-Our next guest is a very funny comedian
you know from his show "Joe Pera Talks With You."
Tickets for his "Summer in the Midwest and Rust Belt" tour
as well as his "Fall Everywhere Else" tour
are available on joepera.com.
Please welcome back to the show our friend, Joe Pera, everybody!
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
-Welcome back to the show, Joe.
-It's crazy to be here tonight,
on the same night as Katie Holmes.
'Cause my name's Joe
and she played Joey on "Dawson's Creek."
Also, Joe Biden is our president.
-What?
[ Laughter ]
That's a -- yeah, that's a real,
real curiosity.
I'm so excited you're going on this stand-up tour.
And I'm curious,
when you get ready for a big tour like this,
are you doing a lot of stand-up to prepare?
-Yeah, doing shows all over to warm up.
I actually did an anime convention last weekend.
I was pretty nervous, but it went well
'cause I opened with the joke,
"I'm so excited to be performing at this anime convention
that I could scream."
Aarrggghhh!
Like an anime guy.
[ Laughter ]
-Did they -- I mean, I'm assuming there --
I mean, they must have just lost their minds.
-They went nuts.
I said, "Sorry, I can't go Super Saiyan for you,
but that's the best I can do."
-I'm sure they were plenty happy.
Hey, I'm glad you're going on tour again
because I'm such a fan of yours.
I am so sorry "The Joe Pera Talks to You,"
a wonderful show, it is not coming back.
-No, after three seasons, they pulled the plug.
Was definitely a bummer.
But my friend Carmen Christopher...
-Yeah -...you know him --
he sent me a Steve Harvey clip
off of one of those alpha Instagram pages.
And Steve Harvey said,
"If a door closes, don't bang on it,
because if you turn around,
the hallway of life will present other doors.
And if you're banging on that one door,
you can't go down and see other doors."
-Wow. -Yeah.
-That's, uh -- That will be a hard line to forget.
-It did cheer me up.
-Yeah, yeah.
-Do you have anything else lined up
with the open time you have now?
-Oh, that's why -- Yeah, I'm really excited to tell you
that Carmen and Steve's advice
was really important
because just the following week, I got a phone call.
They asked me to be the next James Bond.
[ Laughter ]
-You're going to be the new James Bond?
-They needed a different angle after Daniel Craig,
and now they decided,
"Why not a celibate American James Bond?"
-Uh-huh.
Now, are you --
I have a lot of questions about this,
but, um, how do you feel,
you know, because this is, of course,
as iconic a British character in fiction there is.
Do you -- How are British audiences
responding to this news?
-I, well, this is the new -- this is --
They'll be finding out from this show, I think.
-Oh, yeah.
-I think they're going to love it.
It's also -- the new angle they're taking
that James Bond lives in Philadelphia,
he eats prewrapped Boar's Head sandwiches
for breakfast and lunch,
he's learning to play the guitar off of YouTube,
and he's very afraid of dogs. -Okay.
This seems like a really big departure, not just in casting,
but, you know, James Bond's whole thing.
-I give them a lot of credit for trying to refresh this.
-Yeah, you know. You know what? You're right.
I'm sitting here congratulating you
when we should be giving them a lot of credit.
They're the ones putting their necks on the line.
-They're taking a risk.
But I think, I don't know,
I don't see how it doesn't work out for everybody.
-Have you done a -- have you shot anything yet?
-It's funny you ask, because we actually --
yeah, they wanted me to show the first clip.
-Oh, great. -Yep.
-From... -So, is this like a teaser clip?
-Yeah, it was very early on in filming.
-Okay. -Yeah, this is --
Hopefully, it doesn't give too much away.
But this is from the --
James Bond is on his first mission.
-Okay. And what -- that's all we need to know?
-Pretty much. -Okay.
Let's take a look.
This is, I guess, the first look at Joe Pera
as the new James Bond.
Here's a clip of him on his first mission.
[ Laughter ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
So I, again,
I end up with more questions than answers, I feel like.
But -- So it seemed like that started with a man
spitting out...
-Yeah, yeah, we were shooting,
and he just pulled right into the camera and spit something.
And, you know, sometimes the part of filmmaking
is embracing imperfections,
so we decided to keep it in.
-Wow. -Yeah, so part of
the new angle of the new James Bond, too.
-So, it seems like -- I, like -- I've always pictured
a James Bond set as really being locked down and, you know,
not being a situation where a guy could just sort of
drive through the shot.
-We've actually put an ad on Craigslist that says,
"Drive through if you feel like it."
-Oh.
That's good.
You have any more?
I mean, I think, like,
obviously, the appetite is whetted here, but...
-Yeah, this is another one
from kind of the middle of the movie.
It might be hard to figure out what's going on.
But I think -- I think you'll --
I think it will make sense once you play it.
-Okay. Let's take a look at another
scene from the new "James Bond."
-So, what's -- what was --
I, um, I don't know what's going on.
-This is a scene from when James gets pissed off
that people are littering faster than he can pick it up.
-I see, yeah.
And he seems like a broken man in the end.
Because he ends up --
he ends up littering with the bag of litter.
-Exactly. -Yeah.
So this is sort of the "hero is lost"
type moment that happens.
Usually around the end of Act 2.
-Right, exactly. -Yeah.
-And I don't -- -What's the name?
They always have names like "Quantum of Solace."
Does this have a title yet?
-The working title is "James Bond!"
with an exclamation point afterward.
-To let people know it's a little more exciting
than the James Bond you're used to.
-Exactly. -Yeah.
-And then, yeah, I don't want to spoil the ending,
but this is the final -- -Final scene?
I feel like that will spoil the ending.
-Well, I don't know. I don't know.
Do you guys want to see the ending scene?
[ Cheers and applause ]
-All right, here's the -- You want to tell us
afterwards what we're supposed to see?
-No, just that I actually heard that they're putting
the full plots in trailers now,
just so that people want to know what they're seeing.
-Right.
-So MGM can't be too pissed off.
-Okay, great.
Let's take a look at the last scene
from the new James Bond movie.
[ Laughter ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
-So -- the writers -- I wasn't going to do it at first,
but then the writers said that there was character development
shown by, in the end, he decides
that he wants to get chicken, rice, and beans
from a lunch takeout down the street
as opposed to eating a prepackaged sandwich again.
-Oh, I see.
-And then -- Yep.
-it's neat to see him in a baseball hat.
I feel like you almost never see James Bond,
any of the previous James Bond --
Did you have a favorite actor, before you, obviously --
Did you have a favorite actor who played James Bond?
-They are all so good.
-Yeah.
[ Laughter ]
How about -- There's so many, you know --
At this point, I don't know if you can call them catchphrases,
but there's certainly a way James Bond talks.
You know, all the clips were sort of absent of dialogue.
Do you, in the body of this, do you actually speak
and have some of those James Bondy-type lines?
-Yep. We're working on some of the classic lines right now.
Everybody knows some of them, but yeah.
I was doing -- working on the one scene
where I do the big line, and figured --
Do you want to read it with me?
-The scene with you? -Yeah.
-Yeah, okay, sure. So who am I?
Oh, I'm a -- So can I assume -- Oh, yeah, I'm Bartender.
-Yep. -Oh, this makes sense,
'cause I think we all know the iconic line
we're working towards. -Yes.
-'Cause he has a certain kind of --
I don't need to tell you guys. There's a certain drink.
Alright. Can I read it? -Yep.
-Okay, here we go.
Here is your IPA.
[ Laughter ]
What is your name?
-My name is James Bond.
[ Laughter ]
What is your name?
-[ Chuckles ]
Pete Buttigieg.
I'm the Secretary of Transportation.
-What are you doing in Philadelphia?
-Oh, just hanging out.
-I've actually been hoping to see you to tell you my idea.
You should do a high-speed rail nationwide.
-That is a good idea. But how fast should it go?
-1,000.
-Joe.
[ Laughter ]
I'm --
[ Cheers and applause ]
Not until this moment have I felt this,
but I'm starting to get a little worried
about the new James Bond.
[ Laughs ]
-The only way that it could fail
is that we don't get Pete to play himself.
-[ Laughs ] Yeah, that scene would be weird
if you don't get the actual Pete Buttigieg.
Like an actor playing Pete Buttigieg.
-It wouldn't -- It wouldn't quite sell it.
-Yeah, that's pretty much the only problem.
So you shot the three scenes you brought, and you're rehearsing
for this scene. -Yep.
-But you don't know if you have Pete Buttigieg.
-Nope.
-What's the budget for this movie?
-Mm...
-About 1,000? [ Laughs ]
-Part of the reason we're going to try and get Pete
Is that he might divert some of the funds
from the Transportation Department
in the James Bond movie.
-See, I'm always worried you haven't thought this through,
and you always have.
Joe, it's always a pleasure to have you.
Congratulations again on this James Bond move.
Thank you so much for sharing it with us.
Joe Pera, everybody!
For tickets to his upcoming tours,
visit joepera.com.
Tickets are still available
for Meyer Theater in Green Bay, Wisconsin,
on August 26th.
We'll be right back with more "Late Night."