Kevin Nealon

0:06And I started re-watching old SNL bits. Wow. They, Sublimo Man, still holds up. Or Mr. Sublimo. I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's Sublimo Man or Mr. Sublimo Man. They hold up. Yeah, they do. You totally do. Like, twenty-hundred years later. Yeah. Well, I think a lot of times when we're familiar with the sketch that we've seen when we were growing up or whatever, it holds on because it's dear to you and it's familiar to you. But if you had never seen it before. I hadn't. Oh, you had it. But you were that classic and I'll just before I got into it. Right. That's a good question. Well, I don't know, but it's good to know that it holds up. It does. They should bring you back on to do it again. Yeah. It'd be nice. And depth perception. Those are the great kind of sketches that come up with that don't look dated. But I mean, even watch some of the original sketches from the show, like with Belushi and

0:54stuff. And they still hold up too. So it's just that one of those types of shows where, you know, sketches don't seem to age. They're funny. With stand up and not make jokes age. Well, you know, you don't talk about like a president, you know, because somebody watching it a lot, Roosevelt. Really go back. Yeah. So, yeah, you just try to stay engaged. But everything, I think if you're doing stand up and you're doing a lot of pop culture stuff, it'll be dated. Do you talk about pop culture? I'm trying to think of Wellam and how much time. Not too much. Yeah. No. I feel like you've got more personal as the years have gone on. Yeah. It's interesting and just or getting bored. It's just evolving and being bored with your old material and trying to come up with some new areas, you know, it's like being a blues musician.

1:40You just keep evolving and you know, you have to live life a little bit and then you start, you know, creating material from that. And your material should become more dimensional as you get older and you've been doing it for long enough, you know. When you first start out, you're emulating people. You know, when I started, everybody was emulating David Letterman or Richard Pryor or Steve Martin, you know. How do you fold into those three when you started? Steve? More like Steve Martin. Yeah. I like Steve Martin, Annie Kaufman and Albert Brooks, those three guys. Albert Brooks? Yeah. That must have been huge on weeds then for you. Oh, yeah, it was. Yeah. Yeah. It gets to sit down and talk to them. But yeah, so that's, and then you eventually you develop your own style and you find out who you really are and what you want to say. And what do you want to say now? What are people going to hear tonight? Very few days ago, when this airs?

2:26Well, they're going to hear basically some things from Wellam but not overly. Some newer things that I'm working on. And it's always, it's some of its observations, some of its kind of absurd stuff. Others is just spontaneous, you know. It's a little bit of audience participation. How much comes from the Tuesdays to the Laugh Factory when you have all those, I've seen one of those years ago with you bring a bunch of comics on as well and kind of just kind of riff with them, right? Yeah, yeah. Some of it comes from that. I mean, that's a good night. That's a new material night where I encourage comics to come up and try new material. And then we sit down and we jam like this and try to come up with more material. And a lot of comics come up with stuff, they go, oh, I come up with a couple of other things. This is great. Yeah. And you like them up with stuff too. So it's good.

3:12Is it hard like a musician with a set list where you need to put in new bits to get rid of old bits? Is it hard to throw them away sometimes? No, not really. Because by the time you throw them away, you've done doing them for a long time. But sometimes if you need like a, if you have a good strong ending, that's the hard thing to replace is when you have a strong ending is to replace that with something else. And you're so, you rely on it so much to get you off the stage. Do you mean like a set closer like to the show? Something that's a crowd pleaser. Right. What's, I don't know if anyone asks you what's closing the show now, but how do you know? Why have a stripper that closes the show now? And she gets a big round of applause. Yeah. You talk about living life in Craft and the Act. What have you been living recently? I mean, South Africa, probably a big one. But traveling a lot. Yeah, traveling a lot.

3:57And I'm a father now. You know, I'm a young kid. You know, just daily life. And you know, it's not so much. I was trying to say wait until blended there. Yeah. Keep going the other way. It's kind of how your point of view changes as you get older too. You know, you look at things differently. That's why I came up with a title, Wellm, but not Overly. Because I'm not like anxious. I'm not, you know, I'm not having a panic attack, but I'm a little concerned. You know, I'm a little bit overwhelmed, but not overly. I saw you on Bill Maher last week. That must be such an interesting point to be in because you know you're going to get hit with topics that are super heady, but yet you also kind of want to be funny. What was that like? How hard is that? Well, a couple of years ago I woke up and I thought I want to try some things that scare me. You know, take some risks in life. And two of the things was the Howard Stern Show and Real Time with Bill Maher.

4:44Because I'm not that political really. And then the Howard Stern thing, you know, he was on for a long time. And I used to listen to him. He was like an attack dog. You know, and I thought I'd never go on there. I wouldn't want to be put on the spot and ask you know, about my sex life. And you know, to be in a position to put people down, you know, bad-melt people. And then I finally went on there and I had a great time. But I think he had gotten, he's older now and he's more laid back. You know, he's the king of all media now. So he's not really fighting for anything. So we had a good time and you know we became friends. I do want to talk about Blended just because it opened yesterday. Sure. Talk about going to South Africa and it seemed, I think Sandler said this yesterday in the media. He just picks vacation spots now where he wants to shoot movies. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. I guess he's the one. I've been lucky.

5:29I've gone to some nice places to work. I went to a New Zealand shooting a movie about six years ago called Aliens in the Attic. And then you know in South Africa doing Blended and you know I've been to France to shoot some stuff. But South Africa was unlike any place I've ever been. I mean it's just, I mean it's 20 hours away from where I live. You know, and it's got like, it's just you know it's a different language. The people are different. There's animals there that you usually see in zoos. Or you saw penguins. There was penguins in the Cape of Good Hope yeah down south by Cape Town. And then yeah they had the Big Five there. You know not the sporting goods store. The sporting goods store called Big Five but these are the Big Five animals you know. And just we went on like five safaris and that was great. You know it's just and the people that you know we worked with are great.

6:17There was a little bit of a language barrier. I remember we ordered some pizza one night and then I came up with peas. And I really used to just go back and get some zum. Are there a lot of improv on those sets? On those sound and movies? Yeah. Not so much improv but trying new jokes. Yeah. You know it's like that. Like we raised treble. Yeah there's always like a rider on there punching it up. Does that go back to SNL? Does that training really prepare you for stuff like that? Yeah yeah because in between the rehearsal and the live show you kind of are always doing the last minute punch-ups these sketches. There's so many SNL questions that get to the people sent me that I kind of want to get to but oh yeah and this one kind of interests me. What was reading writing weekend update like every week? Well I liked doing weekend update. It was a sit down job you know. But I was still continuing to do the sketches too so I had a full plate there.

7:04And it was a lot of work because I had to write jokes for it. As many as I could on Friday because if you wrote them earlier then all the other late night talk show host had done them already you know and they'll cover those topics. And Laura Michaels had hired this catering company that would come up to the 17th floor on Saturday morning to try and entice the writers that come up and have breakfast, read the paper and write jokes. But a lot of them would come up, read the paper, have breakfast and just that's it. They'd read the paper you know. But Al Franken would come up and you know some of the younger writers would come in the new writers. But I had to like pay people to write jokes for me you know in Los Angeles they'd fax them and give them like 50 bucks a joke out of my pocket you know. And I'd write some jokes. So it was kind of a tough gig but it was fun.

7:50Did you ever know that Franken was going to like did anyone know realize back then that was going to become a him? Well we knew he was a big political animal you know he loved politics he watched C-Span he got us you know all watching C-Span and he used to go hang out with the Clintons at these Renaissance events they had in Washington and I guess he knew them a little bit. So yeah I mean it surprised me that he actually got voted as a senator because you know of his past you know and beyond that now he's a comedian who's going to believe him or trust him. They're so for everyone. But everything's changed now you know you could have a DUI's you could have you know a history of Coke or marijuana and still become president now. I re-watched the finale of Weeds the other day as well in preparation for this and the last

8:38scene you took you passed around to everybody or Doug Tokes I shouldn't say you. But then you whisper something to them everyone laughs and then they kind of they fade to black. What do you say? Was that in the script or were you just riffing around with them? It was not in the script and I don't remember what I said. I really don't remember. Yeah I wish I remember what I said but I don't. It's okay you don't need to. In having to put in here's things you did so now I'm just going to quote things you said to yourself. Yeah. Having posted a couple of years ago when the show was ending you said Doug's a reckless person you're more of a control person that's what you're going to miss most. Two years later three years later is it? You know it turns out I don't miss that. Do you miss anything about Doug? No I think I think we covered Doug you know he was we saw all the sides of him and but

9:24it was fun playing that it was it was fun living through him vicariously and you know being that reckless. But I like being in control more. I got to let you go so we do something called five questions five quick questions one more answers script or improv improv stage or screen screen Leonard McCartney. Leonard. Carl and a prior prior in one word Kevin Nealon. Tall. Thank you. Appreciate it. Pleasure.