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T.J. Miller

Mar 12, 202419 min
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Episode description

Our friend, comedian T.J. Miller calls in!

Transcript

Is the downbeat on ninety seven to one the Freak. As you know, we start at six am unless you didn't know, and I just told you again. Podcast every segment right after the show if you missed the eliminator at eight, that dack stuff, free agency stuff, the news, we do it all here. Play a little clip for you right here because joining us now in the free hot line is our friend. He's been on the show

before. He is funny man TJ. Miller. And here's a clip from his new stand up special called Smooth Peanut Butter that you can get on the streaming platforms. My father in law. When he laughs, if something's really funny, he'll cuss at the end. Damn is that the best? So you want to do? And the funnier the thing, the harder the cuss. So something's really funny on all was on the Free Cutline. It's TJ Miller. How are we doing? Hi? Guys there you teach? Don't

call him T Yevin. Yeah, you can call me teach. My wife isn't like that. She called me t T, which means going pepe in the South. I prefer teach, So thank you, you're welcome. T T Boy is one of Danny Stanny's favorite adult male porn stars actors. Oh, he's an actor, Mike. You know. I'm glad you guys brought this up because last night I finished a great session of love making in the tantric style and it you know, it's just a new experience for me.

It laughs longer. So I went to full eight and a half minutes. There you go. So I recommend it. Let me put it there. So you did it twice? Yeah, that's exactly right. I think I don't know. I capped out about after about six minutes. I'll ask a question that's related to the clip that we just played. So you talked about your dad. The element of dad cussing is so funny to me. I grew up in the seventies and eighties, and yeah, I'm not kidding.

My dad's term of endearment to me was the S word, followed by ass. I thought I was little s ass from my entire childhood. Yeah, yeah, it was just normal. You didn't think anything about it. If you do that now, called CPS on you. Yeah, called child services, honey. Yeah. What I thought was my father never really cussed. I only heard him cuss like twice, and one of them was calling me, uh you little ss, and I I was so scared. I just

remember I was like, well, he's gonna kill me. He's gonna kill me and the rest of the family and all and just leave the country with the dogs. But it's my father in law that the joke's about. And he is so funny, and he cusses not often, but when he does, it is so funny. So I agree. I mean, I think it's it's just lost art form by fathers of the world round CEJ. I imagine you were just respectfully guessing a probably a pan the ass growing up,

you know, loud and thought you were funny all the time. And I always kind of wonder when you turn out to be a success, Like I'm in movies, I do stand up? How does that work? Is it slow with your parents sort of acknowledging like dude, this little idiot look at

him and not to say you're an idiot. Imagine they thought you were smart, but you know, I imagine you weren't the most well behaved in school, that sort of thing, Like is there a day when you kind of look at your parents and you're like, see, see what I mean, yeah, and then I buy their dinner. I think I think it was interesting. My parents kind of, I think, thought that I was funny

and they just wish that I would stop misbehaving in class. Later we would find out that had a lot to do with this brain thing that I had in ABM, and then I would sort of adhd but also manic because as I have I had a golf ball size piece my brain removed in twenty ten, so I actually have less brain matter than most people. I mean, not Deanna or Mike, but maybe maybe KT but I but yeah, so

I was I did. I got a lot of trouble growing up, and I think in some ways it was vindicating for my parents to sort of know that these teachers and said I wasn't worth a D would just kind of feel like, Wow, I guess we were hard on him, because now everybody that they know is like, didn't you used to teach TJ. Miller? Wasn't that right with you and your class? And they have to go Yeah. And I was always calling his parents saying he's never going to mount to

nothing. And now every time I turn on the television, I see him in a movie. You're on TV so yeah, I mean I think it was vindicating for them, and then for me. I think I was just happy that I could make people laugh professionally, not get in trouble for, because that's what I was getting in trouble for, was trying to crack up the rest of the class. That's crazy. This is TJ Miller joining us here on ninety seven to one in the Freak. TJ. So you're I

don't know that your hometown. I know you're from Denver. Did you go to like high school in Denver. Yeah. I went to high school in Denver and then college in Washington, d C. But I came up into Chicago, SE and that's how I started, was as an improviser and a

stand up comic in Chicago. So I've been improvising. I improvised in Denver my high school actually, and the first time I did stand up was in high school because we had this very advanced drama teacher who taught i mean, you know, really heavy Brecktian theater in Greek tragedy, and then she had us all do five minutes to stand up. And that was the first place that someone said, well, not even to do this for a living. Well maybe TJ, but I went what was the Eureka moment? For sure?

But as I was improvising then and even in my stand up album Smooth Peanut Butter, I kind of am a guy who, you know, improvises no matter what, the show goes one place, I go that place. So it's an improv in the album. But also, you know, just regular written material and then stories and so yeah, I started as an improviser in Denver. Now that you put it, you know, I put it

together like that. Are there many comics that you're aware of that don't have much of an improv background, that pretty much just script their jokes and you don't have to name names. But it seems to me like by and large, most of the guys that are that are crushing it and ladies that are crushing it right now have a really deep improv background, and gone are the one liner types that don't have a lot of agility on stage. Well, you said don't name names. I was gonna say, I don't need to

because it's everybody. I think. For the people that actually really are improvisers, there are very few. So people are doing crowd work and trying to release that. So that they can do clips. But if you look at Nate Bargatzi, he would never do any crowd work and he's a big Mark Norman doesn't really do any crowd work at all. And so I think most comedians are really focused on scripted stories, scripted bits, and when people interrupt

them, they do not like that. You know, they try and they're going to shut it down, whereas I'm going to open it up and sort of use that to go. I mean on my YouTube channel right now, which is a TJ. Miller. My YouTube channel right now has like four or five specials, and all of them, except for Dear Jonah, are

basically improvised. You know. I have one from the Stanley Hotel that is one hundred percent improvised, and that's the hotel that inspired the Shining And then I riffed an hour in Spokane, Washington, just about Spokane cut that down at thirty seven minutes. That's called the Spokane Special. So there are very few people that can do what I do, which is I'll go on stage

and improvise an entire show. I'll do a full forty five minutes to an hour that is completely improvised, and so you know, to answer your question, Yeah, almost everybody is scripted and doesn't want to be interrupted. To follow up on that real quick, When you say fully improvised, are you talking about you go out on stage, I would think that you'd have to have some type of jump off point or some template or something to fall back on. Or do you just walk out there and go what's up and just

start winging at one hundred percent? Or is there some kind of structure? Well, so here'd be an example. I would go on stage, see somebody it's not clapping, everybody else is clapping, arms crossed, and I'll sort of mention that and kind of figure out, you know, what's going on from there without even talking to them, and then I'll sort of find my way from that into maybe something that I noticed on the way to the show, something interesting about the city, or something on Main Street, and

then I'll just start talking about what I thought about the city in the beginning, maybe my experiences with those types of people. And then if somebody says something, well, you know, I don't think that's I don't think it's really like that here, you know, I would say, well, that's a really polite way to say you know f you we're not liked, and then I'd kind of say, okay, I bet even when you're at your

most angry, you're at your most polite. And then I would go into sort of creating situations where that person sort of gets pulled over by the police or gets upset with a parent teacher conference, and I'll sort of play out those scenarios as that person, and that sort of builds into more things and more things, and then when it's time to kind of be you know, get out of a situation like that, then I'll sometimes go into the crowd and just say, you know, what's going on with you? Or I

noticed it's value the way that you're dressed or things like that. And so it's a lot of observation and then if something leads me to a story for my life, maybe I would put that in there, But that comes up organically, so I did not have that on the set list, and okay, I got to figure out my way to talk about this thing. So yeah, it's it's completely improvised in that manner. Sorry, Budd TJ.

Miller. How do you apply that when you do a movie like you do or a show Silicon valor or Deadpool whatever, you have a script, but obviously your style is very kind of I don't know, casual, like honest how you you know most of your roles are do is it pending the director if you can add lib a little bit or do they encourage you to do it always and then you leave them with no choice? Well, all right, that was better than kind of the verbatim script. That's exactly right.

Well, after a little while, people started to understand, if you hired me, you're kind of also hiring a writer, because no matter matter what I was going to improvise. But what you do is you get the ads written line, you get that done, and then you sort of you get that done and then you sort of have a moment. I call them joke

slots, where you can try three or four different things. Now, when it's sort of television or film, you really only get three or four shots, And if it's Steven Spielberg, you really only get one or two because he likes to move efficiently and get on to the next thing and he's not

used to really improvisers on set. But if you are a doing voiceover for animation, you could do fifteen twenty different joke slots, you know, just trying different lines and so that is I really that's why I love animation, is you just get to throw everything against the wall and then whatever is the best, well and there you go and on silk a value a lot.

It's like the writers are so brilliant. But I would occasionally have something where I give him as written and then I give him something that was funnier. And occasionally you kind of have a little bit of grinding gears with you know, the head writers somebody if they come back and say, hey, can we do the written line again? And I would say, well, I think we already got the best line, so let's move on to the other written lines. And that can you know, that's when egos clash. But

from my perspective, it's not about the ego and not about me. It's like, what is the funniest thing we can do? How do we get Because if the written line is the funniest, which would happen in Silicon Valley and happen in Deadpool? I would I would not improvise. I would I try a couple of things and go, you know what, let's do the

as written again, because that's better than anything i'd come up with. Yeah, obviously those decisions are subjective though ultimately, and I would assume that the producer or director would have the ultimate say on what goes in and what is funny and what's not. How many times have you have you known in your heart it's like, dude, you pay absolutely the not right line for this, and you went with it, and you're sitting at home watching, you

know, the final product, going, Man, they missed it. They missed it. That's gonna happen a lot, right, Yes, it happened. I don't know that it happened all the time because I've been so lucky to kind of be in it with you know, just every almost everybody I've collaborated with, it's just awesome on top of their game. But I think that, yes, it's it happens a fair amount that I'll see a take and I'll go, yeah, there is something better. But I don't really

spend much time on that because it's their movie. I didn't finance it, you know what I mean. Yeah, and you got hot sauce to make. Yeah, you gotta make hot sauce and peanut butter and peanut butter typically, Yeah, I got an album called Smooth Peanut Butter, and I've got actual peanut butter that you can buy on my website. TJ. Miller does not have a website dot com or on Amazon on And it's the best peanut butter that you're ever going to taste. I'm sure of that. Well,

tell us why what makes your peanut butter so kick ass? Teage? Well, there's nothing. Who just said that because I got to do a nickname prap Okay, Danny, all right, Danny ding Dong, I'll tell you exactly what, okay, And that's because Danda Danny Whaney. I have the only peanut butter that is flavored in a way that you can't. I have three flavors. I have dark chocolate, coconut, that's the ladies, and

then I have cherry. Well come on, I mean, well, I guess we wouldn't know because there's really no ladies on the air right now. But the ladies love dark chocolate, they love coconut, and I love cherry chocolate, which is real dried cherries, milk chocolate and honey roasted peanut. And then another well, my favorite is toffee crispy with toffee milk chocolate and rice Krispies. So I don't know if anyone's ever had any flavor like that

in peanut butter, but it's available now from me. It's called TPV and Jay Peanut Better. Yes, how baked were you when you came up with these recipes? Dude? You know what's sad is I wasn't baked when I came up with them, but boy do they go well with cannabis when you eat this. TJ. Miller does not have a website dot com. Get some Peanut Butter, Get the new album Smooth Peanut Butter. Got thirty seconds, TJ, and then we have to let the next show on. I

know you're a Broncos fan. Do you have any thoughts about mister Unlimited leaving and who's going to be your quarterback? What's going on? Man? I'm hoping for John Lway to make a return. Yeah, Denver. Right now, it's all about the joker and the nugget, I mean, so that's kind of That's what I'm focused on. But the Broncos will be fine well, TJ. Thanks for the time again. Always enjoyed talking to you. You're just so nice too. We mentioned in person last time really really uh,

just popped in here. He's like, what's up, man? I feel like you're our friend even though we've taken you three times on this earth. No, but I love that and the final quick plug and I can hook you guys up with this if you want, just reach out. Tatsuit Dallas is one of the best sushi restaurants in the United States. He's a friend of ours. He used to work in New York City, was the best sushi chef in Manhattan. He left for Texas because he wants to be

a cowboy. If you can get reservations, I tell all of your listeners check out Hotsuit Dallas and Dan Dan Wandom, Danny Many, Sir Mike and Kevin. If you guys want reservations, I can hook that up, no problem. Tatsuit Dallas, Tatsoo Dallas Deep Ellum, Hell yeah, all right, TJ. Thanks, We'll talk to you again soon. Brother. There he goes. TJ. Miller does not have a webit lo you. He's a sweet guy guy. So I have will fun upcoming or later in the

week. At eight o'clock on Thursday, we've done it. It's we didn't get a full shipment but the downbeat singing pot of gold. It's called a micro run. Yeah, micro run, and we're only selling it at stores that are green, so Sprouts, Whole Foods, huh, other green stores. We've learned, the dollar Tree, We've learned it. Don't buy too many of these. The biggest issue with all of our singing items that we've we've come made it to market is that virtually none of them sell. Yeah

you can, you can leave the word virtually. That's the hurdle that we keep running into. But there's something about just the marketplace and business that keeps me coming back for more. It's not because what we're doing is not great. That's can't be the issue. It has to be something else. So what's your point that's the problem with the singing on Thursday? Yes, yes, yeah, Maybe a little extra giveaway action tomorrow for spring break maybe maybe,

and much more. Uh as always will be back six am. Whole Show. Sorry about your talk back posted soon. I start with talkbacks today, but I'm gonna load it up. We're loaded up. Thanks to everyone who participated in the eliminator. Thanks to TJ. Miller, Thanks to JJ, to Mike, to Danny, and to Kevin. Thanks. Skin shows next with Christina and Steve. We've got to speak easy after that, and fun times ahead on this Tuesday. So everyone have a great day. We'll

see you tomorrow morning at six am. And happy birthday to my cousin Blake. Hey Blake Birthdays, Happy birthday man. All right bye,

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