John Mulaney Seeks the Truth While Eating Spicy Wings ｜ Hot Ones [W78ChV1ZE-A].webm.wav.txt

 Chewing and chewing all around the mouth of the chicken goes.
 No opinion on the taste.
 And then suddenly, it's like, hey, we have a consensus.
 [LAUGHTER]
 [MUSIC PLAYING]
 Hey, what's going on, everybody?
 For First We Feast, I'm Sean Evans,
 and you're watching Hot Ones.
 It's the show with hot questions and even hotter wings.
 And today, we're joined by John Mulaney.
 He's an Emmy Award-winning writer and comedian
 who rose to prominence during his time at Saturday Night Live.
 And the time since, he's done everything
 from acclaimed Broadway show to a children's musical
 and a number of beloved comedy specials, including his latest,
 Baby J, which is now available to stream on Netflix.
 John Mulaney, welcome to the show.
 Sean, thank you for having me.
 Do you let viewers know that it's 11 AM?
 You know, sometimes it comes up along the way, you know?
 OK.
 And that, for some, this is their first anything
 that they've tasted for the day.
 You and I both are having hot sauce for breakfast.
 And you're right.
 I think it is important to be transparent about that fact
 to the audience watching at home.
 Maybe, or maybe not.
 I just-- it just-- it's of note.
 [MUSIC PLAYING]
 Here we go.
 Did you ever have braces?
 No, never in my life.
 Oh.
 I did, so I'm very conscious of eating in public.
 Because in high school, you would go, all right.
 Don't worry, John, we're going to be very kind in the edit.
 John will be very kind in the edit.
 I appreciate that.
 I appreciate that.
 But I still have to do my 14-year-old due diligence.
 Yeah, yeah.
 Yeah.
 Make sure I don't have chicken in my braces, which I haven't
 been there for 20 years.
 [MUSIC PLAYING]
 Very tasty.
 Does intense scrutiny or intense media scrutiny
 of a comedian's personal life-- is that a force of good
 or a force of evil when it comes to writing new material?
 Some people-- it doesn't take media scrutiny for--
 sometimes we comedians just start to eat our own tail.
 And our new jokes refer to our old jokes,
 or a lot of it is stories about being a comedian.
 So not so much media scrutiny, but more just
 cannibalizing your own life as a comedian, I think,
 can be dangerous.
 Waylon Jennings, I heard-- you know those Outlaw Country guys?
 Yeah, yeah.
 They had a lot of songs about being Outlaw Country guys.
 Are you sure Hank done it this way?
 Or don't you think this Outlaw business is done,
 got out of hand?
 Yeah, yeah.
 And someone said to Waylon Jennings once,
 you guys used to sing about my life,
 but now you just sing about your own life.
 I thought that's kind of the peril
 of autobiographical comedy sometimes.
 [MUSIC PLAYING]
 Curry verde.
 What does that mean?
 Green curry.
 [LAUGHTER]
 I thought it meant true.
 Verde for a second I thought meant true.
 I was like, oh, what an interesting name,
 means green curry.
 That'd be very nice.
 There we go, two for two.
 Two for two.
 So as a teenager, I understand that you spent many a weekend
 pouring over archival TV footage at Chicago's Museum
 of Broadcast Communications.
 Did you have a favorite exhibit or curiosity
 like did you ever find yourself marveling at Bozo the Clown
 memorabilia or take a moment to visit Edward R. Murrow's plaque
 at the Radio Hall of Fame?
 I did see all those exhibits.
 They also had stuff from the very first broadcasts ever.
 And they had these puppets called Cucola, Fran, and Ollie,
 which I guess were the original Coco Melon.
 This was like the hottest children's programming.
 And they're the rattiest little jive-ass 1951 puppet.
 You can't imagine that this was a show, but it was.
 They just look like socks or like the leather thing
 you put over a golf driver.
 That stuff was interesting to me.
 I went into the archives, though,
 because my parents got me this thing that
 was the best of Johnny Carson.
 So it was like a video, and it had all these famous clips
 of Johnny Carson on it.
 So I was really interested in that,
 as most 10-year-olds are.
 And so I went down just to watch full episodes of Carson,
 just like a full episode from a random day in 1971,
 and see what it was like.
 And it was interesting because they're not that good.
 They're not all-- not every show--
 People look back on that sort of--
 Well, you just pick--
 I mean, if you're on the air for 30 years,
 and you have five good bits a year,
 you've got endless reels of the best of.
 But it was nice to see just sort of a little bit
 of fantasy, just sort of meandering interviews,
 bad monologues.
 Comforting in a way.
 It was comforting in a way, yes, as I began my career
 as a broadcaster.
 They're not all hits.
 What does that mean, lemon pepper?
 It means green curry.
 It means curry of truth.
 Is this a light flavor?
 Yeah, we're still in sort of a delicate touch kind of stage.
 Oh, no, I assume from how many we have
 that you have to pace yourself.
 But also, just in general, this is a little even lighter
 than curry beard.
 Yeah, the last one.
 Yeah, we're pulling-- yeah, yeah.
 We're moving some levers.
 We're pulling some levers over here, John.
 Yeah, the old-- no.
 Playing some psychological games.
 Shades of light and dark.
 Yes.
 That's very good.
 No need to name names, but what's
 the worst reaction you ever recall
 getting from an SNL celebrity host to a sketch
 that you've pitched them in?
 Josh Brolin.
 You said name names, right?
 No, no, Josh Brolin went, well, this isn't funny.
 As I was writing something and I started to walk him through it,
 and he went, yeah, no, but that's not funny.
 It was so a matter of fact, I wouldn't even call it the worst.
 I found it very refreshing.
 It's actually like valuable feedback.
 Completely valuable.
 And it was early enough on Tuesday night
 that I didn't proceed with it.
 It actually was-- I'm not answering your question
 because it was such a gentlemanly exchange of ideas.
 Hey, Josh Brolin, do you like this idea?
 Let me see.
 No, that's not funny.
 Actually, he did me quite a service.
 There were others who--
 I remember we had a joke when Mick Jagger hosted that was,
 hey, everyone, I'm Mick Jagger.
 So mothers, lock up your daughters,
 and daughters, lock up your mothers.
 And he listened and he went, no, I don't like that.
 And I actually remember I made Seth Meyers read that one.
 Because I was going over a bunch of jokes,
 and we got to that one.
 It was-- let me redo that.
 The joke was, I'm Mick Jagger, so mothers, lock up
 your daughters, or should I say daughters, lock up your mothers.
 And when we got to that one, I just handed it to Seth
 and was like, then there's that one.
 You could read that one.
 [LAUGHTER]
 What is this one?
 So this one right here, Chile Lengua de Fuego.
 Don't ask me what it means.
 I have no idea.
 The curry of truth from the Latin.
 [LAUGHTER]
 What do you remember about performing at The Note
 in Wicker Park?
 Was that the first place that you ever tried stand up?
 Yes.
 I was 18.
 I did sort of like-- there was a variety show at The Note.
 I remember being very frustrated that I wasn't way, way better
 immediately.
 After watching comedians for 18 years,
 I really wanted to begin--
 At that level.
 Yes, and I really had no tolerance for my own level
 at that moment.
 But it was very fun.
 It was one of those things where--
 and this is a lot of early comedy.
 The audience is the other people performing.
 And then in the very, very beginning,
 it's often a bunch of people that you invited,
 family and friends, who you're then quite resentful are there
 once you get up.
 And it's not going that great.
 You're like, and why all these motherfuckers
 even in the audience?
 God damn it.
 Well, look at you now, John.
 Look at you now.
 Look at me now.
 11 AM, pounding chicken.
 [LAUGHTER]
 How long does it take taste to hit your brain?
 I would say on like 30 seconds.
 I would put a 30 second clock on that.
 I'm surprised how long some of these--
 You take a bite.
 You think you're in the clear--
 I'm chewing.
 I'm chewing.
 No opinion is forming on the taste.
 Chewing and chewing all around the mouth of the chicken goes.
 No opinion on the taste.
 And then suddenly, it's like, hey, we have a consensus.
 [LAUGHTER]
 This is really nice.
 So earlier this month, more than 11,000 TV and film writers
 went on strike, marking the first stoppage of its kind
 in the streaming era.
 Let's say this thing stretches until like November
 or December.
 What does that actually mean for the people who love TV
 and movies, in your opinion?
 Ooh, it'd be interesting to see.
 Now, if I were to be a touch cynical,
 there's a lot of content already out there.
 And I feel like we've all been saying that for years.
 Like, god, there's so many shows.
 There's so many shows.
 There's so many shows.
 And now we'll see how many there are.
 You only have the ones you have.
 If everyone's just going to continue watching streaming TV,
 I wonder when it will hit a point where you go,
 oh, there's not--
 as a viewer, it's frustrating that there's not news done.
 What to you-- like, if you take money out of the equation,
 like, what do you think is the most important wedge
 issue that's at stake in this negotiation?
 Because so much has changed since 2007 and the last one.
 It's interesting.
 On the picket line, I've heard more and more about AI,
 which I thought was--
 I thought was not a fringe issue,
 but kind of off to the side.
 But maybe as a comedy writer, like, maybe you're
 sort of insulated.
 Because I don't imagine AI being, like, funny.
 OK.
 I also am very confident that there
 is something about--
 that there is a profound difference between knowing
 you're hearing a joke from a person
 and knowing you're hearing it from AI.
 And the audience isn't just looking for the actual--
 Like a mechanical--
 Content of the mechanical-- yeah.
 But I have famously terrible instincts.
 And I've never known what's going to happen in the future.
 So what do I know?
 But I have heard AI jokes that are solid.
 And-- or they're solid.
 Sorry.
 I wouldn't call them crossing over into good.
 But they're solid.
 So maybe AI could replace that 15th joke in an award show
 monologue.
 That's fine.
 And it acknowledges-- you know when
 they have to acknowledge a movie that's nominated or something,
 but the joke isn't that good?
 Maybe AI could provide that.
 Well, only time will tell, I guess.
 Only time will tell.
 Are you ready to move on here to the back half, John?
 Yeah, absolutely.
 So this is the spicy shark here in the sick spot.
 Spicy shark, born in New England, famously spicy place.
 Known for its indigenous chilies.
 Indigenous chilies, curries, and paprikas.
 Yeah, I can already feel that.
 You know what it is?
 It hits the back of the tongue.
 Or it tastes like a sweeter sauce that's gone bad.
 Kind of like, oh, this is a nice flavor.
 Oh, but it's been out in the sun.
 It was sitting on the dashboard while we were parked
 in a Target parking lot for July.
 So in 2020, you were nominated for a pair of Emmys
 for your musical special, The Sack Lunch Bunch, a project
 you've described as being as satisfying as anything
 I've ever done.
 What's the origin story of "Grandma's Got a Boyfriend,"
 clearly a song very much shaped by an enthusiasm
 for musical theater?
 "Grandma's Got a Boyfriend" came from my nana
 having a boyfriend, a wonderful guy named David.
 They began dating, I think, when I was 10.
 It was just-- I knew immediately as a kid,
 I go, this is a funny predicament.
 You know, that's my grandma's boyfriend.
 It just was funny right away.
 Then you get to see your mom and aunts and uncles,
 grown people, having a sort of, you're not my dad reaction.
 Which I'm being very general, and I'm
 glossing over tons of nuance in terms of my own family
 and how they appreciated and loved David.
 But there was that in some ways.
 Just because it's new.
 It was so funny to me.
 And they had so many opinions on it.
 And I remember my grandma's boyfriend--
 I remember my grandma's boyfriend.
 My grandma's boyfriend called the house once,
 and my aunt picked up, not my nana.
 And she went, hello.
 And he went, bonsoir, mon cheri.
 And she was like, what, David?
 And everyone made fun of him.
 [LAUGHTER]
 Adobo loco.
 That means crazy ass.
 I'd actually say this is seven.
 This is quite good.
 Wow.
 Is it your favorite one so far?
 A little bit in that I like the base flavor the most.
 OK, interesting.
 Interesting.
 Like it is that smokier taste.
 There's a little bit of barbecue sauce.
 Has a feeling of a Worcestershire sauce.
 Has a slight steak sauce feel.
 I like that.
 There we go.
 Talk about a crazy abode.
 They're not lying.
 They ain't lying, John.
 They ain't lying.
 This is one of the craziest abodes I've ever walked into.
 Absolutely crazy.
 People kind of don't remember that these shows,
 like "Best Week Ever," actually had really funny people,
 like you and Michael Che on them.
 Did you find that to be a good way to drill comedy,
 or are they kind of different skill sets?
 No, "Best Week Ever" was a great training ground, especially
 for "Saturday Night Live."
 You just have these rather dry prompts of something
 that happened in the news, and you have to come up
 with five jokes for it.
 But in general, I liked assignment writing.
 I still like assignment writing.
 If I write a joke for someone's award show monologue
 and they do it, watching that, I think
 that's the most satisfying thing still.
 Really?
 You watch someone else hit the home run.
 And then whoever I'm with, I go, that was my joke.
 It really is fun.
 But it works.
 No, it's also funny when it doesn't work.
 Yeah, that's what I was going to ask.
 Very funny when it doesn't work.
 Can you imagine? Because they trusted you?
 [LAUGHTER]
 [MUSIC PLAYING]
 It has a missile on it, and it's called the bomb,
 and it's called "Beyond Insanity."
 [MUSIC PLAYING]
 Oh, yeah.
 You can tell.
 Yeah, you didn't have to wait for a consensus,
 I feel like, on that one.
 It was when it got here, I knew it was going to be bad.
 Yeah.
 And that's saying a lot.
 I've done a lot of damage to my synapses.
 And I could tell right away.
 OK, first impressions.
 Yeah, yeah.
 It's very hot.
 Right?
 Goes without saying.
 It's a hot sauce.
 It's the bomb.
 It's beyond insane.
 Some might say.
 It's not good.
 It's not good food.
 You understand?
 Yeah, yeah.
 It doesn't make food better.
 I follow.
 I follow.
 I'm not trying to damage their business.
 Not a good product.
 I think this is their business and product,
 is missing the target that much.
 But you're kind of like straight face, taking it to the dome.
 It's kind of amazing to behold, honestly.
 Oh, please.
 I appreciate that.
 But as we both know, neither of us likes compliments.
 Certainly hot.
 But I'm more struck by the flavor isn't--
 the flavor is metallic.
 And poisonous, kind of.
 It just sucks.
 Yeah.
 It's just not a thing where you go, you know,
 I'm going to put a little da bomb on this.
 Yeah.
 No, it's not.
 Do you have a Mount Rushmore of comedy albums,
 the top four of all time?
 Ooh.
 And tears are coming down my face now, I feel.
 Me too.
 Yeah.
 Shared suffering right here.
 Sure.
 OK.
 Four to chisel into the stone.
 There we go.
 Strategic Grill locations, Mitch Hedberg.
 It felt at the time like there were lots of Hedberg imitators.
 But I think in large part, they've fallen away.
 And now you're just left with this totally singular voice.
 I mean, at one point he just says,
 I wish I had a briefcase handcuffed to my wrist.
 All right.
 Like, there's no joke.
 It's just a fun thought that he has.
 That was always very inspiring to me,
 that sometimes you can just say things that aren't even
 like set up punchline.
 I've never cried this way, where I'm not actually feeling it.
 They're just rolling down the side of my face.
 Bring the Pain.
 Chris Rock's Bring the Pain.
 Very, very unique.
 Very against the grain.
 In late high school, I got I think all of Eddie
 Izzard's albums up to that time.
 Dressed to Kill.
 I can't remember the one where he does the Old Testament
 and the New Testament.
 Great, great album.
 Dave Attell, Skanks for the Memories.
 That's just the best comedian to ever perform in clubs
 at the absolute top of his game.
 It's just a great, great record.
 Record.
 Sounding like--
 It's the sauce.
 You know, it's the bomb.
 80-year-old man.
 Yeah, the bomb is breaking out.
 It's aging you.
 It's aging me a lot, yeah.
 Alchemy.
 I should slow down, because something might hit me
 that I'm not aware of yet.
 But at first--
 I wasn't going to get in your way.
 I just like letting the runaway train go, you know?
 I'm just trying to keep up.
 Tastes like fish food.
 Oh, you know what?
 Do you taste that?
 Yeah, well, I've only ever smelled fish food.
 But actually, I'm making the connection right now.
 Thank you.
 Let me be clear.
 It tastes like how fish food smells.
 I don't know why I'm so defensive.
 Like, if I ate fish food, that's fine.
 That's my choice.
 Did you ever have goldfish?
 No, never in my life.
 Really?
 Never in my life, no.
 Yeah.
 Here's the problem when you're a kid,
 especially if you like taking care of people.
 You want to feed them more, but you're not supposed to.
 And you're like, I love this fish,
 and I know there's only one thing I ever give you.
 And I gave it to you already today, but you're still there.
 And I want you to like me, and I want
 you to tell other fish that I'm a good guy.
 So I'd love to feed you again and again and again.
 But you can't.
 You can't do that.
 It's really hard.
 I think it's a very good--
 it's a very good test for people pleasing children.
 Can you have a boundary with this fish?
 And it's food.
 And it's hard.
 But the results are that you could kill the fish.
 It's really stressful.
 I know.
 It's fucked up, actually.
 I relate.
 I relate.
 Let's find a new way to feed fish where you
 can do it multiple times a day.
 You don't have to be so burdened emotionally.
 What exactly are in these flakes where if they have it twice,
 they die?
 Sounds like it's a problem with the food manufacturer.
 These are questions not enough people are asking, John.
 No one's asking a man.
 No one's asking.
 That's like that--
 Chris Rock really inspired me.
 I say the shit everyone's thinking.
 They're afraid to say it.
 They're just afraid to say it.
 They're afraid to say it.
 I face the stage, and I take down fish food one flake
 at a time.
 Do you recommend just one tap?
 Just a nice little tap.
 Can you see yours?
 How do you feel about that?
 I feel-- that looks great.
 That looks great.
 I don't want the comments to be like, that's no tap.
 Get a good close up of it.
 I don't know why I'm trying to do this.
 Yeah, you really don't have to.
 I know.
 It's like with fish, though.
 You just want to--
 Explore.
 --please them.
 OK, cheers.
 Cheers, John.
 What a ride.
 This is called the last dab.
 Apollo.
 Tangy.
 This is still food, though.
 Right.
 And the bomb wasn't.
 Exactly.
 The bomb is something else.
 A cologne, maybe.
 Yeah, maybe just--
 This is-- like I'm still eating this.
 I know, I can see that.
 And actually, it looks like you've cleaned
 pretty much the whole plate.
 Now, this is the bomb, I believe.
 Whoa.
 No, this one here.
 You're not going back.
 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
 No, I'm not going back.
 But that one I did not do too much damage on, I have to say.
 But you know what?
 For 11 in the morning, that is wreaking havoc right there.
 And to close things out, John, we
 have a little bit of a surprise for you, all right?
 So you close out your special with this eight minute long
 autopsy for an interview that you did with GQ's Frazier
 Tharp.
 Yes.
 Frazier Tharp used to work in this very building.
 He walked these very halls.
 Really?
 And thankfully, his contact information is still active.
 So we reached out to Frazier to give you
 the final Wing 10 question.
 So this is the Frazier Tharp with a Wing 10 question for you.
 All right.
 My question to you is, at what point
 did you realize when you were writing from scratch
 and will become Baby J that you wanted to take our interview
 and make it not only a big part of the special,
 but the grand finale?
 It's good to see Frazier.
 He's just like I remembered him.
 The first time I got on stage after being away in a rehab
 for a couple of months was in May of 2021
 at the City Winery in New York on the West Side Highway.
 And I don't know if I opened with the interview,
 but I got to it pretty quickly.
 Maybe the fourth or fifth night I was doing City Winery,
 Chris Rock came by.
 He said, you should walk out and immediately open
 with the intervention.
 And I did for a long time.
 And so I did that that night.
 So I had to put the interview, because it
 had such big laughs by that point, last
 to close the show.
 So it started closing the show in May of 2021.
 I remember when it came out, the interview.
 I was in rehab and I was reading it.
 And it was a very bad time in life.
 I did think to myself, this is very funny.
 Well, John, yes.
 The wings of death, a distant memory
 that we can look back on like old Johnny Carson episodes.
 You have lived to tell the tale.
 And now there's nothing left to do but roll out
 the red carpet for you.
 This camera, this camera, this camera,
 let the people know what you have going on in your life.
 Oh, thank you.
 I didn't know this was part of it.
 Hi.
 It's me from all the wings.
 Amazing to be part of a 21st season of something.
 It's an honor to have been here.
 It was very interesting to go through these.
 They really paste them out in a way that you think you're safe
 and then they kick you again.
 It's not just easy to hard.
 It's not a perfect curve.
 I have a special called Baby Jay on Netflix.
 I'm very proud of it.
 I've enjoyed all my comedy specials,
 but this one I think is the best I've done.
 I hope you check it out and I hope you enjoy it.
 But more importantly, I hope you check it out
 because that means it gets streaming ratings that I will
 never get any information on.
 I also have nothing else coming up.
 There's a writers' strike.
 I'll be picketing maybe Warner Brothers at some point.
 Come out and bring us water or something nice like that.
 And that's it?
 Oh, I'll continue being a comedian.
 Thanks.
 Thanks, John.
 And that's the Hot Ones experience.
 That was amazing.
 I might have already kind of burned off some taste buds.
 Like, I don't know how good this is,
 but I did think to myself, like,
 this is actually something I would have again.
 Well, you know what?
 We're going to pack it up and you can have it.
 Hey.
 You can have it.
 Thank you.
 Well, then if I'm taking it home--
 Yeah, yeah.
 I might want to figure out how to put that on.
 Thanks.
 This was awesome, Sean.
 Thank you.
 You had a good time.
 Your questions are great.
 Oh, thank you.
 Thank you.
 You're the best researcher.
 You didn't ask me anything I've ever been asked before.
 Thank you, everybody.
 Hey, what's going on, Hot Ones fans?
 This is Sean Evans.
 And if you've ever watched Hot Ones
 and wondered to yourself, how hot are those sauces really?
 I could get through that with no water or milk.
 Well, now is the time to put your money where your mouth is.
 The Hot Ones season 21 lineup is now
 available in its entirety at heatness.com.
 Heatness.com.
 That's heatness.com to get your hands on the season 21 Hot Ones
 hot sauce lineup, milk not included.
 Be careful around the eyes and get them while they're hot.
 (upbeat music)
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