#1129 - Tom Papa

Joe Rogan (0:00)

Young James, ready to launch. Five, four, three, two, one.

Tom Papa (0:06)

We can do it.

Joe Rogan (0:07)

Tom Papa is a motherfucking author.

Tom Papa (0:11)

I'm a man of letters now.

Joe Rogan (0:13)

You're an author.

Tom Papa (0:14)

I'm an author.

Joe Rogan (0:14)

I've always admired that, and secretly wished that I had, not even so secretly wished that I had the discipline to write a book.

Tom Papa (0:24)

You do have the discipline, you just have to focus it on that. You can do it.

Joe Rogan (0:28)

How long did it take you to write this?

Tom Papa (0:29)

About two years.

Joe Rogan (0:31)

That's too long. I don't got that kind of time.

Tom Papa (0:37)

You can do it shorter.

Joe Rogan (0:39)

Like a little pamphlet.

Tom Papa (0:41)

Yeah, just a little flyer.

Just make a short. This is all I can do.

Joe Rogan (0:47)

How long before you started writing the book did you think about writing the book?

Tom Papa (0:52)

I've always kind of wanted to write a book. Did you have a book deal?

No, well, yeah, on this one. I had pitched doing a book, I don't know, like six years ago. Pretty much the same concept and no one was into it. And then a couple of years ago, two, three years ago, a publisher contacted my agent or whatever and they had interest. So we made a book deal. And that changes everything because now someone's waiting for you. You know, you've got to turn stuff in and they make books and they're probably smart.

And you don't want to seem like an idiot.

Joe Rogan (1:28)

Did you have an editor that like went over your stuff and said, this is too long, this is too short?

Tom Papa (1:33)

Yeah, they were pretty great. They were pretty, they just left the material alone.

There was a couple little things where they're like, you know, you're repeating something or that, but mostly it was grammar kind of things. Do you want to say it like this?

Joe Rogan (1:49)

Right.

Tom Papa (1:49)

This isn't technically, grammatically correct, but would you, you know, typos.

That kind of stuff. They were pretty hands off about the actual material.

Joe Rogan (1:59)

And is it a book of essays? Is it your life story? What is it?

Tom Papa (2:03)

It's all on family. It's called Your Dad Stole My Rake and Other Family Dilemmas.

And it's broken down by everyone in your family. Like the basic thing is as a comedian, I've been writing about family and looking at all everyone's families for so long. So I'm going to write about all of them. So it's moms, dads, cousins, aunts, uncles, all broken down chapters like that.

And so I talk a little bit about my family. And then I just talk about funny essays about just life in general, like going on family vacations or...

Joe Rogan (2:34)

Why are you eating your shirt?

Tom Papa (2:38)

I don't know exactly. There's a really cool photographer, Sam Jones, who's...

Joe Rogan (2:42)

And you just decided to get wacky?

Tom Papa (2:43)

He just, this guy is like this amazing photographer who's just done like Clooney and Damon and all these people. And I asked him if he would help him when I showed up. We're just taking some regular shots. And he's like, I have this idea. And he just brought out this giant shirt and put a tie on it and just shot it. It came out pretty funny. I look like Dilbert.

Joe Rogan (3:06)

Yeah.

Tom Papa (3:07)

Or Beaker.

Joe Rogan (3:07)

I was just trying to figure out what you're doing there. I guess what you're doing there is get people to try to figure out what you're doing there.

Tom Papa (3:13)

Yeah, they stare at it and they're like, maybe if I buy the book, I'll figure it out.

Joe Rogan (3:16)

I'll understand. The puzzle is deep inside.

SPEAKER_3 (3:19)

Ooh.

Tom Papa (3:21)

It's just being goofy.

Joe Rogan (3:24)

Yeah, when you write a book, you have to think, man, someone could be reading this 30 years from now, 50 years from now.

Tom Papa (3:30)

That is, as comedians, you write something in the morning, you bring it on stage, they tell you if it's funny or not, you know what you're working with, you go back and forth. This is like, it's permanent and no one gets to review it until it's done.

So the nerve wracking part of it was like, okay, it's done. I'm pretty proud of it. I've like edited it like crazy. I've worked on it for a long time.