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Chuck Lorre
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The Joe Rogan Experience · #2564 - Chuck Lorre
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When Did Chuck Lorre Trust Himself on Two and a Half Men?
Joe Rogan asked whether running both shows at once ever felt like too much. Chuck Lorre said it did, always, the entire time. Around the third season of Two and a Half Men, in a moment he has written about, he sat with great comedy writers arguing over a scene. A sharp realization landed. He trusted himself.
The room was yelling for a different scene. Chuck Lorre felt calm. He decided he knew how to do the scene and told them they were going to do it, without an angry defense. If the scene was wrong, they would fix it. Nobody was going to die, and they were not going to get drummed out of show business. It was a joke in a scene. He realized he would survive being wrong. Joe Rogan called the
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What Did Norman Lear Tell Chuck Lorre About Running Two Shows?
Chuck Lorre said that when he started The Big Bang Theory he was barely keeping up with Two and a Half Men, at 60 hours a week, and he was about to have a second show. He cold-called Norman Lear's office. He said he was Chuck Lorre, he had a show on CBS, and he was about to have another. At one point Norman Lear had seven shows on television at the same time. He invited Chuck Lorre over. Chuck Lorre said he was about to start production on a second show, he was barely doing the one, and he asked what Norman Lear had to tell him.
Norman Lear said Chuck Lorre was not going to like the answer. It came down to going where the fire burns brightest and trying to put it out. The fires were the bad
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Why Did Chuck Lorre Write Sitcom: a Memoir?
Chuck Lorre said the first page of the book is that if he had been able to be better, he would have. The selfish version of himself was the best he had early on. Writing the book turned into a look back at that man. He asked who the guy was, called him an idiot and a horrible human being, and remembered leaving a woman without saying thank you. He said that man was him. Held to what he said in 1969, it would not go well for him.
He said writing about his life had a therapeutic, cathartic quality. He wanted the book funny, because a straight account of his life would be boring and nobody would care. He said if he can make the reader laugh, then maybe the life is worth reading. The book begin
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What Did Fame Do to Brett Butler on Grace Under Fire?
Chuck Lorre said Grace Under Fire was in 1993, when there were only four channels and cable was not where people watched sitcoms. He put the number of famous people then at maybe a hundred. Brett Butler, on a show that was number two, became one of the most recognizable people in the world. The show was huge, and she was on every magazine. He said that pressure can be devastating for a person who is already struggling to keep it together. He thinks she fell apart after the show. He had heard she was homeless at one point, and he does not think she still is. He said he does not know whether the stories are true.
He said people wanted to love her and were rooting for her while the show was on
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How Did a Trip to Elgin Lead Chuck Lorre to Brett Butler?
Chuck Lorre said the next assignment was a show about a single mom. On Frannie's Turn he had wanted the lead to leave her husband and live with her daughter. The network said she had to stay married, because Cosby was married and Roseanne was married, and they wanted another married show. ABC then went looking for a single-mom show. He asked what sensibility he had to bring to it. They sent him to Elgin, Illinois. The chamber of commerce took him to a women's shelter, the YWCA, and hospitals, where women were on welfare or working two jobs and raising children with no safety net.
The single mom on television then was Murphy Brown, who had endless nannies and went about her life with a child
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Why Did Chuck Lorre Take the Roseanne Rip-off?
After Chuck Lorre left Roseanne, the owners of that show brought an idea that was strangely like Roseanne: a heavyset unhappy housewife, a domineering husband, and problems with her kids. They took it to his boss, Bob Meyer, who saw a rip-off of Roseanne and said no. They then came to Chuck Lorre. He knew it was a rip-off of Roseanne and took it anyway. The two people who owned The Cosby Show and Roseanne were gigantic in television, and he wanted to work for them.
He worked with the British actress Miriam Margolyes, who tried hard to play an unhappy American housewife from Staten Island. Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner were powerful enough that the network did not pass. It ordered six episodes
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Why Did Young Sheldon Work With an All-new Cast?
Joe Rogan said the miraculous chemistry of All in the Family was gone, and the same thing happened with Joey from Friends. The chemistry of that cast did not travel. He said not to think a hit travels.
Joe Rogan called Young Sheldon impressive because it is a kind of spinoff and it is not one. Everyone is new. The only inkling of The Big Bang Theory is Jim Parsons narrating. You never see him. He tells the story of a child in East Texas, and that narration was the only link. Joe Rogan said Chuck Lorre pulled off the chemistry in two completely different environments about the same character. He called the result a roll of the dice, and it worked.
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What Changed for Charlie Sheen in Season Eight of Two and a Half Men?
Joe Rogan said he had not known that Charlie Sheen was supposedly sober for most of the early run. Chuck Lorre said that as far as he knew, Charlie was. Joe Rogan said the two are friends now. Chuck Lorre said Charlie Sheen wrote a blurb on the back of his book. In that account, the beginning was sober, and then it went off the rails.
Chuck Lorre said the trouble was clear in the eighth season of Two and a Half Men. Charlie Sheen's manager called and said Charlie was not coming to the run-through, because a Bic lighter blew up and he had no eyebrows. Chuck Lorre said he is somewhat naive about that world, and he knows Bic lighters do not blow up. He said maybe the lighter story came from co
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How Did Two and a Half Men Get the Big Bang Theory a Second Pilot?
Chuck Lorre said the success of Two and a Half Men granted him the freedom to take a couple of tries at getting The Big Bang Theory right. He said they failed at first and made a lot of mistakes.
Two and a Half Men was so successful that CBS gave him unbelievable leeway to make decisions and to do the work over again, including the pilot. He said nobody gets a do-over. They got a do-over on The Big Bang Theory pilot. He said it never happens. They got one, and it worked out.
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What Did Chuck Lorre Say About Charlie Sheen's Early Two and a Half Men Years?
Joe Rogan said Chuck Lorre has worked with some of the craziest people of all time. He said Charlie Sheen came on the podcast and talked about the Two and a Half Men years, and he asked how anyone shows up to make a sitcom while living like that. Joe Rogan said it is amazing Charlie Sheen kept it together, and that he deserves credit for doing good work while he was out of his mind.
Chuck Lorre said they had six or seven years in the clear before it all went to hell, and about 150 or 160 episodes before it started to go down. Joe Rogan asked whether Charlie Sheen was using heavily in the early years. Chuck Lorre said Charlie was managing it and keeping it to himself. As far as Chuck Lorre w
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Why Did Young Sheldon Become a Story About His Family?
Chuck Lorre said Young Sheldon became a show about the family around an odd child with normal parents. The father is a football coach. The mother is deeply religious. A twin sister is just a kid, and an older brother is a knucklehead who means well. The story turned into how they accommodate a remarkable child, and how much love and protectiveness went toward a little boy who did not see how caustic he was.
Chuck Lorre said the grown Sheldon treated his friends horribly. An eight-year-old acting the same way is not acceptable, while a 25 or 30 year old Jim Parsons can be caustic. The same lines are not pleasant coming from a child. The show shifted to how the parents, the brother, the siste
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Why Did a Fan Cry When She Met Jim Parsons?
Chuck Lorre tells a story from his book about an early Comic-Con for The Big Bang Theory. Thousands of people camped overnight to see the panel. He sat beside Jim Parsons at an autograph line, where fans brought a cast picture to be signed. A girl walked up with shaking hands, handed Jim Parsons the picture, and cried from joy at being close to him.
Chuck Lorre said he had been doing the work a while. People were always happy to see Jon Cryer and Charlie. Nobody ever cried, and nobody cried when they saw Roseanne. The girl was crying from sheer joy. He realized something was happening with the characters that the writers did not plan and had no way to plan. The characters had hit a nerve.
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Why Did Hollywood Dismiss the Big Bang Theory?
Chuck Lorre said The Big Bang Theory was a huge hit in Germany, in Mexico, and in Brazil. He set Brentwood apart from that response. He said the show was dismissed, and Hollywood dismissed it.
He was working on a sitcom and dating an unemployed actress. She told him she would not do a sitcom, because she wanted to do film. Chuck Lorre said putting on a play every week is really hard. The week is full of anxiety and stress, and it does not always go well. When a joke fails at the Warner Brothers lot in Burbank and the audience does not respond, he said you can hear the 134 freeway. The silence is crickets. He called a dead joke a teaching device, because it teaches humility. He thought the j
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Did the Big Bang Theory Ever Use a Laugh Track?
Chuck Lorre said the shows have never used a laugh track. For 40 years they have been accused of one, and he said they never used it. A reporter came to the set of The Big Bang Theory, sat in the audience, and watched the cast tape a show in front of a live studio audience. The taping takes three hours to three and a half hours. The reporter then wrote an article complaining about the laugh track. Chuck Lorre said the reporter sat in the stands with 200 people laughing and still wrote about an annoying laugh track.
Chuck Lorre said the article diminishes the show, and that the people behind it want to diminish the show. Chuck Lorre said he thinks he made that point clear in his book.
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How Did Young Sheldon Stand Without the Big Bang Theory?
Chuck Lorre said Young Sheldon worked on Netflix. A whole generation of kids watched Young Sheldon and had never seen The Big Bang Theory. When he talks to them, they do not know what CBS is. He called the standalone run the dream come true. Young Sheldon was not standing on the shoulders of The Big Bang Theory. It was its own show.
Joe Rogan said they binged Young Sheldon after The Big Bang Theory, and the two shows play differently because Young Sheldon is single camera. He said a multicam puts a crowd in the room, so the viewer is in on the performance, like watching a play as much as a comedy. Chuck Lorre agreed. A multicam is a play.
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How Did Chuck Lorre See the Big Bang Theory Characters?
Joe Rogan called The Big Bang Theory unusual, and he called the lead a genius. Chuck Lorre said that was not his way in. He is a college dropout, not a physicist, and not a genius, so the science was never the part he recognized.
Chuck Lorre said the characters were outliers, people who had not figured out how to behave in the real world. Being on the outside and looking in was the part he understood. He said the general attitude was that every episode had to kick ass.
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Why Does Chuck Lorre Say People Will Die to Protect a False Belief?
Chuck Lorre said a belief works as a tent pole. Civilizations and cultures that took God out of the picture replaced God with the Communist Party or a fascist dictator. The pitch is organize around me, and it does not matter whether the claim is right. Take the pole away and people get angry. Call the belief bullshit and everything else a person believes is in fair play, so the tent collapses. He said people will fight to the death to keep the tent pole up, true or not.
Chuck Lorre said a friend who grew up Mormon left the Mormon church and told him she was susceptible to believing anything. She had believed everything they told her for so long that she did not critically think, and spiritu
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Why Did Whitney Cummings Tie Stage Fright to Tribal Exile?
Joe Rogan said the worst thing a million years ago in a tribe was getting thrown out. A person who gets kicked out dies. He said he does not know what misbehavior looked like back then. Joe Rogan said Whitney Cummings told him people have stage fright and a fear of public speaking because speaking in front of the public meant defending yourself. He said that idea is probably very true. A person who had to speak was probably going to get kicked out of the tribe, and kicking someone out was a sentence of death. He said people are desperately in need of one another. The need is not good, bad, or indifferent. It is just the way people are.
Joe Rogan said that need is what makes people prone to
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Why Did Chuck Lorre Buy Dianetics?
Chuck Lorre said he bought Dianetics on a late-night television commercial and did not know what the book was. He did not understand the book was Scientology. He thought it was just a self-help book. Joe Rogan described it as a kind of psychotherapy: digging up past trauma, releasing the trauma, and freeing up life force. Chuck Lorre said that description was not far off the charts, and that releasing the trauma of past experiences was what L. Ron Hubbard did for the most part.
Chuck Lorre and Joe Rogan said L. Ron Hubbard was a science fiction writer who wrote more fiction than any human being that has ever lived, because he never wrote a second draft. They said everything was a first draf
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What Horrible Truth Did Success Teach Chuck Lorre?
Chuck Lorre said actors and comics can be damaged in a certain way, succeed, and still learn a horrible truth at two o'clock in the morning. He is still unhappy. He is still not whole. Success was supposed to make him happy and whole and solve his problems. As a boy he was taught that making something of yourself means you will be good, people will like you and admire you, and you will be a man of substance, a mensch. He said the horrible truth can only arrive with success. He is still a miserable fuck. Now what?
Chuck Lorre said the prize does not close the hole inside. Drugs come in at that point, the same pattern he names with rock stars, along with sex, drinking, and gambling. You canno