-Our first guest tonight is a Grammy-nominated comedian
and actor you know from shows like
"Breaking Bad" and "The Mandalorian"
and movies like "The Heat" and "The King of Staten Island."
The vinyl release of
"Bill Burr Live From Madison Square Garden"
is available at amoeba.com September 23rd.
Please welcome back to the show Bill Burr.
Bill, how are you, my friend?
-What's going on?
I loved that dramatic pause after "Grammy."
I got excited like, "Wait, did I win?"
"This guy is a Grammy...nominated..."
Damn it!
-I wanted you to go through that whole moment,
that whole emotional journey again.
-Oh, it was great. I was there.
They had the thing sitting in front of me like
they were going to hand it off to me like a running back.
"And the winner is..." someone else.
And then the guy just turns away, and five seconds later,
you're standing in the parking lot with your suit on,
wondering what the hell just happened.
-But this is very -- This is really cool.
This is kind of a throw-back to what comedy albums
used to look like way back in the '70s,
sort of a big double album.
And it's sort of also a historical document
for when you played Madison Square Garden.
-Yeah, I wanted to -- When I play these places
that I never thought I would play --
I made one at Carnegie Hall --
I'm doing it for me and then just, like,
big-time comedy nerds.
That's why I put it on vinyl, because I did "Paper Tiger"
like four months after this.
So this is sort of where my act was,
and it's, you know, a half-hour longer, I think, than --
There's a whole side of it
that's not even on "Paper Tiger,"
and it was this whole chunk that I wanted
to have in "Paper Tiger" where I was making fun of
the whole "support the troops, firemen are heroes,"
all of that stuff.
So all of that is on there.
It's just -- You know, it's sort of a weird --
What the hell happened?
Oh, when I was in London, there was some terrorist attack,
so that just put a weird sort of --
And, for some reason,
they didn't tell me that that happened.
"We don't need it to be in his head,"
so the information I needed to make it work I didn't have.
So, we took it out, but it ended up being a great thing
for the special because, you know,
I think people just sitting down --
Like, on Netflix, there's so much stuff to watch,
you kind of want to get in and get out.
So -- But this is the long, you know, if you're at home,
you're on drugs, you know,
you've got to cut up whatever you're cutting up,
I've got the vinyl album there for you.
Old school -- put on your headphones.
-I love it.
You -- I'm wondering, after you play one of these
historic spaces like Madison Square Garden,
does it make it harder to go to smaller venues
or is it exactly exciting as that was before, too?
-No, I like doing that as, like, a --
I like going back into the trenches.
Like, I have never been a person like,
after you do the big thing, you then have to go to the club
in like the three S.U.V.s, and then people have to
make sure it's okay for you to be --
You just make this big thing.
You just make this big thing so everybody is looking,
and they say, "See?
This is what happens. I can't go anywhere."
It's like, "Well, if you would just walk in,
no one would care."
So, I am -- After I listen to my own stupid voice
for an hour or hour and a half, I go the exact opposite.
I like a dive bar.
Back when I used to booze, I would go to, like, a dive bar.
I remember doing The Beacon
and I didn't even really have an after party.
We just found the nearest dive bar,
and I remember some woman there was going like,
"This isn't what, like, an after party should be.
Like, you just played that place.
This should be, like, nicer and everything."
It's like, "Why? What's wrong with this place?"
I hate those places -- when I was drinking --
that it took forever to get a drink.
And if you're a guy, they just didn't give a [bleep]
I used to have to send my wife up.
I'm like, "You know, you're good-looking.
Go up. They'll talk to you.
Maybe he thinks he's going to bang you or something,
and maybe I can get a beer.
So, I like the -- I like those bars back --
Oh, man, I miss drinking.
[ Laughter ]
I used to love day drinking.
-Should we change the subject before
you get too far down this road of missing it?
-No, no.
I just remember how hard it was to quit.
I'm not going to go back.
But I'll tell you, every once in a while,
I'll just see a bar that I would have gone into.
-Yeah.
-And I used to love going in during the day
with the pro drinkers, you know?
And you'd come walking in, and they'd --
You know, they'd just give you that glance.
And then, when you weren't loud and you sat down
and you ordered a man's drink -- you know what I mean? --
and then you just -- then they knew that you had your drink
and you were just going to stare down at the bar
and think about your regrets and not disturb anybody.
It was like -- Like, day drinking by yourself, you know,
as much as they say, "Don't do it,"
is one of the big thrills I had as an adult.
-Yeah, I love that, like, soft wood
where people could carve their misery in for the next person,
you know, just, like, half a message of sadness
that then you, when you had your drink,
could look down and realize you're not alone.
-Yeah, the creepy, like, playful flirting the older drunks
were doing with the younger waitress,
and watching her knowing how to play it perfectly
so she'd still get tips.
I mean, yeah, it was a lot of fun.
-You're doing a signing of this at Amoeba in L.A.
Will this be a situation where you will ask your fans
to wear a mask when they come in
and will you refuse the unmasked?
-I will definitely be wearing a mask,
but I'm at the point now, I don't care anymore.
-Mm-hmm. -I don't care.
I don't care if you think the world's flat.
I don't care what you think.
Just do whatever the hell you're going to do.
I hope the virus gets deadlier
and I want it to just wipe out way more people.
-Yeah. -That's what I'm going for.
Because, you know, we tried --
I think we all tried to pull in the same direction.
It's not going to happen. -Right.
-And we're all sort of broken up
into these pods on the Internet
where people just want to hear what they want to hear.
So, I mean, go ahead.
You know, go take alligator plaque medicine,
whatever the hell you're into.
I don't -- Maybe it works. I don't know.
I don't care. I'm just...
-You know, you have always had the position that we are --
we have a population issue in this world.
Like, you believe we have too many people.
So I guess every time you see one of this,
this is both -- this is an opportunity --
-People are blaming red ties and blue ties
for this whole thing, and that's not --
You should blame God and modern medicine,
because God made people flawed,
and modern medicine kept them all alive.
Defeated Mother Nature.
That's why there's
8 billion mouth-breathing morons on the planet,
myself included.
I should have died of an appendicitis in 1980
under a stack of wool blankets and people rubbing garlic
on my forehead or whatever the hell they used to do.
But, instead, they kept me alive,
so now you have to listen to my ignorance.
It's a plague.
There's a plague of people like me.
So, I think it's great that people
are going to go old school and not listen to doctors
and, you know, go back to doing dances
or whatever the hell they're going to do.
-We need more healthcare dances.
We've lost that. -Yeah. Let's go.
Go back -- Whatever the hell you want to do.
I don't -- I cared right up until when the vaccine came out,
and people are still like, "I'm not taking it."
Then I was just like,
"Alright, well, then I don't care anymore."
-Yeah. -I'm not rooting for them.
-I agree with you 100%.
I was so excited to get it,
and I couldn't believe that was not shared by everybody.
You go out -- -I get it.
I mean, listen, you know,
Big Pharmaceutical hasn't exactly --
I mean, they also created, like, you know,
the opioid epidemic, and people have lost their kids
and they're not held accountable at all.
Are they, Seth Meyers? -They are not.
-They are not, but if you tell the wrong joke in a strip mall,
oh, my God, you lose your career.
It's so stupid.
The stuff that people are paying attention to --
I had a buddy of mine last year freaked out
because they made Mr. Potato Head nonbinary.
He's like, "You can't say Mr. Potato Head anymore."
It's like, "You can. You just did."
And they don't care about people that want to transition.
This is a marketing ploy, alright?
There's 24 hours of free porn.
You can ride around on a Segway
with the virtual-reality glasses.
These guys are selling a plastic potato
you stick things into.
They're rebranding.
"What should we do? Should we make it gay?"
Give it a rainbow ass[bleep]
I don't -- just get him out of here!
That's what they were doing.
The most offensive thing about Mr. Potato Head
should be that it's still made out of plastic
and it's going to be floating in the ocean
for a thousand years after
you're dead and done playing with it.
That's not what it is.
"Did you hear what he said about gay plastic potatoes?
Is this the America we want to live in?"
Meanwhile, there's synthetic heroin killing people.
Not important.
-Hey, I have been a huge fan of your stand-up forever,
but I also feel like I was a real early supporter of
Bill Burr the actor.
I think you're fantastic in everything.
You were just in this great new show,
"Reservation Dogs," where you're fantastic in that.
And "F is for Family" is back for another season.
What is this going to be?
Season 4 or 5?
-This is 5. This is the final one.
-Mm-hmm.
-I'm not allowed to say when it comes out
or else the Netflix Algorithm Police come after me.
They know exactly when to announce it.
So I can't tell you.
But it's going to be coming out hopefully soon.
And then "Reservation Dogs" was this amazing just --
I got the script for the episode,
and just beautiful writing, the story, the whole thing,
and what they were talking about.
And then I went down there, and it was --
You know, they were just really, really cool.
I had a great, great, great time working with
everybody down there,
and I'm excited that the show is doing so well.
I believe it got picked up for a second season
by the time, like, the second episode came out, which is --
-And what a cool young cast, man, of young actors.
-Yeah, yeah.
There's -- Who'd I -- Devery Jacobs.
I did most of my scenes with her, and then --
I get all the names -- Kirk Fox, another stand-up comedian,
plays the junkyard owner.
Tazbah Chavez, Sterlin Harjo.
I know I'm going to forget a few other people,
but, like, they just -- You know, I think Sterlin was --
He came on my podcast.
He's from, like, the independent-film world,
so has a really, really strong background
in just sort of doing things that you want to do,
as opposed to things that will make money.
I just think, like, this just felt like people
were doing this because they were really connected to it.
And I've been really lucky in my career.
I don't know if you've noticed.
I have paratrooped into some of the best stuff out there.
I never created it. It wasn't my idea.
I didn't write it.
But I come in for like half an episode,
rub up against it, and people think I know what I'm doing.
But it's not me.
It's been everybody --
all the Vince Gilligan-type people out there.
-Well, you have been a perfect fit in every one of them,
and it is always just a delight to have you here.
Thanks so much, Bill.
-Alright, Seth. Thank you, buddy.
-Of course.
The vinyl release of
"Bill Burr Live From Madison Square Garden"
is available at amoeba.com on September 23rd.