Bill Burr explains why so many controversies on the internet just don’t matter
Bill Burr’s comedic style comes off as brash but is laced with ingenious turns. And it’s remained popular even in an era of heightened sensitivities, when old tweets can end careers.
“I’ve been called everything from a liberal Trump supporter (to) a centrist, and it’s all based on when people hear what you say, it’s not what you say,” he explains. “It goes into their brain, and it’s cut with all of their experiences and their opinions.”
In addition to constant touring, Burr has been putting out his “Monday Morning Podcast” for nearly a decade, co-founded the All Things Comedy media company with Al Madrigal in 2012 and just received a Netflix renewal for his animated series “F Is for Family” for a third season.
Here are excerpts from our conversation, edited and condensed for space and clarity.
Q: We’re in this moment where what comedians say becomes headline news, and a lot of people are debating what’s in and out of bounds for comedy. How do you navigate that as a comic? Has it changed?
A: No. I do exactly what I’ve always been doing because I travel the country and I have been for 20 years. Like, everybody in L.A. and New York somehow (thinks they have) their finger on the pulse of all these states they never go to, and they’re doing this by what’s going on social media. And everybody knows on social media at this point if you get enough people to tweet about something at the same time, three-two-one, you can get it trending. And you can get this skewed viewpoint that everybody else feels, “Oh my God, the backlash on this,” and it’s just like, if you just looked at a census, everybody would relax.
Q: I’m even just thinking of these stories going viral about joke controversies.
A: Like what? What has even really happened? I’m in the business, and I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Q: You know, you had the president tweeting about Samantha Bee, people debating Michelle Wolf’s set on CNN. A: But for how long? Q: A few days.
A: It’s like, people freak out for 20 minutes, and then they move on to the next thing. The whole thing is just all controversy-based. Like some of this #MeToo stuff, you’ll see somebody get accused of something and it’s — “Ahh!!” — this giant thing. And then when people come out like, “Hey man, you know I dated him for three years. He’s a cool guy,”
that gets nothing. It gets investigated, and they find out there’s nothing there, and they rehired the person, that gets nothing. What gets [attention]is negative.
(Media is) going digital, and these networks are trying to hang on. I mean, look what happened to ESPN there, everybody just started yelling about sports, just hoping, I think, people would stop (and say), “Oh my God, these people are yelling at each other, what are they yelling about? Was it or was it not a ‘football move?’” All this heaving and screaming and yelling, and meanwhile one company basically poisons our entire food supply. The oceans are dying, and there’s all these real problems going on, but those are too overwhelming to deal with, so it’s just little things like, “Oh look at this soccer mom, is she a bad parent?” “Oh, look at this comedian, he said this joke. Does that mean he likes Hitler?”
I just feel this is just a bunch of “Hey look at this! Everybody stop and look at this! Quick, run three ads, three ads, so we can say we got all these hits.”
Half of the internet now is like clickbait, so it’s not indicative of the average person’s intelligence or their feelings about comedy. The internet is horribly skewed in either direction. And then there’s a bunch of people who don’t believe in that but they don’t want to get in “trouble,” which means a bunch of people — who are allegedly progressive — tweeting all of this horrific mean stuff at them. It’s just really like Chicken Little.
Q: What do you view as a comedian’s role in society?
A: Oh, I’m just a dancing monkey. Hopefully I make you laugh, and for an hour you’re just laughing and you’re feeling good.
There’s a lot of stuff out there where they’re like, “These are the truth tellers and blah blah blah!” That’s not me. I would never want that albatross tied around my neck because I’m up there really just trying to become a better comic and hoping people show up so I don’t go back to sleeping on a futon.
Q: You’ve clearly embraced new platforms for comedians, from podcasting to your Netflix series. What does that give you that traditional stand-up doesn’t?
A: Podcasting, from the beginning, was this great way to connect with people that were into what I was doing and hopefully get more people into what I was doing. Everything that I do, if it’s fun, I do it.
I’m amazed with a lot of the feedback that I get. The amount of women that write to my podcast like, “Oh my God, you think the exact way that I think” — I think that I’m like this meathead guy, so it’s kind of a compliment.
Now I have a daughter, and at her 1-year-old birthday, I saw boys her age coming over, a little bit older, and they were animals. It was like freaking “Braveheart.” They came over grabbing toys and just throwing (stuff), they’re climbing up on something, and the girls were just sort of sitting there, like socializing, and also taking it in: “What is that?”
I remember seeing my daughter — at that point she didn’t know how to say hi, so she would just wave — and this kid came up and took the toy from her, this boy. She just sort of waved innocently, and the kid didn’t wave back, which is the first time she’s ever experienced that. And my heart broke a little bit. I was like, “Oh my God, she just met her first (expletive).”
Q: How has becoming a dad changed the way you approach comedy?
A: I’d never go on stage and think, “Oh my God, what if my daughter ever watches this joke someday? What is she going to think of me?” That is the quickest way to suddenly wearing sweaters on stage and being the most unoffensive person ever.
I’ve watched comics that I was a fan of when I was growing up have these experiences and then they would make these changes. One was being a parent and the other one was finding God. Those two things never dropped somebody’s level of funny faster.
And your kid is not going to think you’re funny, OK, no matter what you do. So now you’re sitting there, doing your act for your kid, who’s never going to watch it, and when they do, they’re going to be like, “Uh, dad, so embarrassing! Why can’t you have a normal job?”
I don’t do jokes about my daughter. If she wants to get into show business, I’ll let that be her decision rather than me putting all these stories out there about her. If you tell some embarrassing story about her and then she goes to school — kids are already going to pick on her because that’s what kids do — now you’ve given this extra added ammo and you become part of a problem. I’ve never understood doing stuff like that. The only way I think I would ever tell a story is if I was the butt of the joke.
Other than that, I’ve always been working on my temper. But now that she’s here, it’s something that I’m working much more on, much harder.