- George Carlin behind you.
You know, that's- - Yeah (laughing)
- Holy Grail right there, man.
- Oh my God, I know.
- The first time I met him,
he said "I'm not in show business, I'm a comedian."
- Hmm. - Wow.
(laughing) - Yeah.
- That's the best.
- Like, George was gangster.
(laughing) - [Fortune] Yeah.
- [Male Announcer] This is "What A Joke".
- [Female Announcer] With Tom Papa and Fortune Feimster.
- [Male Announcer] On "Netflix Is A Joke Radio".
(vibrant music)
- The first cut's an hour, boom.
And we're all trained now that these specials have to be
59 minutes (laughing) with your credits, done, hour.
That's all people can take.
This cut felt more streamlined and faster at a longer time
than the original cut, in a way.
So I guess that thing of, oh, it's gotta be 50 minutes,
no one is gonna listen to you longer than that,
throw that out the window.
- You know, it's art.
There's no rules in art.
- [Tom] Yeah.
But nobody breaks them. I mean, that's to your credit.
- Yeah, I didn't expect it to start with an interview,
and I love that.
It was like right out the gate.
Like a funny, joyous story.
- It was one of these jokes,
you ever joke, you only did once?
- [Fortune] Mm-hm.
- I literally only did that White House story once.
- Yeah. - Wow.
- It was, whoa, the last party at the White House.
First of all, you ever been to the White House?
- [Jimmy] Yes. - It's amazing.
- [Jimmy] It's unbelievable.
- You walk in, you see these humongous portraits
of the presidents, everywhere you go, right?
- [Jimmy] Yeah.
- So I'm there, and it's me, and Ahmir is there,
and Jay-Z, Beyonce, Oprah--
It's like I died and went to Black heaven, all right?
(audience laughing)
And then they ring a bell,
and you gotta go watch the entertainment, right?
So it's me, Charles Barkley, and Jay-Z,
go in this room and watch the entertainment.
First, it was Herbie Hancock, and he was amazing.
Like, [imitates bass].
And then Stevie Wonder, like kind of snatches the mic
from Herbie Hancock, right?
And starts playing his stuff like,
and puts some extra blind in it, you know what I mean, like?
(audience laughing)
Put some like... (audience laughing)
Put some extra... (audience laughing)
You know what I mean?
- You've always been a part of whenever I prep a special
'cause Wanda Sykes is one of my good friends.
And she's like, "Chris always told me
that when you make a special, it's gotta be special.
And so none of this crap.
(Chris laughing)
You need to work on your jokes."
(laughing)
- No regulars.
- Yes. (laughing)
- A lot of regulars out there.
(Tom laughing)
- A lot of regulars. - [Chris] It's true.
I saw this on the menu yesterday.
What are you talking about?
- I remember talking to you at one point about specials.
And you were talking about your first one.
How you would study specials.
How you would, back then, VCR tapes,
and would watch all, almost like game films.
You are the first comedian to take a special,
and then redo the whole thing (laughing)
and bring it back out.
Why did you decide to do it?
- First of all the George Floyd thing went down, right?
And, I'm watching CNN,
and they used a clip from "Tamborine"
with this whole joke I did about cops and bad apples.
- [Tom] Yeah. - [Fortune] Yeah.
- And CNN used the clip,
and then, you know, I keep seeing the clip everywhere.
And people are sending it to me.
They always say the same thing,
it's like, "Well, it's not most cops.
It's just a few bad apples."
(audience laughing)
"It's just a few bad apples."
Bad apple?
That's a lovely name for murderer.
(audience laughing)
It's like, how'd they get that one?
Bad apple?
That almost sounds nice. (audience laughing)
I mean, I've had a bad apple.
(audience laughing)
It was tart. (audience laughing)
But it didn't choke me out.
(audience laughing)
(musical swoosh)
I called the editor,
I called my editor friend, Michael Schultz,
who does all my specials.
And I go, is there any more stuff there?
You know, any more cop stuff?
- [Tom] Yeah.
- And so we opened it up and we started looking at it.
And we're like, not only is there more police stuff here.
There's like a lot of jokes here.
- Yeah (chuckling).
- So he just compiled all these jokes
that just didn't make the special.
And I looked at it, I was like, okay.
Maybe I can look at this a different way.
Another side thing is, I'm friends with Rick Rubin.
And they did a reissue of
the Tom Petty "Wildflowers" album.
I don't know if you're a Tom Petty fan.
- Yeah, yeah, of course.
- And he played me like eight new songs, right?
Normally that means,
normally when you hear like a reissue or whatever,
and these extra songs,
you could clearly hear why these things aren't on the album.
(Tom laughing) - [Tom] Yeah, right.
- Not that they're bad, but sometimes they're like,
they're too much like another song
that's already on the album, right?
- [Tom] Right.
- So I listen to the "Wildflowers" thing.
Every song was amazing.
- [Fortune] Wow.
- I was like, what the fuck?
Why are these songs so good?
He's like, "Well, Tom wanted to put out a double album,
the label was like,
"eh, double album is gonna be hard to sell."'
It was like these songs are amazing.
With that in mind, I was like, okay,
let me see what this'll look like.
- [Tom] Right.
- And we started cutting.
And started, you know, re-figuring stuff,
and actually took some jokes out.
And tried to make it a different experience.
- [Fortune] Mm-hm. - [Tom] Right.
- I didn't say anything to Netflix.
I was just, you know, spending my own money,
just tinkering around in the studio.
- [Tom] Right.
- And I got a cut, and I was like, wow, this is good.
And I called Netflix, and they're like, "Fuck you."
(laughing)
Not paying you for-- again.
For the same special.
- Double-dipping.
(laughing)
- Fuck you.
And, nah, they didn't say "Fuck you",
but they were like,
"Well, why would we" you know, really?
And then we sent it over.
And after they watched it, they're like,
"Wait, something, there's something here."
- Yeah.
- This isn't the first time
I done something weird with a special.
I mean- - [Tom] Right.
- A couple of specials ago,
I shot, uh, what's the special?
"Kill the Messenger" in four different countries.
- [Tom] Yeah.
- I've always been into this thing where,
standup is an art form.
- Yeah.
- In an art form, somebody should be taking chances.
- Mm-hm. - Right, right.
- You know what I mean? - Yeah.
- What's interesting is,
Bo Burnham directed this first pass.
And he was kind of pushing it in an artistic way
in certain ways-
- Oh, let me go on the record right now.
This is not, 'cause I read, I think something,
in "The New York Times" and was like,
like I got rid of his vision and all of this stuff.
No, no, no, no.
This, I love Bo Burnham.
I love that version of the special.
- [Tom] Yeah, yeah.
- I love "Tamborine".
"Tamborine" originally, whatever,
is like the special I was dying to make my whole career.
- Yeah.
- So this is not like, "oh, we got it wrong"
or any of that bullshit.
(audience applauding, cheering)
- Chris Rock!
(audience applauding, cheering)
(Kendrick Lamar "Backseat Freestyle" playing)
(audience applauding, cheering)
(heavy tempo rap music continues)
(audience applauding, cheering)
- When you go on tour, you shoot the special,
you shoot the live show, and a lot of people,
they get too enamored with the live show.
- [Fortune] Mm-hm. - [Tom] Yeah.
- And when you get in there,
and you get in that editing room,
when you get in that Avid,
it's like you're making a new piece of art.
Some jokes become more important than they were before.
- Yeah, yeah.
- You know what I mean? Some things seem like,
oh, that was just a throw-away in that special.
And in this one, it's like a whole bit, you know?
- Right.
You could actually get into the editing room,
and make something that the audience didn't really see.
- Depends on the current climate, too.
- Yes, it does depend on, yeah,
there's some of the Trump stuff I took out.
Obviously, it's like okay, we're done with that.
- Why did you make that choice?
- Just some of it was just, you know,
some Omarosa joke, it's like, okay-
(laughing)
No need for that. (laughing)
You gotta get, you know what I mean?
It's like, "Oh, that thing killed in St. Louis."
You're not in St. Louis anymore.
- [Tom] Yeah (laughing).
- You're on this screen,
and now you have to make a new piece of art.
And sometimes, you can have an order
that you've been doing for three years.
And then when you get in that room,
you're like, oh man, you know what?
I'm gonna move that whole hunk over there.
- Mm-hm, yeah.
- It's gonna play better.
'Cause sometimes I mean, c'mon, we're all comics.
And any good comic, any good artist
is 80% insecurity and 20% ego, you know what I mean?
(Tom laughing)
It's like 80% total fear.
(laughing)
And 20% fucking ego.
So a lot of the things you're doing on stage,
it's just fucking fear.
- Yeah. (laughing)
Terror.
- You're like, I'm trying to not have a panic attack.
- Yeah, it's just like, okay,
it's just like you're just making,
you think you have the most artistic set,
but it's really the most secure set.
(laughing)
- Yeah, I didn't die.
- You know what I mean?
- I don't think anyone would ever assume
that you had nerves or fear when watching your standup.
- I mean, you know, preparation is just fear.
(chuckling) You know what I mean?
(laughing)
I mean, it's not panic,
but it's like over-preparing.
- Right.
- It's like, oh, I have a special.
Well, how much time do you have to do on the special?
Well, they want 60 minutes.
How much time do you have?
Two hours and 12. That's fear!
(laughing)
- Do you normally have that many jokes,
over the hour that you shoot?
- Yeah, kind of, I mean when I'm on tour,
yeah, I try to have about,
I try to have two hours at my disposal.
And I try to do about an hour, 40.
- Wow.
- Yeah, same, same.
(laughing)
- 59, 30.
- I'm like, oh, I gotta start writing.
(laughing)
- A lot of that too, it's the house I'm playing.
So I always look at it this way,
it's like, yeah, if I'm playing a club,
they'll get an hour, 10.
- Right. - Right.
- Height.
- Right. (laughing)
- Height.
- Hammering.
- Oh, man.
But when you get up in these big theaters or arena,
it's like well, we just saw Billie Eilish in this same room.
We just saw, you know whoever, we saw Prince in this room.
- [Tom] Yeah.
- What we're used to seeing,
the things we are used to seeing in this room,
are an hour and a half, two hours.
- [Fortune] Mm-hm. - [Tom] Right.
- And they have beginning, middles, ends,
crescendos, callbacks-
- Costume changes.
- Good shit. (laughing)
- Yeah.
- You know what I mean?
Expect Radio City, you know what I mean?
- And you can only bring so many openers.
- There's velvet seats.
(laughing)
You know what I mean, like?
- Ushers with bow ties.
- [Chris] Ushers with bow ties.
A proscenium arch.
Maybe I should give them a show.
(laughing)
I know I said you're not supposed to
compete in a relationship.
But after you go through that shit,
you're like, "Am I gonna lose my kids?"
It's like, yo, I'm going hard every time I have my kids.
And I always went hard, but I'm going extra hard.
It's like, "I don't know what you're doing
at your mother's house, but we gonna top that shit."
(audience laughing)
Every motherfucking time, okay?
Sometimes I bring guest stars.
(audience laughing)
I make sure they go back to her with a story, like,
"Mama, Mama, Drake helped me with my homework!"
(audience laughing, clapping)
"Lady Gaga made me a grilled cheese sandwich!"
(audience laughing)
Y'all think I'm bullshitting.
(audience laughing)
Check my Instagram, all right?
(audience laughing)
- How do you do so much,
and decide what's gonna get the priority?
- Well, I mean, put it this way.
Okay, my first priority is to be funny.
Every year, New Year's Eve,
where the whole world's going, celebrating and counting.
On January 1, I put a yellow pad in front of me,
and I literally write down where was I funny this year?
- Hm. - Wow.
- Was I funny?
- Uh-huh. (laughing)
- Like that's like the most important thing to me.
It's not even, if a thing was a hit or a flop, or whatever.
- Right.
- A movie isn't bigger than a talk show.
It's just like basically, was I funny?
- Did you ever have any years where you're like, oh?
- Yeah, some years you're like, oh.
(laughing) - This list is small.
(laughing)
- I wasn't very funny this year.
So, yes, so that's my first priority.
Like, just to be funny.
And then it's kind of whatever,
you know, wherever the wind blows me.
Honestly, I try to read.
I don't believe in writer's block.
I believe that there's reader's block.
- Uh-huh.
- And if you don't read a lot, you're not gonna write a lot.
- That's right.
It's true, it's really true.
- I gotta get some of those books.
(laughing)
- You know what I mean?
- Yeah. (laughing)
- It's taking in stuff.
- [Tom] Yeah, yeah.
- So you know, I'm trying to take in as much stuff
as humanly possible.
Try to hang around as many comedians
and just talk to funny people.
But, I don't really have a plan.
My plan is to be funny, my plan is to be good.
My plan is to try to do things I haven't seen.
And try to approach it like an artist.
Comedians are amazing,
but we're horrible rock stars.
You know what I mean?
- What do you mean?
- Because we don't, you know, we just put shit out,
we don't fucking like-
- Right.
- You know what I mean?
We don't, there's not a lot of strategy to it, you know?
- Yeah, I've always thought of that like,
I'm like, why do we tour?
Fortune and I talk about this all the time.
It's like, we just go non-stop.
Like how long's the tour?
20-year-long tour. (laughing)
- Yeah, you know, I'm always telling guys
to take a break.
Like, Lorne Michaels used to say,
"You can't make an entrance if you never leave."
- Wow. - Yeah.
Some of them can't even stop performing now,
I'm like- - [Chris] Yeah, I mean!
- This is the best time to stop.
(laughing)
- I mean, but you know, on the other hand,
someone could argue we're not rock stars,
we're jazz musicians.
And jazz musicians play all the time.
- [Tom] Yeah, yeah. - [Fortune] Right.
- If you stop, but you've got something else
to take your mind and your creativity, that's one thing.
Just to stop, as we're doing now,
it's weird to not be around comedians, not be playing.
- It is, but on the other hand, like every great artist,
you know, you like The Beatles,
you like Hemingway, you like whatever.
It's always about taking breaks
and getting new experiences.
And going to India, going to Cuba,
it's like, that's where the, to me,
some of the greatness comes from.
- Yeah.
- You know what I mean?
I look at a guy like Dave.
He took that big break and wow!
- Yeah. - Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Like look how creative this guy's been.
Or the level that his comedy has jumped up,
and it's like that break, is like,
I don't say stop being a comedian,
I'm just saying if you're always in the studio-
- [Tom] Right. (chuckling)
- Comics, we all get like this way.
Like, when you get to that point
where it's like, all your jokes are about,
"And then I got off the plane."
"And then I checked into the hotel."
(laughing) - I know.
(laughing)
- Hotels are dirty, you know? - I know.
Sometimes I do these gigs,
I have to walk around the mall.
It's like, oh!
- There's a world out there.
- There's like a whole world out there.
It's not just gigs.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- It can go anywhere,
it's just the great thing about standup.
You can literally talk about anything.
- [Tom] Yeah. - [Fortune] Mm-hm.
- The gold, the hard thing is just keeping their attention.
- [Fortune] Right. - [Tom] Right.
- You know, you're funny,
you're gonna be funny no matter what the fuck you do,
Tom Papa, Tom motherfucking Papa is gonna be funny
no matter what he's talking about.
(laughing)
You know, they used to have signs up that said,
"Whites Only."
They used to have signs up that said,
"No Blacks Allowed."
Now they got something new,
it's called prices. (audience laughing)
That's right, prices are the new Jim Crow.
(audience laughing)
You know the Four Seasons Hotel
does not say, "No Blacks Allowed."
But a $4,000 a night hotel suite sure does.
(audience laughing)
Yeah, that oughta handle your n---a problem right there!
(audience laughing)
Prices are the new Jim Crow, baby.
You know, Whole Foods does not say, "No Blacks Allowed."
(audience laughing)
But a $7 orange sure does. (audience laughing)
It's like, they don't want my Black ass in here.
(audience laughing)
There's a couple of white people here going,
"They don't want us in here either."
(audience laughing)
- You've made a lot of stuff at this point, my friend.
It's really- you're always inspiring.
- You inspire all of us, for sure.
- Stuff that you say rattles in our minds
for the rest of our careers. - For sure.
And it's always great to, being able to talk to you,
and see what you're coming up with.
- You guys are great. I like this show!
- Thank you.
- I just like when people take comedy serious, you know?
(lively music)