Sebastian Maniscalco: Kids These Days

0:00I didn't even have the option of telling my parents I was warm. could you put the air conditioning on? So like...

0:20Hey, everybody. Welcome to Literally. Sebastian Maniscalco, great friend of the show. Great friend of the show. He is here. Always has a plethora. A plethora of fun stuff to talk about. So let's just get it going.

0:50You look good, man. You look fit. I haven't seen you in like a year. It's been like a year and a half since we've caught up. You've been busy and you're killing the game as usual. Thank you. Yeah, I've been bouncing around. Just got back from Atlantic City. I was there for two weeks. And it was a little bit, it was a lot. It was eight shows. Okay, so wait, two weeks in Atlantic City is like eight weeks somewhere else, right? Yeah. Atlantic City, if you've ever been there, if your listeners or viewers have ever been there, it's basically, it was supposed to be Vegas on the water. Unfortunately, Atlantic City, there is like a beautiful hotel, two and a half billion dollar property and like right next to it is section eight housing.

1:36So it's like really, it's like you walk out of the hotel, you know, it's a little sketchy. It's like Bruce can sing, Springsteen can sing about it all he wants, but it's still Atlantic City. Yeah, and listen, the shows were great and the hotel was great, but, you know, if you want to walk on the, if you want to walk on the boardwalk at night, might not come back at all. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Are you in the middle of doing other... You always are doing such huge dates. Is this the season for it or are you taking some time off? Took some time off in the summer and then just doing some casinos here.

2:15We're going to Las Vegas this weekend. And then just some local California gigs up in Northern California. And then that's it. I'm going to shut it down November right before Thanksgiving. and then next year we're up in the air. I don't have like a vision board or like I'm going to do the whatever it is. It's just whatever pops up, I kind of feel it out. Okay, so what do you do when you're at a dinner party or you're out with fancy smart people and they're like, tell me about your two-year plan. And you're like, I, I, I, I, I. I don't know if you're a planner, if you're like sketching out your year next year or the next 18 months.

3:04But for me, I tell them just that. I go with the flow, whatever comes across my desk. If nothing comes across, then nothing comes across. By the way, anybody who says that they can plan anything in our business is being a little bit full of shit. Because we're all, it's like we're in a river. And sometimes the river is at flood stage. And other times it's a drought. And so you kind of got to go where the river flows. You know what I'm saying? But I always find that the people that I know who are in actual businesses cannot understand. They have, because they're making quarters. They're like, well, our next quarter, we're opening to be in the third quarter.

3:50I'm like, what the fuck, what? Yeah, there's no quarters here. It's day by day. Day by day? Feast or famine? Well, especially in the movie TV business, which you've been involved with. I don't know if I could do that, man. I don't know if I could do the, like, is somebody making a movie? Is somebody making a TV show? It's, you know, with comedy at least, you know you could go out and do it once you get to a particular point. Yeah, you always have it. Yeah, you always got like somewhere you could go. But with the acting thing, it's like, is it coming in or not? Yeah, that's why, you know, with my son, Johnny, my youngest, who decided he wanted to be an actor, I was like, obviously, you have my blessing to do whatever your passion is.

4:44But if you're going to be an actor, you better be a content creator because there's nothing, the sitting by the phone, the professional sitting by the phone thing, not a master of your own destiny to the extent you can even do it is a problem. And he's been great. He's been writing his own stuff. But I mean, I remember coming up as an actor, you know, I'd just be, you know, I was really young. So I'd be like 17, 18 years old with my Corona with lime in it over at, you know, Charlie Sheen's pool, checking my answering machine, hoping for some shit go down. I mean, that's not a sustainable world.

5:23Well, you coming up in the time that you did and now you're looking at the entertainment business now, right? I was having this conversation with a couple of people that are close to me saying, you know, you used to get paid to pretend to be somebody else. And now it seems the business is we're going to pay you to be yourself. 100%. 100%. Is the lure of Hollywood and the entertainment business just seem to be just watered down and now? Oh, I can do you one better. So there's some very, very famous annual poll. It's not like the Harris poll or something, and I'm going to find out what it is, but it's a very famous annual poll that's been going on for 50, 60.

6:14years, polling young people about who they admire and what they want to do with their lives. And for the first time ever, last year, actor, movie star, TV star did not appear on the top 10 jobs at all. At all. and it was replaced with, not surprisingly, three iterations of social media success. They don't want to be a movie star, but they do want to be an influencer. They don't want to be, and you know what else was not on there? Rockstar. Wow. Wasn't on there. And by the way, I don't think it was the term rockstar, but it meant rockstar. So to your point, the allure of Hollywood, well, for 100%, It's been completely supplanted by the highest levels of social media.

7:13And why not? I mean, social media surpassed it in cultural relevance. And it's not even close. So I guess the question is, is entertainment in itself changing? 20 years, are we just going to be watching Frank in his living room eat a sandwich and tell us we got to go to this restaurant? I mean. Well, did you see this whole thing that's come out this week about this AI, the first AI actress? No. And that all of the big agencies were vying to represent her. She's AI. And it became a kerfuffle. I think it's more of a troll. and, but sure enough, some people took the bait and were irate and, you know, of course, everybody has to sign a pledge or some sort of letter today in Hollywood and they did and the person who created it is a company in France, I think, an AI company and they're like, it's, this is no different than a puppet when puppetry came out.

8:13It's never gonna, it's not meant to recreate a human being. It's a new, so anyway, but to that said, they're gonna be AI stars for sure but it'll never it's never gonna place what you do you're in the best place of anybody you're in a better place than me yeah they haven't figured out the live entertainment aspect of it yet thank god so I think I think I came at the right time because by the time this is all said and done I don't know what the hell entertainment's gonna look like but oh you're gonna be and you know the good thing for like live Broadway live theater is also gonna be huge because there's going to be a generation that cannot believe that real human beings can stand for 90 minutes and talk uninterrupted.

9:02Really, they're not going to believe it. They will have no history with it whatsoever. And it will be huge. It's like somebody was saying bespoke entertainment. entertainment's going to become bespoke it'll be like you'll want your Gucci bag you'll be like the Hermes bag like hard to find not everywhere you know there's I mean you you should sell out big places but you know let's say 7 ,000 seats whatever it is that's it it's not hundreds of thousands it's and that's it it's like it's like going to Hermes and you're always going to be there and then a lot of it it will be, you know, Walmart. And, you know, and that's great.

9:49Dude, there's great shit at Walmart. I was, every time I walked through a Walmart, I'm like, I can't believe they have this. This is dope. But that's kind of where we're at. That's my, for whatever it's worth. So what are you telling a young kid like your son? Is it, yeah, get into acting classes and make your own movie? Or are you telling them, you know what? Go in the basement, play video games and put it up on a live stream and you'll probably make more money than, you know, any actor working today. Well, the real thing is about acting for anybody is if you're a real actor, that you're so in love with the process that you would do it for free.

10:31And there have always been people that have chased the other parts of it, which are great. But a real actor, it wouldn't even be a discussion. They would act any time over doing anything else. That was certainly me. I was a big acting nerd, still am a little bit. But in terms of how to navigate where the world is going, I had a really, really interesting conversation with one of the big CEOs at a tech company. And I said, what are you doing for your summer internships? Like, what do you look for? And they said, we're done with the geeks. We've got those. we got hundreds of thousands and we don't and smarty smarty smarty pants we we got that too we got an a we got a cheap what we want are kids who light up a room we want we want kids now who charming uh high eq is valued over high iq and you know able to connect, tell a story, look somebody in the eye, be authentic.

11:41Like that's the stuff that's going to be of value because, you know, all of the, you know, other stuff they've, you have it on a button now. I mean, remember five years ago, it was like, you better study. We shouldn't teach cursive in schools. By the way, shouldn't teach cursive in schools. I'm using it as an example, but we should be teaching coding. Well, how about coding is the last thing we should be teaching. Remember, that was a big discussion. Why are we not teaching our kids coding? How about that's already, no one's going to code. No one. That's going to be an AI. But we had it so wrong even two and a half, three years ago.

12:15So who the fuck knows? Yeah. What are you telling your kids? Oh, I got an eight-year-old and a six-year-old. They're right in it, dude. Dude, they're in the thick of it. Okay, so it's saving private. Our world is saving private Ryan. we're all in the the landing craft instead of taking the shore you know the the beaches of france it's we're headed into ai and the fucking gate comes down and the people were unprepared we've all seen that scene your kids are the kids who make it over the side and now they're swimming to the beach what are you telling them uh well you know listen I don't know if I'm delusional in the sense that I would like my kids.

13:05I like the way I grew up. You know, I like that we had dinner and the table and, you know, there was conversation and there was friendships and there was play. Go in the backyard and go play. Right. So I'm always yearning for those moments. and obviously my kids are growing up in a different environment, you know, different world now that the internet and social media is so prevalent. So I'm trying to keep them as innocent as I possibly can for as long as I can and we'll see what happens. But, you know, I don't give them iPads. They don't have any of that. Do they watch TV on a Saturday morning like I was watching Fred Flintstone?

13:50Yeah, they're doing that. But like yesterday, I was out in the backyard and we're playing football. My daughter was going out for passes. My son was, you know, covering her. And to me, it's like, all right, that's beautiful. I don't want them on a video game with a headset on talking to somebody in Singapore. I mean, I don't know. Am I just behind? I mean, like some bitter old man over here going. I know, man. I feel you. I feel you 100%. It's like, I grew up the same way where like, you knew springtime was afoot when, no pun intended, you took your shoes off and you were out in the yard and you didn't put your fucking shoes back on until the fall.

14:33And the streetlights came on and that was time to go home and climbing trees and all that. Because, you know, football, all that stuff. And people are still doing, I think that's going to come back. I think all that stuff is going to come back. but there's no denying just wait eight's your oldest eight years old which is the oldest yeah wait till they're pushing 13, 14 and they're hammering you for the new Oculus or whatever and all their friends are on there you know playing some damn thing

15:25Well, that's the problem. I told my wife, I said, the parents, if every, like, listen, when I grew up, all the parents were on the same page. So, you know, if you went over to Johnny's house and you were acting up, Johnny's parents, you know, kind of put you in place. Now it's like all the parents are on all these different things. I'll give you an example. So my daughter told me, I don't think Santa exists. And this was when she was six. How old is she? She was six when she told me this. So I told my wife, Lana, I go, find out on your mother thread what's going on at the school. And we found out that the parents were telling the kids there's no Santa because they didn't want to lie to their kids.

16:14And I'm like, what? that's all I do is lie to my kids. What are we doing? So that's what I'm saying. It's like all these parents today are not even on the same page when it comes to child rearing. So when your son comes home with the, says, I want the new Oculus, I'm looking at the parents going, what the hell are you giving your kid a new Oculus for? Now my kid wants it. You know what I'm saying? So I don't know. Oh, I mean, how about, there's a couple up in our neighborhood and we always invite them to, you know, like sometimes it's like a proper dinner, like a sit-down dinner or a celebration and they'll routinely be an hour, hour and a half late.

16:57Routinely. And it's always, yeah, our child didn't want to go to bed yet. So the kid sets its own bedtime. The kid also decides whether... The kid also decides if they want to go to school or not on any given day. Do you imagine? Yeah, we didn't have these options growing up. I didn't even have the option of telling my parents I was warm. Could you put the air conditioning on? So, like, I would go to my father. I'm a little warm. Could we put the air on? And he's like, no, we're not putting the air on. which I often think my father gave us a better life than he had. Right. Yet we couldn't enjoy the better life that he provided.

17:53He's like, I didn't have air conditioning when I was a kid. I'm like, well, we got it now. Right. Can we put it on? No. How did he get air conditioning and not want to use it? He didn't put it in. He must have, you guys just bought a house that already had it. He was like, yeah, I'll buy this. I ain't using that. He built it. He built the house with central air conditioning. And he figured if he put it on, it's going to cost him money. So we were sweating. Makes no sense. I love that you and I are the same age. And it's so funny, air conditioning. Like I remember when my mom and dad divorced. And then my dad started his next life and his next house had air conditioning.

18:37And I thought, man, he is rich. he has made it. It was a thing. Now looking back, I realize we all lived without air conditioning. What? And a lot of us didn't have it. It was new. Yeah, but the difference between your dad and my dad is your dad put it on. Sure the fuck did. Let me tell you something. Ohio in August and you walked into that air conditioning. You were like, yeah, we are living. living. Yeah. Chicago, same thing. Midwest, you know those summers are brutal. So. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, you, so they don't do, obviously they don't do any social media. They're still too young for that anyway.

19:30Yeah. But way to one of them says they want to be an influencer. Well, it used to be you wanted to keep your daughter off a pole. Now, you want to, at least for me, I don't want her doing any of that. So I don't want to do her only fans and this, that, and the other. What happened to just, Daddy, I want to be an accountant. Is that, like, what? Listen to this. I grew up with, people didn't want their photos taken. There was a time where somebody put up a camera, but people were like, no, no, no, I don't like my phone. What happened to being camera shy? Is that, does that exist anymore? Do you remember in your yearbook?

20:17Remember in the yearbook, camera shy? It'd be a square with that in it because somebody literally didn't want their picture taken. Yeah. Camera shy. Well, now everybody knows their angles. I mean, I'm looking and everybody's like with a three-quarter turn and the legs, one leg over the other to give them a fucking V, all the shit that, you know, stupid idiots like us eventually learn. But now like the fucking barista in Des Moines is fucking doing it. It's gnarly. I mean, and how about, so my, my, my, you know, your kids are still young enough that they're proper kids. When they get older, you will learn everything from your kids about what's really going on.

21:03And my oldest son was telling me a stat that, and he could be just, you know, yanking my chain and trying to be dramatic, but a preponderance, let's just say, let's not put a number on it, of people have OnlyFans accounts. And they're like, I'm sorry, you want me to go work at the Dairy Queen this summer? For what? I'm going to take a picture of my foot. I'm going to sell pictures of my feet. What does that tell you? Does that tell you like, what have we become as a society? Put it this way. 40 years ago, was somebody sitting in their house going, God, I wish I could see some feet right now. And now all of a sudden we have that.

21:58It's available to us or? is it that those the feet people were there living quietly under a rock and now that they're out the feet people are out and out and about feet people or I don't know or did the OnlyFans come around and then people got turned on the feet I don't know where do you where would you draw the line let's say you're you never made it as a comic and OnlyFans is out and and listen it's like it's either you got no money and you're scrambling and living a life of difficulty that so many people unfortunately live, or you're taking pictures of your feet. Are you down with the, would you do the feet?

22:44No, I wouldn't do the feet. You wouldn't do the feet? No. If you're not going to do the feet, you're certainly not going to do the other stuff on OnlyFans. No, this is where I go. I don't make it as a comedian. I just get out of the entertainment business and I start working in the hospitality business. I just switched the whole thing. I cannot do anything. Listen, I'm tight with my parents. I could never call them and go, I'm taking a picture of my left foot tonight and I'm putting it up on OnlyFans so somebody could jerk off to it. Well, they don't know. You don't need to call them. I hate that.

23:14I tell my parents everything. Okay.

23:21Do you remember, are you a sports fan at all? Yeah. You remember Rex Ryan, right? His foot thing. Yeah, yeah. That was the first time I was introduced to the foot thing. He had a foot fetish. It wasn't he. Oh, dude, he had a foot fetish. And then he made a video sneaking up on his wife with her feet sticking out of the window at a roadside rest stop. And they were kind of role playing vis-a-vis the feet. And then it got out. And then every stadium in the league would hold up pictures of feet when the Jets came into town. Oh, man. it's the best. That's what I'm saying. 40 years ago, if somebody had a foot fetish and no one would have known that, the rest stop would have been like, you would have saw that picture in an album in the basement somewhere when he died.

24:12You know what I'm saying? Yes, right. Yes, exactly. The other thing is, I mean, for all of us, we have to figure out how, where we fit in this, in the new evolving world. And where do your kids start telling you, and they won't even tell you because it'll just come up in conversation. And that's how you know. They're perfectly fine with fill in the blank. And you're like, wait, wait, what would you say? And it's the culture that they live in is so insane. I mean, the stuff that they just take for granted is beyond. I mean, feet fetish being the least of it, probably. Yeah, I just don't, I just don't, even with these podcasts, right?

25:04You know, I keep going on podcasts and I'm, myself, I'm thinking of myself, how much could one person talk? I got my own podcast. Now I'm going on everybody else's podcast. What's left to say? Not much. Not much. Not much, baby. I mean, and look, I don't, but again, it's what you're saying. It comes back to what you're saying is what people value now, and I think it's kind of cool in a way, is authenticity. They want real shit. and on a podcast, it's, you know, you're doing real shit and, you know, it's not a pre-programmed, you know, appearance on Jimmy Kimmel or whatever. Nothing against that, but those are really pre-programmed and really, you know, manufactured.

26:01But the question is, how many people do you want to see be authentic? Well, I don't know. is there something to be said about having a little mystery? Do we all come out and tell everybody our problems? No. And I went to this and I went to that and I went to marriage. I mean, like, normally that stuff was kind of like. Oh, dude, if you did publicity of any kind when I was coming up, people were like, oh, they're not a serious actor. like it was so frowned on to do any publicity. I mean, Warren Beatty would have, I think he did three interviews for Reds. I mean, Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford, they did not do publicity.

26:54They didn't do photo shoots. They didn't do any of it. It was, you get dinged if you did. I mean, talk about a pendulum swing. Well, I think it hurt the movie and TV thing because now when I look at an actor, I used to look at an actor and I think Tom Cruise is the only one that I could look at and go, I don't know what Tom Cruise's car in the side of his car looks like. That's right. So when I watched the movie, I just see the actor. I don't see anything else. But now everybody's got to give an opinion. They're political. They're this, that, and the other thing. Now when I watch movies, I go, oh, she thinks that this is wrong and dot, dot, dot.

27:42And I'm focused on that and not the movie. Well, that's a subset of the problem is the notion of like people are leading with their beliefs. which is they have every right to do, every right to do, but the price you pay and they're happily willing to do it and they feel that it's a brave thing to do and it probably is, is that when you see them on screen, you go, oh, there's Sean Penn. Yeah, he liked that dictator in Venezuela. I remember that. You know what I mean? And like, well, whatever. But like, you didn't know what the fuck Cary Grant thought about anything or Jimmy Stewart or Robert De Niro.

28:28Well, now you do, but early on you didn't. Dustin, all of them. And then the other part of it is the non-political part is just the proliferation of phones. So I just try to imagine what it would be like to see a picture of Cary Grant walking down Melrose with like a yoga mat and a fro-yo. I just can't, do you know what I'm saying? they'd be like ew well that's the ew nobody ever saw that and there was like a mystique about that i looked at hollywood and again i don't want to sound like some guy who's 52 years old up here like in my day but in my day i looked at movie stars as like i didn't even know what planet they were from like i lived in chicago i thought los angeles hollywood was like you can't even get there.

29:21That's like not even a place that I could even go. That's right. Isn't that weird? I know exactly what you mean. It's like, where is, so how do people, and like where and how, what? But, but you were in it, you were in it at like the, when I was going though, yeah, where, how, you know what I'm saying? So like. No, dude, I definitely, I definitely caught it. I caught the, the the the middle end of the tail end i definitely got to experience the you know the the the dinosaurs of of movie stars in hollywood before the asteroid hit 100 100 did you ever cross paths with uh sinatra or i did what's your sinatra story so my sinatra story is um there was an author who did these hit piece books called Kitty Kelly.

30:17And she was famous for doing books that murdered people. Like she had a Nancy Reagan book and it crushed. And the Kitty Kelly Sinatra book had just come out. And it's every weird and insane Sinatra story. So I'm reading the Sinatra book in the lobby of a hotel in Dallas. Now, I know Sinatra is going to be playing this event that I'm co-hosting and I wanted to read up on him. So he walks by, I hide the book, doesn't see it. Escaped. That night at the event, I'm introduced to him and he grabs my cheek with his, as hard as you can grab it, like literally pinch my cheeks like you would a baby, but as hard as he possibly can.