691: Pauly Shore

Summary

Podcast Summary: Duncan Trussell Family Hour – Episode 691: Pauly Shore

Podcast Information:

• Title: Duncan Trussell Family Hour
• Host: Duncan Trussell
• Guest: Pauly Shore
• Episode Number: 691
• Release Date: May 23, 2025
• Description: A weekly salon-style supershow where comedian Duncan Trussell and guests explore the multiverse.

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1. Introduction and Welcome [00:00]

Duncan Trussell kicks off the episode by warmly welcoming his longtime friend, Pauly Shore, highlighting Pauly’s multifaceted career as a movie star, TV personality, and comedian. Duncan shares his admiration for Pauly’s unique life experiences and sets the stage for an engaging conversation.

Notable Quote:

"Operation Beast Blast. My goal is to get as many subscribers as Mr. Beast and Destroy the pyramids. Trust me, it's the right fucking move."
– Duncan Trussell [00:00]

2. Early Impressions and Celebrity Encounters [02:42]

Duncan reminisces about his first encounters with Pauly Shore, comparing them to his early days at the Comedy Store. He expresses how meeting Pauly was both awe-inspiring and intimidating, given Pauly’s established presence in the comedy world.

Notable Quotes:

"Everyone has had a fucked up childhood."
– Pauly Shore [08:22]

"When you walked in here, it made me think of my first day on the phones at the Comedy Store."
– Duncan Trussell [03:29]

3. The Comedy Store and Mitzi Shore's Influence [07:02]

The discussion delves into the profound impact of Pauly’s mother, Mitzi Shore, and The Comedy Store on his life and career. Pauly describes the club as a nurturing ground for comedians, emphasizing the blend of toughness and compassion Mitzi embodied.

Notable Quotes:

"Comedy, whether I'm Mitzi Shore's son or Sammy Shore's son, it's in my blood."
– Pauly Shore [09:54]

"She was very compassionate. She was very open-hearted in that way."
– Duncan Trussell [50:59]

4. Transition from Acting to Stand-Up Comedy [30:03]

Pauly shares his journey from acting in mainstream films like "Son in Law" and "The Goofy Movie" to focusing more on stand-up comedy. He discusses the challenges of balancing his comedic persona with authentic self-expression on stage.

Notable Quotes:

"I still love acting because it's so hard, and I love figuring it out."
– Pauly Shore [12:06]

"But the thing that you see happen and it's the coolest thing to see. You see someone who's, you know, whatever, okay, on stage and then you haven't seen him in a while and they're just. They figured it out."
– Duncan Trussell [62:19]

5. Personal Struggles and Growth [07:45]

Pauly opens up about his personal struggles, including his sister Sandy’s tragic passing and the challenges within his family. He emphasizes the importance of therapy, meditation, and focusing on the present to overcome past traumas.

Notable Quotes:

"I try not to think of all the negative shit... you can either live in it or you could be like, move on from it."
– Pauly Shore [08:25]

"Taking that way. The Richard Simmons thing was a big deal for me."
– Duncan Trussell [45:20]

6. Developing Authentic Comedy [34:41]

The conversation shifts to the essence of authentic comedy. Pauly discusses how he draws inspiration from legendary comedians like Richard Pryor and Sam Kinison, focusing on vulnerability and genuine moments on stage.

Notable Quotes:

"Acting is listening. Acting is reacting. That's more than anything."
– Pauly Shore [42:25]

"You can't fake vulnerability. They sniff that out in a second."
– Duncan Trussell [35:52]

7. Current Projects and Future Endeavors [20:30]

Pauly talks about his recent projects, including quitting his Los Angeles-based podcast to focus on a more personal venture, “Random Rants.” He outlines plans to reconnect with his roots by returning to his original podcast format, emphasizing a more intimate and authentic connection with his audience.

Notable Quotes:

"I'm going back to that and it's awesome. I started filming some."
– Pauly Shore [21:08]

"Yeah, but the way I look at it is I look at a lot of different ways."
– Pauly Shore [53:18]

8. The Legacy of The Comedy Store and Mitzi Shore [54:14]

Duncan and Pauly reflect on the legacy of The Comedy Store as a quasi-cult-like environment under Mitzi Shore’s leadership. They discuss how Mitzi’s uncompromising standards and dedication to the art of comedy created a unique and influential space for comedians to grow.

Notable Quotes:

"Mitzi never told me when to not. This is her club. She owns it."
– Pauly Shore [74:14]

"Everyone coming to her was hungry to some degree... she was developing comedians because that's what she was good at."
– Duncan Trussell [50:59]

9. Balancing Fame and Personal Identity [62:19]

Pauly explores the complexities of maintaining personal identity amidst fame. He discusses his desire to balance his public persona with his authentic self, addressing the isolation that can come with fame.

Notable Quotes:

"I got to play him in the short film. And I did really well."
– Pauly Shore [45:20]

"I'm playing myself with the fucking wig."
– Pauly Shore [46:03]

10. Conclusion and Final Thoughts [79:00]

As the episode wraps up, Duncan and Pauly discuss Pauly’s ongoing projects and his commitment to personal and professional growth. They highlight the importance of resilience, continuous learning, and staying true to oneself in the ever-evolving landscape of comedy and entertainment.

Notable Quotes:

"I wrote a whole fucking thing about it. And I got a writer, he's writing the script, and I'm going to produce it in Vegas."
– Pauly Shore [80:31]

"You finish up... something happened. But it doesn't just happen once."
– Duncan Trussell [62:19]

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Key Takeaways:

• Influence of Mitzi Shore: Pauly Shore credits his mother, Mitzi Shore, and The Comedy Store for shaping his career and comedic style, emphasizing a balance of compassion and tough love.

• Authenticity in Comedy: Both Duncan and Pauly stress the importance of genuine vulnerability and authenticity in stand-up comedy, drawing inspiration from icons like Richard Pryor and Sam Kinison.

• Personal Growth: Pauly discusses overcoming personal tragedies and the role of therapy and meditation in his journey towards self-improvement and resilience.

• Balancing Multiple Roles: Pauly highlights his transition from acting to focusing more on stand-up comedy and personal projects, aiming for authenticity over fame or financial gain.

• Legacy and Community: The episode underscores the enduring legacy of The Comedy Store as a nurturing ground for comedians and the importance of community and mentorship in the world of comedy.

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Closing Remarks: Duncan Trussell and Pauly Shore share a deep and insightful conversation, offering listeners a glimpse into the life and mind of one of comedy’s unique personalities. The episode blends humor with heartfelt discussions on personal struggles, the craft of comedy, and the enduring influence of mentors and legacy.

Transcript

[Duncan Trussell]

Welcome, my loves. What a stellar episode of the D. TFH we have for you. One of my dear friends, I've known him forever, is on the show. You already know him. Pauly Shore. Fascinating character, interesting person with one of the strangest lives I know of. Movie star, TV star, comedian, one of the members of the Shore family, grew up at one of the wildest comedy clubs on planet Earth and full of all kinds of wisdom and love. So stay tuned for that. But I must remind you, if you want commercial free episodes of this show, won't you become a subscriber? What are we at now? What's our subscriber count at now, Chuck? Woo, baby, we've crossed the line. 150. I only need 50,000 of you to get to 200k. Once we get to 200k, I just need somewhere in the range of 50 million of you to subscribe. Sign up and at that point I will be able to finally destroy the pyramids recently soiled by Mr. Beast. You find more about that in earlier episodes. It's called Operation Beast Blast. My goal is to get as many subscribers as Mr. Beast and Destroy the pyramids. Trust me, it's the right fucking move. Also, I have some shows coming up. I'm going to be here in Austin on the 6th, 7th and 8th of June at the Comedy Mothership. These, these shows are almost sold out and I've heard some comics lie about that to try to get people to do pre sells. I never lie about that. If I'm not saying shows are sold out, they're definitely not sold out, but this one is. So if you're thinking of coming, don't sleep, don't do what I do, don't be the stoner and think you're gonna get tickets the day of. Then after that I'm gonna be in Dallas at hyenas. That's the 20th of June, the 21st of June, I'll be at the hyenas in Fort Wor. And then after that, Tempe, Arizona from the 26th to the 28th of June. And then Eugene, Oregon after a long family vacation. I'm going to be at the Olsen Run Comedy Club. So please come see me. I hope you will. Now everybody welcome Pauly Shore to the dtfh.

[Pauly Shore]

These type of shirts, I mean, I guess you wear them when you're younger, but I think that it's.

[Duncan Trussell]

You kind of, it's in the 40s, you're going to get a spot, you get a spark, you like, put one of these on, you're like, well, I'm wearing one of these shirts.

[Pauly Shore]

And then it's very Jimmy Buffett.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yes. And then it just becomes your. Your wardrobe. But are we rolling, Josh?

[Pauly Shore]

Rolling.

[Duncan Trussell]

Isn't that good, though, man? Isn't it better to not give a fuck about your shirts in the way you used to? Doesn't that torture the young man?

[Pauly Shore]

Wow, this is getting very intense. Shit, I forgot. What, should I take some. Some ketamine for this podcast?

[Duncan Trussell]

I don't do. I don't have any.

[Pauly Shore]

Nice to see you.

[Duncan Trussell]

Good to see you, Paulie.

[Pauly Shore]

Wild, huh?

[Duncan Trussell]

Thank you for doing this, man.

[Pauly Shore]

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Thanks for having me.

[Duncan Trussell]

Dude, when you walked in here, it made me think of my first day on the phones at the Comedy Store. And when you walked in, I don't know if it was my first day, second day, and it was. Legitimately, it freaked me out, because when I was in high school, we religiously watched your show. I'd seen your mom, I'd seen you been high as a kite, laughing my ass off. We loved it. And then I remember you walk in the door, and it was the, like, craziest shit, dude. I was, you know, from North Carolina. What the fuck is this? Whereas your experience of life has been since you were a baby, people like that are always walking in your door. You know what I mean? Like, you. Do you ever get that sense when it comes to celebrity, of like, whoa, holy shit, I'm around this person.

[Pauly Shore]

Yeah, you do. Of course.

[Duncan Trussell]

Who was the last one?

[Pauly Shore]

Woody Harrelson.

[Duncan Trussell]

Oh, yeah, that would get me, too.

[Pauly Shore]

Yeah. I mean, I'm a fan of, you know, and I grew up just like you. I sit and watch tv, go to movies, same people that you do. You know what I mean?

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

I mean, Sean Penn, Woody Harrelson. I mean, anyone that I. You know, I'm gonna. I love acting. I've been acting since I was little, and I love really, really good actors.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

And Woody Harrelson is, to me, one of the best actors out there. So when he was at the. The mothership the other night with Tony, you know, I was a little nervous.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

How's the sound? Is it fucked up or. We good? No, it's good.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah. You know, it's direct just right into the.

[Pauly Shore]

No, but it starts to get. Drop a little. Or you.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah, if you pull back, it's gonna drop. You kind of have to stay up in it a little bit. You know, you gotta be up in it a little bit.

[Pauly Shore]

So. Yeah, I worship the same people. I mean, I remember Years ago, I met Madonna, you know, and I was just like, you know what I mean? So a doctor Dre friends with him. I see him, I'm still like, you know, very nervous. Yeah, very, you know, how's it sound? You got to face it more like be about a fist away. Like this. Yeah, Perfect.

[Duncan Trussell]

There you go. Perfect.

[Pauly Shore]

So I get, you know, I don't need these too, right?

[Duncan Trussell]

If you don't.

[Pauly Shore]

Yeah, I don't want to. Yeah. I mean, whatever. I. I get nervous around people that I worship, you know, they mean that I look up to, you know, that I grew up with. Like, I've never met Robert De Niro. I always see him, like, in interviews, and I'm just like, fuck. But then, you know, he would do this to me, I'm sure, you know, because of my style of comedy and my style of acting is probably not his thing.

[Duncan Trussell]

Who knows? I mean, this is. I guess what I'm trying to get at is the difference between. Well, obviously there's lots of differences, but you're born into, like, a comedy dynasty. Like, you're born into, you know, it's a micro cult, basically. Like, you're born into something that already is sort of like. It's not obscure, but, you know, compared to, like, acting, stand up comedy is its own smaller, cottagey kind of thing. You're born into this just strange incarnation. It's fucking strange. Your mom's Mitzi Shore. You're hanging out at this famous haunted comedy club. As a kid, you become.

[Pauly Shore]

Like, super.

[Duncan Trussell]

You got, like the spike, like, what Tony's getting. You got this like, boom thing. So suddenly you're blasted into an even weirder reality. And, you know, do you feel like that is good for a person? Do you feel like, you know, sometimes just having a mid level podcast, sometimes I get a sense of, like, my experience of life is pretty different to some degree than other people. And I wonder, is this fucking me up to some degree?

[Pauly Shore]

I think in life, and I've gained this as the older I've gotten, you know, you have to really look at what you have and not what you don't have. And I think that it sounds kind of stupid, but, you know, I don't. I try not to think of all the negative shit, you know, or that happened at the store or, you know, with the suicides and the drug overdose and all. I mean, I can go, you know, there's a long list. The guy jumped off the building and my mom and, you know, you can go into that space Argus Hamilton and how he Treated my mom and like, you can go into that and we can all go into that.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

I mean, every single person watching has had a fucked up childhood.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

You know, you can either live in it or you could be like, move on from it.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Pauly Shore]

And so for me, you know, through therapy and through therapy, through, you know, meditation and through, you know, health and through.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

Time, I've. I've really, you know, like, looked at what, you know, the beauty and everything as opposed to, you know, as opposed to living in like some space of just, you know, debauchery.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Pauly Shore]

I mean, and, you know, the stuff I've seen and the stuff I've experienced, you know, was crazy. But then again, you know, if you talk, you interview someone from Iowa, you know, that you could say like, yo. They could say like, oh, on the farm, you know, you know, my cousin's aunt and my uncle and like, we had this crazy. You know, so everyone's got something, but it's really just about learning from it, moving on from it and keep going forward because, you know, we all sit in a place of, you know, I don't. Again, saying the word victim, it sounds like stupid, but my sister lived in that space.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

You know, my sister Sandy, bless her, bless her soul and her heart, she's not with us anymore, but she lived in a place of my mom fucked me over, my dad wasn't there and da, da, da, Right. And she just lived in that space as opposed to fuck. I got hatched on this sick ass thing. I'm gonna take advantage of this situation and learn like. So for me, you know, comedy, whether I'm Mitzi Shore son or Sammy Short son, it's in my blood. I mean, I don't have to be working here, I don't have to be touring, I don't have to be doing any of that shit. I love it, right? You know, whether, you know, I love it just as much now as I did 20, 30 years ago.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Pauly Shore]

I still love it because it's, it's, it's in me.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

You know, like, I just, I just love doing stand up and I love writing and I love trying to figure it out. The jokes are so hard, you know, just to try to figure out what works. And, and so it's in me, you know, whether I was Mitzi's kid or not. And, And I just got the bug. My brothers, my brother Peter, my brother Scott, they never got the bug.

[Duncan Trussell]

Why?

[Pauly Shore]

I don't know. It's like when there's photos of me just watching Cheech and Chong and watching George Carlin and just all these different things, because I just was like, you know what I mean? I just love it. And then when Richard Pryor was there in the 70s and 80s, I was just obsessed. It was just like this thing. And then when Kennison came on the scene, I was like, oh, my God. You know, it's just like this. Yeah, it was in me.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

And I don't know if I'm answering the question.

[Duncan Trussell]

You are. Yeah, you are.

[Pauly Shore]

I don't know if I'm answering question probably, but I don't know. You know, we can all sit in a place of, you know, woe is me. You know, we can all sit in that place, or we can kind of keep moving forward.

[Duncan Trussell]

Got it.

[Pauly Shore]

And so for me, you know, being 57 and. And been through so much, you know, I just try to. To. To. To live today and right now and let go of, you know, anything that has happened in me in my past. You know, I joke a lot about my movie career and shit like that, and. And like, oh, my movie career went to shit. And, da, da. Like, I don't think that I'm just kind of like, I do it as a joke, right, because everyone misses me in films, right? You know, everywhere I go, people like, I want to see in movies. And that's why the Richard Simmons thing is, like, spiked up and different things like that, because people generally miss me, you know what I mean? Like, they generally want to see me in more movies and. And I want to do more movies. Not for the money, not for the fame, because I just like comedy. I fucking love acting. I love acting because it's so hard, and I love figuring it out.

[Duncan Trussell]

Now, that's different, though, because a lot of comics don't like acting.

[Pauly Shore]

I love it.

[Duncan Trussell]

Your mom.

[Pauly Shore]

I almost love acting more than stand up.

[Duncan Trussell]

That's interesting to me because of all the comics that I've watched, you have. You're like the top three most authentic you up there. And, you know, that's sort of a Comedy Store style, I guess you could say. Like, all the comics you just mentioned, maybe Kinison was like. I don't know what he was like offstage, but, like, Pryor, Carlin, you know what I mean? There's this. If anything, when you're seeing them up there, you're seeing a more magnified version of them or something. But what I love about watching your stand up is that the you up there is the you off stage, right? And that's crazy.

[Pauly Shore]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

That's not an easy place to get to, man. That seems paradoxical. But so what, like, initially, when you started performing, did you go through the period of trying to not be you, or was it from watching all these comics you already knew? I'm just gonna be myself up there.

[Pauly Shore]

I just felt, you know, I don't know, I just felt at home there. You know, I felt. I feel more comfortable on stage than I do, like, at a party.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

So, like, you know, when I was going through stuff, when my mom was dying and she was, like, slowly dying, which was fucking hard, you know, when you're. When a parent is slowly dying as opposed to just. I know I was stressed. You know what I mean? And I was going through a lot of stuff, and. And. And. And I was on the road, and anytime I hit the stage, I was like, yeah, I could breathe. I can relax. And I felt like, this love.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

This gen. This. This. This. This general. What's it called, Just natural kind of love. And that I wasn't getting from home. You know, I wasn't getting from my brothers, I wasn't getting from my sister or my dad or, you know, I get it from friends, but I wasn't getting it right. So part of. Part of the reason why I do stand up is the second I get on stage, and I think it's because of my films.

[Duncan Trussell]

What do you mean?

[Pauly Shore]

Well, my films really connected with America. I mean, every one of them. I mean, even, like, Howard Stern just talks about me all the time. He's like, where's Pauly Shore? Like, I miss him. You know, My favorite movie was Jury Duty. Like, you know what I mean? And, like, jury Duty, to me, I don't want to say was the worst movie, but at the time, you know, it was one. It was a movie that people panned and. And it didn't do well, and it's.

[Duncan Trussell]

A piece of shit.

[Pauly Shore]

And all this stuff. And then you dust the. Dust it off, and here we are several years later. It's actually really funny.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Pauly Shore]

And so my point is, is when I'm on stage, you know, people are affected by my films. You know, those five or six films. Even a goofy movie now is so fucking big, and I don't even remember doing it.

[Duncan Trussell]

I didn't. A. What movie?

[Pauly Shore]

The goofy movie.

[Duncan Trussell]

You were in the goofy movie?

[Pauly Shore]

Yeah. Leaning Tower of Cheese. A Josh. I remember it. My kids watch it.

[Duncan Trussell]

Are you kidding me?

[Pauly Shore]

Yeah. Leaning Tower of Cheese Bobby. That's me.

[Duncan Trussell]

I didn't even know there was a goofy movie.

[Pauly Shore]

Yeah, it's a big. Yeah, well, I again, I'm like you. I don't. You know what I mean? That's not my thing. But for Disney fans, you know, you know, I worked for Disney for a long time during that time and I did a lot of voiceovers for, you know, different things. I was also a Pinocchio this last couple years. I was a voice of Pinocchio.

[Duncan Trussell]

Really?

[Pauly Shore]

In a film. Yeah. So anyways, but my point is, is that for whatever reason, the movies that I did connected with people's emotionally.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Pauly Shore]

So even when I go, I sign autographs at comic cons.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

You know, you know what? Comic Con.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah, yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

And you get all these people coming up. I'm like, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's really cool. Yeah, it's really cool. Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

So. But foreign. This episode of the DTFH is brought to you by hims friends. Just out of pure laziness. I haven't shaved my head. As you can see, there's a sad growth of hair sort of sprouting up there. And over the last few days people have been saying, you look good, man. And I want to believe that that is related to like some healthy thing that I'm not doing. But the truth is it's just because I've grown a little bit of hair back. And it sucks because when you grow your hair back a little bit, but you want to be a bald and they're like, you look good, you know what they think about you when you're a bald. I'm not trying to freak you out or make you feel bad. I'm just saying there's gotta be reasons. Hims chose a dude with a receding hairline and a bald spot to represent their product. And I feel like they're brilliant because I'm sort of a. This is what can happen. Like, you know the anti drug commercials where you see late stage, you know people who are like, they haven't just hit bottom, they've cratered through the bottom. That wasn't even the bottom. You know, they look like just their eyeballs are falling out, their teeth are gone, their cheeks are sunken in, they've got weird tattoos, they can't remember where they got them from. And they're like, this is why you shouldn't do this. And I feel like hims is like, yeah, just get this dude with like fucked up hair to show what can happen. But imagine if you were able to address this situation before I did. What are we going to do, you know what I mean, with this thing you know, look at that. It's a little bit like, you know, there's cultures that will exhume the bodies of deceased relatives and put fresh clothes on them. They're still dead. That's my hair follicles. HIMS provides you with convenient access to a range of hair loss treatment that works all from the comfort of your couch. HIMS makes treating hair loss simple with doctor trusted options and clinically proven ingredients like finasteride and minoxidil that can regrow hair in as little as three to six months. Three months. Three months away. Three months away from not having to wear that stinky, sweaty old hat everywhere. Your stink hat smells bad. The process is simple, 100% online, so there's no uncomfortable doctor visits. You can choose from personalized chewable oral spray and serum treatments to find out what works best for you. Answer a few questions and a medical provider will determine if treatment is right for you. If prescribed, your treatment is sent directly to you for free. No insurance is needed and one low price covers everything from treatments to ongoing care. HIMSA has hundreds, thousands of trusted subscribers. They can help you get your confidence back to with visibly thicker, fuller hair. Start your free online Visit [e-mail] Duncan that's H I M S.com Duncan for your personalized hair loss treatment options. Hims.com Duncan results vary based on studies of topical and oral minoxidil and finasteride. Prescription products require an online consultation with a healthcare provider who will determine if a prescription is appropriate. Restrictions apply. See website for full details and important safety information. You're always working on something, man. Like, that's something that's really cool about you. You're very ambitious, but also you get shit done. So are you. What do you got going on? What do you got cooking?

[Pauly Shore]

I love it. I just quit my podcast in la. I had a podcast called the PMS Podcast show, which was great. The guys from Jam in the Van were awesome. And I had a really good time, but it was just a lot of work and it was just like very expensive. Yeah, because it was like a big show.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Pauly Shore]

And it was very ambitious. I had like, Mervis was on it and Joel was on it and I had different bands and it was like a big thing.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Pauly Shore]

And I do want to do it again, but I want to give it a break.

[Duncan Trussell]

Sure.

[Pauly Shore]

So I want to go back, going back to my original podcast which was called Random Rants, which was in my apartment in Silver Lake.

[Duncan Trussell]

I like that one.

[Pauly Shore]

Yeah. So I'm going back to that and it's awesome. I started filming some. Cause I bugged up my cam, I put up all my cameras in la and it's fucking fun.

[Duncan Trussell]

That to me, with podcasting, it's just having any extra moving parts. With podcasting, it can like. It seems to almost run counter to the opportunity podcast because you just end up with too many plates spinning, man. It shouldn't be miserable or it shouldn't be something where you have to plan all week for it. Though some of them, I do like the organized ones and stuff. I feel like that one in Silver Lake was cool.

[Pauly Shore]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

But I felt like you had me on that one at some point. I remember podcasting with you or something.

[Pauly Shore]

No, that wasn't jamming the van. That was over here with.

[Duncan Trussell]

No, not that one.

[Pauly Shore]

That was another one years ago.

[Duncan Trussell]

I don't remember. It's a foggy memory. But I think that's more suited to you.

[Pauly Shore]

Yeah, so. So it's back to basics. I'm not going to have any guests on. It's just going to be me and my dog and like in the camera. And that's pretty much it. I got about eight cameras.

[Duncan Trussell]

You should have guess. I'm serious.

[Pauly Shore]

No, eventually, maybe eventually. But I want to just connect with the people. Maybe the people's my guess. Totally poly, remember? Totally Polly.

[Duncan Trussell]

Of course.

[Pauly Shore]

That was all about yo, bro, what's up? It's just us.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yes.

[Pauly Shore]

You know what I mean? So it's going to be like that. So I'm going to try it for a bit, you know. Yeah, it's kind of where my head. I have to also dunk it. I also have to do what's in my heart at this moment, you know, in three to six months, I'm like, okay, I'm going to get Bobby Lee on.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Pauly Shore]

You know what I mean? So I don't know. But right now, as of today, it's just gonna be me, the camera and my dog.

[Duncan Trussell]

The totally poly aesthetic is interesting in that it leaked later into like Adult Swim. Like that gonzo kind of whatever that was.

[Pauly Shore]

Yes, it was.

[Duncan Trussell]

It became. When you did it pre Internet, you're basically doing like what influencers are doing now, this kind of wild gonzo y. Not like it was under produced, but, you know, when you saw what we loved about it was. It felt so real and it felt just like, this is not staged, this is just some lunatic. And then. But then that aesthetic, it informed a lot of like modern, like hip shows. Like it became a style almost. I don't know if people would Connect it all the way back.

[Pauly Shore]

Because it was so long ago. It was over 30 years ago.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah, but 30 years ago, that was, like, so hardcore. No one was doing that on tv. TV was so square. It was so straight, you know? And when you decided to do that show, did you get pushback? Did people say, you can't do a show like that. It's too fucked up.

[Pauly Shore]

No one knew what it was, and I didn't even know what it was. We just kind of. We rolled the dice. And it was one of those things that. Let's see. Let's see what happens. And I'll. I'll never forget, because when I got on mtv, it wasn't like, oh, they saw me, and all of a sudden they put me on mtv. It took a while.

[Duncan Trussell]

Really?

[Pauly Shore]

Yeah, yeah. I got. I got sent home. It was just like, you know, it's like. It was like auditioning for my mom.

[Duncan Trussell]

Wow.

[Pauly Shore]

When you audition for Mitzi, you don't just get it the first time, right? You know, you suck. You. This. You get. You know what I mean? You. And it takes a while. So anyways, without getting into the specifics as how I am TV thing happened, it was my first episode of Totally Poly was on Sunset Microphone. Me walking down Sunset Boulevard, showing America my backyard. And that was kind of like what it was. Yo, dudes, check out this tattoo shop. It's cool. Let's walk in. Let's see what happens.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

And we would just go in there and there'd be some guy, you know, with the fucking. Is fucking wild dude who's gonna get tattooed. You know what I mean?

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

And then at some point, the producer would go like this behind the camera. I'm like, all right, anyways, check out this video. Slaughter up all night. Check it out, dudes. And we would just go to a video, and then we took that tape from the first week and we went back to my mom's and we put it into the. The machine to watch it back. And it was fucking funny.

[Duncan Trussell]

That was it.

[Pauly Shore]

That was it done? Yeah. It was just like, oh, my God, this is fucking hilarious. Because it was so. Like you said, it was so real, and we didn't. It was just like. It was just one of those things that just worked. And then it just kind of, like, worked. And then all of a sudden, the kids, they found out about it, and then it just kind of took off.

[Duncan Trussell]

Because it's lo fi. Like, you're looking at something compared to what we were all used to back then. And also, you caught the Zeitgeist. Like, you definitely, like, you caught the skater culture. You caught the underground war on drugs drug culture. You caught, like, the outsider culture and it. And also that was when MTV was this edgy, insane shit that you'd never seen before.

[Pauly Shore]

You had like, you know, 120 minutes and headbangers ball and you had. Yo, MTV raps. Yeah, we had all that. You know, and it was very. It was very. Wherever the kids are right now, that's where they were then.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah. And that was. If you think about that, that was the last phase of that kind of tv. There's a period in between of this kind of like, I don't know, stagnant whateverness. And now everyone is doing what you were doing back then. How many Instagram videos is some dude walking around with a camera, maybe being funny, maybe not? But that style was pre Internet. Internet. That's fascinating. You are almost like a foreshock of this explosion. You are basically one of the first, quote, influencers.

[Pauly Shore]

Yeah, yeah. That's what they. Yeah, yeah, that's what they said. Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

That is wild, man. That is so interesting now.

[Pauly Shore]

And I had my own language, and I was talking to the people and I was saying things like, I would do things like, yo, bro, check out the woody crate because it's sweet moisture, buddy. And. And the executives would be like, what the fuck did he just say? And then, you know, the audience would know like, oh, he just said that. Like, they would get it.

[Duncan Trussell]

Where did that come from?

[Pauly Shore]

Just naturally happen on camera, you know, it was just like one of the pausing stuff. You know, where I say the first word that ever paused was major. So I'd be like, check out this video, bro. It's going to be May.

[Duncan Trussell]

Your just invented that.

[Pauly Shore]

Yeah, yeah, I just invented.

[Duncan Trussell]

And you invented that.

[Pauly Shore]

And I said, we. So buddy. And I did that, and it just kind of like took off.

[Duncan Trussell]

That is okay. That I had no idea for some reason. And I think most of us thought this. They just thought you were like that before the show. That you were just some kind of like stoner skater surfer dude. I assumed all the skaters are surfers out in those days.

[Pauly Shore]

I talk. No, no, no, no, no.

[Duncan Trussell]

That's what we talked about.

[Pauly Shore]

I talk like that. But the stuff really developed on camera. Whoa. Yeah, it really developed during the show.

[Duncan Trussell]

That is.

[Pauly Shore]

And I got more comfortable and the more stupid I sounded and the more I went up to people that didn't know the fuck I was, the funnier it was.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Pauly Shore]

Because it was never about what I was Doing is always about people reacting to what I was doing.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Pauly Shore]

And that's why Son in Law, the movie Son in Law, was such a big hit for me because it was me going, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. But it was always about the family reacting to me going, bupa, bupa. You're like the dad going, what the fuck's up with this fudgeing idiot?

[Duncan Trussell]

So you're a trolling, basically.

[Pauly Shore]

Like, you were a troll, kind of.

[Duncan Trussell]

You were trolling. You were going. In your culture, jamming. You're going into, like, the world with cameras already. Fucking weird. Now. It's not as weird, but back then, weird. There's cameras.

[Pauly Shore]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

There's this weirdo on camera. What the fuck is this? So you're catching people in, like, moments of having to just make sense of what. Why is this dude talking like that? What is happening? And that was fun. That's always gonna be fun.

[Pauly Shore]

And it was also. There was a time also where, you know, because I directed the show, so there was a time like that I would kind of direct it once in a while. Like. So for instance, I'd be on a beach, the camera would be off, and I'd see some like. Like, kind of like buff guys by the volleyball court.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

And I'd go up to him. I say, you guys, I'm gonna come up to you with this camera, and I'm gonna fucking start touching you and just fucking look at me like you want to kick the fuck out of me. And don't laugh, no matter what. Don't laugh. So I go, yo, bro, what's up? We're here on Santa Monica beach, going to troll around. We'll see what's happening. Do. Oh, look at that buff guy. Yo, bro, what's up? Get the. Away from me. I'll kick you.

[Duncan Trussell]

Whoa. Right?

[Pauly Shore]

You know what I mean? So I would set up once in a while. I do that for. You know what I mean? For reactions. But what happened was. What happened was, is that my show became so popular, and then everyone kind of knew who I was, and then the jig was kind of up, right? So then I went overseas and it was good again. Like, I would go to Japan, Australia or England or whatever, and I'd do it over there.

[Duncan Trussell]

It's like Borat, like, it's gotta be almost impossible for him to do that anymore. Everyone knows who Borat is. Like, how do you.

[Pauly Shore]

Yeah, yeah, that. That. Yeah. So anyway, so. And then the movies kind of. It was so popular that Disney saw. Disney saw this and then put me in all the movies after that. Yeah, crazy. Yeah, that was cool.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah, crazy. Your mom must have been so thrilled with this entire trajectory.

[Pauly Shore]

And relieved, I think. Oh, God. Jesus Christ. I thought he was going to be terrible. Fuck, that would have been the worst. No. Yeah. So.

[Duncan Trussell]

So, okay, so you get kind of crystallized in that form, though, man. I mean, it's like, you know, like, people are used to you as this character that you innovated during a series, so. And then you're also, like, doing stand up. How did you integrate going out and doing shows as you versus the Paulie on camera?

[Pauly Shore]

It was interesting. It was a balancing act, I bet, because you're on stage. When I first started doing shows, I didn't do shows with seated. There was no one seated at my shows. It was always festival seating. Because the way it would work is when I was on mtv and then I'd hit the road. The way it would work. Sorry, I'm bringing all this stuff back.

[Duncan Trussell]

I love it.

[Pauly Shore]

I don't fucking remember. I mean, I remember it, obviously, but I don't really talk about it anymore. You know what I mean? But when I was. When I got, you know, hot off of MTV and. And, you know, and I was doing my stand up, but my. My cadence and my style was so. Yo, bro. You know, it's like that type of thing. And there wasn't a lot of material. I would always have a band open for me. So a band would open for me and then I would go on for 45 minutes and then I'd bring the band on at the end and we do like three or four songs.

[Duncan Trussell]

Okay.

[Pauly Shore]

That's when I did the Lisa Lisa song. You know, I had the one song, remember? Lisa Lisa. Yeah, I remember.

[Duncan Trussell]

I do.

[Pauly Shore]

And I, you know, because, you know, I always wanted to, you know, sing and. And do all that. So that's kind of how it was, you know, that was pretty much all of the 90s. And then I think by the end of the 90s, early 2000s, then I started playing in front of seated people, Right. But I would stage dive in my show a lot.

[Duncan Trussell]

Jesus.

[Pauly Shore]

Like, I would do jokes and then like, just stage dive and they'd throw me back and all that stuff.

[Duncan Trussell]

But this, this. I mean, this was early. This was early phase development for you as a comic. Like, you're trying to, like, you gotta appeal to the audience. People are coming to see you. Cause of your show.

[Pauly Shore]

They're not an MTV show.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah, yeah, they're coming.

[Pauly Shore]

And to this day, I think people still. I Wouldn't say they don't know I'm a comedian, but they still think I'm the guy from the movie, right? So then they're like, oh, shit, he's got a stand. He's got stand up too.

[Duncan Trussell]

But. But to me, I think, versus, like, there's definitely comedians who become actors. But whenever you see an actor try to become a comedian, I haven't. I don't. I'm sure there's cases of that working. I can't think of one offhand, but it's harder. And so then, you know, who is this person? Like, I don't know who this person is. They don't know how to do your standup is so good that I think people are probably pleasantly surprised by what you're doing up there. And it makes you look cool that that was a character, you know, something you invented versus what you're doing up there, which is very vulnerable, man. It's this very vulnerable, like, heartfelt form of stand up. Like very relatable, but in kind of like, it's dark too. There's a darkness.

[Pauly Shore]

Got that from Richard and I got that from Sam. I really studied them. See, a lot of people never got to study Sam Canison and Richard Pryor live, you know, especially in a small club, for years, Right. So the one thing that I loved about Sam and Richard, what they did every fucking time they went on stage is they played the moment. Whatever that moment was, they played it. And they were always really sweet in the moment. So they'd go on stage and it was always about. It was always not about the joke. It was always not about being vulgar. Because both those comics, Richard Pryor and Sam Kennison were very. I don't want to say the word vulgar, but very, you know, dark and dirty and kind of raunchy and stuff like that. But they had this huge lovable quality about them. And you saw it that. You saw it the first 10 seconds on stage. So I would study that. And I. I don't say I stole that from them, but I was. I was always like, I thought that was really cool. You'd be really sweet, you know, when.

[Duncan Trussell]

You go on stage playing the moment. That's such a good word for it, man. That's a great way to describe it.

[Pauly Shore]

But know to be vulnerable in the moment, to go up there and be sweet in the moment.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

You know what I mean?

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

And that's like. And that was something that I got from them.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

Richard was always so sweet. The second he went on stage, did you ever see him when you worked at the store?

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah, no, I never got to see.

[Pauly Shore]

No. What year did you get there?

[Duncan Trussell]

I got there late 90s.

[Pauly Shore]

Oh, yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

So, yeah, no, I would have loved it. I just that I got to see Carlin, but I never got to see.

[Pauly Shore]

Oh, wow. Carlin was meticulous, but yeah, he was brilliant. He's like a scientist. Yeah, yeah, but so, yeah, so that was kind of that.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah, yeah, but that you can't fake that. That's, that's the thing is like you can't pretend to be vulnerable. Are going to sniff that out in a second. Then you start seeing like performative, like. And I've seen this style emerge as people try to literally steal that by imitating some bullshit vulnerability up there. But there's a huge difference when you see that Live.

[Pauly Shore]

Foreign.

[Duncan Trussell]

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[Pauly Shore]

Into a sweet moment.

[Duncan Trussell]

It's crazy when it happens.

[Pauly Shore]

Watch Richard, watch Richard's specials. He's got a lot of that where he just kind of goes up there and is very nice.

[Duncan Trussell]

That's interesting. That is not my first thought on prior. It's not as sophisticated my thinking on him. I love him. He's one of my favorite comics. But I always. But yeah, now it's obvious.

[Pauly Shore]

And he was, and he was an actor. Great actor. Great actor.

[Duncan Trussell]

A lot of movies.

[Pauly Shore]

Yeah, a lot of great movies.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah. Really good actor. Bill Murray wasn't a stand up though, was he? No, no, just an actor. Now acting is, I love great acting but. And I do voice acting but the thing itself, I don't know man. It never like pulled at me like.

[Pauly Shore]

And that's the same thing with Joe. I've talked to Joe about it because Joe was on news radio for so long, right? That was his show.

[Duncan Trussell]

Oh yeah. Forever.

[Pauly Shore]

He's like, eh. I'm like, you don't miss acting. I'm like, dude, you're an actor bro. He's like, eh, yeah, no, like not everyone. Yeah, not everyone. I just like it because I started acting before my, I'm trying to think I started. Yeah, I think I started, I think I started acting right before I started doing standup because my friend Donovan Leach, he hooked me up with his manager, this, this woman named Barbara Benstein. And my first audition was for Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. And so like me and Donovan made it all the way to the end because you would mix and match the kids.

[Duncan Trussell]

Wow.

[Pauly Shore]

I got mixed and matched with Alex Winters.

[Duncan Trussell]

Wow.

[Pauly Shore]

So I, I got really close and once I got really close on that then, then what happened was is she signed me and then I started landing all these roles.

[Duncan Trussell]

Wow.

[Pauly Shore]

Like 21 Jump street, married with children.

[Duncan Trussell]

Wow.

[Pauly Shore]

And all these different kind of acting roles. Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

What, what do you like? What, what Is it that you like about it?

[Pauly Shore]

It's hard.

[Duncan Trussell]

You like it?

[Pauly Shore]

It's hard. And it's also like. It's. It's. I like to play a different role than myself.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Pauly Shore]

You know, like the. I don't know. I like to. I like. I dissect a script the way I dissect the script. You know what I mean? Everyone. Everyone. Everyone dissects script. Because, you know, you're staring at a script of 100 pages and you're in, you know, 80 of the scenes. You gotta, like. There's a certain way you have to dissect that. And so there's layers of it. It's almost like. It's almost like a. It's almost like a tiramisu, you know? Tiramisu is like all these layers. Like, you gotta. You know, I have a certain. I mean, we'd be here forever if I told you. My, My, my. You know how I break down. And I've been doing it ever since. That's not. Like I just thought of this and no one taught me this.

[Duncan Trussell]

No.

[Pauly Shore]

I taught it myself this.

[Duncan Trussell]

The thing you're describing, that is the commonality I've noticed between every one of my friends who are actors is they love breaking down scripts, struggling over the script, studying the script. Their weird, like, language that they put into the script. It's a real intellectual, hardcore analysis that for a lot of people, would feel tedious. And actors love it.

[Pauly Shore]

I love it, dude.

[Duncan Trussell]

It's the crazy.

[Pauly Shore]

Like, I do cue cards on the wall. I do day one, day two, day three.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

I do a whole thing.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

Also, you have to understand something. There's two big rules that I tell people that want to act. Number one, acting is listening. Acting is reacting. That's more than anything. It's not about how you say the line. It's how you react to the person that say the line.

[Duncan Trussell]

Playing the moment.

[Pauly Shore]

Playing the moment. And because every time, every scene, every. Every take is different. So you have to react differently to every take because you don't know where the other actor's gonna go. That's the first thing is. Acting is reacting. That's the biggest thing. And it's not about, oh, I gotta say my line. Perfect. It's about how you react to the person that's saying the line. That's the first thing. The second thing is, what's the reason why your character is doing something? You have to have a reason. It's not just like, you're going around like this.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Pauly Shore]

You know what I Mean, dude. So it's like, those are the two things, you know, Once I break it down and once I learn the lines, you know, what's the reason. Why is this character going in there? And what's the reason?

[Duncan Trussell]

It's just juggling. It's so many balls. The actors are juggling effortlessly that because to me, like, when you start realizing how acting is so fucking technical, it's not just that you have to. That you have to memorize the lines. It's that there are angles that you can't look at. So it's not a natural situation at all.

[Pauly Shore]

Right?

[Duncan Trussell]

So you're in this complete.

[Pauly Shore]

This situation right here. This is a. This is a scene in a. In like a lawyer's office, right? You know, you're my lawyer. I'm your fucking defendant or whatever. You're telling me you got a camera there. You got two cameras here. This is a great setup for a scene. Let's do the scene right now. Ok. And action.

[Duncan Trussell]

Listen, you're going to have to plead guilty.

[Pauly Shore]

But I'm innocent till proven guilty, though, don't you think?

[Duncan Trussell]

There's video of you.

[Pauly Shore]

All right, enough. Cut, cut, cut. Okay, but. Yeah, like that. That type of shit. That's pretty much it. You know what I mean?

[Duncan Trussell]

Video.

[Pauly Shore]

You did good.

[Duncan Trussell]

Oh, thank you. But thank you so much. Thank you.

[Pauly Shore]

Good night. The Oscar goes to. Duncan Trussell.

[Duncan Trussell]

This is not costing me $50,000 every 10 minutes. And so I'm saying in this tiramisu you're describing, it's not just that I don't want to look at that camera, and I'm going to play the moment with you, and that is fun. It's. Don't say the fucking line wrong. This is your job, man. And this is burning money right now. And you got to be.

[Pauly Shore]

I don't think of that, dude.

[Duncan Trussell]

You. You have such control of your mind.

[Pauly Shore]

Yeah, I don't think that, you know, I lock into this character. I don't see all this other freedom.

[Duncan Trussell]

Is the same thing you talk about when you go on stage. And this is my friends who are actors. They describe the identical experience of diving into the freedom of being somebody else for a little while. Taking that way.

[Pauly Shore]

The Richard Simmons thing was a big deal for me. Me, dude, because I got to play him in the short film. And. Yeah, and it did really well. And I. And everyone sees it, and it's like, oh, my God, like, you're perfect. And so, like, it's like, I'm teed up for this, and we have the script. We got the producer.

[Duncan Trussell]

I so hope that happens, man.

[Pauly Shore]

Yeah, we won't. We won't. It'll. It'll happen. But I'm just.

[Duncan Trussell]

What is there, like, you got to get.

[Pauly Shore]

I don't want to get into.

[Duncan Trussell]

Okay, it doesn't matter.

[Pauly Shore]

It doesn't matter. But my point is, is that it's a role that I don't want to say it's made for me, but it's made for me, you know what I mean? Because I'm flamboyant and I'm physical just like him. And I'm sad like him. I'm lonely like him.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

I've been famous like him. I'm isolated like him. I'm by myself like him.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yep.

[Pauly Shore]

You know, I've had people take care of me like him. There's all these parallels. I was really famous like him. You know, I'm dealing with chubby white people like him. You know what I mean? There's all these things that are exactly the same.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

So it's pretty much I'm playing myself with the fucking wig.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

You know what I mean?

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

And like, you know. You know what I'm saying? Because he was so famous and he was so lonely. Oh, my. So lonely.

[Duncan Trussell]

Well, I mean, like, that's a crazy thing to become famous for. Like an exercise instructor.

[Pauly Shore]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

That is fucked up, man. And spandex, like, that whole situation. How do you keep that going? Like acting. You can always do stand up acting, but what do you do as an enrollment? Talk about getting trapped in a character. That's a. That's a terrible.

[Pauly Shore]

Hey, positives and negatives. You can look at the positive of it. You can look at the negative at the positive. He helped millions of people. You know what I mean? He made millions of dollars.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Pauly Shore]

And he had a million big houses and he ate good food. And then the negative is all the other stuff. So where are you going to focus? You know what I mean? So it's like not everyone's life is positive, positive, positive.

[Duncan Trussell]

No, I know. And I. My. I habituate towards the negative, which is lazy. But still, when I. That's what I love about these guys are tragic figures. Is that as long as there is that positive. Another thing that, you know, inarguably Richard Simmons had is the same thing you were talking about that Prior was doing. It's this underlying sweetness that there's no fucking way any of that would work authentically.

[Pauly Shore]

That guy.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yes.

[Pauly Shore]

Yes, for sure.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

And he really cared about people. And he really. Because guess what?

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

He Was chubby too. And he was made fun of a lot too.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Pauly Shore]

And he was, you know, an outcast too. So when he sees people that are overweight, that are struggling or that are fucked up, he wants to help them because he's really helping himself.

[Duncan Trussell]

Innovator. Ahead of his time. Body positivity.

[Pauly Shore]

Way before body fun too. Funny. Yeah, funny, funny, funny self aware. Yeah, very funny. Yeah, yeah, very funny. I mean, you know, and sweet. Yeah, yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

But also the other reality is that you really. It's like, it's like trying to have a dry fish. If you're gonna be that in the world, tragedy must ensue. If you're gonna walk around the world with an open heart, it's not gonna be yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so then the other thing that informs people like that, and certainly prior, and certainly you, is the kind of tragic, and I mean that in the best way possible, wisdom starts emerging. You don't give up on the open heart relationship with the world. A lot of people do. Fuck that. I'm not going to feel anymore. So people like you run into these people who have a kind of stubborn open heartedness where even though they know what this means for life, it means you get to actually feel meaning the good things you're going to feel. It also means if you let yourself be vulnerable like that, you will experience tragedies that might not befall other people in the same way.

[Pauly Shore]

It's called, Is it called nice People lose laugh or come in last?

[Duncan Trussell]

Sure. There's a lot of.

[Pauly Shore]

It's kind of like Trump, you know, he's very like fucking like this.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

You know what I mean? And he says there's two types of people. There's the victims and there's the pythons, you know what I mean? What do you want to be?

[Duncan Trussell]

You want to strangle people to death? They're being strangled to death. Only options.

[Pauly Shore]

You know what I mean? Yeah, it's fucking hilarious. But it's kind of true in a way, you know, I don't know. But I play the guy that likes to get. I get strangled.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

You know what I mean? And I get taken advantage of.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

You know? You know, what's it called? No good deed goes unturned, unpunished. Yeah. You know, you hook up your friend.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

You know, you give your friend a little money. Guess what? That's an opening for him to fucking come at you more.

[Duncan Trussell]

Dude, it's.

[Pauly Shore]

It's fucking disgusting.

[Duncan Trussell]

Let me tell you.

[Pauly Shore]

You know what I mean?

[Duncan Trussell]

This is the human condition. It Starts with kids. You're trying to be a good parent. You're like, you know what I'm gonna do? Special day trampoline park. You're gonna love it. You take him to the trampoline park. You know, it's not just trampolines. It's fucking that it's fun. Yeah, it's fun. But it's also casino for. It's Vegas for toddlers. It's like flashing lights. They want to do the VR, the claw machine. Now by the end of that thing that you were trying to like, I'm going to be a great parent, they're fucking screaming, I want to do the claw machine again. I didn't win anything. And you realize that thing you're describing, it gets more sophisticated. But it starts at the get go.

[Pauly Shore]

That, you know, no good deed goes.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right, no good deed goes unpunished. Just because most people, they don't know how to regulate their emotions and they're hungry too. People are hungry. You know, that's something I loved about your mom. She understood the psychology of comics more than anyone. Maybe ever.

[Pauly Shore]

Absolutely. Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

And she knew no good deed goes unpunished. And it is no doubt experienced it more times than anyone could ever know. But she never let that quality of humans make her hate that person. Because how could. Because everyone coming to her was hungry to some degree. Everyone had their hands out to some degree. They wanted stage time, they wanted acceptance, they wanted to be one of the chosen ones. And so I really love that about her. She was so compassionate to that. She was very open hearted in that way.

[Pauly Shore]

And I'm. Yeah, and I'm doing something similar, similar to that right now at the store. You know, I talked to Peter and Bob Wheeler who, you know, is kind of like the main person running the place with Peter. And. And I'm like, look at, you know, I'm at the store, you know, I'm doing shows and stuff. I live in, you know, la, and. And I'm there physically and I'm watching and I'm doing my spots. And then once in a while you'll see guys like Steve Kravitz, Jay London Le Maire, Karen Haber Yarcy, you know, all these kind of like, you know, and I can go on, you know, all these kind of comedy star alumni.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

And you know, and I think I put my mom's hat on. You know, I don't put my. Because whenever I'm in there, I'm my mom. You know what I mean? Not on stage, obviously, but just how she you know what I mean? Because I know how she was when she was there. She saw everything. And so I'm sympathetic to those people.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yes.

[Pauly Shore]

You know, very. Just like my mom would be. So we came up with this idea called. It's called the Alumni's of the Comedy Store show, hosted by me. So basically, June 5th is our first one in the Belly Room.

[Duncan Trussell]

That's so cool.

[Pauly Shore]

And it's going to be just Comedy Store alumni, people that have their name on the wall but yet aren't getting spots.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right. Dude, that.

[Pauly Shore]

Okay, so you know what I mean? And we're going to bring them on stage, and then we're going to. We're going to do a q and A with them after what happened.

[Duncan Trussell]

Oh, that's cool.

[Pauly Shore]

You know what happened? What was your experience with Mitzi?

[Duncan Trussell]

That's a show, dude.

[Pauly Shore]

Yeah. What's. What's. What's going on with Mitzi? What were you. What were you here with Mitzi? She made you a paid regular. Like, what was that like? You know what I mean? So it's gonna be in the Belly Room. We're gonna start it off there and then we'll see where it goes. But the way I look at it is I look at a lot of different ways. Like there's Vietnam vets and there's Comedy Store vets.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah, Right.

[Pauly Shore]

You know what I mean? I mean, she's been there 50. Over 50 years.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

So you got all these comedians. Jackson Purdue sent me a list. I could show it to you. Of all the alumni. And I'm like, Jesus Christ. And I'd say about 30, 20% of them are dead. But there's also where all the other ones.

[Duncan Trussell]

Oh, dude.

[Pauly Shore]

You know what I mean?

[Duncan Trussell]

So, okay, that thing was really controversial because Mitzi was not doing shows to make money. She was doing shows because she loves stand up.

[Pauly Shore]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

Meaning people would come knocking at the door who already had a name. Famous comics wanted to go up. She wouldn't let him. They would sell tickets, no doubt. And this would happen during times where it wouldn't hurt to sell some tickets at the store. You know, the store has its own cycles and stuff. And she would refuse to do that because it went against what she felt in her heart was what she wanted to do, making her what a lot of people would think of as, like, eccentric. Like, what's going on? Why?

[Pauly Shore]

Because it doesn't make sense.

[Duncan Trussell]

Makes no sense from. If.

[Pauly Shore]

If financially it doesn't make sense. But. But with her artistic, you know, direction, it made sense. And you were there because you. You did the lineups with her. What years did you do the lineups?

[Duncan Trussell]

I don't know the exact years is late 90s, early 2000s.

[Pauly Shore]

That was a good time too, though.

[Duncan Trussell]

I. Oh, dude, it was really cool. So to witness that other thing that was cool is I didn't know what I'd hitched my wagon to because I didn't come there wanting to be a comic. So basically I just needed a job on the phones. And then I got swept out in this, like, riptide. It was luck. Just pure good fortune. But, you know, Oh. I quickly began to realize, like, whoa. Like, I. I've never been around a person like this. Like, this is like being around Ansel Adams or something. This is like a chance to be.

[Pauly Shore]

She was very, you know, and this was before for the whole Internet thing, so she was very blunt. Oh. You know what I mean?

[Duncan Trussell]

Yes.

[Pauly Shore]

Now you can't be a comedy club owner and pretty much speak your mind, because then, you know, social media will come after you.

[Duncan Trussell]

Oh, absolutely. No, absolutely. Like, she. But she would have spoken her mind still. She wouldn't have cared at all. Nothing. Like, it was like one of my first encounters. But then being at the store, I encountered other people like that. Cause that was kind of the culture there. But that was one of my first encounters with. And she would use the term iconoclast is what she would say. But, you know, a hyper, unique person that wasn't making money wasn't the first priority. Art was. And whoa. The vibe that created was insane. You're like that, like, you know, like that you. That, you know, if you lead with that, you're gonna be miserable. It doesn't really. It doesn't make anything that good, but definitely won't make you money sometimes, you know?

[Pauly Shore]

Yeah. So. So with these alumni, you know, my whole thing is like, you know, guys like Argus Hamilton, Tom Dreeson, and these guys are working out at the store. Like, Argus kills. Oh, dude, he destroys.

[Duncan Trussell]

So funny.

[Pauly Shore]

And he's got great material and it's current and he's funny and. And so, like, you know, you say, like, hey, you got all these other comedians, you know, maybe they could kill. Because to me, funny has no age. You know what I mean? What if these older comedians, these alumni are actually, you know, good, Then you can put them downstairs and interweave them.

[Duncan Trussell]

Dude, I don't know if I just, like, didn't see enough of Argus shows or something, but do you remember, and forgive me if I'm wrong about this, but at some Point Dark Argus appeared like he was doing more square stuff or something. And then I remember going to see him and his material seemed like it had gotten edgier than he's been Sober.

[Pauly Shore]

For what, 30 years?

[Duncan Trussell]

I know, but it's shit. I don't. What I'm saying is something shifted, you know, that's what I love about Stand up is that this podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. Come on, you gotta try it out. By now you've heard of it. Surely if you listen to my podcast, I'm speaking to that section of my audience that has heard my mini commercials for Squarespace. My dearest longest sponsors and wants to create a website, but hasn't tried Squarespace out. You must try. Not just because if you don't have your business online, if you have a podcast, minus a website, whatever it is that you're doing, if you don't have some kind of online presence outside of your social media, then you're cheating yourself. You don't want to do digital sharecropping. That's what we call it. When you hit your wagon to this social media company or that social media company, they can pull the rug out from under you at any second. The algorithm can just. Just blink you out of existence. You still are posting stuff but nobody's seeing anymore. You need a website, a bastion of freedom, a tower on the hill, a light on the tower on the hill, a lantern around. A beautiful lantern around. A light on a tower on a hill. And that light is shining out into the World Wide Web. Whatever you want it to, it doesn't all have to be about business. Maybe you're ready to start showing people your writing, your art. Maybe you just want to make something cool and you don't know what it is yet. Maybe you feel compelled by the forces of creativity themselves to express yourself digitally, self publish, build a website, make it look good. It can change over time. It can grow and shrink. It can do anything you want it to. Because of Squarespace's powerful suite of web design tools. You can go as big as you want. You can make a website in under an hour. I did, and I tested it recently. And now they've got AI to help you out, which you gotta try. If you have had weird experiences with some kind of web design, and at some point you realize, shit, this is more tedious than I thought it would be. I don't have time for this. You gotta visit Squarespace. This is such high tech. It was already high tech, but now it's pre singularity level high tech. You can just blast out a really good looking website. And if you're a coder or you're someone who actually understands like deep web design, they give you the ability to do that. If you just want to put your social media feeds in one place so you can do that. If you want a members only area, you want to create some kind of paywall for special content for your fans, you can do that. If you. Obviously there's shopping cart functionality. All the modern pay service they use, obviously their shopping cart functionality seamlessly integrated into the service. It's everything you need in your go to spot if you're interested in creating a home online. So try, try this incredible service out for free before you do. Go to duncan trussell.com that's a Squarespace website. It has been for years. Beautiful, powerful, simple, elegant, mind bending and easy to update. So you could try it out for free. Go to squarespace.com duncan and when you're ready to launch, use Offer Code Duncan to get 10% off your first order of a website or a domain. [e-mail] Duncan offer code DUNCAN to get 10% off your 1st order of a website or a domain. Thank you. Squarespace. It I've never met a comic who's been like, I'm, I figured it out. I'm done. I've stopped evolving you. That, that thing that you see happen and it's the coolest thing to see. You see someone who's, you know, whatever, okay, on stage and then you haven't seen him in a while and they're just. They figured it out. Yeah, they're fully themselves up there. Something happened.

[Pauly Shore]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah, but it doesn't, that doesn't just happen once.

[Pauly Shore]

Right.

[Duncan Trussell]

It's like a cycle, you know, and that's. It sounds like what you're doing is like not developing them, they're developed, but giving them a chance to sort of.

[Pauly Shore]

Well, it's. To me, it's the opposite of Kill Tony.

[Duncan Trussell]

How so?

[Pauly Shore]

Well, Kill Tony is, is kind of what my mom did. Well, I wouldn't say it's kind of. It is what my mom did.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Pauly Shore]

My mom, you know, Tony does one minute.

[Duncan Trussell]

Okay.

[Pauly Shore]

She does three minutes.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right, Right.

[Pauly Shore]

And Brian Redburn does the Angry Cat. My mom's Giving the light. You know what I mean? It's a rap. So. So with Kill Tony, his show is, is helping young hopefuls. So the alumni is, is, is rediscovering old, old guys and see if they're still there. Because my dad didn't stop. He didn't stop till he was 90.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

You know what I mean? And there's, you know, comedy isn't one of those things that you get worse. You could get worse, but you can also get better.

[Duncan Trussell]

That's right.

[Pauly Shore]

But I. I don't know. I mean, time will tell. They might. You know, Jay London hangs out at the store a lot, and he opens for Louis CK So every time Louis CK Comes in town, he's like, I want Jay London, but yet the Comedy Store doesn't book him. You know what I mean? So let's see. Maybe. You know what I mean? Yeah, we can bring these, some of these back. I don't know. Time will tell.

[Duncan Trussell]

This is like where economics and developing comics crash together in this awful way, which is like, things are more expensive these days. You're running a comedy club, you need to sell tickets. You don't have. You gotta pay the fucking rent on the place. You gotta get people asses and seats to sell some drinks. And it's like that. I get that. But that thing that was happening at the store was very special in that that was not the priority. And that allowed a lot of great comics to evolve in that space of, like, you just experiment, be funny. But we know you're not going to.

[Pauly Shore]

Get well if we can interweaves, you know, again, I don't know, but if we. I wouldn't say if we can, but I mean, what's happening, and it happens here at Rogan's club and in the store, because it's the same kind of structure, is you interweave kind of good unknown comedians with the famous ones, because the famous ones puts the butts in the seats, and the good unknown ones are just good, and they'll someday be known.

[Duncan Trussell]

And. But you, somewhere in there, you also need sort of good unknown, maybe not so good unknown, you know what I mean? So that. So that they. Because no one starts off good, that's usually the open mic period. But the Mitzi, like, the club produced a weird liminal place where you could kind of not suck, and God help you if you sucked in front of her. But still a place where you could, like, you know, get your chops up a little bit, which is anomalous, especially for la. A safe space out there, you know, to do standup. All right, change of pace. And this might be me leaning too much into the negative, and I totally respect you not wanting to do that, but I don't think people understand how many cults there are in Los Angeles.

[Pauly Shore]

All right, I'm gonna get out of here now.

[Duncan Trussell]

Thanks. Come back. Wait, man. Wait.

[Pauly Shore]

What? I thought you said contractually when I sent my document that we weren't talking about manifestation and cults and fucking Martians.

[Duncan Trussell]

I'm not accusing you of being a cult leader. And I'm not going to say that you're running a micro cult in Los Angeles that changed my life or anything like that. I'm very sorry that I brought it up.

[Pauly Shore]

So what's your question about cults? There's good cults and bad cults.

[Duncan Trussell]

That's what everyone in a cult says.

[Pauly Shore]

Yeah. There's nothing wrong with a cult, but.

[Duncan Trussell]

The Comedy Store was some kind of cult. Okay, great. And it's the classic cult form. Cult leader Mitzi, A system that was like. Would pull you in. Mitzi never told me when to not.

[Pauly Shore]

The communist still pulls people in. And she's not even there.

[Duncan Trussell]

I know. So you, you know, you basically grew up.

[Pauly Shore]

I should have one of those circle chains that cult leaders have. Right. You know what I mean? Like one of those necklaces right here with the circle.

[Duncan Trussell]

I'm sorry, I'm not again. And anything will delete anything. I am not gonna leak anything about what you're doing out there. And I don't think it's bad what you're doing. And I learned a lot from your retreats. But the. We can cut that.

[Pauly Shore]

No, but I think I need to put on my cult glasses right now. I'm not trusting what's going on here.

[Duncan Trussell]

You grew up in a cult. You grew up in a. You grew up. And that was like, what? And I agree with you. I don't think all cults are bad. But I remember when I realized there was. It was something of a cult is watching comedians bow to your mom and not sarcastically. That was a wild thing to watch. And maybe not completely out of place that here was a person who, like, opened up a space where many of them, if not for that space, would have been selling cars who the fuck knows what. And so there was a mystical aura at that place that you are steeped in that you grew up in. It's very hard to describe even now, in a way that is tangible. People can understand what I'm talking about. But I just wondered your thoughts on that.

[Pauly Shore]

Well, people were very vulnerable, you know, when they came out to Hollywood in the 70s.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

You know, the 80s, you know, and Lost, you know, most of them were not, you know, David Letterman or Kenison or, you know, or Argus from Oklahoma. Like, you know what I mean? So, you know, everyone wanted to come to California. It was very much kind of like how people want to come into Austin right now.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yes.

[Pauly Shore]

You know, you got Shane Gillis here and Tom Segura and all these guys kind of moved out here, you know. And here's Joe. Joe's kind of a cult leader, too, in a way.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yes.

[Pauly Shore]

I wouldn't even say kind of. I mean, like, you know. Well, I mean, he's kind of like.

[Duncan Trussell]

You got an outsider who's got a lot of charisma, and then something forms around them. But as opposed to, like, the mothership or any other place I've been, that's a comedy club. The Comedy Store had a vibe in it. I'm sure it still does. It's why people called the building haunted. It's why people had all these stories about it, because there is a specific vibe in that place that. The only other place I've experienced that is when I went to India, there's a place called Varanasi where they cremate bodies. And it reminded me, not in a bad way, by the way. This isn't a bad thing. It's like it's this oldest city on earth. Smells like barbecue from the grilled corpses, but it's real. It feels real. And the Comedy Store is like that. And I don't know if you haven't been there, if you could even understand what I'm talking about, or maybe I'm nuts, but do you know that energy I'm talking about in that place?

[Pauly Shore]

Yeah. It started with Ciro's.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Pauly Shore]

You know, which was the club before, you know, and that's where Sinatra was, Sammy Davis. So that building has that feeling. And then supposedly there's ghosts. I've never seen any ghosts there. And supposedly the gangsters have beat people up and killed people underneath the thing. I never saw that, but the feeling is it's kind of like. I call it the Emerald City for comedians. You know, kind of like where everyone kind of comes and feels like it's their home. You know, we're all a bunch of. I don't want to use the word degenerate. We're not degenerates, but we're all kind of like misfits.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yes.

[Pauly Shore]

And it's a place where misfits can kind of feel comfortable. And she kind of created that place because all comedians, I mean, we're all, you know, we're all kind of a mess.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Pauly Shore]

You know what I mean? We're all kind of like, you know, looking a deer in a headlight. And with that Place, you know, my mom was, you know, very motherly, and she pushed her kids, me included, off to the side, and the comics became her kids and her kind of disciples, you know what I mean? And all the different people that came in off the Greyhound and she would take them in. That's why she was so hurt by David Letterman when he. When he crossed the picket line, you know, when. When they were striking. Because my mom kind of took him in off the streets and gave him a stage time and blah, blah, blah. And they're like, oh, you know, as opposed to just negotiating a deal and like, hey, comics need to get paid, of course. But why are you striking and. Cause that's hurtful. Oh, yeah, it's hurtful when you know the person that you just gave a stage to and you gave, you know, even Jimmy Schubert, you know, my mom took care of his leg, you know, because he broke his leg on a motorcycle. My mom. You know what I mean?

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

My mom put this guy into rehab. And, you know, she did that because she cared. You know, she's. Her heart was open because I think that she just knew that comedians need to make the world a better place. And she felt responsible for that because she knew if she could develop these comedians, you know, because that's what she was good at, is developing the comedians. The comedians. Cause in return, bring happiness to the world. I mean, look what she did with Jim Carrey or Howie Mandel or Arsenio or Roseanne or any of these guys.

[Duncan Trussell]

So many.

[Pauly Shore]

I mean, millions.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah, so many.

[Pauly Shore]

So, you know, she was. And she was hard because, you know, it's like joining the army. You can't all of a sudden go through basic training and go like, all of a sudden you're shooting a gun. You gotta be beat the fuck up. You know what I mean? And you gotta, you know, you gotta be pounded. You know, pounded. And basically told you're not ready. Or. Or you got more work to do. And there's no one else. There's no one at the store like that anymore.

[Duncan Trussell]

Well, I mean, this was the worst thing you. The worst thing you can do to a comic is tell them that they're. That joke is funny when it's not. Lie to them, blow smoke, because then they're gonna maybe keep doing a shitty joke thinking you said that and your mom understood that. That, you know, comedy is. You don't. You develop via failure. Jokes bomb. This joke doesn't work. I gotta cut five minutes off of that bit. It's too fucking long. It doesn't work from lies. The audience doesn't lie. The audience is very honest. And your mom was prepping people for that, I think. You know, I don't know. I encountered her after the strike, after the many weird things that happened there. And I think by then she had sort of, like, maybe become even more tough recognizing. Dude, you don't want to let. Like, if you help somebody become famous and they're not ready for it, you're not helping them at all. Yeah, I always felt like it was a. That's part of what she was doing.

[Pauly Shore]

Yeah, but it was definitely, you know, you go back to the cult. You know, cult kind of place, and the. Yeah, it was very much like that. But, you know, it's like, shit or get off the pot. You know, this is her club. She owns it. She's the person in charge. Like it or not, she's the one that gets to tell you to go on stage or not.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

This is her vision. Either want to roll with me or you don't. And she's like, yo, I want to roll with you. I want to answer phones.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

I want to park cars. I want to do all this shit because I just want to get in. You know what I mean? And sometimes people hit me up all the. I don't want to say all the time, but I get hit up all the time. How do I get into the store? How do I get it? Like, just go hang out there. Figure it out. You know what I mean? There's no. There's no shortcuts, you know?

[Duncan Trussell]

No. And, dude, that's something about you that. Your work ethic's insane, man. Like, you know, that's always been something I've been very impressed with. It's a little, like. It's good to be around people like you because it, like, makes you work harder. But, you know, you're. You grind, man. Like, you really do, like, finish shit, which I think separates a lot of people from other people. Tell me about that, man. Tell me about the grind. Where did you get that? Was it from watching your mom? At what point did you realize you can't really fuck off if you want to make good stuff?

[Pauly Shore]

Like you said earlier, everyone's got different levels of their career and different. You know, every. Every seven years, things change and every. You know, stuff happen. So for me, you know, the totally poly thing was. Was the thing that just kind of like, I look at it as that old kind of Reese's peanut butter commercial with the chocolate and the peanut butter, where it just hit for Some reason, it just worked. Yeah, so it just worked. So that was. I don't want to say luck, but that was part luck, part timing, part talent, part being the right guy at the right time. The right network. Network. You know what I mean?

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

It just all kind of lined up and then from there, the harder you rise, the harder you fall.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

So then, like, after my movies didn't perform and I fired everyone, I was pretty much. I purposely kind of put myself out on the street again. I had never been on the street before, so. And I. At 30 years old, I found myself having to figure it out.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Pauly Shore]

You know, start over again.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Pauly Shore]

And that's when I did. Polly Shore is Dead. You know what I mean? And that's when I first started figuring it out.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

So part of it is through therapy. You know, I went to group therapy to help, to give me the tools, to kind of like just deal with shit. Letting go of stuff, moving forward, making a vision for myself on projects. So, for instance, Polly Shore is Dead was the first. To me, it was the beginning part of the second part of my career. Because I wrote it, I paid for it, you know, I directed it, I produced it. I did that.

[Duncan Trussell]

I remember.

[Pauly Shore]

Shit. Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

You worked your fucking ass off, dude. It was crazy. Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

Hard, hard, hard film.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah, man.

[Pauly Shore]

And it took me five years to do it.

[Duncan Trussell]

I'm sorry.

[Pauly Shore]

And that was like the beginning part of.

[Duncan Trussell]

I gotta ask this though, man, like, only. Cause you said group therapy.

[Pauly Shore]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

I'm just thinking we're friends, but I'm thinking how wild that would be. You go to your first group therapy, Paulie's there. And also for you. Don't. Do you feel nervous in that situation about being like, saying everything, which I assume you have to do in group therapy?

[Pauly Shore]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

That's got to be weird for you, man.

[Pauly Shore]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

I would expect you to do one on one therapy.

[Pauly Shore]

I've tried that. But the group is better because it puts you in with real people and it's emotional intelligence as opposed to. As opposed to like, you know, one on one. Like.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Pauly Shore]

You do these, these. These diet. They're called Dyads. You do them with different people and it breaks everything down. It's hard.

[Duncan Trussell]

Oh, you're doing family systems.

[Pauly Shore]

No, no, it's. It was. It was called lifespring years ago. I remember when you remember, I did that.

[Duncan Trussell]

That seemed to coincide with Pauly Shore's dad.

[Pauly Shore]

Yeah, it seemed like those.

[Duncan Trussell]

Those things. Okay, I got you. So that kind of. That helped.

[Pauly Shore]

It gave me the support and the direction. Yeah. Wow.

[Duncan Trussell]

Cool.

[Pauly Shore]

Basically taking. Basically having a sense of humor about myself.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

Because I was so. I took, you know, when, when, when, when, when I put myself out there and then I. And then I went away. I had. You have two ways, you know, when your career goes into a. Into a. A spin. You know what I mean? After you have that run, you have two ways to be. And one way is like you. You say, oh, that was awesome. Like, I had a sick run. Like, let's chill. Yeah, I'm gonna go surf.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah.

[Pauly Shore]

I mean, I'm gonna go chill. Or the other way is you take it personal. And I took it personal. Yeah, I took it personal. And then, and then, and then I went to group therapy and I was able to let go and then I was able to make fun of it.

[Duncan Trussell]

Wow.

[Pauly Shore]

But. But I don't know, because I've produced and directed so many different projects. And this is before the Internet. I mean, we're talking a lot of projects. I mean, natural Born Comics and politics and Adopted and Vegas is my oyster. Like a lot of projects. Because I was. Because I'm able to visualize my stuff. My. My projects. I'm able to finish them.

[Duncan Trussell]

Right.

[Pauly Shore]

You know what I mean?

[Duncan Trussell]

You see, for beginning, I said, you finished up. As opposed. Some people don't. They get halfway. And they say.

[Pauly Shore]

Because I know the beginning, middle, and end.

[Duncan Trussell]

You mean before you work on it, you already pictured.

[Pauly Shore]

Wow. Yes. Yeah, yeah, I see the whole thing. Like, I have this new movie. I met this girl in. In Las Vegas. And I never planned this. This just literally happened about two months ago. I met this girl in Las Vegas. She's a nurse and she's also a stripper. Let me say that again. She's a nurse at night. You know, she cleans people's assholes and all that stuff. You know, working the late night shift where people come in where they're dying. And like a real nurse, she's got her whole license and the whole thing. And then she's also a stripper at the Spearmint Rhino, which is like the number one strip club in Vegas. So she's two people.

[Duncan Trussell]

That's right.

[Pauly Shore]

So I thought it was such a cool character. I'm like, fuck, I got to write a movie about this. So I wrote a whole fucking thing about it. And I got a writer, he's writing the script, and I'm going to produce it in Vegas. And it's going to be this like, kind of like a Nora, kind of like that vibe where it's like Shot. I'm going to shoot it with no actors. I have this whole vision for it.

[Duncan Trussell]

Why. Why is she, like. It seems like the money you would get from dancing would exceed your nurse salary. But why is she nursing? Like, why?

[Pauly Shore]

Well, because she likes it. I don't know. You know, she likes helping people, so. Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

When does she sleep?

[Pauly Shore]

Well, she sleeps during the day, and then she's not. She works on. What is it, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. She does the nurse thing at night, and then she takes Wednesday, Thursday off, and then she works at the strip club on Friday, Saturday. Yeah, it's cool. It's a cool. It's wild, right?

[Duncan Trussell]

Has she ever run into a former patient?

[Pauly Shore]

Well, that's part of what the movie is. You know what I mean? Where it's like. You know what I mean? Yeah, something like that. But anyways. But. But I just thought it was an interesting. You know, it's interesting to me. So I. I all of a sudden started going like this. And I can envision Lies, the movie, and I got my team together.

[Duncan Trussell]

That's cool.

[Pauly Shore]

And I just want to do that, and I'm not in it. I just want to direct it.

[Duncan Trussell]

Holly, we're out of time.

[Pauly Shore]

We could have gone for hours.

[Duncan Trussell]

Oh, I know, man.

[Pauly Shore]

And you know what's cool is I live right across the street from here.

[Duncan Trussell]

We gotta do it again.

[Pauly Shore]

That's what I'm saying.

[Duncan Trussell]

Every time I come out here anytime.

[Pauly Shore]

Really?

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah, of course. You're. You're. You're my.

[Pauly Shore]

Josh. We're okay. We're good. We're good. Josh is my friend.

[Duncan Trussell]

You're. But I am more of a friend. And you are a father figure to many of us, and thank you for leading the way. And I'm so excited to hear what the Silver angel has revealed to you at the next retreat. That was Pauli Shore, everybody. Thank you so much for watching or listening. I'll see you next week. Hare Krishna.