Chris Rock on Fame, Stavros Halikis on Leaving Cum Town, and Eric Idle’s Monty Python Dispute

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Featured: Chris Rock, Stavros Halkitis, Nick Mullen, Eric Idle, Jay Pharoah, Adam Sandler, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Jones

What’s in This Episode

• Chris Rock on how fame has changed since Bring the Pain
• Stavros Halkitis discusses leaving Cum Town podcast
• Cum Town podcast origins and success story
• Stavrios Halkitis launches Stavis World Studio after leaving podcast
• Eric Idle on Monty Python conflicts and breakup
• Failed 1999 Monty Python Final Crusade project
• Monty Python 2014 O2 Arena reunion shows
• Jay Pharoah on his Jay-Z impression and comedy role

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Caloroga Shark Media. Hello, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News. Variety caught up with Chris Rock and they reminded him, bring the pain is when you truly became a celebrity. What has changed about your experience of fame from then to now? Chris Rock said it used to be about getting free stuff and how you’re basically on the third date with anybody you date.

They’re like, I know you. You’re at least on the second date. You skip a date just by being famous. When people come up to me, it used to scare me. Now I realize you’re making somebody’s day.

I try to ask them at least one question, like, where are you from? As simple as that. And they’re like, oh, I had a conversation with Chris Rock. I’ve learned to accept this is who I am. It’s like basketball.

If you’re seven feet tall, you can’t get mad at people asking if you play. I try not to think about fame, but it could be a lot worse. You could be infamous. So I accept it. It helps me get work.

Stavros Helki has had a profile in GQ. He says his workplace hazard is a bunch of guys that look like him stop him when he goes to get pails. He says most of the time I actually really like it. The only time it’s tough is if you’re having a bad day. I remember one time I just made an attempt to get this girl back.

We were talking. She had started dating somebody who was fresh. And I was like, I think I might have a little window to get back in here. Maybe I can grab the cheese before the trap hits me. And I gave it my all.

We’re getting oysters. I picked a beautiful restaurant. I’m making my pitch. I’m like, let’s be together. I messed up so bad.

She hits me with a, no, absolutely not. Are you out of your mind? I tried to do this. You’re just a piece of crap who can’t accept love until it’s gone. And that messed me up.

And I’m walking home to keep it together. And some guy’s like, stop, my boy. And I’m like, come on, I’m crying, dude. I’m heartbroken with a belly full of oysters. I got to make a video for your friend.

You want me to set the fantasy football order for your draft this year right now? Dude, I can’t do that for you, man. So that’s the only time it’s a problem. Most of the time, like I said, I live a hysterical life. And on a regular day, if I got to say hi to a couple of people, that’s nice.

I actually like it. Then he talked about the end of the Comptown podcast. He said, I thought we would do eight episodes. I was doing it to appease my buddy, Nick. At the time, he was like, let’s do a podcast.

I was like, dude, podcasts are over. Marin did it. In 2015, it kind of felt like that first wave of podcasts had crested. Little did we know. I think the year we started ended up a whole bunch of other things we launched.

We launched the Doughboys, Pardon My Take, Blank Check, and I’m sure I’m missing a ton. Those are just the ones in my world. Nick was right. No, of course, I didn’t think it would work. It was one of those things where it was like, yeah, who gives an F?

We can buy a Zoom and three microphones and see what happens. And it ended up being wildly successful beyond anyone’s dreams. I think what people liked on an immediate level is just that it was recreating the middle school cafeteria table. It’s like three dumbasses saying insane stuff to make each other laugh. It’s like, how funny can you get inside the intimacy of a real friendship and once you have buy-in and trust each other?

The funniest jokes are to make saying the most effed up things, because how far can you push it when the other person still knows you’re a good person? That’s kind of the joke. And if you’re really good friends with someone, you can say insane stuff. Now, we happen to broadcast that to people that don’t know us personally at all, and I think that was the ultimate appeal. It was really funny as hell.

I mean, Mullen is one of the best in terms of riffing. Nick Mullen is a savant on podcasts. We were making so much money, and I quit. It’s the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I was getting a check for, I don’t even remember, like 40 grand a month or something.

Let’s do the math on that. Times 12, that’s 40. That’s half a million dollars a year. Not bad. If nothing else happened in my career but that, I still would have considered it a success.

You don’t get to that level in comedy most of the time. I was working clubs. I was basically doing my initial dream, but I realized exactly what I wanted. And as much as I love Nick and as funny as he is, it was his show first and foremost that And I did feel like a support player, which now I’m happy to do in these broader contexts because it’s stuff I’m interested in, like movies or whatever. But I didn’t want to be the second guy on a comeback when I was 45.

And so it was a really scary thing to do. I just paid for my first special out of pocket. Nobody wanted it. So I did it myself on YouTube and I lost 50 grand on that. I had to spend another 50 grand on the Stavis World Studio after that.

And so it was a really scary moment after leaving. But it was like, great. It had to end. I mean, that’s the other thing. That’s a young man’s game.

Uh-oh. Wait, he was 45 and he says, podcasting’s a young man’s game? Uh-oh, somebody tell the guy in the basement doing Daily Comedy News. He says, Sandler’s At a Medium Pace is one of the funniest things of all time. Okay, now as a known Adam Sandler, not hater, but like I don’t find Adam Sandler funny, I do like At a Medium Pace.

It is a funny song. He says, we made some awesome dumb BS, the stuff that I would have loved when I was 14. We made that and that’s cool, but you don’t want to be that guy forever. Apparently Adam Sandler does though. See, that’s the thing.

But I think the relationship can go in different ways. Nick comes on my podcast all the time. I’ve had Adam on. I’d love someday to collaborate on something when it makes sense. But in that context, no, I don’t think that podcast could have gone on.

Jay Farrow told WTOP, I think it’s our job as comedians to make people forget about their problems or forget about the problems at all, or just laugh about their problems so they can forget about the pain. He talked about his impression of Jay-Z. He says, Jay-Z loves the impression. He calls me fake Jay-Z every time he sees me. Jay Farrow warns, if you go see him, don’t sit up front.

If you don’t want me to get into your browser history, you shouldn’t sit in the front. That’s great. Let’s bring us to the Monty Python War. I’ve been enjoying this because I love some drama. Eric Idle speaking to The Telegraph.

He talked about the various pythons. They started with Graham Chapman, who passed away at age 48 back in 1989. Idle says, if you think of John Cleese as the father.. Graham Chapman was the mother. He could be horrible when drunk and vicious, certainly to me.

And then once he stopped drinking, I think he saw me. The whole process of him being ill and dying was very emotional for everybody. You know, he was lovely. Then in 1999, a 30-year reunion was set to happen. It fell apart.

Eric Idle at that point, a TV interview said, I realized we would never agree on anything ever again. That sunk his idea for a final Monty Python movie, which was called The Final Crusade. In which a group of grumpy old knights reluctantly agree to carry King Arthur’s ashes to Jerusalem. I’d be curious to read a script of that. Then they talked about Spamalot.

We learn that a significant rights royalty is paid to the pythons as a group. Eric Idle gets the biggest share. He says, I think I have more business sense. I think they’re not very good at it, a lot of them. But then one of the producers of the original film sued for a share of the pot.

Then there was a legal battle, and the fees from that created the 2014 Python reunion at London’s O2 Arena. That was a one-off show that sold out in 45 seconds, so they did four more. And those sold out in an hour, and five shows became ten. But that’s most likely it. Terry Jones died in 2020.

And then there’s John Cleese’s comment from 2024 on Twitter, which read, We always loathed and despised each other, but it’s only recently that the truth has begun to emerge. People thought that was at Eric Idle. Cleese claimed it was about the others, too, and he was joking anyway. Eric Idle said, I think it might be what he secretly feels. We’ve been good friends from time to time.

There are things I’m grateful to him for, seeing I was funny, putting me in a show, and then being supportive of me many times in his life, and then suddenly deciding, I don’t know what happened. I felt it happened during COVID, and I called him up, and he was getting more and more angry. I don’t know. It’s like they all got angry about Spamalot, and you go, excuse me, I made you all a million effing dollars each. When you pay that back, we can talk.

Obviously, one likes to feel that you’re not vilified unjustly. I don’t read what they say, and sometimes someone will say, there’s another clip. Eric Idle’s proud of his own comedic chops. He was the only one who wrote without a partner. He said, it’s harder, but I still write by myself, and I don’t think Cleese can, actually.

He always has to have a partner. The famous Monty Python veto is no more. It is an ex-veto. It used to be, unless everyone in the room thought a sketch was funny, they wouldn’t do it. Idol says that was removed under dubious circumstances a few years ago.

They have three votes. I have one. They don’t have board meetings, or at least they don’t tell me about them. That’s not great emotionally, but I can live with that easily. You mean I don’t have to go in a room and bicker with those folks again?

I think it’s sad and horrible, though, particularly given it’s against me. It’s like, what did I do wrong in the last 20 years for you? He has determined not to become a bitter. He said, I’ve known many, many comedians, so many funny people. And on the whole, they become sweeter and sweeter.

But I think some get grumpy. Death makes them very anxious, especially if they were more narcissistic at times in their lives. It’s hard for them to let go of what they once had, which was sometimes a masterful control of comedy. I feel like he’s talking about one person in particular. Eric Idle’s not a fan of looking back.

He says they could have done a world tour after the London shows, but Michael turned it all down. I think that was fair. You shouldn’t be forced into doing things you don’t want to do when you’ve gotten older and you’ve got more interesting things you want to do. I think regret is not a useful emotion. I say as you get older, you either get old and better..

We’re old and bitter. From the Chicago Reader, this is some Sunday kind of stuff if you’re relatively new to the show. You know, sometimes I’ll pre-tape a weekend, perhaps right now. We do some of the more esoteric stuff on Sundays, especially in the second half. Chicago Reader took a look at how comedians eat before and after going on stage.

Jordan Wilson likes to caffeine and carb load. Yeah, that makes sense. He said, Today I woke up, made my quad shot oat latte. Then for lunch, I had a jerky stick and a plain bagel. I really like raw dogging bagels.

Often I have two bagels for lunch, just raw. And four slices of wheat toast to the face. It’s good carbs. For the past 13 years, he’s been performing as half of a musical comedy duo with Bobby Sullivan. During this interview, Sullivan was eating salted pistachios and chasing them with his second Dr.

Pepper of the day. Sullivan said, I mostly don’t think about food. But on this particular day, he said he’d eaten a lot for a performance day. Four rice cakes slathered with peanut butter, followed by a Jersey Mike sub with barbecue chips. Wilson chimed in, I don’t think about food much either, except is when this is going to give me diarrhea.

Yeah, that would be bad if you were on stage. He adds, I’ve definitely had spicy Korean barbecue before a show and felt gurgling.

And then I’m like, I got to tell the audience, but there’s nothing they want …

Cynthia Levin says before show she might eat half a baked potato at home or part of a veggie burrito in the car. Most of the comedians for this said they try to go for bland and protein rich. Protein bars factor heavily as does chicken bake or a chicken Caesar wrap. Ashley Lusk explains you don’t want a full stomach. You don’t want anything to hold you back or weigh down on stage.

Dan drees recalled wolfing down a bag of flaming hot cheetos before set then he sweated through his set with bright red fingers and that is your comedy news on a sunday we’ll see you tomorrow

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