today on larry king now the king of other words chris hardwick when i stopped trying to make the entertainment business happy and just pursue things that actually meant something to me that's when everything changed i pod cast my dad the year before he died and it was the single most important thing that i've ever done in my relationship with my dad and now i have it on the talking dance popularity it's building a community around this experience that people have or be something that it's part of their ritual and we kind of help them get back into their lives where therapy plus the trick is you always just when you're juggling three always just want to keep one in the air you know you can do it first when you're juggling five you want to try to ok great there you go you got to keep one in the air that's all you do is keep one in the air well technically that was one in the air that's all next on larry king now.

welcome to larry king now our guest is chris hardwick a return visit we welcome back the comedian podcast a television host and c.e.o. of nerdist industries his popular web series all star comedy bowling just picked up by amc debuts in two thousand and fifteen he hosts the hit after show the talking dead to an area that airs sundays after new episodes of the walking dead on amc and because he doesn't have enough jobs he also hosts comedy central's at midnight that's monday through thursday at twelve am since last we spoke you added at midnight we did yes what happens at midnight well we created what's centrally a comedy game show it's sort of a panel show a lot of shows like this exist in england but we don't have any here but it's a. it's

a game show format with three comedians and all of our source material is stuff we find on you know from the internet basically and that's it it's just internet you know it and they comment yeah we show stuff and put them in games and competitions and then we came up with this idea the you get it from england you know it was there was a company called serious business they had originally did they'd originally come up with a pilot that was a twitter based and i did another pilot for comedy central and at the same time and comedy sort of said well we don't want to do your we want to pick up your show but would you want to come help redevelop this other show and host it and come on as a music producer so we did we redevelop the show i understand you also take the show on the road is in the act we do yeah we just we did it at the comedy festival in florida and we just did one in nashville and we're going to do it at comic-con it's a great we prepped the show all last year at our i have a theater space and we prepped it live nerdist has really been up since you first started you started it in two thousand and eight so it's not just seven years now

yeah oh wow what do you account for its success i don't know i mean it just started as a passion project if anything i guess it was just when i stopped trying to make the entertainment business happy and just pursue things that actually meant something to me that's when everything changed the production company behind the dark knight what the night is legendary halogen or taman yeah their studio their big movie studio now and they say you're a zillion. obama zillionaire but it's they've given us they've given us this sort of the infrastructure that we needed this is going to sound like boring crap you know those docs they've given us the infrastructure we needed to scale up and more resources to be able to do all the different things that we want to do let's talk about the talking dead ok that follows the walking dead right yes or how did that come about. well that was a company that was doing the show then the cohen watch what happens after the housewives thing and. i guess they just thought i wonder if there's something if

people would want to have a conversation after a show like the walking dead because there's a rabid fanaticism behind that show and seven point three million viewers on the i don't know that's crazy well i'm not i thought i knew it would do ok but i didn't know it would do that it's you know it's building a community around this experience that people have every sunday night it's part of their ritual and we kind of help them get back into their lives were therapy tell me about all-star celebrity bowling i was picked up for t.v. on amc how did that come because your father because of my dad yeah you oleo father my father do a really hard look at i passed away last year i. the thing that we do it nervous is we allow people to make stuff they're passionate about and i think that's that in lies the secret sauce behind nerd and what no a nerd is and i i love bowling it's my family business i mean it was my family business and so i wonder where is the bull in this the bowling alley the am i dead the bowling alley still there in memphis tennessee been there thirty thirty one

years to two years and so i wanted to do this show that sort of highlighted what it's like to actually go bowling with your friends as opposed to you know what you see now which is professional it is of famous people bowling yes so in the pilot we bowled against the mad men cast and it was me and nathan fillion and tom lennon and pete holmes versus you know jon hamm rich summer vince kartheiser and jay ferguson later you shoot it we shot at the roosevelt hotel you go to the roosevelt yeah they've got this place called the spare room it's got to lay out in a so we shot it there and we have done a bunch of them on the web there we both against the breaking bad cast and walking dead and conan fallon and so it's been really it's been really fun to do want to follow in your father's footsteps you want to be a bowler when i was a kid yeah i used to bowl i mean i bowled five hours i mean i grew up in a ball my my mother's father owned a bowling center and i believe that's how my parents met the details might be more sort of than i want than i want so i never ask exactly how they meant but they my dad was a touring pro my grandfather my mom said on the bowling center and somehow they

hooked up and so my whole childhood was bowling is bowling similar to a phone shot in basketball in that the pins are always in the same place in the mall is the same distances the same yeah yeah i mean it isn't it isn't i mean and if it were on a bowling lane you know you can adjust you can start back you can start forward you can adjust you know for the one thing that you don't have with basketball is there's a changing oil pattern on the lane and so as the oil wears because otherwise the ball because of the you know the rotation would fly off the plane into the gutter so the oil keeps the ball sliding that's why it's not a strength game it's a game of. precision and momentum so they athletes or skilled that's a good question i think. i think some of them are athletes and summers skilled you know father was an athlete my dad was in the sixty's these guys were pretty bad as a diehard dick weber my dad you know they were actually these guys are bad ass you're a huge star wars fan what do you think about j.j.

abrams directing the no one now you say that and i did i did not know you were going to ask me that and i did bring in my notebook which. makes this noise when you open it. you're a sick man i am a doraine individual but somehow i've managed to build a career out of that. j.j. i am excited about it because here's the thing that i think we do a lot in our culture now is that and i don't fault us as human beings but there's so much data coming in at all times that i think people now judge things based on a word or a headline or very few actual facts about what's going on so some people might see jamen star wars well that's going to be awesome or that's not going to be awesome at all it's like you know what i would like to encourage people to experience things and then judge them i like j.j. he's a nice guy i know when the star wars let's see how he does maybe he'll knock it out of the park maybe he won't but we won't know and i don't want you to be too

passionate and not do a good job it's possible what do you think of the cast well i mean listen i my dad took me to see the original star wars in the theater so that will always be a part of my molecular makeup and so hearing that harrison ford mark hamill in all these that my we pitched the show with mark and he's a sweet guy loves to talk about it he's not crappy about it anyway he's lovely and so i'm excited i want to see these characters again you know like it's going to come back as older versions of them so i would assume so i want to have thoughts on there was a big reaction i understand on the child of the new superman batman movie it's called. bet mandvi superman dawn of joan of justice yeah people say they don't like it i know but people don't care you know why because the louder voices on the internet are always the negative ones because because anger and hate is a more powerful motivator to action then oh that sounds nice like if i think all that sounds i said i'm going to go to the internet right that is the mean versus i

mean versus superman are they going to be enemies in this well what i would assume is that they would there would be some fighting and they would be like we were on the same side we both didn't know our real fathers were both orphans a bad man don't have super powers and then does not he just has a super brain he's the world's greatest detective also very disturbed he's if he's a dark and i didn't know what disturbed and clark he's a he's a molecule away from being dexter since we don't pre-judge you have no opinion on ben affleck them as about man you know that's another thing you know it's yeah he does i like ben maybe he'll do a great you know because listen i think people forget that before iron man came out and started the whole marvel chain of events iron man was not a character that was in the forefront of comics of the time he was a character but he wasn't and robert downey jr was a almost an employee at the time right and center was like what iron man are you kidding me and then it came out it was like holy crap iron man robert downey jr so i would i love to be surprised by people and i love to get excited about things so

i can tell i see it when you know since you have the thing on most of the time i think you'll be a bad bet. as long as you jump with the a cause that's right as long as when you're batman you're talking like this all the time that's right then you're done can you go back it was my son does so you just did right there and he had a good one i think he got it is that he had a weird relationship with robin maybe you know it's tough to say you know he's a very found a circus orphan and then put him into his auto in the movie i'm not judging ok i don't know when you will as you said a lot of comics have problems sort of like probably got to be left alone left right yeah i think so i think you know for whatever reason there's this interest. confluence of the comedy attracts a certain type of personality and it also creates a lot of personality issues at the same time neil simon said most humor is based on tragedy well of course we talked about this before the cameras rolling about how as if your father died and you live my giggled because it's such an awful thought to

me that i can't help but express it comedically because that's my defense mechanism but i've been writing stand up about my dad's death and trying to find that line between what people in an audience can handle when you talk about death and laugh versus like what's human about it like what we're all going to do it at some point why can we not find ways to as a community go hey this thing sucks but we're going to laugh about it because we have no choice. we're going to do a bit about what we can assume but we recently had him on the show i love will we see sort of came up together is he more normal than you or i would you compare the two of you as nerd versions geek i love will and i feel like he will has so much more of the nerd crown than i have i mean you know i feel like i'm an early adopter to stuff but will is like an early early early adopters the guy was blogging in the year two thousand when what was on the show we asked him a few questions about you ok see how well he really knows you all right u.s.

what was he was always like newlyweds drive how do you both spend a typical friday night at u.c.l.a. how do we spend it oh that's easy we we would drink beer and watch mystery science theater three thousand. probably watching ren and stimpy or mystery science theater on videotape oh you were swingers. favorite board game oh man my favorite board game or the four board game that we played you or they would board game played to get whatever. well she's what would he say is your favorite board game i don't know i think his is probably cards against humanity but it's not really a board game it's a card game but i mean d.m.d. we both play d.m.d. not really a board game but sort of a board game or did he say dragon age r.p.g. ok d.m.d. and dragon age they're both playing and finally best side five movie best side fire movie how could you do that to me. i mean look star wars to

me was a beaut judge but you know but ghostbusters and back to the future were two movies that in my eyes and ghostbusters so you know you were in ghostbusters some people say he's got a man to the cause of it all i remember your scene in something with the cigarette just because a cigarette zero on the board wrote that for me oh my god yeah and i i was going to i was going to freak out about you. on the show about that but anyway yeah they were a movie i don't know i would have to say either star wars ghostbusters or back to the future what do you say i wonder if he's going to go star wars with criss cross star wars christos i think he might you know i think he might go. i think he's going to go original star wars nine hundred seventy seven star wars dollars you don't know all right yeah well and i know each other pretty well i'm willing to back chris will show us one of his hidden talents don't go away.

from. her.

chances are forcing. her out. of the television or the finish line out of character on. her part. with chris hardwick what was on the show we touched upon net neutrality yes what's going to happen already with us well i don't know what's going to happen but i just hope that the internet still is equal and for he i mean like any. and open and not teared for you know for everyone i mean it is it is such a way i mean it's almost the internet that before to our culture i was like oxygen in the sense that this is this is how we live now where social media going. can you

predict or is it impossible well it's not him yeah well it is impossible to know what scores of people are going to do but i feel like you know there was a social media explosion that happened in the mid two thousand and i think what i've seen happen in the internet is the early days of the internet people in america online which was a which was essentially a walled garden and then they ventured out. of the walls to see the wild west world wide web and then now they're venturing back into the walled gardens of facebook and twitter and instagram an app based communications so i mean i i don't know i feel like people will just want more and more to surround themselves with their very very very specific needs in very very very specific inner circles and i don't know what platforms are going to emerge to

do that but but i do believe that we are essentially slowly slowly just isolating ourselves to our own little corner of the world when you see netflix who we're on. t.v. lives as there is a point in doing and you can watch anything whenever you want i think i think appointment viewing has largely faded away which is why it's really interesting that there are still shows like walking dead that people when you see event programming that sort of feels like event based programming people do feel compelled to watch because they don't want to miss out they don't even spoils the sports sports or shows like game of thrones or walking dead or you know like breaking bad was on t.v. always going to be around i think it will merge with it because essentially you have two cables going into your house now and eventually it'll be one cable and i think the great equalizer will be who makes that device that gets you know a wide adoption i think you know microsoft is trying to do that with x. box roku box apple only about your podcast i was on you bid on it yeah it was

a good you're great when you get people talking about stuff that they're passionate about and we talked a lot about comedy and it just people just light up with morgan freeman on he was amazing in it it has become the most and also i pod cast my dad the year before he died just as a i happen to be in memphis and i'm like you know i have the equipment i'll just record a conversation and it was the single most important thing that i've ever done in my relationship with my dad and now i have it but to be able to talk to someone for an hour on a human level and understand how they process the world and why. they care about like that to me is such an a better experience than podcasts will make radio disappear well well it will i mean again it's very similar to internet and television you know in the sense that if there's a device in your car that ultimately makes a seamless transition between you know web content and radio content of you can put

the hook into the phone yeah and that is happening you know cars are becoming hotspots you know apple has a new system that's coming into a handful of automobiles so you invited tom hanks the cinema type brother yet tom hanks one of our bookers actually found out that tom loved vintage typewriters so we found in one thousand thirty four smith corona i typed out an invitation on our letterhead and sent to the letter in the typewriter to him never expecting to hear back and a few weeks later i got a letter that he typed on that typewriter which was the the most tom hanks in response that you could ever want to say it basically said dear chris and all the nervous folks how dare you think you can bribe me with this one thirty four smith corona what do you think i am i mean it does type well the typeface is nice the dissolved fine i'll do it you know was just this one interview and he did he's done it twice and can i just can you say one thing about you in the blood test. the one of the most gratifying things to me that made me feel like oh my god casting is fun

i think i might be doing something right we came in and you said i only have a half an hour and i go oh usually there like forty five minutes fifty minutes you go yeah i know but i got i got to go and i go ok fine and we started talking we got to a half an hour and you're like no no let's keep going and that to me sort of felt like oh you're engaged in this like you could have split but you let it go to the four eleven and it was a lot of fun i appreciate that ok i understand you have a hidden time and you're going to show me how did you come to be a juggler well it's not something i really talk about a lot larry ages i happen to have peaches with me but how did you come to be a juggler. ok when i was in college i worked at a country club and peter scolari was a member of that country club we became pals he invited me to go visit him on the set of the newhart show and i sort of became like his little buddy like his robin and so i used to have lunch almost every day the my freshman year of college with him bob newhart tom poston peter was a juggler and so peter taught me how to juggle i in turn taught well we know how to

juggle and then when women are roommates we were juggling fiends did you know women in sight anywhere but lots of juggling ok it's the trick is you always just when you're juggling three always just want to keep one in the air right so it doesn't matter how you do that i'm not a great juggler by the way but you know but there are different types of ways to to do that if i was standing up i might be able to catch a peach behind my back you know you can do a flourish when you're juggling five and you want to try to know ok great and you go well you got to keep one in the air that's all you do is keep one in the air well technically that was one in the air we have social media questions for you right up your alley how fantastic b.j. won lund any plans for more comedy specials yes i'm i'm actually my week basically is you know all the other stuff i do and then there's a fridays and saturdays i try to go to comedy on the road so i'm building a new hour right now and i hope to shoot the special early next year at my t.l.

i want to know what's the biggest misconception about you. that i'm a douche bag. but i look like a douche bag though larry i do look like i do look like me i mean leno like they sort of have like the scruffy hair in the you know i don't know at all you got a thin tide there as if i was skinny tie and i sort of look like an annoying hipster but i but i think i'm a pretty nice guy like i like you i appreciate that i'm trying to be inclusive and supportive of at tim drake with your first book success have you thought about writing a follow up i thought about it but writing a book is to me a tremendous emotional entertaining because it's an. till the second you're done it's always sitting in the back of your head taking up emotional real estate. and they're all the same it's all is well i mean as a shaman it would take that idea and i just don't know if i have the extra space in my brain to do that right now at ted so who would you kill off first in the new season of the walking dead. zombies what

a stupid question all is on being all the zombies the one that went on and that would end the show yeah no no no that it just turns into a sitcom where they all try to figure out how to live together at rye guys six ninety five of your many nerd interests what she takes up the most time. for oprah at midnight i would imagine because that's you know we do four shows a week and so that's going on in the morning and building the show and you know and i do podcasts in the middle of the day then we rehearse and we make the show and you know get up again and do it the next day but although i will say that running nerd it's lives with me all the time so maybe that too little livingston is there a fandom you still want to start or join and i want to is there a phantom i want to start or join. i don't know if i want to man fandom no i don't think so i think i think i don't have to have ok good nerds for larry king unless dead philly cheese i've ever been

a bowling shark like the one woody allen harrison played in kingpin i had a conversation i did with my dad about this when that movie came out and it goes it was a cute movie i mean you know that's not really what it was like to hustle i you know i hustle the road i go yeah i know dad there aren't amish people blowing it was a movie. but no i never i never hustle people who play a game if you only know i threw out questions who thrive answers ok first girl you kissed. first girl i kissed oh geez it was the neighbor girl i think and she was like two years older than me and i was city i think it was miami my my grandparents of the miami and i must have been like eleven or twelve she was thirteen something like that yeah did she tak you see canada did little. i wish i did i don't funniest comic on story funny is comic con story. well i mean this you know not to disparage the poor guy but this struck me is just

kind of charming and i saw a guy dressed as wolverine one year and he was walking by all tough and the claws and everything and he stopped and then took a hit on his adamant taylor you know i think about wolverine he's going to race and so is to me the disparity between the thing what superhero would you want to be. i have the i have the spider-man dream a lot to do i have the spider-man dream a lot of constantly just like shooting webs out of my arm bad boy is the next question was what superpower would you like to have. i have thought about this a lot. i think maybe it would be the wolverine regeneration i think i think i would want to have the relation to be invisible like the shadow that was in the comic but only the shadow knows what evil looks at. marvel comics or d.c. . i'm not going to pick a side of that i enjoy both of them i know that sounds like

a politician answer but i really do enjoy both of them superman or batman. well i mean like who would win in a fight who i lived with that fine only because he didn't have superpowers because batman had to deal with his own. dark troubles but he didn't he couldn't fly well that's that's the thing is that you know bat batman. batman seems to have more depth because he was born from tragedy superman came from a basically is you know a lovable jock you know superman's more nerd super superman it no i think batman's more of a nerd than superman talk and isn't clark and that's a fake persona though he's disguising himself as and of course everyone is completely confounded when the glasses go on like oh you don't look like that guy with the same height and same bone structure at all was amazing and i think i tried to explain that in a comic books but they were dylan oh favorite villain of any of anyone to get me that oh my gosh i wish i'd had some time to prepare this favorite villain.

oh man i don't know larry i'm stumped there's like one thousand things are mine goes back a long way but who's there is jack polanski in shane oh wow with the black gloves that's a good one the good one i still didn't answer your question i don't have the favorite hero. favorite hero like superior swells they have the jobs in burke. i'll tell you my personal hero was always steve martin that's funny because when i grew up like he i was raised on all the steve martin albums i was obsessed with steve martin he was my gateway into comedy and so he's always been sort of well deserves that they were in video game. my fair video game of all time probably super mario brothers three favorite t.v. show of all time. i guess it's got to be dr who he's got me later you know

hoverboard or shrink gray the hoverboard firefly or serenity well i mean they're both pieces of the same puzzle really i mean i mean you're so analytical just so nerd is it what do you want written on your team tombstone. i want and i swear on this i would write but in binary so that no one else would know exactly what it was but there was a bunch of ones and zeroes and they'd have to translate it like something put it might buy an area and it's tombstone. would be oldest man who have a little. great thank you so much you want me back on the podcast as we've got on the podcast i want to thank my guest chris hardwick make sure you watch at midnight monday through thursday it's twelve am on comedy central and you're going to hear the nerdist podcast and learn all things noticed at nerdist dot com and remember you can find me on twitter and kings things see you next time i'd like to thank my

host larry king who had me as a guest on the larry king show please what larry king now on hulu that was so. you like me you want your comedy news with some t twenty comedy news to be a bare fisted no holds barred fight to the dad. like a vampire biting into the next and the corporate elite and billionaire freaks while they're going. well that's what you get with my new show projected in night.

your friend post a photo from a vacation you can't afford. the difference. the boss repeats the same old joke of course you like. your ex-girlfriend still tense tear jerking poetry keep. norris. post only what really matters out r.t. to your facebook news feed.