Name: Theo Von Asks Dane Cook About Being a Lone Wolf
Uploaded: 2019-03-08T01:59:30.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Theo Von Asks Dane Cook About Being a Lone Wolf' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2019-03-08. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Theo Von Asks Dane Cook About Being a Lone Wolf' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2019-03-08. Transcript available.

do you feel you've always seemed to me like kind of to be like a lone wolf kind
of do you feel that
i think that in i don't feel that in life i feel like if anything i it's an
embarrassment of riches
with how many great um mentors and friends that i have in in and out of comedy
um but when you're
28 years old and you hit the stratosphere nobody can talk to you about that
nobody understands it
and perception takes over because then people start to believe that maybe you're
um not accessible
and uh and who is accessible to you you don't find out two years later bullshitters
people want to make
a little scratch right people that see something to gain scoundrels fucking it's
like most icely's
cantina from star wars like all the scum and villainy wants to seek you out
because they want
they want a piece of the sparkle man yeah everybody wants some of the sparkle
you see somebody with
sparkle it's like oh fuck i want to i want to glimmer with that person but now
what happens like
but do it's always seem like you do you have this thing where it's like i you
have to i have to do
this myself because it always seems like you are this different kind of like
you're like pluto kind
of a little bit not that you're out pushed to the outside yeah but that you
choose to kind of be in
this you know like yeah you don't know if i'm a planet or a ball of ice yeah
kind of thing or just
like a rumor that science made up you know like yeah it's like yeah it's like
yeah you don't really
know it's like is this guy a planet is this guy a ball of ice like you see you
seem like that you seem
to just a regular comedian coming up you know it's like who is this like
everybody else seems a little
bit more accessible a little bit more you feel that i don't feel that with a
lot of comedians
yeah and maybe and that could just be my perception your graduating class in my
my graduating class i
wouldn't feel that way about the comics i came up with in and around but i
think it maybe it's
generational right um when i met people ahead of me i was intimidated to go up
and talk to them and
you know what i did i did the same thing people kind of put on me which is they
don't want to talk
to me why would that person care about me why would i'd see uh david spade or
chris rock when i was
young in new york why would they care about talking to me so what did i do i
projected they're probably
too cool for school yeah until finally you're at the comic table with somebody
or we're john like
this and you're like oh shit no that's it's not that crazy yeah no it's
definitely i
don't feel like the warden of the north like some game of thrones thing where i'm
uh i'm i'm pluto
or something on the far outside i do like that that's part of the
interpretation of what i am
because it's a whole hell of a lot more interesting to be somebody where people
want to put their hand
on their chin and go what's going on then somebody was like yeah yeah yeah we
get it we get it i never
wanted to be that i thought i was that i actually thought i was like yeah yeah
we get it you move around
a lot on stage trying to write some stuff we get it and dismissed but if
anything the polarizing
was like oh good yeah i'm not milk toast i'm not fucking boring right i'm
interesting i'm almost
like a little bit of a good guy bad guy you don't know how i'm rolling yeah
that's what i feel like
with you it seemed like the anti-hero yeah and you know what it was fun it's
been fun but has that
been a goal it seems like because you i feel like you you're definitely seem
like obviously super
aware especially comedians are hyper aware of yes who we are and what's going
on i think anyway a lot
of and super sensitive and super sensitive yeah which is one of the reasons you
have to be hyper
aware because you have to know or those things kind of go together because it's
like you're so aware
that it makes you overly sensitive because you're you're taking in so much that
there's so many ways
that you could feel that we could feel offended yeah easily and so we're so you
know aware and then so
sensitive at the same time yeah i think that we're a lot of comics i think what
we do is we you know we
we ruminate and we are we're seeing 10 different incarnations of what could be
and what does that
do that that that then makes you start preparing for what if a happens what if
b happens we exert a lot
of energy even in our stillness dude it is exhausting yeah being hyper aware
yeah exhausting having to
constantly like protect yourself from like seven different ways of feeling
uncomfortable right you know you ever
hear those stories about jim carrey early on in his career when he would he he
had this and did you
ever work with him uh no i never had the opportunity to work with him but i've
i've worked with people
that have collaborated with him and i i i usually don't just uh on hearsay i
need like a few different
people to validate and i started hearing from a few different folks that like
back in the day
when he would go to a party if he thought people were gonna fuck with him doing
what we're doing
thinking oh so and so is going to be there what if she says this what if he
says that
that he would sit and pre-plan some stuff to you know roast you or haze you
right so you couldn't
hurt him some eight mile shit man he had like it already on tap he'd he'd
practice you know imagine
the energy that that took because what if you see one of those people you know
what i mean like
he's like yeah you're fucking neck you're right he yeah he that's the neck you
wore yeah i could see
him yeah he would go he would go uh deep cuts yeah on that shit and um and i
understand a little bit
of that i i think that um i think that the the you know if you're thinking
about a career in comedy
what you got to realize is um it's it's an amazing community it's a brotherhood
i mean that guys and
girls but it's also really cutthroat and it's also um sometimes it's very
participatory and sometimes
it's very isolating you know and you got to know what you need to be at what
point right um and that's
hard to know and i i had to learn the hard way which was pretty much on my own
but then meeting mentors
along the years that uh were um the knowledge that they passed on to me helped
me to figure out
what a career really is and there's going to be a crest and you're going to dip
and it's going to
come up and then it did it there's so many more elements than just what we do
on stage right you
know when you so when your career like blew up you know because i mean you had
what i i mean i and
i've talked about this even in discussions about you when you weren't around um
that you were like
kind of the steve martin of our time in the way that some are of you know that
somebody no one has that
i mean that's such a rare thing that somebody has you know has that trajectory
yeah it's just a rare
thing it happens to someone you know and it happened to you and not saying that
you're you know obviously
you did the work but what happens like with your ego in that part that's
something we always talk
about because one of my scariest things to me is my own ego right because it's
such a it's me and i
know that i'm crafty and that i'm cunning and so i know that my ego is that as
well right like what
happened like what do you like did you find for yourself what i found was um
maybe a little
different because i had grown up so um as an introvert i had grown up with a
lot of fear i grew up as
a as a self-loathing um you know i was in an environment of um there was
alcoholism in my family
yeah there's a lot of heaviness and i felt like i grew up fast um so the years
that i spent doing
stand-up leading up to what would seemingly be an overnight sensation 15 years
later the ego stuff
really wasn't um uh like a uh a bravado or some kind of cockiness it was really
more of oh i'm i'm
finally starting to feel like i can love myself because i obtained something in
life or where i
didn't really know what i would um get to you know i pipe dreamed a lot of big
stuff steve martin and
dice and seeing these guys um yeah definitely you always have those in your
head especially if you're
in the business and you're seeing other people have those things yeah and so i
think that if i'm if
i'm understanding correctly it's like to me like ego was like i'd be at the
cellar when i was still
new and chris rock would come in he bumped me he'd bump anybody and that was
that was like that was
part of it that was kind of like a rite of passage as a comedian like okay some
big star bigger star is
going to come in and so when i made it i was like oh i can do that too you know
i can walk into the
laugh factory which is primarily where i would just go and feel like i can do
what i want this is i've
arrived so that was something i needed to get through the rotating door about
to realize like
no there's still actually like it's still procedural and you can still have
respect for your peers and
there's a way to do that that's um more appropriate than just a barnstorming a
club and then right go
you know so i i got my knocks i learned some lessons earlier yeah yeah yeah and
only because
certain names and some i've named you know would reach out and be like can't do
that man you know you
don't want to you don't want to do that you want to try to play it like this or
um and so i you know
i learned as i went and now i try to kind of what we're doing here pass on to
whoever the next girl
or guy is coming up to say like you know when people say stay humble that's no
bullshit you know
really try to you know keep yourself as modest and um you know it's nice to be
self-affirming but
you gotta you gotta you gotta you gotta be able to like if if you're gonna get
a huge level of um of
power in in any industry really like how you manage that and how it it reverberates
off you to others
that impacts you years later when that person says hey thanks for being cool to
me yeah you know
thanks for being i remember one time like tosh he got really mad at me uh we
were i never was really
close to him and we were in the laugh factory lobby once and i usually talk out
of school but like
this is one of those stories that and i think i had put my hand out to him and
he was like no man
no i don't need you in my life he said something that was really kind of harsh
and i was like daniel
what i'm just you know congrats on the success and all that he he he was not
interested in having
that conversation because i had not been um i had not been cordial to him
coming up i probably didn't
take the time on many nights at the factory to to hobnob or just yeah just to i
i had not realized
that the level of um influence that i had that um that younger comedians at
that moment um not now but
at that moment like that would hurt them if i were to walk by and not
acknowledge them but i wasn't doing
it to hurt anybody i was just still an introvert in many ways right you know it's
it's man it's a
fucking it's perplexing and a paradox sometimes even you know for me we had a
very deep conversation
um off pod and and you know we're we're we're complex yeah we're complex means
you and i have never
been like close but we just seen each other in clubs talked a few times and um
and yeah and then
i came up to your house and and we hung out that time yeah it was definitely
interesting because i
didn't know yeah it's like i feel like other comedians you kind of get a vibe
from and you
kind of get an understanding of right and you kind of seem like that like that
rare element that's kind
of like well what's going on with this guy like is this guy this guy's out this
guy's kind of seems
like a lone wolf to me yeah i i guess that in terms of how i came up in comedy
that's a a fair
assessment because i wasn't in a pack that was all doing arenas and um and billboard
charts and
top-selling platinum albums i i was alone yeah i was really alone there wasn't
uh another person dice
was 25 years ahead of me having done madison square garden 1990 and i bumped
into him at mulberry
street pizza when i was like it was like 0506 and everything i was by myself
just having a slice
just fucking sitting there you know napkins on my face he sat right in front of
me and i i got to
you know have this conversation with an icon somebody i looked up to and and i
felt like finally i was
talking with somebody who really understood when i was talking about uh the
hardships that went with
in the loneliness you know there there was some loneliness i was like i got
here because i wanted to be
in the community and share but i didn't know i was gonna seemingly skyrocket to
where people felt um
uh like a disappointment i wanted to i thought that was good for the business
of all comedy right you
know because in the 90s comedy albums were dead everybody was telling me comedy
was kind of like
you know after the boom of the 80s everybody told me they're like comedy isn't
like you know it was
oversaturated comedy central wasn't putting on people that were really uh
seasoned and ready and so there
was a period of time where comedy was a little bit bottom of the totem pole and
i i felt like hey i'm
i think i'm helping to shed light on a new generation of comedy fans yeah so
outside perspective very
different about what people felt of me to what i was hoping that i was emulating
out there for others
you know yeah and jealousy probably was huge i mean i i can only imagine that
like because everybody was
a little bit jealous of dane cook i think you know i think that what happened
was a lot of comics would
say to me man i'm so sick of djs and people that are interviewing me for my
show i'm trying to build
saying literally saying why don't you do what dane does yeah why aren't you and
um it was frustrating
well i heard you say on stage one time this is one of the most interesting
things i'd ever heard
someone say on stage you said yeah i've been going to therapy a lot recently
and it's interesting that
i'll sit down i sat down in the therapist's office for the first time and they're
like oh dane cook
i've heard a lot i've heard your name a lot in here from other comedians yeah
and that was like such
an interesting i just remember hearing that man and that was such an
interesting thing yeah it was it
was weird you know i remember that moment and being like because he had worked
with a lot of
comedians he was recommended by right yeah via the comedy community like you
should
talk to him because he you know he gets it he knows the world of comedy his
opening line literally
was your name comes up a lot in here man and it's like the vulnerability in
that moment of being like
them wanting to know what are they saying of course of course that would be so
bizarre because then it's
like there's so much of you going on outside of you right such a view and such
a a conversation of
you outside of you right and and it wasn't till some time that um certain
comics had you know come
to me and said uh one comedian she was she was so uh i i don't want to name
drop her if she wants to
come forward and say it's probably whitney cummings but it was not whitney um
but i love whitney uh but
this uh comedian came to me and just said uh you know i it took me a while i
was one of the people
that bashed you i i misjudged you i and she's like a lot of that was my own um
feeling of not
getting to you know what i was hoping the fear you know it's really like
everything comes back to love
and fear man what drives us oh yeah and what we you know what we want to hold
on to and and what we
want to pass up on good evening good afternoon and other times thanks for
watching that video you
just saw i mean it was okay but the next video you could watch could be way
better what if you watch
a video right now that changes your life well you could watch this one or watch
this one watch this one
watch this one watch this one watch this one ah

Theo Von Asks Dane Cook About Being a Lone Wolf

do you feel you've always seemed to me like kind of to be like a lone wolf kind
of do you feel that
i think that in i don't feel that in life i feel like if anything i it's an
embarrassment of riches
with how many great um mentors and friends that i have in in and out of comedy
um but when you're
28 years old and you hit the stratosphere nobody can talk to you about that
nobody understands it
and perception takes over because then people start to believe that maybe you're
um not accessible
and uh and who is accessible to you you don't find out two years later bullshitters
people want to make
a little scratch right people that see something to gain scoundrels fucking it's
like most icely's
cantina from star wars like all the scum and villainy wants to seek you out
because they want
they want a piece of the sparkle man yeah everybody wants some of the sparkle
you see somebody with
sparkle it's like oh fuck i want to i want to glimmer with that person but now
what happens like
but do it's always seem like you do you have this thing where it's like i you
have to i have to do
this myself because it always seems like you are this different kind of like
you're like pluto kind
of a little bit not that you're out pushed to the outside yeah but that you
choose to kind of be in
this you know like yeah you don't know if i'm a planet or a ball of ice yeah
kind of thing or just
like a rumor that science made up you know like yeah it's like yeah it's like
yeah you don't really
know it's like is this guy a planet is this guy a ball of ice like you see you
seem like that you seem
to just a regular comedian coming up you know it's like who is this like
everybody else seems a little
bit more accessible a little bit more you feel that i don't feel that with a
lot of comedians
yeah and maybe and that could just be my perception your graduating class in my
my graduating class i
wouldn't feel that way about the comics i came up with in and around but i
think it maybe it's
generational right um when i met people ahead of me i was intimidated to go up
and talk to them and
you know what i did i did the same thing people kind of put on me which is they
don't want to talk
to me why would that person care about me why would i'd see uh david spade or
chris rock when i was
young in new york why would they care about talking to me so what did i do i
projected they're probably
too cool for school yeah until finally you're at the comic table with somebody
or we're john like
this and you're like oh shit no that's it's not that crazy yeah no it's
definitely i
don't feel like the warden of the north like some game of thrones thing where i'm
uh i'm i'm pluto
or something on the far outside i do like that that's part of the
interpretation of what i am
because it's a whole hell of a lot more interesting to be somebody where people
want to put their hand
on their chin and go what's going on then somebody was like yeah yeah yeah we
get it we get it i never
wanted to be that i thought i was that i actually thought i was like yeah yeah
we get it you move around
a lot on stage trying to write some stuff we get it and dismissed but if
anything the polarizing
was like oh good yeah i'm not milk toast i'm not fucking boring right i'm
interesting i'm almost
like a little bit of a good guy bad guy you don't know how i'm rolling yeah
that's what i feel like
with you it seemed like the anti-hero yeah and you know what it was fun it's
been fun but has that
been a goal it seems like because you i feel like you you're definitely seem
like obviously super
aware especially comedians are hyper aware of yes who we are and what's going
on i think anyway a lot
of and super sensitive and super sensitive yeah which is one of the reasons you
have to be hyper
aware because you have to know or those things kind of go together because it's
like you're so aware
that it makes you overly sensitive because you're you're taking in so much that
there's so many ways
that you could feel that we could feel offended yeah easily and so we're so you
know aware and then so
sensitive at the same time yeah i think that we're a lot of comics i think what
we do is we you know we
we ruminate and we are we're seeing 10 different incarnations of what could be
and what does that
do that that that then makes you start preparing for what if a happens what if
b happens we exert a lot
of energy even in our stillness dude it is exhausting yeah being hyper aware
yeah exhausting having to
constantly like protect yourself from like seven different ways of feeling
uncomfortable right you know you ever
hear those stories about jim carrey early on in his career when he would he he
had this and did you
ever work with him uh no i never had the opportunity to work with him but i've
i've worked with people
that have collaborated with him and i i i usually don't just uh on hearsay i
need like a few different
people to validate and i started hearing from a few different folks that like
back in the day
when he would go to a party if he thought people were gonna fuck with him doing
what we're doing
thinking oh so and so is going to be there what if she says this what if he
says that
that he would sit and pre-plan some stuff to you know roast you or haze you
right so you couldn't
hurt him some eight mile shit man he had like it already on tap he'd he'd
practice you know imagine
the energy that that took because what if you see one of those people you know
what i mean like
he's like yeah you're fucking neck you're right he yeah he that's the neck you
wore yeah i could see
him yeah he would go he would go uh deep cuts yeah on that shit and um and i
understand a little bit
of that i i think that um i think that the the you know if you're thinking
about a career in comedy
what you got to realize is um it's it's an amazing community it's a brotherhood
i mean that guys and
girls but it's also really cutthroat and it's also um sometimes it's very
participatory and sometimes
it's very isolating you know and you got to know what you need to be at what
point right um and that's
hard to know and i i had to learn the hard way which was pretty much on my own
but then meeting mentors
along the years that uh were um the knowledge that they passed on to me helped
me to figure out
what a career really is and there's going to be a crest and you're going to dip
and it's going to
come up and then it did it there's so many more elements than just what we do
on stage right you
know when you so when your career like blew up you know because i mean you had
what i i mean i and
i've talked about this even in discussions about you when you weren't around um
that you were like
kind of the steve martin of our time in the way that some are of you know that
somebody no one has that
i mean that's such a rare thing that somebody has you know has that trajectory
yeah it's just a rare
thing it happens to someone you know and it happened to you and not saying that
you're you know obviously
you did the work but what happens like with your ego in that part that's
something we always talk
about because one of my scariest things to me is my own ego right because it's
such a it's me and i
know that i'm crafty and that i'm cunning and so i know that my ego is that as
well right like what
happened like what do you like did you find for yourself what i found was um
maybe a little
different because i had grown up so um as an introvert i had grown up with a
lot of fear i grew up as
a as a self-loathing um you know i was in an environment of um there was
alcoholism in my family
yeah there's a lot of heaviness and i felt like i grew up fast um so the years
that i spent doing
stand-up leading up to what would seemingly be an overnight sensation 15 years
later the ego stuff
really wasn't um uh like a uh a bravado or some kind of cockiness it was really
more of oh i'm i'm
finally starting to feel like i can love myself because i obtained something in
life or where i
didn't really know what i would um get to you know i pipe dreamed a lot of big
stuff steve martin and
dice and seeing these guys um yeah definitely you always have those in your
head especially if you're
in the business and you're seeing other people have those things yeah and so i
think that if i'm if
i'm understanding correctly it's like to me like ego was like i'd be at the
cellar when i was still
new and chris rock would come in he bumped me he'd bump anybody and that was
that was like that was
part of it that was kind of like a rite of passage as a comedian like okay some
big star bigger star is
going to come in and so when i made it i was like oh i can do that too you know
i can walk into the
laugh factory which is primarily where i would just go and feel like i can do
what i want this is i've
arrived so that was something i needed to get through the rotating door about
to realize like
no there's still actually like it's still procedural and you can still have
respect for your peers and
there's a way to do that that's um more appropriate than just a barnstorming a
club and then right go
you know so i i got my knocks i learned some lessons earlier yeah yeah yeah and
only because
certain names and some i've named you know would reach out and be like can't do
that man you know you
don't want to you don't want to do that you want to try to play it like this or
um and so i you know
i learned as i went and now i try to kind of what we're doing here pass on to
whoever the next girl
or guy is coming up to say like you know when people say stay humble that's no
bullshit you know
really try to you know keep yourself as modest and um you know it's nice to be
self-affirming but
you gotta you gotta you gotta you gotta be able to like if if you're gonna get
a huge level of um of
power in in any industry really like how you manage that and how it it reverberates
off you to others
that impacts you years later when that person says hey thanks for being cool to
me yeah you know
thanks for being i remember one time like tosh he got really mad at me uh we
were i never was really
close to him and we were in the laugh factory lobby once and i usually talk out
of school but like
this is one of those stories that and i think i had put my hand out to him and
he was like no man
no i don't need you in my life he said something that was really kind of harsh
and i was like daniel
what i'm just you know congrats on the success and all that he he he was not
interested in having
that conversation because i had not been um i had not been cordial to him
coming up i probably didn't
take the time on many nights at the factory to to hobnob or just yeah just to i
i had not realized
that the level of um influence that i had that um that younger comedians at
that moment um not now but
at that moment like that would hurt them if i were to walk by and not
acknowledge them but i wasn't doing
it to hurt anybody i was just still an introvert in many ways right you know it's
it's man it's a
fucking it's perplexing and a paradox sometimes even you know for me we had a
very deep conversation
um off pod and and you know we're we're we're complex yeah we're complex means
you and i have never
been like close but we just seen each other in clubs talked a few times and um
and yeah and then
i came up to your house and and we hung out that time yeah it was definitely
interesting because i
didn't know yeah it's like i feel like other comedians you kind of get a vibe
from and you
kind of get an understanding of right and you kind of seem like that like that
rare element that's kind
of like well what's going on with this guy like is this guy this guy's out this
guy's kind of seems
like a lone wolf to me yeah i i guess that in terms of how i came up in comedy
that's a a fair
assessment because i wasn't in a pack that was all doing arenas and um and billboard
charts and
top-selling platinum albums i i was alone yeah i was really alone there wasn't
uh another person dice
was 25 years ahead of me having done madison squ