🎙️ Listen to this episode:
Full Transcript
The Shark Deck. I’m Jenny Mack who with your Daily Comedy News. The Hollywood Reporter talked to John Mulaney about his twenty fourteen sitcom Mulaney. Do you remember that one happened? Nobody watched that.
I remember that one coming out, and I paid attention to it because I was running Seo Sex I’m comedy at the time, so I was hip to John Mulaney a little earlier than most. But yeah, that bombed pretty hard. Anyway. Calling the show Mulaney was the title risky John, John said, very anonymous. I think they thought I was bringing a sensibility to it that was, I don’t know, more widely appreciated.
And then I was also trying to turn that on its head by doing a multicam like, look, we can really make this form weird and interesting. Again, there were a lot of challenges, and I really suffered from high self esteem at that time. There was another version at NBC called Mulaney Don’t Drink, which was about me getting sober twenty three. Interesting right, John said. It was based on the time my life when I got sober twenty three and a two roommates, was just trying to figure out, what does good person too?
That was an actual part of my life or a pointless gauntlet I threw down in front of myself. That was the NBC show and it was really something lost when I, on the advice of others higher up, took that out. But I take full responsibility. I lost the thread that made it something. John also discussed SNL, saying people talk about how high stakes and stressful it is.
It’s also the most protected environment and entertainment we don’t get notes. I saw Jeff Zucker maybe once when he was the president of NBC. Nothing reached us. So to suddenly be the writer, producer and star of a network pilot, let alone a series, it was suddenly being the captain of a cruise ship. I was like, I have to worry about personnel, menu binders, meals for people, hours, how late everyone’s there.
Would you do another sitcom? John? My immediate thought was, oh should I? One thing I learned from doing that was I wasn’t sure what my story was, like, what exactly am I bringing everyone and why do they need it? But ye as before I die, I’d like to write one film as good as Searching for Bobby Fisher or any of those films I saw as a kid that really packed a punch and just got life right.
If I could do that once, I’d be very happy. Moamer talked to the highly reporter about the line, and mo said, you don’t know where the line is, tell you across it. Anytime I was fearful about something in the show was because it was so personal. It was scary. There was one scene where I literally broke down.
It was about my father being tortured and about dealing with that and suppressing that. In the series, I thought, oh, man, I didn’t warn this in my actual life. Whoops, I’m walking off and nobody can even look at you in the eye. Years ago, Dave Chappelle told me be so honest that it’s hard to make eye contact with you. I didn’t get it until that moment.
It makes me emotional just thinking about it. Yeah. Who asked Harry Kanabolo if he thinks his experiences growing up in Queens, New York City, not too far from where I grew up, helped shape him into being a quote unquote political comic. Harry said, I think it developed into that the same thing that made me want to work in immigrant rights is the same thing that made me want to write honest, confrontational material was this idea that things aren’t fair and I want to do something about it. Then after a while you start to realize comedy’s not going to fix anything.
But initially I just had this fire off. I want to say something. Post nine to eleven, everything changed. Before that, I was a kid sheltered in the diversity of Queens and really didn’t question us history as much as I probably should have. And after nine eleven, I’m all of a sudden thinking about work critically.
I thought a lot about racism and how that manifests made me rethink everything I thought about the country, So that really spurred my intellectual curiosity and that spurred my stand up development. As for the comedy climate today, Hurry says, there are all these social movements happening at the same time at a much faster rate as results of the Internet, and people for the first time you’re getting their voices heard, and that comes with the power dynamics that come with any form of expression. In this country. Generally, it’s mostly a white audience in the mainstream who controls the studios, and it’s usually white people out of control and most of these things. There’s institutional racism in this country, and so everything you’re creating as an artist is always up against that background, and all of a sudden you’re seeing this period of great change, at least great questioning.
There’s growing pains and that people don’t know how to communicate with each other, They don’t know how to talk about critical things, and certainly Twitter doesn’t help. The Internet doesn’t help on that, and navigating that is really hard, especially as an artist, especially as a stand up who edits live. Unlike other art forms, we make mistakes as part of the gig. And so I think people will look at this period as one of great transition and like a tug of war of videologies and also of opinions on how free speech works and how it should work. The Good One Podcast talked to Kathleen Madigan about touring, and she says it’s very difficult to have a normal life.
Most people will hate you because your gun all the time. They think it’s funny in the beginning, and then you miss another baptism and another birthday. That’s never the life I wanted. You can’t have stability. You have to be comfortable with organized chaos.
I do really well and organized chaos because it keeps my attention. It’s activity base versus with my one sisters. Safety would be her number one thing. She wants to be organized, safe, nothing, unpredictable. That’s her idea of happiness.
Mine is I like to be very unpredictable. I like it to be chaotic, but I want to know I have control over it. I’ve always been like this, even when it’s a kid. I think my parents would say that too. Like my one sister, every night before school, she had her uniform out, her things set out.
Everything was perfectly organized and neat My side of the room looked like it had been looted. Variety asked Wanda Psychs where there are times when comedians were anti gay or anti trans before you came out, when you were still coming up and want to said yeah, people would say all kinds of horrible things. So we used to let people get away with but you know in this country they would hold public lynchings and people that have picnics any potato salad. While watching We’re evolving, We’re getting better, the steps back in both the news and comedy. That’s what makes the most noise and so the progress we’re making, I think they’re just louder, all the Trump supporters and all that.
But I like to focus on the winds. I mean, there’s not a lot of them, but I like to celebrate them. Hey, you know what’s back this week? It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I’m looking forward to that, one of my favorite shows.
A new study determine that It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia has the highest words per minute, at one hundred and seventy six point two words per minute. The av Club rights that might not be ideal in terms of accessibility. You see there’s a six second rule in subtitle creation that suggests a two line stipit of dialogue should be on the screen for about six seconds, which is roughly one hundred and forty words per minute, not one hundred and seventy six point two The nearest competitor, Brooklyn nine nine one hundred and seventy four point six words per minute. Today is June fourth, and if you were a friend of mine, you know that every year I watch Star Trek two The Wrath of Khan for the anniversary that was the Saturday night movie Be in the Basement last night and I’m a little sad I didn’t get to go see Khan the musical. Today’s the last day that it’s playing.
Con the musical based on Star Trek two The Wrath of Khan, except this time it’s a musical and trickmovie dot Com said the script is flat out funny, all the jokes landed, delivered at a machine gun paste and rarely misfiring. The humor covered diverse topics like Shatner’s Tupai. By the way, there is an entire plog about Shatner’s Tupai. I think it’s actually called Shatner’s Tupei. Wonderful deep dive, the historical unreliability of the Hamilton musical and the inherent comedic gold of chickens.
The nerdiest Trekker, the lifelong theater kid, and the newest arrival to the fandom will all laugh until their sides get sore. While there are deep cut Trek references around every bend, and some of the jokes will warp past Trek newbies, the writers nevertheless go out of their weight to ensure the play remains accessible. Songs benefit from a variety of musical styles, with tap jazz group showstoppers and heartfelt solos. Standoutlets include Admiral Kirk’s character theme and Khan’s flamboyantly vengeent my ram. The set up here Data from Star Trek the Next Generation.
He’s doing some sort of holidack simulation of the events of the Wrath of Khn. So we’re seeing this through Data’s eyes. Data acts not just as the narrator of the musical, but also plays certain characters in the story. I listened to an interview with the creator of the musical on a podcast called Inglorious Trek Sperts. If you were a Star Trek fan, that should be the next thing you download.
Fantastic, fantastic, fantastic Star Trek podcast. So for memory, I think they said Data steps into play David Marcus. He plays Cohn’s sidekick, and I think he plays one other character. Anyway, I’m sad I did not get to see con the musical. But if you’re in New York City and you got up early today and you download the podcast and now you’re pumped.
It’s playing today at the Players Theater in New York City. The creator did say on the Inglorious Trek Sperts podcast that he hopes to do more versions of this in the future. I just may was a real bearer and I didn’t get a chance to get out there, but call the musical.
Speaking of star Trek, William Shanner is the guest on the most recent Mark M…
So I met Shanner and I’m a big Captain James T. Kirk fan in case you can’t sell but Shatner when I met Shatner in real life, he’s got a reputation for being difficult. I think I’m on team George de kay here. If you listen to the Marin interview, especially in the beginning before Shatner warms up, you can hear a little bit of the difficultness or the Okay, this guy’s just a pain to get along with. That was my experience when I met Shatner.
The second time I saw Shantner, he was leaving Serious XM and I was walking in and again, I’m a big trekky and I couldn’t even be bothered to attempt to say hello. So turn off from this first visit. And I’ve met a lot of cool celebrities over the years, but Chanterer wasn’t one of them. Unfortunately, soars Trek to the wrath of Cohn. If you’ve never seen it, pretty good film.
That’s your comedy news for today. Follow the show for free on podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your shows. To see tomorrow.