Chapter 1: How did Sebastian Maniscalco transition from waiting tables to comedy?
Kings Network. Hello and welcome to South Beach Sessions. You know I like talking to the stand-up comedians and very few are better than this guy. He's been doing it a long time and I'm a big fan of his. He's got a new special out, It Ain't Right, November 21st on Hulu. You're still out here doing it. You're still out here crushing it. Sebastian Maniscalco with us.
So where are you right now with the grind of the comedy tour? Are you still every bit as hungry as you have been because you're now also an Academy Award winning film person?
uh well i got three shows left from the tour and then i'm off for a long period of time because after these tours and i just need time to a like recharge reset and then you know live life a little bit so i could extract material from life so It's been a grind, but we're coming to an end here within the next two weeks. I've got three more shows, all at casinos, and then I've got the holidays off.
I'm going to spend it with my family. I'm going to be out in Florida for Thanksgiving and then Christmas here in Los Angeles.
Chapter 2: What challenges has Sebastian faced during his comedy career?
I should tell the people, SebastianLive.com is where you go if you want tickets and tour dates. Is it the same for you as it's always been in terms of the grind of the comedy tour? Because When you say you have to recharge and go back to living life so you can have material for the next tour, you've been on this particular treadmill for a long time.
Yeah, so it has definitely gotten harder as the years progress because the way I look at it is my material has to be greater to or equal to whatever the hell you saw the last time I was in town. And if that dips, I feel like audience leaves and goes, geez. Similar to sports. Don't got it no more. You know, I'm not going to pay a hard ticket price, see a guy who's not at the top of his game.
So as life progresses, as my career progresses, it becomes harder and harder for me to come up with material that is because I don't want to go out there and just. Half asset, you know, just for the sake of going on a tour. I want to go out there and give people because the way I look at it, it is a business. People spend harder money to come out and see you perform. They get a babysitter.
They park the car.
Chapter 3: How does Sebastian recharge and find new material for his comedy?
They make a night of it. And I want them people to leave saying, wow, can't wait till he comes back. I want to take friends and family.
The pressure of that, though, would be pretty extraordinary, I would think, to have to feel like you have to continue to top yourself when, generally speaking, I think I can say this, comedy doesn't age well. It doesn't seem to have affected you very much, but most people aren't doing this into their 60s, 70s, and 80s well. Not that you're that age yet.
Listen, I hope I am able to perform well. You know, in my 60s, 70s and 80s, I'd love to do that. But, you know, hey, my act is very physical. I'm moving around a lot. I don't know who's going to come out when I'm 80 years old and I could barely get to the stage.
But you're saying you'd still love to do it then, huh? Like you love it that way so much that it's something that you can envision wanting that deep into your life.
When I don't do comedy, I'm not in a good mood, put it that way. So this is very therapeutic for me to go up there.
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Chapter 4: What role does humor play in Sebastian's personal life?
Like I just had a fight with my wife yesterday and how I deal with that is I make comedy out of it. So I can't wait to get to a comedy club this week to present that. Actually, I'm going to I'm going to be in. Boston this week doing a charity event, but there I will maybe sprinkle some of the argument material in to see if it goes.
So the way I look at these things, whatever happens that's traumatic in my life, whether it be whatever, a disagreement with your wife, a death, an illness, I try to make humor out of it. It's how I grew up. I come from a family that We were laughing at funerals.
You know I'm saying it was like it's the only way we could cope with the Disaster of what had happened was to find a morsel of humor in it So yeah, I find that this definitely is my career, but also helps me kind of filter a lot of things that happen in my life
I imagine that your wife probably catches you in the middle of arguments, processing how you're going to make it material.
No, it's not even happening in the moment because in the moment it's not funny. It's not. It's like I'm not like sitting there going, this is going to be great for the stage. I'm trying to figure out how am I going to win this thing? But it's like.
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Chapter 5: How has Sebastian's upbringing influenced his comedic style?
That is not the way. If you're still trying to figure out how to win, you're gonna lose for the rest of your life.
It's terrible. It's like you don't win arguments. Yeah, yeah, I get it. But or at least make my point or something. I'm not sitting there looking at the funny of it at all. But you let that marinate for 24 hours. You get up the next day and then you got like, oh, okay, this was funny. That was funny about it.
I'd like for these to be biographical. So take me back before working seven years as a waiter at the Four Seasons, which I want to get to. Take me back to a traditional Italian household, what you're growing into and where the funny was coming from.
So I grew up in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, a place called Arlington Heights. I had a father who was a beautician, a mother who was, sorry, not a beautician, he's a hairstylist.
Chapter 6: What lessons did Sebastian learn from his early days in comedy?
He gets upset when I say beautician. And then a mother who worked at the elementary school as a head secretary and grew up in a fairly normal household. I mean, as normal as you could get, I mean, A lot of entertainment types, you hear a lot of these stories of single parents or a lot of like maybe drug use or abuse or whatever. It seems like the upbringing is a little volatile.
I grew up in a loving home. There was no darkness. Everybody was laughing and goofing around. My parents got divorced. when I was in my late 30s. So it was a different kind of trauma for me later on in life rather than growing up. But I felt like I had a normal childhood. I went to school.
You know, they told me get good grades and grow up in a middle class family and nothing that would suggest that I was going to get into the entertainment business. although I knew at a young age I loved stand-up comedy.
Chapter 7: How does Sebastian balance family life with his comedy career?
In school, when they asked, what do you want to be in second grade, I said a comedian. You told your grandparents that in second grade, right? It wasn't flippant, right? No, no, I was serious, because I used to watch Johnny Carson with my parents, and I was fascinated with...
comedians when they come out oh my god how do you remember i usually like get excited i don't know why i just got excited when they came on and used to love to laugh i was going to comedy clubs when i was 16 years old not to perform just to watch like a lot of kids were going to high school basketball games i was going to the local comedy club with the girlfriend i had at the time and we sat in the back and and laughed so it was always kind of in the fabric of growing up
But, you know, growing up in a house I did, I didn't know how to get into this business. I had nobody in the entertainment world. I went to college. I wanted to quit my first year of college. And I told my father, you know, this is not for me. I want to go to Los Angeles and be a comedian.
And he right away said, just settle down, get your degree, and then you could do whatever you want after you graduate. So I did. And I came out here when I was 24 years old. It's funny that we're even here.
Chapter 8: What can audiences expect from Sebastian's new special, 'It Ain't Right'?
Next door used to be a place called Dublin's. It was a Irish bar. And on Tuesday night, they used to have comedy upstairs. And it was the hottest comedy scene in L.A. at the time. This is about 2000.
right next door, was like, you know, the Dane Cooks were born, the, I remember going, that's where I met Vince Vaughn next door, who I later became, was in a movie with him called The Vince Vaughn Wild West Comedy Show. So, Yeah, it's ironic that we're here today just because I spent a lot of time.
Across the street was a place called Miyagi's, which is a sushi bar that used to have comedy, I think, on Wednesday nights. Used to perform on the bridge. There's like a little bridge and used to perform on the bridge to people who were eating sushi, so...
It's not that far from the Comedy Store. No, it's right down the street. You're talking about something a little smaller, a little grittier.
Yeah, this was my gym, these places right here. Going night in, night out, working out the material, dealing with hecklers. You would go to the Comedy Store down the street and you'd be scheduled at 9.45 and then Eddie Griffin would walk in and perform for an hour and a half. So the whole lineup would get bumped. But I stayed. A lot of people are going to say, I'm not going to stay.
I'm like, I got to stay because the way I looked at it was, I don't know who's going to be in the audience. And number two, I got to work out my material. I remember one night it was dead at the comedy store. A comedian who has passed away since his name is Freddie Soto went up on stage and it was like, I don't know, 13 people.
And Mark Anthony walked in with his group, saw Freddy Soto, and from that night brought Freddy Soto on the road to open up for him. So it's like you take a night off in this business, you never know what the hell you're missing. So that's the mentality I had, you know, kind of navigating the comedy scene in Los Angeles in the late 90s, early 2000s.
And then, you know, 2005, it kind of started making a living, you know, $1,000 a week or what have you. Tell me about the bowling alleys. So the bowling alleys, this was in Manteca, California. Again, a lot of people that have a comedy, oh, we're going to do a comedy night. They just think they could throw it up wherever the hell, you know, the comedy's going to work everywhere.
which not necessarily is the case. You need lighting, you need stage, you need like- Not bowling pins crashing in your- Yeah, well this was a double whammy. This was, I performed in a boxing ring with a bowling alley behind me. So it was like the fact that we were in a boxing ring with fresh blood from the night before on it, and then behind me someone's picking up a spare.
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