I knew what I wanted. I wanted to be a great, relevant comic. It was black or white, life or death, success or failure, mostly failure in my mind. I was only as good as my last set, and I never got the break I wanted. I just knew I didn’t have it and wasn’t getting it despite the fact that I worked obsessively hard. It was never enough compared to __________. I was desperate and angry all the time. I lived in a failure state of mind all the time. I was sinking.
With a failure state of mind you are susceptible to massive resentment, jealousy, bitterness, self-hatred, creative paralysis, anxiety, and dread. Most of these are just fuel for the fire of failure. They were also the engine of my creativity. They were my themes. They drove me. I thought they were all the keys to my success. The bitterness started to erode my ability to create. Bitterness is just amplified self-pity, and self-pity in any form is not entertaining, but I insisted that all people must feel the same way I did.
I used to think people who didn’t fail were somehow shallow sellouts who just knew how to sell themselves. I still think that is partially true, but what I have learned from talking to people is that those who work really hard and harness their talent, if they have it, can find a way. People I talked to, like Danny McBride, Terry Gross, and John Oliver, are all tremendously talented, all incredibly hard workers, and all well experienced in enduring soul-crushing failures. I also learned that acknowledging your victories, even minor instances, is important. Success or failure as a general description or overview of a creative life is ludicrous.
When I started the podcast I had failed. I was in my mid-forties. My comedy career hadn’t panned out. I had no real prospects in my mind. I was broke and coming out of a second childless marriage. I thought I was the victim for a while, but then started to see my part in my position in life. I had to accept it and try to move on. I had to really let it all go in my heart and just start the podcast with no expectations and no income and keep working. I believed I wasn’t ever going to be a relevant comic and that all my opportunities were behind me. I was old and had missed my window. It wasn’t until I let go of expectations and let the humility settle in as opposed to anger, self-pity, and the idea of failure that I became grounded in my body and a fucking grown-up.
Oddly I still talk about all the themes that once hobbled me but know that I can walk and have some hindsight. They are a cautionary tale or a struggle that can be won. Without failure, I would not have any success.
JASON SEGEL—COMEDIAN, ACTOR, WRITER
If the criteria of success is that if you don’t make it, you’re a failure, then a lot of people are walking around feeling shitty.
AMAZING JOHNATHAN—COMEDIAN, MAGICIAN
The school talent show stopped me from being a real magician. The talent show at my high school went so horribly wrong that the next day in school, the kids didn’t tease me. Kids are cruel about that stuff, but it was so bad they didn’t say a word. They avoided me.
I did six tricks, and all six tricks went wrong. I mean, the girl in the sword box had a leg cramp, and she said, “I have to get out! I have to get out of this.” She got out of the sword box halfway through the trick and knocked all the sides off. Two mirrors smashed.
I killed my dove. I produced a dove and it ran. It got out of my hand and was running and I chased it and it stopped real fast. I couldn’t stop that fast. I ran right over it, squashed it with my foot.
Then, oh, I exposed the levitation. You could see the steel bar holding the girl up in the air the whole entire time. It was supposed to be hidden until I got right in front of it.
This was going to be my big thing. This was going to get me chicks in high school. This was going to be what made me from an idiot to a champ.
Then the final thing was the guillotine. I said, “That can’t go wrong,” because the blade falls. It penetrates the neck and doesn’t cut the head off. That’s the trick. Then they shut the lights off. Well, they shut the lights off just as the blade started to drop, so you never saw it penetrate the guy’s neck. It just blacked out. That was it. That was all done to Elton John’s “Funeral for a Friend.” I’m dressed like a dick from Godspell with those rainbow suspenders and the heart on my forehead. I thought that was so cool. I had my hair permed like Doug Henning. I just tanked, man. I went to Toronto and got so shitfaced after that night. I said, “I’ll never do magic again.” I never did. Never did a serious magic show after that.
JON BENJAMIN—COMEDIAN, WRITER, DIRECTOR, ACTOR
I’ve done phone pranks that have gone awry. One involved the FBI.
My friend Charlie, he lived in Boston, in the South End, and I would occasionally stay at his apartment when I didn’t have other places to live. The gist of it was, we were watching TV, we were getting high. My mom is a ballet teacher, and me and Charlie grew up in the same town where his sister lived. He was telling me that his sister’s kids are going to go to this other ballet school that was in Worcester. It was kind of a rival to my mom’s.
So I jokingly said, “Let’s call her. Give me Didi’s number, I’m going to call your sister and tell her not to do that.” So I called their phone. It was a machine, and the message came on, and I left this message in an old lady voice or something, like, “This is Diane, from the Charlotte Klein Dance School. After reviewing your daughter’s application, we don’t feel she’s ready for the Charlotte Klein program. Perhaps you should try Performing Arts School in Worcester.” My mother’s school.
Whatever. It was dumb. That was it. Hung up. I don’t even think Charlie laughed. He was just watching porn or something.
Three weeks later, I got a call from Charlie saying, “This is all fucked! I went to Worcester, and we are fucked! You’re fucked!”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your message!”
“What do you mean?”
His sister was a lawyer who worked for his father, who was also a lawyer. He was a big divorce attorney in Worcester. The sister was working on a really ugly divorce case, where the mother of the woman was harassing Charlie’s sister. The mom was a mean angry person. So they took the joke message that I left to be the mother of the woman involved in the case, and they took that as a threat on Didi’s daughter’s life because, according to the message, she knows where the kid goes to ballet school.
Apparently, in the three weeks before Charlie’s call, they had called the FBI, they pay like eight grand to do voice match from the machine, the tape of me, going “This is Diane, from the Charlotte Klein.…” I don’t know how they jumped to that conclusion. I must have sounded just like that woman, and that woman was making this veiled threat about “I know where your daughter goes to ballet school.”
Marc
How did it get resolved?
Jon
Oh, never.
Charlie’s father called me up and he was like, “You psycho fucking idiot! You will never make a cent! I’m going to sue you! You’ll never make a cent for the rest of your fucking life, you psycho! How could you do that?” I was like, “I … I didn’t even … How was I…”
Charlie, apparently, completely sold me down the river. When he got home, it was like that scene from The Godfather. The father is pacing.
Charlie is like, “What’s going on?”