Name: Joe Rogan Experience #1129 - Tom Papa
Uploaded: 2018-06-11T22:21:33.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1129 - Tom Papa' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2018-06-11. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1129 - Tom Papa' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2018-06-11. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #1129 - Tom Papa

Young James, you're ready to watch.
Five, four, three, two, one.
We can do it.
Tom Papa is a motherfucking author.
I'm a man of letters now.
You're an author.
I'm an author.
I've always admired that and secretly wished that I,
not even so secretly, wished that I had the discipline to write a book.
You do have the discipline, you just have to focus it on that.
You can do it.
How long did it take you to write this?
About two years.
That's too long.
I don't got that kind of time.
You can do it shorter.
Oh, okay.
Like a little pamphlet?
Yeah, just throw a flyer.
Just make a flyer.
This is all I can do.
How long before you started writing the book did you think about writing the
book?
I've always kind of wanted to write a book.
Did you have a book deal?
No.
Well, yeah, on this one.
I had pitched doing a book, I don't know, like six years ago, pretty much the
same concept
and no one was into it.
And then a couple of years ago, two, three years ago, a publisher contacted my
agent or
whatever and they had interest.
So we made a book deal and that changes everything because now someone's
waiting for you.
Yeah.
You know, you've got to turn stuff in and they make books and they're probably
smart and you
don't want to seem like an idiot.
Did you have an editor that like went over your stuff and said, this is too
long, this is too
short?
Yeah, they were pretty great.
They were pretty, they just left the material alone.
Oh.
There was a couple little things where they're like, you know, you're repeating
something
or that, but mostly it was grammar kind of things.
Do you want to say it like this?
Right.
This isn't technically grammatically correct, but would you, you know, typos,
that kind
of stuff.
They were pretty hands off about the actual material.
And is it a book of essays?
Is it your life story?
What is it?
It's all on family.
It's called Your Dad Stole My Rake and Other Family Dilemmas.
And it's broken down by everyone in your family.
Like the basic thing is as a comedian, I've been writing about family and
looking at everyone's
families for so long, so I'm going to write about all of them.
So it's moms, dads, cousins, aunts, uncles, all broken down in chapters like
that.
And so I talk a little bit about my family and then I just talk about funny
essays about
just life in general, like going on family vacations or...
Why are you eating your shirt?
What's going on there?
I don't know exactly.
There's a really cool photographer, Sam Jones, who's...
And you just decided to get wacky?
He just, this guy is like this amazing photographer, just done like Clooney.
And Damon and all these people.
And I asked him if he would help.
And when I showed up, we were just taking some regular shots.
And he's like, I have this idea.
And he just brought out this giant shirt and put a tie on it and just shot it.
It came out pretty funny.
It looked like Dilbert.
Yeah.
Or Beaker.
I was just trying to figure out what you're doing there.
I guess what you're doing there is get people to try to figure out what you're
doing there.
Yeah.
They stare at it and they're like, maybe if I buy the book, I'll figure it out.
I'll understand.
The puzzle is deep inside.
It's just being goofy.
Yeah.
When you write a book, you have to think, man, someone could be reading this 30
years from now.
50 years from now.
That is, as comedians, you write something in the morning and you bring it on
stage.
They tell you if it's funny or not.
You know what you're working with.
You go back and forth.
This is like it's permanent and no one gets to review it until it's done.
So the nerve-wracking part of it was like, okay, it's done.
I'm pretty proud of it.
I've edited it like crazy.
I've worked on it for a long time.
Will people think it's okay?
Will they not think it's hack?
Will they think it's good?
Is the writing okay?
All that other stuff.
And it's been out now for a week.
And I can tell the reviews are good.
People are reviewing it and writing about it and calling and people just
randomly.
And I'm over the hurdle.
The anxiety of is this a good book is over.
People like it.
It's funny and people are saying I can write.
So that is huge.
It's just calmed me down completely.
Because, you know, like you said for 30 years, what if everybody takes a dump
on it?
Well, there's some that are really fucking bad.
Yeah.
I mean, some comics, someone should have just walked in while they're writing
and grabbed
them.
And just said, stop.
And said, hey, you're doing something terrible for your future.
This is going to be around for a long time.
People are going to refer to this forever.
You catch people in these like really self-righteous, defensive modes and they're
writing things down.
And maybe like five years from now, they'll be like, what the fuck was I
thinking?
Yeah.
They're in the middle of writing it.
And I've read some shit.
Oh my God.
Really?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just horrible stuff.
Yeah.
I, no, I'm, I'm, I'm relieved.
I'm not excited.
I'm just relieved.
Like, oh, okay.
It's good.
It was good.
I thought it was good.
I hoped it was good.
My editor said it's good.
People are saying that they're laughing when they're reading it.
Like editors who don't normally say that kind of stuff.
So how do you balance out writing, book writing with writing standup?
Like how do you, how do you divide your time?
It was, it was tough.
Standup, whenever I'm working on something else, standup kind of, I work on it
at night, you know?
And the book was, I got into this rhythm of going in every morning, get up at
seven, go in with my coffee and sit there.
And that was book time until noon.
I would try and just, just work on that and make it, uh, but that wasn't for
two years.
That was like the last, you know, year to eight months kind of thing.
Before that, it's a little looser.
I'm trying to get it done and stuff, but that real discipline of like coming in
every morning, sitting down and seven days a week, just writing, just writing,
just writing.
Seven days a week.
Wherever I was, whatever I was doing, I had to make sure that I had that time.
If I'm on a plane, if I'm in a hotel, if I'm on the road, I was just writing
the thing all the time.
It just became, because you, you know, the biggest challenge for me, and I
think a lot of writers, is that you judge yourself as you go.
You're like, is this good?
But you have to just get it down and know that it's bad.
Just, just get it down.
I want to write this chapter on crazy ants.
So I'm just going to write it and spit it out.
And then I'm going to go to work on it.
Like a bit.
You know, like, like stand-up.
And just go back and just start editing and peeling back and peeling back and
getting rid of words.
And what program were you using when you're doing this?
I did it all on Word.
Microsoft Word.
Have you ever seen Scrivener?
Do you know what Scrivener is?
No.
Scrivener is really interesting.
I did my last special on Scrivener.
Oh, yeah?
It was the first time I've used it for, for writing stand-up.
And what's good about it is on the left-hand side, you have, like, all of your
different subjects.
Yeah.
And you click on each subject.
And, like, there'll be a whole column.
So, like, I had the title, Strange Times.
Uh-huh.
And then the left-hand side.
This is what it looks like when you're looking at the chalkboard, the corkboard.
Oh, yeah.
So, the corkboard is one aspect of it where you have these little cards, like
index cards,
and you set these index cards up, and you, you know, you write all the
different things
on the index cards, but...
You can organize it.
Outside of the index cards, there's also, um, on, like, each index, the index,
the corkboard,
it corresponds to each individual subject.
Like, say, if I'm doing a bid on desks, right?
Uh-huh.
So, I have desks on the left-hand side, and then I'll write out all the stuff
on desks,
but there's also a corkboard tab.
Right.
And then, so, I'll have all the different things to make sure that I covered
all the notes.
Oh, that's good.
Dude, I like it a lot.
Yeah, I'm gonna try that.
What I like a lot, this is not really showing why I like it.
Uh-huh.
Why I like it is because you can have, you can move all those little chapters
around and move
all the bits around, like, for stand-up.
Oh, that's great.
Yeah.
That's really good.
Yeah.
Like, the organizing, it gets so in your head, it just starts bogging you down.
Yeah.
But the good thing about this was that it was essays.
So, each one's, like, four or five pages, right?
Uh-huh.
So, I would just be, like, literally just open up the file and go,
Dads, all right, I'm gonna go to work on this one.
Dad, no gifts for Dad.
And then just, boom, just edit that, put it away.
Uh-huh.
Go on the next, you know, I could just bounce it.
I didn't, what I'm trying to say is I didn't have to keep track, like, a novel.
Right.
I didn't have 300 pages of flow.
Mm-hmm.
You know, they were all just hits.
So, it was kind of similar to stand-up that way.
Mm-hmm.
You know, like, I could just go to work on them.
But it's fascinating.
I really loved it.
Like, I have friends that have written books.
Like, Colin Quinn came and did a book event with me a couple weeks ago.
And he's like, and he wrote a book.
He's like, I'll never do it again.
I just hated it.
I couldn't stand it.
I hate it.
And he's a prolific guy.
He writes a lot for his, I mean, those are one-man shows.
He's always writing.
Well, he did a one-man show on U.S. history.
Yeah.
The guy writes a lot.
But the writing for the book drove him crazy.
I really loved it.
I couldn't believe that you could look at a five-page essay and find something
wrong with it every time you looked at it.
Mm-hmm.
Every time.
Why am I saying this?
They know this.
Why do I have to say he sat down at the table and ate his breakfast?
He ate his breakfast.
You know, like, you could just peel stuff away all the time and get it as
direct as possible.
And I started to really just love that.
Jordan Peterson told me he wrote his first book.
And it took him 15 years because he went over every single line, every single
thing, like a critic, trying to find fault in everything that he did.
Wow.
Until he felt like he got it down.
And it was on the Cold War.
Jeez.
So he really wanted to make sure that he had the subject matter completely
locked down.
Yeah, that's daunting.
Like, if you're dealing with something that people can fact check, people can't
fact check what happened to me in putting my sister in a garbage can in fourth
grade.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
It was family.
It's all about family.
It's all about, like, the joy of being with other people and the aggravations
and all that kind of stuff.
So it was just – and I write – you know, I have a lot of that in my act.
So it was definitely in my wheelhouse.
Like, I'm not writing books about the Cold War.
You're going to write another one?
I am going to write another one.
Have you started yet?
No, I haven't.
Which is – I have a couple ideas.
And the publisher wants me to write another one.
Already they want you to write another one?
Yeah, I think –
That's a good sign.
Yeah, it's a good sign.
We're the number one new release in family humor.
Ooh.
So it's like –
Do you have any potty words in there?
Mm, very little.
Yeah.
Very little.
How many?
Like 10?
That would be a lot.
Got any C words in there?
Which one?
The cunt word.
Oh, my lord.
Yes.
Is that in there?
There's a whole chapter on it.
On cunts.
This is the problem with family.
Cunts.
That's the whole chapter.
Male and female.
Just period.
Yeah.
No, it's actually pretty clean.
I don't know if there's – I don't know if there's anything in there.
I think there might be one or two words.
One or two questionable?
Yeah.
There might be a shit or a – yeah, I don't think so, though.
It's pretty clean.
Yeah.
Good for you.
Anything in there on bread?
Yes.
There is?
Yes.
The final chapter is Just Eat the Bread.
Really?
Yeah.
It's called Just Eat the Bread.
And it's all a chapter of basically using bread as a metaphor for just e