Name: Joe Rogan Experience #1901 - Steven Pressfield
Uploaded: 2022-11-22T00:00:00.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1901 - Steven Pressfield' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-11-22. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1901 - Steven Pressfield' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-11-22. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #1901 - Steven Pressfield

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
Good to see you, man.
What's happening?
It's good to see you, Joe.
With a nice stack of books here.
What do we got here?
Government cheese, a memoir.
Is this your memoir?
This is my memoir, yeah.
Oh, exciting.
Of my 27 years in the wilderness.
And Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be.
That's sort of like a war of art type of book, as you can tell from the size of
it and everything.
After writing The War of Art, because you also wrote Turning Pro, right?
Yeah, and a few others.
Yeah, but along the same vein.
Yeah, yeah.
You just felt like you have more to squeeze out of that.
It's such an important subject for artists and for creative people.
I mean, that book, The War of Art, changed so many people.
Let me ask you, Joe, why did that resonate with you?
Well, there was some stuff that he talked about that it was almost like unspoken.
And one of them is the concept of resistance.
And that the fact that you treated the muse as if it was like a real living
entity.
Which I think it is.
Yeah, she is.
She is.
Whatever it is.
That thing where if you show up and you put in the work, creativity just sort
of gives birth.
It sort of erupts.
It comes out.
It manifests.
There's something to it.
And just I kind of always had this like inkling that that was a thing or this
thought that that was a thing.
But until I read your book, it was like you had you you made it real.
You're like you you just like you laid it out and like, here's the problem.
This is what's going on.
And this is what you got to do.
You just got to show up every day and put in the work and be a damn
professional.
And so many people that I gave that book to, I used to have a stack of them in
my old studio.
And I would just hand them to people.
Dude, just read this.
Trust me.
And it wasn't a hard read.
You know, it wasn't a giant book.
But it was so valuable because it just like, I guarantee you, there's so many
people.
There were so many days where people sat in front of their computer or a notepad
where they wouldn't have because of that book.
Like it got people to where they needed to go, whether they stayed there, you
know, whether they kept up the new that's not you.
Did you yourself, let me ask you, like as a comic, did you experience
resistance to getting, say, up in front of people or in the writing of the
material or.
Yeah, you kind of.
Was that an area where you could relate to it?
Yes.
It all the all the above.
You could, you know, you experience resistance and like, oh, I want to take a
day off, you know, like, oh, I don't feel.
Like going up today.
Like, I know a lot of comics are really good comics.
And they're always canceling like what there's work and then there's spots.
OK, so the spots are important because the spots are what get you better,
tighten your material and how you create new material.
Now are spots when you actually perform?
Is that what a spot is?
OK, so this is what I mean.
A spot is, say, if you're going to go to the comedy store and on regular night
in the comedy store, there might be 15 comedians and each one of them is doing
15 minutes.
So there's just it's a long running show.
It starts from 8 p.m.
It goes on all night.
When you're doing that, that's a spot doesn't pay very well.
I think it pays like $50.
So you just go down there and it's really there's a lot of camaraderie.
We're all hanging around with each other and joking around in the parking lot
and in the hallway.
And you're really just trying to stay sharp and work on new material.
And you might in the comedy store has three rooms.
There's the belly room that seats about 70 to 90 people.
There's the main room that seats about 400 plus people.
And then there's the original room that seats.
I think it seats about 170.
And you do shows in each room like people do spots like sometimes people do
three spots a night.
So those don't pay well, but those are the ones people cancel.
So like a lot of comedians, they're like, oh, I don't feel like going up.
And they'll call in the store.
I'm canceling.
I'm going to cancel.
I'm not feeling well.
I'll cancel.
And it's really just resistance.
It's this thing that keeps you from showing up.
But the resistance for writing is way stronger.
That's really strong.
That's the work that you're talking about.
The spot and the work.
Spots are short sets that you do in town.
Work is when you're on the road.
So the work is, say if you do a weekend at a comedy club.
Now that pays well.
That's where the majority of comedians make their living is doing weekends on
the road.
Or maybe even weekdays on the road.
So then you're doing a show.
And the idea is that you've crafted all this material on your own, in writing,
and then in front of the crowd, doing spots, and doing it around town.
And then when you go on the road, then you have a show to put on.
And that's work.
What's interesting to me, here's my question.
When do you actually sit down and write the thing?
For me, it's two times.
It's either late at night when everyone's asleep in my house, or lately it's
been in the morning.
Lately I've been doing it first thing in the morning.
And there's, I don't know, sometimes I have my best ideas first thing in the
morning for some reason.
And like, I can't quite imagine, what is it like?
Do you have like a theme that you think is funny that you're going to work on?
No, I just sit in front of the computer and write about subjects.
I just have like essays.
See, I used to try to just write jokes, but it seemed too limiting creatively.
Like, the format is so limited that I was missing out on some ideas.
And so then I started writing blog posts.
And one of the things that I realized in blog, when I write blog, which is
essentially essays,
is that I could extract good ideas from those essays.
And those would become my bits.
And so now that's how I write.
When I write, I just sit down and I just like, like, write, like, I'm doing
this idea about riots lately, riots and protests.
And so I just start writing about riots and protests.
And I'm just writing.
And then I'm writing about what kind of people go and what, you know, what
motivates someone to put a Buffalo hat on and try to break it into the Capitol.
And as I'm writing, then I'll go, that's a chunk.
And I'll take that and I'll pull it out and I'll copy and paste it in another
folder or another file.
And then I'll go on stage and try to, like, give those life.
And so then I take those and I try to figure out the best way to present them.
And oftentimes, like, you think you have it right, but then you go in front of
the crowd and they don't think it's funny.
Or they think the setup is funny, but the punchline sucks.
It's weird.
Or they think, you know, maybe the way they laugh makes you think there's
another layer to this.
And you come up with more stuff on the fly.
So you really create in front of them as well as by yourself.
You need them.
Like, you know, you can't create comedy in a vacuum.
You really need an audience.
What's the feeling like when you're on stage?
Are you scared?
Is it fun?
No, it's fun.
It's fun.
And maybe it would be scary if I hadn't done it a lot.
It was definitely scary when I first started doing it.
But now it's fun.
It's just fun.
Like, they're all paying to see you.
It's fun.
It's a good time.
As long as you've done the work, that's, you know, as long as you're prepared,
it shouldn't be scary.
It should be really a good time.
You're there to make them laugh, you know.
But it's – but I've also been doing it 33 years, you know, 34 years.
It's a long-ass time.
I mean, I know that my accountant always tells me that his comedians are –
they all write off their psychotherapy bills.
In other words, he's saying to me that these are the ones that – that it's
not easy being a comic.
Yeah.
I mean, is that – I don't know, man.
No?
It's not easy.
You seem like you enjoy it and it's fun.
Yeah.
It's different – I mean, what does that mean?
It's not easy being a soldier.
Okay?
It's not easy being an EMT.
It's not easy being a police officer.
It's not easy being a school teacher in an inner-city school.
It's not easy being a heart surgeon.
Comedy is not that fucking hard.
There's this old expression, the hard – I don't know who the fuck said this,
but I've repeated it ad nauseum.
The hardest thing that's ever happened to you is the hardest thing that's ever
happened to you.
Or the worst thing that's ever happened to you is the worst thing that's ever
happened to you.
And that worst thing could be you're a little kid and your toy breaks.
Uh-huh.
Or it could be your family got killed in a war.
You know, it really depends.
And so what level of resilience you have is entirely dependent upon what your
life experiences are and what you've come to expect.
And there's a lot of people that are comedians that really seem to think that
what they're doing is so goddamn difficult.
And, yeah, it's not the easiest thing in the world, but Jesus Christ, what a
great life.
You know, you're telling jokes.
You're making people laugh.
It should be wonderful and celebrated.
But a lot of them are – they do a really poor job of mental management and of,
like, assessing their own, like, psychological issues
and coming up with, like, real methods of mitigation.
So why do people bail out on the nights that they're not –
Resistance.
They're afraid of bombing?
They're afraid of getting up there and –
No, they're just not being pros.
That's really what it is.
It's like – that's one of the reasons why your book resonated so much.
It's because, like, it's just – there's a thing that you described that you
just nailed it and you called it resistance.
But there's this feeling that you just don't want to sit and write.
You don't want to work.
You know, like, when I get in front of my computer, there's, like, an urge of,
like, hey, let's go see what's in YouTube.
Hey, let's go – we're going to roam around on – let's go to dig.com, see
what the wackiest stories are.
Let's go to CNN and, you know, that – that is part of the resistance.
Like, it keeps you from just sitting down and working.
And I don't know what that is because you know in the back of your head that if
you do the work, you'll have more ideas.
If you have more ideas, you'll have more material.
If you have more material, you'll be able to pick the best material and your
show will be better.
And then the audience will have a better time.
Your career will go better and all these things.
And yet that doesn't matter, you know what I mean?
You still feel it, right?
Yeah.
And it's totally universal, I can tell you, from the emails that I get, from
the letters that I get.
And it's – not only is it universal in that everybody experiences it, but
they all seem to experience it with the same script.
You know, you're not worthy, you're too old, too young, too fat, too thin,
whatever.
Or let's do something else.
Let's distract ourselves with something else.
So everybody gets the same thing.
I mean, I always say that it's a force of nature.
You know, it's not personal.
It's not specific to you, even though that voice in your head sounds like it is
specific to you.
It's saying, Joe, and then it's hitting you right in the points that are your
sore points, you know?
Yeah.
But it's really not personal.
Everybody seems to experience the same thing.
And –
What do you think it is?
When did you write The War of Art?
2002.
And in that time after writing that, I'm sure it's obviously been a very
successful book.
So you've had time to think about this.
Like, what do you think is going on?
Like, why are people – why is that a force of nature?
What is it?
I'll give – this is my lengthy explanation, but I'll give you my theory.
If we think of the human – so everybody's got to – bear with me.
This takes a minute or two.
If you think of the human psyche, we got the ego, which is like a little black
dot in the middle of a greater thing that 