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The Shark Deck. I’m Jenny McK with your daily company news. Late Night is off to the Writers Strike The Late Bought said. Netflix is cracking down on passwords sharing. It’s like they want us to break up with our exes and our best friend and that cousin we only see Thanksgiving.
Netflix is getting serious about passwords sharing. They’re implementing a new feature called the Awkward Family. Zoom. Call Bert Crazier. He’s got a new movie.
It’s called The Machine and the Light. Times asked him when did storytelling and drawing from real life experiences developing your stand up? Bert said, I was so obsessed with comics who had their own voice and their own story, and that’d say something you could tell wasn’t a scripted thing or something from the collective unconscious of stand up. It was something so authentic, and I remember being jealous of it and then realizing I have those stories too. I just have to be brave enough to say them.
It’s really tough to follow your own voice, in your own instinct. That’s the struggle, really. Bert said, I wasn’t someone who told my own stories. People told stories about me. I was the life of the party, the life of the party is never the one telling you he’s the party.
He’s just the life of the party.
And then someone’s like, dude, you hear what Bert did at the party last night.
And then I’d be in the room going, oh yeah, it was crazy, and I could tell you the story and Bell should a little bit and make it even funnier. But I was the guy that people tell the story about. I wasn’t the one telling the story about me. When I got in a stand up, it didn’t feel natural to tell your own story about yourself. So probably the first ten years of my career, I just wanted to learn how to tell a joke with a set up in a punchline.
I thought that was the craft, but it said the first time I’d told the machine, it was on Doctor Drew’s Love Line. An old college classmate of mine called up and said, hey, why did you tell the story about the time you robbed your friends on a train in Russian? And I was like, oh yeah, And that was like the most organic version of the story ever, because it was like I was in college again. I told it to Drew. He was blown away.
He literally said, that’s your story, that’s your movie. I trimmed it and I tightened it. I told it on a couple of morning radio shows and it was getting better every time, and I was like, oh, it’s a good radio story.
And then when I did Rogan, that was the game changer.
I went on the show the first time and I was like, next time I come back, remind me to tell you the story about the time I got involved with the Russian MAFI and robbed a train. Rogan was like what. I came back the next week and he was like, you gotta tell that story. So I’d sold it and Rogan said, this is your story. This is your movie.
Okay, Bert really did two different people say, quote, this is your story, that’s your movie. I suspect that’s a little rehearsed. That one story changed my DNA as a stand up, like, I’m not even remotely recognizable to who I was ten years ago. With that one story, I learned that the most valuable lesson about storytelling is once the story has an end, you’re good. At first, I didn’t have an end to the machine.
I thought if I made the story funny in the middle, that’s all I needed to do. And I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working. I thought the end was the tagline tonight you party with us. I was trying to punch it up, make it funny and edgy. One of the things people said a lot in Russia was they would remind you, this is Russia.
You’re in Russia. They would say that all the time. This is in America, you’re in Russia. I came up with the tagline after I asked the officer if I’ll get in trouble with my teacher. He says to me, f that bitch, this is Russia.
The light bulb went off, like I finally had an end to that story. Bert Kreischer said in twenty nineteen, I went to Legendary Studios and I pitched three things that weren’t the Machine. The producer there goes, all right, I’ll make it, and Bert says which one. The producer says, I don’t care. I just want to make a movie with you.
I think it would be fun. Which one do you want to make? Bert said, if you’re telling me I can make whatever a movie I want, it’s not going to be the three I just pitched you. And he said, what are you gonna make? And I said the machine, and he goes, I was wondering why you didn’t pitch me that.
I told him because I was so bored of pitching it. Best case scenario, it’s a hit movie and I got kidnapped by the Russian mafia. The producer looks at me and goes, sold, that’s our movie. It’ll be like Godfather meets the Hangover. SOSM Sigoura’s new special Sledgehammer July fourth, The Holly Reporter said, your whole family features prominently in the hour.
To what extents do they have in putting? Tom said, I mean, I don’t check with them at all. Actually, I had a much harsher bit about my mom that I didn’t do in the special. I was like, oh, I should do this when she’s dead, Like this is too mean. I remember when I was doing it for a while on tour and then she came to a show and I skipped it at that show and my sister was there, and I told my sister the bit and she was like, oh my god, Mom would have died in the room.
But my mom is seeing me do the closing bit spoiler it’s about his mom getting high off edibles and she came up to me after and goes, you’re a piece of crap. That’s what she said to me, but you know what, she still hung out. Sigoura says, yesterday I picked up my youngest he’s four. We were driving and somebody cut me off and I go idiot, and my son started laughing. He goes, you really are a comedian.
I go, and he’s four years old and he says, that was funny. You said that guy is an idiot. He loved it. And my seven year old saw me talk about him on Stephen Colbert and he was fascinated, and then he corrected something. He was like, I didn’t say that.
I said this, And I told him I just said it to be funny and he’s like, yeah, but it didn’t go like that, and I’m like, okay, okay. Sigoura was asked to describe his fan base, and he said it’s usually like, oh, this guy kind of looks like me. Like if I’m at the airport and he has a beard and needs to lose twenty pounds, I’m like, oh, this guy’s about to say something to me. He’s gonna be a fan. And they’re usually dragging their women over to me, I wouldn’t say.
The women are coming up to me left and right on their own, like, oh, I’m a huge fan. I mean I have a few and very lucky, but I don’t know. It’s always so much easier to talk about somebody else’s act and somebody else’s fan base because you just see it much more clearly. They asked Tom Sigoura, Hey, do you look at your pal berd Crazher and thank God? Like to do that?
Meaning a movie? And Tom said, actually, I have something I can’t tell you about just yet. Hmm. I’ll give you the scoop when the strike ends. The reporter asked him, do you feel like Hollywood executives know what to do with you and your talent?
Tom said, no, I don’t think they do. That’s the reason this thing is happening because I did it myself. I feel like I’ve been telling the past, Oh you know, this is the and like really, BS is how I’d describe it. But a big part of it, too, honestly, is that I’ve toured so aggressively that I just haven’t been available. There were offers for cool things that came in and I had to be like am in Toronto doing shows and they’re like, well, that’s when this show shoots.
But this store ending was kind of nice because I knew there was a break on the rise and to make this other stuff happen, and here was an interesting teaser. They said, does Brad Pitt have any idea prominently features in the special? And Tom said no, he does not. Varidy got a little political with Wanda Sykes and asked, Wanda, do you think Trump will be nominated again? Wanna said, I don’t see how.
I mean, they’re definitely pockets that he’s going to dominate, but I don’t see across the country how we’ll get the nomination, right? Are we that bad? Is the country that horrible? Really? Varidy pointed out he’s pulling higher than any other GOP candidate.
Wanda said, well, I mean they’re awful. Biden will beat him again. Yep, I said it, old man, Biden will beat him again. They asked Wanda why she didn’t talk about the slap again. Wanda was one of the presenters that night.
Why she didn’t talk about the slap in her special? And she said, I didn’t really have any jokes for it. I think people were tired of it, and I figured it was Chris’s face, so that’s his material. She wishes will Smith the best and says, I really hope you can come back, or really do Did he reach out at all? Yes?
He did when he called, I had the worst throat cold. It wasn’t COVID, but I was really sick, and I was like, hey, I appreciate you reaching out. When I feel better, I’ll getting such. But by then I was like he called, I don’t know what the call was for. I’m good.
Would want to Sykes ever host the Oscars again? She says, no, I don’t think so. I mean it was fun, but solo. No, thank you. Larry Wilmore addressed the Harvard College class of twenty twenty three and encouraged students to view success as a journey rather than a destination.
He offered three pieces of pseudo wisdom to the graduating seniors. These are phrases they can use in their lives. They are it is what it is, do what you gotta do, and play better. Larry says. It’s for when you’re just trying to take it to the next level, or you see some kind of improvement in your life, or you’re just unsatisfied with where You’re headed, play better.
John Cleese says the press has misrepresented him. He has denied reports that the Loretta scene is going to be cut from the stage version of Monty Python’s Life of Brian for fear that it’s transphobic. Last week, it was reported that the scene which a male member of the People’s Front of Judaea said he wanted to become a woman, the rumor was that scene would be dropped. The report was based on Klees receiving feedback from the actors that had run through that the scene would be problematic, but John said he was merely repeating the concerns but wouldn’t act on them. He said on Twitter a few days ago, I spoke to an audience outside London.
I’d told them I was adapting the Life of Brian so we could do it as a stage show, not a musical. I said. We’d had a table reading of the latest draft in New York City a year ago, and all the actors, several of them Tony Winners, had advised me strongly to cut the Loretta scene. I have, of course, no intention of doing so. So someone in the audience had called a journalist and misreported me.
Amazingly, none of the British media called a check. The reboard also said he was cutting the crucifixion scene but not the song Always Look on the Right Side of Life. Klees did not address the crucifixion report, but said the song would remain for very good reason. We don’t want to upset Eric Idol, and it’s his only contribution to the life of Brian’s script. Seems like those two aren’t getting along because Idol had suggested the song had been cut and tweeted, I have nothing at all to do with this production or adaptation.
As for the Loretta scene, a clease tell the Daily Mail, so here you have something that’s never had a complaint in forty years that I’ve heard of, and now all of a sudden, we can’t do it because it’ll offend people. What are you supposed to make of that? But I think there were a lot of things that were actually, in some strange way predictive of what was actually going to happen. Later in the original scene, Eric Idle plays Stan. He tells his fellow revolutionaries, I want to become a woman from now on.
I want you to call me Loretta. John Cleese’s character says what Idol says, it’s my right as a man. I want to have babies. It’s every man’s right to have babies if he wants them. Clease’s character, you can’t have babies, Idol.
Don’t you oppress me. Please, I’m not oppressing you. Stan you haven’t got a womb. Where’s the feet is going to jest date? You’ve got to keep it in a box.
From the Guardian, they took a look at Comedy Unleashed, a quote rebellion against the safe tramline orthodoxy of the contemporary comedy circuit. Wow, it’s a haven for freethinking comedians who leave their self censorship button at the door. Comedy Unleashed features some quote unquote canceled at figures, such as Andrew Lawrence and Grand Lenin. They’re both playing to night. The Guardian says that the man is there five years in.
The three hundred seat theater regularly sells out. It’s a monthly event. Co founder Andy Shaw said, if somebody’s canceled, we’ll put them on on prisable let the audience decide if they’re funny or not. Our red line is is it funny? If people are constantly worried about the possibility offending a single person in an audience that they’ll never follow their art nor be funny that your comedy needs for today.
Follow the show for free on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your shows. See tomorrow. Who does like vacations? Do you need some inspiration for your next road trip? Are you excited to get out there and explore the world again?
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