Name: Joe Rogan Experience #1702 - Laurie Woolever
Uploaded: 2021-08-26T00:00:00.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1702 - Laurie Woolever' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-08-26. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1702 - Laurie Woolever' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-08-26. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #1702 - Laurie Woolever

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
Oh, hi, Lori.
Hi.
What's happening?
How much?
Pleasure to meet you.
Thank you, same to you.
I tried watching the Bourdain documentary, but I just, I got too sad.
I couldn't do it.
And did it feel weird?
Did you watch it, Roadrunner?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Did it feel weird when you knew that the voice was AI, sort of a recreation of
his words?
It didn't feel weird to me because, honestly, it was less than 45 seconds in a
two-hour film.
Oh, okay.
So, no, it didn't feel weird.
I knew exactly where one of the places was, that it was the AI, but the vast
majority of
that film is Tony's actual voice, and I think that really got lost in the
discussion around
the film.
Oh, it certainly did.
Yeah, I was under the impression that the whole thing was, that's how people
are.
They're so gross.
They always want to find the one thing that's negative about things.
Yeah, yeah.
It really bummed me out because that was the dominant conversation on opening
weekend,
and it really kind of took away, for me, from, you know, it's a beautiful film.
I was a consulting producer, so obviously I have a dog in the fight, and I want
people to
love the film.
But I think it's great.
It is really sad.
How far into it did you get?
I just started it, and I shut it off.
Yeah, yeah.
I just got too sad.
Maybe it was my mood that day.
I just wasn't ready to watch something like that.
I was just like, I can't do this.
Yeah, I understand.
You know, I've been steeped in all things Tony for, you know, over a decade,
but since
he died, I've been making these books and working on the film and talking about
him,
and so I've kind of got, I think, a layer of numbness in a way.
But sometimes stuff gets through.
The first time I saw the film, I cried like a baby.
When I was home by myself, I was really glad to be alone, you know?
There's always this feeling when someone takes their own life, like, if I could
have just
talked to them.
Like, if I was there, if I could have talked to them.
That's, you know, I talked to David Cho, and he had that same, he had that same
take on
it, you know, just, you just don't know.
You know, you feel like you fucked something up.
Like, you feel like, it's just, there's no, there's no, there's no peace, you
know?
If you're always, if I think about him, I, I, I just always think, like, what a
shame.
What a shame.
You know?
Like, a guy who was so interesting and so loved, you know, to, I found out
about it from
Maynard Keenan, from Tool.
Do you know the story?
I listened to you talk to Tom Papa right after Tony died.
So, yeah, he made kind of a joke, right?
Yeah, Maynard's a funny guy, and he was joking around, he said that, you know,
he knew that
Tony was really into jiu-jitsu, and Maynard really into jiu-jitsu too, and he's
like, we
should have a celebrity match.
He said, that would be awesome.
And he was talking about it, and then he texted me and said, I guess the
celebrity match is
off.
And I was like, what does that mean?
Like, I guess he had just assumed that I would have already known about it, but
I was in
Chicago, and I had just woken up.
So then I Googled it, and I was just like, oh.
Yeah, that's not a great way.
I mean, there's no good way to find out that news, but that sounds like a
particularly painful
way to hear it.
It was confusing, you know?
It's painful, but it's almost like it's painful later.
In the beginning, it's just like...
Shock.
You're baffled.
You're like, how?
What?
Not there anymore.
Like, this person's not there anymore.
Like, if I text him, it's not there.
Yeah.
I have a phone that I won't get rid of, because it has text messages from him.
And it's like, I can always go back and look at them.
Yeah.
Yeah, same.
I'll never get rid of my last texts with him.
I mean, it's...
And what you were saying about, you know, you just wish you could have done
something.
I mean, believe me, that is a conversation I have had with so many people, and
I think
to myself, like, if I had just been a little more, I don't know, something.
If I had said something, or if I had been more supportive, or, you know, I just,
I knew
he was in trouble that week, but I didn't, it never occurred to me that he
would take that
action that he did.
And the fact is, he had a lot of people around who were very close to him, who
loved him.
And he had other people that were offering to come and be with him, because
they knew
he was having a hard time that week.
And he said, no, don't come.
So, it's...
Why was that week so particularly hard?
He was, there was some stuff in the media with him and his girlfriend that was,
you know,
not great.
You know, he was very, very in love.
And I think there was some, I mean, I'm not saying anything that isn't public
record.
And I'm always hesitant to talk too much about all of that.
But it's, you know, it's out there.
It was in the Italian press and maybe the French press that his girlfriend had
been maybe or
maybe not with another guy.
There were a lot of pictures that made it look not great.
And I think that was really hard for him.
And, you know, you'll see they talk about it.
He, it gets talked about in the film.
It gets talked about in my book.
You know, I think he was, he was deeply in love.
And I think he was realizing that this relationship maybe wasn't what he
thought it was or that
it just, I think he felt humiliated, honestly, you know.
And I mean, that's a hard, that's a hard thing for a private person to metabolize.
And then, you know, you're extremely public person who has been extremely
public about
this relationship.
I think it was a lot for him to handle in that week.
Yeah.
There's not much you can do when that happens in terms of like talking to a
friend, like
words just don't work.
Yeah.
You know, like they don't, you don't, you're not going to absorb them.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
It's, you know, it's, I don't know that someone, I don't know that a normal
thing, I don't
know that a normal reaction to romantic trouble is to take your own life.
I, you know, clearly there's, you know, there are plenty of people who have
trouble in their
relationships who stay alive.
You know, he was a really complicated guy.
He was a really, I think as, as public as he was and as much as he shared about
the way
that his mind and his heart worked, I think there was a lot that he didn't
share.
And I think he was more troubled and more lonely and sad than I think any of us
knew at
the time.
You know, in the intervening three years, I've learned a lot more about him and
I thought
I knew him inside and out.
I was his assistant for 10 years, you know, we wrote a book together.
I had done some traveling with him, not extensively, but I did a handful of
trips over the years.
You know, we were in contact every day.
And, you know, when I started to talk to people after he died, there was just a
lot, a lot more
to him, a lot more to his story.
Yeah.
Whenever anybody recovers from a serious drug problem, but yet still parties, I
was always
like, hmm, how's he pulling that off?
Like the first time I hung out with him, I knew that he had gotten over the
heroin thing,
but I didn't quite realize how hard he drank.
I was like, whoa.
Yeah, yeah.
Was that in Montana when you guys were there?
No, that was later.
That was after I'd known him for quite a while.
I mean, I think the first time I hung out with him was in Vegas, pretty sure.
It was when he was married to Octavia and they were there for the UFC and I met
him backstage.
It was like, wow.
It was interesting.
It was one of the few people that I've met that I was like a little starstruck.
I said something really clunky because like one is to do when they meet someone
they really
admire.
My wife always used to say that he's my boyfriend because I would watch No Reservations
all the
time.
She was like, oh, you're watching your boyfriend.
And so I said, oh, my wife says you're my boyfriend.
And he was like, who the fuck?
He was so good at giving you that look.
Like I've said a couple of real stupid things to him, too.
And I'll just never forget.
We were standing in the telephone store, you know, trying to upgrade my phone.
And I was, you know, kind of new to the job and nervous.
And I was like, oh, what are we going to talk about for 10 minutes?
You know, so I just said, how do you decide like who to respond to on Twitter?
And he just gave me this look like, are you the fucking stupidest person I've
ever met
in my life?
You know, and I know he respected me and I know he liked me, but I was just
like, oh,
God, sorry.
It's actually not a bad question.
Yeah, I just, I don't know.
He just was like, I don't know.
He just, the look on his face was just like, oh, man, I should have just kept
my mouth shut.
And actually, David Simon told me a similar story that, you know, David Simon,
the creator
of The Wire and Treme and, you know, really smart, articulate, funny guy.
And he told me that he said something to Tony that just, he just got that look
that like,
you're a fucking idiot look, you know, and it didn't ruin their friendship, but
he, it
made an impact.
Yeah.
I got really excited when Tony got into jujitsu because I'm like, well, now we
have something
really in common that I'm really good at.
So now we can talk, you know, it's like.
I'm sure you were probably an influence.
I mean, Tavia obviously was the biggest influence, but I'm sure, you know,
knowing that you did
it too was another, you know, another strong reason to, to get involved with it.
Well, that's very nice.
I'm happy that that's the case, if that's the case.
It was really interesting to watch him.
It's very rare that a person is deep in their fifties and has lived, you know,
fairly sedentary
lifestyle, certainly not athletic, certainly not like jujitsu is a difficult
endeavor.
It's not like taking up squash, which I'm like, maybe squash is hard too.
I don't know.
I've never played squash, but it's not like it's, it's, it's very intimate
where someone
is literally practicing killing you and you're trying to resist that.
And so to watch him get really into it and then to watch him watch his
personality sort
of like shift into that, there's a sort of a jujitsu mindset that you get when
you start
doing it all the time, you start training, you start building confidence and
you start
like getting really into it.
Like he was fucking into it.
Like when we did that trip in Montana, he was asking me questions and we said,
started doing, I was demonstrating shit on him in the dirt.
Like we were in the dirt.
And I'm like, when you're in this position and we're like going over stuff like
on the
ground in Montana, I'm like, that's how into it he was.
Like he was really, he wanted to ask questions.
He wanted to go over moves.
I was like, wow.
You're like, you're really all in.
Yeah, it was, I think, you know, Mo Fallon, I think said this to you and he
said it in
the, in the film and in the book as well.
But, you know, if you weren't like, I was not into jujitsu, it did not matter.
Like Tony would just talk to you about it anyway.
You know, you just have to be like, oh, uh-huh.
You know, like either feign interest or, you know, like feign an emergency and
get out of
there.
Because it's just at a certain point, you know, then he's trying to get you
recruiting
everyone.
He was successful.
He got a lot of his crew into it.
And he's like, do you think you would ever do it?
And after he's telling me about like, you know, your nose is basically in
somebody's
asshole and you've got like blood under your nails, you know, and it's
disgusting.
And I'm like, hmm, sounds great.
I'm going to, I'm going to stick to yoga and weight training.
Thank you.
But I did make my kid do it.
Oh, yeah.
And it was totally because of Tony.
I was like, well, I'm not going to do it, but I will, you know, get the eight-year-old
involved.
Oh, that's a good age.
That's a good age to start.
They're all limber and fl