Name: Joe Rogan Experience #1985 - Steven Wright
Uploaded: 2023-05-13T00:00:00.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1985 - Steven Wright' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-05-13. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1985 - Steven Wright' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-05-13. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #1985 - Steven Wright

the joe rogan experience train by day joe rogan podcast by night all day
it's fun hanging out with you last night yeah that was
you know when you're in one of those rooms backstage it's the same
yeah it's the same vibe it's the same
fun even if you don't you don't know the actual people it's connection yeah in
a good room yeah
yeah we're all having fun telling telling jokes it's a nice the setup is so
nice too because
where the green room is it's in between the two rooms so you can go to one room
and watch and then
you go to the other room because we have a balcony set up yeah it's very nice
it's very very convenient
and that actually was the projector room for the theater so we converted the
projector room for
the theater into a green room it's a perfect it's a perfect position because it's
in between the two
rooms so you get people going to come back from the set and then they can you
can see them doing it on
the monitor you can see them on the monitor or you could just step off into the
balcony because we have
that comics balcony so you could watch like if you're on stage i could just sit
up there and watch i don't
have to go downstairs it's very nice it's fun vibe right absolutely it's great
for me to watch someone
like you appreciate it like go and and check it out and go wow yeah it's like
you know right from the
beginning the same no matter where you go i mean if it's a good place i would
have stayed longer but
i didn't want to uh is this going yeah we're going i don't see you don't hear
yourself no maybe because
i'm not turn the volume because i'm not listening is that good do you hear it
now no not at all no
i might have to bail on the headsets and go with real ones oh there it is you
got it okay
real ones i made these in your wood shop metal shop
when you when you started out uh was it the ding-ho days was that like the
first place where you start
like what was it like what year did you start out first of all july 79 oh wow
what was the scene like
well it was the comedy connection the little one downstairs no still there no
it was it was uh on
warrenton street it was street level that was the first one before nix before nix
so it was the same
comedy or excuse me the same um one that was uh the charles playhouse right
yeah yeah you got straight in
yeah and it was right in there it was an amazing room yeah little like 150
people probably not i don't
even think that many maybe 100 maybe 90. that was the first ceiling yeah yeah
low that's where i
i went to see an open mic there and then i thought i what i was doing is i was
you know into comedy from
watching the tonight show that's when i really got like oh these comedians you
know carl and robert
klein all these guys i had to watch the tonight show because my brother was
older than me and we had
to watch what he wanted so i you know i started watching then i started to like
it and then i heard
that there was a club in town and i thought i should go out you know i was 16
when i really was into it
but then when i was about 23 i heard of the club and i thought well maybe i
gotta go try it out i mean i
wouldn't have to move to los angeles or new york and i didn't i my character
then i couldn't have 23 and
i'm not going to move to los angeles it was like a that was too much for me so
i went to the comedy
connection and i watched a show and then i learned that there was a the open
mic nights was every
wednesday so then i thought i'm gonna go back in two weeks
do you remember your first set i don't remember i remember the first joke was
but i don't remember
the rest of it was i said i uh went into a a bookstore and i taught it started
talking to this very french
looking girl she was a bilingual illiterate she couldn't read in two different
languages
and then it and that's how you started yeah i had about three minutes
so did you always write in that style like the sort of non sequitur absurdist
no see i didn't even write anything until i went to the open my watched the
show and when i
knew i was going back in two weeks during that two weeks i wrote things but i
had never written
comedy at all right but when you first started writing comedy it was always
that style it was about
seventy percent like that there was more like
normal-ish i don't know why it came out like that i mean
i i was influenced by carlin talking about everyday little things and that's
what i i said i'm gonna
do that and then the structure of a joke was from listening to woody allen's
stand-up albums
but that i had no that's just how it came out with those two influences plus my
own mind well that's
where it gets interesting right because in your own mind because because you
have a totally different
style than anybody else in boston well really anybody else in the country but
in boston at that time
there was a lot of guys like lenny clark and steve sweeney and don gavin there
was all these like very
very very funny comics great great every guy you mentioned great hilarious top
of the food chain
yeah i tell everybody to this day that those days when in the 1980s when i
lived in boston those are
some of the best comics that have ever lived those guys were murderers i
totally agree with you they
were so good you would go there at any given night you'd watch sweeney just
destroy nick's comedy stuff
and he was so good his timing was so good so much energy and you know and it
was so much stuff about
boston and boston people just love that every one of those guys is different
than the other guy
mike donovan like donovan rogersson so prolific yeah mike donovan unbelievably
hilarious yeah so many good
guys lenny and lenny clark is so funny god damn he's funny and just great guys
too it's just like it's
such a it was a a very unusual group of artists because they're these wild kind
of partying guys
but they had like real like rigid rules about don't be a hack and don't be a
thief and don't be a this
and you know and do good comedy and they all just wanted to kill and it was
there was no real show
biz sort of like uh pot of gold at the end of the rainbow it was really just
being a headliner just
killing that's all they did and there was no show business there there were no
agents no producers
no one to say oh you should do why are you doing it like that like it was like
being on an island
that's how i've described it when we all started like the club started in 79 so
everyone started
maybe one year before one year everyone just started it once and we're all
learning how to do it it was
weird how it lined up it wasn't like that club was there for 10 years the club
opens and everyone you just
said comes and it just begins
like where was it before it wasn't it wasn't anywhere like jay leno was there
before but he would play the
playboy club and it wasn't actually a comedy club before this comedy connection
yeah it's france alameda did a great job of capturing it in that documentary
when stand-up stood
out brilliant great great documentary i agree but about what a strange scene it
was and it was
arguably the best scene in the country it might not have been the best scene in
terms of like everybody
getting to know those comedians worldwide but in terms of like the quality of
the comedy it was as
good as anywhere in the world i agree it's one of those fluke things that just
happens probably like
the music thing in the 60s and uh in the village with the folk musicians and
all that or in london
yeah like it's just all of a sudden these things come together and then this
just things happen
i'm so grateful to have started there me too um you know i started i started in
88 i started after the
wave so i started uh you know there was all the evening at the improvs then and
stand-up uh specials
on like mtv at the half hour comedy hour so i started uh you know like george mcdonald
was the the host of
open mic nights loved you yeah and you get to see teddy bergeron would stop in
who was just to this day
one of the best comics i've ever seen tremendous so good so i started um when
the wave of like
television comedy was just starting to sort of subside i kind of caught the
last wave
you know of that kind of of like the the comedy boom was starting to settle
down
you know and it was uh there was a lot of mediocre comedy out there there was a
lot of
people that were doing what sounded like like an impression of what a comedian
should sound like
you know and they were working all over the place now were you living in massachusetts
yeah i was
living in newton and where did you get it in your why did it go into your head
like i told you it was
for me it was watching the tonight show how did it the germs start well
definitely watching stand-up
on tv i used to love watching richard jenny on the tonight show oh he was me so
good he's incredible
i was driving home one night uh fairly recently a few years back and you know
how sometimes like a
bluetooth on your phone just randomly plays a song when you plug it in it just
randomly played this jenny
bit and i was laughing so hard driving home and uh i while i was driving i
downloaded the whole album
and i just listened to the album coming home from uh from orange county and it
was like
i just forgot i kind of forgot how good he was i forgot how funny he was and
all the tags and bang
bang bang bang bang bang he just never stopped he did several specials stand-up
specials i saw him
live in california he's one of those guys where you laugh out loud you know
sometimes you can watch a
guy and you can think that's really funny but you're not really laughing out
loud you're not right it's not a
judgment but then there's other guys where both lines up yeah you know like
like jenny and kevin meanie
just like oh my god but jenny i mean so prolific he was so perfect top guy he
worked at um
east side comedy club in long island and i got there on sunday and the host and
a couple other comics
are sitting there they look depressed and i'm like what's going on and like jenny
did four different
hours he did two different hours two different shows friday night he did one
hour for the first
show totally different hour for the second show then he does a totally
different hour for the first
show saturday and another totally different hour i never heard of such a thing
i never heard of such
a thing they said he never repeated a joke he said he did four totally
different hours and just murdered
and they all wanted to kill themselves yeah i would too kill myself not them
yeah it's crazy
it's crazy how good he was so i saw him and uh i i saw kenison i was actually
introduced to kenison by a
girl i worked with it was a very funny story she was she'd seen kenison on hbo
and then she went and
acted out this uh the bit about uh the homosexual necrophiliacs paying money to
have sex with the
freshest male corpse so this girl who's a friend of mine is lying on her
stomach in the parking lot acting
it out she's going oh oh life keeps in the ass even after you're dead it never
ends it never ends so
she's acting this out in the parking lot i'm laughing at her acting it out i
didn't even see the bit yeah
this is your introduction to that's my introduction to sam kenison is my friend
pretending she's getting
fucked in the ass like she's dead oh my god that's touching it was touching i
think about her all the
time i really do think about her all the time because she was a girl i worked
with at the boston
athletic club in south boston i was a trainer there and she was like this uh
she was very funny she was
like this big volleyball player girl she was like a big athlete strong girl so
seeing her lying on the
ground going oh oh life keeps in the ass even after your dad it never ends was
there anyone like walking
by like no luckily no nobody she wouldn't give a though that's that was she was
she could have been
a cop she was very funny she was very funny there's a lot of people like that
that you meet they're like
god that guy could have been a comic you know a few of those people s