Full Transcript for #2564 - Chuck Lorre

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day!

So, explain that again. Explain the show that you saw. It was at the Singer Bowl in 1969. Jimi Hendrix was the headliner. The Experience right after Monterey.

Janis Joplin and the Holding Company, Big Brother and the Holding Company, was the warm -up act.

Wow! What was that like? Well, for starters, we bribed a little security guard to get in. Me and my friends. I think we gave them $2 a piece. And we walked right up to the stage. Wow! And watched, like, right there. And then, that was my first, I first went, oh, I guess I gotta start drinking Southern Comfort. Because she's making it look pretty good.

When I worked with Phil Hartman on NewsRadio, one of his favorite stories was he was, like, a stagehand at the whiskey. And Hendrix performed. And it was his job to stand with his hand on the speaker. He was worried that Hendrix would knock the speaker into the crowd. And so, I guess it was just not very stable. So, he said he was literally standing there with his hands on the speaker with Hendrix, two feet away from him playing guitar.

Early on, he would destroy his equipment. Like the Who would do as well. They'd tear up the amps. He'd set the guitar on fire. You know, I'm 15, 16 years old going, oh man, don't set the guitar. Give me the guitar. Don't set it on fire. Don't smash the guitar. Please, no. They were always smashing guitars back then. Yeah, yeah. It was an expensive way to end a show.

But that's what was happening. It just was a, I guess it was just a wild rock and roll thing. It was amazing. A rebellion thing. It was an amazing time to be a kid watching that stuff. Well, it's such a crazy time in human history. I mean, it was one of the weirdest times in all of culture. If you take the difference in the culture of the 1950s to the culture of the late 1960s, it's like just an insane shift.

Yeah. Like one of the most insane shifts that was so radical and so big. It happened so fast. It was a response to the 50s. Yeah. It was that and the Vietnam War and drugs. Yep. All of the above. All of them, psychedelic drugs, everything all together. And the birth control pill. Yes. That changed everything. Yes. Yes. Very good point. Very good point.

Yeah. Gave women freedom. As well. It did the same for men. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Everybody could just do whatever the fuck they wanted. And they're doing drugs at the same time. So everything just boom. Just all came together. Yep. Your story is awesome. The book is great. It really is. It's very compelling. You know, one of the things that bums me out the most about the the internet and streaming is that we've lost the multi cam sitcoms.

Hmm. It's a very weird thing. Like first. The first thing that killed it, I think, was reality shows. Right. That that sort of took a lot of the wind out of its sails. But a few remained. And during Covid, me and my family watched Big Bang Theory. I had never watched it. Hmm. Watched it from episode one. We just binged it all the way to the end.

I fucking loved it. I felt like when I was like a comic in the clubs in L .A., you never heard about Big Bang Theory. It didn't get. It was like there was other shows that people wanted to you were cool if you liked. Mm hmm. And the Big Bang Theory was like, you know, family sitcom, you know, just like real clean. And it's a really well written show.

It's very funny. It's a really good show, man. Thank you. We worked hard. I bet you did. We worked really hard. It was it was a general attitude that every episode had to kick ass. Everyone. Well, it was also so unusual. You have this like super autistic genius guys, your head head character.

Well, the way I entered the show, because I'm clearly not a physicist or by any means a genius. They were outliers. They were guys that couldn't figure out how to behave in the real world. Right. That I got. Yeah. You know, the physicists, quantum physicists and and all that stuff. That was, you know, I'm college dropout. That was never my thing.

But being on the outside looking in that I understood. Right. I understood. Yeah. Your story is awesome, too. It really is. It's it's it's very it's such an American story, you know, because it's you trying to figure out how to make it in show business and trying to be a musician and all these different things that happened to you. And the whole Scientology thing and then eventually, you know, starting to write on big sitcoms and the Roseanne story.

And it's fucking great, man, because it's like it's such a huge part of television history. What you've experienced. You really have. It's like if you think about television history in America was a big part of is defined by its sitcoms, you know, because sitcoms like whether it's all in the family or Seinfeld or friends. There's some about those sitcoms that like cement us in this place of comfort and happiness and like laughter.

Like there's a those are our almost like our extra family is these people on TV that we've become attached to watching every Thursday. For me, it was characters. Nobody remembers the plot of a sitcom. Right. They were great plots, especially on Seinfeld and stuff. Larry David. Nobody can plot a comedy story better than Mr. David. But the secret sauce was you wanted to hang out.

You wanted to hang out with these people. You wanted to sit at the bar with Norman Cliff. Yes. And Woody and Sam. You wanted to have a cup of coffee with Jerry, you know, and the same thing held true with friends was a sort of a surrogate family that you wanted to be part of. But you don't remember the stories. The stories were secondary.

It was the characters and perfect casting on these shows as well. Yeah. Perfect casting. Why do you think that? I mean, in 94, when I first came to L .A., sitcoms were the thing. That's where everybody came to L .A. in the first place. Yeah. If you're a comic, you came to L .A. hoping you were going to get a deal so that you could be the next Roseanne or Jerry Seinfeld or fill in the blank.

Tim. Tim Allen. Brett Butler. There was all those people were like. You go back to Cosby. Stand up. Yeah. It was all you wanted the network to develop a show around you and all these people were scrambling for that. Yeah. And that, for the most part, doesn't exist anymore. Well, we're trying with Leanne Morgan. You know, Leanne's remarkably successful stand up right now.

And the show we're doing with her on Netflix is doing pretty well. Netflix, you can do it. Yeah. They have the freedom. Young Sheldon worked on Netflix. That was great. His amazing thing about Young Sheldon on Netflix was a whole generation of kids watched that show and had never seen the Big Bang. Right. Right. And what's wonderful, too, is when you get to talk to them, they don't know what CBS is.

How weird. It's it's it. But the show stood on its own, which was that was our dream come true that it wasn't standing on the shoulders of the Big Bang Theory. It was its own show. Right. No, definitely was. We binge that, too. After we binged Big Bang Theory, we binge Young Sheldon, which is a great show, too. But different. Right. Single camera.

Totally different. Yeah. Yeah. The thing about the multicam thing is like you're kind of in on it. You know, there's a crowd. They're watching this. It's like you're watching. It's like you're watching a play as much as you're watching a comedy. It is a play. This episode is presented by Paramount Plus. The King returns. Sylvester Stallone is back as mob boss Dwight Manfredi in the Paramount Plus hit series Tulsa King.

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Plus, get free shipping. Just go to thefarmersdog .com slash Rogan. This offer is for new customers only. Yeah. It is a play with four cameras rolling around in front of it. Right. And if somebody makes a mistake, you do it again. Yeah. Or something stinks, you rewrite it or you cut it. But you don't put it on TV where, you know, as I've always said, if it stinks in front of the audience, if you put it on TV, it's going to stink forever.

Right. Right. So it is it is a little bit of theater. I think it started back in the 50s as theater. That's what they, you know, started as radio plays. Right. You know, and then television happened. What was the first sitcom on television? It wasn't The Honeymooners, was it? Oh, I think not. There had to be something probably before that.

Well, it was always, you know, Lucy. But I think even before that there was Phil Silvers and George Burns. Right. I don't I don't know. I don't know the deep history of it, but it all came out of vaudeville and theater. Yeah. One of the more interesting things about the is this this taste for the laugh track. We've never used a laugh track.

Never been for 40 years, been accused of it, but never used it. And I remember one time I had a reporter on the set of The Big Bang Theory who went and sat in the audience and watched this tape a show in front of a live studio audience.

It takes three, three and a half hours. And then he writes an article complaining about the laugh track.

You know, it's sort of like, OK, there's no getting away from this. He sat in the stands with 200 people laughing and he wrote about the annoying laugh track. That's interesting. Do you think they just do that because controversy sells and negativity sells and they just have a narrative in their head? It diminishes the show. They want to diminish it.

They want to diminish it. Yeah. I think I made that pretty clear in the book. Yeah. The word sitcom. It made sense when you married a fucking witch, you know, or you came back from outer space with a genie. Right. And you don't want to get laid, you know.

But it makes no sense when it's a family show like Archie, you know, all in the family. That's that's about a family. What's the situation? He's a bigot. He's, you know, he's he's he's racially insensitive. That's not a situation. That's life. You know. Well, the whole sitcom thing, I just don't feel like you talked about this in your in the book as well.

Like you wouldn't even say that you wrote for sitcoms. I'd say I wrote a TV comedy. Yeah. Yeah. I was embarrassed. Isn't that interesting? I was very insecure. And and I the word hurt me. It physically hurt me. That's crazy. Yeah, because it's Hollywood. It just didn't get the respect that a film did. No, of course not. Not even close. Not even close.

So much harder, though, in so many ways to make 200 people laugh every week for 22 weeks. It's almost impossible. It's very difficult. It's ridiculous. And if you watch the writers scramble and, you know, every week you have to have some new scenario and you've got five cast members. You have to juggle around in the scenes and network executives and company executives and the managers of the of the actors and the actors.

And everybody's, you know, feeling like we live or die, depending on whether the audience laughs or not. There is no grace period. And if you're a writer, you also have to listen to the executives and their ideas early on. Hard early on early on. Early on. Before the show gets successful. Once you get successful. You know, I started to, you know, my testicles dropped at a certain point.

And I stopped saying, saying, yes, sir, no, sir. I just, you know, I said, no, this is the way it's going to go. But that was predicated on having had success. That was all. This the sitcom on Netflix you were talking about, is this going to be multicam or single cam? It's multicam. It is multicam. Oh, that's awesome. We just finished our second season.

I didn't know. Yeah. The only one that I know that's doing it right now is Miss Pat. She's got a very funny show. But it's, it used to be there were so many of them. And it's such a good genre. There were 40 or 50 a week. That's crazy. Now there's maybe three. That's crazy. Maybe three. Could you have imagined? In front of an audience, maybe two.

Could you have imagined? Do you feel, first of all, boy, did you get out at the right time. You know, like with network stuff, like all your gigantic hits. You know, they were all like perfect at the right time when everybody was watching sitcoms. Timing wise, I've been blessed. Oh my God. There's no question about it. It's the greatest timing of all time.

You know? And I mean, I just don't understand why they can't come back. It's such a good art form. It's so fun to watch. When it's done really, really well. Yeah. It's extraordinary. And I've seen the eulogy for it many times over the last 40 some odd years. And I'm hard to buy into the eulogy because one great show changes everything. Yeah.

It's still fun to watch. That's what doesn't make sense. And this is what I got when we were watching Big Bang Theory. Like it's fun to watch sitcoms. It's a very different experience than watching anything else. You're aware that it's a half an hour. You know, you know all the characters. You know, oh, this guy's going to say something stupid.

And this guy's going to do. It's like, it's a very interesting art form that is very, is very, people enjoy it. It's very comforting for people. And it doesn't make sense. Like it just shows you like the mismanagement of television that sitcoms were allowed to go away. It doesn't make sense to me.

I don't, I don't understand it either. Tastes change. The culture changes. Do you think that's what it is though? I don't know. I don't think that's what it is. I don't think they've changed that much. I think there's a comedy has certainly changed. I believe. I think laughing out loud is frowned upon. Really? I think there's a vulnerability to laughing when you let yourself laugh.

And I mean, look at what, look at what gets fetid as a comedy these days. And they're great stuff. You know, I mean, they're really wonderful stuff, but you're not laughing out loud. You know, when I, when I, you know, when I watch something like White Lotus and I talk to people about it, they love it. And it's extremely well done. Mike White's brilliant.

You don't laugh watching it. It's enjoyable. You know, it's extraordinarily well written and well produced and casting is great, but it doesn't, it doesn't cause out loud laughter. You think people don't want to laugh? Really? I think when you laugh out loud, first of all, laughter is not something self -generated. It happens to you. Right.

Right. It's surprise. It should, it should come as a surprise when you laugh. Sure. Right. It's not, oh, I'm going to laugh now. Laughter happens because you've been somewhat, you've been surprised by what you're watching or listening to. Yeah. And, uh, and there's a certain, you have to be, you have to be vulnerable enough to let yourself react.

You've seen people watch comedy like this with their arms folded. They're rejecting you before you've opened your fucking mouth. You know where that happens the most is Los Angeles. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe you need to move.

You're saying all these things that I respect you deeply and I'm hearing what you're saying. I don't agree at all. I think people love laughing. I think they enjoy the shit out of it. It's one of their favorite things to do. Maybe I am experiencing, maybe I am a victim of Los Angeles. Los Angeles is an insanely self -important place where people are constantly judging each other's social status.

Mm -hmm. And, um, they would love to be able to dismiss you and they love to look forward to the opportunity to dismiss you. Not everybody, not everybody, a lot of cool people there. Yeah, yeah. But there's a, there's a percentage of people that come there with a hole in their soul that they're trying to fill that will never get filled. And so they always have this weird way of interacting with people.

It's this constant dick measuring contest and it's exhausting. So where would I go? I don't know. Somewhere else. Somewhere else. I mean, even New York is way better in that regard because it's not tainted by show business. You know, New York is insanely congested and there's too many people and it's just nuts. But other than that, like, it's a, it's a great metropolitan city filled with everything.

All the greatest restaurants and there's comedy clubs and all these. It's not tainted. There's a thing about Los Angeles where the, the spirit of the city itself is tainted by people that want attention. And it always will be. It's, it's impossible to avoid. They, they go there because that's where the auditions are and that's where the plays.

And some of them are fantastic people. Don't get me wrong, but there's a larger percentage that aren't fantastic. And they are a mess and they're exhausting. And those are the people that cross their arms. And that's why you think people don't want to laugh because they do everywhere else. Well, clearly the shows, the shows that I've been spent my whole life working on do really well all over the world.

But, you know, maybe, you know, I'm, I'm, but I'm in a bubble. You're in a bubble. I live in a bubble. Yeah. Yeah. That, that bubble's a little bit of a problem. It's crazy. I mean, sometimes you, you see the big bang theory, huge hit in Germany, in Germany, you know, I, I, I, I, I, astonishing how it, um, Mexico, Brazil. Wow. The Beatles down there.

It's remarkable. You know, maybe not so much in Brentwood.

Right. It's like, that's the thing about it. It's dismissed. And it was dismissed in Hollywood. I remember I was working on a sitcom and I was dating this girl who was an actress and she literally, she was unemployed. She literally told me I wouldn't do a sitcom. I want to do film. I was like, okay. All right. I don't know what to tell you.

Like the secrets to the people that don't know unless they've been there. It's really hard. It is hard, but it's really hard to put on a play every week. Yeah, it's really hard. And, uh, it's, it's, it's, it's anxiety ridden. It's, it's nervousness. It's, it's stressful. It doesn't always go well. Right. When a joke fails at the Burbank, at the Burbank Warner Brothers lot.

And it, and the audience doesn't respond. You can hear the one 34 freeway. Right. I mean, it's crickets. Yeah. It's not good. And, but it's, it's an extraordinary teaching device because you, you learn, you learn some humility. Oh, I'm not as smart as I thought I was. Yeah. That joke died. I thought it was great. Yeah. Died. Oh, we got to fix it.

You know? And that, that's, that's how, that's how I spent the last many decades, you know, rushing around trying to fix it. This episode is brought to you by the terminal list season two. Chris Pratt is back as Navy SEAL commander, James Reese. And this time he's fighting for redemption. Nine months after finishing his list, Reese is hiding in Mozambique with a terminal brain tumor.

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It's also often a wild thunderstorm of creative people getting together, working on something, trying to figure it out. Everyone throwing ideas at things. It's really exciting in that regard. Like every week you're creating this thing and you're putting it on its feet throughout the week. Right. You get a table read, you sit down, everybody fake laughs.

You have to figure out what's real. What's real. You put it together. When I was on Roseanne, it was huge. Every week, maybe 40 million people were watching in real time. No, no DVRs yet. No, basically just the start of the VCR stuff. And, you know, great writing staff. I was really blessed to be part of that staff. But we learned very quickly.

And if they were to say, John Goodman would walk into the kitchen and say, Rosie, I'm home. The audience would go berserk. And we'd be going, yeah, I wrote that line. They were just glad to see him. Right. Right. They were so excited to see him that the response was not genuine. It wasn't a comedy. There was no comedy in Honey, I'm Home. Right.

But they were so thrilled to be in the same space as John Goodman, who they loved. Right. As Dan Connors. And, you know, you have to start learning that those those are not the laughs that you hang your hat on. Those are the laughs because the show's become part of people's lives. You know, it's become visceral. You know, people respond to the Big Bang characters.

I tell this story in the book at Comic -Con early on.

Thousands of people were camping out at night to come in and see the panel at Comic -Con for the Big Bang Theory. And I was sitting next to Jim Parsons at an autograph line, you know, where people come up with a cast picture and they sign it. And this girl comes up to Jim and her hands are shaking and she hands him the picture to sign. And she's crying out of joy to see Jim Parsons to be this far away from Jim Parsons.

Wow. And I remember thinking, I've been doing this a while. People are always happy to see John Cryer and Charlie. Nobody ever cried.

Nobody ever cried when they saw Roseanne, you know, or anybody like that. But they were she was crying out of sheer joy to see these guys. And that's when I went, something's happening here that we didn't plan, that we couldn't have planned, that these characters have hit a nerve, you know. Well, I think it is the misfits thing, you know.

Yes. I think that's a giant part of it. And they become a surrogate family. Yeah. They support one another. Yes. They're losers in a life raft. Right. You know what I mean? Right. And they hold each other up. And all odd in their own unique way that's endearing. And I think for a lot of people, you know, you look at friends, you're like, those fucking people never hang out with me.

What's the point? You know, they're all good looking. They're hanging out together. Yeah. They're too cool. Everybody's cool. Fuck. I don't fit there. But they'd watch Young Sheldon and they'd watch that show and they think, all right, well, these people are just weirdos just like me. One of the things I loved about Young Sheldon we discovered as we were doing it was the show really became about his family.

Right. Here's this cuckoo. Right. Cuckoo's nest. You know, this odd child. With normal parents. With normal parents. His dad's a football coach. His mom's deeply religious. He's got a twin sister who's just a twin. Just a kid. Yeah. And an older brother is kind of a knucklehead. You know, means well, but, you know. It's how they have to accommodate this remarkable human being.

It really became watching them. I mean, how much love and protectiveness went towards this little boy. Yeah. Who was oblivious. Right. At how caustic he was. He was really an asshole. You know what I mean? And so was the grown Sheldon. He was really a dick. He treated his friends horribly. And and it was one of the magic tricks of young Sheldon was an eight year old being a dick is not is not acceptable.

Right. You know, 25, 30 year old Jim Parsons. You can be white. You can be caustic. But when it's coming out of a child's mouth, not so not so pleasant. So it really shifted to becoming how his parents and his brother and sister and eventually in his and his grandmother took care of them. They just they excused him for being the way he was and allowed him to be that way.

That's a love story. It is. It is. And it's completely unique to the original show. The Big Bang Theory, you know, obviously Sheldon's older, but it's just a different thing. There's the whole story is a different thing. The concentration is a different thing. It's really about the family and this extraordinary kid. Yeah. But it's great. Thank you.

When you talk about the Roseanne days, those are some of my favorite days because, you know, I'm friends with Roseanne and I know how crazy she is. And, you know, she talks about a lot that you know better than I do. But but she talks about how crazy she was during those days. That's nice to hear. Yeah, that's nice to hear. She's like, I was a tyrant.

Yeah, that's a good. That's the nicest word I can think of. Well, you know, her whole story, how she got hit by a car when she was young. Yeah, that's what a lot of people don't know. Yeah. And I thought it was really important to have her on after she got in trouble and got fired from her new show to have her on and explain like her history.

She had legitimate mental illness, like not like I need attention. Mental illness hit by a car when she was 15 years old, was in the hospital for a long time, was in a mental health institute for nine months after that. She was a grade A math student after the accident. She could not count like she had a legitimate brain injury that changed her personality completely.

And it's responsible for a lot of her erratic behavior and a lot of the chaos that you see. Also, maybe some of the brilliance in her comedic timing. She was just so so didn't give a fuck. She was so different than any woman comic before her. Absolutely. No, she was groundbreaking. Yeah. That initial act that she and her sister, I don't know if she talked about her sister much, but they wrote that act and it was like nothing that we'd ever seen before.

It was entirely original. Yeah, entirely original. And now I know why children, why, why, why, why parents eat their young, why, why animals eat their young was the keystone of that act. Now I know why animals eat their young. Yeah. She was, she was a force with just hearing the stories like the, how the Tom Arnold, they made you put his name as a writer.

All the scripts, you'd have to change the scripts and write his name in.

Easy for you to laugh. That kind of shit. The reason why I laughed is because I'd heard stories, not about Tom Arnold, but about people doing that. Like that was a real thing. Like it was almost like a union job that you got with the mob where you didn't really have to show up. Oh, you know what I mean? The no show gigs. Yeah. It was almost like that.

Like people got writer's credits when they weren't writing at all. It was a lot of money. A lot of money. A lot of money. A lot of money. Yeah. I know many stories. I remember complaining to an agent who, I might've included this in the book. I don't remember. He said, Chuck, you gotta let them fuck you a few times so they know they love you.

Yeah. That's in the book. Yeah. It's a weird business, man. It's a weird business. And all your stories about just dealing with crazy actors and the civil shepherd thing, how she made you change the joke and then it didn't, it didn't work. And then she got mad at you for that. And it worked for Baranski. Baranski could read the phone book.

I mean, that was a, that was one of the great gifts I've ever been close to watching her work. And that whole weirdness where people get upset if someone else got a joke. Yes. Even if it was like that person's character to say that line and not your character. Right. People get, it was all about who gets the lines, who gets the good lines.

And given how successful those shows were and how much money was being generated by them, it's hard to defend how, how much cruelty, you know, and malice went into the making of it. It was so unnecessary. It should have been a constant celebration. It should have been an ongoing party. Look what we did. You know, more often than not, though, in those situations, for whatever reason, when someone is the head, the big star of those shows, you hear nightmare stories.

When someone is like the lead actor, the show has written about them. It's all about them. It's like there's there's some something about the intoxicating power of being the top person on the show. Your your your pictures six feet high on a fucking billboard outside the place. Your name's painted on the wall. They can't help themselves. So they just get crazy.

It makes me think of it was my great good fortune. To get to know Bob Newhart. Ah, and to and to call him a friend. And he did a bunch of Big Bang episodes.

And he taught me something I've never forgotten. He goes, I'm not the funny guy on the show. I react to the funny guys. You know, Larry Darrell and Darrell and Tom Post and those crazy characters would come in in the show when he was a psychiatrist. Even that one crazy people would come in. And and the comedy was in Bob reacting a raised eyebrow would get an enormous laugh because he becomes the audience reacting to the crazy people.

And. He I was begging him for years to come and do any show I'd worked on as I such a fan. And I remember.

He finally he watched the Big Bang Theory and he said, all right, I'll do this one. But I have three demands. Go. Because it has to be in front of an audience. I don't do anything. I said, that's all we do. We only work in front of an audience. Done. Number two, I wanted I want my character to have an arc. I want it to be over a few episodes.

Done. Number three, I want to win an Emmy.

He'd never won an Emmy for his show. That's crazy. Isn't that nuts? That's crazy. And he did on the Big Bang Theory. He won an Emmy for a best supporting actor Best guest actor in a comedy and it was one of the genuine joys of my life was I got him the Emmy That's amazing. He got it. He got the Emmy, but we delivered on all three. That's amazing.

I can't believe he never won an Emmy. That crazy. That's crazy That's literally crazy. I went to the Emmys once and it was after Phil Hartman had been murdered and he was nominated for an Emmy So we all won and he didn't win and when he didn't win Dave Foley looked over me goes What the fuck does a guy have to do to win?

That's beautiful. We were all so so broken. We were so sad. It was so not not that he didn't win the Emmy just that he had just recently been murdered It was just it was still was so hard to believe and so painful that Dave just came in with the banger

Dave Foley was like one of the secret producers of news radio the news radio the the Paul Sims is so brilliant And that when he created the show he allowed all these creative people to come up with alternative lines and Dave was from kids in the hall. So he was just a fantastic writer on top of being very funny And so he would come up with better lines all the time and Paul would always use them.

It was just there was no ego there It was such a great place to be and so when When Phil got killed, it was like we were just broken. We were just like what? And so for Dave to say that at the Emmys was like I'm like, okay, no one's topping this I'm never come back to the Emmys again. Get out of here. No, that's the high note Yeah, you could come up with that.

I can't believe Bob Newhart never won an Emmy. That's insane. He did on the big bang Yeah For the Bob Newhart show. That's bananas

That's bananas such a good show It's uh, he seemed like a lovely guy. I'm I wish I got to really was meet him. He truly was back when I uh when I was getting started I when that when that set was I worked on the on the same lot as the uh As the show the bread and beckford bread the second show and um When they were down when the stage was dark I'd go sit in that little lobby set In the dark just kind of drink it in You know, it's a tiny little set where he'd stand behind the counter And larry darryl and darryl would come in Yeah, I just sit there in the dark and just take it in, you know Shit, this is where they make this show.

Wow Then later on We would bunch of us on two and a half men would sneak into the west wing set and sit in the uh oval office This is as close as we're gonna get to the oval office We were sitting there You know late at night That's awesome Just bringing up two and a half men like you have gone through some of the fucking craziest actors Like you've worked with some of the craziest people of all time Charlie when he was here he did the podcast and he's like telling me about those days When you hear all those days like how did you function? Like how are you showing up and doing a sitcom when you were living like that? Like it's kind of amazing that he kept it together the

way he did Mm -hmm Like that's one thing that he really deserves credit for the guy did good work while he was out of his fucking mind We did six seven years in the clear before it all went to hell We had like 150 some odd 60 episodes before it started to go down And did was he heavy using during those times to my knowledge? Oh, so he was he was managing it and keeping it to himself, but as far as I was concerned We had a great partnership We were having a lot of fun the show was insanely You know successful um

It was you know, we had uh, we had something in common, you know, we were all on the same kind of I thought we were all on the same road, you know, keeping it clean right staying sober and stuff and uh

The show was killing it. It was just it actually the success of that show Is what granted me the freedom to go? You know and go and do A couple of tries to get the big bang theory right. I mean we failed at first, you know We made a lot of mistakes, but two and a men was so successful CBS granted me Unbelievable leeway to make make decisions do shit over again like the pilot Nobody gets a do -over.

We got a do -over on the big bang pilot Wow, it never happens. We got one and it worked out It's football season and uber eats is delivering deals every game day this week buy a four -piece signature chicken from popeyes and get another one free on uber eats when you're Watch party gets hungry order in and keep everyone's attention where it matters on the game order a four -piece signature chicken from popeyes and get another one free no matter who scores big tonight You'll score great deals on uber eats all season long because it's not football without food Popeyes offer Valid through november 1st add eligible menu item to order prior to checkout Taxes fees and terms

apply product availability varies by region Exclusions may apply see app for details This episode is brought to you by squarespace If you're thinking about building a website you should try squarespace. I know because I use it That's right Joe rogan .com is powered by squarespace It has all the features that you need to create a standout website like an ai enhanced website builder seo optimization tools and Seamless checkouts with mobile pay links head to squarespace .com Slash rogan for a free trial and when you are ready to launch use the offer code rogan to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain Boy, did it work out? Boy, did it work out? Yeah, so I

didn't know that charlie was supposedly sober for most of that time as far as I know he was And but you're you're taught you talk to him now, right? You guys are friends now Yeah, he's a blurb on the back of the book So he says he was sober for the beginning and then it won and then eventually he just I don't know at what point It went off the rails.

Did you notice like a change? Well in the eighth season? It was clearly we were in trouble. It was it was You know When his manager calls me and says charlie can't come to run through today rehearsal His bic lighter blew up and he has no eyebrows

Now I'm somewhat naive to some of this stuff, but I know bic lighters they don't blow up Wow, maybe they do when you're cooking coke with them. Maybe that's what happened But there was a lot of the behavior became more and more erratic a lot of more a lot of missed stuff um, and um, you know And the sad truth about about my part of it was I I was determined to stay in denial.

I just didn't want to know I wanted to believe it was all okay. I was absolutely

You know forcefully You know oblivious I just wanted to believe it was all going to be okay just because the show was doing so well it was doing so well and It was fun. I mean right we kick ass that we worked really hard My partner on that show lee aronson and I We were ruthless we every second had a kick ass. We were absolutely Determined to make it the best possible show we could Every week no bad shows, you know I like in a bad show on television to go into a restaurant and having a cockroach come across your table You don't go back to that restaurant ever again ever again And that's how I felt about Situation comedies You make a bad show you people are gonna maybe

never come back You're gonna lose a bunch You're gonna lose a bunch, you know, I just my own experience. I love cheers. I was devoted to cheers There's a couple of years there were You know, you had to get through cliff going home to his mother

I I wanted to be in the bar with you know, woody and sam and And I you would tolerate you know, some of the dips, but then they'd come roaring back With great writing and you know stuff But more often than not if a show fails on a few a few occasions even a show you love Yeah, there's a likelihood you may move on and it's usually something happens behind the scenes like a head writer leaves or someone new gets hired and they have new ideas about stuff and That's generally how it goes, right? There's a weird delicate chemistry to write these things when they work Yes, you know And it you know, it's really obvious when you think you can spin something off Do you remember

Archie's place? No, I don't And they tried to spin off Archie bunker. I remember the the name now that you brought it up, but I don't remember it at all I think he ran a bar Wow, and it was a new show with Archie bunker But without meathead Yeah, and you know and edith and I remember he went on to do a cop show and I was very upset I was like, how is he playing a cop on tv? That miraculous chemistry of all in the family was gone.

Yeah, it was gone and same thing happened you know with uh, joey off of friends the miraculous chemistry of that cast right you just can't just Right I think I learned a lesson watching those things going don't Don't think this thing travels Right, you know, right

It's That's why young sheldon is so impressive because you didn't it's it is kind of a spinoff, but it's not and everyone's new The only inkling of the big bang theory is jim parsons narration Right, you never see him right Him telling the story Right Being a child in east texas That was the only link Yeah, yeah It's just amazing that you pulled off that chemistry and two completely different environments about the same character Yeah, that was that was that was the roll of the dice wasn't it? Yeah, oh, yeah, but it worked If we didn't find in then we would not have made the show Yeah, there's things about certain sitcoms like seinfeld's a great example where those people

just work together So well, yeah, you couldn't imagine a new person being put in the mix or someone going away like what? You would ruin the whole thing Absolutely, and and again The characters in their relationships with each other oh, why you watch yeah, you know, you know I can't tell you one plot But I never missed an episode right I you know, I never missed it Thursday night was gold Because of seinfeld Yeah, I mean the entire country was watching Because of seinfeld and because of friends on Thursday night on nbc.

That was the night Yeah, and then bochco shows at 10 the bochco shows were impeccable, right? Right, right I mean one after the other, you know hill street la law, yep, you know

NYPD blue It was an incredible run of sophisticated cop shows It really was it's like It's like it's amazing how many cop shows there have been It's like boy. Do we like watching cop shows? But again, they were character shows. Yeah, I mean bochco understood that as well that you know, the It wasn't the crime of the week, right? Which is the you know Solving the crime is more the the dick wolf approach to dramas Bochco was was about the characters about the cops about Yeah Their their their heartaches and the you know the torments of being a cop in los angeles and Also, if you're gonna write a show about drama who experiences more drama than cops every day It's it's the

perfect genre Yeah, because you're always gonna have chaos You could write in any kind of chaos Whereas if it's one person who's a plumber Experiencing that much chaos in his life like what the fuck are you doing with your life, man? How are you involved in so many murders?

How there's so many armed robberies when you're around But if you're a cop, it makes sense to write it in like that It was the there was I can't remember the name of the guy who he was a New York City cop who wrote a whole bunch of books that I think were a big factor in in the Bochco lore I can't remember his name he wrote

Gosh damn it I can't remember his name I'll remember it tonight when we're done

But he wrote he wrote about cops as people Mm -hmm People in untenable Work yeah Work was you know this incredibly destructive work environment and um Starts with an M Yeah cop genres sitcoms It's uh, it's just to me it's the cop genres are still around Whereas the sitcoms have I mean where they've been reduced by 80% More 90 yeah Yeah, again back back when I got started there were Four sitcoms on every network five nights a week or four nights a week So what is that that's you know 16 a night Mm -hmm And then the hour dramas were at 10 o 'clock every night for years Yeah, I don't believe that's because people don't like them I really don't I think it's just a mistake in

broadcasting I think they've fucked up and I think if they came back with some good ones the problem is It's a hard job It's a hard job and the and I was one of the blessings of my career was I got to have a journeyman uh Period where I was on I was learning, but I wasn't in charge I wasn't the guy I didn't have to you know Say that way right I I had maybe seven eight years before they said here your show And I wasn't ready I still was overwhelmed Merle miller no Nope All right, we give up Can't figure out it is um Um

Um But um That first show Yeah, I got I was the keys to the kingdom. I got a show on tv Right now. So this is a show after you leave roseanne And now you're working on your own show, but they put it on like saturday night

The owners of the roseanne show Had an idea for a show that was strangely like roseanne Uh,

you know, this heavy set unhappy housewife With a domineering husband and Problems with her kids And they went to my then boss Bob meyer and asked him if he wanted to develop that into a series and bob Quite rightly saw that they were just trying to you know Rip off roseanne and do it again have another hit show with an unhappy housewife And he very wisely or whatever said no, I don't think so.

I don't like this idea So they went all right. They came to me And I thought this is a rip off of roseanne i'm in

Because what I was thinking is these two people owned the cosby show and roseanne They were gigantic eight million pound gorillas in television back then I want to work for them I somehow I'm not saying no even though I see what see it for what it is and I worked my ass off on it And we this lovely lady and british actress named miriam margolis margolis margolis And she was a terrific actress um And she tried so hard She showed so hard to to be an unhappy uh american Staten island housewife And the show You know to credit how powerful marcy uh carcy and tom warner were The network couldn't bring themselves to say pass They couldn't say pass and they ordered six episodes

And they put it on the coveted time slot of eight o 'clock saturday nights for people who don't know That's the worst time slot you could ever get on network television It's like making the show and using it for landfill Yeah, everybody's out everybody goes out in the old days before the internet People would just leave the house on saturday night if you go back far enough saturday night had some huge stuff How far you gotta go back back into the 60s really yeah saturday night was a big night yeah Interesting it went away was that because television was fairly new it was like a crazy thing yeah To stay home and watch tv that makes sense But anyway um they ordered six

episodes they couldn't they they aired five couldn't bring themselves to air the sixth one You know like you know like it would have hurt And I thought you know, okay, that's the end of my career. I'm done. I had my shot. I blew it And tom order Came in my office a few days after they canceled the show And said uh, the noble failure Let's try again I had never put noble and failure together in the same sentence You know, did you think the show was good or do you think it didn't have enough time to get good? Here's the problem with Writing the tv and producing a tv comedy is uh You know, you don't have perspective you lose perspective you're working so hard right You don't

really have the big pictures to either you think it's working you ask anybody on any staff on any Sitcom back in the day We're doing great work, right? I think it's it's it's it's just impossible to own the fact that it might be mediocre given how hard we're working Right, so I don't know that I really had a clean perspective on whether it was quality television Or deserved to go on or not.

I just know I worked really hard and I was heartbroken That it failed. That's a very honest perspective. I appreciate that And then he said that's no failure. Let's try again and I was like I get another I get a do -over. I get to try again Great, you know, because when you're yeah indoors they bring you lunch You know they feed you, you know, you have a parking spot.

Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. And uh, that's that led to them saying, uh um, we want to do a show about a single mom And I was like, wait a minute. I wanted the franny's turn the character the thing is just I wanted her to leave her husband And and and try and be You know single and live with her daughter and you said no she has to be married because Cosby's married Roseanne's married.

They wanted another married show But what turned out was abc Was looking for a single mom show. So now they wanted a single mom show And I said

Where do I come in to what sensibility can I bring to a single mom show And to their credit? They sent me to elgin illinois To spend a few days the chamber of commerce took me to a women's shelter um Ywca Hospitals where women were either on welfare working two jobs, you know killing themselves to support themselves While raising children And I got this walk through What I went oh This is This is greek tragedy these women are They're They're heroes I mean At the time the single mom was uh, murphy brown Murphy brown Had endless nannies Right She just went about her life and there was a kid But a woman raising children by herself without a safety net That hadn't been done

And I came back from that trip going okay, I want to write this I want to write this because this is I get it now. It's it's a hero's journey It's it's You wouldn't think it It's a sitcom It's four cameras in front of a live audience But for me It was the hero's journey It was this woman Against all odds Caring for her children after a horrible divorce And having to work her ass off to just to feed them And uh And then it And then it went a little south when they said okay And we found the perfect Actress to play that part and that's how I met Brett Butler

Sure you laugh Well, that's a similar situation to what we're talking about before Where people would just become tyrants when they have their own show She was very unhappy Yeah Out of the gate Day one Seems crazy You'd think we should have been celebrating because the show was an instant hit I There was Home Improvement with Tim Allen And then they put it on right after it and it did great And she was on the cover of magazines and she was on all the talk shows And she's a truly funny woman She had a great stand -up act Oh, she was hilarious Yeah, no questioning and she took to acting Immediately You know, I've watched people try and do this Not everybody can do it Brett

could do it Brett could do it But it didn't go well for me It just seems so insane that someone would get an opportunity that if you're a comic that's the opportunity That's it It's your own sitcom How could you be upset? It's weird I think

If you're damaged in this certain kind of way that Right That actors and comics can be damaged And you succeed

And you learn that horrible, horrible Two o 'clock in the morning horrible truth

I'm still unhappy Right I'm still not whole This was supposed to make me happy and whole Success was supposed to solve my problems That's certainly what I was taught Right When I was a boy You know If you make something of yourself

You'll feel You'll be good People People will like you and admire you And you'll You know You'll be a man of substance Yiddish was a mensch Right And And then you learn that horrible truth Only can happen with success Which is Oh, shit I'm still a miserable fuck

Now what? Now what? Right That's not going to solve that That hole inside And generally that's where the drugs come in That's where the drugs come in With rock stars Rock stars and gambling Yeah You can't fuck your Drink your way Drug your way Gamble your way out of that Shit works temporarily And then it doesn't work And when it stops working You're truly fucked Yeah You're truly fucked You're trying to find a solution That The best I understand That

Nothing on the outside Is going to heal the inside This episode is brought to you by Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4 is coming And they're going all in on this one The kind of missions that make you go Dude Did they really just do that? Set during a full -scale North Korean invasion of South Korea Expect a real boots on the ground experience As young South Korean recruits fighting to protect their homeland And North Korean forces Hunting traders Interrogating civilians and more Modern Warfare 4 launches October 23rd Pre -order digitally for early access to the campaign Or pick up your physical disc on day one Visit CallofDuty .com for more Rated M for mature It has to be an

inside job To get well from that stuff It's also for For people's perspective If you're talking about What was Grace Under Fire Was 93 In 1993 There was only four channels Okay And then cable And nobody was watching cable Not like that Not like sitcoms Nope And there was maybe A hundred famous people on earth Nobody was famous back then There's way more famous people So if you're a damaged person And then all of a sudden You're one of the most recognizable people In the world Who Brett Butler was When that show was number two I mean that was a huge show She was on every magazine You saw her everywhere Yeah Like that kind of pressure And that kind of For a person who's

already like Struggling to keep it together That can be devastating Yeah I often threaten to write a screenplay The perfect murder The perfect murder Of an actress Who is malicious And destructive Is to make her famous And to ruin her No I've yet to write that story yet But you want to do something Harmful To somebody Who's You know Damaged in that way Make them famous It'll absolutely destroy them Isn't that nuts Yeah It's nuts Did she Afterwards I think she Really fell apart After that show was over I'd heard at one point in time She was homeless I don't think she is anymore I heard those stories as well I don't know I don't know It's Such a sad Turn of events You know

Because people wanted to love her Especially when she was on that show They were rooting for her Yeah Yeah She was a spokesman For A spokeswoman for You know Millions of women Yeah And men loved her too Because she had balls You know She suffered no fools Yeah And she worked in an oil refinery Yeah On the show It just sucks that So many talented people Have that Whatever the fuck it is That Self -sabotage gene You know That makes them Not be able to ever Change course And enjoy this Fortune that they've been Given Making an audience laugh Temporarily fills the hole Temporarily Right Yeah And you go home And you're You're still that guy Yeah You're home Yeah That's the

problem Yep Yeah Okay What are we gonna do About this Right I don't think there's Anything you can do About it I mean It's just a It's a tale as old As time You know And you talk about In your book About if If happiness and success Cured you Of all your problems You would see so many Dead rock stars You know And I think You're dead on I mean That's They were all Drugged out of their Fucking mind And they're all Like we were talking Earlier Had you had seen At one point in time You saw Morrison You saw the Doors play For like 20 minutes Before you Tried to pull his dick out That was the shortest Concert I've ever been to It was an outdoor It was a singer bowl It was an

outdoor Kind of arena And cops came in On horses Hitting people over the head With sticks Right Because he pulled His dick out To stop the show Because he'd already I think it was after He did it in Miami And he got arrested In Miami That was his new move It was like Bert Kreischer Taking his shirt off I was 16 years old Or something like that And I'm standing there With my friends Smoking the joint Going This is terrific This is fantastic We were watching These horses go by This is fantastic We were We thought Well Yeah okay It would have been nice To maybe hear a second song They opened with Light My Fire Never finished it Really End of show Oh my god Yeah That's crazy

This is cool man This is a great show Let's get out of here Before we get hit Who did you say He was performing with again The warm up act Was the who Wow You know Before Tommy They were a warm up act Wow Great So like my generation Yeah I can see for miles Great stuff Yeah Before Tommy Once Tommy hit They were They never were A warm up act again But this was just prior to Tommy Wow Dude That's it But again I mean How many of them died at 27 Morrison Hendrix Joplin Yeah Although the Hendrix ones Very weird There's a lot of very interesting Conspiracy theories About the Hendrix murder Or the Hendrix death Rather That it was Perhaps a murder He was leaving his manager His

manager was a Shady mob character His girlfriend After the murder Or after his death rather She gets thrown off of a roof They said it was a suicide It doesn't Seems a little sketchy But his former bodyguard Wrote a book about it And apparently You know If Hendrix left You know His manager Would lose out On all that money But if Hendrix Was dead Then he would get royalties From all those songs Forever He would He probably Contractually Would have had them anyway Yeah I mean most managers Back in those days It was Oh they were very predatory It was really predatory And corrupt Yeah He would have had a piece Of his publishing No matter what Right Live or dead You know

Listen But he wouldn't have anything From the future The idea of him Asphyxiating on On his own vomit Is a heartbreaking end To a generational superstar I mean There's He had a big impact On me Oh my god He was like Unlike anyone before him His sound was so Completely unique That I mean Eric Clapton Famously said Like he felt He wanted to quit Playing guitar When he saw him It was just like And Eric Clapton Was insanely good Yes For a guy like Eric Clapton You know Go listen to Derek and the Dominoes Layla Layla Jesus Christ With Dwayne Dwayne Ullman Oh my god Passing back How Oh my god That back and forth With him and Dwayne Yeah Or Have you ever loved a woman My god

Eric Clapton And cocaine Just that Oh my god Yeah Yeah But that That story Is just The story of his death Is like Oh It's really It's a weird one Whereas Some of them Do seem like Normal drug overdoses But the Hendrix one There's a lot of weird stuff To that one Where it does seem like It's possible that he was Murdered Unfortunately But all There's just a huge number Of those guys Died so young And it's because Of what you're What you're talking about That whatever Fucked up thing That makes them So brilliant At performing And it's like Almost an attempt The more brilliant you get It's The more you can fill That hole temporarily The more love you get In these big bursts

And then the crowd Goes away And then you're by yourself And it's just Back to the darkness And then the drugs And then the alcohol And then the chaos And then Ripping your life apart And then there's another show And there's another burst And you're feeling good When you're on stage Then you get off stage It's the same fucking thing And it never heals It never heals From the outside The outside stuff As glorious as it is And fame and adulation And fancy cars Yeah It's great It's wonderful There's no reason To denigrate it It's just It's not The real solution The real solution You know I'm going to say it And then regret it But the real solution Is a spiritual solution

You have to find something Beyond this world Why would you regret that? Because you live in LA? Because you're in your bubble? Because Because it's part of It's part of my life Right But why would you regret Saying that? Because it might seem like Cliché Flaky and hairy fairy And you know Woo woo New age bullshit Yeah But I don't know Any other way I just don't And I do know That In my own life

Seeking A spiritual solution Not finding it But the act of seeking it Is There's some salvation In that You know No I think there is as well I don't think there's anything Silly about it And I think The problem is The term has been co -opted The term spirituality Has been co -opted By people that you do Consider to be flaky Yeah That's the problem Yeah You know It's like Is it possible That you could Preach the word of Jesus In front of a Sold David P.

Peter Robinson, Jr.: Sold out stadium and really be sincere. Yeah, sure. It's possible. But how many people who are preaching in front of sold out stadiums and giant arenas? How many of those are actually sincere? Well, it's a small percentage. It's not the same thing. You know, it doesn't mean it's not possible. David P. No, it just has a bad name.

David P. It has a bad name and spirituality has a bad name because it's just it's attached to a lot of people that, you know, through no fault of their own, they're trying to find their own way. David P. And they're using that kind of lingo. And maybe some of them are just still really fucked up. And that word now gets attached to people that are claiming to be on a path to try to fix themselves.

David P. But you just associate it with people who are unsuccessful in the act and they're just like it's like performative. They're like performatively being spiritual. David P. Whereas I know some people that are like legitimately spiritual. Some of the nicest people that I know that are like I know this guy is a Christian and all he does is build houses like small homes for homeless people.

David P. Right. David P. And help them and get them jobs and get them to teach them skills and help them get clean. David P. I know people like that, too. David P. They're real. David P. Yeah, they're real. David P. Yeah. David P. And they're role models. David P. Yes. David P. I want to be like that guy. David P. Yeah. David P. Yeah. David P.

They exist. David P. Yeah. I've been fortunate enough to know a few in my life and they've had a deep impact giving rather than taking. David P. Yes. David P. And yeah. Yeah. No question about it. That was not my nature. I didn't go out to Los Angeles a giver. David P. No. David P. I wanted. Give me. David P. Well, it was also the culture back then, right? David P.

It was all I knew. You know, I think, you know, I said the first page of the book was if I could have been better, if I could have done better, I would have. That was the best I could do, you know, which is real. Yeah. The selfish, self -centered, you know, dick. That was the best I could. That's the best I had early on. It took a while. Yeah.

Well, it's a work in progress, basically. We all are. Yeah. That's part of being a human being. You're a work in progress. If everybody's held to the thing that they said when they were young and stupid, oh, my God. If that's who you are forever, some shit you said when you were 20 years old, like, good Lord. That's insane. It's insane. It's insane.

It denies the fact that we change. Of course. We do change. Yeah. You know, I, you know, one of the coolest things about this book was me going, oh, what an idiot. Who is that guy? Who is that guy? What a horrible human being. Yeah. What a selfish, self -centered. Jesus Christ. You just left her. You didn't say thank you. What is wrong with that man? And that man was me.

You know? It's wild. And, yeah, there's a therapeutic kind of cathartic quality to doing something like this to try and write about your life.

And I'm an absolute laugh whore, so I wanted to make it as funny as I could because otherwise it's just boring. Who gives a shit about your life, Chuck? But if I can make you laugh, then maybe it's worth reading.

But beginning with my childhood, you know, when I was a kid working for my dad, you know, those things, that's me. But if I were to be held to what I said in 1969, it wouldn't go well for me. For anybody. Yeah. Yeah. It's great that you're reading the audiobook, too. Was there– you know, I jokingly said in the book that I'd asked Idris Elba or Brian Cox to read it, and they passed.

Brian Cox would be great. It would be great to have some sonorous kind of really a barato and a beautiful– you know, that didn't happen. I made that up. But I didn't really see how someone else could read my memoir. It didn't make sense to me. How does that make sense? No, it makes no sense. One of the things that you talked about that I think is very interesting is the Scientology angle.

And the reason it's interesting is because when I was– when I first came to Hollywood in 94, Scientology was everywhere. There were so many successful Scientologists that a lot of people were thinking about joining Scientology as a strategy to further their career. Absolutely. People need to understand that. Like it's hard for people of 2026 to wrap their head around the environment of California, Los Angeles, 1994, and the impact that Scientology had.

Because you had Tom Cruise. You had Jenna Elfman. Was that around that time, Darman, Greg? Yeah. You had– I mean there was a ton of people. Kirstie Alley. Kirstie Alley. A ton of people. Paul Haggis. Super successful Scientologists. Scientologists who always seemed to have their shit together and they were like really focused and they were career oriented.

And there were so many of us on the outside like, wow, maybe I should be a fucking Scientologist. Seems like that would help. Listen, they built that thing called the Celebrity Center on Franklin. Yeah. For the very purpose of– Hubbard even wrote about it. People admire celebrities. They'll want to do what celebrities do. Let's make an environment that attracts celebrities.

It was a PR gesture. He understood positioning, which is I think a marketing term where– that's why famous people do TV commercials. You know? Yeah. You know, Peyton Manning says buy this– buy Geico. Peyton must know he's a quarterback. Right. No, he doesn't know anything about– but you're paying attention because he's famous and he's really good at what he does.

And now he's telling me how I should insure my car. Makes perfect sense. Right? And Hubbard understood that early on that celebrities position Scientology in a way that will draw people in. And he was right. You know? I thought it would give me an edge. I thought that if I went down this road, it would give me an edge into the career that I wanted.

What was it about it that you felt was going to give you an edge? Was it the philosophy behind it? Like the way they structure their lives? Because I bought Dianetics on a late -night television commercial. I didn't even know what it was. Right, right. I didn't understand that that was Scientology. Kind of a psychotherapy. Yeah, I thought it was just a self -help book.

Yeah, digging up past trauma and releasing the trauma, freeing up your life force because you're releasing the trauma of past experiences. Yeah. It wasn't that far off the charts. Well, that was what L. Ron Hubbard did for the most part. He borrowed from a– But he was a science fiction writer. He was a science fiction writer. Not only that, he wrote more fiction than any human being that's ever lived, ever.

Absolutely. Right up there. He did. He wrote the most. More than Stephen King. He wrote more than anybody. Yeah. Anybody– because he never wrote a second draft. Everything was like a first draft. It was all horrible. It was pretty shitty. It was the worst. Yeah. But funny in that regard, like that Battlefield Earth movie is fucking fantastic just because it's so goofy.

Have you seen it? I have. It's terrible. It's amazingly bad. Yeah, yeah. But it's good bad. It's bad to the point where it's like, what the fuck am I watching? Like, oh my god. When you're 21, 22 -year -old me and you're scared to death, the world is big, the world is threatening. Yeah. I don't know what's going on. I want to be in music.

I want to have a career in music as a songwriter.

These people promised me they knew a way for me to do that. And I was so vulnerable to that promise. How did you get introduced to it? This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Have you listened to the radio lately? Or maybe you've been catching up on your favorite sports podcast or even this podcast. Chances are you've heard a lot of ZipRecruiter ads.

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And the sax player was a Scientologist. And we were in Columbus, Ohio.

And we had a day off from the gig. And he said, I'm going to the Scientology Center in Columbus, Ohio. You want to come with me? I didn't know what Scientology was. I had just towed my car in Iowa. So I had nowhere to go. I was going to be sitting in my room. So I said, yeah, fuck it. Sure, I'll go. And wouldn't you know there were pretty girls there? So I'm in.

There's pretty girls here. Oh, they're very smart. Very smart about that. Yeah. And I bought a thing called the communications course, which promised to improve my ability to communicate. What could go wrong with that? What could go wrong with that? Obviously, I'm a musician and I'm trying to become a songwriter. That's a communication issue.

You know, anything in the arts is communicating. I could get better at that. Perfect. Why wouldn't I do that?

And what he was doing, he had these drills called training routines. And the first one, TR0, was you would sit like we're sitting right now in front of each other and just be in front of each other. No twitching, no laughing, no giggling, no getting creepy, no getting lost in thought. Just sit there. What I didn't know. I got really good at it, too.

What I didn't know was it's just meditation. It was just meditation. It was just learning to be still, which is meditation. Just learning to be still and not being tossed around by every fucking thought that comes screaming through your head like, you know, a tree full of rabid monkeys. And that first time I did it, opposite a pretty girl.

It was a woman who was running the classroom communications course. I said, I have this feeling like I'm up in the corner of the ceiling looking down at me. And she yelled out, Chuck has gone exterior.

I didn't know what that meant. But it was an extraordinary experience. I have a very vivid memory of being up near the ceiling looking down on me sitting in front of this woman doing training routine zero. So it worked. It worked. I popped out of my head and I had an out -of -body experience. I didn't know what was happening. I didn't understand what exterior.

I know what the word meant, but I didn't understand this as, but it felt good. The only other time that happened to me, having that experience, was when I flipped my car over at 70 miles an hour in Iowa. And I remember seeing the accident from up in the sky looking down at it. That was more like a near -death experience. That was a near -death experience.

But it was also a very calm, huh. Wow. As the car is flipping over down this embankment. And so the experience, that's a powerful experience. And I wanted to pursue it. I wanted more of that. Well, that makes sense. I mean, what's interesting is if you get a kid, a young guy or a young woman in a very suggestible state. Yep. And this heightened moment where they really believe there's some real significance to them sitting there and doing this exercise and that something big is going to happen.

Your brain can trigger endogenous states that actually are real. So it's like what they're saying is kind of true. Even though it's kooky, like a lot of it is very kooky, like some of these methods of just doing that kind of stuff, it can have powerful transcendent results. Nobody told me this was going to happen. It just happened. Yeah. You know, I was just told to sit there and just be relaxed and just be there in front of another human being without, you know, getting uncomfortable.

Or if you get uncomfortable, just deal with it. Just sit there. That's all I was told. That was the entire instruction. Nobody said you're going to be up near the ceiling watching. Did you try to recreate that experience? And it never happened again? Well, on occasion. Did you ever try to recreate it with the same woman? No. Maybe it's her.

Maybe that's it. Maybe it's like being there with a beautiful girl and her looking in your eyes, you're looking at hers. Maybe that triggers the thing. I don't think it had anything to do with her. No? No. It was just you were in that suggestible moment? I just. But who was suggesting what? No one suggested anything. It remains a mystery, and I'm okay with it being a mystery.

But it's certainly, it's certainly, it's not one that I've forgotten. There's a documentary called Holy Hell, and it's about this cult leader that used to live in Austin for a while. And one of the weird things this guy did, he was a yoga teacher, and also he was a hypnotist and a gay porn star. So the documentary is crazy. Right. But in one of the things that he would do with this cult is he would do a thing called the knowing.

And they had to be ready for it. He had to decide they were ready for it, and they'd have the ceremony. And when they had the ceremony, he would touch their head. He would put his hands on their head, and they would experience this unbelievable, like, psychedelic moment where they contacted God. And they all talked about it, because the anticipation of this moment was so heightened, and they were so suggestible.

Right. And he was, you know, an actual professional hypnotist. And when he would put his hands on them, whatever it was inside their brain, it would just release. And even after they talked about him being a fraud, if they all left the cult and they said all these terrible things that he did, they still said that moment was the most powerful moment of their life.

Hypnotism is a powerful mechanism. Yeah. It really is. Yeah. I think that that's– I don't know. I've not heard of this, but that's a story of a hypnotist. Yes. Yes. Yes. A hypnotist that really can give you the greatest moment of your life, even though everything else he's done is terrible. Yeah. Like, even though he's taking everybody's money and fucking everybody, and it's always the same story.

He did make them see God. That's what's weird about it. And so many people are looking for something to take them out of their state, the state they're in now. And if it's Scientology, if it's being a Mormon, if it's Catholicism, whatever it is. Like, people are trying to find something that gets them. Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels, cocaine, ecstasy.

Yeah. But for you– so I never actually went to a Scientology meeting or anything like that. I just got the book, but they never stopped emailing me– or mailing me, rather. Every day I had one of those UPS boxes, and every day it would be some new invitation to some Scientology event. Yeah, you got on the mailing list. I didn't realize it was even Scientology when I bought the book.

Sure. I thought it was just L. Ron Hubbard's going to teach me how to kick ass. Yes, absolutely. I always call it, you know, this is going to give me an edge on the universe. So when you first started doing it, when did you start thinking maybe this is a little wacky?

My entire community of friends, everybody was in. Wow. Everybody. Everybody. And I couldn't help notice my life was shit. And these other people who I admired and I looked up to, they were getting in car accidents, getting divorced, catching colds, basically being just human beings, dealing with whatever shit was coming down the road. Not the evolved, you know, spiritual titans that Scientology was promising.

You know, the exalted, you know, spiritual, enlightened beings. People, you know, you know, you know, I got it. I got it. You weren't supposed to get a cold. You were supposed to be, you know, the promise was you were going to rise up above all these human minutiae, you know, dilemmas and problems and whatnot. And you were going to have this remarkable insight into the world.

And you have power, power being very powerful, power being powerful, being a real hook. Because if you're a young, scared guy like I was,

power was missing. Right. There was no power. I was just scrambling to try and get my foot in any door that would open. And so here these people come in, promise you the one thing you don't have as a young, stupid man is power. And it was an easy sell. And, you know, it took me 10 years to realize, wait, this isn't working. It took 10 years? Yeah.

This isn't working. And my wife at the time, she was in Scientology as well. We both kind of went, had a moment alone one night going, this is bullshit.

You know, 10 years, 10 years it took to wake the fuck up. And we bailed out. And we lost all our friends. We were excommunicated. Did they fuck with you at all? No, because I had no money. Oh. Nobody chases you if you have money. Right. You weren't successful enough for them to miss you when you left. Yeah. See ya. And it really began to turn into my life that we're talking about here, which was I decided that I'm not going to look for some outside element to help me go where I want to go.

I'm just going to work my ass off. And for the next 10 years, I worked like a dog until I scrambled in and eventually, you know, got on a show where I'm, you know, getting yelled at by Roseanne Barr.

But I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. So it didn't hurt you to leave. It hurt you in terms of... It was imperative for me to leave because I finally took responsibility for my life. It's on me. Right. It's not on what this guy says. It's on me. It's what I believe, what I perceive. And a lot of that perception and belief was bullshit.

I was still, you know, a frightened young guy trying to find his way in the world. But it was on me. I wasn't going to... I wasn't looking for some outside wisdom to give me leverage. I was just going to... I was going to work until I dropped to get where I needed to go. And, you know, the funny ending of that story was I succeeded. I succeeded.

I had a career I couldn't have dreamed of. And I still couldn't... And it still didn't solve the hole, the dark hole in the soul that we were talking about. Right. You know, which, you know, led to the other change in my life, which is... Was it 27 and a half years ago I stopped drinking?

So... And that's been a massive change. You know. So... Because, again, you know, what I keep saying over and again, I'm not sure I'm saying it clearly. But, really, the one thing that is clear is the outside stuff. Whether they be experiences or stuff or relationships or, in my case, marriages. It doesn't... It's a band -aid. It doesn't heal the wound.

The wound has to be dealt with in some other way that's personal.

The spiritual path of your own, you know, your choice. You call it. It doesn't matter. If it's Christ. If it's Yahweh. If it's the Koran. If it's Latter -day Saints. Or if it's Eckhart Tolle. It doesn't matter. Pick one. Pick one. That's your best shot out of that darkness. As far as I can tell. I think you're probably very accurate. I think you could probably do it on your own.

But I don't know very many people who have. It's really hard. It's hard. We're community animals. You know, I think we thrive. Yeah. In groups. I think that's how we're wired. I think the worst thing that could have happened a million years ago in a tribe was to be thrown out of the tribe. You're going to die. Right. You get kicked out of the tribe because of misbehavior.

I don't know what misbehavior is in the place to scene error in Neanderthals. But if you got kicked out, you're dead. Whitney Cummings told me that's why people have stage fright. That's why they have a fear of public speaking. She said because when we were in tribes, if you had to speak in front of the public, you were defending yourself.

That's probably very true. And you probably were going to get kicked out of the tribe. Kicking out was a sentence of death. Yeah. And so we're desperately in need of one another. And that's not good, bad or indifferent. It's just the way we are. Right. Right. Which is what makes people so prone to ideologies, to religious cults, to all sorts of different things.

We want to be part of a group. We want to be part of a group. Yeah. Even if the group is wrong, it's a group. Right. It doesn't matter. Right or wrong is irrelevant. I'm in this group. Yeah. Look at it. I got friends. And people will do wrong things to defend the group. Absolutely. Yeah. Fight to the death. Yes. We go to war over these groups.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a weird thing. It's just for a lot of people, it's finding a good one. Just find one that works. Find some sort of a spiritual path that gives you some sort of peace of mind. And it doesn't hurt others. And doesn't hurt others. Yeah. That's it. It's not really complicated. Yeah. Yeah. You know, but we don't live in a culture that pursues that.

We live in a culture of consumption. You know. Yeah. I think there's more people aware of that now today. But it's just, there's no guidebook. There's no operator manual on how to be a person. That's very effective. And even religions. Like you're kind of figuring it out on your own. It's not as laid out as I'd like it to be. You know, like very clearly from the beginning to the end, this is how you're supposed to behave.

This is what's wrong. This is what the, like, this is what the, the, the greater spiritual path. This is why it exists. I was raised in a Jewish household.

No one ever talked. No one ever discussed. No one ever discussed. No one ever discussed. How did this happen? It was never discussed. It was just do this and shut up. Right. Here are the rules. Do the rules. And moving on. Right. And that was, that was how they were raised too. So, you know, it's not like there was no malice. It was just here are the rules of our, of our, of our tribe.

Do the rules. And, and, uh, at no point was there a connection made with this could be the most important thing in your life. This could actually solve the whole dilemma of being a human being. It had nothing to do with that. It was, it was a rules based religion. It was, it honored some wonderful things like education, you know, and, and there was a great deal of, uh, of goodness to it.

Societal goodness. You know, I think I mentioned in my book that my father was one of 11 Republicans in the country.

11 Jewish Republicans. 11 Jewish Republicans in the country. I left out the, the, the key word, uh, cause he, you know, he believed in his heart, each man for himself, you know, pull yourself up by the bootstraps and stuff. And he believed that dearly. But, um,

I lost my train of thought. Well, we were just talking about having some sort of a connection with God and, uh, a spiritual connection and that this is what helped you become sober and get out of the darkness. Um, this is the roundabout way of it. Um, what, so did you do Alcoholics Anonymous? Like, is that what? Let's not talk about that.

Okay. Yeah. No, I just wanted to know like what, what. Let's, let's focus on the word anonymous. Okay. Okay. Just, I got sober. You got sober. Yeah. But through that you started exploring spirituality.

It was inevitable. It was a part of it. It's inevitable. It, it, it, it, you know, and, you know, the, the most extraordinary thing, uh, it's hard to do this and retain anything like anonymity, but there is the encouragement to pursue a God of your understanding, not someone else's. Um,

yours, that was a remarkable, that's a remarkable insight for me. Really? I get to choose. Huh?

Wow. Wow. This doesn't, this is not a ritualistic here, do this, do that, you know, it's not about don't eat fish on Friday or pork ever. It's about finding something greater than yourself.

It's not that hard to do given of your understanding that could be the ocean.

It could be whatever you choose it to be. It could be a fucking doorknob, but it's, it's critical. It's critical.

What was the path? Like, so you, you go from becoming sober and this idea of worshiping something or looking at something. Okay. What's the word? Respecting something as a higher power. The word worship is, uh, I don't understand that word. Um, no, it's just recognizing. It's just recognizing that there's something else going on here and it ain't me.

That's it. There's no worship involved. There's no genuflecting or, you know, um,

there's service. How can I be better in this world? There is, there is that, there is that, you know, um, and for somebody like me who was gimme all the time is always gimme, gimme. I need, I need more, more is not enough. Yeah. Right. I need more. And when that ceases to work, when you finally wake up and going, there is no more, more is never enough.

Um, when you, when you finally give in to the reality is that that will never do the job. I will always be empty. If that's the way I'm trying to go about it, then you, then there's a possibility that's the bottom. And the bottom is where you decide to stop digging. And the bottom is where you go, okay, let's try something else. Do you, do you have a negative connotation with the word worship? This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.

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Do the holidays right this season with Traeger grills. Not really. It's just, it's not, it's not what I recognize. What do you think worship is? Like in your mind, what do you, is that being subservient? You know, it's being subservient, you know, the punishing, you know, all -powerful, you know, thing that's going to, you know, punish and whatever.

Right. The Old Testament stuff. Right. Okay. You know. I don't know if they have to be connected, though. I don't think of worship in that way. I think, I think a lot of people do, though, and I, especially when you get into the Old Testament stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just, for me, what I've been doing for the last many years, it worked.

What can I tell you? Right. I don't truly understand it. I really don't. It's so much of it is counterintuitive, but it worked, you know? Now, I'm, by all means, if you read the book, this is a guy who's got some serious issues. I haven't, you know, I haven't cleared that hurdle by any means, but it's better. It's a better life than the one I had.

And is this an, was this an arc for you or was this a quick realization upon getting sober? Slow. It was a slow. Slow variety. Process to get to where you are now. Yeah. Slow, slow. And do you define it like what you're serving or what you're, what you worship, not bad words, sorry, what you appreciate Do you think you create about the higher power or you don't have to define it? I don't think language is really equipped for it.

Right. I think language, the very act of putting a word on it limits it. The very act of saying this is a thing, a noun. I don't know if this is going to sound strange, but I think it's a verb. I think it's a process.

It's action. It's not a brick. Right. It's moving, whatever it is. Whatever greater power it is. Whatever that is. It's not a static thing. I think that's a better way to describe it. Yeah. And again, language wants to solidify it. Language wants to name it. This is this. Right. And language is a beautiful thing. I love language is one of my favorite things.

Words have been good to me. Making up words and putting them together in sentences has been terrific for me. I'm really grateful for words and language. But there's a limitation to what words can show you about what's going on. Yeah, most certainly. And that's a I think that's an important point. Like what you're saying is that it's it's moving and that it's alive.

And this is not a you know, that's I think one of the problems that secular people have with the term God. They think of a guy in a robe that lives in the clouds and it's ridiculous instantaneously. We see a man in the fucking moon. Yeah. We answer my father, my anthropomorphize everything. We see our images everywhere we look. Yeah. Right.

And it's it's kind of a it's amusing when it's not doesn't cause war. Right. Good point. It's also connected to a lot of the ancient depictions of it. Unfortunately, you have to think about like ancient depictions of God and Moses and all these biblical pictures or figures who are painted in the garb of the day in which that painting was made.

And these people were looking up at the night sky going, what the fuck? Yeah. What the fuck?

Who's making the lightning? What's happening here fighting? Yeah. No, they had to come up with a story. We are, you know, I mean, have you ever read any of the Yoval Harari books? Yes. He makes it really clear. That's our superpower. We tell ourselves stories. And we believe them. Right. And we congregate around them. And we were able to mobilize millions and millions of people around a fiction.

Yeah. It doesn't even have to be true. We just need to believe it. And we're all moving and we're all marching in the same direction. It's monkeys don't do that. Right. Monkeys don't have a monkey God. Right. They're just monkeys. Hey, pick these mites off of me. Thank you very much. You know, but they don't they don't organize around what is essentially a belief.

It's not true. It's not true. You want to call it true or not. It's an organizing element that no other animal does. It's you know. So we get to.

We get to rule or and or ruin the world. And we want to define the structure of whatever that thing is that we want to. We want to. Even if we're pretending we want to give order to it. Absolutely. We. This order is too scary. Too scary. Too scary. Too crazy. It's fucking. Look at this. You know. It's. Also, you can't have people running around making up their own order.

That'll fuck everything up. You can't have a bunch of people. Well, God's been talking to me. No, no, no. You know what he tells me? Yeah. Pork is awesome.

Well. You can't have that guy. Yeah. And listen, you know, in. You can see where.

When. Civilizations or cultures that took God out of the picture, they replaced it. Yes. With the Communist Party. Yeah. Right. With a fascist dictator. Yeah. You know, it's same idea. Mm hmm. Organize around me. Sure. Right. Doesn't matter if I'm right or not. Organize around me and people will. And if you take that away from them, they get angry.

Yeah. It freaks them out because it's like a tent pole. The tent pole moves. The tent comes down and everything. You know, if you believe that this is the truth and someone says, no, it's not. It's bullshit. Everything else you believe is in is in fair play. Everything. Right. Right. The tent collapses. So people will fight to the death to keep the tent pole up.

Doesn't matter if it's true or not. It's the tent pole. I have a friend of mine who grew up Mormon and she left the Mormon church. And when she left the Mormon church, she said, I'm so susceptible to believing anything because I believed everything they told me for so long that I didn't critically think about anything. So she's like any spiritual people, healers, all that stuff.

She goes, I'm so susceptible. I believe everything. Yeah. I think I think growing up the way I grew up, I was a vacuum. I was wide open. You got you've got you know how to get out of this. This madness, this world. It's so frightening. Right. Show me. Yeah, I got nothing. I got nothing. I'll go. You know, I was I was absolutely fragile. Stupid, fragile.

Like most people. Yeah. And, you know, that's I got to write that. I got to write it down. Yeah. Well, that's the beauty of it. That fragility and that emotion and all that chaos. It comes out in creativity. And the added benefit that Scientology has over everybody is that they've got all these successful celebrities. That was the big one.

Back in the day. Oh, my God. That was the big one. I was like I felt like they knew something I didn't know. Like whatever they're on. And I didn't really know the whole story. I didn't really know the whole story until much, much, much later. I had heard versions of what they believe. And it wasn't until Going Clear. Lawrence Wright's book.

Great book. Great book. Great book. I was like, holy shit. Yeah. Once wasn't until that until I really kind of got the grip of what it's all about and how big part of it was secrets. Yeah. You know, institutionally held secrets. They glue you. Oh, I want to know the secret. Yeah. Stick around. I'll find out the secret. We're all looking for, you know, we're all looking for a secret.

Like the knowing. The knowing. Yes. And keeping that stuff secret. Purposefully secret. And we were told that some of this higher level stuff could conceivably kill you if you're not ready. I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding either. It was that those words were used. If you're not ready for these higher level spiritual things, it will destroy you, drive you mad.

When I bought my first house in 96, my next door neighbor was a Scientologist. And there was a piece of land. We were just talking in front of the house. And there was a piece of land next to his house that he was going to buy, but he had to put it off because his wife was going clear. And I go, what does that mean? He goes, well, it's this, uh, ceremony that she undergoes.

And, uh, afterwards she will no longer be affected by outside influences. I was like, Whoa, how are they going to do that? And he explained to me, I go, well, why do you have to put off the sale? He goes, cause it costs $50 ,000. They sent her to flag in Florida. Is that what it is? Yeah. Yeah. There's a, there's this own thing. And I guess in Clearwater, it's incredibly expensive.

Go clear in Clearwater. Incredibly expensive. 50 grand. This guy was a construction guy. He had a construction business. It's probably a million dollars now. Ooh. Yeah. It's 96. I don't know. But, um, and there was a very purposeful thing. Putting a high price tag on it made it important. Ah. Smart. Yeah. It's smart. It's, you know, it's marketing 101.

If you give it away, it doesn't have as much value as if you say it's worth $50 ,000. I think Paul Haggis was the one in the documentary who was discussing when he first got a hold of like one of the ancient stories that is like super secret. And he read it. It was like, what the fuck am I reading? Right.

Cause it was just kooky L. Ron Hubbard. It was science fiction stuff. Oh. Yeah. Oh. Yeah. But you know, I mean. Hey, whatever floats your boat. One of the gifts of this, of writing a memoir was, uh, I found my way to able to forgive myself. Hmm. Rather than be embarrassed. Right. I would never tell people that I spent 10 years in a cult. It's humiliating.

What a dope. Right. I wouldn't, you know, I, I, I was so frightened of being wrong. Right. Um, and in writing this thing, I was wrong. It's okay. It's okay. I was wrong. I was young. I was frightened. I made some bad choices. I got, I got through it. I was blessed to have some angels come along, along the way to help me through it. A lot of that stuff.

But I got through it and, and I don't have to be humiliated by being a foolish young man anymore. You know? Well, that's part of the maturity of age. You realize being a foolish young man is almost inevitable. There's no getting around it. Agreed. We're all foolish. Agreed. And that's, uh, I, you know, I was, I was watching an interview you did, um, the other day cause I wanted to learn about what I was sitting down in with Tim Robbins.

And he said something that struck me as worth repeating, which is, um, a remarkable insight. I thought, and it was, it was a remarkable insight for me. It came very late in life, but it was simply the power of saying, I don't know.

What a relief. Yeah. To not pretend I know. Right. What a relief to not, you know, to not act as if I don't know. I, I have a handle on this. Right. I don't. And what's great is when you're sitting in a room full of people and making a TV comedy, a sitcom, and they all look at you, you know, cause the second act doesn't work and everybody looks at you and it's a great feeling to go, I don't know.

It stinks. Anybody? Anybody? You know, I'm, I'm open to anybody having a solution to this shitty second act, but I actually don't know. And I'm okay with that. I mean, in the past I would have gone on some long diatribe trying to convince everybody I knew what I was doing. It's exhausting. Yeah. I don't, you know, I don't, I'm doing the best I can.

And when I don't know, it's freedom to say, I don't know. It's freedom. Oh, shoulders go down, you exhale and you seek to collaborate. So many people need to learn that lesson. Cause it's a burden that you don't have to carry. You're carrying around an unnecessary burden that's propped up by your own ego. And it's, it's, it's with your consciousness.

I think it's how we're raised too. Uh huh. You know, I don't think, you know, we're not taught as children to admit to ignorance. Right. You know, it's just, it's not how we're raised. It's not, it's, you know, man. Right. Does the right thing. He knows what to do. He's, he's, he's the leader. He's, he's John Wayne in my generation, you know, more Steve McQueen, but okay.

A little later. Yeah. But you're certainly not taught to say, to have humility and say, I don't know. And humility has a bad taint to it because it's, it's, it's, it smells of weakness, but it's not, it's the opposite of weakness. Right. And, oh my God, you know, to be able to say, I don't know, help me is, is actually an incredible strength.

And it's much more admirable. It's a, for, for people on the outside watching, they, they, they recognize it as being true. It's a, this is a authentic moment rather than someone bullshitting you when you know they're bullshitting you and they know that, you know, and everybody just goes through this stupid fucking dance. One of the questions I get asked all the time now that I'm in the twilight of my career is what's the secret sauce, you know, what's, what's, you know, what, if anything carries through all the different TV shows and whatnot.

And the word that comes to mind is collaboration. I, I didn't do anything alone. You know,

I, you know, you come out of the comedy world, you know, that writing comedy with others is really a gas and it's far more effective. A hundred percent. I learned so much by being in a room for 25 years with great writers. And one of the things I talk about in the book, which is really meaningful to me was when I got the chance to do the Kaminsky method with Michael Douglas, I decided I wanted to write it alone to see if I still could write alone.

Because I'd been in a room with people yelling at each other for years. No, this is funny. This is funny. No, do it this way. And it would get volatile, you know, comedy writers. Right. You fucking nuts. What are you stupid? It got mean. Right. But when I sat down and write, wrote those scripts by myself, I realized all those guys were in the room with me.

They're in my head. You know, really? You think that's funny? It's, you know, it's a fucking pun. You moron. You know, that guy's right. He's in my head. He was part of me now. And I wasn't, I was writing alone, but I wasn't alone. All those guys. And you know, when, when you watch a great standup, it gets in your head. You don't copy. That guy.

But his insight can change the way you perceive things. A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by eight sleep. There are so many people out there who swear by the pod by eight sleep, the smart mattress cover that goes on your existing mattress. But if you've been on the fence, now's the time to get on board. Why? Because they've just released pod six.

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It helps to support the show. Simply safe ahead of crime in real time. Stanhope always says that he writes in he thinks about himself as a defense attorney defending the bit as he's writing it. Who is this? Doug Stanhope. I don't know. Hilarious. Great stand up. Hilarious guy. But he looks at it like he's like that bit is being tried. How does he defend this bit? And he makes sure that he lays it out in that way.

That's great. Yeah. That's great. But it's the same thing. Like having someone in your head that's a critic that's going to look at it and go, hey, what the fuck is this part? You know, and you're like, hey, hey, hey, hey. The scene isn't. That's not how you're in the scene. All right. Let's fucking work together here and fix it. Right? Yeah.

You know, and what a gift, you know, and so, you know,

again, going back to that word, humility is a strength.

I succeeded because I counted on other people. A hundred percent. There's no way. If you've been on a set of a sitcom in particular, there's no way to do it on your own. It's like every, you need to have a lot of brilliant people working together for it to work out well. Have you interviewed this guy, Taylor Sheridan? Yeah. He's a good friend of mine.

Wow. Yeah. Okay. That's, that might be the, the anomaly. Cause you know, I, I love that stuff. I love all that stuff. I've watched everything. I, you know, I'm just. He's a freak. He just turns them out. I feel so fucking lazy when I watch this. Me too. I'm such a, just a, just, I'm just, driftwood. He wrote it and directed it. And then he had time to write that great feature and holy shit.

Yeah. He turns them out. I just, and it's good. Yeah. It's one thing to turn it out. And it's one thing to turn out quality. You seen Hell and High Country? Yes. Hell and High Water, Renna? Is that what it is? Hell and High Water? Yeah. That's a fucking great movie. And I just, the Sicario stuff. Yes. And then 1883 and 1923. Uh -huh. Alan Mirren and Harrison Ford.

Wow. No, he's, he creates banger after banger. I don't know. Lioness. I haven't watched Lioness, but everybody tells me that's incredible. It's fantastic. Landman. Landman's fantastic. You know, Billy Joe Thornton. Billy Bob. Billy Bob. Yeah. Unbelievable. Great stuff. He's like, it was funny. The pitch for that show was he was going to do Bad Santa, but on an oil rig.

And he's like, fuck yeah, I'm in. Bad Santa as an oil man. I got to work with him once, Billy Bob. He, his people, his representatives called me and said, Billy Bob wants to be on the Big Bank Theory. I'm sorry, what? I'm sorry, what? It was an Oscar winning, you know, sling blade guy who wants to be on the Big Bank Theory. I said, I'm sorry, you're going to have to give me more.

He goes, his mother loves the show. And as a gift to his mother, he wants to be on the show. Oh, wow. And we did it. That's awesome. And we loved it. We had a great time. That's so cool. He played a 50 year old version of them who lived in his mother's basement.

After all these years and all these shows, what keeps you doing it now? Like, what do you enjoy about the process now? I'm a laugh whore. Making people laugh is fun, you know, and sitting in a writer's room is fun. Sometimes you want to tear your hair out because it's hard. But every once in a while, you know, you hit something and you go, oh, this is good.

This is really good. And what the fuck else would I do? Well, you can kind of do whatever you want. That's why I'm asking you. Okay. So I'm asking you, I can do whatever I want. What am I doing? I can travel. That's a couple of weeks. Now what? Right. Okay.

I'm going to garden. No, I don't see me in the tulips. Keep going. I'm going to garden. What am I doing?

I get a chance to make people laugh. That's not a bad way to spend the day. You know? So. No, it's an awesome way to spend the day. Yeah. But some people, the, the stress of continuing, continuing to create and continuing to produce things. Like it eventually gets to them where they just like, I want off the ride. What I've done. And you really hit on something there is the stress of it at a certain point is intolerable.

It's just intolerable. I just, I find myself becoming the, the short tempered curmudgeon. Right. The old guy who has no patience. I don't want to be that guy. So I'm, I've been gradually pulling myself back into more of a consultant role where I'm not, if I'm on the stage at a rehearsal and the actors play out a scene and the scene ends, everybody looks and says, looks at me and goes, is it okay?

So my very presence suffocates the process. I am the plastic bag from the dry cleaners. Right. I kill small children.

So I have this extraordinary writing staff, wonderful cast and crew. And sometimes my presence can be, um,

I don't want to say destructive, but it doesn't encourage people to step up and go, what about, how about if, I think this joke doesn't work. Can we beat it? You know, it doesn't, it doesn't invite collaboration. Um, and the sad truth is they think I know, I don't know. I'm guessing we're all, you know, you in the comedy business. It's a game of guessing.

I think this is funny. Uh, I guessed wrong. Right. When it does, when it dies. Right. Let's fix it. No harm, no foul. I'm not a horrible person cause it died. I'm just, it just died. They just feel less likely to take chances when you're around. I think I suck up a lot of oxygen at this time in my career. Makes sense. You know, I remember one time Norman Lear came to the set cause he was going to go back into, he made a, uh, a, uh, a, a version of, uh, one day at a time.

Um, and he was executive producing a remake of one of his shows from the seventies. And he asked, can I come and watch you guys work to, uh, see how it's being done now. This is 35, 40 years after his day. And of course, you know, geez, Norman Lear is going to come watch us work, which I was a nervous wreck after every joke I'm looking at.

Is Norman laughing? Is Norman laughing? But I asked him, I remember this really vivid moment when I said, are you going to write the pilot for this new sitcom you're going to make? And he went, are you crazy? Now if I give it, if I write the pilot, nobody's going to give me notes. Nobody's going to give me any constructive feedback. I'm all by myself.

I'm not going to write it. If it says written by Norman Lear, who's going to do the punch up? Right. Now I'm not saying I'm Norman Lear. He reinvented television. I carried on, you know, I I've been keeping it going, but he really changed the game. So I don't want to, it's the same effect. It's the same effect. At a certain point in my career, I've noticed I have a, the word stultifying comes to mind effect on the process.

And the people I love working with could give a shit about my opinion. And I love that because then there's back and forth. Then there's, then there's arguments. There's, you know, there's a, there's collaboration. Yeah. That, and it has to happen that way to do it. Right. That's fun. That what's, it's also great that you recognize that your presence that can make them nervous and fuck it up.

Yeah. And you want to go, no, no, you don't understand. I actually don't know what I'm doing. Right. I'm just guessing. I'm guessing based on a lot of experience, but I'm still guessing. And, and, uh, that's just your reputation precedes you. You've had too many hits. You've, you know, it's a beautiful problem. Yeah. It's the best problem.

It's certainly better than the opposite problem. When I started the big bang theory, I had, I could barely do one show, the two and a half minutes. It was, it was 60 hours a week. Easy. And when I started the big bang theory, I called Norman's office, cold call said, I'm Chuck Laurie. I got a show on CBS. I'm about to have a second show. At one point he had seven shows on television.

Simultaneously? Simultaneously. Simultaneously. I said, would he be available to talk to me? Maybe give me some tips. And he, I'm very graciously invited me over to his office. And I sat down and I said, I'm about to start production on a second show. I can barely do the one. And now I'm going to do two. What can you tell me? And he said, you're not going to like the answer.

And it boiled down to, he said, you go where the fire's burning the brightest and you try and put it out.

That was his management technique. That was it. The fire of chaos or the fire of creativity? He had seven shows in production. Either the script didn't work. They miscast a role. The bad fire. Put out a fire. The director wasn't working. Yeah. The second act didn't work. The, you know, some of them are small. Some other huge problems. Right.

You know, so and so's, you know, ill. Should we shut down? You know, you know, do we wait a week? Do we push a week? What if we miss an air date? Oh my God. What if you miss an air date? The problems can be big or small, but his solution was gauging his response. Basically, you know, nothing, nothing, nothing. Oh, that's a crisis. I'll go there.

How did that guy have time for anything in life? I don't know. He's a good man though. He was really, he was a generous and good man. I was very, it was a real privilege to spend a little bit of time. That's amazing. Yeah. Was there any time ever any time when you were doing both shows simultaneously where you went, I don't think I should have done this.

This is too much. Always. The entire time. Always. But there was a moment around the third season of Two and a Half Men. And I know I wrote about this. Where I had a weird epiphany. I was sitting in a room full of comedy writers, great writers, superstar comedy writers. And we were arguing about something. I don't remember what it was. Some scene in an episode that we were working on.

And it dawned on me that I could trust myself.

And it was a really striking experience. Everybody was yelling and complaining and no, not this, do that, do this. And I just thought, I think I know how to do this scene. And everybody's going, no, blah, blah, blah. I went, no, I think I know how to do this scene and we're going to do it. Not angrily defending it. Just I felt calm. You know, I felt this calmness going, I think this can work.

Let's do this. And I also, there was a moment in that calmness where I went, if I'm wrong, we'll fix it. Nobody's going to die. You know, we're not going to get drummed out of show business. Right. It's a joke in a scene. Right. And I realized that I could be wrong and survive being wrong. Well, that's the benefit of being very successful.

And that's, that's also, but it also goes back to the, I don't know thing. I don't have to know, but we did it and, and it was a turning point for me, you know, where I, I loved working in a room full of writers, but I wasn't bound by consensus anymore. I was, I was able to, to have trust intuition, which is a weird thing. It's not thinking, you know, this, right? In comedy, you just, you have this feeling.

It's an, it's, it's, it's inchoate. It's not, it's not something you could express in words. You just know, I think this is going to work. And that feeling grows. The feeling grows. With the episodes you've done. Yes. And you also know when you're bullshitting yourself. Right. This is lazy. Yeah. We can do better. Right. I know, I know, yeah, this will work, but it's, it's not great.

It's okay. And okay. Why are we doing this if it's just okay? Let's, let's at least try for great. Right. If we fail, we tried for great. But if you fail for, if you fail trying to do okay, you know, go home, go home. It's you, you're, you're done. So, you know, that's about shoot for the moon, settle for a low orbit. That's a great message.

I think it's a good way to wrap this up. Um, thank you. I really appreciate it. It was fun. I'm stunned. I thought for sure I, maybe I could talk to you for 20 minutes and I'm going to go running. We did two hours. Screaming out of the room. Going this. I know you were saying that at the beginning of them. You're going to be fine. Well, you're a delight to talk to.

And you are too. Thank you very much. Thank you. I really enjoyed it. I get it. I get it. I get it. You, you, you have, you have, as you, I'm sure you well know, you know, you have a, an aura about you, a myth, a mythos. Hmm. And what's the myth? You're powerful, powerful man. And, uh, and what you've achieved is, it's, it's remarkable. Oh, thank you.

You know, as we say in the comic book world, use your powers for good. It's all an illusion. It's just me talking for years, but I appreciate it. The 10 ,000 hours are, are, are, are clear. Well, thank you very much. Um, you're awesome. Your book's great. And this was a lot of fun. Thank you very much. All right. Bye everybody.

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