Episode 343 · Post-Ben
Small Talk with Colin Quinn | The Tim Dillon Show #343
with Colin Quinn
Apr 23, 2023 · 1:09:23 · 261,000 views · 26 segments, 144 moments indexed
Tim speaks will Colin Quinn about the most original voice in comedy, a culture of rats and how the two will get a movie made together.
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- 1 min
Intro: Colin Quinn Joins the Show
#Tim welcomes comedian Colin Quinn, plugging his new one-man show and noting Quinn does a new hour almost every year.
2moments
- Tim welcomes Colin Quinn to the show and mentions his new hour special
- Colin releases a new hour almost every year
- 2 min
Tim and Colin discuss losing their voices from yelling on stage, the Milwaukee crowd holding a grudge over a canceled Improv show, and Colin's advice to see voice coach Gary Ramsey.
4moments
- Tim's throat starts getting sore when he's ready to move on from material—his body rejects the bits.
- In Milwaukee, Tim canceled a show at The Improv due to losing his voice, rescheduled it for a weeknight, and the city still resents him for it.
- Tim's agent, described as the fattest agent in America at 400 pounds, told him to just get a steroid shot without concern for polyps.
- Gary Ramsey gave Tim advice about changing his whole life to protect his voice during tour.
MilwaukeePabst TheaterThe ImprovGary Ramsey
- 3 min
Colin explains in detail how Gary Ramsey's Alexander Technique-based breathing method saved his voice, comparing it to how babies breathe, and how it let him do three Broadway shows in a day without losing his voice.
6moments
- The Gary Ramsey breathing method is based on Alexander Technique, using your diaphragm and stomach instead of your throat to avoid polyps and hoarseness.
- Tim credits the technique with never losing his voice over almost 20 years, even with his naturally raspy voice that would wear out immediately otherwise.
- Someone emailed Tim about the method after he and Tim Dylan were suggested as a father-son comedy duo.
- A one-hour session with Gary shows you where you're gripping your throat unnecessarily, so you can yell through your diaphragm instead.
- Babies breathe correctly by expanding their stomach on inhale; adults do the opposite, pulling their stomach in and tightening everything.
- During Broadway, Tim did three shows on Saturday, each an hour and 20 minutes, with no voice rest days, and his throat stayed fine the entire time.
Alexander techniqueGary
- 3 min
Colin describes his new show 'Small Talk,' about how everyone is watched and rats on each other now, riffing on his old Mafia-controlled hometown on Long Island (Island Park) where minding your business was valued, contrasted with today's snitch culture and mafia guys doing podcasts.
6moments
- Colin's new show is called Small Talk, about the minutia of how people relate to each other.
- The big theme is how language works today when everyone speaks as though they're being watched and under surveillance by each other.
- Tim says everybody's a rat and it's a culture of rats, nobody hates free speech more than we do.
- Those guys loved to stand around the boats in flip-flops and brown socks with slippers, smoking cigars and looking miserable over the water as a sign they'd made it from the city.
- The value in that town was minding your business, keeping your opinions about people private because you didn't know who was listening.
- Those mob guys now rat on everybody, no one kills them anymore, and they all get reality shows and podcasts.
small talkLong IslandIsland ParkGoodfellassurveillanceOzone ParkThe Sopranos
- 3 min
They discuss how Colin still writes and rewrites entire theatrical shows rather than doing crowd work like most modern comics, and Colin mentions surviving a heart attack and feeling 'good, not great.'
7moments
- Tim notes that most comics now do crowd work instead of writing full shows, asking audiences where they're from or personal details.
- Colin explains his show incorporates small talk by making the audience interact with him in conversation rather than answering direct questions.
- Tim jokes that he's a dying man at 25, referencing that writing full shows is a dying art.
- Colin would prefer to direct and write rather than just perform stand-up, citing a pitch meeting where he could hear himself talking too much.
- A woman with blue hair on a movie pitch made Colin realize immediately the meeting wouldn't go well.
- Colin suspected the pitch failed because the studio executives weren't interested, despite the idea being about a subtle, great Irish family story.
- The Irish family movie pitch happened three years ago, when there wasn't much appetite for that kind of story.
small talkcrowd work
- 4 min
Colin recounts pitching a Netflix movie about an Irish family with interns sitting in on the meeting, Netflix passing on it, and the plan to have Tim Dillon play a bar-band singer in the film.
7moments
- Tim pitched Netflix an Irish family story and got rejected immediately.
- Tim was going to be the lead singer in a bar band in the film.
- Tim asks about the ideal business approach to funding a hypothetical movie.
- Tim mocks his guest for calling a subprime mortgage boiler room a 'real job.'
- Discussion of how newer generations understand being a small businessman out of necessity.
- To make a movie work, you'd have to raise money so people could actually recoup their investment.
- You'd theoretically have to kidnap Joe Rogan's dog to fund an independent film.
- 1 min
Tim reads a Helix Mattress ad, describing the sleep quiz, hybrid coil-and-foam design, and a 20% off plus two free pillows promo code.
3moments
- Tim mentions his family is visiting for July 4th and notes they're judgmental, but promises they'll love the Helix mattresses.
- The Helix sleep quiz asks basic questions like sleep position to find your perfect mattress in under two minutes.
- Helix is offering 20% off all mattress orders and two free pillows, with the promo code TIMD at helixsleep.com.
- 4 min
Tim and Colin get into the economics of financing and distributing an independent film themselves, kidnapping Joe Rogan's dog for money as a joke, streaming subscriptions replacing individual purchases, and the difficulty of recouping investor money.
7moments
- Movies cost enormous amounts of money, and distribution has fundamentally changed—people subscribe to Netflix and HBO instead of buying individual purchases like they did with iTunes.
- The realistic path for an independent film is to license it to Hulu or Netflix after production, but that's depressing because investors struggle to recoup their money through those deals.
- Podcasters have proven they can produce late-night-caliber content and sketches online can match SNL quality, but movies and prestige TV like Succession and Game of Thrones remain impossible to produce independently at scale.
- Studios make prestige shows because they control what gets promoted and what people see—they don't know how to make genuinely funny low-budget movies the way Scorsese did with Mean Streets.
- Even with podcast promotion, the math doesn't work: 50,000 people buying at ten dollars each is only $500,000; a million dollars requires 100,000 sales and massive awareness.
- If Tim, Christa, and Andrew made a movie together and promoted it on their podcasts, other comedians would go on their shows out of passive-aggressive interest at not being cast.
- The fundamental problem is unpredictability: you can estimate what percentage of your audience might buy based on numbers, but you can't know until the film is released how people actually receive it.
Mean StreetsJoe RoganAndrew SchulzChrista Stefano
- 3 min
They discuss how Colin's quality web series Cop Show still struggled for eyeballs despite star cameos, comparing it to viral hits like 'Old Town Road,' and joke about hiring Dylan Mulvaney to do outrageous stunts to manufacture controversy and attention for a hypothetical film.
4moments
- Tim made Cop Show, got everything right—quality content with celebrities—but still couldn't get eyes on it.
- The biggest viral things start as something people hated or treated as a joke, like Lil Nas X's Old Town Road.
- To market a movie, you need a specific campaign that gets eyeballs; quality work alone isn't enough.
- Tim would hire Dylan Mulvaney to promote a film in the most grotesque way possible, just to generate controversy and attention.
Dylan MulvaneyLil Nas XBud LightBurke ChryslerDave Schultz
- 2 min
They riff on staging fake scandalous camera moments (Mulvaney fights/hookups) to go viral, and how oversaturated micro-communities on YouTube (like fishing content) make breaking through nearly impossible.
6moments
- Tim pitches a fake on-set scandal: a rogue cameraman catches de Stefano and Dylan Mulvaney together, then days later captures a violent altercation.
- Without manufactured controversy, content gets buried because there's so much material on YouTube now that audiences fragment into niche communities.
- Tim wrote and starred in a fishing show sketch at SNL before his last appearance, featuring Tracy as a character from To Kill a Mockingbird.
- The sketch involved Tim as a fishing show host interrogating Tracy about looking in a neighbor's window, with a setup mimicking the courtroom drama.
- Jim Breuer played a redneck sheriff in the sketch, with Daryl as the father, and the comedy worked well enough that it got cut after dress rehearsal.
- Young Britney Spears appeared in the sketch as a girl and performed well in it.
Dylan MulvaneySaturday Morning LiveBritney Spears
- 2 min
Colin recalls writing a To Kill a Mockingbird parody fishing sketch with a young Britney Spears that got cut after dress rehearsal, then discusses Bill Murray inventing a totally new ironic tone in comedy that nobody had done before.
6moments
- Tim discusses creating a Lion character and how comedians in the 1990s had a different mentality about performance.
- Bill Murray invented a comedic tone in 1978 that nobody had seen before, a deadpan ironic style that became widely imitated.
- Completely unique comedic voices are rare; Bill Murray changed how people did comedy by introducing a tone that spread beyond just comedians.
- Matthew McFadden's character Tom on Succession represents another example of a completely original comedic tone you don't see elsewhere.
- Bill Murray did multiple characters on SNL, including an oily lounge singer, all delivered with a distinctive tone nobody had done before.
- Norm MacDonald had a similarly distinctive and unique comedic tone that nobody else could replicate or had attempted before.
Bill MurrayNorm MacDonaldTom on successionRichard Belts
- 2 min
Colin praises Norm Macdonald's singular conversational style and recounts the recurring bit where guests on Norm and Adam Eget's podcast were led to believe Adam was a Holocaust denier.
6moments
- Norm's comedy made the listener complicit—he'd subtly suggest someone quit their job and then act innocent when they actually did it.
- Tim attended Norm's memorial service where Adam Eget spoke and killed.
- The guests at Norm's podcast didn't always know Adam Eget had this reputation, so they'd get angry thinking he was an actual Holocaust denier.
- Norm would casually reference the Holocaust accusation while interviewing someone and just move past it, leaving the guest visibly confused.
- Adam Eget took the hits without trying to defend himself, which made the bit even funnier.
- Adam Eget is now running a comedy club designed by a comic that has a distinct feel when you walk in.
Norm MacDonaldAdam EgganJoe Rogan's Club
- 1 min
A quick aside about Rogan's comedy club being well-designed by a comic and having heavy UFO imagery.
2moments
- The spacing and crowd positioning at the Comedy Mothership is perfectly designed for comedy, even if the UFO imagery is heavy.
- Tim has two quick Woody Allen stories from being in his films.
- 5 min
Colin tells two long Woody Allen stories: getting a small cop role in 'New York Stories' and being yelled at by a hostile second AD, and Pat Cooper's furious meltdown at Pips comedy club after being asked to improvise again for the camera after Woody Allen left.
10moments
- Tim cast as a cop in Woody Allen's 1987 film New York Stories while doing comedy at night and smoking three packs a day
- Second AD screams at Tim on first day for not knowing it's a Woody Allen movie; he shows up progressively later each day
- During his scene in Union Square Park playing a cop with an actress, Tim realizes he's bad and Woody can see it
- Woody Allen gives Tim a single piece of acting direction to try to save the scene
- Fifteen years later, Ray Garvey pitches Tim on a film project where Woody Allen will do stand-up comedy
- Tim doubts Woody Allen would leave to do stand-up in Brooklyn for Ray Garvey's project
- A month later, Woody Allen actually shows up to film stand-up comedy at Pips in Sheepshead Bay and brings Tim on stage
- Danny Aiello pulls up in his Jaguar and negotiates to use it in the scene; Pat Cooper arrives and complains about only getting a town car
- Woody Allen performs thirty minutes of brilliant improvisation, riffing freely on the room and everyone in it
- Production asks Pat Cooper to recreate his ad-lib performance, and Pat refuses, cursing out Woody Allen and leaving for Randazzo's clam bar
Woody AllenPat CooperPipsColin QuinnDanny AielloNew York StoriesRandazzo'sThe Improv+3 more
- 3 min
Colin describes auditioning at the historic Pips comedy club in Sheepshead Bay, an incident where angry Avenue X guys stormed the stage over a failed comic's audition, and the mob's control over NYC comedy clubs in 1984.
5moments
- Tim auditions at Pips in Brooklyn on a Wednesday night and finds a hand-written sign saying Joey Limbuck won't be performing.
- Six Italian guys from Avenue X, all shaved heads and wife beaters, burst in and start throwing chairs to break up the show.
- The guys' friend Joey Limbuck had failed his audition the week before, so they've returned to disrupt the club in his honor.
- Joey ends up performing his act from the back of a flatbed truck parked outside, with the crowd chasing out to watch him.
- Tim gets a Friday night audition slot by sticking with the club owner during the chaos, but bombs and never gets used again.
PipsAvenue XWoody AllenBrooklynCaptain Walterswheelers
- 4 min
Colin runs through who was considered big in the early comedy scene—Rich Jeni, Ronnie Shakes, Eddie Murphy at the Comic Strip, Richard Lewis—and tells stories about Larry David's confrontational stage persona and Rodney Dangerfield's real generosity backstage.
8moments
- Rich Jeni was considered the man among working comics, doing all the Rogue gigs in the early 80s.
- Eddie Murphy would come into the Comic Strip once every six months and just dominate the room.
- Larry David would get mad at the audience in seconds—he tested crowds unfairly from the start.
- Tim was there when Larry David got into a fight with a drunk friend of Lenny Dykstra's who called him a Jewish bastard.
- Larry's opening bit was asking the audience if they'd taken French in high school, ready to turn hostile if they didn't understand his tu/vous conjugation joke.
- Rodney Dangerfield would show up at his own club in the bathroom with a Heineken and go on stage for 10-15 minutes of real comedy.
- Tim tried to sell Rodney a few jokes and Rodney told him they were shitty and just moved on.
- A lady once came up to Rodney quoting his famous catchphrase, and he told her to go fuck herself.
Larry DavidRodney DangerfieldEddie MurphyRich JeniGilbert GottfriedJerry SeinfeldLenny DykstraRonnie Shakes+2 more
- 3 min
Colin recalls meeting Adam Sandler at 17 before he was famous and watching him transform into a star after six months on the road, plus Colin's own experience with sudden college-crowd fame via MTV rather than SNL.
7moments
- Tim's MTV career was his big break, not SNL.
- College crowds of 1500 would line up for his shows without him realizing who they were waiting for.
- MTV popularity created a sharp age cutoff—kids screamed in the streets but nobody over 23 knew who he was.
- Tim met Adam Sandler in 1984-85 when Sandler was 17, already charismatic and running with the same crew he still works with.
- First impression: Sandler was cocky but not yet funny.
- Comedy has a unique advantage over other arts: the audience gives immediate, involuntary, honest feedback.
- You can't tell a band mid-song that their new material isn't working, but silence at a comedy show delivers the message instantly.
- 3 min
They discuss Patrice O'Neal's singular ability to completely own any topic and any room on Tough Crowd, and how great comedians force an audience to listen on their terms.
7moments
- Patrice became himself by age 18 or 19, with a natural charisma that made people love him.
- Tim still listens to Patrice on O&A and watches his specials; the way he broke things down is irreplaceable.
- The best compliment for a comedian is that their perspective is completely one-of-a-kind.
- On Tough Crowd, Patrice would command the room with body language and tone, silencing everyone else to listen to him.
- Many successful stand-ups operate from a tone of absolute control—listeners will hear them out however long it takes.
- When Patrice entered that zone, he owned every single topic he talked about.
- Tim's podcast works because he starts talking about something, then suddenly takes an unexpected turn that surprises the listener.
- 1 min
California vs. New York Fashion and Playing a Rap Manager
#Tim jokes about adopting California colorful fashion versus New York's monochromatic 'uniform of misery,' riffing on playing a Miami music manager bailing his rapper 'Shiggy' out of jail before Rolling Loud.
3moments
- Tim describes New York fashion as a uniform of misery compared to California's colorful approach.
- He jokes about dressing like a rap manager from Miami who just got his artist out of jail.
- Tim introduces his fictional client Shiggy the God and explains the artist's legal troubles with his baby mother's boyfriend.
Rolling LoudNew YorkCaliforniaMiami
- 3 min
They debate whether comedy requires actual jokes and laughs to count as stand-up, discuss Louis CK feeling like he's already hit every height, and joke about launching an energy drink and merch instead of writing tight material.
8moments
- Tim argues that comedy without jokes isn't really stand-up — if you're not getting laughs, call it something else.
- Louis C.K. told him recently he might not come back to stand-up because he's already done everything.
- Tim says he has backed-up material but wants to take a few years to write and direct instead.
- He's selling only a couple hundred seats on the road, not headlining big venues or flying friends around.
- Tim suggests launching an energy drink instead of perfecting comedy material.
- The new model: take photos with people, sell them shirts, do five to ten minutes on stage instead of real comedy.
- Everyone's fighting for attention in comedy now — Tim used to run around with wigs and fake tits to get noticed.
- Tim advocates for style and substance together, but admits style without substance was his mistake.
- 4 min
Colin's show 'Red State Blue State' is praised for showing regional cultural differences comedically rather than as threats; they discuss how zealots and extremists now dominate political discourse, reducing everyone to either 'groomers' or 'Nazis.'
5moments
- We've stopped seeing regional differences comedically and started seeing them as threatening.
- Social media zealots and extremists set the cultural tone because moderate people aren't funny.
- Red State Blue State worked because it was about culture and environment, not ideology.
- Trying to get central Texas and Tacoma on the same page is futile—the country is fundamentally regional.
- If you characterize everyone as either groomers or Nazis, there's no room for compromise or discussion.
- 2 min
They discuss how AI and algorithms are homogenizing culture, predicting a future 'museum' need to remember distinct regional personalities that will disappear as people become more engineered and connected to phones than community.
6moments
- Tim on living through the last era of human creativity before AI and algorithms transform everything beyond recognition
- Glad he occupied the era where digital wasn't omnipresent—he saw the before and after of the Matrix shift
- Regional personalities that differed across the country will disappear, replaced by homogenized AI-generated versions
- People are now engineered from birth through algorithms and phones instead of community and tradition
- The next generation will fall in line as workers for whoever runs the system
- People already speak in algorithms—their speech patterns are generated rather than organic
AI and algorithmsChatGPTThe Matrix
- 1 min
A short riff on Irish fatalism versus American optimism, joking that hope and enthusiasm feel disgusting and sociopathic to the Irish.
3moments
- Being Irish means not really expecting anything; Tim was raised without hope, which makes him antithetical to people who are drunk on it.
- Irish people don't believe in enthusiasm and hope—it's disgusting and gross to them, people look at you like you're disgusting for showing it.
- Tim argues that to be super positive in the current time, you have to be a little bit of a sociopath.
- 1 min
Colin gives ticket info (colinquinn.com) and mentions directing plans, then teases a small scene he shot in a big movie where the director seemed furious with him throughout.
4moments
- Tim plans to direct Colin in a movie outside an Italian restaurant in Island Park, Long Island
- Tim did a small scene in a really big movie with one of the biggest stars in the world
- Colin compares the director's behavior to Woody Allen, who gave Tim the same treatment while filming
- During the scene, the director kept saying to Tim, 'I don't know what you're doing'
- 6 min
Colin reveals (while trying not to) that his mystery scene was with Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga in an unnamed big film, and he and Tim theorize that directors yell at comedians because comedians try too hard to be 'entertaining' instead of just being themselves.
9moments
- Tim explains why comedians struggle with acting: they try to entertain rather than just being themselves in the scene.
- The director said 'we got it' after the scene, leaving Tim uncertain whether that meant it was actually good.
- This was Tim's first scene in any movie, though he won't say which film it was due to NDA concerns.
- The movie stars Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, and Tim had a scene opposite Phoenix.
- The director was screaming at Tim during takes, criticizing his blocking and line delivery.
- Production gave Tim the lines on the day of shooting to prevent the script from leaking.
- Tim describes his podcast and comedy as a 'low art form' that isn't respected compared to serious acting.
- Barry's new season includes a scene dismissing podcasts as a low-status medium compared to other media.
- Tim hopes his scene with Joaquin Phoenix made it into the final film and insists it was actually good.
- 2 min
They close comparing getting yelled at on set to Bobby Knight's coaching style (Quinn Buckner vs. Larry Bird), Colin recounts Joaquin taking his lighter mid-scene, and they sign off plugging colinquinn.com.
3moments
- Quinn Buckner responded well to Bobby Knight's coaching, but Larry Bird left Indiana State after a year because he couldn't handle the yelling.
- Tim says he'd respond to a director like David O. Russell yelling at him because he understands it's about improving the work.
- Joaquin Phoenix pulled a lighter out of Tim's pocket on set and smoked a cigarette mid-scene to get into character.
Bobby KnightDavid O RussellJoaquinLarry BirdQuinn BucknerWoody Allen