🎙️ Listen to this episode:
Featured: Bill Burr, Aaron Sorkin, Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Fallon, Jay Leno, Paul McCartney, Jim Downey, Seth Meyers
What’s in This Episode
- Bill Burr Rolling Stone cover story on finding his voice
- Bill Burr stars in Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning
- Bill Burr discusses moving away from anger-based comedy
- Bill Burr commentary on Luigi Mangione and tech CEO accountability
- Conan O’Brien returns to guest host The Tonight Show
- Conan and Fallon discuss SNL 50th Anniversary encounter with Paul McCartney
- Seth Meyers announces new schedule with longer breaks
Questions Answered in This Episode
What is Bill Burr’s new movie The Social Reckoning about?
It’s an Aaron Sorkin film starring Bill Burr as an investor character named Charlie who confronts Mark Zuckerberg. It releases in theaters October 9th.
Is Bill Burr still doing angry comedy?
No, Burr says he’s moving away from anger-based comedy and wants to be the ‘meat in the middle guy,’ accessing a broader range of emotions to make his act stronger.
Did Conan O’Brien return to The Tonight Show?
Yes, Conan returned as a guest host on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon after previously hosting the show before Jay Leno reclaimed it.
What did Conan say about Johnny Carson’s advice?
Conan recalled that when he got the Late Night job, Johnny Carson told him ‘just be yourself, that’s the only way it can work,’ which Conan followed.
What did Bill Burr say about big tech companies?
Burr criticized tech CEOs’ response to criticism, saying they function like the CIA and should examine their practices rather than just increase security when called out.
What’s changing with Seth Meyers’ Late Night schedule?
Seth Meyers announced the show will have longer breaks between production cycles to maintain consistency, though won’t go straight through year-round.
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. Should be an easy one for me today. I’ve got a ton of clips. Bill Burr got a cover story on Rolling Stone.
There’s a lot to unpack today. And we’ll pick at that for the next few days. Bill Burr stars in the Aaron Sorkin movie The Social Reckoning, in which Bill Burr plays an investor composite character named Charlie who confronts Mark Zuckerberg. That’ll be out in theaters October 9th. We’ll get a lot of press from Burr in the next couple weeks, including this from Rolling Stone.
Let’s just jump in here. Here’s Bill Burr talking about finding his voice. I feel like I’m finding it now. Yeah. Because I actually am who I would have been Like, that guy I was wasn’t who I was.
That was traumatized me. You know, fight or flight mode, alopecia, losing clumps of hair. And so I figure out, like, you know, I had a style. I had a thing that I was doing. I had something that was true to who I was, but I’ve changed now.
So, you know, that’s another thing about doing this stuff and that whole, oh, don’t get happy, whatever. It’s like, dude, if you’re funny, you’re funny. Like, imagine if you were angry, but you could sing. Right.
And then all of a sudden you weren’t angry anymore.
You can’t sing anymore. It’s like you don’t lose talents because of emotions. Yeah, really interesting. Burr is talking a lot about not wanting to be the angry guy. He wants to be the meat in the middle guy, which is a new Bill Burr.
Here he talks about anger. Anger to me was embarrassing because it reminded me of my dad who had no control. And I used to always be like, I’m not going to be like him. And what happens? Yeah.
There you go. You’re doing exactly what he was doing. So I always felt shame and all of that. I hated it. It’s the thing that made me hate myself, which made me go darker, which made me get angrier because I didn’t know how to get out of it.
It was just this spinning down thing. It was just like, it would be like, okay, you’re going to write a song on this piano, but you can only use these notes, you know, as opposed to you can use the whole piano now, you know what I mean? So it’s like, I can still, believe me, dude, I can blow my top like anybody. You know what I mean? I know how to do that.
I got 50-something years practice that. I would like to learn how to do these other things. The social reckoning is not exactly a follow-up to the social network. I mean, it’s Aaron Sorkin, it’s Facebook, different cast. Bill Burr also talked about the East Coast versus the West Coast.
Here, I don’t disagree. You know, being in the East Coast, like, an East Coast thing is like, you know, hey, man, don’t lose your edge. Don’t go out to West coast and lose your edge. It’s like, what? Don’t start enjoying my life.
Don’t be a chill person to be around. And like, and that’s also another thing too, like that, you know, in comedy, there’s this big thing, you know, don’t get happy. You get happy. You’re not going to be funny. And it’s the exact opposite.
It’s, it’s, it opens you up. You can, you, you’re, you have access to all these emotions now that you can add into your act.
And then also you can revisit all of these topics that you just, you just wer…
Like my favorite part of me, this whole journey of being a comedian is when I stopped doing this and started doing a little more of this. It’s like, dude, if you’re funny, you’re funny. And as Bill Burr talks about the social reckoning, he also got a little bit political. Here he talks about Luigi Mangione and stuff. You know, this whole thing that, you know, we live in a world where, like, if somebody’s..
Tells their version of the truth of what’s going on. And especially if it is true, like they have to like, you know, it’s like they’re trying to escape Russia in the 80s. It’s insane. And it’s like, I thought this was like, this is an American company. What’s going on here?
And they all seem to function like the CIA, which is really sort of like indicative of that you’re kind of doing something wrong. I mean, if you look at all of this stuff, like the response to the Luigi thing, was not to be like, well, hey, maybe we need to look at what we’re doing if what we’re doing makes some crazy person do this. Their response was to take their faces off of the internet and get security. It’s like, you don’t think you need to examine.. You know what I mean?
It’s like you’re not the president. You’re just the CEO of a of a business.
Meanwhile, Conan O’Brien returned to The Tonight Show.
You may recall Conan hosted The Tonight Show for a little bit before the worst person who ever lived, Jay Leno, took the job back. Here is Conan and cracking up Jimmy Fallon. Welcome back. You look fantastic. I always love running into you and seeing you.
Although I have to apologize. I think the last time. We hung out, it was the Saturday Night Live 50th. Yes. Anniversary.
What happened? I interrupted you. I was so wasted. No you were not. I was not wasted.
I interrupted you, you were having a, there’s a very funny writer named Jim Downey. Yep. Who we both know. One of the great comedy writers of all time, yeah. He’s fantastic.
There’s a documentary about him on Peacock if you want to check him out. Eh, don’t watch it. All right, sorry, sorry, I take it back. We don’t have time to plug that. Sorry, sorry, sorry.
But he had an accident and he’s fine, but he had an accident and he was wearing an eye patch. I just remembered this. Yeah. And so I was walking around with Jim and you were talking, and I came over to do a bit, but you were talking to Paul McCartney. It’s not but I was talking to Paul McCartney.
I was talking to Paul McCartney. I know, I know, but this is a huge deal. I mean, we meet people all the time, but there’s a couple of people who will always be, you can’t believe, you step outside your body and you say, I’m talking to this man. He’s a legend. I was talking to him and you suddenly interrupted and you said, Conan, your Uber’s here.
Which is funny. But not while I’m talking. To Paul McCartney! But you looked at me, and I go, I pointed at Jim, and you go, hey, your Uber’s here. Yeah, and you pointed to Jim, who’s got an iPad.
And Paul is sort of like, and by the way, Paul was in the middle of telling me, I think he is very talented. And if you’d been in the Beatles, it would have been even bigger. That’s not true, that’s not true. And I said, well, gee, and then suddenly, ah! Hey, your Uber’s here.
You go, dude, I’m not doing a bit with you right now. I’m talking to Paul McCartney. I’m not doing a bit. Anyway, you go, don’t ruin this conversation. I said, don’t, I said, you can’t.
You can do bits whenever you want. I love the Uber bit. Fantastic. Like he legit told me this. Conan told Felon about his career.
I was working at the Simpsons when I got the job, the late night job. 24 hours later, I was the new host of Late Night. I fly to Connecticut. I go to this thing. No one knows who I am. I get there.
Johnny Corson. Who he qualified. This is how we’re all getting old. He had to tell people, Johnny Carson, the host of The Tonight Show, this show, for 30 years, when I was growing up, the most famous person in America for 30 years, and I teach college kids. They have no idea who that was, if you want to feel old.
The most famous person in America for 30 years, he’s standing there. Johnny told Conan, just be yourself. That’s the only way it can work. I decided, well, he’s right. I just got to go with this Conan thing, whatever that is.
Seth Meyers was back from seven weeks off. He sat down with The Wrap. He explained the new structure will have longer breaks. Oh, goody. Seth said, there’s a nice consistency to our show when it’s rolling, and we want to be able to provide that as much as we can, as much as it’s in our control to our audience.
Obviously, we’re not going to go straight through, but if we can find our way into that SNL schedule that relies on summers off to make sure that when more people are watching TV, we’re on with better regularity, we’re going to do that. Uh-huh. Totally not a budget cut. Totally not. He also did the podcast.
Views on some episodes of that topped over 1 million on YouTube. Seth explained, We didn’t want to disappear. We wanted people to know that we want to be making stuff for them. Sal and I always talk about how without the show as an outlet for our own anxieties and everything else, we go a little bit crazy. So it was a bit of catharsis for us, and we really enjoyed doing it.
Meyer said that they hope to stick to a similar time off schedule next year. We always really want to let people who would rather be doing the show than not. And if it was in our hands, there would be more weeks on the air for us, and people don’t quite believe that. Count me as one of them. You just pretty much told me.
Budget cut. Certainly over the course of a long summer break, people have every right to call us out for what they perceive as a sort of laziness and living a good life. What we want to do with Proof of Life, the podcast, was just kind of hammer home as much as we could by doing it. He was asked, is this the longest break you’ve ever had? Seth said, certainly without a writer’s strike, this was the longest.
Yeah, it felt reminiscent of what I was used to with SNL. Obviously, I’ve worked for a show that takes the summer off, but a seven-week break was very out of the ordinary for us, and I think everybody, based on the energy here, was chomping at the bit to get back. The goal is to have less breaks over the course of the fall, winter and spring. Obviously, we’re not going to go straight through, but if we could find our way to that SNL schedule, we’re going to do that. He was asked about there being one fewer late night show now.
He said, I think it’s too early to tell if it impacts bookings. It’s never been a situation where we’ve been upset about the quality of guests we’ve been able to have. One of the nice things is obviously Stephen was talking about politics. We’re talking about politics. There always seemed to be room for both of us, so it was never a case where we were anything but grateful that he was also on the air.
So we’ll see. One of the great things about Strike Force 5 was getting to know those guys as people, and that’s how I’ve seen them ever since. The way our show has ever worked is when we make the show we want it to be. So whether there were double the late night shows or one less, I think we’d have the same approach. Jalen Brunson, host of Saturday Night Live this week.
Can’t wait. You know he’s going to be great. He’s great at everything. Maybe we should give him 1230. Not the worst idea, but we need him on the Knicks.
Not yet. Maybe we’ll do 10 years of Chris Fleming at 1230, and then Jalen Brunson can take over for Chris Fleming when Chris Fleming gets the Tonight Show. I don’t think any of that’s going to happen, but it’s a plan. Jalen Brunson was on Tamron Hall’s podcast. He was asked if he was prepared for anything SNL would throw at him.
He said, probably not. Being honest with you, I have no idea what I’m walking into, but I know it’s going to turn out great. Will he sing? Jalen Brunson said, no. Pete Davidson was asked for advice and Pete said, Jalen doesn’t need any advice from me.
He’s New York royalty forever. He’s really funny and his podcast is great. He’s going to do great. I’m very excited for him. On Gossip Corner, the prime minister of Greece ran into Dave Chappelle at a Greek restaurant in San Francisco.
Paul Kirby is the managing partner at Kokari restaurant. He told the SF Chronicle Dave Chappelle stops by whenever he’s in town. A Greek news outlet posted video of the exchange with the prime minister and Dave Chappelle. Dave was asked about his relationship with his audience. Dave said, Meanwhile, Adam Sandler was spotted out on September 9th.
I think that’s his birthday. He turned 60. Sandler was dressed the way I do, kind of like how I’m dressed now, except Sandler’s hoodie was purple. It was a bright lavender zip-up sweatshirt pulled over his head. He was wearing a pair of dark sunglasses covering much of his face.
He paired the hoodie with a green t-shirt, loose white basketball shorts, and wildly colorful sneakers. I think Adam Sandler and I could be friends, except for the part where I don’t like his comedy work, and I think he does. The man accused of allegedly trying to extort money from Carrot Top says the public has the wrong idea of the case. The man even posted a video on YouTube responding to common reporting on the case. Blaming a judge for branding him vexatious.
That’s a Scrabble word. V-E-X-A-T-I-U-S. Vexatious. Use it in a sentence. The judge said I am vexatious.
The man says he was just following the judge’s orders. It’s not as black and white as people try to make it. The man said he will do any live interview at any time to clarify what’s really going on. And Vulture put out the list of the top comedians you should and will know. Did I get the title right today?
I’m not going to get it right every day. I’m not sure I did it today. First up, Jack Benziger. We’re told by Vulture Jack’s comedic universe is Saw-esque, filled with traps, ensuring no character he creates will ever see things go their way. He delights in the freaky, the grotesque, and the embarrassing.
Benziger came up in the Chicago improv and sketch comedy scene where he met future collaborators including Sarah Sherman, Connor O’Malley, and his Joy Tactics podcast co-hosts. Walter had two quick questions for Jack. First question, at this point in your comedy career, is there someone you’ve proved wrong? Jack said, I tried doing improv in Chicago for many years before realizing stand-up is a better fit. One time I had an improv coach tell me I should be myself less.
I don’t fault them because I was a nuisance to do improv with. I was doing written stand-up jokes in scenes and had a catchphrase. I was soaking wet one time, which isn’t cool. I was using my phone to Google things during scenes. Eventually I realized I should just quit.
But yeah, the person who said to stop being myself, I disagree, probably, in a sense. Question number two. When you think about the future of comedy, what concerns you? What excites you? Jack said, And not because they want to eventually start their own non-alcoholic beer or sexual liquor company.
Is the N.A. Beer a dig at John Mulaney? Who knows? All right, some housekeeping. This week’s Saturday Deep Dive will be Marc Maron, then the week after Bill Burr, and the week after that, Norm MacDonald.
Then on October 4th, I finally sat down and recorded at least one episode and a trailer of the Late Night series I wanted to do. That will be in its own feed, so make sure you subscribe to.. Is Late Night Dead. OK, the new show is called Is Late Night Dead. I will eventually use those episodes in this feed.
But for now, it will be its own separate podcast called Is Late Night Dead. And that will be out on October 4th, wherever you found this show tomorrow. Now, did you notice we up early Wednesday morning? Johnny Mac pre-taped the Friday episode because I teach on Thursdays. That’s why I do that a lot of times.
And I had misscheduled it. So if you were up early on Wednesday, you got the Friday episode early. But then I deleted it and it’ll be back. So if you already heard the Friday episode. So Saturday is Marin.
Sunday is normal.
And then October 4th will be the Is Late Night Dead feed in.
Its own feed. And that is your comedy news for today. See you tomorrow.