Few performers can pull of existential crises and fart jokes. Pete Holmes is one of them.
Whether you've got tickets to his shows at Spokane Comedy Club this weekend or not, you can listen here to SPR's extended interview with the LA-based comedian.
Reporter Eliza Billingham and Holmes both considered becoming pastors in previous lives, and they talk about everything from aging and parenting to purpose, art, and God.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
ELIZA BILLINGHAM (INTRO): Hey guys. It’s Eliza. I just wanted to quickly say that Pete was such a champ to make this interview happen, but timing was tricky and neither of us were able to make it into a studio to record.
Our Zoom call audio is fighting some background noise and it does a pretty incredible job, but every once in a while, you might hear a word or two get clipped.
Still, I think you’ll find this a really easy listen. We started by talking about this tour and how it’s different from other shows he’s done. He said this set is his favorite one he’s ever written. It comes from an experience that I assumed would be a comedy buzzkill.
PETE HOLMES: I’m just kind of growing up. I have more stuff about being a grown up, more stuff about being a dad, although I really don't think you need to have kids to understand it. But my life is just a lot richer.
So in your 20s, you know, you write jokes about like Robocop. And now that I'm in my 40s, I write jokes about, you know, what it's like to be in a relationship for 12 years and what it's like to have a kid and the responsibility of that. And just and obviously there's always going to be some existential kind of what are we doing here stuff? Always just for a bit there.
But it's just that I also think is part of your life getting richer as you get older. I have fewer bits about pizza and more bits about, you know, — I don't I don't want to spoil it. I'm looking at my set list to see what I have…
It's funny that I'm like, ‘Oh, this is such a higher hour,’ And like one of the bits here is called “Pull My Finger.” So it's it's still pretty silly.
But I think it's it's got a — sorry to overuse the word — but it's got a richness. There's something more substantial about it.
And I love just doing silly bits, and there are plenty of just silly bits. But I think comedy really thrives when you have a perspective, obviously.
When I was in my 20s, I used to joke about how I felt like a dad, even though I didn't have any kids. And now that I have a dad, I feel like I filled out the suit a little bit. I'm like, ‘Oh, this is who I always was.’ And being a dad is exactly as fun as I thought it would be. And it's way more challenging than I thought it would be. So I get to bring that into into the show.
EB: Do you like getting older?
PH: I love getting older. Yeah, for sure.
I really wish I could give whoever said it credit. But somebody told me it's not Native American. But it's the phrase, “No wise person ever wished to be younger.” And I think that's really right on. Especially if you're not plagued by too many things.
There's a lot of things that start creeping in. I'm lucky that my eyesight is still pretty good. My hair is still here. I can still move my body. I don't always need to be sitting. So like I feel like aging isn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be.
And there's definitely like a more defined sense of purpose and usefulness and place that I just, I look back on my 20s and I'm like, ‘Oh, that’s that's Frodo at the beginning of the journey.’ You're going through all of these trials.
And your 40s is, like, you got back to the Shire. You’re Bilbo, basically. You get to talk about fighting the dragon and you get to talk—-you don't have the ring anymore, but the next generation has the ring. But you don't need the ring.
You can write the book about that, that young pursuit of something important and relax. I don't miss going into Mordor to stay with the metaphor.
EB: I told my news director that you were a theologian in comedian’s clothing. Is that accurate? Would you take that as a compliment? Are you mad that I said that?
PH: No, no. I actually was just telling a friend of mine that there's a there's a small group of people that don't even necessarily know that I'm a comedian and I kind of think that's cool. I'm like, ‘Oh, I like that.' Because that's really important to me.
So when you say that, I actually feel very seen. And the reason for that is because, again, with age, I want to be authentic and I want to talk about the things that are actually important to me.
For me, not everybody in their 20s, but for me, a lot of it was —- it’s the difference between like commerce and art.
You know, I heard Rick Rubin talking about how some Marvel movies can feel more like commerce because they're almost like reverse engineered to figure out what the audience wants and then giving it to them. And that's why I can sometimes not always, I actually really like Marvel movies, but sometimes can feel like empty calories, certainly.
And I think there's something similar going on in my life, which is, when I was in my 20s and even my 30s, there was more time spent wondering what the audience might want and trying to give it to them.
And then as I start to notice the overlap between what I want to do—-if you watch my earlier specials, I dabbled in talking about for lack of a better term, the meaning of life—-I would kind of hint that I wanted to talk about it.
Once I realized—-in great part, thanks to the Internet, meaning sometimes those bits don't work the best life, but they get picked up very much on the Internet—-you go, ‘Oh, there is an audience for people that are spiritual, but not religious, who will run away if you, just like I would, if you imply any of the old school religious trauma triggers that we all kind of grew up with. But they do have in them an earnest desire to talk about what this is.
Like, this is insane. This what you're experiencing right now and what I'm experiencing right now is insane. It makes no sense. It's the greatest mystery. We wake up into it every morning. In fact, we never left it. We were there in our sleep, but we become aware of this mystery when we wake up.
And I just think it's absurd that it's not the only thing that we're talking about. And I feel a little cheated that clergy and people that have get to be the ones that talk about it.
And I think ordinary people, meaning people that like going to comedy shows and like laughing at my joke about “pull my finger” are also, like all human beings, naturally, inherently curious about what it is that's going on here.
But we don't have a lot of safe places to engage in that. Because usually if you talk to somebody about a word like God or the mystery or consciousness, that person is trying to get you to join their group or contribute something or donate something or fly their flag or tell them they're right.
I'm trying imperfectly, I'm sure, but I'm trying to just be like, we all get to talk about this. Even in between two jokes that might be dirty or wild, right there in the middle is an earnest joke about the mystery of existence.
That in itself is the message—-that, like, we get to talk about this too. It doesn't belong to the people with the funny hats and the incense and the bells and the robes and the caves. Every single person, your ticket is stamped, you're welcome to the conversation just by virtue of your existence.
EB: And you're doing all of this in the craft of comedy—-often stand up, but other things too. But I wonder, do you think that sadness is something that inherently is to be cured?
PH: Cured? Wow. No. In fact, being a parent is such a great education because my wife and I were just talking about this. When my daughter is having a tantrum and I get frustrated, we both have this opportunity—-it doesn't feel like an opportunity at the time, but looking back, you realize that even getting frustrated that my daughter was throwing a tantrum because I was trying to get her to go with me to a birthday party. What she wanted to do, but she was just having a hard time.
And then she accidentally knocked over a bottle of water, like a big glass bottle of water, and I thought she was in danger and I thought it was making a mess. So I got like flooded with all these feelings.
So it's not quite sadness, but it's these feelings that we don't know what to do as grownups. For me, it's like, ‘Ah!’ and for my daughter, she's having a hard time with this transition, whatever she might've been feeling.
And in that moment—-I don't think there's anything inherently spiritual about this—-you just go, we're not our feelings. Our feelings come and go.They don't need to be fixed. They're not a flaw. Any more than a cloud is a flaw in the sky. It's just there. It's a temporary appearance. It's a passing show.
And actually, if you're trying to get rid of your sadness or get rid of your frustration, that push against it, that aversion, is energizing it and making it way more likely to stick around.
So allowing these things, acknowledging that it's not who we essentially are, sadness is to be greeted like a child throwing a tantrum, except it's you.
And I don't tell my daughter, ‘Stop crying.’ I tell her, ‘You're a good kid having feelings.’ When I'm sad, I say, ‘You're a good man, good person, having big feelings. But it's not you.’
Even that, ‘but it's not you,’ isn't quite right. It's your experience right now. I promise you, it's going to pass.
So let's just breathe. Let's honor it. Let's fix what needs to be fixed.
Maybe it's just going outside. Maybe it's moving your body, talking to a friend. But when my daughter is crying, I try to give her the same compassion I give myself when I'm having a hard time. So that's a good teacher.
EB: I think you mentioned this—-well, you mentioned finding an audience for the things you wanted to do on the internet versus maybe in every live performance that you've done.
But in these kinds of conversations that I would say are meaningful and thoughtful and self-reflective and not the things that I would quickly associate with LA or with the entertainment industry, are you able to find people in your field who talk about these things with you on a regular basis? Or do you feel alone in your career?
PH: I would say to agree with what you're sort of implying there is that there can be an almost catastrophic lack of substance in what we consider Hollywood, right?
So there is a lot of like status and I'll tell you you're special if you tell me I'm special. It's all this like weird, almost like NFT market. It's only valuable if you agree with me that it's valuable. And that can be very hollow.
There's something fun about it as well. There's something, look at this fun little world that we've created and it can be very exciting. It's not all like wicked, you know? But it's not, it won't sustain you. Just that won't sustain you.
So you're absolutely right. I find you do need to have another source. And that doesn't just mean, I don't mean God or something particularly.
I just mean my life has become so much more rich. We moved out of LA. I live about an hour and a half outside of the city. And for the first time in my life, I have a community. Most of my friends aren't comedians.
My closest friend is Mike Birbiglia, who's a comedian, but we just talk on the phone. Not to say ‘just talk on the phone,’ but I mean like that's that. And Judd Apatow and I are quite close as well.
Those are my closest comedian people. I used to think that's what life was, was you wanna be at a brunch where everyone knows how to do bits, everyone knows how to “yes, and” everyone.
I still value those things. But now one of the things I'm looking for is somebody that reminds me who I am deep down. That we can remind each other, as Ramdas would say, that we can walk each other home or that we can sustain each other a little bit more rather than just relying on the specialness of show business.
So to answer your question, yes, my life now, most of the people in my life are not in show business, they're not in comedy, and we do a lot more—-whether or not we're talking about it, it's just a little bit quieter, and that allows for these types of, not just feelings, but experiences to be expressed, if that makes sense.
EB: You brought up wickedness, albeit a little bit joking, and you brought up Mike Birbiglia. I watched an episode of your podcast with you and Mike, which is mostly just you guys making fun of each other, which is, like you said, delightful, because both of you know what you're signing up for. But you kind of joke like, what a safe space for wickedness, and then you back off and you're like, ‘Well, it's not actually wickedness.’
I'm from a religious background, too, and so this whole idea of sin or wickedness or evil that may or may not overlap. But I wonder, do you have a category in your mind for something that is indeed wicked, and is that something to be avoided or not?
PH: Well, I believe that we belong to each other, and I think sin might be better defined as a forgetting that we belong to each other.
So it's not that God is wagging his finger like a lifeguard or blowing the whistle and telling you to get out of the pool. It’s just unconscious, or you could even say in extreme cases, it's mental illness—-an extreme forgetting we belong to each other. And that takes many different forms.
When it comes to making fun of Mike Birbiglia and saying he looks like something you would find in a pool filter, or he looks like the picture Matt Damon would take to his treadmill to motivate him, that to me is very, it's almost sacred—-meaning Mike and I love each other very dearly, and fundamentally, I believe we're just both temporary appearances, meaning like the ocean is awareness or love, and there's a wave for now called Mike, and there's a wave called Pete, and those waves are both buying into the idea that we are separate waves and we're making fun of each other.
Because I think that can be a reminder that nothing essential to us is out there—-nothing essential to Mike is his appearance, nothing essential to me is my neediness or my sweatiness, or whatever he makes fun of me for. There's something cleansing and beautiful about being incredibly offensive and irreverent, and even though I love these things, my act has jokes that I agree are a little bit shocking, and it's because I don't think there's anything “here” that needs to be taken so seriously, and I think that in itself is a message.
Nothing real can be threatened, and nothing unreal exists—-that’s in A Course in Miracles. Nothing real can be threatened, so let's fucking take shit on everything and make fun of everything and delight and laugh in everything because it's not the real, it's not the real.
That doesn't mean—-you need to know the context, I don't just go up to people and roast them. But one of the great privileges of being friends with some comedians is that we understand with these masks, as this wave, in this part of the ocean, I can say you look like Paul Rudd on his deathbed, and you'll laugh, and we'll both kind of feel like, ‘Right, I knew none of this was that serious.’
Does that make sense?
