The Art of Comedy, Drama & Politics | Sal Litvak on Hollywood & Why Funny Became Dangerous

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Dangerous left laughter. [00:00:06] Speaker B: Dangerous. Dangerous laughter. Dangerous laughter. Danger. Laughter. [00:00:27] Speaker C: Sam. [00:01:07] Speaker D: Day 8. [00:01:09] Speaker A: The Emergency Destruct system is now activated. The option to override detonation procedure has now expired. The ship will automatically destruction. Welcome Back to the DL, ladies and gentlemen, and the other 72, 73 genders. I am A.J. rice. Remember, on Dangerous Laughter you have to understand that we believe in the equal distribution of mockery. And we've got a great show for you today. I mean, today's show actually gets into the philosophical DNA for why Dangerous Laughter exists. And I've been working on a book, an accompanying book to go along with this show. It's more of a history book of dangerous laughter. And I think you're going to enjoy today's guest. For sure, for sure. And just remember, we are unfit for polite company. But there is a gentleman coming on today that I'm a huge fan of. I just want to take a moment. This month, not that long ago, our millennial vice president walked into abc, walked into the set of the View where the harpies from ancient Greek mythology host a show where they all sort of came out of the same, you know, yent, conveyor belt, pain in the ass, conveyor belt, walked in there like a gentleman, something I could never do, and acquitted himself on the View with joy with, you know, although I don't know all the names of all the dingbats on there with who is it? The caveman from the Geico commercials. There's a bunch of people on there. You know, some of you out there will know their name, some of you don't. But he was superb on the View. He was a bullet sponge and none of them affected him. And he just sort of let them do their thing. You know, Whoopi from the GEICO commercials tried to take control. And I saw Anna Navarro, who never shuts the hell up. She was, she was the one that was yapping the most. You know, with all the sort of talking points about, you know, kids in cages and the open border and pretending that the 12 years of Obama and Biden didn't happen. So she was complaining about that. Although, you know, to her credit, couple, couple months ago when, you know, the US military snatched Maduro in his Nike jumpsuit, she was, she did praise the administration for that. So that brings me to today's guest. Our next dangerous guest is that rare yarmulke wearing unicorn. He is both Jewish and Hispanic. You imagine this. I mean, the jokes I've got right. The jokes I'm sure he's got right, which means he haggles over his favorite two dollar cerveza. He haggles over it. Probably had a pinata at his bar mitzvah. And he affectionately calls himself a giutino. I'm never on. I'm never. This will be said from now on. You know, I had Chris Salcedo, who's Catholic, a couple weeks ago. You know, next time I have a few surveys with him, I'm gonna start calling him that when he makes me pay every time there. Sal. He is the writer, director of the new film Guns and Moses and author of the book Let My People Laugh. I asked him to come on the show, and he said to me I would never go on a show that would have him as a guest. Ladies and gentlemen, my favorite Latin yid, Salvatore Litback, ladies and gentlemen. [00:05:00] Speaker E: There he is. [00:05:01] Speaker C: There he is. [00:05:03] Speaker A: Sal's in the house. As you can see, Sal, I am dressed today because I. I'm going to like LSU's homecoming today. Yeah, so there's a little LSU homecoming going on, although I didn't know yellow. [00:05:14] Speaker C: You know, people can see you in a crowd. [00:05:17] Speaker A: That's right. That's right. Well, I wanted to wear an outfit that matched your book cover. Right. Although I never think that far ahead. But. But here we are, Sal. So the book Let My People Laugh. Let My People Laugh. The Greatest Jewish Jokes of All Time. Now, I write anthologies. I've written three, as you can see behind me here, and they are political satire, you know, and I. I channel a lot of some of the people and jokes that are in this book. I got to tell you, I. I grew up on the east Coast. I'm an Irish Catholic Philly guy, and as you know, as Dennis Leary once said, the only difference between Irish guilt and Jewish guilt is whiskey. Whiskey, ladies and gentlemen, and always never Bush mills. That's a Protestant whiskey. So if you're gonna. If you're gonna drink some Irish whiskey, you want to get some red breast or some Jameson or, you know, if you got a little coin to spend. Sal. Little Middle Middleton Irish whiskey. So look, we love this book. Here it is. Everybody's got to go get a copy of it. Why did you decide to put this together? It's fun. You know, this is, you know, take it in the john, do a little vignette while you're doing your morning constitutional every day. I mean, I love this book. Why did you decide to put it together the way you did? [00:06:35] Speaker C: I mean, number one, I love to laugh. I love to make people laugh. I'm inheritor of the Jewish humor Tradition, it goes back not hundreds of years, but thousands of years. The Talmud, which is to say our oral tradition that stretches all the way back to Mount Sinai, talks about a great sage named Rabba almost 2,000 years ago who would always open his Torah teachings with a joke and records the oral tradition. His students would laugh. So either they were very polite or he was genuinely funny. And I would go with the latter. Jewish history is full of pain and suffering as well as high points, funerals and weddings and everything in between. And we break a glass at a wedding to remember a bit of our sorrow in the midst of our joy, so that in the midst of our sorrow, we'll find some joy as well. And, you know, humor for us is medicine. It's entertainment. It's. There's many of us who collect the jokes. My dad, my, you know, my grandparents were among them, and so I love telling the jokes, and I thought I'd make a book out of it. [00:07:37] Speaker A: Absolutely. One of the taglines for this show is where we talk about transforming horror into humor. [00:07:47] Speaker C: Yeah, right. [00:07:48] Speaker A: Horror into humor. People have talked about the definition of comedy over the years being tragedy plus time equals comedy. Tragedy plus time equals comedy. That's one of the themes here. I mean, it absolutely is. And one of the things that I have picked up on and it's not with every comedian and I, I am working on a project where I go back to ancient Greece, So, you know, 500 years before Christ. I don't go as far back as, you know, the Old Testament, although I was desperately searching for some jokes from people like Elijah. And they got. They got close. You know, he got. He gets a little close there for. For at least my thesis, which is about Western civilization and dangerous laughter and the sort of inquisition of humor and that, you know, we have a long tradition of cancel culture. [00:08:41] Speaker C: Right. [00:08:41] Speaker A: It doesn't start with Shane Gillis. It doesn't start with Roseanne sending a tweet. Right. It doesn't. And that. And that Western civilization, Judeo, Christian, Greco Roman civilization is unique in the sense that we have had funny people, some Jewish, some not, some pagan, some not, some Christian, some not in the whole history of the Western tradition and, you know, only on very few occasions and none of the big ones that I found. Do we kill them? Do we kill them? Now we've thrown some in jail. Some had to go into exile. People that were thrown in jail, like Voltaire, who's a satirist, was thrown in jail, were people that were stripped of their titles, like Lord Byron and Ben Franklin. A lot of people don't think of Ben Franklin as a funny guy, but if they have, they've never read poor Richard Zalman. [00:09:32] Speaker C: Exactly. [00:09:33] Speaker A: The most banned book in history is a little book called Huckleberry Finn has been banned across three centuries. Starting off with the right and now the left, if you follow the trajectory, starts off being banned by the Concord Public Library, and now it's being banned by, you know, the black studies departments at BU and Boston College and other places. [00:09:59] Speaker C: Let me jump in for a second. [00:10:00] Speaker A: Go ahead. [00:10:02] Speaker C: Because my daughter just graduated college in New York, and then my wife and I, my daughter and her brother drove across the country. We rented a car in New York and drove to la. We took the northern route. We hit Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Badlands, all kinds of great stuff. We had a family playlist and we listened to Huckleberry Finn on audible, narrated by, of all people, Elijah Wood, who I got to say, did an amazing job with all the accents, woke ify the novel and remove the, you know, thousands of references to the N word. [00:10:37] Speaker A: Sure. [00:10:37] Speaker C: But they told it straight up. And it's such a brilliant book. It's so funny, so sharp, so cutting. Everybody should reread Huck Finn. It's amazing. [00:10:47] Speaker A: Absolutely. Have to read it. And obviously Hemingway once said that, you know, all of American literature kind of springs forth from Twain. [00:10:57] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:10:57] Speaker A: And from Huck Finn. That's a famous sort of Hemingway quote. I mean, look, we, you know, the American people, I mean, we've been around 250 years. The English language obviously predates our existence. There are a lot of places you can go to find dangerous laughter. You can go to Lenny Bruce or you could go to Aristophanes. You go to. And everybody in between, you know, I mean, there were people even during the Dark Ages called the Goliards who were running around telling jokes. They're like former Latin monks that got thrown out of school. And they were basically guys that were doing pub crawls and doing stand up during the Middle Ages, you know, and then obviously the Enlightenment happens and you've got Jonathan Swift all the way up to Sal Litvak. Which brings me to one. One guy that I came across in my studies of this because it's a history of not just comedy, but farce, parody, humor, the grotesque and other things. I, and I didn't know that much about this guy, and I do have an English literature background, was someone named Heinrich Hein. Okay. [00:12:07] Speaker E: Who? [00:12:08] Speaker A: In, in, in the piece I'm working on, the book I'm working on, he's the first Jewish satirist that shows up. And I find it. He's just an amazing person because he's the guy that I found that was banned. And he had to go into exile in France. He was banned twice. Twice separated by a hundred years. He was. He had to flee the Prussian states. That's what it was called the time united, you know, Prussian city states. And he was banned in, you know, the 1830s. And then he's banned again a hundred years later. And he's banned a hundred years later by the Third Reich. He's banned 100 years later by Hitler, Garin Goebbels, you know, the whole gang, the whole band, Right, Eichmann, the whole gang. Whole gang's there. Ava Braun, Candace Owens, they're all there. [00:12:58] Speaker C: Not a bunch of comedy enthusiasts. [00:13:00] Speaker A: Yes, but the reason he was banned, we talk about censorship, and this is the reason, you know, certain Jewish comics are banned and have been banned. Heinrich Hein has this quote that said where they burn books, and they were burning his books in 1838 in Germany, where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people. And Hitler never forgave him for that. So when they took over, his books were the first one banned by the totalitarians in Berlin that overthrew the Weimar Republic. Which brings me to this, this question. Why do oppressed people laugh? Why do resilient people laugh? And, and, and why? I want to know why humor survives sometimes when power falls apart. Because your book is about the history of Jewish comedy. Yes, it comes out of suffering, but it's in that gallows humor that some of the greatest jokes of all time come, right? [00:14:08] Speaker C: Well, of course, you know, the, the classic is Two Jews on a Park Bench in Berlin, 1938. And, you know, one of them is reading the Yiddish paper, the other one is reading Der Sturmer, the, the propaganda arm of the Nazi party, right? And so the Jew reading the Yiddish paper says to the other one, how could you read that trash? Just how could I read this trash? Are you kidding? When I read the Yiddish paper, it says the Jews are being arrested, Jews are being condemned, Jews are being executed. When I read their sturm, it says, we own the banks, we own the ships, we own the airplanes. The news is much better. [00:14:44] Speaker A: Right, exactly, exactly. I mean, that, that's, that's the thing is that when you create a satirist and you create. I mean, look, there have been some silver spooners guys that, you know, Lord Byron, although he, you know, his parents were kind of screwed up, you know, he Was like a lesser noble for member of the House of Lords. But you know, it doesn't matter whether it's Oscar Wilde or hilarious. Yeah. I mean they, they come out of the milieu of pain and suffering. It doesn't matter whether it's Jewish, Catholic or whatever. Now some of us genetically are predisposed to go in that direction because you know, the Irish experience, the Jewish experience and there are others come out of. And this is why guys like Richard Prior and Dave Chappelle are so funny is when you come out of that milieu of oppression or you know, being poor and, and going through that, you. Comedy becomes a survival mechanism, doesn't it? Does it not? [00:15:49] Speaker C: Yeah, I think for sure that might be where it's born. But I think something you said earlier in your intro. Right. You're an equal opportunity mocker, right? I mean, sure, you can't spare anybody. And I think what everybody recognizes about the guy who can find humor in anything is that he's also got that, you know, that 30, 000 foot view that maybe other people don't. When you can to make something funny, you gotta see connections and things that other people don't see. And I think those people are dangerous. You know, funny people are dangerous. Yep. Because when you can make connections that other people don't see, you can also see what the wizard is doing behind the curtain and maybe even get it across. Encoded language. And of course the totalitarian regimes hate that. Right. [00:16:37] Speaker A: I mean, I. Look, it's, it's an amazing thing. I mean, I know. I mean you chronicle it all brilliantly. You know, a lot of, a lot of these jokes in here. You know, and I love your fake blur, your blurbs on the back. I love those. I, I've done some of them myself. You know, it's, it's interesting when you talk about cancel culture because of comedy, you talk about different, you know, people that were thrown in jail and Lenny Bruce was thrown in jail and you know, George Carlin had Supreme Court decision on the seven Dirty Words. Right. But one of their, one of their contemporaries. I want to play this for you, then we're going to take a break. I just want to get your reaction on this side of the brick. Chris, get, get Rabbi Tuckman ready here. Look, I am a huge fan of Mel Brooks. He's someone that is still alive. [00:17:30] Speaker E: Right. [00:17:30] Speaker A: The 99 year old man creating. He's doing Spaceballs too. He's. I mean, it's out of control. [00:17:36] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:17:37] Speaker A: You know, I am more of a Woody guy than a Male guy. But I love them both for different reasons. But Mel, one of my favorite jokes of all time, and I wonder whether, you know, he could do this today, is from Men, Robin Hood, Men in Tights, where he's playing Rabbi Tuckman and he rolls up to the boys. Chris, let's hit that video. [00:18:01] Speaker C: Whoa, Mar. [00:18:05] Speaker A: Hold there, friend. [00:18:06] Speaker C: You've just entered the territory of Robin the Hood and his merry men. [00:18:14] Speaker B: Fagel is. [00:18:17] Speaker A: That's right. And look, as you can see there, that's 19 year old Dave Chappelle, you know, playing Achoo. Playing the parody of the Morgan Freeman character. I mean look, he's riding around, he gives him a demonstration of circumcision. He's basically a moil Rabbi Tuckman instead of Friar Tuck. And he does a little demonstration with a carrot we don't have time for. But I mean, I, you know, I look around, Sal, and you make films. We're going to talk about your, your latest film in the next segment. You know, I just don't see the pedigreed comedic brain, Jewish or otherwise, like guys like Mel Brooks or Woody Allen or, you know, and there are others, there are people that do quirky stuff like Wes Anderson and so they do some funny stuff. But I mean, you know, once he's gone, we're gonna, I mean, we're losing. And I was talking with another guest about Clint Eastwood, the same thing not long ago. We're losing a national treasure, are we not? [00:19:19] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, it's like it's got to the point where Lawrence Olivia used to say, you know, when asked how could you play a black man? Or how could you play an Indian man? How could you play a German man? He says, it's called acting, dear boy. Just get into the character. And now it's that only a black lesbian woman can play a black lesbian woman. Only, you know, paralyzed, paraplegic, amputated. You know, Native American man can play paralyzed, amputated. You know, it's ridiculous. People can play parts. [00:19:55] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:19:56] Speaker C: And the lines are getting blurred all the time. But I do think that there is a movement against all this stuff. I mean, young people who voted for Trump who are just sick of being branded if they're white, that they're toxic, masculine white, like it's ridiculous. People are. I feel like the pendulum swung so far to the ridiculous that it's coming back a little. I'm not saying it's back all the way. We're still living in a ridiculous culture. [00:20:19] Speaker A: Sure. [00:20:20] Speaker C: And I love how there's the Babylon Bee and not the Babylon. The things that are satire a year ago are suddenly mainstream news. Real news this year. I mean, it just seems to me that everything that's happened since COVID was not imaginable before COVID And it's like year after year after year, the country's gotten more and more ridiculous. But I think that the average American has a lot of common sense and will only put up with the ridiculous for so long. [00:20:48] Speaker A: I agree. [00:20:48] Speaker C: I agree. [00:20:49] Speaker A: We're going to take a quick break. We come back on the other side. A lesbian black will be hosting this show. I'm getting. I'm getting yanked. You're watching Dangerous Laughter. I am AJ Reisworth with Sal Litvak Back on the other side. [00:21:01] Speaker D: I'm spiritually aligned with revolution. I don't see color unless it's white. Then I see genocide. The Black Lives Matter support group rejected me again, even though I wrote an apology letter to Harriet Tubman. They said my white privilege energy was too aggressive. Can you believe that? Every day I wake up and hate that I was born in America. I even moved to Venezuela for two weeks. But Uber Eats didn't work, so I moved back. And now I just sit and meditate on my colonizer shame. I breathe through my white shame. I meditate on how to destroy capitalism while I order everything on Amazon Prime. I have no brain of my own now and believe everything the fake news media feeds me. I am the woking dead. [00:21:56] Speaker E: You should be women. And yet your beards forbid me to interpret that you are so. So. Someone once said comedy is the art of turning horror into humor. That's the essence of the Curse of the Bearded Lady. Laughing in the face of madness before it devours us whole. Nothing in living memory has been funnier or more horrifying than a movement convinced there are 72 genders. Boys have a penis. Girls have a vagina. The curse of the Bearded Lady. The curse of the Bearded Lady. The Trans mafia has whipped America's sanity. It's Monty Python by way of mingalo. Absurd theater with real victims. I'm not here to conduct a medical examination of the trans mafia. This is a cultural autopsy. If Billy Shakespeare could write you tragedies, histories and comedies, why can't I? The radicals refuse to surrender their gender mad stranglehold on America's vital institutions. This book will show how we got here, how we fight back, and how the Democratic Party's obsession with mainstreaming the bearded lady will doom it to political extinction. [00:23:19] Speaker C: Foreign [00:23:23] Speaker E: stay locked in with the man who slayed the woking. Dead. This is Dangerous laughter with A.J. rice on the Publius Media Network. [00:23:36] Speaker A: Back on the DL. I am A.J. rice. This is Dangerous Laughter. Always remember, our job here is to transform horror into humor, which is why we've got Sal Litback with us today, author of the book Let My People Laugh. And you know, look, Sal, Sal's like a, a man of many talents. He's got the, the Talmudist website. I mean, he's got books, he makes movies. And look, he came out with a movie. I, I describe it, I always think of like the power and the glory and the whiskey priest who just goes around, you know, taking people out in the Graham Green novel or the Boondock Saints. Sometimes I talk about this movie that you made. Sound like that, like people just snap, right? You know, for years I always said to myself, somebody needs to make a movie where a rabbi just, you know, takes into his own hands after something terrible. And, and look, you made this movie. You're, you are the producer, the writer and the director. And, and it's called Guns and Moses Gun, not Guns and Roses. Guns and Moses, ladies and gentlemen. And, and tell the, tell the audience who's in it. And then we'll, we'll throw to a clip here. [00:24:53] Speaker C: You're going to see Mark Feuerstein playing Rabbi Moe, the legendary Christopher Lloyd, Neil McDonough and Dermot Laroni, as well as Jake Busey and Alona Tal. Amazing cast who everybody really committed to the parts. It, it's not a comedy. It's an edge of your seat thriller, though there is humor in it for sure. And, you know, we were inspired. I'm the co writer, I write with my wife. We're a mom and pop shop. And it was, you know, we were looking for a thriller topic and then there was a murder. There was a shooting at a synagogue in Poway, California. Young man came in with, with an automatic rifle, killed a woman named Laura Gilbert Kay would have killed a lot more people, but the rabbi, an older man, walked on courageously and tried to stop, stop him. Got his fingers shot off and then the gun miraculously jammed or a lot more people would have got killed. And around that same time, I'm an orthodox Jew, which is to say a visible Jew. When I go to synagogue on Saturday, I have a black suit, black hat. And we've been aware for some time that the danger to the Jewish community is real. I joined an organization called Magenam. We're trained, licensed, we carry. We have to pass qualifications that are more difficult than the FBI. And please God, we should never need such skills. But if we do, we won't be a soft target. So these are all the elements that went into the creation of guns and Moses. [00:26:17] Speaker E: Awesome. [00:26:18] Speaker C: Awesome. [00:26:18] Speaker A: And yet, look, like he said, you're going to see here, we're going to play the trailer. You know, you're going to see some faces that you know, like Christopher Lloyd and others. Dermot Mulroney. Right? I mean, there's a lot of people you recognize in this. So buckle up, let's watch the trailer and we'll talk about it on the other side. This attack, [00:26:50] Speaker E: it's personal to me. This crime against a Jewish community will not go unpunished. [00:27:01] Speaker D: His name is Clay Gibbons. [00:27:02] Speaker A: That is a sick joke. [00:27:04] Speaker D: And he drives a matte green GTI with Nazi insignia. [00:27:07] Speaker E: Get your hands off my son. [00:27:09] Speaker A: Your son's a member of a white nationalist hate group. Dad, it was a ramp room. [00:27:14] Speaker C: I lost everyone, but I survived. [00:27:23] Speaker D: The question is, are you gonna be a sheep or a shepherd? [00:27:32] Speaker B: I told him what I found. Then he was killed. What did you find? Why you want to play detective? Because no one else is. [00:27:38] Speaker E: Isn't the killer in custody? [00:27:40] Speaker B: A suspect is in custody. [00:27:45] Speaker E: You don't control me, Alan. [00:27:47] Speaker A: You controlled you. [00:27:48] Speaker E: You blew it. [00:27:49] Speaker A: Are you going to find who did [00:27:50] Speaker E: it and get me out of here? [00:27:51] Speaker B: Yes, I am. [00:27:52] Speaker A: When your enemy tells you that he wants you dead, believe him. [00:28:05] Speaker E: There are no words, but there will be deeds. [00:28:34] Speaker A: There it is, ladies and gentlemen. I mean, you can go now. What? Tell the audience all the different places they can go now to see this. [00:28:41] Speaker C: The easiest is by Amazon prime, also Apple movies, I think, you know, Roku and some other platforms and YouTube movies. But the easiest by Amazon Prime. And thank God, the word of mouth is great on the movie. People love it. Audiences always love the movie and they're telling each other about it, especially the Second Amendment law enforcement community. They appreciate that. You know, when Hollywood has to take a guy who's never shot before and make him a shooter, he puts five tin cans on a fence, he misses the first one, he hits the next four, and then he's a crack shot. So that's totally unlike the real world and the firearms training in the movie. When the rabbi's learning is real, slow is smooth, smooth is fast. You know, sight picture, trigger press, add pressure, let the bank surprise you. It's real world training and. And so there's a realism to the movie and a guy getting in over his head that audiences really appreciate. [00:29:41] Speaker A: Now you've got a diverse cast ideologically on in this movie I know a little bit. I've Talked to Neil McDonough. I interviewed him once, like, 10 years ago on another show at the Washington Times was before. He was sort of fully embracing who he kind of is now. But you could. I could kind of feel it talking to him, where he sort of stood on some things. You know, Christopher Lloyd, I don't really know that much about what he thinks of this or that. I mean, maybe he's out there saying stuff. I don't know. Mulrooney, I kind of know his sister's a famous Democrat outside of Philadelphia, where I'm from, you know, but you have this group of people and they're all coming together to make this. What were they liked, were they did. Were they. Did they blend nicely? Was it a nice potpourri of different perspectives on this? [00:30:32] Speaker C: I'll tell you something. Production was very difficult. It was. When Hollywood makes a movie like ours and you'll see it's indistinguishable from a studio movie, you know, that would have cost at least 20, probably more like 30, $40 million. We made it for under five. And the way we did that was to shoot it in 20 days and for that to work. And it did. It was because the cast totally committed and trusted what we were doing. And, you know, we just worked long, tough days. There was a lot of action in the movie, and that takes extra time. So we had a wonderful working relationship. But it's worth saying that we conceived and wrote and shot the movie before October 7th, and the world shifted on October 7th. You know, not the worst attack on Jews and murders of Jews since the Holocaust. And the protests against Israel and the Jews began on October 8th before, you know, before Israel had even begun its response. It never had anything to do with what's going on with the Palestinians and in Gaza. It's like this latent Jew hatred that's been simmering for a long time that was unfashionable after the Holocaust. Now these people just feel perfectly good and proud shouting it from the rooftops. [00:31:51] Speaker A: Sure. [00:31:51] Speaker C: And so there were some members of the cast. I'm not saying they're anti Semitic. Obviously they're not. They knew what movie they were signing up for. But when that climate changed, they didn't want to put themselves out there in a movie. That's obvious. [00:32:05] Speaker A: They don't want to put. They don't want to promote the film. [00:32:07] Speaker C: Exactly. I mean, the movie narrative, in the sense that it's pro Second Amendment, pro America, pro Israel, has nothing to do With Israel. I'm sorry, it's not pro Israel. Has nothing to do with Israel. Right. Certainly pro Jewish and pro traditional values. And, you know, and so these days, either you're coded, you know, woke and flying the rainbow flag, or you're safe. [00:32:32] Speaker A: Right? [00:32:33] Speaker C: And, you know, so we fell a little bit into that trap. And then if you look, you know, at our numbers, for example, on IMDb, where we had a very average number, 5.4, but if you have to look at it, it's like all nines and tens and ones, right? So a movie like this, it's a very competent thriller. The only reason you give it a one is because you can't stand Jews who defend themselves, you know, use weapons when weapons are used against them. And so we get attacked. I mean, and you see this all the time. Businesses that go off narrative in mainstream America or woke America get swarmed, you know, in Google reviews or Trust pilot reviews, whatever it is, whatever industry you're in, we're seeing this happen, right? [00:33:17] Speaker A: You know, it's interesting the, you know, because obviously a lot of Jewish people in the entertainment business, I always think of the, I always think of Martin Short, Jiminy Glick interviewing Mel Brooks, saying, saying how come there's not more Jews in the entertainment business? And Brooks is like, what are you talking about? That's all there is. You know, it's, it's funny the way things get embraced. I've gotta think, and I have heard, I do have some, you know, sources, that there is a tension, I guess, now in Hollywood now you do have some new ownership, like over at Paramount and, and some other places where, you know, certain types of behavior is just not going to be tolerated. But, you know, I am a big Adrien Brody fan and I, you know, his work in the Pianist was amazing. So I, I waited to watch this movie, the Brutalist. Okay. I waited to watch it. I'd say, you know what? I love Brody. You know, I, I, I, he won another Academy Award for this. Let me watch this. And one of the other reasons I wanted to watch it was it's set in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and in Philly, where I'm from. I'm from Bucks county and northeast Philly. So I'm like, all right, I'll watch this. You know, and I love Guy Pierce, too. And I was, you know, the guy is, is a professional. He's been around forever, and he was up for an Academy Award for this. He didn't win. Now, I watched this movie and, you know, it had all the ingredients that make me want to like this movie. And I think about the way Hollywood embraced this movie. It's a bizarre movie. It's bizarre, okay? You know, it tells the story of these people that escaped the Holocaust and they come to the United States and, you know, you know, the WASPy white people are treating them terrible in Bucks county and all the rest of it. But I think about that movie next to your movie and what you just said and how, you know, the bizarre storytelling of the brutalist gets embraced. Everyone loves it. There's like a, you know, there's a. There's a sexual assault in it, or at least we think there is. And. And. But where your movie is just like a badass vengeance, Jews defending themselves. But you have that flashbulb event October 7, and, you know, Hollywood on cue says, well, I don't know about guns and Moses. I'm gonna go embrace this weird thing over here. Because this is. This is. This is more my flavor. Right? [00:35:44] Speaker C: It's ridiculous. Yeah. I mean, we even heard during the. The publicity of the movie that the critic at the New York Times liked the movie. We were gonna get. The positive review in the New York Times for an independent movie means a lot. And it got killed. It got killed by an editor higher up. So, yeah, no, this is. This is not good for the New York Times. So they just didn't review it. [00:36:06] Speaker A: Right. [00:36:08] Speaker C: With our cast, our theatrical footprint, it should have had hundreds of reviews, you know, and it didn't. [00:36:13] Speaker A: Right. [00:36:14] Speaker C: Because that's the price you pay when you're off narrative. [00:36:17] Speaker A: It's just amazing. And look, you know, there are some. I mean, you're doing your thing. There are some other places out there, Angel Studios and stuff that Gibson does and stuff that Wahlberg does and some others that, you know, even Clint Eastwood to some degree, although he seems to be impermeable to. To them, they. They can't really touch him. I mean, he's 96 at this point. You know, it's just. It's an amazing thing. And I was talking about this with another guest. Different technology is such. Now that you can reach an audience, you can find an audience. I mean, look at the way the left has treated Taylor Sheridan shows. You know, they. They. They trashed Yellowstone, you know, as each season. And then, you know, he has created this whole universe of shows, but. And he's talked about it, you know, about how he. He gets traded or, you know, but the more. I think the more movies like Guns and Moses movies that, you know, like the Angel Studios movies and others that are out there. You know, Andrew Breitbart, who was a mentor of mine, used to say we can't just sit around and complain that all the late night hosts are left wing and all of. All these people are left with. All Hollywood studios are this way and that we have to get in the arena and be creators. [00:37:37] Speaker C: Exactly right. [00:37:38] Speaker A: And that's why. That's why you do what you do. That's why I decided pretty much after the Charlie Kirk assassination and some other things that have gone on here in the supposedly conservative media. I mean, to get into the game here with dangerous Laughter. Because Gutfeld can't fight every battle all the time, every way. He can't. And there are others out there. Babylon B and Steven Crowder. We're glad they're out there. Well, we need more. [00:38:05] Speaker C: Exactly. [00:38:06] Speaker A: We need more. We need an army. [00:38:09] Speaker C: They have a massive ecosystem. Right. They're. They're supporting hundreds of. Of movies and hundreds of comedians and so many late night shows and other comedy shows. The work infrastructure is massive. Our side has just got nothing but space. [00:38:25] Speaker A: I agree. [00:38:25] Speaker C: For everybody that wants to get involved. [00:38:27] Speaker A: I agree. I agree. So listen, we're gonna take a break here. Come back on the other side. I got some fun stuff I want to run by you about comedy, about dangerous laughter. Look, we're talking to Sal Litvak, his. His movie Guns and Moses, his book Let my people laugh. I'm A.J. rice. This is Dangerous Laughter. We will be right back. [00:38:47] Speaker C: In today's breaking news, the Curse of [00:38:48] Speaker E: the Bearded lady by AJ Rice has [00:38:50] Speaker A: already hit number one on Amazon new [00:38:52] Speaker E: releases and it is only on pre sale. You should be women, and yet your beards forbid me to interpret that you are so. Someone once said comedy is the art of turning horror into humor. That's the essence of the curse of the Bearded Lady. Laughing in the face of madness before it devours us whole. The curse of the Bearded Lady. [00:39:33] Speaker A: And now, please enjoy another elegant celebrity endorsement of dangerous laughter with A.J. [00:39:39] Speaker D: rice. [00:39:40] Speaker B: Hey, how's it going? This is John Gruden, the old coach. Just getting started here. It's an early morning in Las Vegas right now. The streets are quiet out there, but last night they were rocking. They were all talking about A.J. rice. A.J. rice is live. I love this guy, man. This is your moment right now. If you're gonna host your own podcast, you gotta be a nightmare for the opposing team. And I'm into nightmares. I mean, I want you to live rent free inside the enemy's head. Byob. Be your own blocker hustle. Hustle, hustle. Rice flip right, double edge. Jet 36, counter naked, Waglet 7X quarter. I mean, I want you to be a player, not a spectator. Rice. Let the competition come. Rice. Bring it on. Be the franchise quarterback. Rice. You got a motor, kid. Everybody sees it right now. Hit the gas and run these guys over. And don't forget Spider2y banana execution. Congratulations. You've been diagnosed with dangerous laughter. Now get out there and win. Love you, man. [00:40:58] Speaker A: This endorsement has been brought to you by collapsing standards everywhere. And now back to Dangerous laughter. [00:41:06] Speaker E: Stay locked in with the man who slayed the woking dead. This is Dangerous Laughter with AJ Rice on the publiest media network. [00:41:20] Speaker A: And we are back on the DL. Dangerous laughter. I am AJ Rice. Remember, enlightenment begins when authority becomes laughable. Always remember that. We are talking with Sal Litvak, Salvador Litvak, who is Chilean and Jewish. Well, what was going on there? Somebody was having a good time. I gotta tell you. Sal's parents new book, Let my people laugh. I've always think about the. The Seinfeld episode where I. I forget who it was. Somebody wanted to. They said, I'm Cranston. Yes. I'm gonna. You know, I'm Jewish for the jokes. I just want to be Jewish for the jokes. Right. [00:42:00] Speaker C: I converted for the jokes. That's what he said. [00:42:01] Speaker A: That's right. That's right. Exactly. You know, sometimes you got to do it. I mean, I know people that became Catholics so they could tell pope jokes, so. So recently this summer, the New York Knicks won their first NBA championship in 53 years. Hey, I was rooting for him, too. The whole team's filled with Eagles fans and Villanova grads and X Sixers. Even Maurice Cheeks, hall of Famer sitting on the bench. Love maurice Mo Cheeks, Dr. J's teammate there in 83. And I love this team. I loved it. I've loved them for a long time. And I am a Sixers fan. And they dispatched us with four brooms. They did it handily, and the Sixers probably deserved it with the way they were playing now. Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David, many comedians, New York personalities, they are all going to these games. So after the. The. Through the. The showstopping thriller of, I think the game four, Jerry's. Jerry's walking out of Madison Square Garden. He's gotta. He's, you know, he's got to come out the way everybody else comes out and get through the security perimeter or whatever. And there's some kooky, wacky Israel hating streamer. I Don't even know this person was standing out there with a camera. And he want. He wants to get in Jerry's face, right? And he tries to stop him, and he tries to get Jerry Seinfeld to say something. Chris, let's play that video. Oh, Jerry. [00:43:38] Speaker C: What up, Seinfeld? [00:43:40] Speaker E: What up? [00:43:41] Speaker C: Can we get a free Palestine? Can we get a free five? Come on, give us one free five. [00:43:46] Speaker A: It doesn't exist, Sal. It doesn't exist. Jerry's just ready. He's ready for him. [00:43:58] Speaker C: He's ready. I mean, taking it for a while, it's great. [00:44:03] Speaker A: The left went nuts. The kooks and even some of the right, they. They went nuts. But, you know, he's quick on his feet. That dude didn't know what was gonna happen. And, you know, Jerry's been doing this. Jerry was doing shows in Australia at one point, and he had a bunch of hecklers and he dunked on them. You know, I mean, Jerry's not, you know, Mr. Rabbi, but he is of Jewish. He's Jewish. [00:44:31] Speaker C: He's been to Israel. [00:44:32] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, he's been to Israel, done the whole thing. Right? But he's also not a. He's not going to buy into the. This. This kooky narrative that the entertainment industry is selling that we were just talking about, am I right? [00:44:45] Speaker C: Well, because the entertainment industry is totally enslaved to the concept of the oppression Olympics, right? And so they will reduce any conflict around the world to white people oppressing brown people. And so they run the Israel situation through that lens as well. And it doesn't apply. It makes no sense there. The only thing you have to do to understand the Israel situation is look at a map. You know, like all these people who are objecting, who don't know what river and what sea they're chanting about, they never looked at a map. Because when you look at a map, Israel, this tiny dot that's surrounded by so much Arab lands, which are like curvature of the earth size. And to say that there's no room for the Arab Palestinian population, they just need to move like five miles away. I mean, when they make bus lines and train lines in America, they move people 20, 30 miles. So what? Okay, now you have to commute. You have to move your house. So what? And if these people moved a few miles away, there would be no conflict. But they've got, you know, the media and the communist infrastructure around the world supporting them and running everything through. Well, if Israel's winning, it must be white people oppressing brown people. And it's just Total bs. [00:46:04] Speaker A: That's right. And look, you know, Israel, I call it the canary in the mine shaft for Western civilization. I mean, they're like a matchbox. Matchbox sitting on, you know, a football field compared to their surrounding enemies. And look, the Arab, The Sunni Arabs seem to be coming along. There's been some peace agreements, you know, that have happened. Abraham, Accords. Some people have posited that Saudi Arabia was ready to do a deal with Israel, and that's why October 7th happened, to prevent that from happening and, you know, because they can't have it bad for business, you know, but it's. It's. It's amazing to me. Look, I'm a geriatric millennial. You know, I, I grew up with parents that were boomers, grandparents that fought in World War II. They were there. My one grandfather was in the navy. The other one was in Bradley's 1st Army Division, the Irish one, although both, Both of them were Irish. And it's an amazing thing because I, I should know better what I'm about to say, but to me, some of the stuff that I've seen since October 7th, and I'm not Jewish. I'm an Irish Catholic wise ass from Philadelphia. But I grew up with the blacks and the Italians and the Jews. We played basketball. We did. We talked. We did. That's what we did. [00:47:31] Speaker C: Yeah, we all did. [00:47:32] Speaker A: Right? It's not. They're not. It's not. There's some alien race to me, okay? You know, the people falling off the turnip truck, I mean, they scare me more. I, I will tell you that I never thought. And I should know better because I know history going back to the Pharaoh. I never thought that we would see the type of behavior in the streets going after not just Israel, but Jews in general. But I guess I shouldn't. I guess I should know better because this is like the oldest bigotry in the book. It spins up every couple decades, every couple centuries, for whatever reason. People want to dump all. They want to project all of their own problems on this tiny group of people who, you know, as far as I'm concerned, make the world a better place with some. With some humor, you know? And look, there are people that. You quote Seinfeld to them, you quote curb your enthusiasm, you quote Mel or Woody or who, you know, whoever. They don't watch it. They didn't watch it. They don't get it. It's too New York. It's too Jewish. Whether it's Seinfeld or whatever, they're just. They don't have it. It's not there. The way they were raised, it's not there. And that's fine. They like, maybe they like Jeff Foxworthy or Larry the cable Guy, whatever the hell they like, right? [00:49:00] Speaker C: Or how I met your mother. That's the young people seem to like. [00:49:03] Speaker A: Sure, sure. But I mean, I never thought, Sal, that we would get to this point where we just sort of reliving this same type of anti Semitic craziness. And I guess we are right. [00:49:18] Speaker C: It goes back, A.J. it goes back to the Bible, right? Genesis 12, 3. God says, I will bless those who bless you and I will curse those who curse you. Why did God need to say that? And why do you say it like for all time, you know, so talking about the Jews way back in the first book of the Bible, you know, so you mentioned also I have this platform, accidental Talmudis. I have a million followers on Facebook, a few hundred thousand more on Instagram. I share what's beautiful in the tradition, including the Jewish jokes and more spiritual teachings. My first joke that went viral was probably like six, seven years ago. You know, it's an old silly joke about anti Semite is drinking in a bar and he notices a Jew sitting nearby and he says, a bartender, bartender, a drink for everybody in the place. Everybody except him. And he looks over at the Jew to see how he's taking it. The Jew just smiles back and that makes the anti Semite mad. This is bartender, a drink for everybody. Top shelf, your finest premium. For everybody except the Jew. And he looks over to see if he's pissed off the Jew. And the Jew just smiles back and nods. And a semi can't believe it. He says to the bartender, is that Jew just stupid or pretending to be? The bartender says, oh no, sir, he's the owner. [00:50:45] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:50:47] Speaker C: Hey, so that's a, that's a fun little joke right? Now when I told that, you know, put on my, I don't know, Instagram TikTok 6, seven years ago, hundreds of thousands of views, everybody's entertained. I just shared it last week and it did go viral again. Like maybe 600,000 views. But this time there's this mix of the, you know, the kind of comments I usually get. Hilarious. I love it. Made my day. So funny. And the Jew haters who come out and say, you know, oh yeah, well that, there you go, the Jews own everything. It just shows. The Jews own everything, right? The poor and I Semite got ripped off. You think that's funny? I'm like, are you freaking kidding me? You're gonna be offended by that joke. And you're gonna accuse us of exploiting society because we work hard and own small businesses like a bar. That. That's what offends you, right? Like these people look at the accusation, confession, right? They talk about the victim card, right? Somebody who blames the Jews for all their problems. That's the victim card. And that victim card is denied. [00:51:57] Speaker A: Sure. Look, we, you know, we're politically incorrect here. I mean, we don't believe all civilizations are created equal. We don't believe all cultures are created equal. That's why some civilizations go away. They don't make it. But there are some Western civilization, and then inside of Western civilization, there are, you know, pillars of that civilization. You know, you say to yourself, well, I mean, Italians own things, the Irish own things, Jews own things. People, I guess, are mad at the things that Jewish people own. But I ask, ladies and gentlemen, let me ask you a question. Who would you rather own these things? Someone from a dump like Haiti or a dump like Uganda? We do have a Ugandan mayor in New York, in New York City. Now, how's that turning out? How's it turning out, Right? I mean, look, let's be honest here. There's certain people you don't want to see when you walk in certain places, you know, when. You know, how many, how many videos of 18 wheelers have we seen recently where the driver is cooking tiki Marsala on the dashboard right before he flips the 18 wheeler off the overpass? I mean, look, part of the problem with stereotypes is they're real. That's how we get them. They're real. But, you know, you have to, I mean, you have to sort of weed, weed through it. I mean, there, there's jokes about everyone. And that's why I did open the show with the equal distribution of mockery. I have just as many jokes about Jews as I do about drunk Irish people, as I do about Italians playing bocce ball, as I do about, you know, Mutt and Jeff going hunting with Elmer Fudd in the woods. I have plenty of those things, you know, and if we, if we didn't take everything so freaking personally. All get along better. [00:53:46] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, listen, what you just said. If we're not going to be politically correct, you know, if you got. If you hear a guy say God bless you give him a nice smile. You guys say Baruch hashem, which is God bless. You know, blessed is God in Hebrew. You smile, I say allahu akbar, you're running immediately. [00:54:08] Speaker A: That's right. Exactly. That actually means something. So speaking of this and speaking of, you know, you being hunted, you know, and, you know, when people are trying to do reviews of your movies or your books, Jerry is taking heat all over the place. You know, what's funny is when you see there's two types of posts about Jerry Seinfeld. There's the people that loved what they saw, and then there's people going, see, this proves this. This proves that Israel is, you know, engineering a genocide of the Philistines, or whatever they're called there. So there's this. There's this clean, comic Italian guy similar to Jerry. Doesn't really, you know, work blue. His name is Nate Bargazi. Okay. [00:54:52] Speaker C: Oh, hilarious. [00:54:53] Speaker A: Yeah, different, you know, different generation. I think he's like a Gen X millennial guy. So he was recently at the UFC fight at the White House, and he's getting heat. He's getting heat for posing with pictures. He's getting heat for just being there. So this is where we're at. I mean, where the hell was he supposed to be? Was he supposed to be in New York City singing with Bette Midler? Right? On stage with, you know, Peter Fonda's dopey sister? [00:55:20] Speaker E: Who. [00:55:21] Speaker A: Where. I mean, really? That's where he's supposed to be with. With Dairo. So he goes to this thing because he's a fan. He's a fan, and he's getting. He's getting about it. It's like, I have seen you four times and now I will never see you again. You want to see some of these stupid posts from these, you know. You know, snowflakes? I mean, it just goes on and on. I got a whole list of them here, you know. Oh, another One Bites the Dust by Nate. Now, I'm gonna be honest with you. Nate's funny. I've never clicked on his stuff. I'm gonna go click on it now. You know, I. Because I'm, you know, I'm a curse word guy, right? I'm from Philly. I'm a curse word guy. So, you know Shane Gillis and all. You know, I, you know, Ricky Gervais. They're my guys. You know, Norm was my guy. May he rest in. In heaven. We know Norm's in heaven. We know he's up there talking, you know, talking to OJ as we speak. [00:56:13] Speaker C: The joint with Norm McDonald guy. Hilarious. In a conversation. Hilarious. Yeah, not everybody. The conversation. He was amazing. [00:56:24] Speaker A: So something else. Something else happened at this UFC event. Chris, get this ready now, look, the Thing about dangerous laughter is that there's really no rules. There isn't, because the second. The second Caesar comes after you. The second. And President United States comes after you. The second. The king of France or Elizabeth. The first comes after you like she. She did to Ben Johnson to playwright. The second. That happens, you know, that's when dangerous laughter is. Is peak. So we had a situation where one of the fighters, after he won, and I love the look on Joe Rogan's face here, decided to send a message. And I'm gonna play this message, send a message to America about the former first lady Michelle Obama. [00:57:14] Speaker E: Let's hit It's a man. Am I right, America? Ladies and gentlemen, Josh Hokut Rogan. [00:57:29] Speaker A: Rogan's wearing that little short tie. Looks like a little clip on tie. I mean, look, we have. We have told our fair share of, you know, meaty back. You know, Michael Obama jokes here on the program. I. I think it's funny. I think it's fair game. I think the patron, the. The queen of dangerous laughter, may she rest in Jewish heaven. If they're. I don't know if Jews believe in heaven, but. But I'm joking. Joan Rivers. Joan Rivers warned us all. [00:58:02] Speaker C: Yep. [00:58:02] Speaker A: John warned us all years ago that Michelle Obama. Yeah. Might not be a female, although I think she probably is. Please subscribe. [00:58:14] Speaker C: Yep. And everybody knows it. [00:58:16] Speaker A: No one knows. No one knows. You know. You know, in the old days, she could go on Howard, when Howard still had some brain cells left before all the jabs, and Howard would have done a physical honor, and it would all be, you know, sort of center in the bathroom with Robin. They would have checked, and this would all be over. All the jokes would be over. But, I mean, what do you think about that? That was the. That's peak dangerous laughter right there at the UFC fight. [00:58:45] Speaker C: It's like he trained his whole life to win a UFC fight at the White House for that, for that. [00:58:51] Speaker A: Just so we can say that I'm gonna go beat this guy's ass and win. So when I do, I can yell. Yeah, I can yell this on the air. I mean, look, you got to give it to him. I mean, he got it out on the air. It is now everywhere. And obviously, the same people who tell America that the bearded lady who's behind me here, which is my book, that my. My third book, which comes out this summer, the Curse of the Bearded lady, the same people that told us that the bearded lady should be treated like any other person, told the bearded lady to get in the Pool with Riley Gaines, that there's, you know, Democrats lift up their skirt. There's 72 genders under there. That same people are somehow outraged that someone called Michelle Obama the bearded lady. I mean, what do you think of the hypocrisy here? How about the hypocrisy here? [00:59:55] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:59:55] Speaker C: Why is that an insult? Exactly. According to their standards. Why is that an insult? [00:59:59] Speaker A: That's right. That's right. They should embrace it. They should embrace it. I mean, this is their thing, right? And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why this show is unfit for polite company. Sal, though. Sal's a gentleman. Sal, look, you've got a movie that everyone needs to go see. [01:00:17] Speaker C: Guns and Moses. [01:00:18] Speaker A: Guns and Moses. You've got an all star cast. Go to Amazon and get it. You get. While you're there, you can get. Let my people laugh. I mean, this book is amazing. You don't have to look. This is not one of these things. You have to read cover to cover. You can jump around. I mean, and he even sort of, Sal sort of outlines that in the introduction. You know, if you have to give a toast, if you have to, you know, if you've got it, if you're at a wedding, you got to give a toast, you got, you gotta go to a fundraiser, you go to a golf course. [01:00:49] Speaker C: And look, may, you need a joke. I got the list. [01:00:52] Speaker A: You need a joke, it's here. But it's goy friendly. It's goy friendly. And as a super goy, as a super gentile ninja here, you can absolutely steal these jokes. As a gentile, you can do it, right? It's like what Woody Allen used to say, if you're gonna steal, steal from the best. Right? That's what, that's, that's what you can do here. [01:01:14] Speaker C: Mark Twain said, amateurs borrow jokes, professionals steal. [01:01:20] Speaker A: Exactly, exactly. And I'll leave it, I'll leave it at that. Sal, look, brother, you know, we've, you know, full disclosure, we work with Sal. We love them. We, we help promote some of these things. But this has been a great conversation. This has been pure dangerous laughter today. Sal, I just want to thank you for coming on. God bless you. Buy the book. Go buy and rent the movie. Right, Sal, any. And let's. And give out your website for the Talmudist. [01:01:46] Speaker C: Accidental talmudist.org or accidental Talmudis on Facebook or Instagram. We'd love to see you there. And AJ, thanks for having me. This show's hilarious. I think it's going to be the biggest podcast in America and it should happen as soon as possible because the audience needs you. You are needed in America right now. [01:02:03] Speaker A: Well, I appreciate that, brother. I appreciate. I knew there was a reason you and I got along, you know? I mean, look, always remember, there's no substitute for perfectly timed derision. And look, you can. You can. You can dunk on people without being totally mean. Sal's not mean. I'm mean because I'm an Eagles fan. Look. Ladies and gentlemen, Sal Litvak. Look him up, find him on social media. Guns and Moses, not Guns and Roses. I am AJ Rice. We will catch you on the flip side, [01:02:39] Speaker C: Sam.