🎙️ Listen to this episode:
Featured: Pete Davidson, Chris Rock, John Mulaney, Stav Stathis, Steve Carell, Mel Brooks, Don Adams
What’s in This Episode
- Pete Davidson reflects on 9/11 anniversary 25 years after father’s death as a new father
- John Mulaney rumored to star in Get Smart reboot
- Chris Rock Variety cover story on new direction as writer-director
- Chris Rock addresses Oscar hosting future and the slap incident
- Stav Stathis new Netflix special review
Questions Answered in This Episode
Why is today significant for Pete Davidson?
Today marks 25 years since his father, NYC firefighter Scott Davidson, was killed in the 9/11 attacks at the World Trade Center. Pete is now 33 years old with his own daughter named Scotty, making this year especially meaningful and difficult.
What did Chris Rock say about hosting the Oscars again?
Rock said he would only return to host if he were nominated, and he doesn’t expect that to happen. He believes his time as host may have passed and expressed that his recent bad day isn’t as important as bigger issues in the world.
Is John Mulaney really going to be in a Get Smart reboot?
According to this episode, there is a rumor that John Mulaney might star in a Get Smart reboot, though Johnny Mac expresses uncertainty about whether this is confirmed or just speculation.
What is Chris Rock doing besides comedy now?
Chris Rock is transitioning to being a writer-director and is directing a film called ‘Misty Green’ that will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. He says he’s moved on from his previous identity as a stand-up comedian.
What did Chris Rock say about working out controversial material in comedy clubs?
Rock explained that comedy clubs are meant for workshopping material, even controversial content, and that you have to ‘go over the line to find the line.’ He criticized the backlash comedians receive for testing edgy material during the creative process.
What was Johnny Mac’s take on Stav’s new special?
Johnny Mac found it nice company and worth watching, though he found the excessive cursing in the first 10 minutes jarring. He described it as an hour of humor stories rather than great art, but enjoyable overall.
Full Transcript
This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.
Hello, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News. Got a big Mulaney story and a huge Chris Rock article to talk about. But, you know, today is 9-11, so I do want to lead off with a 9-11 story. I did an episode on Sunday about how comedy dealt with 9-11 after the fact, if you want to go back and check that one out. I also wrote a little bit About my own experience in my sub stack link in the show notes.
Today will be a normal episode, but let’s lead off with Pete Davidson, who is reflecting on his first 9-11 as a father. 25 years to the day after his own father, New York City firefighter Scott Matthew Davidson, was killed at the World Trade Center during the attacks. Pete told the New York Post, I thought, oh, he was an old guy. He’s 33, but now Pete’s 33 and I have a kid. And that would be like my kid not having her dad. So this year is extra tough, but also extra beautiful because I get to spend the day with Scotty.
That’s his daughter. It’ll be very healing and special. It was also very cool that Elsie wanted to name her Scotty. My dad’s name was Scott, but his nickname was Scotty. When she arrived, we both looked at her and we’re like, she looks like a Scotty.
It’s nice to keep that name alive. Pete says he’s looking forward to telling his daughter about dad. Pete said, I have old videos and pictures and stuff, and I’m excited to share the classic stories I have of him with her. Scott Davidson was dispatched to the World Trade Center after the second plane hit the South Tower. In 2023, Pete was on the Real Ones podcast and said he found out his father had died from TV.
Pete told the story, I had no idea. His mother had told him he was grounded and not allowed to watch TV. Pete said, I was like, what? I didn’t do anything.
And then one night I turned on the TV and I saw my dad on TV and they’re like…
He said it was weird because they didn’t know that he was dead for like three weeks. Pete reminds us they were finding people, you know, they were pulling people out and there was just some sort of hope. And it was just up and down and nobody knew how to deal with it. Again, I got into that on Sunday. It’s a tough day, especially if you were in New York City that day like I was.
So let’s just awkwardly move on and talk about John Mulaney, who might star in a reboot of Get Smart. Not the worst idea ever. You may recall Get Smart was created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry and ran for 138 episodes from 1965 to 70. The first four seasons of the James Bond-type spoof aired on NBC. The final season was shown on CBS.
Don Adams starred as Agent 86, Maxwell Smart, opposite Barbara Felden’s Agent 99, and Edward Platt, who played the Chief. They worked for a secret U.S. Government counterintelligence agency called Control, which was in a constant battle with evil chaos. While smart always has the upper hand, he was often incompetent. There was a 1980 feature film called The Nude Bomb, which was just a terrible name made without Mel Brooks and Buck Henry.
You can kind of tell there was the 1989 made for TV sequel Get Smart Again.
And then I don’t remember this at all.
There was a 1995 reboot that also starred Don Adams and Felden and Andy Dick that aired on Fox for seven episodes in early 1995. I gotta go find that. I don’t remember that happening at all.
And then in 2008, there was the film adaptation with Steve Carell as Maxwell …
Anne Hathaway is Agent 99. Alan Arkin is the chief. And Dwayne The Rock Johnson is Agent 23. Not good. Not good.
And Steve Carell as Maxwell Smart is not a terrible idea. So John Mulaney, I don’t know, man. I’m rooting for you. Chris Rock got a big, fancy cover story in Variety. The subheader Chris Rock isn’t exactly who you remember him to be.
He likes to take his time. He asked himself repeatedly, what am I trying to say? I don’t want to say something mean and get canceled. It’s a wide-ranging interview. At one point, they talked about the president of the United States.
Chris Rock was one of the celebrities who predicted Donald Trump would win in 2016. Chris Rock said, I’m not a fan, but it’s weird when somebody gets one thing right and the one thing almost clears them all of their other sins. The news is fake. He got that right. He talked about one of his famous routines.
You know, the one Michael Scott does in the office? I’m not going to do it for you. You know that one. He says when he was working it out, it brought controversy. Variety tells us if you thought the recorded version was uncouth, you should have seen him workshop it on tour.
Chris Rock says in Oakland one night, I remember dying a death. People wanted to fight because I didn’t have it right yet. You got to go over the line to find the line. That’s what people don’t understand. When a comedian gets in trouble for saying something at a club, it’s like, dude, that’s what the club is for.
Chris Rock, now 61, says he doesn’t spend much time at comedy clubs anymore. This is interesting. He said, we’re all different people at different points in our lives, and I think I got everything I could out of the last guy, whoever I was then, meaning the comedian. Now I’m this director guy. Huh.
He is directing Misty Green, which will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. He says, again, I’m a different guy. I’m trying to be anyway. Is he making jokes? He says, we’ll see what happens.
I’m saying I’m a writer-director guy. Then I’ll get an offer for some show on CBS where I’m Mandy Patankin’s neighbor. Hey, I brought back your wrench. Making 80 grand a week. They did ask him about the Oscars.
Would he host again? Great answer here. He says, when people ask those questions, they’re being disrespectful to the people that got the gig. They have great hosts. Conan O’Brien is amazing.
He then added that Nikki Glaser is amazing on the Golden Globes. I feel like the industry is just prepping us for Nikki Glaser stepping up onto some other show. We’ll see what happens there. I’m not going to say never, but my time might have passed, honestly. Would he return to the Oscars for the first time since 2022?
Is it that long ago the slap happened? Rock said, the only way I’ll go back is if I’m nominated. And I’m not getting nominated, and that’s okay. We’ll deal with it if it happens. Like, let’s manage expectations.
As for the slap, he says, you know, to answer the question, I wish nothing would have happened.
And also, I don’t want to say anything that takes attention away from how goo…
It’s a crazy world. We walk by homeless people. There’s all sorts of stuff going on right now. Me having a bad day. It’s not that important.
Stavros Akias. I watched his special. I really liked it. I should have mentioned this yesterday. I watched it Tuesday night, I guess.
I liked it. Now, I had my laptop out, so I was second screening and just trying to free up drive space on this computer that I record on. It fills up all the time. So I had Stavros on, but I wasn’t staring at it. But I found it nice company.
I effing wish he would effing stop effing cursing effing a little bit. Effing, effing, effing. It’s just unnecessary and it’s jarring, especially in the first 10 minutes. He’s effing cursing like every effing word, dude. But then he kind of found the rhythm or maybe I got used to it.
So at first I found it jarring, but I found it nice company. It’s not great art. It’s not George Carlin. It’s just an hour of a guy telling humor stories. I found a good company.
Definitely worth your time. Stavros in the GQ cover story said the first taste of mainstream success I had probably, I forget the year, maybe 23 or 22. And that year I did a theater tour, shot my first Netflix special. Second special overall. Did an indie movie.
We shot season one of Tires, and I started Stavi’s World that year, and that was all great stuff, but I wasn’t prepared for it. I wasn’t prepared for that workload. I wasn’t prepared to do that many things. I had no guardrails back then, and it was also off the pandemic a little bit. It was like, leave your house and go get messed up.
Do all the fun stuff you haven’t been able to do. It was bad timing. It was like you’re handed everything It was both celebratory and stressful, which is the perfect storm to just completely give in to your vices. I was just like eating crap, getting high, a couple pills mixed in, a little drink. I was never really a drinking guy, just to get through it.
But also, I had a good time doing it.
And then I was like, damn, it’s kind of hard to breathe right now.
If somebody unplugs this CPAP machine, stuff’s going to go bad in this Courtyard Marriott. So yeah, there were times that I thought for sure it’s kind of like the end of The Witch. It’s like, would you like to live deliciously? I was living deliciously. And you’d die if you do that too much.
Starburst said, I love stand-up, but I feel like it’s a thing I have to trick people into coming because they see me podcasting, acting, they see a clip go viral, whatever. But in general, that’s how the entertainment industry feels now. It’s like you have to quietly work on your art and get better at everything while also being famous because nobody has any infrastructure anymore and everybody expects you to do everything. And so you have to keep getting famous because I want to keep making movies. I want to keep doing stand-up specials.
I want to tour till I die. I love stand-up. To do that, you just kind of have to have fans and be famous. Hmm. I don’t think he’s crazy at all.
Dane Cook has lost some weight. Now, I never thought of Dane Cook as heavy, but when I was looking at the pictures, I was like, all right, he’s not as thin as he was 25 years ago. Who is? Anyway, Dane Cook, now 54 years old, showed off his slimmed-down figure on Instagram, telling fans he’s lost 50 pounds. Can you imagine Dane Cook losing 50 pounds?
I mean, again, I don’t think of him as a big guy at all. Dane wrote on the caption, down over 50 pounds to 195, not since 2009. He showed off chiseled arms and a sleeveless gray shirt. We learned Dane Cook swims daily to burn 500 calories, then does 30 minutes of Pilates, kettlebell work each morning, and ab roller workouts a few nights a week before bed. He described his diet as carnivore adjacent and says he fasts daily until noon when he has a protein shake with collagen.
He also listed NAD plus three days a week. I don’t know what that is. What’s NAD plus? NAD +, is an essential coenzyme found in all living cells that helps turn food into cellular energy and repairs damaged DNA. Okay.
So he does that three times a week, light therapy, and several peptides, which he says he uses mostly for muscle recovery. Oh, and he happens to have a movie coming out. What a weird coincidence. Funny Money, the documentary about his brother, allegedly, is it allegedly? I’m going to say allegedly.
Allegedly stealing some money. That’s out September 18th. The trailer looks pretty good. I’m looking forward to that one. Kathy Griffin, often in the news for controversy, today she’s attaching herself to Dolly Parton.
She says Dolly Parton once sent Kathy Griffin a letter after Griffin asked her to appear on My Life on the D-List. Kathy Griffin says she couldn’t do it because I’m a little outrageous for her fans, but she wrote me the nicest letter saying, I wish I could do it. I watch it all the time. Keep doing your thing. You’re so good at what you do.
I appreciated her honesty. Which was, I love the show, but I live in Pigeon Ford, Tennessee. That’s pretty funny. Now, according to Kathy, Dolly said she’d be like, Hmm. All right, this weekend on this program, on Saturday, the weekly deep dive is about Rodney Dangerfield.
On Sunday, I remember a couple weeks ago, I stumbled across Rolling Stone’s top comedians of all time, the article from 2017. I went in on it, and let’s see how it has aged or not. So that’s Sunday’s episode. Tomorrow is Rodney. It is Friday.
It is time for the Comedy Stock Market. Comedy stock market. Thank you, Burt Reynolds. Uh, this week, I don’t have much for you. I do want to recommend we buy Nimish Patel.
He’s got a special on Netflix on September 22nd. I played the trailer for you the other day. That sounds pretty funny. Uh, you want to buy some more Joe Coy? We could buy low on Joe Coy.
His specials out on Netflix on Tuesday. I don’t know. You want to buy even more Mulaney? I feel like people know about Mulaney and we’ve bought Stavros Alkia is like the last three weeks in a row. Uh, So I don’t really have too many buy recommendations.
No sells again. I’ve been pretty positive, right? We haven’t sold a comedian in a couple weeks. So that’s it. Buy some Nimesh Patel.
That’s your comedy stock market for this week. Saturday Night Live UK is back this weekend. Jeff Goldblum is the host of SNL UK. Musical guest is somebody I’m really into. C-MAT, real name Kira Mary Alice Thompson.
The only reason I know about C-MAT is when I was in Ireland last year, March? Yeah, not this year. St. Patrick’s Day the year before. I kept hearing good music and I’d pull out Shazam and be like, what is this?
And just add it to like an Ireland playlist. And CMAT was on the radio over there. And nobody over here knows who she is, I think. But she’s really good. I like her a lot.
Anyway, if you guys watch SNL UK this weekend, you will see her. Her album Eurocountry was nominated for the Mercury Prize and won Best Album at the Novella Awards in May. SNL UK has added a new cast member. It is actor Freddie Meredith. You may know Freddie from Such Brave Girls and Big Boys.
I don’t, but doesn’t mean he’s not good. He also just did the Edinburgh Fringe. His debut show was called Need a Light, which was nominated for Best Newcomer. He said it was a no-brainer to join SNL UK, calling it the most iconic comedy show. It will undoubtedly inform everything I do for the rest of my career, and I can’t wait for the experience.
I’m not sure SNL UK is iconic, but, you know, good point. Why wouldn’t you jump on that? Morty Gleeson was the winner of Best Newcomer at this year’s Edinburgh Comedy Awards. Morty caught up with the Irish Times. She said she has two middle names, Louise and Elizabeth.
And when I was a kid, I thought my name was Marty Louise Elizabeth. My confirmation name was Valerie. And I picked that just because of the TV show Sabrina the Teenage Witch. I wanted to pick Sabrina, but they were like, you can’t pick a witch name. It was too pagan for them.
So I picked Valerie because that was her best friend’s name on the show. They asked Marty when she last got angry. She said, I don’t generally get angry, to be honest. But I recently got introduced on a stage by a male MC as adorable. I thought that was crazy, but that was probably the last time.
I let things slide until it’s a situation where I should say something. I’m quite chill. If I’m in a rush, I’ll get angry, but just internally angry at myself. Hey, Marty, who would you like to play you in a biopic? She said, it has to be a cartoon.
Maybe like Cartoon Network visuals, like Cow and Chicken. Then I could do the voice. But if I had to pick someone else, it’d be a hybrid of different people. There was a way to putting them in a machine and making it one person. It would be Jack Black and C-MAT.
C-MAT’s all over. In Osaka, the Osaka Comedy Festival, Saturday, October 10th through Monday, October 12th, if you want to go, Columbus Day weekend, why don’t you head on over to Japan. Free street performances will be held at Namba Square throughout the three-day festival. But this is the catch. Why are you telling us about this, John?
We’re not going to Japan. You know that. I know that. You know that. Why are we telling them about this?
They’re doing nonverbal comedy in the square. Osaka has developed a distinctive performing arts culture that includes manzai comedy and rakugo storytelling. Now, what are those? I don’t know, but John, you host the show and probably have Google. Can you tell us, please?
Okay. Manzai is a traditional style of Japanese stand-up comedy performed by a rapid-fire two-person duo standing in front of a single microphone. So the Sklar brothers, but Japanese. Rakugo is a 400-year-old traditional Japanese art of comic storytelling where a lone performer sits on a cushion.. And acts out multi-character conversations using only a fan and a cloth.
Someone tell Chris Fleming. And that’s probably enough for today. Behind the scenes here, there’s a podcast conference next week, so I’m going to have to pre-tape next Friday’s. So let me hold on to a story. What story, John?
What are you bumping? It’s about what comedians eat before shows. That can wait a week. That’s your comedy news for today. Rodney tomorrow, and a look at the best comedians of all time, 2017 version on Sunday.
That one’s a lot of fun. Stuff has not aged well. Here, I’ll lead with one of them. Aziz Ansari? Really?
Aziz Ansari you put on the list? That didn’t age well. All right. See you tomorrow.