D
uring the first 10 minutes of John Mulaney’s interview for Rolling Stone’s “Last Word” column — where pop-culture icons reflect on their work, success, and the lessons they’ve learned along the way — he holds forth on the following topics: Eurovision, the campy, annual global pop-song contest; the Songwriters Hall of Fame; and the memoir of Jimmy Webb, the songwriter-composer behind “Wichita Lineman” and “MacArthur Park.”
“Please feel free to include literally anything we discussed,” Mulaney says before we jump into the real interview questions, “because it’ll be far more interesting than anything about my career.”
Mulaney’s restless brain ricochets seamlessly between the highbrow and lowbrow. He’s hardly short on confidence, yet even when he says, “I’ve always been so famous in my own head,” you can see the wheels turning on how that remark might be misperceived.
But being both a cultural omnivore and a frank truth-teller have served him well. Over the past 15-plus years, his star has risen steadily to the point that he now dominates every medium he enters, from voiceover movie work to TV appearances to his own specials and, as of last year, late-night. His Netflix talk-variety show, John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s in L.A., was a six-episode absurdist experiment that blended wildly disparate guests, musical acts, pre-taped bits, and esoteric performances (“Why is Waingro from Heat doing standup?”). It was intended to be a one-off as part of the streamer’s semi-annual Netflix Is a Joke festival. But it was such a sensation, they invited him to keep it going.
With Wednesday’s release of Everybody’s Live With John Mulaney, the comedian expands on the show’s initial premise, with Michael Keaton, Joan Baez, Fred Armisen, Cypress Hill, and personal finance columnist Jessica Roy joining him for the first episode. Here, some words of wisdom from the host himself, delivered live from Los Angeles, by Zoom.
What are the most important rules that you live by?
Never plan more than three months in the future. “Live by,” not “work by.” Don’t eat crackers or anything like that in bed. Even if you keep the plate right under your chin, they end up at your feet. And an easy one, but: Nobody knows nothin’.
No one’s an expert. [We have a] complete inability to ever discuss scenarios that actually will happen, and we are often on the wrong thread.
Give me a real-life example of that.
One of my first agents, Hugh Fitzpatrick, we had this call in 2005 [about how] ABC was hearing pitches from comedians that were 23 years old for mini-pilot ideas. I asked him, “What types of shows do they want?” And he paused and said, “Oh, they want hits.” And that really stuck with me, like, “Oh, right, they just want whatever would work, and they want the thing that no one else would do that seems like it won’t work, but then works.”
The “horse being loose in a hospital” joke was about President [Trump], but it’s more of a joke about [how] we’re not good at predicting anything. Seven minutes before 9/11, we were all looking for Chandra Levy. We’re just not really on it, and we’ve never been on it. I guess there were these psychics back in the day who would make their New Year’s predictions and some of them would come true. But that’s probably not true, either.
Did any psychics in 2019 predict Covid? This is what I will be Googling after this interview.
I was told that Sylvia Brown, the woman who was, on the regular, unmasked on Montel as being not psychic…
She’d tell parents of missing children if they were alive or dead and be completely wrong.
Oh, yeah, I think that was her bread and butter. I don’t know why I’m saying to a major publication that she predicted Covid way earlier.
Who are your heroes?
[SNL music producer] Hal Willner. Hal was a total completist. Any interest of Hal’s, he researched to the nth degree. He chased down every lead in a large project of knowledge that involves ventriloquists, John Cassavetes movies and TV shows, Nelson Riddle and Captain Beefheart albums, and obscure comics. Just this catholic knowledge of stuff that can only be described as “stuff Hal was into.” He liked so many things so much … He cared about a lot of stuff a lot, and people that are really into what they do really inspire me.
What is the best advice you’ve ever received?
My dad told me if you’re on the phone with someone in a business conversation and you don’t like what they’re saying or how they’re countering, just say nothing. Silence makes people crazy. They’ll pause waiting for you to talk; you won’t. Then they’ll continue to talk. And then they’ll go, “Are you still there?” And you’ll go, “Uh huh.” And then they’ll start talking again. And he goes, “They’ll probably walk back everything they said or meet you at the terms you wanted, or they might even go above what you wanted, because they’re so uncomfortable.”
Have you ever tried that in your career?
[Smiles.] Yeah.
Has it worked?
[Smiles.] Yeah.
What’s the worst advice?
I won’t name them but [in 2015], an extremely powerful person in Hollywood was telling me that I have to always own all my IP, which is not possible. And the guy’s looking at me and goes, “I know people who are famous and not rich, and they’re miserable. And I know people who are rich and not famous …” and I, John Mulaney, say, “And they’re happy.” And he goes, “No, they’re miserable.” And he looks at me and goes, “You need both. You need to be rich and famous.” It was like a parody of meeting this person. I was like, “Is this a cut scene from The Devil’s Advocate?”
You were fairly famous at this point.
Not enough for this guy.
What advice do you wish you could give 2008 John Mulaney who’s auditioning for SNL and working on his first special?
As soon as you’re ready to leave Saturday Night Live, stay one more year. I wish I had. I didn’t realize that when you feel burnt out is not the moment to make a decision like that. In terms of other stuff, there were obviously a lot of twists and turns [in my life] after 2008-9, but I don’t know if the advice would’ve stuck. It wasn’t really an “advice would’ve solved that” situation. [Laughs.] I did get a lot of encouragement on various other problems.
What do you wish someone would have told you about being a celebrity growing up?
I would have said to my child self, “It’s exactly like you picture it.” And I would have said to my 20-year-old self, “It’s exactly like you picture it.”
Why do you say that?
[Pauses.] I hope this doesn’t come off badly, but I’ve always been so famous in my own head [laughs] that I don’t think my younger self would have been fazed at all. I just kinda was always a famous comedian in my head. The amount of times as a little kid I would interview myself — I was always, no matter at what stage, for some reason, processing the highs and lows of it.
Have you always been comfortable with fame?
I’m a little embarrassed to say yes. I was always comfortable. It’s a little like living in a small town. “Hey John, how you doing?” “Hey, John.”
What comedians move you the most?
There’s a Moth story with Taylor Negron talking about getting a pet monkey when he was a kid. And I watch it a lot for stage presence. He has the mic in the stand the whole time, and I’ve been doing that more lately. I just like his whole vibe in it. That story really touches me.
I really feel for this kid who wants a monkey, and then his uncle Ishmael finds a monkey that fell off the truck for Circus Vargas and he brings the monkey home, and the monkey would shit in people’s purses and make love to them.
What are the best and worst parts of success?
The best part is easy: It’s what you think. The audacious headline you dreamed up in your head once is actually written. And it just feels good. The worst part is your instincts were rewarded, but your instincts aren’t always right. I guess the lesson could be, “Everything I think of is good” [laughs]. It breeds a total confusion. I don’t walk away going, “I’m great at doing that.” I go, “How did he” — meaning me, one month in the past — “nail that?” And then I go, “I just kept doing whatever I wanted. But that can’t be it.”
In your career, you’ve never rested on your laurels. What drives that?
A bored John Mulaney is a dangerous thing. It’s more the curiosity of it and a very childish, “But I already did that.” Not always the most prudent motivation. My son says that, actually — “We already did that.” “I thought maybe you’d want to go back.” “No, we already went there. Find another indoor gymnasium.”
Do you get impostor syndrome?
No. Listen, one of my problems is not that I don’t feel really at home doing entertainment. I have other problems.
Your son, Malcolm, is three. Has fatherhood impacted your work?
That’s a constant thought of “will I talk about this onstage?” But when my son was born — I have no distance from the relationship. I’ve talked about him onstage, but in a limited way. I have no take on him. I’m Hal Willner and he’s an R. Crumb comic. It’s total. There’s just no distance. I’m totally absorbed. He’s my guy.
At your first post-rehab show at New York’s City Winery in 2021, you told the audience, “You’re the longest, most intimate relationship of my life.” People applauded before you added, “That’s not a good thing.” How does it feel when a disconnect like that happens?
I should have learned that most times when you mention the audience, they will applaud. [Laughs.] It’s a thing I learned the very first time I emceed at a club. Like, any reference to them, they will applaud. It’s that, “Saturday night, people are wild tonight. I don’t need to tell you that in Youngstown, though.” And they’re like, “Yeah!” You could say, “I’m so sick and so addicted to your praise.” And just by saying “you” and pointing…
Did that moment strike you as odd?
I thought it was funny. It’s actually the perfect reaction. The only thing I would regret is [when I said] that’s not a good thing. Why editorialize?
You’re on a group text with Jimmy Kimmel and Nick Kroll about the band Kiss. What comes up the most?
It’s mainly the [Gene Simmons Vault] Experience, which was something Gene was pushing for a while where you could go be amongst Kiss merchandise. When Nick and I were on Celebrity Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, I memorized a bunch of Gene Simmons quotes and I used them throughout the segment. There’s [also] a thread of me, Bill Hader, Fred Armisen, and Jimmy Kimmel that’s all about Van Halen and David Lee Roth and Alex and Eddie [Van Halen]. Interviews with Alex and Eddie about David is the platonic ideal.
Are you a fan of Kiss and Van Halen? How seriously or ironically are we treating this?
Granted, [Kiss] have this body of work, but it’s always interesting to me, the people who got into anything like that for any reason other than enjoying the music. That’s certainly not Alex and Eddie [Van Halen]. I like Van Halen a lot, and I like Diamond Dave’s bluegrass album of covers [2006’s Strummin’ With the Devil]. I’m embarrassed to say, it’s kind of in my shuffle.
Billy Joel once said, “I met more girls by playing the piano and not trying to have a clever pickup line. And I realized the power of this stuff.”
That is very surprising. I would have thought he was like a piano prodigy who knew jazz and classical and rejected it for rock. That’s knowing nothing about him. If I were to pull that out of my hat, that would be my diagnosis.
Will Everybody’s Live With John Mulaney be similar to Everybody’s in L.A.?
I don’t know. It was this six-night pop-up show tied to a festival, and it was really fun to try. I felt like a lot of instinctual things worked out. I’m very committed to diving into irrelevance, never being relevant. This ties into a few things: recklessness, overplanning, and taking calls. A lot of stuff we did in the first six, we’ll continue.
The overriding sentiment seems to be that it was a show that shouldn’t have worked, but did. Yeah. [Pauses.] Except that everything that shouldn’t work always does.
