- And I realize she's looking at a pig...
driving a car...
doing cocaine.
[dark electronic music]
♪
[wind whistling wildly]
[cheers and applause]
- Hello, everybody, welcome to "This Is Not Happening."
I'm your host, Ari Shaffir,
and today all the stories are about nostalgia.
[cheers and applause]
Hells, yes.
This first comic, what an honor to introduce him.
He's absolutely hilarious, a legend of stand-up comedy.
Please give it up for my friend and yours--
Mr. Artie Lange, everybody.
[cheers and applause]
- My story has to do with cocaine, and--
[laughter and cheering]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, listen,
I've had a love affair with cocaine--
a love/hate affair, you know, it's--
I mean, I'm the only guy who ever got fat on cocaine,
as far--
I went to rehab for coke.
I swear to God-- this is a true story.
I'm in group therapy,
and this black kid walked up to me and said,
"What are you, pouring that shit on cheeseburgers?"
[laughter]
"God damn, you're the fattest cokehead I ever seen?"
That's how black guys talked in my rehab.
I went to rehab in 1888.
Uh, so, okay, I-- here's the story.
I come out here in 1995
to do a show called "MADtv."
It was a sketch-comedy show.
[cheers and applause] Oh, oh, thank--all right.
Thank you. I mean, you know, the show was--
it was fun, you know.
I was 27 years old, came out here,
and the first time I was ever out here
was the screen test for "MADtv."
And I came out here with a job, making, like, ten grand a week,
and it was great.
The problem was, I brought from New York City
a massive cocaine problem.
And I somehow had a coke problem
with $40 in my pocket in New York.
Now I had ten grand a week, okay?
And I literally would intercept the checks at "MAD"--
I would go to the accounting office at "MADtv,"
before it went to my agent.
I would get the check. I would cash it.
I would send, like, four grand to my mother
'cause she needed it.
I would put six grand in my pocket
and walk around L.A. like I was Jack fucking Nicholson,
you know.
And, you know, I had a blast, but, you know--
I was on a train that was gonna hit a mountain,
you know, that was-- moving real fast.
So a lot of the sketches we did on "MADtv," we did--
we did film parodies, okay, 'cause that's "Mad"--
It was based on "Mad" magazine,
and, you know,
you did these bad, bad puns
of movie titles,
and we'd have a pitch meeting to pitch this stuff,
and I would just say stuff as a joke.
Like, instead of "Dead Man Walking,
I'd say, "Ed McMahon Walking"...
as a joke, in the back.
Cut to me in three hours of prosthetics
as Ed McMahon.
Stuff like-- one time, I pitched--
They told us that Tori Spelling
had agreed to do a guest spot on the show,
and I pitched the Tori Spelling Bee.
And it-- [laughs]
The Tori Spelling Bee, and she would, you know,
have to spell words,
and she would have to use words in a sentence,
and the one word she would have to spell was "nepotism."
[laughter]
[laughs]
And then use it in a sentence, and the sentence was her
looking right at the camera, going, "I like nepotism."
So stuff like that.
So one of the sketches we did was called "Babe Watch,"
and that was Babe the Pig in "Baywatch."
My hand to God.
So guess who played Babe the Pig?
Moi.
And there was a lot of fucking money
for these sketches at the time.
We had a big budget, so we shot it on location in Malibu.
It was a two-day shoot.
I go out there. I had to be there at 4:00 a.m.
to get three hours of pig prosthetics--
a pig face, a pig snout, six teats,
the bikini top on each one-- that was the joke, you know,
and...
You didn't see us at the Emmys a lot back then.
So, anyway, yeah.
So six teats and a pig snout.
Now, the woman who did the makeup
was the best in the business at this.
So three hours of prosthetics, I look like a fucking pig, man.
I looked in the mirror, and I was like, "My God."
I had a pig snout covering my mouth and my nose
and the ears and all that shit and the teats.
So I go back to my trailer.
We got about an hour before we're shooting.
I go back, and I start eating.
Now, I catch of glimpse of me in the mirror, eating.
[laughter]
Guys, I'm--
literally, I'm going, "I'm a fucking pig."
I'm a pig eating.
This is not why I signed up for this, you know.
I don't want to be in show business
to be this, you know.
So I really started to freak out.
It was, like, a 14-hour shoot,
and I said, "I'm not gonna get through this without cocaine."
Not gonna happen.
So my coke dealer in New York hooked me up with this guy,
a contact he had in L.A. who was a coke dealer,
and this guy-- he was a Rastafarian guy.
I don't want to be, you know, racial,
but they just happen to dominate that business, all right?
And-- [laughter]
And he was the best cocaine dealer ever.
He was always right on time.
You called him, he was like, "I'm there," you know.
He was kind of-- he was always at a party
no matter what time of the day it was.
He was like Harvey Keitel in "Pulp Fiction,"
you know, the-- [laughs]
The Wolf, like, "You sending The Wolf, baby?
That's Kool and the Gang."
So I call him. I call him from the set.
And I go, "Dude, you got to fucking--
You got to meet me on the Pacific Coast Highway."
We were in Malibu, by Oxnard.
"You got to meet me. I got to get something from you.
I got to get an eight ball from you," and he goes,
"All right, all right, can you get to this restaurant, Duke's--
Can you get to the restaurant on the Pacific Coast Highway?"
And I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, I think I can."
So I hang up with him. I look around.
Now, I'm in every shot of this sketch.
I look at the-- the assistant director's
not looking for two seconds.
I run to my car.
I get in my car, and I speed the fuck away.
I just speed away.
I'm doing, like, 90 miles an hour...
looking, I'm telling you,
exactly like a pig.
I do, like, 90 up the highway, took about 20 minutes.
I get to Duke's. I pull in. He's already there.
The fucking guy-- [stutters]
What, were you at a brunch at Duke's? What happened?
'Cause I mean, anyone here who does drugs,
you got to score, you know-- you know, coke or heroin or--
you know, we all know what it's like
to score heroin, right?
[laughter]
[laughs]
I don't know. I was at a church social, sorry.
So, you know, they're never there.
These guys are never there.
You're supposed to meet them, you know, in Brooklyn,
and you get a call a half hour later,
the guy goes--like, a Puerto Rican guy going,
"Yo, man, I'm in North Carolina now."
"Excuse me? 'Cause I'm in Brooklyn."
"Yeah, man, I'm sorry. I fucked up.
Can you get to North Carolina?"
This guy was efficient. Okay.
So I get there. I get out of my car.
I run to him. He gets out of his car.
Now, I never told him I was on a TV show,
'cause I was afraid to, like, share my life with him,
and I forget myself.
He sees me get out of this car...
dressed exactly like a pig.
And he looks at me, and-- It's so fucking--
[laughter]
I'll never forget the look on his face.
[babbling and laughing]
When I retell this story,
this might be the funniest fucking part.
He goes--he looks at me, and he goes--
"Damn, man, what kind of crazy shit are you into?"
[laughter and applause]
He probably thought I was at some crazy drug party,
you know?
People dressed like pigs, like the--
like the "Eyes Wide Shut" orgy scene, you know?
What's the other password?
So I said-- I had to come clean.
"Oh, no, I'm on a TV show. I'm doing a sketch.
Like, I'm paid--the pig-- it's a long story."
And then he goes, "You're on a show?
What show you are on?"
and I go, "'MADtv.'"
He goes, "Oh, damn."
Look, can we talk about this later?
I just need the coke, you know?
He was starstruck for a second.
So I get the cocaine from him.
I can't pay. I don't have anything on me.
But he was, again, the best drug dealer ever.
He took credit. He goes, "Fine. Don't worry about it."
So I grab the coke, and now I'm, like, so freaked,
I got to do some.
I have to do some immediately,
just to get myself ready for what I'm going back to.
I get back in my car, and anyone who's ever had a cocaine problem
knows what a key hit is. You put--
If you don't have a straw, you know,
you put some coke on a key.
You know this, right? [laughs]
[laughter]
[laughs]
I apologize. You look really grossed out by me, but--
[laughter]
For a ton of reasons, but--
So I put some coke--
Again, forgetting what I look like--
I put some coke on the end of a key.
I go to do it.
I can't get the coke through the pig snout.
I can't do it, so now I'm thinking--
[laughs] I'm the only one in the history of the world
who's ever had this problem.
So now, three hours of prosthetics
I went through, okay?
And I'm trying to get
the fucking, you know, key through the thing.
I can't do it, so I'm like, "Fuck it."
I make a decision.
I break the fucking nose,
which means when I get back there,
it's gonna be an hour of fixing it before we shoot.
I'm in every shot.
So I break the fucking pig nose. I do a couple of blasts.
I'm like, "Okay, I'm fine."
Now I get back on the Pacific Coast Highway,
I rush back towards Oxnard.
I stop at a light at Topanga Canyon,
and I figure I'm gonna do another hit.
It's broad daylight. It's, like, 8:00 in the morning.
[laughs]
[laughter]
So I do another hit. I got the--
I got it up to my nose like this,
I look over, and there's this beautiful woman
in a Lamborghini.
This is the look on her face...
[laughter]
And I realize she's looking at a pig...
driving a car...
doing cocaine.
Then I'm thinking, you know, "Fuck her.
"This is L.A.
It's probably the third time she saw that that day."
[laughs]
At this point, I have no--
I'm like, "Fuck it. I don't care who sees what."
So I do another hit. I drive. I get to the fucking set.
Everybody wants to kill me,
but they can't really say it yet,
because we got to do 14 hours of shooting.
So they see that my fucking nose is fucked up.
They have to redo my nose,
and, you know, we start shooting,
and everybody couldn't stand-- Look, I was a fuck-up.
Every two hours, I broke the nose again to do coke,
and every two hours, she had to fix it.
And she knew what was going on. I wasn't fooling anybody.
So this happens.
We get through the day, and it's a nightmare.
So we had to shoot the next day.
They got us a little motel right on the ocean there,
which was next to the shoot,
So I go in. I fall asleep.
They rip all the shit off me.
I fall asleep in the bed. I wake up the next morning.
At some point during the night,
every bad thing in my body must have just fell out of me.
I mean, yeah, I just-- I shit the bed.
And I had a lot of bad in me.
I wake up--you know the scene in "The Godfather,"
the horse's head, where he wakes up, he sees all the blood?
I was like... [screaming]
[laughs] I had shit all over the bed.
I was late. I had no time to clean it up.
I I took a steaming-hot shower,
steaming hot, every--
took everything off, got dressed, ran out.
I had no time. We were checking out of the hotel.
I had no time to clean up.
So I just threw the bedspread over all the shit.
I mean, it was a river of shit.
I just threw it over the fucking thing and left.
What could I do, you know?
I had no cash for a tip...
which is very rude.
And I got there. I got through the day.
Everything was fine.
So we're driving home,
and I'm thinking about the hotel, and I'm worried about it.
I'm like, "Ah, well, you know,
I'm just gonna have to be embarrassed by that,"
but then I realized the room wasn't in my name.
The room was in the name of the first assistant director...
[laughter]
This guy Josh, you know.
If they want to blame somebody, they're gonna say,
"This guy Josh, you know, shit the bed
and didn't clean up,"
which got me off the hook, but it made me feel happy/
It really did.
The Rasta guy, the coke dealer--
again, he was the single-- the single coolest motherfucker,
as far as fast living, didn't care.
About two years later, I found out that he--
he was in a metallic-blue Corvette
driving with this chick he dated
up a winding street up by Northern California.
He was doing, like, 100 miles an hour, veered off,
hit a 18-wheeler, and just-- the two people disintegrated.
That's how he died, so he's dead.
And I'll tell you what, in the weirdest of ways--
and this is why I'm a fuck-up in life
and I care about all the wrong things.
In the weirdest of ways, I miss that motherfucker
more than anybody I've ever met
in Los Angeles.
My name's Artie Lange. That's my story.