Conan O’Brien’s journey to late-night host is the stuff of legend. And although it’s well-known that a number of big names turned down the gig before it was offered to O’Brien, less well-known is the fact that it ultimately came down to O’Brien (who was Lorne Michaels’ top pick) and Paul Provenza (NBC’s top pick).
We all know how that ended up playing out, but as Provenza reveals to Mark Malkoff in part two of a two-part episode of LateNighter’s Inside Late Night podcast, by the time O’Brien was announced as David Letterman‘s successor, Provenza had convinced himself that he’d turn the job if it was offered to him.
That, plus more stories from his early Comedy Central series late-night series Comics Only, working with Keenan Ivory Wayans and Steve Martin, and the one unnamed comic (out of a hundred) who asked to be edited out of Provenza’s raunchy documentary, The Aristocrats. (Provenza and his co-director Penn Jilette complied.)
Click the embed below to listen now, or find Inside Late Night on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Visit Paul Provenza’s YouTube channel to watch clips from his various projects over the years.
Show Transcript
Mark Malkoff: Who was your manager at the time?
Paul Provenza: Uh, uh, Eric Gold. He was with, um,
Ellen. He was Ellen’s person for a while, wasn’t he?
Yes. Yeah, he’s the one who made the deal for her talk show. Yeah. He, uh, Eric Gold handled, uh, aside from myself, he handled Ellen. He handled Keenan Ivory Wayans, Keenan Ivory Wayans, Damon Wayans. He handled Jim Carrey, basically all of the, uh, breakouts of, uh, In Living Color and what have you.
What was it like in 1998 going on the Keenan Ivory Wayans Show? I know you started with him.
Yeah, Keenan and I go way back. In fact, again, I was there maybe a year before Keenan showed up at The Improv in New York and uh, Keenan became the doorman. And in fact, he was so, he was doing so well. He actually dropped out of, he was going to Tuskegee and um, he dropped out to go full-time into comedy. He didn’t have a car. And like I said, sometimes the club closed at 4:00 AM most of the time at club, closed at 4:00 AM Uh, I had a car. I lived in the Bronx, and so I would take him home, I would drop him off at home and we’d sit in the car in front of the projects he lived in, talking comedy, talking about his dreams and talking about each other’s, you know, fantasies of what we wanna do and everything. There’d be gunshots going off right and left. I’d be ducking down. He goes, yeah that’s nothing to worry about. But yeah. Um, so. We were pretty close at that time. I thought we were pretty close at that time. And then when we both moved out to Los Angeles, which was around the same time, um, there was a showcase for Saturday Night Live, a recast of Saturday Night Live. And Keenan and I were both on this showcase, and I don’t remember if I followed him or he followed me. And I don’t remember who did this bit, but it was something that a lot of people used to do at The Improv bringing other the guests, and if you were hosting at The Improv. You would do this with a friend. It was kind of a stock gag for somebody MCing. Uh, and I don’t remember what, again, whether I did it to Keenan or Keenan did it to me, but he finished whoever went first, finish the set and said, ladies, gentlemen, are you ready for your next performance? Uh, yes. And, and, and he’d introduced me or I’d introduced him again, I forget. So the first person goes, are you ready for this crowd? Yeah, I’m ready for this crowd. No, this is, this crowd wants, like eal. Are you ready to give this crowd as they want? This crowd is incredible and the crowd’s gonna be You go? Yeah, I’m ready. Are you ready? I’m ready. No, no, no. Are you ready? Show me you are ready. I’m ready. I’m ready. Are you a man? Are you gonna take this crowd by the throat and destroy this crowd? Are you a man? Yes. Are you a man? Yes. And then kiss me on the cheek and go, okay, baby. Have a good set. And that was it. It was just a silly little setup and switch. So the next day after this audition, we both managed for Eric Gold and, um, Eric Gold calls us and says, listen, they don’t think you’re right for Saturday Night Live, but they love the chemistry you guys have together and to take this good looking young black comedy rising star and you know, you a comedy rising star to put you together. They’re really excited about it. They wanna make a development deal with you two guys. So we’re like, this is amazing. So I get together with Keenan, they’re like, what do you wanna do? And we both talked about how much we loved, uh, we, because we thought about like, what a, what a young white guy, a young black guy. What’s the angle here? And we both talked about how much we loved I spy, and we came up with this idea to do like son of I Spy, where I’m the son of Bill, uh, Bill Culp, and he’s the son. Bill Cosby of, of Robert Culp, and he’s the son of Bill Cosby, and he’s actually a tennis pro, and I’m actually his business manager, which was the, uh, what’s the word? The cover that Culp and Cosby had on I Spy. But in our version, he’s actually really just a tennis pro, and I’m really just his business manager, but all the nefarious, they figure, oh, they’re doing this again. So we end up in all of this, you know, all this criminal investigation stuff against our will. And I happened to do a gig in, uh, Palm Springs and Robert Culp was in the audience. So I talked to him afterwards, you know, he was big fan of I Spy and we talked to him and he was like, uh, and so I called him and he said, love the idea. ’cause we wanted them to be in the pilot to launch us and maybe even, you know, do recurring things. Who knew? So he said, I’m down with it. And then Keenan went on the Tonight Show with Bill Cosby as a host, and Cosby loved him. So he called Cosby and Cosby said, we’re in. So we went to NBC and we said, we got Culp and Cosby on board, and this is our premise, they loved it. We go to get the rights from Sheldon Leonard and he says, no, can’t have the rights. I’m gonna make a movie. The I Spy movie didn’t come out for another 30 years.
Yeah, I was gonna say decades and decades.
But that was our premise and we worked it for basically the duration of our en entire, uh, development deal. And then it just went away.
So that did come out though, right? Eventually. Did it come out?
I Spy? The I Spy movie? Yeah. I Spy movie came out, I think with Ben Stiller.
Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah.
Or I Spy 2002. Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson.
Dave Letterman leaves NBC. They need a replacement. He’s going to CBS. Lorne Michaels is gonna decide who is gonna replace Dave Letterman. There weren’t a lot of people being considered, I know it was you, um, Jon Stewart, uh, Drew Carey, I think auditioned a as well. And then you had this guy, Conan O’Brien. Clearly you had most hosting experience, I would think maybe Jon from the, he had had the MTV show and stuff at that point. But did you, how far did it get, did you meet with Rick Ludwin? Did you meet with um, Lorne Michaels?
Well, I gotta tell you this story. I hope this doesn’t undermine my affection for Jay that I mentioned previously, which is really neutral, just as a comedian watching another brilliant comedian. But Jay was really responsible for all that, and I didn’t even know this. Jay, here’s the story as as I understand it. The Letterman show was not contractual for any of the affiliates, only primetime. In other words, if you were a local NBC station, you had to buy the primetime lineup, but late night you didn’t have to buy. Right. So they had to seduce all the affiliates whose contracts were coming up to sign on to whatever this late night talk show was going to be. They couldn’t say, oh, you know, we, Garry Shandling’s gonna do the show. So they’re like, oh yeah, we’ll sign on for Garry Shanding show. They didn’t have talent on deck yet. So in order to keep the affiliates on board for this non-required time slot. They brought in Lorne Michaels, so they could say to the affiliates, we don’t know what it’s gonna be. We don’t know who’s gonna be the host of it, but it’s Lorne Michaels, who’s made you all a gajillion dollars. So back this, they signed on all the things. So they had made this deal with Lorne Michaels, and part of that deal was complete creative control for Lorne. So as they were going through the process, and Lorne was bringing the talent that he wanted to host the show, the various people, you know, for NBC to sign off on NBC was like, he’s just bringing us everybody who’s in front of him every day. He’s bringing us all the people that he’s worked with on Saturday Night Live. He’s not expanding the horizon at all here, and we’re getting a little nervous. So they call Jay. Who they know is in clubs every night. They know Jay knows exactly who’s out there and who’s good and who knows how to host a show. So they make this sort of side deal with Jay as a consultant. And one of the first things that Jay does is send them a whole bunch of VHS tapes of Comics Only. And he says, you want a guy who knows how to do the show, he’s doing it already. Take a look at these. I had no idea that this was going on, but Jay used to do that. Jay used to sit there and watch Comedy Switch channels to, to find the standup who’s doing something on somewhere and watch it or tape it or whatever. That was Jay’s, you know, that’s Jay. So he sent them all these tapes and he got them on board with me and, um, they were really, you know, they were talking to my manager a lot about this. And then Lorne Michaels finds out that there’s this alternate list of potential hosts. And as the story was told to me, he goes through the roof, he’s pissed off that NBC is overriding his creative control, or that they would even doubt that he could do it. Who knows? But he gets pissed off and he says, I’m not gonna consider anybody until I at least see them live. So they put together this showcase in Los Angeles at the LA Improv. And Lorne flies in for the showcase. Now, I’m doing a gig in Boston this weekend, and I get a call from my manager saying, here’s the thing, you know, you’re not gonna be considered unless he sees you. And I’m like, I feel like there’s really no shot at this. I don’t wanna cancel a gig. I’m, I’m already in Boston. Like, you know, what am I gonna do? Eh, maybe it’ll come around again, whatever. So I called Jay. I said, Jay, here’s the deal. I’m in Boston. I know he’s, he’s a Boston guy. So he would really get, you know the thing, you are in a club in Boston, you don’t just walk away. That’s a sh*tty thing to do. Uh, so I called him and I said, you know, here’s the situation. Whatever, is this something I really need to do? Or, you know, is it gonna make a difference? And he said, gotta tell you, he goes, you really, you really, you’re kind of in the pocket here, and I think you really need to do this because you got NBC in your corner. Uh, you just gotta win over Lorne and NBC can’t fight for you if you don’t at least do this showcase. I said, okay. So I canceled my gig that night. I find another friend of mine who was a comic who was nearby, go, can you do this gig for me, Ty? I make amends with the club. I fly out to LA, I do the showcase. The next night I fly back to Boston the day the next morning to do so. Basically, I missed one night. Now I get to this, uh, the LA improv for the show, and I see the lineup and I see Jon Stewart in the middle of lineup and I go, well, that’s who they should choose there. No doubt about that. That’s the winner right there. I mean, I, I don’t even know what, this seems like a waste of time for everybody. ’cause if you don’t go with Jon Stewart, you’re an idiot, Rick Reynolds was on the lineup. He was a kind of very, uh, early, I think he did, he was one of the earliest comedians that I knew of doing like solo shows, like a one man show, a very, very confessional, which is a very popular thing now. He was doing that back then, and Drew Carey was on the lineup. Jon Stewart, myself, I think, um, oh boy, I can’t remember. You probably know better than I do. But anyway, so I did the showcase and then, you know, it went okay. I didn’t do badly. I didn’t, I don’t feel like I blew the off the place. So I get back to Boston the next day and I’m, I’m, I’m fried from flying, you know, over two days and, and, and I’m sleeping before the show. It’s probably about five o’clock in the afternoon and I gotta get ready for an eight o’clock show. And I get this phone call waking me up from a nap and it’s some reporter from some TV Guide or something like that, wanting to talk about this showcase and, you know, am I in the running and blah, blah, blah. I go, hey, I really don’t know. I just did a showcase and go, I do these things all the time. I either find out I got something or I didn’t, you know, more than I do at this point, you know? And they were like, well, can we talk about this? And they, and he, and, and I said, well, look, I gotta go do a show in a couple hours. And he goes, what time are you leaving for the show? I go, where are you? And he goes, we’re in the lobby. I come, I come down to do the show. And there was like this phalanx of reporters and I’m like, I can’t believe anybody’s interested in any of this. This is crazy. So it was all of that buzz around it and everything. And ultimately I got down to the point where, you know, my career was in such a place where I was getting opportunities to do a lot of very different things. And I was really excited about that. I liked that, you know, and if I did a show like that, if I did a talk, a late night talk show, that’s a full-time job. That’s it. That’s your career for as long as you can make it last. That’s all you can do. And so I was in this weird place of, wow, it would be really great. I. To get a show like that, but that’s all I’m gonna do for the rest of my life. I don’t think I’m that guy. And it got to the point where I was like, man, I hope I get it offered so I could turn it down. There was so much press around it, it was so much, it was crazy. Uh, you know, a whole book. It generated Bill Carter’s whole book, you know, the whole phenomenon of recasting, all of that. Uh, and I was like, if I get the offer and I turn it down, it probably will raise my profile so, so much that people will go, you’re crazy for turning this down. But it would kind of put me in another place and I wouldn’t be stuck doing one show for the rest of my life. So I actually really was only marginally invested. But anyway, after it all comes down and it goes to Conan, I call Jay and I said, Jay, listen. I’m just calling to say now that the dust is settled, I’m just calling to say thank you because nobody has ever put themselves out. For my career the way you have, I go, you know, we’re not real clo, we’re not, you know, pals. I, I, I’m just so blown away by how generous you are and how much you believed in me for this and, and I wanted to thank you for that. And he goes, yeah, boy, you couldn’t have gotten any closer. Wow. It was right down to the wire.I was like, well, thank you. And I hang up. I call my manager right away, but Jay said it was right down to the wire. What, what do you know about this? My manager goes, hold, lemme call you back at five six. He makes a few calls. He calls me back and pick up the phone. I go, hello. He just goes. Not wanna know. I said, what you talking about?It really truly was an 11th hour decision. Like, you know, 12 hours in the conference room with everybody’s tied with pull down Chinese food, you know, spread around the table. Uh, he goes, they were really, really pushing for you. And ultimately, uh, Lorne wouldn’t back down and they’re going with Conan, but they were in your corner in a big way,
Lorne, for, for the most part, always in house. I mean, he picked Tina Fey and Jeff, Jeff Ross I know, killed in his audition for update. And it’s like they’re, they’re not gonna bring in. They don’t bring in outsiders very much unless it’s like somebody like that Lorne’s worked with previously or he discovered it himself. But it’s nice that NBC went, uh, for you and stuff.
I mean, now that’s the story as I heard it from Jay and some people at NBC.
I’m not surprised.
I’m sure every individual involved, if they heard any of the story, they’ll have a different story. Who knows? But having said that, I knew of Conan as a writer. I knew that he was really, really hot as a writer and I knew about Lookwell,
Oh yeah, Adam West. That was hilarious. Sure. “Here’s my headshot.”
Which was hilarious. Yeah. And I knew that Conan had a tremendous amount of respect from other writers. You know, Fred Wolf knew, knew Conan his work, and he was like, he’s great. He didn’t have any on-camera experience, but it didn’t, Lorne knew that if I stick with him long enough, he, it’s my timeslot. I can do whatever I want with it. You know? Uh, I don’t know how long he would’ve had to prove something to NBC, but he knew that he could turn Conan into the Conan we know now. That if he gave him this opportunity, he would become Conan O’Brien. He was zero performing experience.
It took him about two years, a year and a half on camera, but it’s, it’s pretty amazing. What was it like working with Steve Martin? I ran into him a few times. He’s always been really nice to me. But there’s something, uh, you know, I just, I think I know from just reading about him and that he, he’s very shy and, and to himself a lot, which is totally understandable. A lot of comedians are, but what was that like working with him and he chose you out of anybody to be at his play? It, it was on Broadway, right?
Um, it, it was technically off Broadway, but it was the Promenade New York, which is about as Broadway as Off Broadway can get. Um, and, uh, and yeah, and I did it. I did it for about a year in New York. And, and then about six months later, they, uh, announced a national tour and asked me to do that. And, uh, yeah, that was really, uh, that was a great experience. First of all, I. I love doing theater and so that was great.
I mean, you’ve won awards. Leno made fun of you because you won some sort of Drama Desk Award. You had been on Broadway, this was I think 96, 97 with Steve Martin. What was the play and what was it like working with him?
The play was Picasso at the Lapin Agile, which, uh, was um, just this fantastic little confection, you know, about a fictitious meeting of, uh, Picasso at the age of 23 or four, and Einstein around the same age right before each of them make their huge breakthrough. Picasso painting, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, which basically changed modern art and, uh, Einstein coming up with his Theory of Relativity. And it was just this weird little invention, but based on a lot of true things, the characters in the bar were re-enacted. The, the Lapin Agile was a real bar, means the agile rabbit, uh, or the nimble rabbit, uh, is a bar in Montmartre in in Paris, where. At the turn of the century, all the impressionist painters used to hang out. Uh, so there’s, there’s some real truth behind this fictitious, uh, notion. And it was just this great little play that, that had some hilarious, silly comedy, also some beautiful poetry, a great, great ideas in it. And, um, and it was exciting and fun to do. Steve was, uh, the, the play started in Chicago. By the time it came to New York. Steve redeveloped it and worked with the cast, and I actually replaced the original actor playing Picasso from Chicago. Played it for the first few months in New York. Then he left the show and that’s when I came in and Steve was still doing rewrites and stuff and, um, he would sit in the back of the theater when we were rehearsing. I was getting put in rehearsals, you know, everybody else had been doing the show and he would make changes and he would, you know, see what I brought to it and make a little change here or there, see what didn’t work, or can work better than, had worked before. So he was in a very collaborative place and but also stayed away from, you know, anything that the director wanted to do, he, he deferred completely to people who knew how to do theater, you know? Uh, so he was very, very collaborative, very supportive. He was so encouraging. He would come back and talk to us after rehearsals or after shows and, and just say, you know, oh my God, you’re all bringing so much more to this than I ever imagined. And, and he couldn’t have been more generous and, and supportive to work with. Uh, I loved it. And then we did a national tour. There were a handful of markets where they needed to juice ticket sales, so they asked Steve Martin to come and do press conferences in those cities. Right. And he’s notoriously shy. He, he’s uncomfortable in a, in a situation with more than four people. You know, he much prefer being, you know, in a small group. He doesn’t, didn’t like any of that stuff. So he said, I will do the press conferences. If you get Provenza, who plays Picasso and Mark Nelson, who plays Einstein. If they’ll do the conferences with me, I, I’ll do those conferences. So we ended up doing all these press conferences together. Uh, Mark Nelson, by the way, who played Einstein, a genius, one of the most exciting actors I’ve ever worked with. Absolutely brilliant. He was the center of the play for me. I mean, it was, he was the focus of the play for me. Everything that I did was because of how he was playing Einstein. He was just great. Uh, I love him. One of the greatest actors I’ve ever seen. Anyway, uh, so we would do these press conferences and they were often people who were at these press conferences were often radio people who I had worked with, who I had done their radio shows when I was touring. And they knew, and every time I was in St. Louis, I would do this radio show. And they, so a lot of the people that were at these press conferences in some of these cities knew me. Steve didn’t really know me. He didn’t know me as a standup. He didn’t know anything about me. He knew I was a standup. I think we talked a little bit about standup, but he wasn’t familiar with me at all. But we started doing these press conferences and all of a sudden I’m getting a lot of these questions from all these people that have known me over years. I’ve done their shows. At one point, I don’t remember what the question was, but uh, I interjected the answer was a small hairless Filipino boy. I don’t remember what the setup was, but I gave that answer. And Steve was drinking water at the moment and, and snf it through his nose. Another little mini Oscar. Another little mini Oscar for me.
That’s… to make him laugh. I mean, such a genius.
But you know, it’s pathetic. I don’t remember any of the details. I just remember that that happened. I don’t remember the joke
A long time ago.
What’s wrong with me? Anyway, here’s, here’s me and Steve, at one of the press conferences.
Oh, that’s a great pic.
Isn’t that a great picture? I love that.
I really like that.
So those were really fun to do. And he was really, again, cordial and, and it was a small group of us. And so we’d be in limos, going to various press things or whatever. And then I, we did a, a preview of the road company in, um, Providence, Rhode Island, and he had come up for it in a limo. And we were all going back to the city and he said, why don’t you guys come and ride with me in the limo? So Mark Nelson and I rode in this limo for I don’t know how many hours from Providence, Rhode Island back to Manhattan. And he had a few drinks and really got loosened up. And it was, it was hilarious. And he was like, you know, hey, when we get out, why don’t you guys come and hang out at my place for a little while? Let’s, let’s, you know, hang out a little bit at my place. He goes. I said, it’s like, you know, two o’clock in the morning, what about your neighbors? And he goes, my neighbor is my ex-wife. We had to put a wall in between the condos. So she has half and I have half, and she’s on the other side of that wall. And I’d like her to hear me having a good time for once.
So you did, you, you went to his place, you went to hang, hang?
No, we, we were exhausted and we had to go back up to do a show the next day.
Oh yeah. You had to do a show.
So, so we didn’t go and hang out with him. But, um, at one point when we were in Los Angeles, he invited us all over to his Los Angeles home.Uh, and we had a little get together and he was very aloof there because like I said, you know, at that point there were probably like a dozen people and that’s way too much for him.
Too many people. It’s like Johnny Carson. He like, Johnny was the same way, like, just like a few people.
Yeah.
I think, I forget who said it, maybe Dick ha that said that Carson was incapable of chitchat. Just, you know, just making regular conversation that didn’t really have anything to do with anything. And, um,
Yeah, very, very close to the vest. Very personal, I mean, very private, just not really outgoing. Yeah. Again, just, you know, didn’t, didn’t really like. Socializing with more than a handful of people. I, uh,
I get that. Introverts. I’m an introvert, believe it or not.
And you know, Steve is so in his head. I mean, you look at his stuff, even a standup, even the stupidest, silliest goofiest standup is so thoughtful.
Yeah. He is incredible. One of the greatest ever.
I can imagine that, you know, uh, large groups of people, especially show biz. You know, it was hard to. But since we worked together, he was hosting, uh, one of the galas at the Just For Lughs Festival one year. I forget who it was, but a friend of mine was writing it for him, writing bits, you know, he’d come out and intro the next guest, whatever, and he had somebody there. Oh, I know who it was. It was David Feldman. Somehow David Feldman ended up writing for him in real time. You know, like something. Somebody would be on and he would go give Steve a joke to use at this next break, you know? And I wanted backstage, saw David and uh, and he said, yeah, why don’t you come and hang out, write some jokes. And Steve came back and went, oh yeah, yeah, you wanna write some jokes. Write some jokes. So David and I, I think there wrote maybe one or two little gags that Steve ended up using on that gala thing. Whatever. It was nice. It was nice to be in a room with Steve Martin and he knew who you were and he respected you, and he did your joke. I may not have fame and riches in my time in show business, but I got a lot of mini Oscars.
You’ve done so many incredible things and met so many people. I wanna talk about your YouTube channel, Paul Provenza. And, um, you’re also on social media as well. We can get to that, but
Not really. I am on, there was a page on Facebook and there’s a Twitter feed and there’s, that’s about it, but I, I’m not really participating. I decided long ago that that was going to be, a, uh, a horrific and horrible thing to do, so I just, I just backed off of all of it.
Okay. Well, we have your YouTube channel where you have some, uh, amazing clips of people and I know, um, yeah. Comics Only Fred Wolf and, you know, T. Sean Shannon was a writer. The, that must have just been such an amazing experience just to have that.
Oh, it was great. You know, Fred didn’t tell you this story, and I’m gonna ask him about that, but Fred didn’t tell you the story, but I worked with Fred. A road gig. I don’t remember where it was. Uh, but we were on the road together and at one point during our week of shows, I said to him, man, if I’m ever in a position to hire a writer or have like a, you know, a sidekick on a talk show, I go, I’m calling you.
Yeah. He’s so funny. I love Fred.
Sure enough, I mean, we’re talking like 10 years later, out of the blue I call him and I go, Fred, you’re not gonna believe it. This has actually happened. You know, obviously his career was moving, his career as a writer was moving. He was, he, he wasn’t as invested in his career as his standup, but he was a great standup. He was really funny. He did really inventive things. He did a thing where he would run a phone line onto the stage and he would call to order a pizza and you know, and he’d say, so if it’s less than 30 minutes, I get free and all that sort of stuff. And then he would play these audio tapes of like being surrounded by a SWAT team and keep the conversation going with the pizza guy. And it was all legitimate. You know, it was a local pizza guy that he called every night, different one, you know, from wherever he was. And it was always hilarious and it was such an inventive, crazy thing to do. I just thought he was brilliant. So when this came up, I called him, and his thing was he, he said, I, I would be happy to do this, but what would really make me happy is if I can be on camera. And I said. Fine. Great. And then T Sean, you know, I was introduced to T. Sean and a bunch. Mike Armstrong was one of the first writers we hired who had, not long before this, had won an Oscar for writing the Appointments of Dennis Jennings with co-writing with Steven Wright. And um, so I just wanted to get these writers who were so interesting and smart and funny, and I was so happy to put all of ’em on camera. I was so happy because I wanted to create this. it’s kind of like… We all loved Letterman. We ended up doing a lot of Letterman like bits, but actually pointing to the fact that we are ripping this off from Letterman and we would do sh*tty versions of them, you know, those guys. What, what we did was created this on-camera family that the writing staff was in all of these sketches, the writing staff was, we did stuff in the writer’s room, you know, that ended up being roll-ins on the show and stuff like that. And I just wanted this family of just funny people, all of the. Even though I was quote unquote the star of the show, you know, it was my show. I was more than happy to have funny people around me and they never disappointed. And we started to do really wacky things. ’cause the whole thing was, it’s supposed to be this talk show, right? So these guys would come up with like hilarious sketches that had nothing to do with the talk show. So we had to like shoehorn, like, what goofy, obvious way can we come up with that’s so bad that it’s funny to make this in a talk show format, so we did things like this running gag where I, I’m, I’m a film buff and I go to these film buff conventions and I buy this footage, and so it was a chance to do these little roll-ins as these like really, really overwrought jerry rigged ways to fit everything into a talk show format. Here’s the great thing about this show. Okay? We started doing all of this dark stuff. Uh, we were blowing people’s brains out. We had all these things with like, you know, one of the running gags was security cameras all around the building and Fred’s dancing in women’s underwear and the, you know, with a gun in the men’s room and all this weird sh*t, and then he blows his brains out. Of course, he comes back after commercial and he’s got little. Little x bandaid there, like very, really cartoony, you know? And we act, we actually created this thing called the, the crew built this thing that we called the gut blower 2000, because we were constantly blowing people’s heads up and, and eviscerating people and things like that. Uh, really goofy, cartoony stuff. But we committed, so we sent the first batch of scripts to Ha!. It was the Ha! network at the time. It was before they had merged. We sent a bunch of scripts to them and they’re like, you can’t do this. You can’t do this. They go, well, we already did it. We already have 20 in the can, and Jerry Kramer, who sadly passed away not that long ago. Uh, he was the producer of the show and we became producing partners on a number of other things, uh, over the years. But he was just like, he loved to laugh and he didn’t care about, he would say, we can’t do that. And then I would make him laugh about it. And then he said, all right, let’s do it. And then. And all of a sudden, you know, we’re doing a, a, a recreation of the Los Angeles Riot riots, but with all clowns, you know, no jesters, no peace kind of thing, like over the top stuff that he would always figure out a way that we could do it no matter how stupid it was. If it made him laugh enough. He and I go to New York when Ha! and the Comedy channel merge and form Comedy Central, which didn’t even have a name yet. It was actually, they were going with CTV. Um, which it turns out is the network in Canada. So they had done all of this stuff with logo, CTV, all over the place and found they couldn’t use it. It was, didn’t even have a name yet when they, we had gotten together, but we still had a contract to do another batch of shows. So we both fly to New York and we go to their new offices and they had just moved in these, these new offices. The merger of the merged offices and we find this room. And in this room is a fax machine. It’s a storage room. There’s, you know, fax paper and printer paper and, and chairs that haven’t been used and stuff piled up in the corner. And they were moving in. So Jerry copies down the number of this fax machine. So every time we had to send them scripts, he would fax ’em to this number. They finally get to us, like the second batches. We did batches of shows that were like, we did, I think 26 shows, and then we got an order for 20 shows, and then we got an order for 35 shows, and then we got another order for 35 shows and we ended up doing 165 shows, but in these little batches at a time. So we deliver another batch of shows and they’re like, you can’t do this. You can’t blow people’s brains out. You can’t do this. And Jerry had been getting away with convincing them, saying, look. You’re a new network. You’re not even on in New York City yet. Just put it on. If you have problems, we’ll deal with them then, but just put it on, what difference does it make? And he convinced them to just put it on. He’s like, well, what are you? You gotta give us money for more shows. They go, well, you never sent us to scripts. We never signed off on these scripts and he said, I faxed you every script and I never heard back from you. So I assumed everything was okay. And it wasn’t until months later somebody went in the that little storage closet and found the fax roll behind the table with all our scripts and that’s how we ended up getting away with a lot of sh*t , ’cause they were ultimately like
Smart producer.
I know it’s such a bad idea.
Problem solving 101.
It’s such a terrible thing to do, but we did it. Uh, and, and then we started to get a little bit of a following. And like I say, it wasn’t on in a lot in, in every market yet. It wasn’t even on in, in, in New York City yet. And we started to get press and we started to get all these weird little write-ups and things. And so they said, uh, I guess it’s okay. You know, keep doing what you’re doing. They, there were a few things that they ultimately did make us cut, but I can’t even remember what they might’ve been. Most of it, they let us get away with some really dark stuff.
I hope you put more stuff on YouTube and it’s great to see Fred and, uh, all these amazing comics. Yeah, just, I’m trying to think of some of the other people that you had that, that I was looking at on YouTube, but
It’s kind of a time capsule of a comedy boom.
It really is. It, it really, I think that’s a good point. Yes. I think it’s a good, it’s a really good point. It’s, it’s amazing to see, um, everybody from like a lot. It’s so sad. How many people aren’t alive anymore. Um, that you, you had on, but I mean, it was a couple decades ago, but, um, yeah, to see people.
Yeah. Same thing happened with the aristocrats. We have a 25% kill rate. The Aristocrats, 25 out of a hundred people are dead.
Oh my gosh. I can’t believe.
Yeah. Yeah. So many of ’em too young.
Was there anybody that asked that you filmed that since it was such a filthy joke? Uh, for the most part, people’s interpretation. Was there anyone that asked to be cut out after they filmed? They, they agreed.
One person. One person.
Did they sign a release?
Yeah. Oh, they, they asked us, you know, I mean, this performer said, look, I, I’m having second thoughts and, and I was talking with my wife and, you know, he, he was somebody who had a, a, a significant career in, uh, in Vegas, you know, and he was like, eh, my, my wife made, made me really paranoid and worried about this, whatever. We had no issues with that at all. We took him right out because. When we started this thing, we decided that Penn and I decided we don’t wanna have to convince anybody to do this. This is the stupidest thing ever. And it’s the Raunchiest joke ever. And if somebody doesn’t really wanna do it, we don’t wanna talk ’em into it. So that was, you know, it was really easy. We cut ’em out right away. And, um, I happened to, at that point, actually, I was able to bring somebody else into it that I wanted to have into it, but it was too late. So I was able to bring somebody else into it to replace him.
Is this person still alive? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I, I’m, I’m, I’m just not mentioning the name. Not ’cause there’s any reason to just, it’s not fair to tell the story without, without him knowing that I’m telling the story.
That’s, no, I totally get that. I think I know who it is, but it’s all good.
But that got so much press when that came out. Um, and you’ve been so good in your career, just like, just kind of showing the public what comedians are like with the green room on Showtime especially, and with The Aristocrats just kind of like, um, you know, the curtains partying a little bit and people see an inside view stuff. And the fact that, uh, I, I can’t, I still can’t believe the people that you got in The Green Room. Like you got, um, uh, Jonathan Winters and just so many amazing people.
Dan Pasternack, um, amazing guy, um. You got Klein on as well. Robert Klein.
Yeah, that was, um, pastor Dan Pasternack was one of the great comedy producers of our generation. Um, I mean, he’s behind or, or had his hands in some like real important things in comedy that have happened in our lifetimes. He was very good friends with Jonathan Winters, and he, he, he introduced me to John.He said, listen, Jonathan’s living up there in Santa Barbara and he has nobody to play with. And so he would bring me up to play with him. Uh, you know, Richard Lewis would go up and play with him. Uh uh, I brought with me one time to play with him. I brought Rick Overton up to play with him, and he was, he loved Rick Overton. So as I got to know Jonathan, I. And, and, and he began to trust me and appreciate what I was doing. I invited him to do the show. I wanted to do the show, and he agreed. Um, because I, I reached out to Robert Klein. Dan had told me, he said like, he’ll feel good if Robert Klein is on the show with him. You know, he’ll definitely do it. So I asked Robert Klein, he was like, oh my God, be on a show with my idol, Jonathan Winters. Absolutely. So I got the two of them on the show, and then I wrote Rick Overton to be the other person on the panel because I had seen Jonathan was watching Riff, was watching Rick Overton do a riff. He had this look on his face that was like an 8-year-old child discovering something. It was so beautiful. And he’s like, do, do, do that. Sean Connery again, do that. Sean Connery again. So I knew that he loved Rick. So that was the show I put together. And um, I. It’s one of my favorites of all of them that I had done because it’s John winners and it’s Robert Klein, who was one of my idols. I mean, when I started doing standup, I wanted to be the bastard child of George Carlin and Robert Klein. I felt like if they too, if they both their DNA were merged, that’s what I wanna be. So to have Robert Klein on the show with Jonathan and my dear old genius friend Rick Overton, it was just heaven unearthed me. So it was one of my favorite things. And John, I thought what was so fascinating about Jonathan was a, he was really funny, but b, he told really personal stories and he was like an 80 something year old guy who’s telling stories about how f*cked up his father was. He, he died never having resolved father issues. And, you know, it’s just, I, I just thought it was a Jonathan, like he’s never really presented himself before. Anyway. I loved that show so much.
Those combinations were so interesting. Yeah.
I’m back around with Showtime. Showtime’s talking about renewing it for the second season. They go, we don’t, you know it. It was two old guys. It was two old guys. We don’t want that anymore. And I said, are you serious? Because it’s possible that I can get Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner on the show together, and are you telling me that that’s not good for you? And then, yeah, two old guys, we don’t want that.
I’m so glad that you were able to at least do what you wanted. And I’m, I go back to that one where it was, um, Ray Romano, Garry Shandling, I think Bo Burnham, I forget who else was on, uh, but it to, to, to have Bo Burnham, who is so young. Keep up with those guys. Like Shandling was unbelievable to watch. I mean, he had that one, one thing, um, I forget what he, what he said. There’s, there’s a clip. It’s on YouTube and stuff, but, um, that was, I, that’s the other one that I think really stands out for me. Was that, that episode?
Well that’san interesting one, ’cause there were five people on that show. Normally it was four. Uh, but we had five on that show because I had the show lined up Right. And I got Ray Romano. I got Marc Maron. I got, um, who else is on this show? Hanlan and Bo Burnham. Shandling and who else, who else was on that show? But I’m looking at the, the card on the board and I’m like, something’s not right. Something’s not right. Like, what could possibly be wrong with a show that involves Gary Shandling, Ray Romano. Marc Maron talking off the cuff about whatever, like, is this something, something’s not right. I get a phone call and somebody kind of comes in and goes, is it uh, uh, somebody on line two? The who is it? Bo Burnham? And I went, that’s it. Because I had called Bo, ’cause I’ve known Bo since he was like 15. Uh, in fact, because of Dan Pasternack, he was working at Super Deluxe at the time. Creating online comedy. And he said to me, he says, there, what do you wanna do? Is there anything you wanna do? I said, there’s this kid that I’ve seen online, his name is Bo Burnham. He’s a, he’s really young. I go, he’s so brilliant. It’s so interesting. And he does sh*t in his bedroom. And I go, I’d like to take some of his music and do like a full blown, like big production budget music video of, of some of his stuff, and Pasternack goes, checks him out and goes, yeah, let’s do it. So he wants to do that. So I reach out to Bo and uh, uh, to, to try and make this happen. And he was on like a class trip or something. I’m like, how old are you? He’s 15. Like, oh my God. Um. Anyway, that never came to pass, but I knew of.
I wanna interject because you were modest. I wanna interject ’cause you were very modest. He was a huge fan of yours and he was very starstruck. Pasternack told me that he couldn’t believe he was talking to you.
Well, he didn’t. I was surprised that he knew who I was. He, when I said, uh, my name is Paul Provenza, he said, deep Enza. And I was like, oh, this guy knows comedy. ‘Cause he knows who I am. He’s 15 years old and he knows who I am. This guy knows he’s, he’s deep tracks, right. So, um, that ultimately didn’t come to pass. Uh, and then I hung up, up with, hung out with him in, uh, Montreal at Just For laughs, which I think was the first time he ever performed live. And at the time I was curating the comedy program at the Lake Shore Theater, which is in Chicago, which is now the Laugh Factory. But at the time it was a, a, a theater. I booked him into that, and that was, it was his first road gig. His first live performance was at Montreal, just for last, and this was his first road gig. Uh, and his father came with him. He was still really, he was still like maybe 16, or I guess he was probably 17 at this point. Maybe, maybe 16. I don’t know. Anyway, so I knew Bo and we had spent a lot of time talking and he’s absolutely brilliant. I mean, he is a really smart guy and he’s thoughtful, and my conversations with him were like, more sophisticated, not only about comedy, but also about life and philosophy and, and art. More sophisticated than just about any, you know, anybody around my age. I just thought he was absolutely brilliant and I was like, nervous that he would be like eaten up and chewed up and spit out and everything. But after spending time with him, I was like, no, you’re gonna be okay. You can smell the bullsh*t a million miles away. You’re, there’s something special about you. You could handle this. You know? So I had a call into him and he called back just as I was wondering what’s going on with this show. I said, that’s it. It’s Bo, it’s Bo. Bo is the missing ingredient. So I added him to that show and that was the thing that really I think makes that show special was because all of a sudden is Garry Shandling talking to a kid that he knows he’s as as smart as can be and if, if Garry could talk to him about any, he knew how bright this kid was, right? Marc Maron didn’t know anything about him. Ray Romano didn’t know anything about him and who else was in that show? Um, and, um, uh, so that turned out to be the really special thing because I asked Bo to do that song, which I think is really powerful. What’s the name of that song where he basically talks about selling out as a comedian, how George Carlin is rolling over in his grave and all that, you know, art Is Dead, is the name of the song. Uh, and it opened up a lot of conversation and it took us down roads with Ray Romano, who I knew. I had seen the documentary that that, um, had been, that Tom Caltabiano had made about Ray, uh, Ray Romano. This is so interesting to hear Ray in a limo coming back from a sold out show, talking about how insecure he is and everything. I, I, it felt like that’s the missing ingredient and it turned out to be, again, one of my three favorite shows of Jonathan Winters show, that show Garry and Bo and, and et al, um, and the Doug Stanhope, uh, Green Room show with, um. Janeane Garafolo and Richard Belzer and, uh, Glen Wool, uh, and Dave Attell. Uh, those are my favorite shows. That one, because that really did feel like a green room. I mean, at one point I even got up to go take a leak because I didn’t need to be there. I loved that. That real, that one is the one that feels the most like a real green room with those people
Because that’s what you were going for. The the missing person was Judd Apatow. I just looked it up.
Of course. Judd. Thank you.
We love Judd Apatow.
Yeah. Um, and, and Judd was actually, uh, Judd was on the show. I mean. It wasn’t like I wouldn’t have had Joe Judd on the show, but he was on that show in particular because that would give Gary a level of comfort.
Oh, that makes sense. And also Judd was on, is on your YouTube channel, I believe.
Um, for, yeah, he was, I, I think one of his first TV appearances as his standup was on comics only.
Yeah. That’s unbelievable. Paul, thank you so much for doing this. Everybody, check, check out Paul’s, uh, YouTube channel and please. Put up more content. It was such a thrill to talk to you and, um, yeah, I’m glad we got to do this. You, you were on The Carson podcast, I can’t believe how long ago that was, but you were such, so nice to have me over to your home and, um, it was a big thrill and it’s a thrill to talk to you, um, years later. So.
I love talking to you, but you, first of all, you go so you do such deep dives and you know, minutiae that is like, oh wow, that’ll be fun to talk about. Nobody knows about that. Uh, so I appreciate you and what you’re doing, and I get, I’m just loving the podcast. I’m loving.
Oh, thanks so much.
I listened to so many of ’em with people that I didn’t even know, writers or, or, you know, people involved that I didn’t even know that I’m just in love with now, you know. And, uh, the fact that you show love to Fred Wolf and T. Sean Shannon and you think makes me love you even more, those. Hugh Fink.
Oh yeah, those guys are amazing. They wrote some of my favorite Saturday Night Live sketches, and I remember Hugh Fink doing the, the, they would call it the senile Henny Youngman playing the violin watching on, on evening at the Improv.
Oh, we used to do with them. It was, uh, by the time, like I said, we did 165 episodes in that show, right? Uh, and we had this thing of, we’ll just shoehorn stuff that doesn’t really fit a talk show in, because that’s stupid and we’ll do that. It got to the point where it’s like I started sending them to prop houses and said, just come up with funny sh*t to do.
Just get stuff.
Yeah. And so they would go to prop houses and play. Come back and say, okay, there’s the thing. It’s like, like an air traffic controller’s thing, right? So we wrote the sketch and it was like, get the unit, let’s do it. Yeah. It was so fun. It was so fun. I was now, I was up for just about anything. I wanted them to shine. I wanted them to be on camera as much. So they started to get these, you know, characters that people were starting to associate with, you know? Um, T. Sean was always getting slapped by women who worked on the show. That became a running thing, and uh, it was just. Love those guys.
Yeah, it’s so much fun. Uh, please put stuff up on Paul, Paul Provenza. Thank you so much. This was so much fun and I’m glad um, we got to do this. And, um, best of luck. I’d love to have you back.
Anytime, man. I could talk to you for hours. You, you like stuff that nobody else likes.
Thank you, sir.
