This is the FCB Podcast Network. A prais Masoda day that we won't to say, then we won't to say, oh we got it does? No one can take that, Owen. This is gonna be okay. A prayers Masoda day that we won't to say, then we won't to say, oh we got it does? No one can take that, Owen. May this don't be okay? Hey, everybody, welcome back to another Just listen to yourself. This is a j lt y plus and I've got a very special guest on with me today. He is a longtime friend and a very good friend. He is also senior columnist at PJ Media and he does other very important things over there. He is a comedian, but most of all, he is my friend. Please welcome Stephen Cruiser, Steve Finally, I'm so happy to be here, so happy to be here. It took a while, but I'm always on his show. But because my show is really I do a lot more serious subjects. I typically, you know, we like to hang out and have fun, so Cruiser isn't necessarily my first thought, Bud. He was my first thought today because I wanted to talk about the genesis of stand up comedy and cruiser. Before we get started on why the subject came up for me, can you tell people a little bit about your experience in the entertainment industry, what you do and Wow. There's a popular misconception, which I think you might have too, is that I've retired from stand up somehow, which I have not. I just haven't been on the road for a few years. After being on the road for thirty years. I started going stand up in the eighties during the boom. I started going on the road in the late eighties. I've been all over the world doing stand up, entertaining the troops. So when people ask me what I do, I still say I'm a comedian. Because I'm a comedian and I'm going back on the road. I just having to fall into writing about politics longuy am. I I get paid most of my life for telling jokes and spouting off my political opinions. That's not a bad those aren't two bad gigs there. So I so yes, and I still talk, think and write it. I still write a lot of comedy. I still talk about it all the time. I still you know, my good friend Kevin ni Junior, who's a comic, has joined this over at PGA Media. We're putting together We've been putting together a tour for a while called Unwoke, because we want to go out in combat the anti free speech bot bent in stand up right now, or what people are trying to impose upon stand up. So, yes, it's been a long journey. The journey still goes on. But I am a comedian too, and I think about it all the time. I think about comedy more than most than you would possibly imagine. And you've I mean, you've done a lot. Not only have you been a stand up comedian, but you've also been a host. You've hosted shows, and you've been I mean a lot of our listeners will remember Red Eye, the good old days of Red Eye. You used to be a regular guest on Red Eye. Much very a very storage career. Yes, a lot of television in the past. Nothing recently. We'll get to work on that. No, you know, in today's environment, I don't know if I'm going to be on TV again, but we'll see, we'll see. I'm not, but I'm not. I'm not holding my breath for that because, as you and I have discussed many times, there's so many alternative sources for getting content out. Now, you know, it's not like back in the day when all you had was network TV and then cable after a while, it's like it's a whole different thing. So you know, I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not youthful anymore, and I'm not out there just look looking for a sitcom because that's a rough game anyway. Yeah, and like you said, those days are over. I mean, I think part of the writers and zag contracts were reducing content because there's too too much content out there. So I think even like the streaming services are going to reduce their comment content and so a lot of that means. I mean, but that don't be sad about that, because what that means is that a lot of non traditional media will pop up like this. It means. What it means is that no one's going to hand you a check. Now, you got to go out and hustle your own check. But the opportunities for doing that are so much greater than they've ever been. I've always looked at it as like a feature, not a bug. I really like the opportunities. I love the constantly shifting ground in content and entertainment right now, because you don't have to wait for somebody to bring it to you. Go here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go out and you got the guy. I don't know if you've seen him, this is like and he is funny and humor is what's sold it. This guy's chef reacts on TikTok and Instagram. I've seen him. Yeah, here's a guy. He's a professional chef and he just started mocking TikTok videos and people posting recipes. Just started doing that as a side hustle. That's his job. Now he's not a chef anymore. He's getting it. He's making enough money to support his family just from being a snark master on TikTok and Instagram. So that's the kind of thing I'm talking about. You go out like, Okay, I'm just going to do this now, and you can turn it into something if you hustle it up. I like that. Well, let's talk about how entertainment culture has evolved in the genesis of it, because here is the topic that made me think, oh, there's a podcast in here, and I would love to talk to someone with some intelligence on the issue. So a couple of our mutual friends, one of them being Gary. We're tweeting back and forth, and our friend John said, it's interesting how Dennis Leary completely vanished from pop culture much deserved, And then Gary says, oh, I still sing I'm an asshole. That was a famous Leary bit, and John says, probably his peak. Of course, Louis c. K claims he stole those jokes from his old routine, and Leary's circle of theft continued. And then I piped up Leary's fame is an interesting peak at cultural desperation. There's a podcast episode in here somewhere. The attitude was more attractive than the material. And back in the day, I was a dentist Larry fan. I mean, I never had any issues with him. He just was a guy that popped up and he was entertaining. But I didn't miss him like when he was gone. I hadn't a loought about him for quite a while till that tweet and I and it made me think of like the days of Leary and Andrew Dice Clay and even Roseanne, where there was this little resurgence of sort of bravado machiesmo like and in the nineties and mainly in the nineties, and and it seemed to me that Leary's popularity was a product of what was happening at the time, which was political correctness. Now we call it woke, now we call it. But in the nineties, political correctness was coming onto the scene and a lot of people were were reacting against it. And that's why you had a guy like androdis Clay who made a lot of money off this persona that's like this womanizing, misogynist. So I just thought it was really interesting. Do you think that sometimes, well, I think most of the time that comedy is sort of a response to what is happening culturally, or am I just reading too much into it? It should be when it's done. Well, what's happening right now is that if you want to be popular still, if you want to get on television more, if you want to be more mainstream, then you're supposed to be absorbed by whatever the zeitgeist of the day is. Then you're supposed to go along to get along. They're not speaking truth to power anymore, and comedy used to be just that. I mean, they're sitting there. You've got Sarah Silverman for God's sake, who is what I've seen Sarah alive. I've worked with Sarah before. One of the raunchiest comics I've ever worked with. She's going back and apologizing for twenty year old jokes. Now you've guts, so they were offensive. She is one of the most when you think edgy, I don't know if you've ever seen it. Like the stuff she does on TV, nothing nothing compared to what you know. There's this little basement gig we used to hang out at in Santa Monica, which she would unleash their because that was unreal. So she's out there now just because you know, that's the way you got to do it. If you want to still be you know, if you want to be on Kimmel's show, if you want to be on Colbert's show, you got that. You have to be absorbed. They're not doing that anymore, and they need to do it. They don't need to be out being cheerleaders for one political side or another, because real comics don't do that. I'll give you a quickie here in twenty twelve. I remember it was shortly after Andrew Breitbart died because it was the last thing I ever wrote for Breitbark. After this, it was like a few weeks after he died, south By Southwest had just happened, and they had a panel there discussing why there are no famous conservative comedians. And the panel was all of these left wing writers and a couple of left wing comedy I meet super left wing people too. I said, well, there aren't any because you haven't bothered to go meet any That's why. And they were and they were talking about, well, this is why conservative comedy isn't funny, because it doesn't speak truth to power? And I go, what are you guys talking about here? We're the only ones doing that. You guys are four years into the same Sarah Palin joke at this point. Okay, like where is your truth to power? There? And and it's your you. It happens right now. I have said over and over again. And this is not just a partisan thing. This is from a purely analytical comic point of view. This president administration is the most target rich environment for humor I have ever seen in my life. Okay, and they're up there, and Kimmel's up there doing Trump jokes. That's all they're doing right now, and right now, if I had a talk show right now, I'd be going, Yeah, give me the Biden stuff first. Soon as I got into the writer room, every day Biden stuff first. Yeah, pick any Biden clip you found this week, Just throw a rock, hit it and I'll make fun of it. Because so, yeah, it's it should be a cultural response. It should be whether you like that particular brand of humor or not. It should be Lenny Bruce, it's you know, yeah, people out apologize and what they're saying. Lenny Bruce used to go to jail for dropping F box. Frequently. He had undercover cops in the audience waiting to arrest him in case he dropped an F box. And now we're apology. Oh sorry, I didn't. Oh I didn't, did I offend? Oh? And I noticed this cruiser when I'm out at comedy shows or you know, when I've been you know, dip I dip my toe as a bucket list item in stand up comedy, and when I've been working with other comics. There's this thing that I've been noticing recently because I've been doing that recently, where especially younger comics, if they want to say something that's close to edgy there's like a built in apology in the big yep, you know what I mean. Like, it's not it's not a thing of I'm so sorry that I offended you. If I offended you, it's a thing of oh oh look at that that dude, he's black. Oh hey, come on, everybody, we all noticed it. Like it's always having to qualify their jokes, and it takes me right out of it. I don't think it's it's no. If you're gonna have attitude, have attitude, yes, don't don't. Don't think you can kind of like artificially craft your attitude, but you know, get away with it with disclaimers. No, that's not attitude. Attitude is being And you know I have said a kajillion offensive things on stage. It's never been by design. It's always been my persona. I have no filter. Kevin and I were just talking about this, and maybe you and I were talking about it yesterday. I did back to back podcasts yesterday when I recorded with you that I recorded with Kevin, and I can't remember which I talked to which about well, you and I weren't doing you and I weren't doing you. Know, you and I weren't talking about tag team, but KINI fights betweet betweet between Congress women that we'd like to see discussion. Craizer that much number one on my list, Lauren Bobert and AOC that was that was number one on my list. But I said, I said, it's like it's it was never contrived with me. The thing with me is is as much as I is as gregarious as I can be in person or in the I mean in like real life or anything, I am at my most comfortable when I'm on stage with just a microphone and an audience. That's it. So my all of my filters are gone then completely. And it's not because I ever had any I have. I did talk about this about a couple of weeks ago when I first started going on pedlining. Every time I get to a town, not every time, but there'd be like in the local arts paper or something, they they they have a listing and they'd be describing me as an angry comic. And I never felt like an angry comic. Like wait, and then I started watching more take of myself and I'm going you young kids google tape. I started watching more tape of myself and I saw okay. There's yes, there's an edge, there's a darkness there. But that's always been my persona. It was never like, you know what, I'm gonna go be me an angry comic that'll sell that. It was never that way. So if you're gonna have that attitude, if you're gonna have that edge, have the edge. Don't have the edge, and then try to soften it in case it cuts somebody. Right, the edge is what's funny because ultimately, comedy, whether or not it's clean comedy, like maybe you're watching like a Christian comic at your church, or it's corporate comedy you're at the company Christmas party and you're or it's an edgy guy on stage. No matter what type of comedy you like, all of it is rooted in discomfort. It all is like, if I watch a clean quote Christian comedian, they're making fun of the church. They're making fun of the silly little things that we do in the church, and we look around at each other and we go, oh my gosh, she's so right. It's so embarrassing that stuff, and we laugh at ourselves. If you have no edge, you're comedy. If you don't make people think about the things they do and believe, and and give them the ability to laugh at it while you're doing that. That's not comedy. Great example Chappelle, Dave Chappelle, I mean, look at look at what first of all, how popular his uh, you know, his reappearance on the scene has been, and how he just sort of took down those walls and decide I'm going to say what I want to say. Ultimately, though, you know, you'll be watching Chappelle and forget about the trance stuff. Just sometimes he'd be talking about stuff and it's like, damn, I do that. Oh he's calling me out, and you you feel uncomfortable. You hate that you're laughing at it, and that's what makes you laugh at it harder. So your jokes for me makes me believe that you don't believe anything you're saying. You just hit on something that I've said about my act for years, and I come about it in two different ways. I agree with what you just said, and I like to do that on occasion. I also like to present a version of myself that's semi autobiographical, but there's a lot of fiction in there too. But it gives the audience something. It's the opposite of the discomforting. It makes them feel comfortable because then they can go, God, my life's not as bad as his. I like to do that too. That's why I like to dredge up the really yucky stuff every once in a while too. But I have said, because I'm a my single biggest influence in stand up has always been Richard Pryor. And this is why I end up doing this that I love making people laugh at stuff that they don't want to laugh at, that they sit there and go go wow. I love laughing at stuff I don't want to laugh at. That's my whole mo. I mean, I say it's not contrived, but I do love material that makes people go oh God. It's like I have an opening line that I've been using in my AX for twenty plus years, and it's about my ex wife, the mother of my child, and we're good friends and blah blah blah. But I wrote it in the heat of the divorce when I was not happy with her, and and we were still living together then because we hadn't worked out that situation yet. And I go up and I did it. I did it. I just thought of it. I just it came to me I was doing a this is this is how much fun comedy used to be. I lived in LA and by the airport, and there was a gig down in Orange County every Friday night that I believe was in a narcotics anonymous group, a biker narcotics anonymous group, and they would have their meeting and then they would do then they would have comics, and it was it was a showcase gig. It wasn't nobody was getting paid for this, but I kept hearing about it. Everybody came to say, this is like one of the greatest gigs. They're the greatest crowd. And I kind of knew that because I'd had a lot of biker crowds before and they are always great audiences. But I'm going to like a good biker and so I go up and I can't repeat it here because I don't want to offend your people, but like, I don't want to offend your audience. But I come up with this line, and then my friend who's with everybody's just losing it. And I told my AX the next day and she goes, Okay, I know it's about me, but damn, that's funny, and I kept it in my act even though I'm not angry with her anymore. You know why, it's a great line you get you get, you get five great opening lines in your career. Baby, let me let me ask you this so so here is so I want. I love your I would love your professional opinion on this as a political writer and as a comedian. So someone who's happier foot in both worlds, what do you think about people like people? I'm not I'm actually not going to naming names because I don't want to get hung up on the names. The issue is, there are a lot of people in our industry on the political side who came out of entertainment. That's not weird. I know people think it's weird, but it's actually not because they're both performative industry, so it's very common for people to That's why a lot of actors run for office. And so there are a lot of former comedians. Well I would consider them former comedians who are now popular political pundits, and maybe they'll say something that isn't well thought out. It's a political position, but really it's just an excuse to insult people or insult a group of people, and then when you push back on that, they go, well, what's your problem, I'm a comedian. Like sometimes I feel like there are people like, can you hide behind that I'm a comedian thing to say controversial things, particularly if you have a job in another industry, or is that just like making excuses not if what you're doing is actually political punditry. There's a difference there. Like when I'm doing politics here, people are always like, you know, I'll write a column or I'll do something an online broadcast, and like I said, well that wasn't as funny as I wanted to me. And I said, well, I'm not doing stand up right now. I'm being a political pundit. And I differentiate it too. I mean, yes, I'm a funny political pundit's there, but I'm not doing stand up right now because I used to. Okay, in the early days of the Tea Party Eraro, when we first met, I would get contacted by various groups all the time to want to come in, and they say, you know, we want you to come in and maybe do some comedy. I said. I used to remember. They used to bring me in for speeches a lot too, and I would say do you want me to do a speech or do you want me to do stand up? And they would say what's the difference? And I said about five thousand dollars. I said, if you want me to go and tell jokes for a half an hour, you're paying and and and that that's the thing, because what I'm doing politics. No, you don't get to hide behind it. You don't get to go out and you know be it's I keep I keep coming back to the late night show hosts because they're not late night show comedians anymore. They're late night pundits. They're advocates for a certain political point of view, and if and if you disagree with them, you're not going to be on the show. The only popular leftist comic who's ever going to have someone who disagrees with him on his show is Bill Maher. And Bill's always been that way. He's always been a radical lefty, but he's almost always had a conservative on his writing staff. And so the rest of them are just like, no, and no, you don't get to hide behind I'm a comic. I'm gonna go out and offend half the country because I'm a comic. No, make it funny man. You can make a funny Trump joke too. I'm not saying he's off limits. You can make a funny Nikki Haley, Joe good Lord. If I were on stage tonight, I'm sure i'd have five minutes of Viva Ramaswami stuff. He's just begging me to mock him. But no, you can't know if you're gonna be a comic. Be a comic, if you're gonna be a political comic too, And there have only been about five of them in history who were funny. Political comedy is hard to do consistently. It is I'm not a political comic. On stage, I weave in some socio political stuff, but I'm not a political comic and I'm not I'm not gonna get up there. And you know, Will Rogers my way through it, Will Rogers, Will Durst in the semi modern era another funny one. There had been Jimmy Tingle, but not there aren't that many. You've done it consistently, so seventy two thousand words later, No, you can't hide binder, hot topics, the news of the day, in depth interviews, and a whole lot more. It's The Outlaws radio show. Subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, iHeart, or wherever you get your podcasts today, that's out Laws, the Outlaws Radio Show, n FCB Podcasts. I'm sorry, everybody. The trash truck is outside too, So if you hear that, just ignore it. Yeah, I get that, And I guess you made the real I want to go back to the point you just made. It was really good about how we don't have late night hosts anymore. We have late night pundits and it used to be Yeah, and like I get, I don't watch late night TV anymore. And it's not that I don't like the format. I've always been a fan of the format and see friends on there, but I don't tune in anymore because if I want to get my politics, I'll go to the news or I'll watch you know, I'll see what you've written on PJ. Like, there's so many places to get my politics. But these guys used to be like think about Jimmy Kimmel Cruiser, Think about how like on the Edge he used to be, Like I Corola used to do some crazy stuff. He and Corolla did The Man Show together, and then they went in the opposite direction politically, completely opposite, pulled out Jimmy. Well, you know what, that money is hard to But you know, when Jimmy got offered that talk show, he wasn't a full time advocate. Okay, he morphed into that during the Trump years. He didn't sell out. They didn't say, but I first met. I don't think he sold out to get the show. I think he sold out to keep the show. Yeah, oh yeah, I first met Jimmy. I don't know if you remember. There was a comedy show called Win Benstein's Money on Comedy Central. There was a game show and I was I was a contestant on that show. When my daughter was first about to be born, and first born, I didn't want to travel as much, so I started looking around. I was like, okay, I'll go on a game show. I did a couple of cruise ship gigs. I didn't like quicker stuff like that, but I was on I was on Rock and Roll Jeopardy during its brief experience in appearance, and then I did When Benstein's Money, when Jimmy was the sidekick and Jimmy was nothing. Jimmy was nothing but edged. Then he said, he said, he asked me about my name. When I was being introduced, I said, well, my realize name is long and polish and he said, so you opted for a gay porn name instead, and that was the old Jimmy Kevel. But yeah, he sold out and the advocacy is just tedious. It's not if you go back and if anybody wants to go see in recent memory, I mean, it's easy to go, Oh, go watch Carson. Yeah, go watch Carson, but go look at all there's so many good Craig ferguson clips online. He's only been off the air with like eight years now, and he was he and Conan were the last two who weren't political sellouts. Yeah, and they were the ones who the last two who were fun to watch. And they were the last two they got booted out of their network contracts. Yeah, and and well Craig left on his own. He didn't want to do that anymore. Well because the contract the contracts that they were offering him were going to put a muzzle on him. And you want yeah, yeah, so it was it's it's possibly it's a genre that has a rich tradition that used to be fun to watch. I grew up watching Carson and they've killed it. They've just stuck. They've got people who are It's not so much laughter. There's a laugh, there's an applause sign, but it's more like a yeah, yeah, you go kind of response. It's clapter, clacter, that's what it's. I always forget whatever people like to call that. It's clapter. It's the perfect description. That's like watching the view. There's no punchline. It's like, yes, it's like watching the view. I went on. I was on the Doctor Phil show a few years ago, some years ago. I don't know where the video is. It was right before the streaming era, so they didn't send me clips. It just like if you catch it on TV, let me know. But I've never seen it, not recently, but it doesn't matter. I was on there was a conservative foil. It was a show about slut shaming, and it seems so quaint now given what we talked about. And it was such a bizarre experience because you got to see very much how structured the show is and how you know, like they've got the narrative set before you go up there. But I and I didn't meet Doctor Phil at all. I mean, I just until I was on stage. That's the first time I saw the man, and I was seated next to him, and because I was a conservative foil, it was obvious that me and this other guy that were there were set up as the people who were going to get all of the you know, the abuse. And there were a few times when doctor Phil was and I was making you know, cruiser. I was brilliant, obviously, like I was making great points, and the audience was with me, like the audience was clapping, which was pissing off Doctor Phil. And he would say these lines that you could tell were already in a can and it was like, this is my applause line, and so I need to wrestle back this applause. And so he would say these lines and I would think, gosh, this is so canned. You know. It's clear to me that he didn't care about this subject. He wasn't really interested. I honestly think doctor Phil is actually on my side when it comes to the issue. I just think he was thinking show business and he was like, I need the response. So when I'm not getting the response I want, I'm going to save this one line. Isn't Donald Trump the worst? You know? And I was like ah, and I'd see that all the time in lefty entertainment, and it's just so ridiculous. It really is canned lately, and it's it's difficult, and you know, people can say this is sour grapes for me. It's not sour grapes for me. No, I'm not that famous. But then again, if I gotten famous in my twenties, I'd be dead now. So it's better off I have had. I have had. I am happy with my career. Like I said, I've been around the world. That's how I met my former spouse and have my beautiful daughter. That's how I've made friends like you. Because the comedy did help me transition into politics. Okay, in my defense too, I think another part of the problem with all of this is a lot of these people who get the TV gigs, they really don't. They think they know about politics, especially in the social media era, they don't. I worked on my first campaign in nineteen eighty four. I began doing political activism almost at the same time I started doing stand up so they always dovetailed, even though I kept them far apart for a long time for obvious reasons. Because I'm a conservative in the entertainment industry, but well read. Also, you have alternative sources of news. You get mainstream news and all news. Yeah. But by the time I started being the comedian who was spouting off about politics, I had had decades of political activism under my belt too. I wasn't just some guy who was reading New York Times headlines and regurgitating them. I was like, so that's another part of the problem and why it has to be canned, because these guys don't have the intellectual chops to have. All they know is I'm telling you, if you're just if you're a wealthy leftist celeb in LA just hanging out with other wealthy leftists celebrit you don't know anything. You know not you don't know anything. You know nothing. Oh my gosh. As evidence by like, remember recently, I mean maybe recently, like last summer, somebody tweeted that their car got stolen off the street in LA something that happens every day, and at this point in Los Angeles, the police have already actually made the announcement if you get your car stolen and that's not a police call, you file a report with your insurance. They're not even responding to those things anymore. And so this person was complaining, right and complaining about the politics, and Seth Rogan responded and he was like, well, I've lived in LA for thirty years or whatever, and what kind of an idiot leaves something valuable in your car. You don't leave anything valuable in your car. Everybody knows that. Victim blaming, victim shaming. I'm like, what the hell does Seth Rogan know about? Well, how much you have to think about leaving something valuable in your car? Or he has a driveway probably with a garage and a gate that walks. I have friends who like our mutual friend Mickey, who's an actress and a single woman living in Los Angeles. She's got to keep her head on a swivel when she walks from her car to her apartment. You know, it's like he doesn't even live in the same universe. Yeah. Well yeah, And when he was broken enough to be living in a place where he shouldn't leave anything valuable in his car, he didn't have anything valuable, so he wouldn't know. Well, in there, I would posit that Seth Rogen has never been that broke. He comes from money. Okay, probably, I don't know that much about Seth Rogan. I told you it's it's uh, it's it's I think that there is going to be a bit of a backlash. You didn't ask this, But I don't think this is going to be the state of affairs forever forever, because as we all know, the network TV model is kind of a dinosaur anyway, and it's it's on its way out, although maybe not as quickly as we would like it to be. And I think, like what Kevin and I are trying to do right now, we've been talking about this since the pandemic. The pandemic killed a lot of comedy clubs, Dangerfields in New York clothes. Yeah, that hurt. And and I said, well, we don't need comedy clubs anymore. I said, you and I are conservative comedians, and Kevin does no politics on stage either, but we're branded conservative commute because we're lunatics. Well, and we also work for a conservative media company. So that's it's it's hard to duck that. But yeah, but I said, I said, you and I don't care if we're on Kimmel or Colbert. You and I don't care if we ever get a television show again. We can do whatever we want now, I said, screw the comedy clubs. Let's find small theaters. Hell, let's do six months of VFW halls and American Legion clubs. You know that that'll be you know, and that's and comedy in a small venue is fund I've done comedy in front of fourteen thousand people, and I've done comedy in front of eight Okay, and I can there's a happy medium there. But I love intimate comedy. So and we're and that's very freeing because we're going to go to places all over America that won't want to cancel us, first of all, and that's a lot of America, as you know. That's like everything in between the Coach except Chicago and which has my favorite stand up club ever, and they don't book me in there anymore because the bookers are raging lefties. Club. I'm not gonna say, I'll tell you off because just in case I've got this wrong, but I don't think it's There were there were a few clubs where I was a very popular headliner, and I knew along that the bookers were raging lefties or the owners. And then I started being on Red Eye a lot, and then all of a sudden, I wasn't headlining there anymore. Yeah, so it's like it's not it's basically a two dot connect the dots. Let's talk about that for a second. Let's talk about Red Eye, not necessarily a show, but what red Eye was, and particularly Gutfeld's place in conservative comedy or comedy on the right. But tell us a little bit about your experience. I was a huge Red Eye fan. I probably saw you on Red Eye before I even met you, and and you, I mean, we've had this discussion personally and online forever. But there's this idea I feel like we both feel this way. I'd love you to elucidate on it, that the conservative media space is really missing a huge opportunity with the idea of like entertainment shows, nighttime entertainment, nighttime talk shows. It's happening a little bit in the podcast phase, but other larger networks like Fox, with a lot of cash, you know, and a lot of opportunity, don't seem to get it. Like a guy like Jimmy Kimmel is popular, but a guy like Greg Gutfield gets way more viewers than Jimmy Kimmel, I don't understand why power players on the right aren't replicating that. Sometimes they do, and when they do, you know, it's all too forced. It's like, we're going to do conservative comedy. Now, We're going to do conservative music. Now we're going to do I'm gonna throw out a quote I mentioned Breitbart earlier, who we both knew and loved back in the day. Andrew and I hardly ever talked about politics, but we did talk about media a lot. And and there was a there was a The Right Network was being launched in I don't know if you remember that. They had all this seed money and they just decided to blow it all on promotion parties and everything. And and and Breitbart and I are probably alcohol involved, were down in Kancun, Mexico talking about it one night and I said, I said, you know, we talked about entertainment and this and that, and this was in red Ice heyday. And I said, what would you do like differently here? He said, sure as hell. Wouldn't call it the Right Network, he said, he said, does NBC call themselves the left network? No, but that's what they are. And so and that's the thing. It's like when it is done. One of the reasons it's not done consistently is because the law point to stuff like that. I go, well, that didn't work. Well, it didn't work because the hand fisted way you went about it. You don't say this is conservative comedy, this is a conservative sitcom. This is a conservative show. You weave You weave conservative or libertarian principles into it without you know, blaring trumpets to announce their arrival. That's what you do. And you don't shoehorn them in either, like they do with liberal talking points on so many shows right now. You don't pigott. It's got to be organic. It's got to be part of the script you're writing. It can't be like, oh, here's the part where we have to talk about this, and then you shove it into the script. That's what's like, Like I did, like, here's a simple thing, and this is something that we're more sensitive to because we're conservatives who've been watching too much woke stuff on TV. But FX did a did a series about the Exorcist for five, six, seven years ago or something. I just watched it two nights ago. I didn't even know about it, but I'm it was good, and it was good. And what I thought was most amazing was that, yeah, some of the crazy people were religious, uh fanatics and everything, but the two main exorcist guys Priest, Defrocked Priest, were not portrayed as cartoonish people of faith. And you don't get that much you go. Their faith was treated very respectfully, very genuinely. It wasn't the main focus all the time. The way they wove it into the show was beautiful, and that was that's a conservative message right there. Oh, look we've got we've got a we've got a priest on here, and he's not a whack job and he's not a molester and he's not So I thought that was a small example. But that's the kind of thing we need to do more of. I hope we can are doing more of it. I know you've you've you know, you've gotten into production and stuff like that, which is like way too much attention to detail for me. But if you if you want me to write something, sure I'll start writing scripts again. I'm in the mood. But uh, but that's so, it's a it's it's a multi layered thing. It's uh, as we talked about in my podcast, I say, nuance is kind of dead now and people forget and the nuance there is that a lot of people who you pitch things to will then point to the stuff that didn't work. Like if I went, like, you know, told Fox News right now, you know, I know, let's do a comedy sketch show, they'll go, well, you know, we tried that half hour news hour thing and that didn't work, and said, well, it's because you hired all lefty writers and lefty actors the show. And and now a conservative sketch show. And I'm not calling I'm saying, don't make it conservative. Don't. Here's the baseline liberal. That's it, the baseline for services Right now, all we want to watch is something that's not gonna want us, that that we don't have to cringe about. We don't. I've been watching nothing but horror films since July and it took me like a month to figure out why. And it's because I don't run into a lot of woke I don't. I don't have to sit there and wait for the other shoe to drop. Every once in a while there will be one, but I'm going I'm still just watching horror films because I don't have to worry about it anymore. Somebody there's gonna be and I do Hallmark movies, you don't have to worry about the woke. We moved off a Hallmark because they did get a little woke. But we do a lot bit of the older stuff. But yeah, but they've got Candace still has that network, doesn't she, Cameron? She just do they do? Do they do a do they do a whole holiday thing like Christmas? We should do a mash up one day and then maybe I'll sit in with you guys and we'll do a holiday movie, and then you guys sit in with me and we'll do a horror flick. Yeah, we need to do that. I mean, me and my huge horror fans. And one of the reasons is exactly why you say, because I get this question all the time, because especially as an evangelical Christian, you know, there are a lot of people who are like, oh, if you like horror movies, that's satanic, that's you know, these are scary images and this demonic, and my thing is like, horror is the last place where you can tell the bare naked truth about the battle between good and evil. Where you can use God's name, you can use God and Jesus as a superhero. And also most horror is such a it's such basic storytelling. I don't have to worry about taking my daughter. And I know this sounds foreign to some people, but I don't have to worry about taking my daughter to a horror movie and worrying about some surprise about trans this or whoever this or oh my god. It's not a story about how people identify sexually. It's a story about good and evil. There's values a story about essentially about people who too stupid to know not to go into the basement when the lights are out with all of horror right there. You need to come with us to the Colorado the Telly Ride Horror Festival. Oh yeah, I know, you've seen our pictures. We have so much fun, and it's and here's the thing, it's it's chalk full of liberals, of course, because that's those are the people that go to the film festivals. It's chalk full of liberals. And so it's so fun to stand in line and listen to people talk about what they've seen and not and they don't understand that they've seen very traditional conservative messaging on their screen, you know. But yeah, we have a great time. Maybe you could book a gig out there. It's a great place. I've done a gig and tellery ride before. Not in the winter, though I did one in the summer there. Who absolutely gorgeous. You've never seen any place like it? Yeah, I've done, but it's so yeah. Yes, So the bare minimum for any conservative to be entertained right now is just don't offend us with stupid woke stuff. I've actually seen woke or liberal things woke as organic parts of a story that don't offend me as much. It's the shoehorning. It's the shoehorning that always gets me. It's like, we're going along, we're going along, everything's fine, and oh, right now, fifteen trans guys on a unicycle and well, and then the abortion and you know, you know, and then with a vagina hat. Then unicycle trans guys with a vagina hat. That's what I'm saying right now. I'm tired of unicycle trans guys with a vagina hat and abortion. Also gender pay gap. That's the title of this episode. That's gonna be the title of this episode. I we gotta start rubbing it up. But I, yeah, I totally agree with you, and that I think is the issue. And it's the issue because I still pitch. I still pitch. I still pitch projects to people with money, like conservative people with money, and my project's never really going. Maybe they're not that good, fair enough, I might not be the best script writer. But also I feel like partly one of the responses I get back all the time is that it's just, well, your main character needs to be more conservative, or you need to have a speech in here about this is just a story. It's when I made my short film Minty about Harriet Tubman, and it was just a retelling of her as an action hero, just goofy, silly fun. But I picked it because of the story of freedom right Ultimately, it's the battle for freedom now. I packaged it as a black exploitation style action film, but underneath the messages that people don't understand what it takes to be free or what it means to be free. But that wasn't a blatant message I had to hit anyone over the head with. But it seems like a lot of people want to fund who have the money I need to fund projects like this. What they want is blatant, hitting you over the head stuff, even though they say that's the problem they have with the left wing stuff, and that's the problem with anybody who's funding anything, and like and like, i I'll just I'll hit you with one one of two more things. First of all, like when I had the script that was really hot about twenty five years ago, they were sitting there and they were going like, maybe we can do this, maybe we can do that. They wanted to be more even more political, and at the time that wasn't as popular and I wouldn't have wanted to do it, and everything within one guy one, this one producer who I respected and I'd been working with for a while. He said, no, here's what would be more funny. And I went, oh, let me stop you there. And I said, you tell me how you're going to package this, do that, do this, do that, show runners dead blah blah, don't ever tell me what's funny again. Yeah, And he was like he was shocked because no one had ever talked to him that way. But I told you yesterday, this is why this is important, especially comedy, and why I think we need more U We're on the right right now, and gott felt we can have a whole episode about Guttfeld about that, about his place, on what he's doing over there, and why red Eye work. I mean, this version of his show's different, but the heart of Red Eye still beats in it and a lot of replicated a million times over. But what One of the things that made Red Eye popular at the time was that it wasn't just because he had comedians and musicians in talking about politics, but we were all like, yeah, we're just goofy comedians. And not everyone was a righty either. He had lefties on all the time. I used to be on with Amy. I was on with Amy Schumer, I was on with Imagen, Lloyd Weber. I don't know how many times I was on with Image and Lloyd Webb, like ten times at least. But this is why it's important. I told you to ask me about the lawyer from Chicago. Yeah, like two months ago. Here it is lawyer from Chicago. Yeah. I do that all the time too. I write down notes and then don't look at him the whole The lawyer from I'm I'm It was parents weekend at the University of Arizona, c of months ago, and I'm down. I had to go down by the u of A before we went to the game that night, and so I stopped in one of my favorite bars, get a burger beer a coming back, and I started talking to these parents who are in town for the week. And they're both lawyers from Chicago. They're both left these but they both love stand up and so we're getting into that, and and the wife, the husband and wife, and uh, she said, she said, stand up comedy really is the last stand for free speech in this country, isn't it. And I said, oh yeah, I've been saying that for years. It is the firewall. It is the last thing, and they're trying to ruin it. They're trying to shut us up. We're the people who were supposed to be out. You should, okay, I said, you can't hide behind the i'm a comedian thing. Well, if you're doing good work, I think it's not your height. You're not hiding behind anything. You're doing what you're supposed to be doing. You're not just out hacking it up. You're hacking it up and just being offensive for the sake of being offensive. Then no. But if they start like like I said Lenny Bruce. FBI agents and undercover LA cops in the audience trying to take him down just for dropping F bombs. And if they succeed in shutting us down completely, which I don't think they will, it's the whole shifting nature of the entertainment industry that I was talking about. I don't think they will, but it really is because once they shut us up, we're all in a gulag. That's it. I'm seriously not that. If you ever wonder what real function comics have in the world, that's it right now, because if they shut us up here, because it's the first amendments toast, comedy is art, and the arts are always the first thing to go in in tyranny for that very reason, right because our art really is the definitive free speech, and so artists are the first to be jailed, they're the first to be wrangled. So you're absolutely right. Well, I've got to go, But before we go, this has been a great I mean, obviously we could have a million of these conversations. Maybe we should, but I don't know. Maybe on your comedy tour you want to put in a little add a little discussion session bring me aboard. We'd already talked about that. We'd already talked about doing maybe twenty five minutes each and then having a Q and A afterwards. Maybe that's the way we want to do this tour, once we get it into bigger once we get it into bigger venues, that's what we moved. That's yeah, So that's that'll be fun, that's right. Yeah, Well tell people in the meantime where they can find more from you. Uh Pjamedia dot com newly revamped website. We just lost the We just launched the THH news app today. Townhall news app just launched today, and uh so you can find me there. I do a newsletter every week, they called the Morning Briefing. It's got humor, it's got art, and it's got links to hardcore news all and then I do some news commentary at the top, stuff like that. But hopefully you'll be able to find me soon in a town near you, because anything outside the coast. Kevin and I are trying to We're looking at Utica, New York right now, Lavonia, Michigan. These are the kind of places we're going to go to to start, and then we'll come here to Blue Tucson to record everything because I still get away with a lot of stuff here hometown. I love it. Well, of course I'll be there to support you guys whenever and wherever. Well, thanks for being in on the conversation with us. I highly recommend you subscribe to Cruisers Morning Briefing over at PJ Media. It's a great catch all. So if you just want a rundown every day delivered right into your inboxing and it's free, and it's free, it's free, and if you're conservative, it's free and it still supports conservative media because we make ad revenue off of that. So yeah, but it doesn't cost you anything. There you go, all right, thank you money. Well, thanks for joining us today, and remember, if you have any comments you want to get in on this conversation, you go ahead and send me an email j lt y at ProtonMail dot com. J lt Y at ProtonMail dot com. Hit me up on Twitter at real Kira Davis. Buy my book Drawing Linevatives Need to Battle Fiercely in the arena of ideas or the titles something like that, Let's Got a Jacket blurb by I Stephen Cruiser. There Stephen Cruiser has endorsed this book, So if you like what you heard from him today, go get So this was good and this is a conversation that we could break into like fifteen different party. Right, Maybe we'll do some of it on my podcast. Maybe'll do somebody on somebody on your I feel like there's something in heres, like I'm always fascinated to have these discussions and I'm always looking for people to have these discussions with. So there is something in here. I'm always down to talk about this. I will talk about I will talk about anything having to do with comedy all day long. It's my it's my thing. It's my That's like I would much rather talk about comedy than anything else other than my kid. All right, everybody, Well we're gonna go, but until we meet again. Remember every once in a while, just stop and listen to yourself. That we won't say, then we won't say, oh we got it no longer. Take that OA with bath it gonna be okay. Our brains an that we won't to pay, then we won't to pay Oh we gott it does no lot? Get dig that O and D its gonna be okay. This has been a presentation of the FCB podcast network where real talk lives. Visit us online at fcbpodcasts dot com.
