Andy Kindler’s State of the Industry 2013 at Just For Laughs: The case against Adam Carolla

Did Andy Kindler make any self-deprecating comments during his State of the Industry at Montreal’s Just For Laughs festival?

Did I need to include a year in that previous sentence?

Rhetorical questions aside, Kindler’s annual rhetorical roast of the year in comedy and show business again delighted and amused the packed ballroom at the Hyatt in Montreal last weekend. Kindler’s targets included usual suspects (Jay Leno), industry vets (APA’s Mike Berkowitz, who told people afterward how delighted he was to be ribbed by Kindler) and trends (he had a great Vine chunk), and himself (early and often). Unlike past years, however, Kindler decided to bypass several pages of jokes for the sake of time so he could focus his energies on a semi-serious attack on Adam Carolla. In as much as these things ever are.

Why Carolla?

I’ll let Andy Kindler speak for himself:

“I’m going to say something here, and then I’m going to go back to the comedy. There’ll be comedy here…

I think P.T. Barnum said, ‘There’s an Adam Carolla fan born every minute.’ H.L. Mencken said, ‘No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of Adam Carolla fans.’ I’d like to apologize to everybody here, and everybody in America for going on Adam Carolla’s terrible, terrible podcast. I really had no idea. I just thought he was The Man Show, and he was — I didn’t know he was a terrible human being. I thought he was slightly amusing and kidding around. I had no idea that he’s a bigot with a capital NAZI.

The first time I did his podcast, it took me an hour to get there. And he put me on for 10 minutes. He never makes eye contact. He’s incapable of it. But he’s always like, ‘Andy, please, take the gas money.’ He was, ‘Please, here’s some food, Andy.’ He’s such a good guy! The second time was at the Jon Lovitz Tragedy Club. When you think of people who were funny 20 years ago, who do you think of? Jon Lovitz. Don’t you? Pack ’em in! By the way, you know a white person is leaning toward racism if they start all of a sudden complaining about how much taxes they pay under Obama. And that’s what Jon Lovitz has done, turned it into a pastime. Everybody’s racist is the point of this speech!

So I went to the Jon Lovitz Tragedy Club in Universal City. And, I mean, it’s not the worst comedy club in the world. It’s the worst enclosure ever planned. They called me, a couple of months after I did a set there, they said one of my jokes just hit the rafters. Which are infinity ceilings. So here’s what you do. You want to do Adam’s, Adam Carolla’s podcast? You go up to Universal City. You park in Curious George 4 or wherever you park there. Goofy 3. You pay $20 fucking dollars. I don’t go blue. Fucking dollars. Freaking! You pay that. Then you take a four-mile hike over to the Lovitz comedy club, where all you’re thinking the whole time is, I will not be — they will not give me money for the valet, it’s not going to happen for the parking garage, I’m down $20 and I haven’t even started the podcast.

I didn’t know that I’d be on for the entire hour. And I didn’t know that Adam Carolla, he literally keeps you on for the entire hour, like you’re a plant. He doesn’t know what you’re saying. He doesn’t care. Nasally. Whiny. For an entire hour. It’s nonstop. He is raising money online right now!

By the way, anybody who goes on Celebrity Apprentice. You’ve got to either not know what’s going on, or you’ve got to be a racist. I’m just telling you. You’re all racists if you go on. He is raising money on Donald Trump’s Kickstarter thing. And it’s not money for him to have a comedy workshop, or for therapy to find out why he’s a jerk. He’s raising money for a movie called Road Hard. This is literally unbelievable. I think the name of the movie should be called Road Kill. Again. I apologize to the world for being in the same camera shot. Whatever. Just being next to Adam Carolla.

I’ve got to wrap up this tirade in two minutes and get back to the comedy. The comedy!

Here’s the description of Road Hard. Road Hard. This is what the description is. Stand-up comedian Bruce Madsen — alright, guilty! Stand-up comedian Bruce Madsen — not a fake name. ‘Stand-up comedian Bruce Madsen is Prometheus, chained to a rock, having his liver pecked out by eagles. Only in his case the rock is the depressing circuit of comedy clubs he can’t escape and his tormentors are the endless carnival of nickel-and-dime club owners, horrible emcees and retarded TSA agents’ — yeah, they’ve got to go down, The TSA agents! You’ve got to stick it to them! ‘that populate the torture chamber comics call “the road.”‘ Like he would know about the road. He’s not a stand-up comic! …

What Colin (Quinn) said the other day, and I have to admit my own shortcomings in this area. Colin said, I don’t even know Sam Morril, I don’t know what that thing was, but I do know that Patton Oswalt did a brilliant joke a couple of weeks ago about the San Francisco TV station that said all those Chinese names that were sent in to them fake, like Hung So Lo, whatever. So Patton Tweets that, ‘they just hired a PR person, Wi So Solly.’ And Salon goes after him, ‘How could you say this?’ That is a perfect joke! You could not be — you’d have to run sideways to not get that joke! And then this horrible Salon bullshit! I’m not articulate. They start going after Patton. Look, I have some issues with Patton. He’s very modest. But still… Brings it back to him. But look! He’s hilarious. You can’t deny it. He’s hilarious! And they start going after him. ‘We saw your Twitter feed and we saw your jokes from 1992.’ You are idiots! You have to be familiar with the field that you’re talking about. So I get that. But also. I also get that, if people don’t like things, they should have every right. Because comics are so thin-skinned. They’ll say, ‘Get the hell out of here, you fucking idiot!’ They don’t say that. They say worse. When someone says, ‘I don’t like what you said.’ ‘GAAAAHHH!’ So. You get to say anything you want…

So the point is. My point is… Look. If you’re not a comedian. If you’re literally not saying anything funny, you’re just a bigot or a racist. I’m telling you right now. I don’t even have to tell you where to go on the Internet. You go to any of these Internet sites, and here’s one: ‘I hate Mexicans. I don’t hate all of them, but they come to this country, they have no values, and they don’t like to work hard.’ He says, ‘These black people…’ I don’t do good impressions. ‘These black people say they can’t get a cab in New York, but, you know, the cab drivers aren’t even white, so that’s not our fault. Maybe these cab drivers know something about these black people!’ Yeah. OK. If you’re not stunned, you should shoot yourself in the head. Alright. So you have to be funny. And I submit to you that there’s not a funny bone in Adam Carolla’s body. I do. Maybe he was funny with Jimmy Kimmel. But he stinks on his own. And I hate these people who think they’re stand-up comedians because they’ve done it a couple of times. Ricky Gervais had a hilarious show. He does four stand-up shows, he’s on a panel on HBO with Chris Rock and Louis C.K. and I forget the other person (Jerry Seinfeld) and they’re talking about comedy. He thinks he’s — that’s the worst thing — he thinks he’s great! I would know if I had never done a — I tell you, Ricky Gervais, if there wasn’t licensing, he’d be in a hospital right now, performing brain surgery. He’d be like, ‘I do things well!’

So, he says. ‘Bruce has one simple question: What the hell happened?’ This is from the description of the show. ‘It seemed like just yesterday his TV show was a hit, he had a hot young bride and his phone wouldn’t stop ringing. Like his mythological Greek forebear’ — you have, you know nothing about Greece! You bone-headed, hate, muscle-headed hate bot. Look, if he comes after me, I’m going to fucking cry and go into a ball. God damnit!

[Todd Glass interjects] Fuck Adam Carolla!

Fuck him!

[Glass] Fuck everybody here for not being as angry as you at that fuck!

That’s true. You’re being truthful, right?

[Glass] Yes.

He’s a fucking–

[Glass] He’s a fucking pile of shit!

You know what he said? He had this, he said I don’t know about these people with the sex changes, it’s ridiculous, it’s disgusting. Then he goes on, and ‘I’m sorry if I hurt people’s feelings, because I’m a comedian.’ You are not a comedian! Comedians tell jokes. They have a premise. And they have a punchline. And if they’re good: Tag, tag, tag, tag, tag, tag, tag! Callback!

OK. I don’t even want to finish this fucking guy’s fucking description of his show. What Adam Carolla’s doing, neo-Nazis should have thought about years ago. They should have beat black people’s heads in…in a comedy club. It’s comedy, right? I’m a comedian! I’m a violent comedian.

Adam Carolla is like Hitler, if Hitler wasn’t funny. Donald Trump’s website is called FundAnything. He means, maybe you want to start the KKK in your hometown but you can’t afford the sheets.

OK. This is the best part. I hope I have it. We all love Steve Hofstetter, right? OK, so here’s…OK. He writes this. Somebody sent it to me. My inside guy. He writes this yesterday. This is from Steve Hofstetter. Everybody’s — who emails me things like, ‘One nighter. In Texas. Fly yourself in. You pay us $20. Share a room with a horse and the other talent. Clean up after the show. Bus the tables….

OK. This is unbelievable. This is so great. On the eve of my show, which I was certainly prepared for. This is the worst….(Kindler asks for time)… ‘Fellow comedians. Adam Carolla is looking for three comedians to put in his new movie, Road Hard.’ This is from Steve Hofstetter. ‘It’s the hilarious story of a beleaguered stand-up comedian trying to find his way. Road Hard is a crowd-funded movie. That means all the funding and money comes from wonderful people like you. It also means that there won’t be any studio executives giving notes. Because the movie’s budget is raised by people excited about the project. That gives Adam’s team…’ He has a fucking team! Sorry. ‘…complete creative control. And that means this is going to be a damn good movie. At the time I write this, Adam has raised $779,000 of the $1 million the film needs to happen.’ By the way, he doesn’t have to raise $1 million, he gets to keep the money. ‘Providing amazing prize packages like set visits, in-home stand-up performances, premiere parties and more. Adam is helping change the face of Hollywood. There’s an incredibly unique prize package up for grabs, which is to send a tape to Adam. He will personally review and pick three comics to not just be in the movie, but to have their stand-up featured in it as well. Currently, only 55 comedians have submitted, so you have pretty good odds. That is one hell of an opportunity. Whether or not you get chosen, you get reviewed, you get some amazing movie swag, and your name will be in the credits.’

So, the deal here, is he’s charging comedians to be in his movie, and he says ‘Must not be SAG-AFTRA.’ OK? Alright.”

You can hear Andy Kindler’s entire State of the Industry from 2013. I have a recording of it, too, in case you want to plug into my phone.

Sean L. McCarthy

Editor and publisher since 2007, when he was named New York's Funniest Reporter. Former newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News, Boston Herald and smaller dailies and community papers across America. Loves comedy so much he founded this site.

View all posts by Sean L. McCarthy →

26 thoughts on “Andy Kindler’s State of the Industry 2013 at Just For Laughs: The case against Adam Carolla

  1. I don’t doubt that Todd “now that I’m gay, nobody gets to say the word ‘gay’ in a way I don’t approve of” Glass WOULD like to f Adam Carolla.

    Jealousy is an ugly thing. Those two losers are Exhibit A and B.

    Especially Kindler, who’s clearly never heard of Godwin’s Law.

    Carolla is sitting in the studio he built with his own two hands, thinking about his hot wife and two cute kids and thousands of fans and millions of bucks and two NYT bestselling books — thinking about pretty much everything except Andy “Who?” Kindler.

    1. You ignorant bastard. You attack Todd Glass because of his sexuality and accuse him of being jealous of Adam Carolla’s success, yet you don’t know a damn thing. You are exactly the type of person Kindler is chastising in his rant.

      Adam Carolla is ignorant and uses harsh language to offend other people in a way that only dimwits would find funny. By the way, Kindler is right, Carolla is not a stand up comic. He wishes to be in the world which is why his show features and highlights comedians.

      I’m not even upset that you’re a Carolla fan. I’m upset that you are so ignorant and intolerant of a person’s sexuality that you would use it as an attack against them.Especially a person that you don’t even know.

      Instead of leaving hateful comments on a message board, go to a Carolla show and you can all snicker and high five each other as you make fun of people who are different than you.

      1. This clearly wasn’t an attack on his sexuality. It was an attack on him telling other people what to think and how to act. Who made you the god of judging what opinions are right to have? You proved the point he was railing against: Claiming anyone saying anything they oppose will be shot down and misrepresented by IGNORANT people like yourself.

        1. What are you talking about?

          I’m speaking about the comment made by “Kathy”. This “Kathy” person wrote: “I don’t doubt that Todd “now that I’m gay, nobody gets to say the word ‘gay’ in a way I don’t approve of” Glass WOULD like to f Adam Carolla”.

          Saying that because Todd is gay he wants to have sex with Adam Carolla. Attacking his sexuality.

          Did you not read Kathy’s comment?

          1. Your reading comprehension skills are piss poor. Amazing how people can get so offended over things they dont understand, its like you are so desperate to have something to be offended over that you prioritize your criticism over even attempting to figure out what the person actually said.

    2. Please stop proving Adam Carolla’s point that women aren’t funny. Thanks in advance.

  2. This is frankly incomprehensible. I don’t know why I tried to even read the whole thing. Has he recently had a lobotomy? Maybe it would be better to hear spoken out loud than read, because I didn’t get a single thing from that other than a whole fuck of a lot of bitterness. And I don’t like Carolla at all either.

  3. Adam Carolla is funny. Kindler doesn’t like that a non traditional comic who he has different views than is funny. That’s all.

  4. For what it’s worth, I had two experiences with Carolla last summer.

    At JFL, Carolla performed on a Gala with an American political theme because of the presidential election, and was the only one to stray from the theme and also bombed. Hard. He might even tell you that (or told you that on his podcast) himself.

    Last August, I interviewed Carolla over the phone, and he gamely answered questions about Donald Trump, Bill O’Reilly and Jimmy Kimmel.

    https://thecomicscomic.com/2012/11/08/adam-carolla-talks-trump-oreilly-diy-and-his-funniest-fart-joke-ever/

    I don’t know that I’d consider Carolla a comedian. He’s the comic relief when he’s broadcasting with Dr. Drew, but he’s a broadcaster. A radio personality who’s now a podcast personality. Not a comedian. If you want to split the difference, call him a smart ass. Or a dumb ass. An ass who can take the hit.

    1. Carolla isn’t a “Standup” but he is a comedian, the problem is that he actually comes from an opposite background to most comedians. His family were leftist cultural relativists on welfare and were self hating white people. He has his philosophy based on his observations of the world and a lot of the truths as he sees them are uncomfortable. Racism is to attribute a trait to someone based on their genetic makeup, and that thought among the reasonably intelligent is long dead. Judging cultures and the outcomes tied to them is not racist, when Carolla comments on 70+%of AA children being born out of wedlock and the dire consequences that implies he isn’t saying something that is untrue or hateful but it is always easier to hang the messenger.

  5. Kindler is stuck in the machine. he’s been a comic for 20 years. what’s his great moment? the neighbor on Everybody Loves Raymond? what’s his great contribution to comedy? is calling somebody a nazi in 2013 funny? maybe it wasn’t supposed to be a joke, maybe it was just a comment. if “nazi” is your punchline in 2013….you’re a HACK!!

  6. this isn’t an attack on todd glass’ sexuality, buuuuuuut….

    at this point, he needs it… he needs an angle, something to set him apart because it’s not his comedy or point of view, but now he is the comic who was ‘strong enough to admit who he was’…..now his audience can sit in the crowd and feel good about ‘supporting progress’, that more significant to glass’ ticket sales than any punchline he’ll think of.

    sorry guys. truth hurts.

  7. As a long-term listener of Carolla’s podcast I believe that it is unfair to say that he racist (insensitive and lightly ignorant, perhaps, but not racist). A unifying thread in his racially-tinged rants is not that any particular race is inferior — he seems to truly believe that everybody has the potential to thrive — but that pervasive cultural behaviors keep folks from succeeding. That’s why he typically holds up the Asians and Jews as being role models due to their emphasis on education and family (that, ergo, results in greater success). For example, he does not cite poor genetics (see, James Watson) for the high crime rate among young black males, but instead decries the failure of family and education to steer people straight.

    If he was better educated than he is (being a junior college drop-out) he could present this thesis in a more palatable way. If he had John Hodgman’s education, he could approach these issues from a progressive (and generally acceptable) viewpoint. But, alas, his facile mind is hobbled by a failure of family and education also.

  8. Kindler is monumentally unfunny. People clap and give him courtesy laughs because they agree with his political viewpoint, not because his material is funny or he has any comedic skills.

    He’s been using the same material for years, and it isn’t very good. Alexander Graham Bell’s sarcastic hello! is his fallback when he’s bombing. So he tries to be a “metacomic”, which means he does unfunny bits, and when people don’t laugh he acts like he needs to explain the jokes and the punchlines (implying that his material is too “sophisticated” for his audience. In his heart, he knows he’s funny). The audience gets the jokes, but the jokes and the teller of the jokes are just just lousy. He ignores rule #1 of comedy: If you have to explain it, it wasn’t funny, and trying to explain it makes it less so.

    Meanwhile, Carolla just rolls along. Give him something new to talk about, and he’ll find a funny angle on it, on the spot. Kindler whines about his guest appearance on Carolla’s show, and how he had to pay to park (in Los Angeles). What he leaves out is that he bombed as badly as any guest on Carolla’s show has ever bombed. He complains in his speech that they kept him on the show for an hour. That’s Kindler’s way of saying that he wasn’t ready to be on the show and just be funny. Kindler came on the show ready to barf out one his canned, stale routines, not to spontaneously play off the other members of the show with humor. And that’s why he hates Carolla, because he couldn’t hang.

  9. Carolla was funny and even brilliant during the 1990s, and has been repeating the same material ad nauseum, to the point that nauseum has become necrosis.

    Kindler is strangely inarticulate for someone who makes a living doing extemporaneous public speaking. He also unfortunately reinforces the cultural failure to differentiate between racism and bigotry.

    Carolla may or may not be a racist, privately. What Carolla & his audience champion is that bigotry is humor.

    The sad part is that Carolla used to be creative, relatively apolitical (or at least equal-opportunity against left and right), and almost entirely non-bigoted in his Loveline broadcasts until … 9/11.

    Kindler brings a total lack of knowledge about Carolla — with any deeper knowledge of Carolla’s history, Kindler COULD have nailed Carolla incisively. Kindler criticizes Salon.com for knowing nothing about Patton Oswalt (” … You have to be familiar with the field that you’re talking about …”) yet has zero goods to nail Carolla with. Carolla has been shoveling his dogshit for years, and Kindler just recently noticed the milder dogshit.

  10. Granted, Adam Carolla’s strong suit is not interviewing guests or making guests feel like the center of attention. As a guest on the Carolla podcast, you sort of have to earn air time. In a way, Adam’s favorite guests have earned his approval, and subsequently, the right to truly be featured. It may not be fair that guests are put at the mercy of Adam Carolla’s whims, but that’s what he does. Is he funny? Sometimes he is, and other times he’s not. But he’s a podcast personality, and to many who have listened to him over the years, he’s like a friend or a next door neighbor who you occasionally duck behind the fence to avoid (affectionately, of course).

    Andy Kindler needs to relax and take his experiences with Carolla less personally. His reaction says more about his own insecurities than it does any deficiencies Adam Carolla may have as a human.

  11. The Carolla-Hitler joke is a rehash of Kindler’s Dane Cook-Hitler joke from a few years ago, speaking of hack. The problem is, most common people who enjoy Carolla’s show don’t have these liberal Jew hang-ups about “racism” and Hitler like Andy Kindler or Todd Glass. They are working people who probably have a better understanding of cultural realities from everyday experience than these L.A. utopia-mongering “alternative” comics.

    What Kindler said about the white people in Carolla’s audience complaining about taxes under Obama, that this is somehow racist, is ridiculous and offensive to regular working people. This says more about Kindler’s ilk and their deep-seated insecurities about whites embracing any kind of populist feeling which, through liberal Jew logic, will lead to “Hitler”. It’s the Andy Kindler-types, getting all caught up in the fact that the president is part-black, who are instigating the racial stuff, not the poor working people.

    I do think it’s funny that Kindler goes after some of these big names, especially Gervais and Louis C.K. I remember a scene in “Louie” where the Louie character calls Nick DiPaolo a “racist Nazi” for criticizing the cult of personality around Obama. Though Nick’s performance was good, It was an emotionally flat scene with no comedic edge to it and nothing new to say, like most of “Louie”. I’m sure Kindler would agree with me.

  12. I love that Kindler waits to leave the show to start talking trash. What a coward. My favorite part is that neither of these guys would last a full minute in the same room as Carolla.

Comments are closed.