Five Questions With ... Adam Carolla

NEWS & VIEWS

'The Man Show' and 'Crank Yankers' comic does stand-up at Borgata

By Ray Schweibert 

Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted Jul. 13, 2011

Adam Carolla has become a well-known name nationwide based on his willingness to say it like he sees it.  

He also takes a practical stance toward the many endeavors he’s been involved with in his 47 years, knowing that people can still do well for themselves by continuing to persevere even if a relatively small percentage of those endeavors happen to pan out.  

For Carolla, many endeavors have — he was co-host with Jimmy Kimmel of two humorous hits on Comedy Central, The Man Show and Crank Yankers; he helped a Los Angeles radio show called Loveline reach the peak of its popularity during his 10-year stint; in November he released a book called In 50 Years We’ll All Be Chicks (And Other Complaints from an Angry Middle-Aged White Guy) that already sold over 100,000 copies and reached the New York Times best-seller list — but the endeavor that really helped him make his mark probably seems the most unlikely.  

In May 2009, Carolla — who will be making his Atlantic City stand-up debut Saturday, July 16, at the Borgata’s Music Box — started what would become an Internet sensation with the then-titled Adam Carolla Podcast. He began it with little more than an idea spawned from feedback from his friends and fan base, and was shelling out thousands of dollars a month for the necessary bandwidth needed to launch the show into cyberspace.  

The podcast was such a success that it evolved into a profitable Internet network of sorts called ACE (Adam Carolla Entertainment) Broadcasting that includes a series of weekly shows (including one called The Parent Experiment co-hosted by his wife, Lynette) that are consistently among iTunes’ most downloaded podcasts. With over 70 million downloads to date, The Adam Carolla Show was recently deemed the most downloaded podcast ever by the Guinness Book of World Records. 

To purchase tickets to Carolla's show at the Borgata, click here.

Atlantic City Weekly recently spoke to Carolla by phone.  

 Can you talk about how The Adam Carolla Show and ACE Entertainment Broadcasting evolved? 

Well, all we do, pretty much, is just provide a free product that we hope people will enjoy, tell a friend, and run a couple commercials. This is just one of the things I’ve tried with the idea that we’ll do it for a while, if it seems like people like it enough we’ll see about going out and getting some advertisers and turning it into a network, and that’s just what happened. There were no real high expectations, just a basic understanding that if you show up and deliver a product and the product’s consistent on a daily basis — and you do it for free — no matter what, you have a better chance of making it work.  

 How surprised were you with its blockbuster success? 

You really never know anything in advance. They always say ‘Oh, it’s up to the comedy gods’ or whatever, but really it’s up to the people. People hear it and they either dig it or they don’t dig it. Most of the time they don’t. There have been a million shows you’ve never heard of that have come and gone. I’ve been in some of them. That’s the way it usually works and you don’t base it on advanced knowledge, because it would be a very low-percentage endeavor if you based on ‘Well, is this going to be successful or is it not going to be successful?’ It’s sort of like saying, ‘I’m not going to shoot this half-court hook shot unless I’m sure it’s going in.’ It’s probably not going in, but that just means you’re going to have to shoot it, go shag your own ball and go back and shoot another one. And the good news is that if two out of 10 go in, you can make a living shooting half-court hook shots. 

I never make the declaration that ‘This one’s going in or this one’s rimming out.’ That’s not factored into my thought process. It’s not worth it for me. I can’t control it and I can’t affect it — I just try to do the best job I can and sometimes things work out and sometimes they don’t. Who knows why phenomenons become phenomenons? I don’t get caught up in the parts that I can’t control.  

The podcasts are very entertaining, and I particularly enjoyed listening to your interview with (documentary filmmaker) Ken Burns. How much organization or prep work goes into doing your interviews? 

Nothing’s prepared in advance. You didn’t hear any papers shuffling or note cards flipping while we were talking, right? I want to have a conversation, I don’t want to dictate a conversation. In Ken Burns’ case, he was at a hotel in Beverly Hills, we went there, sat down and did the interview, then we packed it up and went back to the valley.  

In one of the podcasts your co-worker Bryan Bishop guest hosts while you’re on the road, and he talks about a benefit you did for him when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Is that sort of humanitarian gesture something you do often? 

Hey, I’m not a saint, and there’s a lot of people who do a lot more than I do in the philanthropic department. On the other hand if I can do something for somebody, especially if it’s someone in my sort of radio family, sure I’ll do it.  

That was one of those things where somebody came up with an idea and I called a few of my celebrity-comic friends, one thing led to another, and next thing you know people are coming from several states, we’re hosting the thing in a big venue, and I think we made about 150 grand that night. It turned out to be quite a deal, but again, it wasn’t like I said ‘I’m not going to sleep until Bryan’s taken care of’ or anything like that. It was more about my having the ability to do something that comes fairly easily for me. Let’s face it, it’s not ‘work’ that we [comedians] do in the traditional sense. It’s one thing to say ‘I’m going to donate X amount of lumber to build this new church’ or ‘I’m going to spend 10 hours on a Sunday raising this barn for this family.’ For me it’s make a few phone calls, send a few e-mails, go out on a stage on a Saturday night and have some fun with some guys I know.  

What will your standup routine in Atlantic City entail, and can you tell me your inspiration behind inventing the drink called ‘The Mangria’? 

My routine’s pretty straightforward. It’s just me, my sensibility, my attitude. I’m not reinventing the wheel. I do have a visual part to it where I’ll show some pictures and clips that’ll make it a little bit different from your basic stand-there-for-90-minutes and tell jokes. It’ll be jokes, stories, pictures, anecdotes — things you’ve seen before, only done by me.  

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