Speaker 1: Kalaroga Shock Media. Hey there, I'm Johnny mack In this
summer on Saturday, is gonna start doing some deep dives
on some topics. Today, we'll take a look at Shane Gillis.
And here's the thing about the Shane Gillis story that
nobody tells. Right. Everybody starts with SNL. Everybody starts with
September twenty nineteen, the firing, the controversy, the tweets, the
whole thing, And it's understandable because it's a clean narrative.
Guy gets the biggest job in comedy, loses it three
days later, and somehow ends up bigger than he ever
would have been had he kept SNL. Good story, writes itself.
The more interesting story, the one that actually tells you
something useful about where comedy is right now, starts a
few years earlier, in a much less glamorous place. It
starts with two guys from Pennsylvania doing a podcast that
almost nobody was listening to, talking about comedy in a
way that felt less like a product and more like
a conversation that needed to be recorded. Matt and Shane's
Secret Podcast, two guys genuinely entertaining each other, and occasionally
remembering there might be people listening. There were a lot
of comedy podcasts in twenty seventeen twenty eighteen, even more
so now. Most have a recognizable formula comedian. You've heard
of a guest, you've heard of some stories about the road,
maybe some bits that didn't make the special. Thing about
Matt and Chane was neither of them were famous enough
yet to have that kind of show. Plus the show
had a specific sensibility that was weird and funny in
its own right. It wasn't using the podcast as a
promotional vehicle, it was using the podcast as the actual thing.
Joe Rogan gets credited with proving that the long form
podcast could be a legitimate media format, but what Rogan
also did was create a permission structure for comedians to
build audiences outside the traditional pipeline. Before Rogan, the consensus
was that the path when something like this, you do clubs,
you go on late night, you get a Comedy Central special,
maybe you get a sitcom. Somewhere in that process, the
industry validates you and the public finds you. Rogan didn't
quite follow that path. He did TV Fear Factor UFC.
But Rogan experience operated completely outside that validation system. By
the end of the twenty tens, Rogan had more reach
than basically any TV show, and it built it by
just talking to people for three hours. Now, what he
pointed out now, what Rogan accomplished was that the gigkeepers
were optional. Shane Gillis was building something real on top
of his podcast. The podcast was getting passed around by
people who cared about stand up and Shane got a
reputation in the clubs as someone whose material was genuinely
different in olden times. There's a version of the next
few years. We would have grinded through the normal progression,
maybe it gainst a Comedy Central half hour, but instead
he got the call to SNL. No, you remember that.
That was a big deal. Shane was funny, original, and
the fact that SNL was adding him felt like confirmation
of what his audience had been saying. And then three
days later, old podcast clips surfaced some bits with some
racial stuff, some jokes that played differently when pulled out
of context, and SNL fired him before he even did
a single episode.
Speaker 2: It was kind of surreal because I went from I
was one of the first people to get like canceled
or however you want to say it. Consequences however, Yeah,
however you want to say it. It doesn't matter what
we call it. It is what it is, right, But uh,
I was one of the first people to go from
I was doing. I was poor. I was not famous
at all. I was poor, and then I got canceled immediately,
like that was my thing, Like right, it was a
very famous and then yeah, most people that get canceled
or yeah, you got canceled on the way. I got
canceled immediately. Yeah. They literally were like how about this guy?
And everyone was like no.
Speaker 1: The official statement was polite and final. Lorden Michaels does
not do messy public disputes. Shane was out USA Today
September twelfth, twenty nineteen. Shane gillis one of three new
featured players on SNL is apologizing. Shane posted to Twitter,
I'm a comedian who pushes boundaries. I sometimes missed some
happy to apologize to anyone who's actually offended by anything
I've said. Note the actually in there, the clip that
was pulled, Shane said, I'll quote it directly from USA
Today here Chinatown's expletive nuts. Let the expletive live there,
using a racial slur for the second expletive. Shane's apology continues,
if you go through my ten years of comedy, most
of it is bad, You're going to find a lot
of bad misses. My intention is never to hurt anyone,
but I'm trying to be the best comedian I can,
and sometimes that requires risks. From The Independent, October twenty fifth,
twenty twenty four. Lorne Michaels, the creator of SNL, has
said that he didn't want to fire Shane Gillis from
the show, but was ordered to by executives at NBC.
Lauren told the Whorl Street Journal that was very strong
from the people in charge, and obviously I was not
on that side, but I understood it. Lauren said he
kept in touch with Shane after the firing. Michael said
he said something stupid, but it got blown up into
the end of the world. I was angry. I thought,
you haven't even seen what we're gonna do and what
I'm trying to bring out in him, because I thought
he was the real thing. After the firing, an SNL
spokesperson in Or issued a statement which reads, after talking
with Shane Gillis. We have decided he will not be
joining SNL. We want SNL to have a variety of
voices and points of view within the show, and we
hired Shane on the strength of his talent as a committe
and his impressive audition for SNL. We were not aware
of his prior marks that have surfaced over the past
few days. The language he used is offensive, hurtful, and unacceptable.
We are sorry that we did not see these clips
earlier and that our vetting process was not up to
our standard. Shane responded to the news of his firing
on Twitter, saying, I'm a comedian. It was funny enough
to get SNL that can't get taken away. Of course,
I wanted an opportunity to prove myself at SNL, but
I understand it would be too much of a distraction.
I respect the decision they made, honestly grateful for the opportunity.
I was always a mad TV guy anyway, After all that.
The discourse that followed depended on which side you were on.
Was it a reckoning with the kind of comedy that
gets platformed, or an example of outrage culture eating someone
who was clearly not a bad person. Or some complicated
thing in between those two positions. Now, Shane's statement is interesting.
He didn't grovel in the way that crisis PR people
usually suggest one does. But he also didn't go on offense,
and he went back to work. He did the podcast,
he kept doing clubs. He didn't disappear. And here's what
the TV executives missed. A huge number of people already
felt like they knew Shane Gilly. They've been listening to
the podcast and watching the clips. They had a relationship
with him that preceded SNL. When SNL fired him, those
people didn't update their opinion of Shane based on SNL's decision.
If anything, his fans dug in harder. Then there's the
Gillian Keeves stuff. Shane and John McKeever started doing character
videos that lived on YouTube and existed outside the podcast
ecosystem and outside the stand up ecosystem, just doing their
own thing. Gilly is a character Shane does, kind of
a dumb, sweet, vaguely threatening guy from Pennsylvania, and the
sketches have a handmade quality that it feels unpolished. Their
production value is intentionally low. The pacing is often ways
that feel deliberate they're funny in a way that's generally
hard to explain if you haven't seen them.
Speaker 2: Hello, I'm Bob Isis of Isis Toyota, and we have
a great collection of pre owned, certified Toyotas. But there's
one thing I want to make very clear, and it's
that we have nothing to do with the terrorists over
there in the Middle East right now, and that's why
we are the good Isis all right, listen, yeah, lean
into the Isist thing. It's a good marketing tool, the
great marketing tool. I agree with Barbie.
Speaker 1: I think you should be like here at Iss Toyota
will behead the competition.
Speaker 2: Yes, no, we're not doing this. What are you guys
talking about. We're not wishing death to any of our enemies.
We are wishing death to low the high prices.
Speaker 1: Me and Barbie.
Speaker 2: We can hold AK forty seven. Yeah no, no, that
would be so cool. So I'm holding an AK forty seven.
She's holding AK forty seven. You're like, we gotta go
both toyotas and I I can be doing that like
terrorist turkey gobble thing, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: We're like good.
Speaker 2: Enough at Ices Toyota. We have nothing to do with
Aboo Bakar albak Dottie and his vicious gang of thugs.
All we're trying to do is put you into an
affordable tree owned, certified Toyota.
Speaker 1: What's notable about it, it's it's proof of something that
not every stand up can pull off, which is being
funny in multiple formats. It also helped Shane reach more
people because you might not be ready to listen to
two hours of him and Matt, but you'll watch a
four minute sketch on YouTube where something weird and funny happens.
Different entry points, different audience relationships, all building towards the
same thing. By the time Shane's Netflix special That's My
Time came out, Shane was operating with an audience that
had been built over years through channels that Netflix had
nothing to do with. The special was good, confidently good,
the kind of stand up special where you can tell
the comedians knows exactly what they're doing and it's comfortable
taking their time.
Speaker 2: A lot of guys would knock on the front door.
Not these guys, not our guys, not our guys. Our
guys went through the wall. They blew up his roll,
and they used dogs beautiful dogs. Beautiful dogs is the
funniest detail. It's true. They actually did use It was
the Army Rangers, and they used dogs because they were
afraid howback daddy was gonna be wearing a suicide vest,
so they killed him with dogs in a robot and
then made fun of him for crying. Let that guy cry.
That's the scariest death I've ever heard of. That dude
was laying in his bed in the middle of night.
His wall exploded ten dogs in a robot.
Speaker 1: Netflix wasn't breaking Shane Gillis to the world. They were
confirming what people already knew. Historically, the platform, whether it
be HBO or in later days, Comedy Central and then
Netflix was the thing that made you the special was
how people found you. Netflix wanted this special because they'd
watched enough comedians to understand that an audience that was
earned through years of direct relationship is more durable and
more engaged than an audience that came through a platform
recommendation algorithm. Then in twenty twenty four, Shane hosted Saturday
Night Live Ladies and Gentlemen. Shane Giless.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you, thank you very much. It's yeah,
I'm here. They Most of you probably have no idea
who I am. I was, actually I was fired from
this show while ago. But if you know, don't look
that up. Please. If you don't know who I am,
please don't google that. It's fine, don't even worry about it.
I don't know this is I probably shouldn't be up here.
Speaker 1: Honestly, Lord Michaels does not do things accidentally. Inviting Shane
Gillis back to host was not a neutral decision. It
was a signal that this person is large enough that
the firing now looks like a mistake. I thought Shane
was very funny that night. Some people did not. I
thought it was great. He did a monologue that acknowledged
the history without making the whole episode about the history
that brings us to today. The comics coming up right
now are watching all this. They're watching the way Shane
navigated the firing, watching the way the podcast became a
real thing, watching the YouTube stuff find its own audience,
watching the Netflix deal, watching the SNL hosting. They're learning
that you don't have to go through the old paths.
Doesn't mean SNL doesn't matter, doesn't mean Netflix doesn't matter.
It means they're different now. You can comments on this
program in the Facebook group, Daily Company News Poscast Group,
or on Spotify in the comments section. Also follow the
show on Spotify, turn notifications on so you never miss
an episode. And I'll see you tomorrow with a regular
episode