The Loudest Woman in Comedy | Roseanne Barr | EP 452

You know, the world of Comedy premises was decreasing, decreasing, getting tighter and tighter because there's just so many things that you couldn't say or you'd be attacked and run out of town. You know, but uh this is just a real free and freeing feeling, and it's just wonderful to look out and see people of all shapes, colors, sizes, ages laughing together at just the ridiculous absurdity of it all. It feels like a revolution, like we've always dreamed of a revolution for free thoughts, free ideas, free people.

Hello everybody! I got the opportunity today to talk to Roseanne Barr. We talked about her recent work with the Daily Wire Plus crew on Mr. Burum. She plays a high school principal near retirement in that show. Then we talked a fair bit about comedy as such and exactly what a comedian does. What it's like to hit the mark so precisely that you can tell the truth in a manner that opens people up and brings that unconscious joy that's associated with spontaneous laughter.

Trying to nail down exactly what that means, it's part of this broader phenomenon that we see where so many people that are making their mark on pop culture are comedians, former and present. Rogan of course springs to mind—Russell Brand, many many people—Dave Rubin, Steven Crowder, Theo Von. There are so many comedians that have made a name for themselves as interviewers. We talked about that a fair bit, her experience with cancel culture and class discrimination or difficulty in making class adjustments, let's say, in Hollywood. Her more recent experiences on the comedy scene in Austin, which is a real up-and-coming comedy renaissance city, in no small part as a consequence of Joe Rogan's enterprises there.

Join us for what proved to be a very interesting and enlightening conversation. Let's start by talking about Mr. Burum. You're working with the Daily Wire Plus crew, yeah? And so, how's that going?

Oh, it's just been a blast! It's just been so fun. I like their process, I like the people. I love Adam Carolla and the other comics. It's just been so fun to be part of something that is so on the line and purposely offensive. It's just great to offend, you know? And I think for an audience that likes that sort of thing, it's great, accepting. For people who really want to think and rearrange furniture in their mind, it's fun to be a part of that.

The problem with arranging furniture in your mind is the snakes and the spiders tend to crawl out from underneath, isn't that true?

It's definitely the case. So, tell everybody about Mr. Burum because there'll be lots of people watching and listening who don't know about it.

Well, it's a 30-year dream of Adam Carolla to portray this character. I guess it's based on a real-life teacher of his, a shop teacher. He was, as I understand it—I hope I'm not misspeaking it for Adam—but he was very influential to Adam and he had a different approach to teaching. It was unconventional, and some people would probably right now, you know, people would be up in arms about the way he taught. But he not only taught but reached people and, you know, challenged them to do their best.

So that's kind of what is so great about the cartoon because it shows a teacher that cares in an unconventional way and actually moves students to think and do their best work. And he's up against, like you and I, people who are thinkers, up against this huge force of, you know, collective—yeah, evil, the collective—you know, the collective. That's what I just call it now, that has, you know, their fascist definitions of everything where people must obey, must bow, must repeat, must parrot.

And so in all of that, there's this one gifted teacher who wants to do it his way, and he is, of course, under scrutiny by all the collective. I play the principal who's about two weeks from retirement and doesn't give a damn, just wants to get the retirement and is trying to do what she has to do, and it's kind of—is a veteran. And so she's kind of on Mr. Burum's side but she has to obey the protocol.

And this one character—oh my gosh, I'm blank on his name—but he’s played by Tyler Fisher. I'm so sorry, Tyler. He plays like—he plays Carponzi. Yeah, and he's really a lib. He's a real, like, pronoun type, you know, guy that is all that, and he's trying to get Mr. Burum fired, using the rules that Mr. Burum doesn't follow.

So my character is like trying to protect Mr. Burum and trying to protect her retirement. The best comedies, animated or otherwise, often have a very sharp and biting satirical edge but underneath a certain amount of heart and genuine human connection. This was something that was very marked about The Simpsons, for example, because it was completely satirical. But at least for the first 13 seasons—there were some stellar shows after that too—really what made the series so remarkable was the fact that you actually ended up identifying with and liking the characters, despite their manifold flaws.

Do you ever watch The Trailer Park Boys? Have you ever seen that?

Oh yes! I love that show!

Okay, so why do you love The Trailer Park Boys? Because I also love The Trailer Park Boys, which I'm very sad to say, but I'm a super fan, and it has the same quality, right? I mean the characters are completely reprehensible most of the time, but there's a connection underneath that's genuine, and that gives the show—it's not just cynical—it is genuinely funny.

So, what is it you like about The Trailer Park Boys?

Well, I like just that it's absurdist. It's so based in reality that it's absurd, which is like what reality is right now. It's just so absurd. It's hard to write jokes when you're in the middle of an absurdity because you can hardly top how ridiculous and absurd everything is. You just maybe need to just hold up a mirror, and that's what I like about it. Because I had so many people in my life who are just like The Trailer Park Boys. Maybe they don't—I think The Trailer Park Boys have a lot of insight that they do have a lot of insight, but you know, I think that it speaks greatly to class consciousness, which is what fascinates me more than anything else about American culture, and you know, Canada and the UK, and you know, I guess the West.

The fact that everybody is kind of blind to the fact that we live in such a class-based culture is like the last thing that anybody ever notices or talks about. But it's just so present in that show, and it's just so hilarious all the things that come with that whole working-class thing, which I just love.

One of the things that always struck me—the town I grew up in, the town I'm in right now, because I'm up in Northern Alberta—is a working-class town. I suppose I climbed the class ladder after I left Fairview, but one of the things I really missed as that happened was humor. I mean, the people I grew up with here, basically all we did to amuse ourselves was to engage in competitive bouts of humor. And that was ridiculously fun. It was a way of gaining status too because the funniest people had the most status and also obviously the people that could take a joke. And in working-class jobs, you need to be able to take a joke—that's for sure.

Well, everyone does all the time in life, but you know, among the intellectual class, frequently, especially among the posers, there's an absolute lack of humor, and that's very annoying.

It is absolutely true; it's very dull and pretentious. And you know, one of the things too that I really learned, I think you can tell people who are dangerous because they hate comedians and they hate automobiles.

I never thought about the automobile.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's the same! It's the same!

So I think it's that private personal mobility and freedom that, you know, I mean car culture was always a working-class culture. And the thing about a car is you can go anywhere you want, whenever you want, with no restrictions or very limited restrictions, and no one can tell you otherwise. Plus, it's super private. Or it was until you had OnStar and all these bloody things that monitor you 100% of the time while you're driving now.

But like, cars to me really signify freedom. And well, comedy is the same way because you get to say whatever you want, as long as it's funny.

I had a good friend of mine, once up in Northern Alberta. His rule was you could say anything you wanted as long as it was funny or true. And funny and true, man, that really tops the charts. If you can pull that off, that's what my family too was. It was a dysfunctional family and, you know, like everybody's—I guess everybody has an element of that—but we could say whatever. We couldn't ever—we weren't allowed to say we were angry or that something was wrong. We weren't ever allowed to whine, as it was called, but we could tell a joke expressing dissatisfaction or anger or rage or anything, and it would be, you know, it would be accepted. Everybody loved it; we'd laugh it off. And that is like how we communicated the darker parts of our psyches, you know?

And it was okay, but if you would tell a joke and it would bomb in front of my dad, then he, you know, then you get slapped. So I kind of got robotized into being a comedian because it was a right way to express and to survive all of this stuff. So, you know, I learned it that way.

But it was kind of like that in all my friend's houses too. If you were snappy with your wit, your parents appreciated it, even though they wanted to, you know, beat the hell out of you sometimes!

Did they?

Yeah, well, the thing about discussing dark things with humor is that it has two advantages, I think. And the first is you get to shine a light on the thing that's dark, but more importantly, you get to show that you can stand seeing it. And also, that you can sort of, you can transcend it at the same time, which is really what you're doing when you laugh it off. So you're showing that there's something there that's negative and maybe even that's causing suffering, but at the same time, you're indicating everybody's willingness to look at it and also to rise above it.

And so that's a pretty damn good deal.

And this is why I to dispel its power over us, right? You know, I always thought that comedy was—I mean, I do feel it's a gift, and a lot of us comics, you know, drunk and sitting there talking to each other seriously, which we do when we're drunk and drinking and stuff, and getting serious about comedy, which we do, but it's probably really boring to non-comedians. But we talk about what a kind of a holy thing it is to be a comedian, to have the power of naming, you know, being able to name something and then to dispel its power over us. But more important than anything, the way I look at it, and I always bring it up, is to laugh at power, to scorn it. They cannot survive that.

And so we look at it as like, oh, it is a holy calling. In a kind of a working-class way of telling the king or the emperor, “Hey, you're naked as hell, buddy!”

Yeah, well, you—you've pointed out two things there, I think you're really interesting. I had never thought about that relationship between comedy and the power to name.

That's what God grants Adam in the story of Adam and Eve, right? He's supposed to—God, in fact, God brings everything in front of Adam to see what he'll name them. And it's interesting; you naming something actually has that real title alliance with wit.

It's really hard to coin a word or a phrase, right? You have to hit the target dead center before you can come up with a new phrase that will spread. That happens very rarely; that's a real mark of precise aim.

And so, and you're absolutely right—precise aim is so much a part of it.

Yeah, exactly! Yeah! And then the scorn issue—that's also dead relevant.

Well, I think this is partly why you can tell the tyrants because of their attitude towards comedians, is that it's the people who don't want to be unmasked and especially who don't want to be unmasked in relationship to the fact that all their vaunted compassion is nothing but a play for power. They're the ones that detest comedians and have absolutely no sense of humor. That's a very dangerous thing in a person—to have no sense of humor.

And so what does that mean, if you have no sense of humor? Well, they have no sense of watching comedy.

I've always been a comedy fan, and so was my father; he wanted to be a comic too. And I think he made me one, but they—the content of the humor they like because everybody laughs at something eventually, but the content and politics of the humor they like is something that I've studied as a comic for a long time. And it is kind of by class, the way I look at it. It's very much by class, class, and it's also by sex, and you know, it's also by, you know, a few other factors but, you know, in my mind. But these people—they will laugh, but we always say they laugh downward.

They laugh at their less—yeah, they laugh at their, quote, lesser, like less educated, less—oh, I always call it academia. They're less demented, you know?

You know, the riff-raff or whatever.

But sometimes they'll laugh upward, and sometimes they'll laugh laterally, but it's very subdued. But the thing they will never do is laugh at themselves, right?

Right!

And they really despise any humor that puts them as the joke.

You know, I got fired because I made fun of the Obama Administration and their policies in the Middle East, even though they tried to say it was about something else. But that is what my tweet was about that got me fired, and my work of a lifetime stolen; everything they did to me and also misrepresenting what I meant and not allowing me the chance to explain or anything. You know, just deadlining me.

But he is—and those leftists around him—leftists don't have a sense of humor at all, but they definitely don't want to be made fun of at all, and they resent it. They get so angry because, you know, the one thing I always say about fascists—two things: they despise dialogue and humor. You know, conversation and actual dialogue about an idea, they despise that. And any kind of humor that includes any discussion of class or that kind of thing, you know?

And well it might be harder on the Democrats to have working-class humorists go after them because, in principle, they're supposed to be advocates for the working class.

And so if it's working-class humor—which does tend in my experience to be very self-denigrating, right? And I do think that's a real mark of character.

It's one of the things I really like about British humor, and I think Canadian humor's got that edge too. You know, the Brits are very, very good at laughing at themselves. The Monty Python troop was unbelievably good at that because their humor was all unbelievably good, and it made the comedy in some ways timeless too because it wasn't focused exactly on the political, or actually very rarely on the political.

And so it's very strange to see that some of the jokes from the 1970s—many of the skits that the Monty Python troop pulled off in the 1970s—are still funny as hell.

And, you know, I talked to John Cleese at one point and he told me they were planning to do a Broadway revitalization of The Life of Brian. You know, they wanted to cut out the—do you remember there was one section with the little cabal of left-wing radicals that the movie centers around? One of them, I can't remember the comedian, decides that he's a woman about halfway through the movie.

Which is, yeah, yeah, it's very funny. It's ridiculously funny.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so, obviously, in some spectacular way, foreshadowed all this trans nonsense that's been coming down the pipeline. But they were very resistant. The people who were going to produce it were very resistant to continuing to include that in the Broadway revival.

I don't know if that ever did get sorted out because Cleese was not happy about it. But that's also a testament to their satirical brilliance—to have managed something; it's 40 years ago now, that still hits the target, you know, viciously enough to be of concern to the woke dimwits today.

I mean, it's so interesting because in the movie, The Life of Brian, the desire of this character to be a woman is actually treated with a fair bit of—is it dignity?

Well, it is! It's satirical dignity! So there's nothing about it that would offend anyone who had the least iota of sense. Quite the contrary, it's very, very hilarious.

But it is a good example of that inability to laugh—it's worth so long. It's definitely, I watched it recently again, I think after I talked to Cleese. I was curious about it, maybe before, because I wanted to, you know, pop it back up in my mind. But it’s aged very well, I would say. It's probably more relevant today than it was when they released it.

That's fantastic! When comedy does that!

Yeah, well, it zeroes in so tightly on radical leftist nonsense. And you know that was a problem in the '70s, but it was nowhere near as much of a problem in the ‘70s as it is now, so we're in uncharted territory.

We are! We are! They think they have it all nailed down, so it's just so great down here in Austin, which is a blue city. You know, I was nervous to come down here. My daughter and son were with me and a friend. We went to the comedy club. You know, I'd had a few drinks and I was pretty loose. My friends were there, and one of them wanted me to come on stage.

And my daughter, you know, my daughters are liberal, and oh my God. So she goes, “Mama, don’t go on; it's a blue city; they're going to hate you.” And I went, “Ah, I'm going on!" I just was brave enough, whatever. I was in the mood because my friends were there.

Well, so I go on, and it was just fantastic. I think a lot of it's because it's Austin; because it's a different kind of a blue city. But, um, and they're young, but they loved it. I was shocked. My daughter was shocked, and it got me to move here because this—you know, a smart comedy audience is never woke. They're not woke, you know? And they want to be challenged. They want to laugh at ridiculousness, and they want to laugh at themselves, you know?

And they want to hold their beliefs and their ideas up to the light and examine it. They're not cowed into silence like so many of the blue things, just cow into silence because it is so huge. How are you going to fight it? It's so huge; it's everywhere. It's a monolith.

And, you know, they want to dictate everything we think, do, and say. And they think they're justified to do it, and they have no idea that they're fascists—they have no idea!

I've found, in my tours, that the most enthusiastic audiences are in the most liberal cities.

That's what it was. I was shocked!

Yeah, yeah!

Well, I also think, you know, you said that people are censoring themselves and they don't even know it.

So, in the likes of, say, when I've gone to Portland—Portland's a good example because I have very enthusiastic crowds in Portland and large crowds. That's been the case for all the left-wing cities that I've visited—even Berlin. We did a show in Berlin that was in the middle of the Communist District. The Berliners regarded that as a—you know, the real lefties!

I didn't bloody well know that the theater was in the middle of a Communist District. I, you know, essentially, I probably wouldn't have rented it if I would have known that. I'm amazed they rented it to me! We had a fair number of protesters, but the response was very enthusiastic.

And it's a large part of it is just—it's relief on people's part. You know, they don't even know that they're under this weight of continual lying—they think no. And so then they go somewhere where that isn't happening, and it's like “Oh, Freedom!” You know?

And so that's a relief, and that puts everybody in, well, the sort of mood that you're in when you're around people that you can actually talk to and think with.

Well, it's great down here, Joe's Comedy Club, because it's dedicated to freedom of speech. And, you know, for comics so that we can do our best work. Yeah!

And that feeling of freedom is why comics from all over the country are moving here to Austin—to be able to work.

Yeah, yeah! And it's just great because it feels like a comedy renaissance. You know, exactly!

We can't challenge ourselves more, and there had been such a long time where, you know, the world of comedy premises was decreasing, decreasing, getting tighter and tighter because there's just so many things that you couldn't say or you'd be attacked and run out of town. You know?

But uh, this is just a real free and freeing feeling, and it's just wonderful to look out and see people of all shapes, colors, sizes, ages laughing together at just the ridiculous absurdity of it all. It feels like a revolution—like we've always dreamed of a revolution for free thoughts, free ideas, free people.

It's just wonderful. When I go on stage there, I always say, I always thank Joe for, you know, creating the place for comics to have free speech. And then I say my goal is to get 86 the hell out of here, you know, to go so far. You know, because, you know, comics, we like to get in trouble!

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Today, well, the thing is, the funniest things you can possibly say are right on the ragged edge of disaster, right? You want to push it—right?

Yeah, absolutely! You want to push it right to the point of no return. And if you can dangle there, that's hilarious. You want people to be thinking, “I can't bloody well believe she said that!” And it was so perfect, right?

Now, if you go too far, well then it's trashy or genuinely offensive or cheap. But it's a very, very, very delicate line to walk. I always get the crazy thing, “She's crazy!”

Well, I've said for my whole career, you know, that mental health issues—so it is kind of funny that they—it's kind of like they're saying she has so many mental health issues that she's completely mentally health challenged.

Well, yeah! That's why I'm a comic!

Yeah, well the thing is about—pure crazy isn't funny; it's just sad. I've been to comedy shows where the people—and these are usually, you know, very early career comedy shows, let's say—where people come on stage and really do nothing but confess their sins, let's say sexual and otherwise, and that is not funny, that's just sad!

And so, anything that I don't think, anything that's funny, is ever reflective of mental illness. I don't think those two things go together at all! I mean, you can say crazy things. No, if it's funny, it's sane!

And it doesn't really matter, you know? And the thing about comedy too that's so interesting is that it operates at this profoundly unconscious level. You know, one of the things I noticed about having little kids is that even before they could speak, they had really good senses of humor that was associated with play.

And so comedy, humor is so deep that it's there before words. So that's really something. And then everyone laughs in an audience before they think, right?

If you have to—so what makes comedy reflective of you—well, you said it was holy in some sense, and it is because you're talking directly to someone before their filters are up.

And no, if you laugh, the laugh catches you. It's not something you do; it's something that happens to you. And so that can't—if it's faked or forced, you can tell because the laughter isn't genuine; it's also not any fun!

It's so interesting; it's such a mystery. I've never been able to figure out how it is that something as sophisticated as a sense of humor can develop, say, before even language.

And it's definitely something that bonds people together, right? Because one of the ways that you bond with your little kids is with jokes and games. And even peekaboo is a joke—it's, “I’m gone, I’m here!” Babies will laugh like mad about that.

They laugh with repetition; that's disrupted in a surprising way. It's very, very interesting.

Well, one of the great joys—I have ten grandkids, so one of the great joys is, you know, trying to see how young you can get them to laugh, me! I mean, I just love to see where is it? Where do they find the funny?

I love to watch where is someone finding the funny.

Yeah, no kidding! It seems like universal that you find it in the, you know, reflexive bodily issues, like farting and stuff like that. Our bell—kids love that!

I'm a huge star to my grandkids in the comedy department for all that kind of thing. But, you know, something I really enjoyed about having little kids is because I kept that sort of tradition that I grew up in of competitive comedy alive in the house. And so I was always—oh, it was so fun!

And my kids both have great senses of humor, like I don't think my daughter Michaela—I don't think she ever says anything that isn't a joke!

And that's where she's most comfortable. I mean, it took my—took my wife quite a while to realize this. She probably only said this to me about ten years ago.

She came up to me and she said, “You know, I think everything Michaela says is a joke.”

And I thought, “Yeah, that's exactly right, I'm glad that you got that.”

And so, and because there's always an edge to it, you know. And it's a challenge too in some ways when you speak and play like that because the challenge is to see if the people that you're interacting with can—well, can tolerate that and can understand and appreciate it.

It's a lovely thing to be able to speak about serious things with that comedic edge. I mean, that's a real art, man—to transmute suffering into joy, that's for sure!

I said that last night! It's so funny; they wanted me to come down because they were having an open mic night, and they had a young woman and she has a disease—I can't remember the name—but she's in a wheelchair doing comedy. It's like a MS kind of a design?

Yeah, yeah! And she's a beautiful girl, young student, and she did just a great set. She did just a few minutes, but so I'm kind of like the comedy grandma, and I—you know, they all roast the people. But I don't want to do that because I said, “Oh, I'm just—I’m too famous and rich and good-looking to do that,” you know?

So I have to do the grandma thing, plus I love to mentor the young ones, and so I said to her, you know, “You are so lovely, and people really love you. They love your comedy because you have the essence of comedy in you. We all see that you have reached down into that pool of pain that you obviously have lived through in your life and brought out beauty and joy, and that is what people—that's the essence of comedy! And you are going to be a huge star!”

Yeah, yeah!

Well, one of the things I noticed—like my daughter was extremely ill when she was a kid. She had terrible juvenile arthritis, and she had her hip replaced when she was 16 and her ankle replaced when she was 17. It was really bad.

She was in, like, excruciating pain for about 15 years, which is really quite a long time. And she has talked about that publicly, and I've been at some of the events—they haven't been taped—some of the events where she spoke about what happened to her, and she's able to make her stories of that period of time often screamingly funny!

And that's actually a real indication of recovery!

Right!

It isn't that you can just talk about it without emotion; it's that you can—what? Would you say it’s the absurdity?

I guess it's the absurdity, but that is—that's a real art form to be able to take those excruciating moments and to make them into something that's shareable and that enables everybody to rise above the pain at the same time.

And, you know, trying to think of the word—oh, it used to be medieval where you would—where they would talk about transforming tin into gold.

Alchemy!

Yes, that's what it is! Alchemy!

And watch—you know, you were talking about laughter before—and for comics, well, we love to get people to where they can't stop laughing. They want to not laugh!

And the other thing is, you know, when you were in school and you weren't supposed to laugh, but something made you laugh—that's the best thing to watch from the stage!

When you see people going through that, and then you just push on until people—we always say like when the head goes back and there's an intake of breath—that's when you're healing! Because you actually are killing them in a way, but it's a good kind of kill!

You know when I used to go work out with a couple of friends of mine in Boston. And one of the games we would play was to tell a joke when people were bench pressing because, well, when you laugh, you lose all your muscular force.

And that's really interesting too!

Because it—and I've been trying to figure that out as a psychologist! It's like obviously laughter is associated with play, and play is the opposite of power and aggression. Play is truly the opposite of power.

That took me like four decades to figure out—that play is the antithesis of power!

And it's so interesting then when people laugh—they go, “Yeah!” It's a very good thing to know, you know, especially in your relationships because if you're playing with your children or you're playing with your wife, then you know that you're not being a tyrant!

And you can do almost anything in a spirit of play. I mean, it's hard when you're suffering, that's for sure. It's hard to transmute real pain into play.

But if you're doing anything perfectly, you're doing it in play! And it's so interesting to see that when you make people laugh, they lose all their muscular force! You know?

They collapse into laughter, they dissolve into laughter, and it takes them over!

And so I—and they do that; they do that, you know? Sometimes if we're getting real spiritual with it, and we say it's that universal ha—it's the expression of, you know, the ha—you know, because when you're a meditator, you know, it's the—you know, inhale and the exhale.

So it's like the exhale and the letting go of, you know, secrets almost!

Yeah! Right! Ghosts and devils!

Right! Right! It's really powerful!

And you know, well, it's interesting to have people do that communally too. Because what that means—this is something that's profound too, and it is something that Joe Rogan is managing to foster this again in Austin.

Because it also takes a lot of trust to laugh jointly at a joke, right? Because especially if the joke is off-key or pushing the limits, the fact that you'll laugh with others means that a situation of trust is being established in the room, right?

And I’ve spent some time thinking about trust. I actually think that the only true natural resource is trust. That if people trust each other, they can make the desert bloom. You know, that’s—

Yeah, yeah! It’s definitely the case!

And comedy is an endeavor that's predicated on a tremendous amount of trust, right? Because the audience has to trust the comedian, and the comedian has to trust the audience.

I mean, one of the things I've learned to do—you tell me what you think about this for you—before I go out on stage, I always remind myself that the people that are in the audience—this might be easier for me; I think it's more true for my audience for a variety of reasons—they're on my side! And as long as I'm grateful that they're there and I'm communicating honestly, everybody is aiming at the same thing.

Now, I know in a comedy situation it's more complex because there's going to be cynics in the audience, you know, more. But like, what's your attitude to your audience? Do you think—like, how do you conceive of your audience and how did you learn that?

Well, you know, I've been a comic for almost 40 years. So you learn it by trial and error and by going in front of different kinds of audiences and trying the same thing to see how it will work in front of this specific group, until it works everywhere.

So you know, it's trial and error, but it's so many other things. Like, you know that you could tell a joke, and if you don't do the right rhythm of the joke or have the right inflection, it won't work. So it's like so many things that are combined in it.

But I think what I've learned is when the audience knows or trusts that you are having fun and that you're enjoying it and that you have gratitude that they've come there to see you and they love you, and then you can't help but love them back. You know, I mean already, you love them because they're your fans, and they keep you alive.

And there is a tethering between me and my fans, and I suppose every other comic might have that same view. I don't know, but it's a tethering to reality and to the best in humankind. They want—they want, you know how Virginia Woolf said, “The job of the writer is to put the severed parts together.”

Right, I think she wrote that in Three Guineas, but one of my favorite books. But anyway, I always think of comedy like that because we're putting the severed parts together that other people may not see.

And that's mostly what we do—things that seem disparate ideas, but then when you really look at them under a microscope, they're very connected. And people are like, “Oh yeah, right, right, right, that’s an insight!”

Yeah, yeah, that drawing of connection, yeah!

And once you do that, they appreciate that it's, well thought out. And then they're kind of like, “Well, I thought that way too!” There's that, too!

I think that way too, but I couldn't say that way or it didn't occur to me in that way, but you gave words to something that was vague and spinning around in my head. You gave me the building blocks for that.

So, you know, a lot of love—it's just really a lot of love! And, you know, just such a great positive energy thing to be able to affect that and to watch it.

People don't—people don't often, I know, don't hear them talk a lot about being on stage. I mean, we talk about some stuff, like you know, doing a great set or killing or, you know, having a good one or bombing or whatever, but don't talk about that relationship that you're building—that beautiful relationship.

It is so spiritual to watch people get it, to be the person in the arena; that's fun!

Yeah! Yeah, that’s so fun!

Well, so my tour manager was a stand-up comedian for a long time, John O'Connell. And he toured with stand-up comedians professionally, as well as a manager. And there's a lot of similarity between what I do and what stand-up comedians do.

And one of the similarities that I've really started to understand is I've talked to a variety of comedians—Jimmy Carr really helped me think this through because he's thought a lot about what he does and is able to articulate it well. You know, Carr said that—and I know many comedians do this and maybe you do this—when you're preparing a set, is that you know, he'll go, when he's preparing new material, he goes to smaller clubs and tries out his new material, and some of the jokes land and others don't, and he just collects the jokes that land.

And so, I thought that was so interesting because stand-up comedy looks like it's a monologue, but it's got that dialogue element in the initial practice. Because, like he helped me understand that you could be a comedian by telling a lot of jokes and seeing which ones people laughed at, and then just collecting those.

And you don't need much of a hit rate, right? If you need to generate 90 minutes' worth of material, and you have five hours of jokes, you can just get rid of the 80% that aren't any good. The audience will tell you what's funny.

And one of the things I love about the lectures that I do—which are spontaneous—so I'm always watching people, you know, in the audience. I'm always talking to someone, and I want to see them. I want to see their eyes light up; I want to see them be struck by something, right?

I want to give words to something they already know but can't say. And people have told me that a lot—that they like my lectures because I say things they know to be true but haven't been able to articulate.

And certainly comedians do that well! They do that all the time, and it is great because often if I can make a point that has that characteristic but is also funny, I mean, that's a real blast!

If you can manage to pull that off, it's a real blast too. And when you're writing your set, you know, because I do 90 minutes, but you do it in groups. You know, you do your jokes in groups to build on an idea that culminates. You know, it's like little groups—probably five to seven minutes, and you start at one premise with a joke.

And then the next joke is kind of built on that previous premise and it goes a little bit deeper, and then the next joke goes deeper, and then by the fifth part of the bit, you've blown up the whole premise and showed that it was all along.

That's what I like to do! It's like to turn everything on its head, from its head.

I can't really explain it, but that's my favorite part because it's like, “Oh, we thought she was going to go left, but she went right!” I mean, I'm not talking politically. We thought she was going here, but the whole time she was taking us here.

I love that misdirection stuff because that gets the biggest laughs because they thought they were getting set up for something completely different.

I like to remove their expectations where they go, “Oh, yeah, I've heard this before.” You know, I come in and go—and, you know, by virtue of the fact that I've always been one of few women in comedy, that’s been a plus for me.

You mentioned earlier that you have thought through comedy from the perspective of, I think you said age and sex and what else? But, and so talk a little bit more about being a female in the comedy industry because most comedians are men.

Like, my experience has been that truly comical female stand-up comedians are very rare.

It's too hard! It's so hard! But you know, one thing I found out—probably because I have five kids, you know, that's one of my good jokes—I say, “You know, I have five children; I used to be kind of pro-life!”

That's a good joke!

Yeah, that's a good joke! But my friends are all comics, but you know, all these guys, I always ask people because I'm a nosy, nosy old Jewish woman. And so I'll ask, and they always have a funny mom.

So much part of it!

Oh yeah, you know, so they—that’s interesting!

You know what? My mother, my mother just died—she died this week—and one of the great memories I have of my mother is—and this is something I always knew about her—is I could always make her laugh.

And so that was a big basis of our relationship. I could always make Mom laugh by teasing her. In fact, I think the last thing I said to her when she was in the hospital, I was giving her hell about being in the hospital because my father was ill, and so we were worried about him, and then she ended up in the hospital, and I gave her a rough time. You know that made her laugh.

And so that's interesting, and I didn't—I didn't—I haven't heard anyone say that that relationship of comedy with mother is so particularly important, but that was definitely the case in my household.

It was my mom that I could really make laugh.

I wonder why that is, exactly, form of—it's obviously a form of play, but I wonder why it would be sex-linked like that!

Well, I want to hear more about your experiences as a female comedian. Hard life on the road?

So that's part of the—I didn't go on the road too much until I was older. I didn't come up like a normal comedian because I had so many kids. But I did go on tour for 18 weeks with Julio Iglesias as his opening act.

That was the beginning of my bigger career.

And yeah, that was so difficult! Oh my God, it was so hard to live through that! But when I started comedy, it was 1980, and they didn't like women. They didn't, you know, nobody liked women too much then. If they do now, I don’t think they do.

But anyway, they really didn't like funny women, and they didn't like women's comedy. They didn't like women's anything to do with it because it was so all about men. You know, it was all men, and it was very fraternal and very collegiate.

And I was not any of those things, but they didn't like me. And that was like the first time I got deplatformed or whatever we're calling it—censored. They didn't like me!

And so they refused to let me work there at the comedy club in Denver. But I wanted to do it, and so I had to go to these alternative places to do comedy. Like, I would go to punk clubs, and I'd end up in mosh pits with no microphone doing comedy!

That's why my voice is so loud, because I learned that there—just telling jokes in a mosh pit. I mean, I can't believe it sometimes, but I mean, I learned so much!

I'd go to biker bars, I'd go to jazz clubs, I'd go to a Unitarian Church, lesbian lunches, and you know—20 people and small groups—and it made me way better! It made me fearless! It made me more determined! It made me better!

Because it made me fearless! And, you know, fighting to keep my head above water until finally some male comics from LA came and they saw me. And they went to the club that had censored me and said, “You really should let that girl”—that's what they called me—“you should let that girl on; she's really funny.”

And they pressured the club to let me back in, and so they did! Because I had these really strong male comics who were well-known who were traveling through Colorado and who advocated for me.

So had I not had that, I don't know what would have happened, but they kind of treated me like a nice sister. You know, they were very brotherly to me.

And once that happened, I kind of took off, and that was only a matter of about four years. Then I went to Hollywood, and I had one of those overnight things that happened. I was there one night and I got all these breaks and ended up on The Tonight Show!

And my first time on The Tonight Show, Julio Iglesias was a guest and picked me to go on tour with him, and I got my TV show from that. So it was really a matter of one night.

So why did Iglesias decide that a comedy show was a good way to open his—his—

Well, everybody had a comic opening for him back then, and you know, I was doing housewife jokes and his fans were women, and he thought it would be a good idea.

And it was! It was a blast!

Oh my gosh, it was so fun! I had not ever really been in front of big crowds before because I had just been in Denver. But like to play the Astrodome in front of 50,000 people as just, you know, a stand-up comic, it was just overwhelming and fantastic to stand there on stage in front of that many people and hear the laughter coming down off the walls like it’s raining down from heaven.

It was just wonderful! And we did that all through the United States, and so that made me more efficient as a comic, you know, and more excited.

And more efficient? What do you mean by more efficient?

Oh, oh, to be able to—as Mitzi Shore called it, who’s the mother of all of us stand-up comics, really, from The Comedy Store in LA—she would always say, “Your job is to deliver the mail.” You were up there for two minutes and you didn’t deliver the mail! You were fering and humming and you weren’t delivering the mail!

I say that, you know, and so the efficiency of setup, punchline, next! You know, just the efficient rhythm of no fat, no long premise with extra words—no! Right?

To edit, to go, and you know, I had famous comic friends who—I befriended and mentored me. Like, you know, I met Rodney Dangerfield, and he chose me to play his wife. He never had done that!

Oh yeah!

And you know, Bob Hope even, and Phyllis Diller and Dick Gregory, Richard Pryor—all these people I could name that I love so much would sit around and speak with me about comedy.

And they taught me about removing the fat—even an extra word is making you less efficient because you want to say the least amount of words and the perfect amount of rhythm with the right inflection and expression.

And you know, that's a lot of stuff—plates—it’s like that guy spinning in the air, and then boom! You gotta come in at the right time!

They might be laughing really hard for a long time, and that screws up your punchline, and so you kind of get mad. Like, “Shut up! I'm trying to deliver the punchline!”

And you're laughing, but then you go, “Hey, they’re supposed to—that’s what you're here for!” You know? So you have to figure out how am I going to navigate this to get the best punchline because I know it's a good punchline and I want a huge laugh!

I don't just, you know—because I monitor the laughs! We all do! Like, “Oh, I'm only getting a six when it should have been an eight!” You know?

You're just—the thing about my boyfriend is a musician too. We always talk about music, and comedy is just a great way of being in the now.

You're so in the now! You know? You're not thinking about yesterday, tomorrow, nothing! Even a minute ago, you just have to be in the now to deliver the mail! You know?

Deliver, right—the punch.

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[Music]

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Yeah, well, so you're touching there on a lot of motifs with regard to the sacredness, let's say, of comedy as well. It's like you have to separate the wheat from the chaff. So you have to be efficient!

I loved Mitch Hedberg for that reason because he could just deliver like—God! Amazing! Amazing ability to just deliver non-stop short jokes and often so perfect!

So, and then you talked about plate spinning. One of the things I really find fun about lecturing, and I think this is one of the things that makes my lectures akin to a comedic act, is that I like to bring five or six stories that I haven't told together and then to see if I can weave them so that right near the end of the lecture, they all come together and make the same point.

And we call that a callback!

So that, you know, when you build the story and then you get to where you're reminding them that you were talking about that before and you know, make the relationship come together! Those are the most fun!

When a callback will occur to you and you—because you will get the biggest laugh and applause on callbacks!

It's the most fun thing that—you just feel like it's a gift from God! And I like—I do feel like so much of it is a God thing!

You know, because I always tell people when we're getting real spiritual with stuff, I'm like, “Well, God wrote me some great jokes today!” Because, you know, they do come in like that!

I will, you know, I’ll be sitting there writing, writing, writing, and it's just crap, you know? Three pages of crap! And there's a certain, a feeling—physically, a feeling of suspended animation!

It's what it feels like! And the top of my head actually opens in some way, and God inserts an idea in there, and it’s my best jokes! I don’t—it doesn't feel like I'm doing it because it just is a whole other thing!

That's like when you're in the wave, you're in the channel, you're in the groove!

Yeah!

Like a lot of musicians say—yeah! When they're playing jazz musicians, you know, it's just the phrase comes in!

But God puts these—he'll just lay these jokes in there, and that's why I always say God’s the funniest comic of all! Because look what He does in the world! It's all hilarious!

His sense of relationship and the way people live that they don't see it is the funniest thing in the world to me—how funny He is!

Like, I'm trying to think of how to illustrate that. It'll come to me, but it's not right now! But I get my best jokes just—they just—it’s like a download!

Well, it's interesting though, too, because you said that that often happens when you've written, you know, three pages of second-rate material.

To get those moments, you have to put in that counterproductive work to—I mean, when I was finishing up my last book, which was only a week ago, like I was cutting whole chapters that took me a whole month to write! It's like—but it doesn't matter, right?

Because the fundamental issue is that you conserve that wheat and you get rid of the chaff! And the more that you get rid of that second-rate, the better you have—the better what's left over is!

And you know, the other thing that's kind of sacred about the comedic act is that—you said that you're in the moment—is that you really have to pay attention to the audience and not be afraid of them because then you can feel where everyone is!

Like you're having a conversation with someone! Because you are when you're on stage—even if it's a monologue, the audience has to be along for the ride.

And that's where you—you can capitalize on timing! It's something I'm not great at—I can't really tell jokes!

I can be funny on stage, but it has to be spontaneous! I've never really learned the art of telling a joke that I already knew!

It's a skill that I've managed to develop, but I can see the connection with the comedic world by watching comedians pay attention to the audience. And because timing is everything!

Right? You have to be, you know, when you get real meta with it, it's like, well, you're kind of in the past, the present, and the future all in the same now, right?

Because you have to think about how am I going to follow this up. Especially in my shows, they like to heckle me in a friendly way or just start talking for some reason!

And, you know, I love it too! And for some reason, that's when I really love it because I love when my brain is working on three or four channels at once!

All comics love that because it's like, “I was so sharp!” And, you know, you're telling your friends, “I was on it! I, you know, I did—you know?”

We're bragging to each other, you know, or explaining to each other.

But yeah, you're—it's a heightened awareness thing! And I don't know, you're just—if you're funny in life, you're even funnier on stage!

Because you've got the stress and the pressure of, “I better be good!” You know, and it propels you!

But how did you cope—and did you cope—with jokes that don't work? I mean, part of the reason I think I've had a hard time telling jokes on stage is because I get self-conscious if halfway through the joke I get self-conscious!

That's really the problem, you know? And then of course it doesn't work because I screw up the timing!

But there are few things more awkward than making a joke that isn't funny! And you said you played in some pretty rough places, and obviously, you exposed yourself to enough of that to—but I'm curious about why you were able to tolerate that to begin with!

Because it's actually pretty painful to tell a joke that doesn't work, especially if you know it's funny and you just screwed it up.

So how—what do you think it was that impelled you to get through those bouts of self-consciousness that you know paralyze most people to the point where they won't—you know, people are terrified of public speaking, much less doing stand-up comedy!

So how—why—how did you persevere through that?

Yeah, I wonder that myself sometimes! But I think it's because it was such a—self—it was such a survival mechanism in my family and my childhood.

And it was a self-defense mechanism for me to survive a lot of crazy and painful things and it in a way—I talk, I'm friends with Mike Tyson, you know?

And it's a lot like boxing; I always talk about—we always compare when we talked about it. It’s so much jousting, it's mental jousting to be on stage and to stay in control of one woman, you know, with no props, with no orchestra!

Yeah, yeah, with no video! Just stay in control of a, you know, 5,000-seat room just with your voice!

Because it's a lot of mental jousting! And well, they're not going to defeat me, not after what I went through as a kid!

I'm not going to let them defeat me because I can't be defeated! Right? So that's an attitude of challenge rather than fear.

Yeah, it's like, “No!” They're not—you know, it's like I always feel somehow it's a God thing to me.

And it's like, “The devil ain't getting me; I'll take the devil down.” That's why I'm on stage!

And he isn't going to get me! And so that's what I do! And when I screw up, then I just, you know, feel bad and embarrassed.

But I go home, and I go, “You know, I'm going to make it better!” I never feel defeated! I don't allow myself to feel defeated because comedy is a living thing!

And you can always get better! You can—nobody can stop you from getting better!

You can always—

Right, right, right!

And I'm not going to let them stop me! I'm going to just keep getting better no matter what they tried to do to stop me!

They're not going to—until I have my last breath, I'm going to be saying, “F*** you!” because that's how I feel! You know?

They're not going to stop me unless they gag me. I mean, there are things they can do to me, I guess— they’ve done enough.

But you know, I respect and I respect and believe in and live for the truth! And comedy is truth!

And you know, you're trying to tell the truth to people to make the world better. You're—you're not trying to make light of people's suffering; you're trying to get at power and bring it down.

And make it so it feels like—I'm—I guess I feel like a, you know, a warrior—a word warrior!

And you know, for me, it's also like for all the people who were told to shut up, I'm— they’re there with me too! You know, I see it so deeply like that because, you know, geez, it is like that!

Well, it is! Well, I especially think that's especially the case if you're a comedian who's popular among the working class, you know?

Because working-class people—the sensible ones—and I think most working-class people over about 40 are pretty damn sensible! That doesn’t necessarily mean they're particularly articulate, you know?

And people can be wise without being articulate! And then if you're a working-class comedian, then you have the privilege of articulating that! And that is a big deal!

And it is something that's going to make people love you because people like to have the words at hand to say what they know to be true!

And it is a very peculiar thing! On my show, I've probably written 120,000 jokes!

Wow!

And part of the joy of it is—when I was on my TV show was—I would think, “Oh, here's something that some fat lady or some fat guy is going to say at the water fountain at work!”

Right!

So it's like arming people who may have suffered or felt marginalized, “Here’s a little bit of something for you!”

You know? Because when I watched comedians as a kid with my dad on Ed Sullivan, and here, Richard Pryor—people, man, I felt like I was being gifted!

Especially Pryor! But you know all of them, really! But I loved Richard Pryor. He was my idol and became a friend, which was a wonderful part of being a comic.

But you know, to get—I got what he was doing as just a little tiny girl. I saw the implication of everything he was doing.

I knew he had gone— I knew that he was insiding a stereotype kicking down the walls from the inside. I knew that! And I said, “I can do that!”

My friend Michael Malice—I don't know if you know who he is.

Oh, yeah!

Yeah, I know Michael; he's a—yeah, he's very funny! He's very funny.

And he told me, he goes, “God, with you, it's pathological!” He always tells me, “Your funny is pathological! You can't turn it off!”

You know? Or like in private, and you know, it is pathological. But, you know, when I'm in the mood for it!

But and I'm a crusader, and a lot of us are, you know? Richard was.

Well, tell—tell me a bit more about Roseanne and how that started up, and why it was you think—

Yeah, yeah, yeah!

Tell me about the show and why it was that it turned into such a smash hit! What do you think you did right?

I mean, first of all, it was very unlikely, right? You said you had these weird coincidences happen to you when you went off to Hollywood, and it all came together pretty quickly.

So how did you—like, what did you say yes to? And why did you make it work? How did you make it work?

Oh my gosh, that was really—you know, I have the story I tell normal people, you know, and the normal press people—I always wanted to be a comedian!

And so I started at age 28 to tell jokes! But the real thing is when I was little and we watched TV and see like Father Knows Best and all these shows.

I'd look around and go, “Hell, this is nothing like my family! Nobody has diabetes, and none of the men are fat and covered in hair!”

You know? It was nothing! I go, “This is nothing like anything I've ever seen! Where are these people? They're not screaming! They don't eat with their mouth open!”

You know, and I had it in my head since a young age: “Boy, I want to get on TV and have my show, and I want to do the Roseanne show where I show people that I know.”

And TV—how come there's nobody like our family on TV? But we did have The Honeymooners, I remember, right?

I loved—and I also idolized Jackie Gleason, and I loved The Honeymooners so much that was a real working-class miracle!

That show still—that one stood up over time, over a century! It's still brilliant!

And just like a bare set and human dialogue—that guy was so great! Charlie Chaplin—I loved all these things!

You know who I really love? Mr. Bean! That guy doesn't even need language! He's so great!

But um, you had the fantasy, someday I'm going to get on there and show a family of fat people that fight! And it was always in my head, and I wanted to show another less perfect thing.

And it was always in my head! Um, and so after the Julio Iglesias tour, Hollywood came knocking to do a show, and so I said yes, I'd like to do that!

And I don't know—I thought it was going to be a lot easier than it was once I signed up and got into it. Like so many people say, especially comedians, and then you see how the works—how the sausage is made!

Yeah, how the sausage is made!

It's like, “What have I done? Right? Have I got myself into?” And just trying to keep your head above water where they're trying to drag your feet down!

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Well, it's a production mill!

I mean, it's a funny thing for a comedian to do a sitcom because those aren't the same thing! They're really not the same thing!

And you could see very funny people become less and less funny as their sitcoms progress—partly because I think they just get exhausted!

It's like, well, you—there's only so many golden eggs the goose can lay and then there's so many people that you have to please, too!

Whereas when you're on the stage, well, you have to please yourself and your audience, but there isn't that group of 40 people—even if they're on your side!

I don't know how—it's got to be very difficult to do comedy collaboratively!

So yeah, I—I tried it, and I worked out a system that kind of followed along with being a mom.

You know, I'll have the final word; you guys can play— you can put in things, but I'll have the final word! And because I could write a joke!

You know, I could overwrite—they didn't want to say they had shitty jokes, but a lot of times they did, and I just snapped it in because I have pathological joke-writing ability, and I cannot not do it!

I cannot not correct a joke!

That's right, right? I can understand that!

Yeah, yeah! And so that was just part of just the whole dismal of what I did!

And well, that's a sign of expertise, you know, when great chess—there are as many chess possibilities in a single chess game as there are atoms in the observable universe!

And so it's very—yeah, so there's a lot, but an expert chess player can look at a board and know what to do like it's a gestalt!

And that expertise you're talking about with regards to jokes—that really is the sign of being an expert!

You see the patterns! And if you see them, it's like seeing an obstacle in front of your path or something like that!

You can't not see it!

And you said you wrote 120,000 jokes—how many of them do you think were funny?

What percentage do you think were funny—like truly funny?

Um, all—I'm talking about on my show and the jokes I've told over the years.

Oh, I probably have like six hours of jokes that I've told as a stand-up comic! And then the show—what was it, three or four—twenty to thirty episodes a year? It's a lot of jokes, that's for sure!

And they didn’t get on the show unless they were funny.

You know how many jokes do you think you wrote that didn’t make the cut? Because I'm trying to get at how much work you had to do to get that expertise!

Right, right—10,000 that sucked! But I keep tinkering on them!

And sometimes just putting the word “and” in there would make them work, you know? Like I said, there are so many levels of it. Sometimes just moving words around or saying it with a different inflection would make it work.

So it's just like a tinkering—a craft!

It is a craft, you know, to craft those ideas into a sellable joke that you can deliver.

There's so much to it! I mean, I can't even—it'd probably be a real bore to sit and talk about that with people who weren't really—

Well, it's interesting to try to figure out why really pointed communication works! I mean, there isn't any more pointed communication than jokes!

Absolutely, man! You gotta be right on the money!

And so it's definitely worth some analysis because it's hard to get it right!

And it's so perfect when it is right!

Just think, you know, one of the things that we've been dancing around here is the notion that the truth—truth stated most perfectly is comedic!

And isn't that amazing that what you get with the right kind of truth at the right moment is like a burst of pleasure, a release of tension?

That's so amazing! And you—you gotta kind of wonder, as a consequence of that, just how far you could push that, you know?

We talked about the fact that if you do things right, there's an intense play in that!

And I truly believe that if you are the master of the moment, you'd be playing all the time!

That's a hell!

Yeah, right!

Right!

That's a good thing!

My wife and I have been practicing that very hard! She had a boat of—we both had bouts of de-fatal illnesses a couple of years ago!

We had a pretty good relationship before that, but it's better now because I think we both take less for granted!

Maybe that's part of it! It put a new seriousness into our relationship, but we're trying to bring that spirit of play to every moment.

And man, you know, if you make that a game and an aim, then you get better at it!

And that's—there isn’t anything that's more fun than that!

Now, I was just thinking when I ran—I ran for president in 2012 on the Peace and Freedom Party, which my idol Dick Gregory also ran on that party as a presidential candidate in the '60s.

And they say they say had votes really been tabulated correctly, he might have actually won! But, you know, considering the fact that he wasn't on every state ballot, but that always intrigued me, so I wanted to do the same!

And because we agreed on so many things!

It's deep thought, deep political thought goes into comedy too!

But when I ran my speech, I said, “I'm the only serious comedian in the race!”

Yeah, right! Because these other guys are just jokers! But I’m a serious comedian!

And so, you know, I did it in a humorous way, but, you know, I said, “They just go for the laugh!” Because that's a lot of comics too, you know—just going for a, you know, a cheap laugh!

The cheap laugh!

Yeah, I guess the cheap laugh is one that's not connected to anything else.

Hey, see you—you know, you pointed out that in a good comedy set you're weaving things together, and the more complex humor is going to have a story associated with it!

There’s going to be interweaving across the set. I mean, some comics do more of that than others.

But like, that brilliant—yeah, right?

Yeah, he's a really good example of that; he's a real storyteller!

Bill Cosby was really good at that too!

I know it's illegal to say his name, but God, he was funny!

He’s another idol!

Another idol!

Well, I saw him in Edmonton in the mid-'70s, I think—long, long time ago!

And you know, he came out on the stage with just a stool and a cigar, and he had people laughing so hard in the audience that they were literally hyperventilating!

It was amazing things to watch, and he was a real storyteller!

And it was an amazing thing to watch his mastery of the stage! Such a catastrophe when things blew up, when he blew things up around him!

That was such a drag because on the surface, he had done so much good and he was so funny!

I mean, he was—he was crazy; he was a crazy master of the stage!

Well, you know, it’s like, there’s—they say there's such a thin line between, you know—madness and talent!

You know, he's the textbook example.

Yeah, yeah! His shadow got the best of him!

Right! So many comics have the same, you know, problems with, you know, their outlets, and how they don't have a lot of self-control!

There, but on stage, it's a master!

Yup!

Hey, so now you're spending a fair bit of time—we talked a little bit briefly just before the podcast started—you’re spending a fair bit of time in Austin, and you're going to be doing shows at Joe’s, at Rogan’s Comedy Club?

The mother—no, I’m doing it at another place called Cap City Comedy Club, and I'm going to be there in Austin June 17, 18, and 19!

How big a venue is that?

I think it's pretty small—maybe 300 seats! But it's a good place to like, uh, work it, you know?

And, you know, it always takes about a year to get a whole new hour, right? Right?

So—and then you have to tool it, and so it's at the point to take it to an audience, and I'm kind of excited about it!

I haven't done a 90-minute show in Austin yet, so I do look forward!

Yeah, okay, now you did say that you had performed at Rogan's comedy club, though—

Yeah, I was there, but we only do like 15–20 minutes!

Oh, I see!

So you're developing a whole—

Uh-huh, uh-huh!

And when was the last time you did that?

Oh my gosh, I think, well, I guess it was about a year and a half, huh, when I did!

So what—now you're working on Mr. Burum! What—like, do you have—what are your plans for your future? I mean, you’ve had a bumpy ride with all the cancellations!

Yeah, yeah! I'm doing a podcast on—you know I guess it's where everybody is doing podcasts, YouTube, um, Rumble, Apple, you know, it's called the Roseanne Barr Podcast, which I'm really getting into.

I’ve done 49 of them now! Oh yeah, and I'm just loving that—conversations with intelligent people and fighting the good fight—trying to wake people up, trying to say the things that aren't—that are like missing.

I like to go to the places that are not really being talked about!

And how are you picking your guests?

I pick them by, well, mostly it's people who call and want to be on because a lot of people are calling and wanting to be on!

Flattering!

And I'm like, “Yeah, I'd love to interview!” I just had Tulsi Gabbard on, and that was a fantastic interview because she's a tough cookie!

Yeah! We both are from Hawaii! I also live in Hawaii part of the year! And to be able to talk about Hawaii and how it creates a different kind of culture and a person with a different sort of point of view than the mainland!

We got to talk about that and then talk about politics, of course! You know, I’m a huge Trump supporter!

And, you know, I like to talk about that and what that means to me! It means, um, populism!

And the Awakening of populism, which I