John Mulaney goes online to answer the internet’s questions. The GQ Men of the Year 2024 cover star responds to questions on Quora, Reddit and X, as well as fact-checking Wikipedia and replying to YouTube and Instagram comments.
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00:00Hey, GQ, it's John Mulaney.
00:01I'm gonna go undercover on the internet
00:03and look at stuff.
00:05It's actually me.
00:09It's me, for real.
00:10This is me doing this.
00:14Let's see, this is from Reddit.
00:17The kid John talks to in Baby J, was the kid hired?
00:20John did the same joke at the show in my city
00:23and ever since I've seen the recorded version,
00:26I've been wondering, did he do that joke at every show?
00:29If so, how could he be sure the kid
00:31was going to be at every venue?
00:32Okay, so the last standup special I did called Baby J,
00:35there was a young boy named Henry in the audience.
00:39Henry was not hired.
00:40Henry was, like Pinocchio before him, a real life boy.
00:44Henry was actually in the audience and I talked to him
00:47and that ended up in the film of the special.
00:49At other stops along that tour,
00:52there were often children
00:55and often children under the age of 10.
00:58There was once a baby.
00:59It was often weird to go through 90 minutes
01:01of very dark personal stories
01:04while looking into the eyes of a fourth grader.
01:06So I would call it out at the beginning.
01:09I met a lot of kids on my drug stories tour, just a fact.
01:14If you had to choose a favorite special,
01:16what is your favorite John Mulaney special and why?
01:18Okay, so this is a question for other people other than me.
01:21Now, what's interesting about this question
01:22is that favorite is spelled with a U
01:24and that means that the person is not from America.
01:28They are from Great Britain.
01:30And as an Irishman, I will not answer your question.
01:34How about one of these guys,
01:35parentheses John Mulaney slash Pete Davidson as Plastic Man?
01:39I know who Pete and I are
01:42and I don't know what the rest of that means.
01:45Is Plastic Man a DC comic?
01:47If you know the answer, call my personal phone.
01:51It'd be a money thing.
01:53Honestly, I can answer for Pete as well.
01:55It'd be a money thing.
01:56Apparently these movies pay a lot,
01:58these action hero things,
01:59but that is also changing
02:01in today's ever evolving media landscape.
02:04Subreddit Big Mouth, which character is most like yourself?
02:08This person answered, I think I'm most like Andrew Glauberman
02:11I would say I'm most like Andrew Glauberman as well
02:13since I have the same voice as him.
02:16A decent amount of his exploits were based off
02:18things I did when I was a younger man.
02:21And that's all I'll say.
02:22Richard Kine says John told him
02:23there might be another season of Everybody's in LA
02:26but in a different city.
02:27He said, well, we might be doing it again.
02:29I don't think I ever told Richard Kine
02:31we'd be doing it in a different city.
02:33Recently when I saw him said,
02:35hey, if you do more Everybody's in LA
02:37and you wanna replace me, I won't be offended.
02:40And I was like, one, I don't wanna replace you
02:42and two, of course you would be offended.
02:45No one would be more offended than Richard Kine
02:48if he was replaced from Everybody's in LA.
02:50Sweet man, I'd go to any city in the union
02:54with Mr. Richard Kine.
02:55Why do millennials find John Mulaney funny
02:58from a confused Zoomer?
03:00They don't all.
03:01I've certainly stood in front of some who don't.
03:04I say different names of movies
03:06and things that millennials know
03:08and they go, I remember that.
03:09And I go, of course you do.
03:10It's a trick using these references
03:12to get laughs out of you.
03:13They find me funny
03:15cause they found me funny in their twenties
03:17and they want to still feel young.
03:19Next.
03:21Instagram.
03:23I don't know why it's weird
03:24that John Mulaney is wearing Nike.
03:25I feel like he should be wearing grandpa clothes,
03:28which is to say no brand flannels and corduroy pants.
03:31Well, smart guy, I'll have you know
03:35that that is not how I dress.
03:37So I understand why you think I would be wearing
03:41no brand clothing like an elderly man.
03:43I do own some items by Nike and even Reebok.
03:46I absolutely agree with this person.
03:49Whenever I'm wearing a Nike shirt like that,
03:51I feel weird too.
03:52I should be one of those people you see at the gym
03:55who's just like walking slowly on the treadmill
03:58wearing mainly Carhartt.
04:00How the fuck are you sitting like that?
04:03I am able to sit like that
04:06because I have hip dysplasia like many dogs.
04:10And I am able to sit completely Lotus
04:12with my legs folded over each other.
04:14I actually have a tear in my right hip
04:16because my hip bone is so weirdly shaped.
04:19And I go to PT, but they told me it's not gonna work
04:22and that I am gonna need hip replacement surgery.
04:26So who's a grandpa now?
04:28Wikipedia, the encyclopedia of incels.
04:32From watching the lifestyle of the character,
04:34Ricky Ricardo on the program, I Love Lucy,
04:36Mulaney knew he wanted to go into show business at age five.
04:39That is absolutely true.
04:41I liked that Ricky Ricardo sat around the house,
04:43looked at a magazine for some of the day,
04:45smoked cigarettes, and then went to the club at night
04:47and did his job in show business.
04:49I thought that is absolutely the best lifestyle.
04:51And I live that now, except I don't smoke cigarettes anymore
04:55because a man hypnotized me in Santa Monica.
04:59At age seven, Mulaney was a member
05:01of the Chicago children's based sketch group, The Rugrats.
05:05Because of this, Mulaney had an opportunity
05:07to audition for the role of Kevin in the film Home Alone,
05:10but his parents declined.
05:11I was offered to audition for the role of Kevin
05:14in Home Alone.
05:15My mom thought about it for a little while.
05:18I was getting a booster shot,
05:20and my mom waited until we were at the pediatrician
05:23and then told me, your dad and I have talked
05:25and we're not gonna let you audition for that movie.
05:28And then I got a booster shot.
05:29I think it was like, let's just,
05:32maybe if we put the two bad things at once,
05:34they'll neutralize each other.
05:37But I remember both, and I disliked them both.
05:40I do wanna say for the record,
05:42there is no better performance in the 1990s
05:45than Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone,
05:47and he deserved an Oscar nomination
05:50and an Oscar for that role.
05:52If you have a Macaulay Culkin story,
05:54call me at my personal number.
05:56After graduating from Georgetown in 2004,
05:59Mulaney moved to New York City
06:01with ambitions of a career in comedy.
06:03Yeah.
06:03And was hired as an assistant at Comedy Central.
06:06After a year, he pitched the idea
06:07for a parody of I Love the 80s called I Love the 30s,
06:10which he developed with fellow comedian, Nick Kroll.
06:13True.
06:13I Love the 30s was a parody of I Love the 80s
06:16in that we were talking in a flippant way
06:18about pop culture stories, but of the 30s,
06:21which had more weight to them
06:22than the type of thing they talked on I Love the 80s.
06:25One of them was about the Lindbergh baby.
06:27And we talked about it like you would Cola Wars
06:30in the 80s, like just kind of flippantly.
06:33And my Nana called me and said,
06:34I was alive for the Lindbergh baby kidnapping.
06:38It was not funny that baby died.
06:41These are not things you should joke about.
06:43I made it sound like that was a conversation,
06:45but it was a voicemail and I never called her back.
06:48Okay, these are YouTube comments.
06:51Can someone explain DTLA to a person not from there?
06:55Downtown LA is the downtown part of Los Angeles.
07:01Often downtown means the center of where things are.
07:04This is not the case in LA.
07:06The downtown is a scary wasteland that we all avoid.
07:09As I joked on the show, a lot of people wonder
07:11what happened to New York in the 70s.
07:13It moved to downtown LA.
07:15Why did they decide to turn the concept
07:17of a man ordering lobster in a diner into a Les Mis parody?
07:21I don't know.
07:23Am I questioning it?
07:24Hell not.
07:25Okay, Sherlock3134.
07:27And I'm not being condescending by calling them Sherlock.
07:29That is their screen name.
07:31I also don't remember how it became a Les Mis parody.
07:35Colin Jost and I were talking on a Monday in 2009
07:41about how long some diner menus are
07:44and how they always offer like Thanksgiving dinner
07:47and a lobster.
07:49We talked about writing a sketch for that week's host
07:52where someone would order the one lobster
07:55that they have at a diner.
07:56After read-throughs, there's always a big bulletin board
07:59with every sketch and you move them over
08:02into the show's running order as you plan
08:04that week's episode.
08:06And I remember, I remember lobster diner
08:09wasn't even on the board.
08:11It was a card that said lobster diner
08:13that was laying on the floor.
08:15So no one ever said, we hate this,
08:16but it was greeted with a blizzard of indifference.
08:20When I came back to host in 2018,
08:23that Monday I ran into Colin in the hall
08:26and he said, lobster diner?
08:28And I said, absolutely.
08:30Okay, these are from Quora.
08:32What is John Mulaney's weakness?
08:34Hmm, I don't have any well-publicized faults.
08:38What's one thing I have trouble resisting?
08:42Can't think.
08:44I have had my ups and downs with various dependencies.
08:47I would say, I don't understand what happens
08:51at a four-way stop sign at all.
08:54I normally just stare forward and hope everyone else leaves
08:59so that I can do my thing.
09:01No part of it makes sense to me.
09:03The waving, I just, I panic.
09:07How does John Mulaney come up
09:08with his standup comedy material?
09:10Slowly.
09:11What is the best Steely Dan song?
09:12The best Steely Dan song is Sign In Stranger.
09:15Post.
09:16These are questions from X, formerly Twitter.
09:19Why couldn't John Mulaney host the Oscars?
09:22I'm busy.
09:23It's really no, no other way to put it.
09:27Burt Vonnebutt asks, why is John Mulaney
09:30and The Bear the most Chicago thing ever?
09:32I am from Chicago and the show The Bear is set in Chicago.
09:36My Chicago experience was not filled
09:38with many small businesses
09:40that become Michelin star restaurants.
09:42A lot of people ask me for restaurant recommendations
09:44in Chicago because it is such a great town for restaurants,
09:47but like I grew up there, so I ate at home.
09:50We didn't go out to places.
09:53Sometimes I'd have snacks in a car.
09:55If spider ham was bitten by a radioactive pig,
09:57is it really cannibalism?
09:59No, but I don't think anyone's saying it is.
10:02Everything I know about spider ham
10:04is the lines I say in the movie.
10:07I didn't understand what it was when I arrived
10:10and I don't understand now.
10:11They wouldn't even tell me what it was called.
10:13I showed up and it had like a code name
10:16and they were dancing around
10:17that it was a Spider-Man related movie.
10:19I was like, I don't give a shit.
10:22Like, don't tell anyone.
10:23Who am I gonna tell?
10:24Okay, that's it.
10:25I've answered enough of your questions.
10:28Okay, that's it, I'm done.
10:30Okay, I'm done.
10:31I don't wanna do this anymore.
10:33I think we all learned very little.
10:35I know less about myself now than I did at the beginning.
10:38So I'm signing off.