Name: Joe Rogan Experience #1334 - Fahim Anwar
Uploaded: 2019-08-14T10:14:25.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1334 - Fahim Anwar' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2019-08-14. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1334 - Fahim Anwar' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2019-08-14. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #1334 - Fahim Anwar

What's up, man?
What's up, man?
How are you?
Good to see you.
Outside the store.
I know.
Isn't it weird when you run into a comedian that you don't normally hang out
with outside
the store?
I mean, I would recognize you, but sometimes you'll meet someone that you met
at a meeting
and then it's like at a Ralph's and you can't place the context.
That's bad.
Especially if it's like an executive and they really like you to remember them.
Are you good at faking it?
Nope.
Terrible.
What's your tell?
I just say I don't know.
I'm sorry.
Do you do this thing where you go, it's good seeing you instead of nice meeting
you?
Nope, I've done nice meeting you and they've go, we've met five times.
I go, shit.
I don't think people understand the volume of people that comedians, especially
at your
level, like come across every day.
Yeah.
Like how many shows we do, people come up to you afterwards and being like, oh,
great set,
blah, blah, blah.
And how many meetings in general?
Are you aware of Dunbar's number?
Oh, is that like how many number of people you can, it's like a hundred or
something you
can keep in your head?
I think it's some, I don't think it's an exact science, but I think they think
it's somewhere
around 150.
I believe it.
You got about 150 people in your head.
And after that, you fucked.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's tough.
It makes sense, right?
There's no way you can keep them all in there.
No.
That doesn't make any sense.
Yeah.
It's cool outside the store, you know, having a chat.
Yes.
Yeah.
It's like you feel the most camaraderie with other comedians outside the store
when you
run into them at an airport.
I was just thinking about that.
Every time I go to LAX, I'll bump into like someone, Joe Coy or last time it
was Burt Kreischer
and like Jesus Trejo, we're going to do, I think Utah.
It's just like a hub for all of us.
Yes.
So you'll see so many because we're all just transients.
We're here for the middle of the week.
And then when the weekends come for the clubs, we're all going somewhere.
Yeah.
Like people that want to come to the store, Tuesday is like probably the best
night.
And people don't understand why, like it's so stacked.
Like, why is it you?
Why is it Burt?
Why is it Kreischer?
Why is it Joey Diaz?
Yeah.
Like, well, we're just biding time until the weekend.
Right.
And practicing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's the, one of the weird art forms that you can't practice, you can't
practice alone.
You have to use an audience.
Yeah.
Don't you think?
Oh, for sure.
And even like, I'll be telling the same joke and I won't really change the
words, but
it'll be like an inflection.
It's almost like, I don't know, when a jazz musician or something like plays a
note just a little
differently, you know, you ever notice that like a joke won't work?
Maybe because I'm, I'm like making a meal out of this word, but if I kind of
just like
throw it away.
Yep.
Oh, now that fixes it.
It's interesting to do it long enough where you realize it's like, it's not the
words.
Sometimes you, there's like a performance nuance to it to fix the joke.
Yeah.
Like it's on paper.
It's the same joke.
You know, what's really weird is that none of this shit is written anywhere.
Like what we're talking about.
You know what the worst is?
Like I did, um, like JFL, they're doing a taping out there for TV and they're
like,
send us your transcript.
Ugh.
So that means you have to sit at a computer and like, it takes, it takes the
magic, like
whatever your seven minutes you want to do for the taping, they want you to sit
on like
on a Mac and open up word and be like, how you guys doing or whatever.
Just like type it all out.
You need a better manager.
No, but the thing like, I refute, I didn't do it for you.
I just dodged it.
I asked Aaliyah cause I used to do it in the past and I was like, yo, they're
asking me
to write this out.
It's taking all the fun and organic.
Like I feel it would really hurt my performance.
Yeah.
If I literally wrote a transcript and I'm like a robot up there and he was like,
just don't
do it.
And I go, what happens?
He's like, nothing, nothing happens.
He's like, I've done it a million times that just keep, just be dodgy.
It's some pencil pusher that doesn't make any sense.
I think they get, you know, well, they have power over people that don't have a
name yet.
I think they have people above them breathing down their neck and then, you
know, shit rolls
downhill.
So then they keep on asking like, where is it?
Where is it?
Just change your number.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, that's why I had like the reps kind of be a buffer and I was very aloof
and like
he's very busy.
Did they contact you at all?
Was it direct to you?
The thing is I would, I would see them throughout the fest and they're lovely
people.
I love these people.
But they'd be like, where's the translation?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I'd be like, ah, I'm, no, I just, no, I play the game a little better.
I go, I'm not there yet.
I'm not, I'm not in your mother's pussy level yet.
I still gotta be like, I'm gonna go back to the hotel room.
It's a funny thing to say.
It's a funny thing to say.
In your mother's pussy.
Yeah.
Where's the transcript?
You didn't check your mother's pussy?
I swore that I, I faxed, your mother's pussy has a fax machine.
I faxed it to her.
It should be in there.
Yeah.
You should go check.
Check around the corner.
Yeah.
So it's the worst having to type it out.
It's also like, Just for Laughs is a weird situation.
It's evolved, right?
It used, well, yes.
It's a weird way of looking at it.
It used to be very valuable for comedians.
Yeah.
Now it's very valuable for Just for Laughs.
Because they have this enormous platform and you go there and everybody knows
that all these
great comedians are gonna be there and they make an enormous amount of money
off the comedians.
It used to be the comedians would go there because the industry would go there
and the
whole key to the whole thing was development deals for sitcoms and they tossed
out so much
money.
I always hear about the gold rush and the heyday of JFL and how deals are
getting thrown out
left and right and like lives were made.
Oh, lives were made.
I don't know that JFL.
But fake lives were made too.
Like they ruined it.
Like because I have a theory about people who aren't comedians.
Like they see people laughing at stuff and they see something's fun.
They think it's funny.
But a comedian can go, this is just tricks.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, because the amount, the volume of comedy that we watch on a regular basis
is so much.
So we can discern, like Ian Edwards and I will talk about this.
We watch, we're students of comedy.
We watch a lot of comedy.
People can get like a huge pop out of the room, but like Ian can cut through
the bullshit
and know that like, oh, that's a parlor trick or yeah.
So it's a different type of thing.
But I think a lot of times, you know, suits and everything, they just hear decibels
or
right place, right time.
And they believe this lightning rod moment or whatever, this great set is
indicative of
their entire comedic being instead of like a lucky role.
Yeah.
Do you ever hear, what is that guy's name?
Was his name Chicken?
Is that what his name was?
I always hear that as an example.
Like I heard you blew the roof.
He was the guy that ended it all.
Like literally.
Because I think they gave him a half a million dollars or something crazy like
that.
I kind of want to see this chicken set.
Like what was the set that just blew everyone's mind?
He was a handsome fella and he was young and he was very energetic and they
thought he was
going to be the next Jim Carrey.
Did you see him around?
Was he an LA guy?
No, I don't know where he was from, but I saw him at Just for Laughs.
I saw him quite a few times and he was a nice guy.
But he was terrible.
I mean, in a way that like it was just a bunch of blah, but there was no
substance to it.
There was no thought to it.
So they tried to put it together.
They tried to make like a development deal and he did a little touring, but it
all went
south and it fell apart.
He eventually committed suicide.
Do you know how many years he was doing that?
He hung himself in front of a school.
A school?
Yeah.
Like that's what I had heard.
Like he hung himself on a tree in front of a school.
Jeez.
This is his last piece of performance art.
I don't know if that's true.
See, the thing is like, I shouldn't even say it on a podcast and millions of
people can
listen to him, but I did.
But the hanging part is right, right?
Yes, he definitely committed suicide.
It's one of those things, man, where like if it didn't work out and he didn't
develop,
it didn't, he didn't, he never became like a legit comedian.
But thing all right over there, Jamie?
Yeah, I think if, like if that had happened and he actually had, I don't know,
the equity
of a standup comedian and been doing it for long enough, that would be like a
bump in
the road, but you can come back from that.
Oh yeah.
If that's just sort of like your lotto ticket, then that's why it was so
drastic, I think.
Well, some people are just not, they're great comics, but they're not really
into acting.
They're not the best at acting and they got kind of forced into acting.
Yeah.
I love Mitch Hedberg's joke where he's like, he's a great standup, you know,
and it's like,
you know, they'll come up to me and they'll be like, can you act?
He's like, that's like going up to a chef and being like, can you farm?
Yeah, that's true.
I mean, I'm butchering it, but yeah, they're such different things.
But it's, you have an agent, right?
And the agent wants to make money.
So it's an avenue for cash.
Yeah.
And, you know, you look at Seinfeld and Tim Allen and Roseanne and Brett Butler,
and
there was all these comedians in the nineties that made a ass load of money
doing sitcoms.
Well, that's the quicker payoff too.
I even noticed it with my own career, like when I was a younger comedian.
Like out here in my early twenties, when I moved from Seattle, like when I
first got
reps and stuff, I was going out on these auditions for like CW shows or just
whatever.
They just throw you against the wall.
You're an actor.
Comedy is this thing you do at night.
Right.
They don't even really give a shit that you do standup.
They probably don't even think you're funny.
You know?
Yeah.
It's just a cute thing you do.
It's like a kid, like a dance recital or something.
Like they don't care as long as you're going to these auditions in the daytime.
So they just hope that you hit on what, like a series regular.
Yeah.
And then that's some cashflow for the biz.
Oh yeah.
But luckily, I mean, I don't know.
I think your successes are carved by your failures.
So I'm kind of fortunate that I would get some acting things here and there,
but never anything
substantial enough to take me away from standup.
Well, never anything substantial.
The worst is when they tell you to stop doing standup because it's messing with
your acting
role.
Like that's what they did to Tim Allen.
Oh really?
Yeah.
Because his acting, he was, you know, he was on home improvement.
It was a gigantic hit.
They were making gazillions of dollars, but he was a, I don't want to say he
was a blue
comedian, but he, some of it was a little risque.
So how did Saget deal with it?
He stopped doing standup.
Oh, okay.
So he stopped.
Dude, Saget stopped doing standup forever, forever.
He really didn't start doing it again until after that show was done.
What the fuck was that show again?
Full House.
Full House.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He stopped doing it for a long time and then kind of drifted his way back in
and now he
does it regularly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think that's, you know, maybe they did that at the time, but it's almost
detrimental
to let go.
Cause standup is your car.
Like it's your business.
You're in control over it.
And the TV stuff, it's like one hand washes the other.
If you let that go, you're letting go of this revenue stream so that when the
acting gig
is over, you're kind of fucked.
Cause this w