This is a downbeat on ninety seven one The Freak. All right, here
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as well. Ninety seven one the Freak dot Com Join us now in studio
is comedy man Paul mccurio, and you can see him at the Plano House
of Comedy tonight and tomorrow night. Both either or do your thing TX dot
House of Comedy dot net. That's TX dot House of Comedy dot net for
your tickets. And Paul works well, he does a lot of things right,
but he worked with The Daily Show for many years works now for Late
Night with Stephen Colbert. I was listening to the Strikeforce five podcast a little
bit, yeah, and uh they were talking about getting back into it,
and Steven mentioned people were up his ass about he forgot about these eleven am
meetings and he said he's pretty scatterbrained and he needs people to keep him on
track. And I don't know how associated with that you are. Yeah,
well, there's different meetings that happened during the course of the day because like
you're starting the show, like you got to plan, like everything has to
happen that day basically, like you're doing a show that day for that night.
At five point thirty, we tape it so like it's it's two hundred
and something people to make the show go. And if the guy running it
is you know wrongk at eleven o'clock in the morning, it's not going to
work. And that's why Steven has to be removed. And I think I'm
going to be the to the show. Now, all right, congratulations man,
if you need some staff riders, good at it. So you guys
to submit your resume if you want to. If you want a job,
I need rice, chrisp retreats and a turkey baser and you got it.
What's a resume? We can just anything on the back of the now.
No, yeah, so we we kind of the whole thing is just you
know, it's a it's a We went from like, uh, the Daily
Show had about eighty eighty five people, The Colbert Report had eighty eighty five
people, and then when it went to this show and went to like over
two hundred people. It's a beast. It's an hour. We were doing
a half hour show four days a week, two hours of total content a
week at Comedy Central to five hours a week at you know, a major
broadcast network, and you know, pressure every day, every day, every
day day. Yeah, yeah, I wanted to talk to you about the
pressure thing. I bet there was such a underdog beauty to the early days
of the Daily Show. When you're not on a major network, the expectations
are probably pretty low and you are invariably daily for lack of a better word,
trying to find out where the line is pushing the envelope, being creative,
going for an idea that maybe you hadn't considered that you had that freedom
to do what you wanted to. And the only time you probably even knew
that the bosses knew you existed is when you pushed the boundary a little bit
too far. We were just talking about the previous segment about like two instances
where we got yelled at because we went too far, but it was like
getting yelled at by the President network literally, but the stuff was getting yelled
at over comedy, so he could not he was yelling at us. It
was about like you know, showing pictures of like things that were like dildo's
and saying dildo too many times and stuff like that for people who weren't listening
earlier. But he would yell at us, but like he was laughing through
the yell, like you can't and I not to laugh because at the end
of the day, it's just comedy, sure, but like he was smart
enough to know let him just blow the chemistry set up in the basement and
see what happens. Because when you know where the line is, that now
people are gonna start watching because you're like, can you believe? As opposed
I was doing the same old joke like whatever, you know, it's you
know, like that everybody would be doing it late night. We wanted to
just do one step beyond and go whoa, whoa? Did they just say
that? Yeah? And so that's so now like the back and Black segment.
Lewis Black's a good friend of mine, so my writing partner and I
created that segment with him because we were trying to find stuff to do.
And you guys, know you're creative, you have a show, you do
segments. The best stuff comes when you try are not trying to come up
with something like you just sit in a room and go, okay, we
need a bit from like from from nine forty to nine p. Fifty.
We just need a bit that we can, like a refillable bit that we
could do. And then we throw ideas around and nothing happens. And then
like you're in the bathroom taking a dump and then something comes to you based
on toilet paper, right, So what happened was when we would pitch the
way we pitched shows for The Daily Show was you pitch uh articles or stories
and papers and magazines and then you pitch video, so we'd have a producer
coming because we would run like a news feed, like like a news show.
So we get us we paid for a subscription for Associated Press. We
get news stories from all over the country, so we get locals, like
stories from Plano or Fort Worth, Texas, or Providence, Rhode Island or
wherever whatever, Right, and you call through it the stories, the stories
you were getting like crazy, like crazy, like whatever, sorry and so
like, and we're like, but but they were too small to do as
a national story. For John at the top of the show. They always
had to be national stories. It had to be like a sub segment maybe
later on. Yeah, and even then, like we had small town news,
right, you watched the Early Days show, there was even with John
in the beginning, there were three It was called headline News, and the
second act was this just in and then the third act was other news.
And as you went along it could be a small or smaller story. But
still these were too like and a lot of times it was like a Florida
man dot dot dot right like and then we would get these stories like,
oh yeah, so Florida man says he saw an image of the Virgin Mary
and some melted butter. Like it was crazy, right, yeah, and
like what are we gonna do with these? We're like, we know,
we'll look up for something for Lewis to do. He could just rant.
So we would just find three stories that sort of had something to do with
each other. We'd make up this spine among them, and then we'd give
it to him and he'd rant, and that's it was. It will be
to the day my dying day. The most fun that I ever had was
sitting in this room every like Tuesday to produce this piece. So we would
sit with the producer Lewis, myself and my writing partner and just go through
video for like three hours. And it was like hanging out with your buddies
in a basement, just saying the most inappropriate stuff. Ninety percent of what
we're saying could never get on the air, but the other ten percent was
gold. And and by the way, I'm surprised I'm not dead from cancer
because he was a chainsmoker, Lewis, and so was the producer. And
this is when you could smoke in a building and all the windows were closed
and we're like, it was just insane and nothing was better when Lewis would
get so crazed on camera that he would blow the read because he and he
couldn't stop, and then we'd have to retake and everybody's laughing in the studio,
and it was it was, it was beautiful because it came out of
this like there was this thing. It was like this thing that came out.
It was like a necessity that came out of like, you know,
just having all these stories and what are you going to do with them?
Right, so we gave the Lewis and when we're off and running and you
go from that, you know, kind of renegade TV on a on a
non major network into evolving and growing and doing what you're doing now where I'm
sure you know you said you've talked about more than doubling the amount of people
that are working on the Cold Bear Show. And even then, isn't it
amazing you talked about the creative process and you're talking about, hey, we
need a five minute bit for nine o'clock and you don't have anything, and
you end up cramming something in there and forcing something and that stuff never lands.
You know, that's going to be the worst thing that you do.
But even with all the creative minds working together, all of the writers mate.
Like you mentioned earlier, you know, either you have a group of
writers because one day I've got nothing and I need to be carried that day.
Will you get that person's best idea? And then it goes through all
of the different filters and processes and producers, and then you run it by
the network to see if it's okay to air, and you put it on
the air and it just doesn't land. That's still a reality. There's no
science to this that we're all just schlubs, just winging it, trying to
do the best that we can, you know, on a day to day
basis. And I think that's all of us in this vast sea of people
that want to entertain and produce content, as they say nowadays, and we're
all just trying to do the effing best that we can. And it's it's
a struggle. And that's why there's a rehearsal. And you know, you
go in with I don't know, say fifteen jokes, knowing that five of
them you're probably gonna kill because you're not sure. You can't find it.
Sometimes you just can't find it. Yeah, I mean, I can tell
you how many times, like I found it like falling asleep at midnight.
That was the line I should have put in there, because it's like taking
a final, like you never have enough time. At one point there were
just six of us writing six headline jokes a show with multiple punchlines, so
you'd have to write six different topics in three hours and try to come up
with as many shokes you could. It was like crazy. And now you
know, then we could say stuff that I don't even know now, like
even for my act. Like there's this whole political correctness thing, which is
like like it's kind of you know, really taking control of some comedy and
content and stuff like that, and like and I think it's gotten. And
I think comedy should be, whether it's stand up live or these shows should
be pushed back and saying the things that you should be able to say.
Like I think the I believe in political correctness. I just think the pendulum
swung too far. Yeah. I also believe comedy is a bit of a
safe space too. Yeah, I think so too. You know, full
anything goes, But come to see my show. I'm just going to tell
you what I think. I'm not going to try to offend you. But
I'm not going to worry that. Like, the problem is social media is
empowered everybody. Everybody's trying to catch everybody. That's what I noticed. What
did he mean by especially if you're a white guy, It's like, what
did he and? And it's gotten not just like in society. It's funny
because this just happened the other day. My wife and I were talking about
the last two nights ago. So my wife and I walk on our dog
in Central Park. We live in New York, so it's lawyer especially have
a dog on a leash, and our dog was on a leash, and
this is the guy who's dog wasn't on a leash, big dog and little
kids around. It was scaring people. And my wife, who's like the
nicest person in the world, just went up. He goes, excuse me,
sure your dog should be on a leash, just like that, just
like that. What does he do? He goes, why because it's a
pitbull, like implying that we were like racist to a pitbulls. And then
I and I snapped and I went no, because it's got a baby in
its mouth, that's why. Okay, because because it has prison tattoos and
he's smoking Marlboros and he's packing a switchblade. Okay, like can we just
stop? Like it's too much? Like can we just all just sort of
not try to be at each other's can't? We are just such little sad,
insecure week beings just going through this life just being offended and defending ourselves
and lashing out because we're just afraid. We're just always afraid of something.
It's also people don't have I don't. I just look at the glasses half
full. I don't always assign nefarious motives to people, like just like people
do things innocently, like because my buddy of mine and I were talking about
it, because like what are you gonna go for Halloween? And I remember
you couldn't do this today, but it was innocent when we did it.
My parents would dress me every year as a hobo. That's what they called
it, like hobo hobo, which is which is basically we didn't have money
for a costume. Oh and they always forgot it was Halloween. It was
like five o'clock. Just take some of daddy's old clothes and they put like
cock on, get some little shopos something on your face looked like a beard,
and they send out, well, you couldn't do that now because I
was a homeless person. It would be considered insensitive. And it's true,
like it was kind of weird if you think about it. That and and
our parents dressed us as homeless people and then sent us out onto the streets
at night to collect free food in front of real homeless training. It was
like when your creative career failure, you're not gonna get candy and that,
so you're gonna get baked beans and a harmonica. That's all you're gonna get.
And it's like it's so it's just become this like so like I like
to talk to the audience, right, I like I really and so in
fact, and may even be bringing it here. We're taking I got a
show called Permission to Speak, which is uh, it's a theater show that
I was doing before COVID and New York Broadway, and it's directed by Frank
Oz who is Yokol created the Muppets and awesome, yeah, and and so
we're taking it out on tour and it's I I think that we're nameless and
faceless to each other, but if we talk and share stories, personal stories.
We connect because we realize we have more in common than we think,
and we're not so divisive. And anyway, it just calms down. Like
I've been talking my act lately, I go, can I just be the
guy in the middle? Can I be the guy that sort of believes a
little bit of what you do over here? But I'm not the devil to
you because I don't believe in everything, and I'm a little bit of a
little bit of what you believe over here, And I'm not the devil too.
Like life lives in the gray area. That's the interesting part of life,
the nuances I have to believe. Like can I believe that you should
have a gun, but maybe you shouldn't aboard children? Can I like all
this stuff? Right? Like? You can have all of that stuff?
And I don't talk politics in my act. I just think it's like,
can we all just relax. It's just so this show that I've been doing,
I just bring people on stage and they tell stories from no life cool.
It's randos, not planned, not picked ahead of time, not planted,
and you've got a plan of how you kind of manage manage them or
less. They go up stuck on the quote unquote on the air or at
the time. Yeah, well it's not good. What if they got nothing?
They everybody has something, I swear to go. I mean, I
you're skilled enough to pull that out of clips. Y next time I come
on, I'll give you. I'll bring some clips with me. I got
clips. But you're deft and skilled enough to be able to what I'm talking
about, to to kind of manage getting the most out of them. If
they are, you know, very timid or spoken what I'm said, that's
a good point. I know, within about twenty or thirty seconds. I
mean, look, you guys are great at what you do. You're great
listeners and that's why you're great interviewers. And that's half of it. So
the key for me is I can't get ahead of myself. I got to
let the game come to me, right. So like, if I'm talking
to you, you have a Texas Rangers set on and you say something amazing
about your life, and I missed it because I've been for two minutes saying
I got a really good baseball cap joke that I'm going to do. Then
I screwed myself and I shouldn't. But if I just listen and listen and
listen, and you go to the second question, and then the third question
you get gold. I had a guy come on stage right and like,
this is in New York and he happened to be a New York guy,
but we were getting people from all over the world because it was in Times
Square. War was doing one of the theaters there, and he goes,
he just seemed like he was angry, Like so whatever, I go,
what's going on? He goes, I'm all right, go what do you
do? Like I go, and then I finally said, like the third
go you seem upset. He goes, yeah, yeah, yeah. My
wife goes, you want a story. I got a story for you,
because, uh, my wife is having an affair with a priest in Lichtenstein.
And everybody starts laughing, and I said, look, I only have
one rule in the show, which is you can't tell jokes. Because it
sounded like it was like a guy went into a bar joke right yeah,
And he goes, oh, no, I'm not joking. I'm not joking.
Now everybody's leaning in. Now I understand. All I'm doing is I'm
going up and I set the premise of the show, which is what I
just described, but we have a set behind me. It's a set piece
with boxes. My set was designed by the set designer for The Late Show
is Stephen Colbert, because he says, when he's seen me do this,
he feels like, I am box people, and we're all in our own
boxes. And if we come out of these boxes, we realize, you
know what, you might be far right and I might be far left,
but you know so, I'm never We're never going to change each other on
politics. But we start to connect and I realized, Oh, this guy's
got a dog that craps on his furniture, and I got a dog that
creps on my furniture. And he's gonna in law that he hates. And
I got to well, then maybe he's not so bad, and then maybe
I'll listen to his politics. And that's hopefully what can happen, but that's
up to them. So the guy goes, yeah, I got a story
for you. Yeah. So my wife's mother dies. She lives in Lichtenstein.
So we go over there for the and he's talking just like this.
He goes, we go over there for the we go over there for the
funeral. So my uh the priest, you know, big fat priest.
He's fat, fat, fat bastard fat because and so and so we go
okay and he goes, So I have to go back. You know,
my wife stays to take care of the estate, and one thing lets or
another. Apparently the priest starts hitting on my wife. Yeah, so I
find all this out later he goes, of course, and so then my
wife, you know, she's like uh so then they start sleeping together.
And my wife's into working out, so she would go on hikes and so
he could get in his pants, her pants. He would go on hikes
with her. So now the guy lost thirty pounds. So because of me,
that fat f is is is bring my wife and he's down thirty pounds.
It looks great. The place is like what And then I go,
so where's your wife? Now? Oh, she's living with me in the
house in Brooklyn. Oh like what they worked it out or they apartments.
And I go, you're getting divorced, yeah, I think, so I
go, well, you got to let her go. Man. People were
yelling literally yelling out like you got a divorce or like that is so New
York idea. And so it's called permission to speak. And I really love
this area and the audiences are great here, and I want to take it
here. And so so I like to another woman. I go, what's
your name? She goes Nydia. I go Lydia with an L. And
you could tell she was annoyed, because everybody does that. She goes,
no, Nydia with an N as a Nancy Nydia. I go, oh,
that's an unusual name. How'd you get that name? That's all I
said. And the reason this works is because I I think people want to
tell their stories and sometimes need to tell their stories because everybody's been told to
be quiet and be careful what you say. And this is a safe space.
You could say whatever you want. I'm not gonna let you insult people
and be racist or whatever. Course, I don't care what you say.
Leave that to John Stewart's exact pay wearing that tiny dog shirp and living dog
whatever. Yes, exactly. And so I go, how'd you get that
name? She goes, well, my father, She starts laughing. She
goes, my father got my mother pregnant with me, but at the same
time was having an affair with a woman named Nidia. And he named me
after the woman he was having an affair. Way everybody did what you guys
just said, they went, oh my god. And so we've talked a
lot about writing today. We would sit in a room. I would give
you these stories and we would start writing them and then you say, tear
it up. No one's going to believe it. It's not believable. I
am telling you. Yea, So we should do that here, let's do
it. We'll make it happen. Yeah. So I basically like, yeah,
I'd love to and love to come on and you know, promote it
with you guys and everything. So we have this really cool set that we
designed and we're doing rear projection and my animator is JJ Settlemeyer. He did
Beavis and Butt, heead, he did all the STV Funhouse and Frank Oz
fell in love with it. I had him on my podcast and I just
met him once. And I love to talk about process. I'm like a
process key because my feeling is like I've worked in late night TV, but
they're really marketing shows like the Late Show, Tonight Show, the marketing shows
for people to come on in ten six. So we would have like Bruce
Springsteen on You have him for two segments, so that's ten minutes. The
guy's a musical genius. She talked to him for three hours. Right,
It's like, and I my podcast is just long form? How do you
do what you do? And Frank explained how they created them up, It's
like, puppeteers are not guys that just like do voices. They imbue their
own personality traits into the character. So he created Miss Piggy, Fozzy Bear,
all of them, right, Cookie Monster. Miss Piggy is insecure because
Frank was insecure, and that's why she's verbose and loud and whatever and in
your face. Fascinating. I get chills just talking about it. Right,
Like, this is the mind of that show. At its peak had two
hundred million viewers around the world. Right, yeah, I have that guy
in my seat here. I want to talk to him in his process.
So I was trying to get this thing off the ground. I'm like,
I need somebody to direct me. So I said, I just called him.
I only met him once. I go, would you look at my
show? I need I'll pay you. He goes, no, no,
no, sorry, I'll come and look at it. And he really fell
in love with it because he said, I feel like there's a humanity to
the show and we need a show like this now that can actually kind of
bring people together in a cool way. But so take that on the road
man, Yeah, really really. November eleventh is our first show in New
Jersey. The November eighteenth, we're going to Chicago and we're booking we're going
to be Milwaukee. So it's a theater show with the set that travels with
me. Yeah, and when you're like the thousand, two thousand, three
thousand, probably a thousand and below, okay, just to see how I
do. Yes, I don't know what. Yeah, horn would be great.
Maybe what was it? Eric Andre was just here. It was a
long horn that's we'll touch you, break and give you a few places.
And yeah, my podcast is called Inside Out with Paul mccurrey. I had
Paul McCartney and I'll tell you that story next time I come on. Please.
Yes, you guys are awesome man. Thanks for taking the time and
hanging out to talk like this on radio and have this kind of I kind
of feel like we've done. They don't like it when we do this.
They want to bite size, you know, bite size quick stories hit them
past. So we just did basically an hour. We did a podcast live
on the air. We're probably gonna get in trouble. I absolutely worth.
I can give you more funny if you want. No, no, no
no, We got to go anywhere Mercurio, t X dot House of Comedy
dot net for your tickets. He's at the plane Out House of Comedy tonight
and tomorrow night again. Get your tickets t X dot House of Comedy dot
net. Paul, thank you for the time on man. We'll talk to
you next time you're in town and we'll go around and let's get this take
Staples button with me. Yeah, please start. Thanks guys. Coming up
next, we got your messages from the iHeartRadio app, plus a little more
Rangers Astros news game at four today. Got a little update for you next
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