Name: Joe Rogan Experience #1971 - Howie Mandel
Uploaded: 2023-04-19T00:00:00.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1971 - Howie Mandel' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-04-19. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1971 - Howie Mandel' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-04-19. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #1971 - Howie Mandel

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
Can you hear me?
I hear you perfect.
Okay.
Hello, Howie Mandel.
Hi, Joe Rogan.
Good to see you, my friend.
I know.
Very good to see you.
I know.
And amazing to see you.
Before you start anything, I've got to tell you how excited are you.
Did we start?
No, yeah, we're starting.
Okay, I've got to tell you how excited I am to see you.
I am the biggest fan, if there is one thing that I'm a fan of, it's innovation.
And I think that you have become the comedy innovator.
And I'm blowing smoke up your ass right at the beginning of this.
And I've got to say what I've seen from the outside, you know?
In 1978, I came down to the comedy store, and I got up on a lark, Mike Binder.
Got me up there on a lark.
I was not pursuing it.
I had gone on at Yuck Yucks in Toronto, and I fell in love with this.
Mitzi gave me my biggest break.
And there was a guy by the name of George Foster, who was in the audience that
night,
that said, hey, do you want to do TV?
And I said, yeah.
And he hired me to do Make Me Laugh, which I did with Binder and a bunch of
other people.
And with no intent of making this a career, you know?
I didn't pursue comedy.
I knew nothing about comedy.
I was a fan of comedy.
I watched comedy, stand-up.
Even when I went to Yuck Yucks, I had never, you know, I don't know.
Let me get back to you, and then I'll talk about me.
But the thing is that I'm aware of the history of comedy.
And when I was a kid, it was in New York.
Everybody went to New York.
That's where Lenny Bruce was working.
You just showed me a picture of Lenny Bruce.
And then when Carson made his way out to California, there was a shift where
everybody had to come to California, you know?
And you had to get on at the comedy store or maybe the improv with the intent
of maybe, if you were lucky, getting a spot on The Tonight Show.
Right?
Yeah.
And I don't know.
How old are you?
55.
55.
You're a kid.
How old are you?
I'll be 68 this year.
You look fucking great.
Thank you.
Maybe all this knuckle-touching is the way to go.
I don't know what the fuck it is.
I don't know that I...
But anyway, the point is that there was only one place to go and make it in
comedy, and that was California.
And that was you needed a spot at the comedy store.
And anybody who was anybody either got a spot at the improv or the comedy store.
And then even if somebody didn't know you and they came up to you and they said,
are you a comic?
And, oh, what do you do?
You'd say, I'm a stand-up comic.
They go, were you ever on Johnny?
And if you weren't on Johnny, then they kind of dismissed you.
Wow.
But that was the truth.
Yeah, I remember those days.
And I believe now, and this is the smoke that I'm blowing up your ass, there
was a shift.
You don't have to go to California anymore.
You don't have to be in New York.
You don't have to be anywhere.
But you got to be in Austin.
You got to come to Texas or you got to be part of whatever it is, this movement
that you have moved out here.
And if you look at the people that are getting huge clicks online for their
specials, Ari Shaffir and Shane Gillis and all these other guys, what do they
have in common?
They came and they touched you, you know?
And I think that that is where comedy is going.
And these people with podcasts are now selling huge amounts of tickets without
going on one.
They don't have a Tonight Show to go to.
They don't have a club to hit.
And now you opened up The Mothership, which is, I think, properly named,
because I believe that this is, if there is a geographical epicenter for comedy,
it is here, you know, now.
And I think you did that.
I've never met somebody that, you know, Mitzi was the last person that kind of,
Mitzi Shore I'm talking about, but accidentally did it, you know, because that
was just something she won in a divorce.
But you know that story.
But she was the perfect person to have it.
Right, but she didn't know that.
Yeah, but she had the best sensibility for comedy, and she was so ruthless.
She mentored me.
She helped me in so many ways.
Right, what she gave me, we have a lot in common in that.
She gave me my break.
That's her.
Yeah, no, I know I recognize her.
I saw her, I knew her.
Taylor Bose, pretty dope, right?
It is.
Great painting.
It is a great painting.
But the thing about Mitzi, if you don't know the beginnings of that, you know,
it was Sammy Shore's club.
It was her husband's club, who was the opening act for Elvis Presley.
Right, which is hilarious that she took it in a divorce and she's not a comic.
Well, because you take shit, it's like you take custody of a child and you're
not a parent.
Sugar Shane Mosley, the boxer, his ex-wife took one of his championship belts.
But it looks nice with certain tops.
Do you know how goddamn crazy that story is?
No.
That guy went to war with his hands.
He was throwing knuckles at another skilled man and won a world title.
He's got this beautiful belt strapped.
The whole crowd cheers and she's like, no, it's mine.
And she took it.
So Sammy Shore was telling jokes for people, audiences that weren't his.
They were Elvis's.
Right.
And he opened up a building for his friends to work out.
And Mitzi went, no, it's mine.
And then he told everybody that was in the business not to work there.
Right.
So she got all these kids, all us kids would show up and work because we wanted
stage time.
And that's how people started blasting off, you know, Jimmy J.J. Walker and
what's his name?
Who did, not my job, man, Freddie Prince, you know, and that's, and that became
the, and that's why when you started seeing Carson out in L.A., he'd go, we saw
this young kid last night at the comedy store and that's what made it big.
And I think by the same token, you're the new Mitzi with less hair where you
keep touching these people.
Like, that's how I hear personally, I, and I think a lot of other people hear
about the, the Brian Callens and their standup and their Ari and Shane and Bert
and all these other guys that are arena.
They're playing fucking arenas and theaters now.
That was, there was a select few when I was young, you know, I was talking to
you outside.
I used to go, what year did you start at the comedy store?
I remember seeing you a lot.
I started the comedy store in 94.
94, and you got news radio out of there, right?
I was already on news radio.
When you started there?
Yeah.
I know a lot of people that, you know.
I was actually on another show.
I was on, I think I'd got past, like, in between shows.
I got past right when the show I was on called Hardball fell apart.
I don't know Hardball.
It was, it was canceled very quickly.
It was like six episodes on Fox.
It was a baseball show.
And while I was on TV, that wasn't, my main goal was I had to be a paid regular.
I had to get to be a paid regular at the store.
Dude, when I was a kid, like, in 88, when I was 21 years old, people would talk
about the comedy store, like, with hushed tones.
Like, it was mecca.
That's where Kinison came from.
Right.
It was like, whoa, Richard Pryor used to work out there.
Right.
I was there every night.
Watch that.
Yeah, you would, you would hear about, Bill Hicks used to be a door guy.
Holy shit.
Right.
It was mecca.
Everybody knew you had to get to the store.
So when I came to LA, that's like the first thing I did, man.
Like, the very first thing I did when I came out here, I came and watched a
show and sat in the back room.
It was a terrible show.
It was like, Bodak's were on stage.
It was awful.
Really?
I used to sit in the back.
I used to sit in the back and, you know, Letterman was the host, you know, who
was this weatherman that came out from Indianapolis, you know, and he was just
pretty casual about, you didn't think.
I thought he was hysterical.
Yeah.
But, and you'd watch, you know, Jeff Altman and Billy Crystal and Robin, who
was on fire because he just started Mork and Mindy.
And then every night I would watch Richard Pryor, he come out and he was
putting together what became Live on the Sunset Strip.
Wow.
And he would get up every fucking night and like some, people would be packed
down the street to see him.
But I remember standing at the back.
He had just gotten out of the hospital from freebasing.
He still had bandages on his neck from, for those that don't remember, you know,
he got, he almost died.
He lit himself on fire.
He lit himself on fire.
And there was a joke, which he started, I saw him do it at the comedy store.
He used to light a match and go like this.
He goes, what's this?
This is me running down the street.
And then that became like a joke.
But he perpetrated that joke.
And at the time, it's hard to put this in context, it didn't get a big laugh.
People's jaw drop, like you don't talk about your near death experience, you
know, and he would always like push the envelope.
And I was just in awe.
I never saw a comic do this in my life that he didn't have jokes per se, where
he would just talk about his life or he would experiment.
I talked about one particular night on, I did Binders.
Did you see the comedy store?
Yes.
I think you're in it.
Yes.
I talked about the one night, I'll never forget.
He just walks in.
The crowd goes fucking nuts for him, you know.
And he turns around and he starts doing, I can't do him justice.
But he says, you know, I'm the fucking Lord.
I'm the Lord.
And everybody's laughing.
And I'm just here to pick up my son.
I'm here to pick up my son.
You might have seen him.
He's kind of a skinny kid with a beard and a robe, a long robe, goes by the
name Jesus.
Does anybody see my son?
Where's my son?
And people are laughing, but it's getting kind of uncomfortable.
And he goes, I need my, where is my son?
And then he leans down as if somebody in the front row is talking to him.
He goes, what?
What?
What the fuck did you do?
What?
Where is my fucking, what did you?
And he just starts screaming, my son, my boy, my baby.
What the fuck did you do to my son?
What the fuck did you do?
And he's like screaming, what the fuck did you do to my son?
And he got, and I can't remember the, because I don't remember the order.
He wants to talk to an apostle.
And then he realized, what the fuck did you do to him?
And then he goes, bring me Martin Luther King.
Bring me Martin Luther King.
Where the fuck is Martin Luther King?
And then he gets that info.
And he goes, where's Kennedy?
I want to talk to Kennedy.
And he goes, where the fuck?
Fuck.
And he's screaming, and he's got tears coming down his eyes.
The room is just sitting there in awe.
And then he turns around, and he points at the entire room, and he goes, you're
on your own.
And he walked out.
Oh, my God.
I know.
Oh, my God.
And I thought, fuck.
Fuck.
But that's Richard fucking Pryor, who just had a, he knew, he just went for
emotion, you know?
Not only laughter, emotion.
Well, he would, what I feel like is that Lenny Bruce was the first guy to do
our kind of comedy.
Where it wasn't just street jokes.
It was, it wasn't just, you know, two Jews walking to a bar, that kind of stuff.
It was like, he would talk about life.
He would talk about social issues.
And then Pryor made it way funnier.
Like, Pryor's stuff still holds up.
The Lenny Bruce stuff, it's hard because of the context of the time.
Like, you can't put yourself in 1960 and sit there and understand the cultural
context of how crazy everything he's saying is.
But he still has some jokes that fucking still would kill today.
But Richard Pryor's life, you know, he was raised in a brothel with no money,
had horrible, you know, issues with relationships and drugs.
And that's the kind of, that's what he talked about.
And those are the characters that he mimicked.
And those characters are still alive and well today, you know, like that kind
of character.
Oh, the Italian mobsters?
Yes.
When they did the thing about him getting paid and they're giving him noogies.
Yes.
He pulled out a fake gun.
Yeah.
Yeah, but h