Robert: Dane's not really that guy. He's pretty serious offstage. He's got a great sense of humor, he's one of the funniest dudes, but he's not into that shit. I mean, Colin Quinn, I'll call him a fatso as much as you want. Jim Norton has no chin. Billy Burr's pale. But it's weird: Colin treats Jerry Seinfeld different than he treats Jim Norton, you know what I mean? There's different relationships. I wouldn't because it would be disingenuous for me.
Jay: I wouldn't want to roast Dane because he brought me on tour; he gave me the chance on HBO.
Robert: That's not why I wouldn't roast him.
Jay: Plus I'm not Jeff Ross. I'm not Lisa Lampanelli. I'm not a roast-type comic. I wouldn't roast Bob Kelly.
Robert: Because I'd f--king kill you. I'll stab you. I'll beat the shit out of you.
Jay: You would.
Robert: I would. You're a little man; you're not that big. I'll fight you. I almost fought Gary [Gulman] today. If I'm gonna fight Gary, I'll fight you.
Jay: I know you'd fight me.
Robert: Don't look at me. Look away.
Jay: I am.
Robert: Look down. Good. ... on a unfounded rumor that Cook puts makeup on his stomach:
Jay: Where did you hear this rumor? I'm curious.
Robert: That's hilaaarious!
Jay: From other comedians? A lot of comics talk shit about Dane Cook 'cause they're jealous of his success. And they would looove to stir up trouble amongst his own fellow bandmates.
Robert: I'm not in a f--king band! I'm a solo individual, man!
Jay: It was an analogy.
Robert: But it's not a good analogy.
Jay: I agree, it was not a good analogy.
Robert: All right, so say I'm sorry and move on.
Jay: I have nothing to apologize for, I made an analogy.
Robert: It was wrong.
Jay: It was not a good analogy, I'll admit that. But I have no reason to say I'm sorry.
Robert: Say I'm sorry for making a bad one. And including me in it.
Jay: I should not have made it. I'm not going to say I'm sorry, but I should not have made it.
... on what didn't make the cut on HBO's Tourgasm series that should have:
Robert: It was supposed to be a DVD documentary from [motions with hands] here to here. You were supposed to see Tourgasm from the beginning to the end. And anybody who watched the show didn't like it at the beginning, but all of the sudden by the end they were like, "It was good!" It does have this arc, and it does come full circle, but I think that a lot of the components that would have made it better—the stand-up, some of the conversations about comedy—it is coming out on the DVD; five extra hours.
Jay: There's a lot more depth to it, because you get 20 minutes an episode, 25 minutes max, and it's hard to take 450 hours and cut it into six, seven shows.
Robert: Yeah, we're talking 30 f--king days of filming, from the time we woke up to the time we went to bed, and all the shit that happened. HBO had to make a storyline, you know what I mean?
Jay: Some people called it a reality show; it's not a reality show.
Robert: It got trashed by other comics: "It's boring." You know what? Being on the road when you're not f--king dong coke, you're not doing drugs, you're not going to hookers, you're not drinking alcohol, you're not smoking cigarettes, I mean, half of us had chicks, and yeah, it's kind of f--king boring, man! We're all in our 30s. We all did all that. If we did this tour f--king 10 years ago, 15 years ago, it would have been retarded. People with shit written on their faces ...
Jay: I would have maybe died.
Robert: We would have f--king done some crazy shit. We would have been getting along great. You wouldn't be so sensitive. Man, you'd be partying and banging broads. Dude, we would have been f--king best friends! You should f--king drink again.
Jay: Let's start drinking some Wild Turkey tonight.
Robert: This is the key to it that people don't get: It's Jay and this stage of his career, just starting out, just trying to make it to that next level. It's me, a guy who's doing it for this long, can headline but never got a shot. Nobody knows who I am. I do well at the clubs all the time, and it's like, finally, "Let's see what you can do if you do get this shot." Gary Gulman had his shot, kind of faded away, it's like, "Dude, let's see if we can jump-start you again." And then Dane, who exploded the f--k out of everything. It was supposed to f--king get us to the next level, and it did what it was supposed to do. Yeah, we're all going to separate; we're all going to go our own ways. Gary's going to go over here, I'm going to go over here, Dane's going to go over here, Jay's going to go back to f--king waiting tables.
Jay: No I'm not.
Robert: Jay, I'm joking.
Jay: I know, I know.
... on what they learned from the Tourgasm experience:
Jay: It took my comedy to another level, because it was an amazing confidence boost. And that's what comedy's about, is confidence. The more confidence you have, the more fun you can have, and the more fun you have, the more fun the audience has.
Robert: You do a comedy club, it's a little intimate, it's a little slower. But you do 12,000 people, 8,000 people, 10,000 people: That's a show. It's a whole different dynamic. It taught me how to go in front of that many people and f--king keep them entertained for my whole time. So it was great as far as head-wise. But you know, after it's all said and done, 20 shows in 30 days was ridiculous. It was a grind.
Jay: It was funny, because my friend's in Skid Row, and he was like, "Dude, I was laughing at you guys. Twenty shows in 30 days? I was on the road for eight months straight, dude; we didn't even get started until three months in." We had never done anything like that or even dreamed it would be on a tour bus like rock stars. It was overwhelming for us; plus, we're crazy ...
Robert: We're always f--king analyzing everything and saying, "What does he really mean by that?" You're always going, "He meant that, no I mean that, and he said this." It was like, "F--k you!" after a couple of days.
Jay: Regardless of all the fights and the crazy antics that went on around Tourgasm, the bottom line is that all four of us had the one thing in common, and that was stand-up comedy. Like Robert said, the goal was to get to the next level, and we had this amazing opportunity because Dane Cook's exploding, and for him to give us all a chance to be a part of it enhances our comedy so we can take it to the next level. And so even though we fight, if we have a good set that night, all of the sudden it was like we didn't even fight.
Robert: That's not true.
Jay: It is true.
Robert: Not really.
Jay: We had a huge fight one night ...
Robert: We still fight, dude.
Jay: Yeah, we fight.
Robert: We fight all the time.
Jay: We're yin and yang.
Robert: I'm yang, he's yin. That's a hack analogy.
Jay: Robert's so blunt and honest that I learned a lot about my own insecurities and things that I maybe wouldn't admit before. I've learned how to be more honest with who I am and found out a lot more about myself, and now Robert's trying to tell me to take all these problems I have, that I wasn't even admitting to before, to actually admitting to it first, and then you can turn a lot of that into stand-up comedy. I can take a lot of what I learned about myself on the tour and now turn that into jokes.