funny thing about seeing that, like when there's a bunch of people suffering, you can just go like, well, that's the way it is. It's the way it is. You don't boil it down to like, well, that person's in a shit ton of pain. Yeah. Yeah. And what if it was you? I mean, there's no qualitative difference between, um, my grandmother and an old lady in Gaza or an old lady in, in Ukraine. There's none, there's no difference. Yeah. They all have the same value, but I can look at it. I can just be sort of have CNN on and see, like people hurting and I can go, and if it's my grandmother, they're both dead. But if it was one of my grandmothers to get the fuck on a plane, go there, fucking rally the troops. Let's get going. Let's do something about it. Well, like I said, always think about like how war is so unnatural for a human being to experience and how much that skews your whole emotional landscape for the rest of your life. Once you're a part of like atrocities and you survive. Yeah. I mean, you're, you're, you're a part of it. I don't think you're ever able to react to this things the same way. No, I don't think so. You mean if you're in one, if you're in. Yeah. Yeah. Who knows? Yeah. I don't know. I never experienced it. Well, just like being like, my dad was a Vietnam vet. Yeah. And like a very well adjusted guy. And, and one of the guys who like, you're like you in Vietnam, he'd be like, yeah, like, what do you want to tell stories? You know, he's in combat. And then when he was like 72, one day we were just talking and he goes, you know, I think the war really affected me. Huh? I was like, yeah. He was like, yeah, I think about those guys every day. And I was like, every day, every day. He goes, every day I think about the guys I lost and stuff. And I'm like, are you just like, you're just realizing this right now? And he was like, yeah, I never really thought about it. I was like, yeah, that's you. You've been traumatized, but it took you fucking 50 years to process it. That's what trauma is. He says, I think about this every day and I never really ever thought about it. - I've never thought about that. - Yeah. - It's just this thing. thing that you just live with and it's your constant yeah all of a sudden you go oh this has been been here because you get i don't know what what made him i wonder what made him yeah realize it maybe because he was dying so he started to think about things more like that yeah yeah but he died he died yeah he died sorry yeah well it's the way it goes i wish mine would he's still kicking huh yeah he's in the hospital right now so i shouldn't say that but your wish is gonna come true yes it will yeah at some point it's the one thing you can count on yeah for sure now the um by the way i i saw your new hour which is fantastic thanks it's so good man thanks it's been a really fun one to do you i wanted to ask you this because when we initially started talking you were like when i stepped away from stand-up to write you're like a year and a half and you weren't counting the days you're like i'm done with that so how what made you go back on stage so i was uh really i think when i passed a year like some about a year because it contains all the routines of your life all the holidays and birthdays and everything i did a whole year without it and then when i started doing a second year i started to smell a little rot you know what i mean yeah and i started coming up with jokes it just was like i started thinking of jokes and i felt like i had to pee after i was like filling up you know what i mean yeah like i gotta get rid of these or i gotta just do them once yeah and so i went to the comedy cellar one night and i had been on stage and like i don't know a year and three four months something like that and i just went to have a steak and hang out with some friends and they somebody didn't show up and they're like do you want to go on and i was like i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know and so i said yeah fuck it it doesn't mean i'm coming back to stand up i just want to go on yeah and so i got a waitress to give me her pad her her pad and i just wrote a list of the jokes i had in my head it was like five or six jokes and i went on and i started doing them and it was so fun yeah and i felt like i was sitting at a piano yeah and just going like this and i was like i'm good at this like i'm good at it and like the pleasure of doing it was like i was sitting at a the pleasure of knowing that like if i leave if i say something and there's a laugh there and i know the next thing and i just know right when to come back in you know what i mean like that those skills of being able to like here's the thing look at them here's the next boom like i know how to do that yeah and they were so pleased and i really looked at them it's something that hasn't gone away in this whole tour i for some reason for the first time i really there's always been a bit of a cage up with the audience but i was just like really looking at them and watching them enjoying it like seeing really specific faces laughing and and the bits were really kind of either really dumb or very audacious so people were kind of going like what yeah and i was really enjoying that face yeah this face going like what are you talking about yeah yeah and so i came back i did a set like a couple of nights later i thought i'm just doing it for fun but all the audience i was facing were pretty good i came in one night and it was really bad crowd and because i just have no i'm not i hadn't hadn't uh been doing it for so long i didn't know chops yeah i had a really rough set and i realized this is not a this is a dangerous hobby you got to go in or out in or out was the was the thought so i i didn't do it for like a month i mean because everything slowed down for me in my whole life i was like i could take a month and think about this and i took a month just to think about it and then i went let's let's get into routine i started doing three or four sets a night started seeing what is this what are these jokes what are they what's the new feeling yeah and i felt a new uh thing kind of like what i was saying with writing the book that like i had a new ability which is that i don't get emotionally involved um with my own person in other words i'm not i don't take it personally if they like the joke or not or how they feel about the joke and i'm okay with any outcome and what that kind of gives me is the ability to do a joke that we always think binary as comedians yeah laugh no laugh but no laugh doesn't mean nothing happened right something happened so when you've when you're in that space yeah because i think you have a like one of the best at like perspective on these things is like if it doesn't get a laugh which is like you know the goal let's say of obviously doing jokes is to get a laugh you won't abandon this no you'll just well you'd go like i need to hone it more or just it is this sometimes it's just sticking with it like um i think i have i wrote rules this time for the no i didn't bring my notebook i wrote this rule on my notebook that said um don't bail if it's not working you know yeah that's one of the toughest things to do yes if you do something and the crowd goes yeah you just created a new feeling in the room the the thing is that we go in a circle on stage with stand-up we tell a joke and it gets a laugh and it leaves the room feeling pretty much exactly the way you found it and then you tell another joke you just you're they're laughing and they just laughed and they just and they're laughing again and they but if you piss them off or confuse them you've got a new stir in the room you've got a new chemical a new gas and then when you light the next match the flame's a different color yeah and now you're off in a new path and now which is exciting it's very exciting people will laugh at a joke that they're kept at a neutral like this guy's good is the feeling we want to give them all the time yeah and they like me is sort of important to us but i'm having a good time we want them to think they're having a good time but if but but people that are uh pissed off they're not gonna have a good time but if but but people that are pissed off they're not gonna have a good time they're having a good time but if but but people that are pissed off laugh differently yeah and for different reasons so you just created a new spectrum of it's like finding another it's like carving out another key on the piano that's not black or white it's a new thing yeah and they go like what and you go like uh-huh well now i'll just play you a song a beetle song right right oh god that song sounds so good it's not just about relieving them but it's like uh i just think that's the thing that's that laughs are one thing they're one thing but there's a lot of things and and you the laughs are the backstop and they're the they're the they're the clay they're where you're where you're what you're really working in it's important yeah um but there's so much if you just i'm talking about fraction of an inch it's terrifying to not be getting a laugh for 3.8 seconds is too long like if you go like like let's go five this five you tell a joke it doesn't get a laugh for five seconds starting now that's dead i'll put a gun in my mouth yeah yeah yeah yeah but if you're able to have it it's not that long i know you're able to have it and then and you're okay with it you're not going like this you're just going all right you guys are really tense but it's okay i know it's okay because i control the future yeah i'm on i'm the one on stage i love the feeling of upsetting an audience and then and then getting to a joke that they can't help but laugh at that's great it's the best feeling yes yes well i was uh at the cellar because i was working so i've been working on this set anyway whatever i i i got back into it and i was just like i'm in yeah so i started to do uh more sets per night and do the usual process i did it and then i got back into it and i was just like i'm in you know but trying to keep in mind this idea that um there's more more room to play and uh also to just be i called the show ridiculous because i just wanted to be just ridiculous and i'm not i don't want to make any points i i think that i've done i'm really tired of certain things i've done for a long time and this thing i got in my head when i quit before which was like you don't have to do this anymore i just said i'm going to keep that idea i don't know there's a bunch of things i have to do anymore rants like where i'm like duh you see how this is yeah like i had a big bit in the set that was the center of the set because it was killing so hard about how people talk on the news and use certain buzzwords it was a little it wasn't like anti-pc but it was like you know like dissecting the speech hypocrisy yeah it's enough with that shit like i'm so bored with that but it was killing and it was fucking with my set because everything around it was kind of ethereal and pointless yeah and so when i was in omaha nebraska i remember one night i was like what if i just don't do the bit at all it's like a 15 minute chunk i was like what if i just leave it out and i never did it again because the show i left it out everything else kind of rose and got better yeah and then i decided the integrity is in keeping that stuff being important to me like the stuff that means nothing yeah but i think it means something yeah yeah and being really convinced of this dumb fucking idea you know and believing in it yeah and i see guys going like why are you on this right now but they're enjoying it it's exciting to them it's so much more fun than like right and i'm going yeah yeah know what i mean yes and also that's the most traded commodity in comedy right now yeah and i also hate that type of um that way of like in movie making when a film is like a film about like this is just the things should be like smoking is bad yeah and then it's a movie about you're like yeah i already know like there's no yes i don't like this ride no it's no fun it's no fun no the best to me the things i enjoy the most movies and stuff are things that confuse me that make me go like but i thought this and now i don't know or just like or you know so so i'm not making any points on stage and that's been the fun fun thing but so i started doing the bigger theaters like 2500 seats the ones that we we do a lot yeah and the bits the the set started to feel like it was sagging because i can't really see them anymore and i missed the clubs where i would do this thing i'd say something really convinced in my voice about this stupid thing and then i'd stop talking and they're and i feel that all their heads go like this and then one guy would go and he'd laugh yeah and then everybody would look at him yeah and i would look at him and then somebody else would laugh and i'd look at them and then i'd play in that area and say something that's how the whole set was created really yeah was just like really seeing them and there's one joke in the set that's like my favorite one and when i do it there's always one person that's dying harder than everybody and i always look at them and i nod at them and i want to say to them that's my favorite yeah yeah i don't want to say that because it's not a great thing to say in 13 minutes into a set yeah yeah this is as good as this is the best the rest is yeah but that i'd lost that when i was doing the 2500 seat theaters so during the last couple of weeks of the or like month of the tour i started going back to the cellar and around and just doing jokes that aren't in the set and doing just being reckless really yeah and i started doing tons of sets and then i went back up to poughkeepsie and did the laugh laugh it up this club in the it's upstairs of a pub yeah i love it in there really yeah and just going up there with a notebook and just trashing through an hour there you know i went down to side splitters in tampa oh yeah on my way to a big gig in puerto rico and in puerto rico i did a local club like i was just doing local i want to do puerto rico i really want to go love it i really want to go do that you'll love it um yeah i was telling us we were talking about stand up and about like you know certain comics have certain gifts like you go like this guy is so good at yes economy of words like he just knows how to get and i was saying i was like you know i think one of louie's gifts as a comic is that every hour you have you have this capacity to say things that are like i feel like it's a you people go like it's a universal like i feel like i i've had this thought but for some reason i've never heard it articulated and i don't know how you do it over and over i'm always like god damn it like i know this thought right i can't believe i no one's ever said it i've never heard someone say it and it feels like i don't know that to me is like one of your community thanks yeah that's a good my mom told me that i could do that my mom said that i could take simple things and explain them yeah it didn't seem complicated but that's true my favorite compliment i ever got is i'm gonna repeat a compliment i got yeah was from chris rock and he said to me that i'm i'm like thor because what i'm doing is not it's not mysterious i've got a huge hammer and i'm just destroying yeah but nobody else can pick up that hammer i'm the only guy who it'll do it for that feels like a good one i liked i i like thinking that about my i like to take that compliment and just bathe in it yeah just like yeah because i was trying to tell somebody this too about as a comedian they were like you know how do you feel about like yourself as a comedian and i go well it's not this you don't it's not i feel this way all the time right i get off stage sometimes and i go i'm pretty good at this i think and then it goes that's right up and down i think a thing that you do that's great is that you take your uh your harder feelings like anger and you wear them very comfortably and you give them a really great voice because you're not uh i mean what i've seen of you you're not like no ranting and you're just saying i hate this yeah that's true and there's something about that that's very powerful because that's interesting people have a hard time with feelings like anger and stuff and spite yeah spite which is not even an emotion it's just like that yeah yeah is you can have guilt about that that's true but it's real and you know going back to russian literature a lot of it is just like people are yeah and it's not a moral judgment it's just it's a form of love is like how much do we hate people in this way yes i love people at their worst it's my favorite part of people that feels like a very louis statement i love people at their worst yeah i do that's that's what i love about them is when they they're when they're useless when they have no control it would have no self-awareness yeah you gotta love somebody like that when you really meet a buddha you're like i could spend four minutes with you that's about it but otherwise you really stink as a person to hang out with i want to meet a mess like i want to meet somebody who's just a my best friends or i just sit there and i go man yeah but they're interesting though yes they are but there's something about like my favorite joke of yours is the and i'll just even though you know what i'll tell it the way i remember it which is that you're in a movie theater and there's a baby a couple has a baby yes i'll do it in the first person behind me who's um and the baby's making these horrible screaming noises yes and so i turned to the couple i said are you stabbing your baby and the woman said no and i said well could you yeah that's true that's good man that's that's fun it's a great joke oh thanks man thank you it's told calmly yes you can feel it's a it's a really heavy spite yes and it's justified you don't bring your baby at the same time it's like they have no they can't go to movies without their baby that's true they got no money so it's like what do we do but it sucks for you it sucks for me in that situation it doesn't not suck for you yeah but so you know like the thing that's great about comedy is that you don't have to make a movie because you don't have to make a movie and is uh breaking those rules like not being fair comedy's not supposed to be fair right so i remember back when people were saying this thing a lot uh that comedy should never punch down yeah so everyone just said comedy should never punch down so you did it wrong yeah well no no that's not true truly i shouldn't never punch down yeah you don't like comedy or you're pretending you don't like comedy exactly punches yes down this but it's the funniest so i was explaining this to somebody once who didn't understand what it meant and i said well the idea with don't punch down with comedy is this if you have uh a maid or like you know a cleaning lady in an office building who has like five jobs and she sees the boss walk by who's a billionaire and she says you know that guy you're like yeah but if a billionaire goes up to a little cleaning lady and like spills coffee on her head and goes haha i i was like i was telling this person that's not funny yeah but of course it's a trillion times funnier so much fun it's way funnier of course than somebody punching up is is crusading and it's like punching down is horrible and funny hysterically funny this is like i've had this exact conversation with someone who one time we were like they were talking about my a special that had come out and i was like what are you talking about you know i don't even know what you're talking about and then they would go you know you did this you do that but ultimately it's like he goes you know as far as like kind of like going over like the rules of comedy he's like but like don't be a dick right and i go no are you nuts i go what do you mean yeah and he's like well you know it was like basically don't punch down and i go but being a dick can be the funniest thing like yes dickheads are funny yes and and saying something smarmy and shitty to someone might be the funniest thing yes it's not polite and it's not nice but it's still funny of course it is what's his name chance langton he's a guy from boston when i started chance was one of the big comics in boston and his whole act he had a like a theme which was because that's the way i am uh-huh and uh so you just say an awful thing about himself and say because that's the way i am and one of them was whenever i see a pay toilet back when they used to i don't think i've seen that in years but it used to be in some public places the story was like this is the way i am and i'm like what are you talking about this is the stall would have a coin thing in it to get in he said every time i see a paid toilet i crawl underneath and i on the floor because that's the way i am and you know someone says someone has to clean his yeah and that's the funniest thing in the world yeah that's the funniest part of that yeah no it's it's the whole point to comedy to me is what you're not supposed to do it's you know yes it's not real you're not really doing something yeah you're making jokes shut up you know yeah it's like someone getting mad at a tweet you're like well it's not real yeah well they used to be that was the thing i think twitter kind of with the line yeah because some comedians would tweet a joke joke and then they tweet an opinion oh so they're going like so then people would say well that's an opinion they go no fuck you it's a joke well well which that's true one is which if you want to be taken seriously yeah what do you want to be taken seriously i don't yeah please don't let's not i mean that's that's in terms of what i enjoy and what i like out of life i think so people can do whatever they want right but i know the moral crusading comedians are exhausting and they probably got something that's uh cool about what they do that i'm not seeing i like a certain thing other people like other things whenever there's a movement that uh i find really annoying yeah it usually will stray into something really cool like they'll make something i wouldn't have made the whole point of the reason i like the way i do comedy and the kind of comedy that you do that i like which is saying things you shouldn't say is you go you're finding shit other people weren't looking for yeah some of it it's a value some of it isn't hopefully it's all funny yeah but so what they're doing of like let's keep it fair i mean that'll find something that comedy hasn't looked for do you know what i mean of course because it does get to be all one thing too much so i i'm not it's not the kind of thing i do i'm not i'm like i'm a blues guy they're electronic dance music whatever it is yeah but they're gonna find some shit yeah we have i don't watch that enough to yeah that's probably good to judge it yeah yeah um so will you you're on this massive tour right now um do you think you're gonna hang it up again when you're done with this story yep at least a year and a half off well the thing i didn't know was gonna happen is that you know it's just like the god i'm such a slob i'm just seeing myself um that uh that the denial of age you know when the year is going by it's like it's fucking hard to be on the the only way i know i did a good show now is if i'm in a lot i need to get in a bathtub of salt because your body hurts it hurt too much yeah and it's not because i'm particularly physical but because i'm pushing i'm really trying yeah and um what it takes for me to be is like it takes a lot of repetition and pushing to be the kind of comic i think i'm supposed to be and uh i don't think i could do that anymore i don't think i can do it physically and also i really enjoy life uh off stage i really i learned to love it and i love writing novels like that's i didn't know i would love that so much and so and maybe three people will read that yeah or three hundred thousand used to come to the shows yeah and i'm okay with that i really don't need the attention i don't need that much i'm not interested in it it's nice it's nice to have your work seen but i don't like being paid attention to anymore um i like being private and i have a i feel good in my life so that's great um but i'd still love to create i think what i probably do after this is not do a full-scale tour anymore i don't want to tell i don't want to book a year of shows again i'm in the same like world as you like every time i finish a tour yeah i call my agent i go hey so for this next one yeah let's rethink how we do this yes and as this one's about to end um i shot a special over the weekend it comes out christmas eve on netflix and i'm already like hey when i do my next tour which is not going to be for a while yeah i'm like let's like re-imagine how we do and i'm basically all i'm doing is like hey let's pare this stuff down i think it's a good idea i think it's a good idea artistically i think it's a good idea for your head you know um i think about comedians like stephen wright you know who's one of my favorites of all time yeah and steven um he goes i mean i don't want to tell his life but he goes off and he'll do a couple of like couple of things and then he's like i don't know i don't want to tell yeah and come home and then two weeks months go by he goes does yeah never does more than like two nights in a row and his the markets that he plays at are still fresh he's been doing this he's been big since 1980 like 85 yeah and it's 40 years later as long as i've been doing comedy and uh he's still got a really healthy following and he gets and he loves doing it so i think that's the move and the other thing is like we talked about is like you don't have to announce this crazy out you can just do the thing where you go up with dates yeah like here's some dates and then time goes by you can go up with some more dates go up with some more you could just like go hey can i do what's the next open date at town hall in new york or something and just do it and then and then really work on this stuff in a different kind of like yeah i was like looking out the window the other day and thinking about this and i saw this crazy flock of there is a flock of pigeons that live in washington square park and once in a while you see them and they just create these these uh uh tornadoes of bird uh and they they land behind these buildings that i look out onto so i see those pigeons all the time and i was watching them do this thing and i thought i want my work to be like that like just like this instead of like let's get through this almost fucking military campaign yeah it's very muscular it's very economic it's very about the economy yeah the whole thing how we structure this shit the fact that we do a full hour all the time is just so that we can sell tickets to it theater audience everything's about money and uh career and all this nonsense so um i think when this one's over i'll just like i'll probably take a good year off or longer without performing yeah and then when i get back to it i'll just just let it feel like this a little more it feels like it's like so aggressive yes and like i i already feel the difference i'm 46 now of like when i was touring really hard five six years ago i feel a huge difference on the toll it takes and i'm healthier now yeah and like you know eating better and working out more but it still wears you the fuck down it does and i had a sense of it when i started this one and it's kind of a contrary action i did the opposite of what what i wanted for that i decided i'm going to make as much of this tour as i can because i'm not going to do this again like i kind of knew it right away yeah so i packed in a trillion shows and i put in i'm going to india i'm going to china i'm going to japan i've always wanted to perform in these places and i'm doing them all now because i know i'll never do this again i'll never do this scale ever again so i'm doing everywhere and i'm also trying to make as much money as i can so that you don't have so that i can cool it for as long as i can the last time i did that it lasted a year and a half another big reason i came back to it yeah i ran out of fucking money yeah i was out yeah i think a fair thing to say people don't consider that too like you it costs money to do like you you can run out of money um you can and also i did like i even though i didn't have i stopped having the income i used to have i kept making projects with my own money yeah i made a whole movie with my own money nobody really saw it and so i started to deplete and then i got like a friend of mine told me a friend of mine who was on his way up he said he said i had that a big moment today i looked in the mirror and i said i have a million dollars first time in his life he said i'm a millionaire i have a million dollars that was a big moment and i said to him i had that moment twice first time it was good news second time it was bad that's very funny yeah they were about 10 years apart yeah first time i was like i have a million dollars then i was like i have a million so i need to get back to work but this tour hopefully will get me at least a few more years yeah without you know and at the end you've done all these shows and you have this money i medallion oh yeah lck that's what i'm working on yeah dude i have a good guy for you he's gonna hook you up good and he'll give you a good price probably like 150 grand it's fucking tight yeah you'll like it nice very nice good um ingram is the book yes it is this is fucking awesome and i felt i'm telling you real emotion uh it's it's impressive man you you're really talented at this thanks yeah i hope you also make another movie though someday yeah i have a few ideas someday you have one that you told me about in detail i don't remember that you don't remember that one jesus thing yeah yeah yeah yeah that's fucking great yeah that's a hard one yeah maybe i'll make that one yeah it'd be great we'll see uh yeah it'd be awesome um congrats on this thanks man and thanks for doing the podcast thank you um all right we'll see you guys next week one goes top of the other wears a shirt tom tells stories and bert's the machine there's not a chance in hell that they'll keep it clean you want to impress them on a first date but also play it cool so what do you do i'm rufy thorpe and i wrote and read a real love story about a hinge couple that navigated exactly that listen to the free audiobook now