Name: Thursday Afternoon Monday Morning Podcast 10-13-22
Uploaded: 2022-10-14T05:34:31.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Thursday Afternoon Monday Morning Podcast 10-13-22' from Bill Burr on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-10-14. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Thursday Afternoon Monday Morning Podcast 10-13-22' from Bill Burr on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-10-14. Transcript available.

Thursday Afternoon Monday Morning Podcast 10-13-22

Hey, what's going on, everybody? It's Bill Burr. It's time for the Thursday
afternoon, just before Friday, Monday morning podcast.
Just checking in on you. Just checking to see how your week's going.
You know, who's kidding who? Doing an extra half hour, making some ad read
money.
And usually I just sit here running my yap, talking to myself.
But lately I've had a whole bunch of guests, and this guy here is at the tip of
the top here.
The Johnny Walker Blue of sketch comedy actors, the one and only Bruce McCullough,
who has the return of his off-Broadway show, Tales of Bravery and Stupidity, at
the Soho Playhouse in New York City, October 14th through the 29th.
Welcome, Bruce McCullough.
Bill Burr, one of my friends, and I can say comedy heroes. It's so nice to be
with you.
I know. I haven't seen you in forever.
First of all, how great was that intro? I mean, I sound like a frigging
professional there.
You are a professional. You are reading for folks who are listening to this,
and I don't know there's not many.
He is reading from a teleprompter. It's kind of sad.
And you know what happens with old guys? He's got a little white stuff in the
corner of his mouth, which I think...
Oh, I know. It's a whisker. It's a whisker.
Okay.
Did somebody tell you this was going to be a video podcast so you could hide
behind that windscreen the entire time?
Yeah. No, that's for your sound. Is this a video? So I'll take this off.
That sounds... Oh, there's the moneymaker.
Check. Check.
I just didn't want you to know I'm wearing a wig. As we know, I have a William
Shatner wig.
No, you don't. You have nice purple hair on this podcast.
Thank you. On this podcast. Thank you.
Dude, I miss you, man. We did it years and years ago. We worked on something,
and I feel like I've seen you twice since then.
Yeah.
I'm so thrilled. You know, the new Kids in the Hall movie, and now you've got
your Broadway play. If I was back there, I would definitely go to the show.
You would have an excuse to not have to go to the show. I get it. But you
should tell people what we did because I remember when I saw it. Actually, the
last time I saw you was at Festival Supreme.
And then you started phoning me and going, dude, I'm... I don't think you used
the word triggered because you're too cool for that. But you went, I'm
triggered again thinking about it. Because Bill and I, I helped write and
direct. I didn't direct. I helped write and produce a show, a pilot for Comedy
Central, I guess 10 years ago now, if not more.
Longer than that. It's like 12 years ago.
Yeah. With him and Kevin Hart. And it was about their true friendship. And my
God, it was good.
And it's like, if that one's not going to go... And I think it was a money
thing that, you know, probably not Bill's people, but probably...
I don't know. Oh, is that what it was?
I think that's what it was.
Yeah.
Because he was just blown up there. Remember when he used to bring a knapsack
filled with money that he'd get on the road? Which I'm sure you've got a knapsack
now with your own.
I actually don't remember that. I just remember that he would...
The reason why the show was going to work, I felt, was because we were complete
opposites.
Where I would just show up in my Prius and he would show up in like a Hummer
with like, you know, 10 of his friends hanging around the set and everything.
We were complete opposites. We were basically playing what are exaggerated
versions of ourselves.
Right.
And then we gradually, we started off happy and it was going to get darker with
our drinking issues and all of that type of stuff.
But we never got that far. And you, you were directing it.
I didn't direct it. I produced it.
Oh, see, I didn't, I thought you were directing that. I just remember you came
out one time and gave direction and made me laugh my ass off. You did it like,
you just weren't, you were, you were, you were imitating a director being an
asshole.
And me and Kevin just started laughing. And I just said to him, I go, dude, if
this gets picked up, how much fun is this going to be?
Aw, yeah.
And what happened? It went right near the shitter.
The shitter. Yeah. But a funny story from that show, it's not about you. So you
won't mind me telling it. I remember because, you know, Kevin Hart's great, but
sometimes a little bit late, just a little tiny bit late.
He came really late to a writer's session that was at my house for some reason.
I didn't know I had that amount of power. And he wrote on an index card.
Why Kevin Hart promised not, because he had been drinking, uh, to drink for 24
hours. And then he crossed it out and went, and then he crossed it out and went
23 hours, which I thought was so funny.
But here we are.
It's not like he came in, like, blasted or anything. He was, dude, that guy was
like 27 years old, making movies and stuff. So he had clubs to go to at night.
I don't fault that.
Yeah. I think they invented bottle service for him at that time. I'm not saying
anymore.
It was. I think that, I think that that's what it was. Yeah. But it was going
to be, uh, it was going to be a lot of fun. And I think, uh, this business
realized it. So they were like, no, we can't do that. You know, what's funny,
right? As I said, it was going to be a lot of fun. And they took it away. You
literally went like this, like you were imitating hanging yourself.
I almost hung myself with my, I don't want, I don't want to say it. $300 scarf.
Who am I? Whatever. $300 on a scarf.
You know what I got? Yeah. It's gone. It's already, I've already gifted it.
It was a lifetime achievement award for, uh, yeah, that's what they give in
Canada. They give you, in theater here, they give you scarves.
Hey, what part of Canada are you from? Are you, you, Toronto? Where are you?
Oh God, no. I'm from Alberta. Um, where you're an animal. Oh, I'm an animal. I
was, I was born in Edmonton.
I actually, you won't even. Oh, it's a little cut above a little cut. The
cattle down South, the oil men are up top. I get it.
Let me show you the, I guess you can't really. There's a, there's a scar from a
knife fight I had in the Calgarian hotel when I was 19 years old.
So I've, I was through the wars as a young man. Wait, a knife fight? Like you
had a knife too where this guy pulled a knife?
No, no. A guy actually cut me with a knife. There was, there was a phase, Bill,
and you probably remember this, where guys would have cowboy hats, but they'd
have little feathers on the front of them.
Uh-huh. Like, like little, I don't know what they were. And I, I guess I, it
kind of had pissed me off. So I decided to take his little feather off.
Oh, you don't do that. You don't do, you don't take a man's feather off his
cowboy hat. So that's, that's what happened. And I was so hard.
No, no, no. Slow down. Slow down. So you're in this bar.
Yep.
All five foot four of you, right?
Well, I, I tower in at five, six, but correct.
Five, six. And you walk up to John Wayne looking guy in Alberta, which for
those Americans, that's like the Texas of, of Canada, as far as cattle, oil,
you know, go fuck yourself, be a man, let's get a gun and that type of shit.
So you go in there coming up from a sketch class and decide, you know what, I'm
going to, I'm going to imitate, I'm going to improv with this guy.
Yeah.
I'm going to throw a ball by taking his feather out of his hat.
And see, and see what he does. And of course, Bill, as you know, I was wearing
nurse shoes at the time, which is what I often, often work.
That was my go-to for my drinking shoes because they were so comfortable and
they were so punk to me.
What is your deal, dude? How did you grow up in that place? So frigging macho.
And like, that is not your vibe at all.
So what was, so you, you grew up out there and everybody's fucking punching
cattle and drilling oil and flattening the mountains and you're, you're doing
what? Reading Jack Kerouac?
I was reading Jack Kerouac. I, well, and listening to, you know, it was
probably not even punk. Yeah, I guess it was punk music by then because I was
18.
So that was, you know, 77. So, um, yeah, no, I, I grew up in reaction to the
place, uh, that I was, I would dress, I would dress, I'd wear pink shirts and
they would chase, men in trucks would chase me down the street, uh, to beat me
up and scream.
You know what word they screamed at me and, um, not hero.
Screamed faggot at you. I mean, say what they called you. You just don't call
somebody that.
That's, that's, I guess that's correct.
At this point you can get, you can literally get in trouble for saying the slur
that was said to you.
Yes. That, that I came out from under, which is why when I wrote running F word,
as we like to call it now, um, on the show, it was that it was like, oh no, uh,
gay men are heroes.
We are, we're heroes for folk heroes for living through what people in Alberta
and people in Toronto, uh, put them through.
So what you just decided that you were just going to like.
What gave you the strength that like, how, how irritated were you by the, uh, I
mean, it's a pretty testosterone place, Alberta.
Like at what point was it just for the sheer, like, uh, you know, it was like a
standup comedian.
You go up and you're just like, all right, these people are into this.
So I'm going to make fun of this.
This is their home team.
I'm going to make fun of their home team.
Was it just simply like that or had something else happened?
What happened to you before the pink shirt is what I want to know.
Well, you know, not to be too serious.
I come from a pretty rotten childhood.
My dad was a boozer and a salesman.
He was good at being a boozer and not good at being a salesman.
Um, my mom left bill when I was seven years old.
I wasn't allowed to have a picture of her or talk to her.
I didn't talk to her for two years.
And so, yeah.
And then my, my step-mom, Connie, uh, who I'd often say, you're not my real mom.
What's that?
Francis.
I, I wish.
Oh my God.
Now you've made me think of Connie Francis and they were, they were boozers.
So I, I, you know, and I had the house that you couldn't bring people home
because my dog
would have binky would have attacked my dad.
My, my mom might be asleep on the stairs, Connie, from having drunk her Hudson's
Bay rise since
eight in the morning.
And so I found basically first it was blue oyster cult, punk music, and then it
was punk
music.
Right.
And then of course I fought.
It just, I, that's amazes me that like you, you're just like the nicest soft-spoken
person.
You must be a terror on set.
No, you get into, you get into like a knife fight and all of this stuff.
So like, um, did you get tired of getting your ass kicked?
Did you enjoy it?
Did you fight back?
Oh no.
When I, no, I wasn't as good.
I, and there was a, there's an actor that you may know, Callum Keith Rennie.
He was in, um, what's that show he was in?
Oh, well, look him up.
Uh, he was, we went to high school together and he's become quite a good actor.
He was in Californication and a few things.
We would fight together.
He was a good fighter.
I was good at just, you know, bleeding quite honestly.
You were the hype man.
Yeah, I was the hype man.
But I started going, I had friends who had moved out to Toronto and I started
going to
Toronto where there was people like me, right.
And there was music and there, you know, and the Buzzcocks played.
And the damned played.
And I wanted to get to Toronto as soon as possible.
And when our show, we had a show in Calvary that became successful when I
started doing
comedy, I wanted to go to Toronto right away.
And it wasn't for the comedy, it was for the music.
That's amazing.
So where did you meet?
Uh, well, first of all, how did you get from Alberta to, to Toronto?
Did you, did you have any money to just fly out there?
Did you get in a piece of shit car and drive across?
What, what are you, Saskatchewan?
Well, a few things.
I worked, I worked, uh, loading trucks and driving truck for Canada Dry.
And what, what you could do in the old day