(uptempo rock music)
- [Man] Ladies and gentlemen, your hosts
Jonah Ray and Kumail Nanjiani!
(crowd cheers and applauds)
- Hi!
Oh my god! - Thanks so much for coming.
- So, this is just a normal show.
(audience laughs)
Why did they laughs so much at that?
- (laughs) You're funny!
He's so funny, he's a funny lookin' guy!
- Alright, so we're already at the racism.
(audience laughs)
- The thing that I love about Meltdown
is that we're all 100% friends.
Like once in a a while, there might be a wild card,
but usually it's all people
you'd have over at your house for a party.
- It's in the back of a comic book store,
it says nothing about the show in the front
of the comic book store.
You would never know except for a chalkboard outside
that I thought was drink specials.
- You've seen the back.
It's like the parents are gone for the weekend,
and it's like we're throwing a party!
And just like some fold out chairs
with like a low ceiling.
- You ever get a phone call?
That's annoying, right?
(audience laughs and applauds)
You better.
You better be callin' to tell me your hands are chopped off.
(audience laughs)
It's like, oh, I just wanted to hear your voice, Daddy.
(audience laughs)
Buy my CD, right?
(audience laughs)
- Starting in 2009, I was doing a show here
in the back of Meltdown Comics monthly.
- When I moved to LA, Emily and I moved to LA,
we were looking to sort of run a show
because Emily had been running a show in New York.
- Jonah was like, well, you know actually he's like,
I run this monthly show.
- It's in the back of a comic book store?
And I was like, what?
This sounds unbelievable.
- So I suggested that we team up and make a new show
in the same venue.
- Let's do it every week.
We chose Wednesday 'cause there weren't any shows going on,
and Jonah, as he said, sort of knew the space.
It was like Emily's gonna handle
the production and the booking, which is the hard part.
- Which is the work.
- And then Jonah and I will come and just say stupid stuff.
It's so exciting!
- Very exciting!
- It's really exciting!
- I never went to shows in LA
where comedians were hanging out.
The comedians would do a set and then leave
because they weren't really fun,
conducive-to-hanging out places.
And I was like, wouldn't it be cool if we had a show
where people felt like they wanted to come by
even if they weren't on the show,
people wanted to stay past their own set.
- Did they call you?
Because they said backstage is boring,
and we need to turn it up a notch, or what happened?
- I swear to god,
I did not know they were recording back here.
- Usually if you come to a stand up taping early,
you're just sitting around being an idiot,
but this, you're like hanging out with people,
that's the point of it.
I really like this show.
- Whoa, what did I walk in on?
- [Moshe] We're doing bits. (laughs)
- (laughs) What's your name?
- [Moshe] Moshe.
- Hi Moshe, Nick.
- Nice to meet you, man.
- Sorry to interrupt your bits.
- No please, we'd love you to join.
- We're all like Roman emperors now,
just on our computers all day on Facebook and YouTube.
Don't like, that I like!
Incoming call, ignore!
(audience laughs)
- A big part of my job is just massaging everyone's ego
and making sure that everybody feels respected,
and everybody feels heard.
- When am I on?
We have you on first at this point, are you good with that?
- No, why am I?
- [Emily] Anybody could go first.
When do you wanna go?
- Maybe first is fine.
- Emily always takes such great care of us.
She's kind of like our mommy.
Our comedy mommy.
- That was everything that I hoped it would be.
And more!
It was amazing!
- From a stand-up's perspective,
the Meltdown show is the creme de la creme
of all the creams on all the tops
of any of the cream barrels
that are the shows in Los Angeles.
Do you guys think you're good people?
(audience laughs)
That's a weird one, isn't it?
Everyone's like, hold on, we have to decide now?
(audience laughs)
- This show is more of a just have fun,
try out some fun new stuff,
you're working on trying on a weird character piece
that you maybe haven't done before.
- I assure you I am not merely a caricature
of a gay villain!
(audience laughs)
- I think it might have been Emily
who just kind of to save both of our egos
said we should host together.
- Yeah, and I think that worked out immediately
because it adds such a fun vibe to the show
because we don't plan what we do in the beginning.
- Oh, she's so excited, she's leaning in,
like what's gonna happen next?
More of this.
- Just more of this, sloppy guys just trying to say words.
- Sloppy guy, really guy who's in great shape.
(audience laughs)
Sort of a scumbag, just kind of a champion of the people.
- There's something kind of fun an electric
about not knowing what's gonna happen
when we're on stage together,
and what's gonna happen with the crowd.
- Are you a One Direction fan?
You are.
No, it's okay.
- How old are you?
- [Woman] 20.
- [Kumail And Jonah] 20!
- That's slightly too old.
- [Jonah] Yeah, yeah.
(audience laughs)
- Jonah and Kumail's banter
has gotten better and better over the years.
They've gotten better at playing off each other,
and the audience has gotten better at knowing
that they're gonna be involved, too.
The audience participation is a huge part of the show.
- What's your name?
- [Woman] Frankie.
Frankie, that's a great name.
- 20, 20, Kumail, 20.
(audience laughs)
- The two of them will come on stage,
and they'll, it's this big, the joke is
we're doing too much time, and then that stops being funny,
and then it's funny again 'cause they're like
what if we were actually doing this much time at this point.
- Kumail and Jonah doing a tight 45 up top,
but don't worry, it's riffed, so.
- So they'll laugh, and then they'll stop laughing
'cause it's really offensive the amount of time
that they're doing at that point.
And then, it starts to get really funny
because then they bring on the first comic.
- I recently got Warren Buffet drunk,
which is where you get drunk enough
that you actually become fiscally responsible.
- It's very hard to have a bad set here.
The people are listening, and it's almost like
they can see if you're funny, and if you're funny,
they're gonna kind of go on the ride with you,
even if it's two new ideas you thought of
on your ride over here.
- (grumbling) Norm MacDonald as a zombie.
Okay, just riffin' bits, havin' fun.
- My name is Gaston Dominguez-Letelier.
I own Meltdown.
We've been here for 20 years.
It's 14,000 square feet of comics, toys, and a theater.
- You can buy the new Wolverine
and then get in here and watch Brian Poussin
talk about the new Wolverine.
- Yeah, exactly.
- Alright, so he is a nerd.
Alright, this official.
- It's not mean comedy, or you gotta buy five drinks type
comedy club, it's just like bros
and brodance if that's a word.
- Glasses, glasses, glasses, glasses, glasses!
What are we, in the back of a comic book store?
- What's cool is that he's so invested in this place,
that sort of love extends to our show as well.
It feels like we're all a part of one big family.
- The crowd is amazing.
If you're here, and you're willing to be funny
and willing to kind of get on stage and have fun,
then they're gonna come with you.
- God, that was so much fun.
To do a show in front of those crowds,
it's fuckin' nuts.
- And I think it makes people feel
like they're in on something,
and that they're part of a club.
- There are people who come here,
and they didn't know each other, and now they're dating.
I think we're only a few months away
from a Meltdown wedding.
- Will you marry me?
(audience laughs)
- Uh, you're married.
- Yeah, you're married, you have a kid.
- I am no longer married.
(audience laughs)
- People come here just to hang out,
and that's one of the fun things about it.
And something that I haven't talked about
and I refuse to talk any more about from here on out.
- They want it, they're almost like junkies or something.
And so they just want to be around the comedy.
- One of the guys that was coming to our show
turns out was a great illustrator
and now does our posters every week, Dave Kloc.
- I got to know Jonah, and eventually I told him
I thought the shows had the feel of a basement show
or a punk rock show that had show posters and stuff.
And I thought his show could use that.
- I love his artwork.
I think he's really talented, and I mean,
I have them framed all over my house.
I mean, sometimes when my name's smaller
than someone I hate, I don't frame that one.
- They are my mortal enemies,
I will fight them 'til the very last!
- We never had the idea of starting this weekly show
with the idea that it would become a TV series.
That was never part of the plan.
- Mike Rosenstein, who's a producer of the show,
who works at Red Hour, had been coming to the show.
He came every week and was like, hey, we should see
if we can make a TV show out of this.
- I would bring my friend Lance Bangs
to the show all the time,
and we coming probably for a year,
and whenever he's in town, he would come with me.
And we shot backstage with the comedians,
we shot some stuff on stage.
- We're gonna do this for TV,
but only if we can do it right here.
We're not gonna move to a different space,
and try and recreate this.
It's gonna be right here, it's gonna be the regular show,
and if we can bring in cameras
without disturbing the vibe of the show,
then we'll do it.
- Get a camera on me!
Stay the fuck out!
You stay out!
Stay the fuck out of here!
This is our time!
This is our time down here!
Get out of here, stool!
Get the fuck outta here!
- We wanted to preserve the show
and kind of capture it for people.
I think that worked.
- I don't understand how they put this together
into a 22-minute episode.
- It's gonna be very documentary style.
- This could be anything.
- It could be anything, but it won't be.
- The future of the show is just gonna remain the same.
We shot the show on Wednesdays,
we still do 'em every Wednesday, we haven't stopped,
we're not gonna stop.
- It feels like the perfect show to me.
I don't wanna change anything about it.
- This is more of just a vanity project for us.
(audience laughs and applauds)
Let me do a little blow.
(nose honks)