<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" Dave Attell is not going to be the next Louis C.K. He&amp;#039;s not going to be on magazine covers, touted as &amp;quot;Comedy&amp;#039;s Great Big Thing.&amp;quot; And he&amp;#039;s fine with that. He&amp;#039;s got a loyal cult following, many of whom first discovered him (and continue to discover him, thanks to YouTube) on Comedy Central&amp;#039;s Insomniac. He&amp;#039;s been mostly off the cultural radar in recent years, but tonight, those of us who still think Attell is an underrated comedy genius will have a reason to rejoice. Attell&amp;#039;s first stand-up special in seven years, Dave Attell: Road Work, will premiere at midnight (or 11 p.m. Friday if you&amp;#039;re in the Midwest) on Comedy Central. (If you&amp;#039;re reading this too late, or don&amp;#039;t have basic cable for some reason, you can buy the special for $5 at CC: Stand-up Direct.) Directly after, at 1 a.m. ET Saturday, there&amp;#039;s the premiere of Comedy Underground with Dave Attell, a new eight-episode stand-up series that features comics like Amy Schumer, Judah Friedlander, and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. Both the special and the series are reportedly &amp;quot;uncensored,&amp;quot; which means there&amp;#039;ll be a lot of F-bombs dropped and jokes that&amp;#039;ll make Suey Park get carpal tunnel from writing angry tweets. I called Attell to talk about hyper-sensitive audiences, the pointlessness of Twitter, the existential dread of smoking outside of airports, why nobody wants to be a lawyer anymore, and of course, hardcore pornography. ERIC SPITZNAGEL: I&amp;#039;m an old fan of yours. Like old old.  DAVE ATTELL: How old exactly? How old are you?  ES: Mid-40s. DA: Finally! Thank god. Okay, this is good. ES: Have you been doing too many interviews with youngish journalists? DA: You have no idea. They&amp;#039;re like babies. We have nothing to say to each other. ES: We could do the whole interview just talking about VHS porn. DA: Oh, please! Yes, I would love that. Those were the days, right? Before the digital took over. ES: We&amp;#039;ll get to the porn. First I&amp;#039;ve got to ask you about the new Comedy Central shows. DA: Gotta keep selling. [Laughs.] That&amp;#039;s what we&amp;#039;re here for.  ES: Both Road Work and Comedy Underground are billed as uncensored. Uncensored in 2014 means something very different than it did in 2004, or 1994. DA: That&amp;#039;s a very good point. I would say that uncensored today was probably just PG-13 in the &amp;#039;90s. Now everybody is so fucking politically correct. So you&amp;#039;re right, maybe I overplayed it. It&amp;#039;s not as dirty as it could be, but it&amp;#039;s dirtier than it should be. ES: Between one and 10, one being a Toronto Mayor Rob Ford press conference and 10 being German porn, how dirty are these shows? DA: Wow. You&amp;#039;ve done your homework. I would say the special is dirty, but the series is filthy. These young kids have some crazy jokes. They have some balls, you know what I&amp;#039;m saying? And they talk about balls.  ES: They managed to be dirtier than you? That&amp;#039;s saying something. DA: Here&amp;#039;s how I think of the Comedy Underground show. I&amp;#039;m just some sad old hack comic bringing on the new people. It&amp;#039;s really about them. Shows like this are the only place left to do this kind of material.  ES: The dirty stuff?  DA: Yeah. You can&amp;#039;t do it on network television. You can&amp;#039;t even do it in the clubs sometimes. They&amp;#039;ll be like, &amp;quot;We don&amp;#039;t want to insult the bachelor party in the back.&amp;quot; ES: We live in an age of oversensitivity. DA: The crowds today, it&amp;#039;s always &amp;quot;too soon, too inappropriate.&amp;quot; You get groans if you make a joke about the Civil War. I&amp;#039;m pretty sure there&amp;#039;s not any 150-year-old people out there. I don&amp;#039;t know what they&amp;#039;re teaching the kids these days, but they seem to be very tolerant of everything but comedy.  ES: So what you&amp;#039;re saying is, they&amp;#039;re probably not going to enjoy your bit about special-needs children and dolphins? DA: Oh God, not a chance. The young people who come to the clubs now, it&amp;#039;s like they think it&amp;#039;s performance art. They just sit there and blink. It&amp;#039;s weird. ES: Are they stupid? DA: No, no. They&amp;#039;re smart. But they&amp;#039;ve been through the wringer. They&amp;#039;ve been tiger-momed into being over-achievement machines. They&amp;#039;re being crushed by student loans, they&amp;#039;ve never known a world without a war on terror, and none of them can afford to buy a house. Every day is another 15 phone apps they need to buy that promise happiness but just leave them empty and soulless. I feel bad for this generation, the Millennials. They&amp;#039;ve been fucked.  ES: The very first joke on your special was about Cubans. Are you sure it&amp;#039;s safe to open with a racial joke? DA: Oh boy, you found that racial? ES: It wasn&amp;#039;t? DA: That&amp;#039;s just Queens, New York. I don&amp;#039;t know, I don&amp;#039;t think of jokes that way. ES: Will Suey Park have anything to complain about in your material?  DA: Who? ES: The CancelColbert hashtag woman. DA: Oh, her. Here&amp;#039;s the thing, I&amp;#039;m not really a Twitter guy. That whole Twitter thing, and the girl with the Twitter, and Colbert tweeting but it was probably somebody else tweeting for him, it&amp;#039;s just... [pause, sighs] Is that the world we live in now? I don&amp;#039;t know. ES: It&amp;#039;s kind of tiresome. DA: It&amp;#039;s fucking awful. Who cares? And I&amp;#039;m not just talking about the people complaining. I don&amp;#039;t think anything I say is that important. ES: How much longer do you think you&amp;#039;ll do this? DA: Complain about Twitter? ES: Do stand-up. Are you ever going to retire, or just keep going &amp;#039;til you drop dead in a Chuckle Hut in Omaha? DA: I don&amp;#039;t know. You always want to think that you&amp;#039;ll quit a week before they want you out. That&amp;#039;s like any job. I don&amp;#039;t know, man. I feel like I&amp;#039;m at the end of my rope here. ES: You&amp;#039;re burned out? DA: It&amp;#039;s not so much the stand-up, it&amp;#039;s all the promotion that goes with it. It really is just creeping me out. I&amp;#039;m too old for it. I remember when you&amp;#039;d do radio in the morning, and then you&amp;#039;d do the shows and it&amp;#039;s done. But now, it&amp;#039;s never-ending. You need to do a podcast and Twitter and animate something. It&amp;#039;s like, what about just getting onstage and being funny? What happened to that? ES: It&amp;#039;s all on the Internet now. DA: I&amp;#039;m up against a skateboard video somewhere out of Ukraine. I can&amp;#039;t compete with that. ES: Do you want to do more acting? According to IMDb, your last acting gig was a voice-over for the 2010 video Scooby-Doo! Abracadabra-Doo. DA: That was my best work as an actor, I think. I&amp;#039;m living off that money right now. ES: You are? DA: Yeah, that was a nice payday. That was $800. ES: That&amp;#039;s retirement money, my friend. DA: Well, it was something I hoped would lead to more work, but I guess not. I came from the era where ugly guys were either writers or voice-over guys. Now, all the A-listers are getting the big voice-over gigs. Honestly, I hate acting. Which is good, because I&amp;#039;m not an especially talented actor. ES: Did you ever think comedy would lead to an acting career? DA: Never. But a lot of comics now, I think they get into comedy thinking it&amp;#039;ll lead to acting. I&amp;#039;m the kind of guy who got into comedy hoping it would lead to running a comedy club. ES: Do you like the lifestyle of a stand-up? Going from town to town, sleeping in hotels and always heading to the next gig? DA: When you&amp;#039;re young it&amp;#039;s fun. When you&amp;#039;re old, it just seems like a lot of standing in front of airports chain-smoking. That&amp;#039;s really what it is to me. I&amp;#039;m standing in front of an airport at 20 below zero. The airport isn&amp;#039;t even open, I&amp;#039;m the first guy there. I&amp;#039;m waiting for the actual people to open the airport because I got kicked out of the hotel. The hotel only had me for one night, so now I&amp;#039;m here. ES: There may be some young fledgling comic who reads this and says, &amp;quot;Fuck that. I&amp;#039;m going back to law school.&amp;quot; DA: I wish they would! But that&amp;#039;s the problem, nobody wants to go to law school. Everybody wants to play a lawyer on TV, but nobody wants to be a lawyer. It&amp;#039;s true. Everyone&amp;#039;s an actor. I don&amp;#039;t know, what do you think? You live in LA, you&amp;#039;re on the pulse of it. ES: Actually, I got out of LA the first chance I got. I live in Chicago. DA: Good for you. It&amp;#039;s a nightmare out there. ES: Too many people in the industry. DA: And they&amp;#039;re all telling you to start a podcast or tweet more. It&amp;#039;s like having a comedy career involves all these other jobs that I don&amp;#039;t really want to do. Maybe down the road, but it&amp;#039;s not for me now. I just like doing stand-up. ES: What about doing a TV show based on your life? Like what Marc Maron and Louis C.K. are doing. DA: I&amp;#039;m not interested in being any more visible than I am. For Louis, who&amp;#039;s kind of a genius, and Marc, who I was just talking to before you called, they&amp;#039;re both great comics and I&amp;#039;m really happy for their success. I love seeing guys who I&amp;#039;ve been in the clubs with for years make it. I don&amp;#039;t have any kind of jealousy or anything like that. But I have no interest in trying to follow in their footsteps. ES: Okay, we&amp;#039;ve avoided this topic for long enough. Let&amp;#039;s get to the porn. DA: Finally! ES: Your Showtime series, Dave&amp;#039;s Old Porn \u2014 in which you watched classic adult movies with comics and porn stars \u2014 only lasted for two seasons. Is it ever coming back? DA: If I had the rights to do it, you would see it right now. Hopefully down the road there will be another, as they say, &amp;quot;platform&amp;quot; for the show. See? You&amp;#039;ve got to get up with the terms now. ES: You&amp;#039;re so 2014. DA: We&amp;#039;re looking for another venue or avenue for digital downloads, or some bullshit. It&amp;#039;s about the brand! ES: Please stop. DA: What&amp;#039;s your brand? It&amp;#039;s about the brand, man. ES: Old Porn still has an active Twitter account, so that gives me faith. DA: That&amp;#039;s the only time I&amp;#039;ve been excited about tweeting, because it&amp;#039;s all porn stuff. ES: Your Old Porn Twitter is the only reason I learned that Gloria Leonard died. DA: Thank you! See, we&amp;#039;re doing a public service. I still feel like we were on to something. People come up to me in airports and restaurants and say, &amp;quot;I loved that porn show. I watched it with my wife. She didn&amp;#039;t like it at first, but now she sees that it&amp;#039;s hilarious.&amp;quot;  ES: Was it based on real experiences? Do you watch porn with friends? DA: No way! Guys always tell me about hanging out and watching porn in their frathouse, but I never was in a frat. I mostly watch porn alone in a room, with just my sad thoughts.  ES: But as it turns out, watching porn leads to some really fascinating conversations. DA: Especially with women. I loved hearing Kathy Griffin or Amy Schumer talk about this stuff. Because nobody ever watches porno with a woman in the room. It can be illuminating. ES: We learned some things. Like that Marc Maron got his sex education from porn and thought vaginas were a &amp;quot;devil&amp;#039;s mouth.&amp;quot; DA: I know, right? Marc is a good guy because even though he&amp;#039;s full of angst or whatever, at the end of the day he&amp;#039;s still a comic. He knows his porn. Comics know porn. We know it. ES: I&amp;#039;ve found that to be very true. Every comic I know is like a porn historian. DA: We&amp;#039;re obsessed. ES: Why is that? Why do comedians love pornography? DA: Because we need it. We need it more because we&amp;#039;re not in bands. If we were musicians, we wouldn&amp;#039;t need porn. Let&amp;#039;s face it, music beats comedy any day. Music touches the heart. But comedy... I have no idea what it does. It rattles around in your head for a while. And then you fuck a musician and forget all about it. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/interviews/a28242/dave-attell-interview/>