Doug Stanhope on Comedy, His Mother, Libertarians, Alcoholics, and Trump

individual liberties drugs the prison system which is loaded with nonviolent drug offenders that should have gotten no harsher sentence than a high five yeah I'm that guy Doug Stanhope is a beloved comedian known for his caustic dark honest humor if there were no afterlife how could my mother have bought me and my friends so many nice things from the SkyMall catalog on her credit card four days after she passed from this road his new book digging up mothers a tribute to his late mom Bonnie Annan true Stan Hope style it's a bizarre and charming mixture of scummy debauchery relentless self-criticism biting social commentary and of course straight-up common Stanhope sat down with us to discuss comedy what Alcoholics Anonymous taught him about stand-up his time dabbling in libertarian presidential politics and how his mother for better or worse shaped him into the man he is today let me start by saying that Reason magazine is the only magazine that I subscribe to and actually pay the bill Wow other ones like The Economist bill me later and I'd never pay it reason I actually pay the bill well thank you for keeping up with that payment and when I'm done I always leave them in the pocket in the airplane so other people get the message your memoir is this insane tale of debauchery drugs comedy and love and the central character is your mother Bonnie issue as a an alcoholic suffered from depression was a truck driver a bartender and then an actress a failed comedian for a minute which I had to watch and it was really painful he'll head you have vicodin addict and suicidal funny she was a caretaker who abused her patients she was evil yet vollhardt you seem to both have a love of comedy yeah whereas your dad is portrayed as this like really nice and pleasant guy who doesn't really get the joke but even the armor like on this weird level could you talk about you know comedy with it early on she was she was dragging us to Richard Pryor when he had his movie in theaters his live stand-up movie and we're 10 years old and she's dragging us to stuff like that and leaving hustler magazine around so and I'd read all the truly tasteless jokes the cartoons and yeah I developed a very adult sense of humor way too early to be bringing it to the schoolyard there's an example in your book of one of your homework assignments it was one of those things where you like have to write a sentence with the vocabulary word right I was wondering if you might read a couple of those for us and absolutely about what aides were you hear this I would have been around 11:00 okay this type of humor is what got me sent to psychologists he is the most skillful hit man in Chicago they all said he was the worst aim until they saw his flaming arrow ripped between the man's eyes third sentence it was the most pleasant of the protesters who were slain by National Guard machine-gun fire and finally it was easier to crunch the baby's head in the Vice so yeah you turn in homework like that when you're 11 they're not thinking class clown right they're thinking a troubled kid right current-day they think school shooter and the teachers sent you to for psychological counseling and yeah this was like a whole theory at array of tests and Rorschach exams and I had to draw a picture of my family so I had my stepfather banging my mother doggy style my brother was killing a cat with a knife and I was hanging myself because I thought that is funny I just had a dark sense of humor which just speeded up the cycle he needs to go to counseling there's something wrong with this kid yeah at a dark sense of humor but it was just jokes and so they were freaking out how did your mother react my mother that was the kind of [ __ ] we'd talk about around the dinner table that she just kind of ignored it and would defend me when she had to we would go to the school psychologist the counselor and we'd you know do the same thing we did to her in grocery stores where we go mom are we gonna have to have our beatings today and the guy just almost drop his clipboard go what's this about beatings and she'd have to explain this is just our sense of humor and I mean this is like the kind of early forming of a comedians mind but the school is medicalizing it as something that needs to be treated and something wrong with you how many brilliant minds that are thinking outside the box I hate the expression but just have different personalities are being crushed by the school system that says no you just follow the rules and don't step out of line Benjamin Franklin what's going to put under a 72-hour watch as a danger to himself and others flying a kite in a rainstorm is what's a kid's suicidal he's got a key on a kite in a lightning storm there's this trend now in higher education a lot of comedians have been talking about they won't perform on college campuses because the kids are also oh they also sit there with a blank index card waiting for you to say the wrong thing so they can make a protest on your perform on college note a half a dozen colleges back years ago made the mistake of booking me after a NACA convention and I'm sure every single one of those student activity directors was fired for having me on the stage word got out no more it's now hook on campus no never again nor would I want to you don't want to perform in that environment the book opens with the death of your mother which was a kind of assisted suicide cocktail party could you pseudo assisted for legal reasons yeah I'll be making the cocktails I don't know how many morphine pills you're taking I turn a blind eye but yeah we made it into a cocktail party slash roast because she did have a dark sense of humor right up until the end and and it was it was a fantastic way to go I wish Comedy Central would pick that up for for their roasts do doing it to someone on their deathbed because that's the way I'd want to go it's such a contentious issue now like a lot of states are changing this issue it was just changed here in California it's now loud yeah it's sad that you have to go to some places depressing is Oregon to kill yourself you should be able to do it in a sunnier place but I think the tide is turning we had a like just talking in yo mumbo jumbo well if someone were to kill themselves how much of this dosage would they need and they not I'm going to kill my because she knows I can't know even though I know right it seems like the hospice workers are kind of like given a little like wink wink and this is how you theoretically do this so yeah oh you want to do you want three weeks worth now all right gotcha in case you want to make your own choice but there's people who don't have a choice because people with locked-in syndrome I was Stephen Hawking gonna kill himself if he wanted to you can't blink yourself to death on a screen so your mom had a lot of problems with alcohol and she would take you along with her to AAA meetings yes yeah she sobered up when I was around seven years old so I basically grew up in a a how did that experience going to a meetings as a child a shape work video to work if you've never been to an a a meeting it's almost like they're advertising alcohol when they speak because they make all these stories grandiose they build them up and they're laughing during them and and then I had stabbed and then I woke up in there you know another town and I didn't have my pants on and everyone's laughing and they sum it up with some moral and thank God for the program I don't have fun like that anymore so you're listening to this and it's very adult in content they don't censor their language and you're twelve years old in the back of the room I'm laughing my balls off and I'm sure a lot of just the storytelling in AAA I'm sure was had to be of some influence to me making light of the most dire situations in life and that's what I gravitate towards in my act as a treatment organization you've actually been kind of critical of a I think it's five of the 12 steps or about you turning your life over to God and it doesn't matter you know what God it is you they say oh yeah door knob can be your God as long as you're turning your life and your will over to I first of all I'm a drunk this is probably not the best time for me to be creating my own omnipotent deity they should have a more structured guide it's just silly if you went to an oncologist and said hey what's this lump and I told you to just pray and have faith you go ocean I'm screwed everyone in the book is fairly nomadic and you kind of just go places because you think it would be funny to live in Idaho Orson yes I've always been very impulsive I've planned very little so and and now the place you've landed in is Bisbee Arizona that is a kind of small border town in Arizona why Bisbee why are you there it's just a town I fell in love with when I lived in LA and I Drive out to go on the road had a couple of days to kill between gigs and Phoenix and El Paso so I just took back roads and you go through this tunnel and you're like what the hell is this town it's an old mining town but it's artists took it over in the 70s when the mine shut and it's gorgeous it's perfect I hate traffic I don't like people much and it's right out on the Mexican border so I'm right by the fire exit when Trump gets elected get out before they build that wall you've had some involvement in the mayoral race there in Bisbee could you tell me a little bit about that you have two friends they're like 40 year old beavis and butthead friends that just sit around my house all the time and get high and watch the price is right and we thought it would be funny to run run them both run run them against each other and ignore all the legitimate candidates I don't know if they'll get enough signatures to actually get on the ballot but in the meantime we're making the town's folks sweat these guys are actually running you actually sort of ran for president at one point under yeah literally were funny no 8 and I think I lasted about a month and once it got into the paperwork and off you're doing this legit you know I can't mention this on stage without the money I make from the gig being considered campaign contributions in like I there's way too many rules and I screw up way too many times in a day to be facing six-figure fines for not dotting and I crossing a tee even following any of the libertarian oh I follow Gary Johnson I'm a huge supporter of Gary and want to get them on my podcast but I live too far away that guys fantastic hopefully the Trump you know rats fleeing the Republican Party will actually give the the LP a boost what do you like about Gary Johnson's message I don't know [ __ ] about the economic side of the Libertarian Party one of the reasons I bowed out I'm never going to learn this but just in individual liberties drugs the prison system which is loaded with nonviolent drug offenders that should have got no harsher sentence than a high five for selling drugs you mentioned Trump too what is Hillary not a viable alternate I dread at this age being almost 50 and having no kids and no care about the future and no hot prospects for living a long life Trump I'd take over Hillary just for the entertainment value they're just entertainment to me it's no different than professional sports no president my entire lifetime has affected me personally on any direct level that I could point to so yeah it's a guy you have to watch out or lady you have to watch on CNN and she's a terrible actress walking round my chair moving to try job buddy

Channel: ReasonTV

Views: 552,987

Rating: 4.847486 out of 5

Keywords: doug stanhope, standup comedy, pc culture, outrage, libertarian, reason magazine

Id: 7Z8W5yQyzk8

Length: 13min 21sec (801 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 08 2016