#2116 - Kevin James

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Let's go shimmy! Let's go shimmy! Most people don't know about shimmy. They don't know about your alter ego.

No. Well... Yeah, you were the one who brought it out of me.

Well, we would do shows. We would do shows in New York. And you would go full, shimmy. I'd be on the side of the stage yelling out, shimmy!

Well, when we first started... By the way, we did the Joe Rogan Experience 30 years ago, right? Yeah. Just hanging out. Just playing pool.

I started at Stitch's in Boston. And then I was like 2 years in when I met you. And then I think we met at Eastside. Which was awesome. What a great club.

Yes, my man. It was the greatest place to go. I remember it would be a line around the block. Two shows on a Wednesday night. It was insane comedy.

The golden age of comedy at the time. 1990?. Oh my god, it was incredible.

I started at 89.. I think I met you in... What is it?

91 maybe?

Somewhere in there. And I was following everybody. I was being the stand-up comedian with the jacket sleeves pushed up and the bolo tie. Do you know what I'm talking about? I was just that straight guy.

They're animals, just like we are. We're all animals.

That's right.

Way to go for you, too. You just always needed a hype man. You just need someone to let you go. Give them the green light.

It's so funny. You're right.

You just needed a hype man.

You were the one who did it for me, in Montreal, too. Do you remember that? By the way, do you remember the beer we would drink? There were two kinds of this beer. I can't remember this Canadian beer.

Oh, it was the best. I think it's gone under. I think they just announced they're going bankrupt.

Oh, really?

Yeah, unfortunately. See, we should tell people what it was. So what it was during our time when we were young, was the Montreal Comedy Festival was where young comedians would go up and you could kind of get a deal. And that's where you got the deal to do the King and Queens.

Well, I got the deal to do NBC. And then that failed. That went into CBS.

But once you get in, the thing about, people should know, like in the 90s, there was this thing that was happening where everybody looked at. a comedian like this could be the next Roseanne. This could be the next Tim Allen. This could be the next Seinfeld. So every time they looked at you, they're like, what do you got?

A hundred percent. You have one set that pops and people talking about it. There's a buzz. And it's like, you're in. You're set.

And they have bidding wars. So, like CBS would be, Fox would be, they would all be throwing in. You know, there's guys who walked in. Do you remember Chicken?

Chicken was the crazy guy.

Yes. Chicken got the deal that killed the deal.

Yes. He got like $800,000 or something. It was some crazy money. I don't know what it was.

Some nutty amount of money.

But he had no act, right? It was after that they thought he was...

He just tricked everybody.

He did.

And I don't know how he did it. And I wonder if he had a hype man. If he could have kept tricking people. Maybe he just went off the rails with anxiety when success starts. Because that's one of the things that does happen.

My bud, I'm telling you, I still deal with that. I'm not even kidding. You obviously don't and you haven't.

I do, though. Do you really? Yeah, I do. I just ignore it.

Well, that's what you got to do, I guess. And that's what I don't do enough, because I start thinking. And I start overthinking both sides. I'm like, oh gosh, what if this happens? This means something.

I've been doing comedy for 30 years.

I go, I don't need this. I'm ready to call Sussy and go, I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to do it. I get up there and go, I go, just get him with that first joke. If you do, you settle it.

That's so nerve-wracking. I'm glad it worked out great. I hate it. I ran into Sandler when I missed you at the airport. I ran into Sandler.

Yeah, I called him about it. He had the same thing. So it's nice to see somebody like that has it too.

Yeah, a guy like him can still eat dick.

I talked to Billy Joel. And he says, literally he was like, I've gone through those. I'm like, you? But when you're playing music, it's different.

Yeah, but they'll throw that Saudi money at you.

He threw crazy money at them. He did a corporate gig, or whatever it was. And he says they weren't even listening. They turned away. And it's like, just you and the band.

Dana White had a 40th birthday party. And Stone Temple Pilots played. And it was insane. These dudes played like it was a packed arena.

Where?

It was at a fucking conference room in a hotel somewhere.

They didn't care.

They didn't give a fuck. They had a beautiful stage set up. The stage was set up, nice. But all of a sudden they were like, Hey, everybody. Stone Temple Pilots.

They just went.

I was so impressed by his ability to perform. It took a while for people to even filter to the dance floor in front of them. And watch the show. This dude did it. There was 50,000 people.

He who cares less has more power. That's it. I'm going around with a tray. He's like, I don't care.

He didn't give a fuck.

And everybody jumps in.

Full commitment. When someone just fully commits to something like that, it's very inspiring. And you'll never forget that. Because if you never see anybody fully commit, that's why. You never see great comics ever.

That's the way you gotta be, man. I gotta do it.

You need a hype man.

I need a hype man.

You're two different guys.

You know me.

Are you doing it in the round?

No.

That's the way to do it. You know why? You'll still have a great time. The arenas are great. It's a wild experience.

Because everybody's facing everybody.

So all the people see each other. And they're all in it together.

I love that idea. Does the stage turn? No. You walk around. I used to do the Westbury Music Fair.

You have to find some distinctive person in the audience.

That big guy is my marker.

The one in Phoenix spins around too. Is that the Celebrity Theater? You can turn it on or off. That's a good one too. It's a comedy club, but it's in the round.

I would feel guilty. Half the crowd is looking. I'd be thinking now, I've got another thing to think about. They've seen my ass for the last 40 minutes. I've got to spend it.

You have giant screens. The thing about the arena is they have massive screens. If, for some reason... We did these ones in Ohio. Chappelle came down.

This is a guy who doesn't overthink things. You don't need the hype, man.

He just strolled in.

Wow.

Then he goes, OH. He puts the mic out.

Even bigger.

It was insane. It was so fucking cool. He's from Ohio. He lives in Yellow Springs. Right outside of Dayton.

It's intimate in a special way.

The screens are giant. You just walk around. When Dave was facing that way, I'd see his face on the screen. It's not bad. It's still awesome because you're there.

The screens help.

They're everywhere. They're giant. They're 50 feet wide. They're fucking everywhere. It makes it easy.

I would love to be in the round. I think I'm in Denver, in Salt Lake City, where I'm worried about this. My first arena.

It's going to be fun. It's going to be fun. This is Dave. Listen to this.

I get to bring up one of my best drivers.

I mean you literally can't even hear him.

bring up Dave Chappelle.

Look at this.

That's insane.

I felt like we were seeing the Beatles. I felt like it was like Hendrix got on stage.

Well done for you bringing him up. That's insane.

It was awesome.

That's incredible.

It was so fun.

I would be afraid, because you've got such heavy hitters and I come up and I'm talking about weird little observational stuff. It would get in my head. It would.

There's a lot of weird observational comedians kill there. It's a fun place. Duncan kills there.

That's insane.

All these monsters that come into town. In any given week. it's Krista, Stefano or fucking Dave Smith. There's so many killers.

How often during the week are you there? How often are guys working out? There's stuff there.

Seven nights a week. Two shows each night in each room. Except for Mondays and Sundays, which are open mic nights. Open mic night there's a show in the small room. There's only one show.

That's incredible.

Two shows a night in each room. Four shows a night.

How big are each room?

One's 250 and one's about 110 to 120..

Do you feel a difference?

Yeah. The little one's super intimate. The little one is like, if you remember, the belly room at the Comedy Store. It's like the belly room and the original room had a baby. That's the little room.

When you're trying out stuff, people are going up there with notepads.

Yeah, yeah. Kristina Zitsky does it all the time. She goes up with a notepad. A lot of guys go up with notepads. If you've got some new shit you're working on, he goes up with notepads.

Because you want to be able to remember.

You don't want to fuck up the bit. The audience kind of appreciates it. They go, this is so new.

They have to look at it.

Brian Simpson hosts this show called Bottom of the Barrel. That's a really fun show. You go up there and you have no material. You just reach into this whiskey barrel and there's a bunch of different premises that the audience members have written down. You pull it out, you open it up.

And you do a bit on that?

Yeah, you just start talking shit.

If I was to go there and do my act, I would pretend like I pulled that out of the whiskey barrel first.

Did you ever notice?

Are you kidding?

I was like, oh, it was robot fuck dolls.

I have a whole chunk on that.

But it was one of those moments where I was like, oh, last night I spent two hours writing stuff on this.

So let's just run with it here.

and see what happens.

Have you ever had a dip? Because they must go nuts when they see you, right? Yeah. Because back on Long Island I'll work at a little club like Governor's. I don't know if you remember that.

Oh yeah, Governor's Levittown.

And I'll go out there and I'm hometown boy and I go up there and they go nuts for like a minute or something. Not like that, but they go crazy. It's fun to see you. And then within two minutes, they're ordering sausage and rolls.

Yeah, well, New York audiences too, they don't have much patience for bullshit. It's a good place to start comedy. New York and Boston both. Good place to start comedy, because people don't have any patience for bullshit. Yeah, we're happy to see you, but come with the jokes.

I do a lot of writing while I have a tour. Like, if I have a tour in the theaters, where I'll try to, if I have a set, theme set, I'll try to add some stuff in there for the next one. Have you ever done that?

When you do a lot of shows, it's great. Because you kind of get a sense of where you can stick stuff in.

You always have a safety net of. I can go here if it's going nowhere. That's my problem. That's what I do too. I'll write a huge chunk on something and won't know when to bail on it.

Oftentimes I realize it's because I didn't buy in. That's what it is mostly with me. If I'm entering a bit like, I wish I didn't bring this one up. If I ever get to that place, you just have to fight off that thought. There's this thought that comes to your mind like, oh, why did I bring this up?

enthusiastically.

as you're actually engaged with each part of it while it's happening.

When I write a new bit, and if I write a big chunk and it's too much, I'll go up with too much stuff. And I didn't rehearse it. Because words are so efficient. You say one word or you're repeating a word, it stumbles you up. And then it kind of blows it for this, the next part of the bit.

The problem is then you start thinking about it. And with new bits, they're just not etched into your brain yet. So as you go up with them, they're like little Bambi walking on ice.

It's not steady.

But that's what small shows are good for. That's what fucking around is good for. And that's also when it's really important that you're inspired by whatever this idea is. If I'm inspired by the idea, I can always talk about it. If there's a thing that I can get behind, where I'll go, you explain this to me.

What I'm trying to do now is because I used to write just separate jokes. Joke, joke, joke, joke, here. And every time I would bring up a new subject, it was like the audience is starting from scratch again to try to catch up. And it's exhausting to try to understand. So if I try to put it in a story or a theme to my set, at least they kind of know what's happening.

That's why I always admired guys like Stephen Wright. Those non-sequiturs. I'm like, how do you do that? And how do you write? God, that's going to be so hard to write.

Who's the guy?

Mitch Hedberg? Same thing. Non-sequiturs.

And you were with him. And that's what made it even funnier.

Who does that now?

And that became something that actually elevated it. They weren't storytellers. Right.

It was part of the fun.

So out of it.

Out of nowhere. Somebody asked me, do I want a frozen banana? I said, no, but I want a regular banana later. So, yes.

He's the best. What a fucking great joke.

He was amazing, man. That was a guy. He just didn't want to kick heroin. They were trying to get him to kick heroin. He's like, uh-uh, I like it.

Is that what it was?

He liked it. He just wasn't going to kick it. He was hospitalized while we were on The Man Show. And Doug Stanhope and Mitch were very close. And I, you know, I admired him deeply as a comedian.

What a talent.

And he was all non sequitur. It was all. one bit leads into the next bit. Double tree hotel.

I love it.

I love it.

I love that humor, man. He was amazing.

Yeah. He was. He was. It's just, um, you know, that guy had a hard time in the beginning because people didn't know what he was doing. So he would go on after these high energy music acts.

It'd be different, like that.

And you're in the middle of Ohio or whatever.

They're not used to that. They don't know who you are.

You're just the headliner. Oh, he's on Evening at the Improv? Okay. And then they go to see you. They really didn't know.

But when they don't know you, that's one thing that has made it a little bit easier is when people are coming to see you and they know you, as opposed to who's this next guy? Yes. Way, way, way easier.

But it also comes with a trap because they'll laugh at stuff that's not that good. We've all seen guys who only perform for their crowds, only in big places. They only do theaters, only do their crowds. only. That act can get soft.

Well, you see a lot of these guys now that are developing an act because they did something on Instagram or whatever. They developed these audiences that they get popular and then they put together an act. They go and the clubs are like, well, let's put this guy up.

Well, there's also a lot of guys who do crowd control. They do crowd work stuff. It's like just fucking around with the crowd. and that's most of these clips. You've seen a lot of guys who put up clips of crowd work because you don't have to burn your material.

The audience can feel the shift when I go back to my own material. You wrote this.

What is this whack-ass bullshit you've been thinking about all day? You're better off responding. There's certain guys that their thing is really just talking to the crowd. That's a different thing. It's a great thing.

I fear that. I don't like doing that. I've built my act with the speed of it that no one has the chance to get in and ask a question or heckle. You build this shell around you. There's just not enough time.

You don't need that. Some people like it. Some people like to interact with the crowd.

It's a great tool to have. Do you talk to the crowd at all?

Occasionally, you have to. At the comedy store, you had to. The comedy store, for the longest time, had zero crowd control. They do a good job now of policing the room, but back then, it was comics that were the door people. It was comics that seated people.

But you toughen up that way. You build a...

You understand how to go with the flow. Some people don't do that. They did not like the comedy store. for that reason. They just go up there and they like to have a slow pace and do their bits and build.

That's me. That's more me. I was always afraid of the comedy store.

It's just when you go up. If someone like Adam Egott, who's brilliant at scheduling and really understands talent, and where people go, you just want to put them in the right place. You don't want to put them after a music act. That's the death. The death is the guy who has the funny songs.

You just see the guitar in the back and the guys tuning it up and you're like, oh no, when is he on? He's on next, then you're up.

No, the guy with the guitar always ruined the show. They always killed. They would kill and you couldn't follow them. Musical acts, raps. Remember Red Johnny and the Round Guy?

You're done.

The show was over, bitch.

You see them? go. I'm getting in my car. I'm leaving. I'll see you later.

It's crazy how a song or a funny song tops everything. Who was that guy that used to be on Dr. Demento? There was that guy that used to have dirty songs back in the day, and he was famous. He would tour around with dirty songs.

John Dalby? Yes.

That guy. Remember that guy?

Dr. Dirty. That's right. He would light up a room.

You're not going on after him. It's over. Everybody knew who he was. You would hear his songs on Dr. Demento.

I'm going up there talking about puppies afterwards. Hey, you guys ever.

lose your keys?

And you're searching.

This guy's talking about getting a blowjob while you're taking a shit. He was just... But he had that following of people that would just come to see just those songs. So they would hear the same songs over and over again. They loved it.

You don't have to write as much. It's great, right?

But you're going to get bored. You ever see that Kinnison song about the Beach Boys? Kinnison had a bit about the Beach Boys. Imagine them 35 years later singing the song. Same fucking song.

That's tough.

You want to be able to do new stuff. The new stuff is scary, but

it's fun. It's so exciting.

How much time did you take off?

I wasn't really off. I would keep it going, but just doing shows. No writing. I really wasn't writing. For years.

It's so hard when you're doing a television show. When I was doing news radio, I fell into a real spot over a period of at least a year where I wasn't writing at all. I didn't do any new jokes. I had the same tired-ass jokes.

I remember jumping in your Supra and heading to the comedy store. You would go up a lot. You would still do things there.

Maybe that was a different time. That was when I snapped out of it. There was a period when I first moved there in 1994, where we were working 16 hours a day. I was tired all the time. I would just show up at the club and do my set and then go.

That's what I felt like I was doing.

In my head, I was always like, they're going to realize I'm not an actor. I'm going to get fired. This is the last TV show I ever work. I almost got fired from the first show I ever was on. Where I was the star of the show.

You didn't stomach it, man.

The thing is, the guys who wrote the original show were brilliant. They wrote for Married With Children. They wrote for The Simpsons.

I remember. I go to your tapings, man. It was so much fun.

They were going to fire me. I was like, this is terrible. They hired a new producer. The new producer came in and took over and turned it into the sloppiest, most obvious, terrible sitcom. That prototypical sitcom where you watch and you go, ugh.

Only because you didn't want to, though. I thought you were funny as hell in that stuff. You just didn't like it.

Insecure, didn't have any experience about actors, didn't know how to hang around with them. I was so used to comics. For me, it was fighters and then comics. Just crazy people. I was just only around crazy people.

That's sitcom people. It was exhausting.

That's hilarious. You'd always hear about tyrants. You'd always hear about the Brett Butlers and the people that would scream and throw coffee in the face of the writers.

News radio. was that bad? Those guys were...

Oh, there was none of that there.

That was cool. That was a party.

The writers were great. It was a totally different kind of experience. Right. What was my point? What was my point?

You were saying that...

I thought I was going to get fired.

It wasn't for you. You thought they were going to find you out.

I had to just do stand-up just to prove that I was still a comic. I remember one point in time, the producer of news radio said to me, he was like, why are you still doing stand-up? You're an actor now. Oh, no. I was like, oh, no.

This is a trap.

I had one really bad set one night in front of one of the producers and one of the writers. I fucking ate shit. I went up at this door late at night at 1 a.m. in the main room and just had a terrible set. Just bombed.

That's what I felt, man.

I've been slacking off because I've been working 16-hour days and I use it as an excuse to not write. From then on, everything got way better. Way better. My stand-up, I dialed it in much more.

How do you write? Are you the guy sitting down?

I sit down in front of a computer and I just write. I don't write like, this is exactly how I'm going to say it. I just spill my thoughts out, because I feel like it takes me a lot longer to write the words than it does for me to think about things. The more time that I'm actually just writing the words, it's extra time thinking about the things.

you kind of like locked into it. No, I just type. Yeah, I type.

Whatever the subject is, there's just one subject that I'm doing right now where I've written it, written about the subject four times. I start a whole new Microsoft Word file four times and just completely revisit it. Just one more time.

What program are you using?

I just use Microsoft Word and I go into focus mode. Have you seen focus mode?

Yeah, it blocks everything else out.

I used to use Write Room. I'll still use.

Write Room. I did Scrivener.

I use Scrivener.

I'll find one thing about it and then I'll go, I don't like this, that. It sets my bits up this way. or I can't do this, or I can't transfer that, and then I'll spend the whole day looking up for apps, for the perfect app, and I'm not writing. Yeah, you're distracting yourself. Of course.

I try to avoid that. But Scrivener, what I do with Scrivener is I make each individual bit, once I have it kind of boiled down, then I put it in the columns. The way Scrivener is set up, whatever the subject is.

I love Scrivener. The only thing it didn't do, it didn't transfer to my phone or when I'm at a gig and I want to look it up quick, you have to go to a Dropbox. It was annoying. I go, I need it.

right away. Yeah, that's where notes on iPhone is the best.

The best? The problem with notes? You ready for this? I got them all. You can't categorize.

That's true. You can't keep it in order.

That's the only thing about it. Then I'm off that one and I'm looking five more hours. I'm looking for other apps.

Right, because if you have a folder in your notes and then you open up that folder and edit any one of those things, any one of those subjects, it'll move to the top. That's the newest one now. Yeah, that's not dumb. That should be an option. Somebody should make a.

stand-up for one of those things. I would love it. Yeah, but most comics.

don't use them. Most comics just write things down. Have you ever seen Mark Norman's stack?

No. It's crazy. He's got.

a stack like a fucking phone book, like that thick of index cards and napkins that he keeps in his pocket. He's so crazy. You try to read it, it's literally like an insane person. His handwriting is illegible. There's no order to them.

Easy. Way more than that.

200 index cards?

In his pocket? Here's what I'm going to do tonight. Card 167 to.

one... It's a window into the madness. It's the brilliance of his comedy.

I remember Richard Lewis would throw out... There'd be a piano up there, and he threw out a scroll of... Just legal pads of paper and crazy stuff all over. He set it all up. He was nuts with that.

That was also part of his thing. Look at Norman's stack.

It's like sitting on a fat wallet.

Taxi cab drivers, if they have too much shit in their wallet, you'll have a little bit of a lean. You'll get a bulge in your back.

I could never do it. I don't even know what... I need to have it organized.

You were always an organized guy. Even back in the day. I admire that. I think that's a very important thing that some comics feel like they don't have to do. You don't have to do it.

if you write the bit out, physically, write it out, that you will remember it better too?

By hand. If you write it by hand, you remember it better. That's proven. If I do an arena... I got this from you, by the way.

I'm not doing it anymore.

This is what I got from you. I didn't have a writer because I'm lazy. When I would go do theaters, they would just use Kevin James. writer. We have the same manager.

Did you see that?

All normal stuff. Maybe I added whiskey to it. One thing you had was index cards. And Sharpies. I was like, that's a great idea.

Why don't you do a prompter or something like that?

No, I don't need that. I'm fine. Once I write it all out, I've been doing it every night. Every night. I just like to do that as an extra little detail.

I don't know if I'm losing my memory, but I need bullet points up there.

Let me get you some of this. Do you take any nootropics?

I take nothing.

This is what you're going to get. Just take this one and I'll get you some more. That's Alpha Brain. That's the black label. Alpha Brain.

Am I going to see unicorns?

No, no, no. It helps memory. It's really good for memory. It's really good for focus. It gives you a little extra juice mentally.

Creatine is okay. It's okay to do that?

Creatine is very safe. Creatine is one of the safest supplements.

What does that do, though?

It adds water to your body. Your body has more water. That's one of the functions of it. It's one of the reasons why it makes your muscles look bigger. It makes you stronger.

I've got to give you this thing that Weidman gave me. These herbal pills, completely natural. We were playing golf in Atlanta, or whatever it was with DC. Cormier was there. The three of us went out.

Does Weidman have those on his Instagram? Can we find out what that stuff is?

I don't go into business. I want in on this thing. I have some. Three of them. Just try it.

How long before they make that illegal? They just made BPC-157 illegal.

I'm telling you. I'm out of shape now. It is literally the only thing that gets me up. I'm like, I can work out. I can do it.

Speed is natural too. It's all coming from the earth. Everything is natural.

The key, what they said in these things. The guy throws out. Even if you get ashwagandha. The active ingredient in it.

Well, just get a trainer.

I'm doing a documentary right now.

Yeah.

I started it in January. I'm assembling the best guys. Dolce is going to help me out with this thing. He's awesome. We already did one.

The food thing is, you can't outrun a bad diet.

You can't.

It's the best phrase. It's real. That's where it all comes from. It all comes from food. We're all addicted to food.

That's right. I can't.

Yeah, you need a hype man.

You do.

You need someone around you who's also doing it.

Well, that's it. It's community. I don't have that. It's like when I'm with Dolce, if we're on a movie together, he's got me in shape. He's giving me the meals.

You know. one thing that you can try, that I guarantee will help you lose weight is the carnivore diet. Because if you do it, the one thing that you're going to not eat is any carbohydrates. You're only going to eat meat. If you cut out all bread, all pasta, all sugar, all bullshit, I'm not saying this is a great diet.

The ketogenic thing, that for me has worked. Because Dulce will hate me for saying, when they say blueberry or carbs, he's like, carbs are fine for you, the right carbs.

There's nothing wrong with carbs. It's a fuel for your body. What I'm saying is, if you're trying to lose weight, one of the best ways to regulate your appetite is a carnivore diet. Because you don't overeat with it.

But I think it's deeper than that for me. I think it's like, anything will work. I fasted that way. I've done everything. It all works for a while, but why am I this size now?

It treadmills a little piece of hope.

It's a hope, a new thing. I got the Jacob's ladder. I go, oh, it's great. It's jujitsu. You're grabbing the wing, just as great.

And then it slides right back.

What happens?

It's one of the things about you that makes you really funny, is you're indulgent. You're a wild dude who's trying to stay buttoned up. That's part of what's really funny about you. And that indulgence, it goes into other things. And for you, it's food.

I quit things, too. I feel like I have the same almost intensity that you have, but I'm not a finisher. I don't...

We started jujitsu...

Did we start at the same time?

Yeah, basically the same time.

You were the one who brought me down there. I'm a blue belt.

Well, a lot of it is learned behavior patterns you get stuck in. And if you're unlucky, you can get a bad behavior pattern of constantly quitting things. But if you're lucky, I got very lucky that when I was 15, I got obsessed with martial arts. Because that was the first thing I ever did in my life where I didn't think I was a loser anymore. I was like, I realized that if you work really hard at something, and you're completely obsessed with something, it could transform your life.