Luck is a religion for Bert Kreischer. Try sitting with him for more than a few minutes without it coming up in conversation — especially as it relates to comedy. Walking through the halls of his Sherman Oaks compound that houses Berty Boy Productions, he rattles off moments of good fortune in the careers of the world’s biggest comics like a sports stat guru who knows the game better than anyone else. Because, honestly, he does. And it’s not because he thinks he’s the funniest man to ever hold a microphone, though his shirtless razzle-dazzle and talent for hilarious, heartfelt storytelling has obviously created an empire. It’s because he is in a constant state of identifying the luck in his life, which he says is half the battle when it comes to success. No surprise then that “Lucky” is the name of his latest special premiering Tuesday on Netflix.
Recently The Times spoke with Kreischer about the value of luck over hard work, the smartest thing he did to retain audiences who stream his comedy and his desire to return to the fun and creativity he had in comedy before his career blew up.
In your special you once again come out onstage in all your shirtless glory — congrats on looking much more svelte these days.
Sadly I’m still morbidly to the obese. That’s the craziest thing about the body, the BMI scale. Have you ever looked at yourself will be on my scale? My first time I ever did it was a long time ago, on a podcast with Tom [Segura] and I were fat-shaming each other, and we were so morbidly obese. And even at my skinniest, I am still morbidly obese.
What is the key thing to help you stay motivated with physical fitness and staying healthy on tour or preparing for a special?
It’s gonna sound so stupid — but it’s partying. I only work out so I can party. I look at guys who party and don’t work out and that kind of bums me out, and I go, “Hey, man, not allowed to do that. That’s not the way it works.” Every dad I ever knew growing up, if they had beers, they were very active. Maybe they have drinks on a night and out, but in the morning they wake you up and go play basketball, or go fishing in the morning. My dad ran marathons. So I just, it got ingrained in me, if you’re gonna go out and have fun and party, then you’ve got to pay the tax in the morning. I’m still fat, and I work out really freaking hard — I just benched 325 pounds. But I’m still just doing it so I feel better about myself when I wake up in the morning and I’m like, “last night was a long night, but I’m gonna go work out.”
How has it been allowing those elements of your life to co-exist between partying, working hard with comedy, having a family, etc?
I got a canary in the mine, and that’s my wife [LeeAnn]. There’s been times where she’s been like, “a;l right, let’s pull it back.” Two years ago in July, she was like, “I think we’re gonna pump the brakes on this one.” And then I didn’t drink for like, three months, and I lost 55 pounds. But my wife’s the same person who, if I’m not drinking, and we’re in Italy, she’ll be like “Have a glass of wine. Don’t be a fool. We’re only in Venice once. It’s snowing, let’s have a drink. Have some champagne.” My wife won’t let me be a teetotaler and won’t let me be an alcoholic.
You’ve got a lot of jokes about LeeAnn in this new special. When you write jokes about your wife, do you have to run them by her before you hit the stage?
No, I just write them. Because you gotta remember, I still just do stand-up the way I did it when I was a kid, where you just write the stuff and say it, and if it didn’t work with the audience, then you stop doing it. But if it works for the audience, then you’d figure out the tax on your family, and you’ll be like, are you guys cool with this? But you got to find out if it works first. So I just tried them all, and then she came and saw it a few times.
And there was a little bit of a process in this one, because I wrote the material on the road, and I told it so much, I was on such an aggressive tour, that I kind of lost the smile in it. And so that material specifically, if you can’t tell that I am joking, if you think that I’m mean, or if I lose the little, in her words, “the rascal” in it, then all of a sudden it’s mean jokes about women. But if you know that I’m a loving husband who adores his wife, then it’s OK. And [my wife], my producer, and my director were all like, “we just want to make sure we see the smile in it.” And so I think we, I know we achieved that in the special. My wife edited it, she edits all my specials top to bottom. I gotta be honest with you, I look at like the first five minutes, and then if I like the first five minutes, I watch the whole special. But the first five minutes is what I’m really specific about. Streaming is like grabbing their attention right away and saying “Don’t leave, don’t go anywhere. I know you have a million options. Don’t leave, don’t go anywhere.”
When it comes to retaining an audience, whether you’re touring or doing specials, has that changed a lot since you started comedy?
Oh, f— yes, you have no idea. There used to be a thing called a closer. A closer would be something you’d put at the end of your act because you were done, and then Netflix showed up. And now audiences decide your closer for you. If they were bored, they were done. And it turned out that the majority of specials only got about 30 minutes of viewing. One comic said to me, he goes, I actually can still tell my closer because no one watched the whole special, so I’m still using my closer on the road. And I had this great closer about zip lining with my wife, it was in [my special 2018 special] “Secret Time.” That’s like my favorite joke of my whole set. Why would I put it at 48 minutes and have it close out my special? Why wouldn’t I put it at 22 minutes, so that, if you’re telling me they’re only gonna watch 30 minutes, then I put it at 22 minutes and you just watch my closer. If you’ve just watched my closer, then you’re gonna watch the rest of the special.
We got the notes back from [my 2018 special] “Secret Time,” and Netflix was like “your rate of retention was through the roof! People that started your special, 95% of them watched the entire thing, and that had not never happened.” And literally, they brought us in for a meeting, and they’re like, “what did you do?” And I said, I talked to some comics who did specials here and no one watches their whole special. So I just put my closer at 22 minutes. Literally, Netflix said to me, “is it cool if we give your special to other comics?” And I was like, “yeah, tell them what I did.”
And so for this one, I had a really great joke that was like that. I think it’s the phone sex joke. That little chunk was really great. And it’s at four minutes and 20 seconds. And I’m like, nice, and I knew I had a closer that could go nowhere else but the end, a story about my dog that passed away. So I was like, “dude, that belongs at the end.”
That part was so emotional. Anyone who has ever had a pet can relate to that bit.
For that bit I think I was in Utah, I was in a place where men are men — it’s not like, not like L.A. or New York — they’re “men,” the country. They’re men who lift things, but don’t lift weights, like, just strong dudes. And I told the story about my dog and I saw dudes crying in the audience, and I was like, “well, that’s weird.” And then I got so much feedback [on social media]. They’re like, “Bert’s show is amazing. But that dog story, man that killed me, man it was hilarious, and we just put our dog down.” I just, that kind of stuff and stand-up, you know, some comics look for the edgiest stuff, or the stuff that like is gonna be clickbait. For me, I look for the stuff that kind of brings us together and makes us all feel the same or equally as good about our broken parts. And I just thought that was a good bit to include in the special.
When you laugh at your own jokes it almost sounds like you’re crying — it’s like a specific type of laughter that makes every joke seem to hit harder.
What’s so funny is a long time ago at a meeting with William Shatner, he said to me, sitting on my couch like this, he goes, “Can you cry?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Can I see it?” I said, “Yeah.” So I started crying. And then I started giggling, because I was like, “I’m crying in front of William Shatner.” He’s like, “I love it. I love it.” If you ever cry, as a man, you go into the bathroom. because you don’t want anyone to see you. If you ever catch a reflection of you crying, you turn into your high school buddies real quick. You’re like, “what are you, a p—!” and when I cry, I giggle sometimes.
I’ve never met your daughters, but I feel like I have after watching this special — they sound hilarious in all of your stories about them. Do you see the comedian gene in them? Would you ever want them to move into the family business?
I don’t, because they’ve seen how the sausage is made. I mean, you gotta remember, everyone you see trending on Netflix, they call uncle — it’s different. But they also see how tough comedy can be on a person and as an occupation. So I don’t think they’d ever get into comedy. I wouldn’t even want it for them. My daughter’s best friend, Daisy, that’s who I want to make a comedian. She’s funny as s—, and she doesn’t know she’s funny. Me and Whitney [Cummings] wrote an act for Daisy on the road. I’m like, “Daisy, just try stand-up.” She goes, “it’s 20,000 people. People don’t do stand-up for the first time in front of 20,000 people!”
The title of the special “Lucky” feels self-explanatory given the life that you lead, at least the life people see. But what made you want to make that the name of your special?
I believe in luck more than I do hard work. I really sincerely do. I had a moment in my career where I had to be resigned to the fact that I may just be a journeyman comic, that I may just be a guy who always does shows at Funny Bones and Improvs. And I was cool with that. I was very cool with that. I may never make more than, you know, $5,000 on a weekend. … So I was resigned to the fact that I may never be the person everyone runs into the room to go watch do stand-up, I may not be the guy that gets specials. I may have to do a workaround. I may have to work a little different to get the fans that I need to make the living and to keep my family above board.
And then my Machine story went viral, and one of my best friends [Joe Rogan] happened to become the biggest media personality in the world, and my other best friend [Segura] decided we should start a podcast. Now, all of a sudden, my podcast is blowing up. That’s luck, man. Everyone works hard. But sometimes you get lucky. If you look at my life, I’m the luckiest motherf— you’ll ever meet. I also believe that if you identify the luck in your life, you just start feeling lucky. Those dudes who are like, “man, I can’t catch a break,” it’s just like, stop. Start thinking of all this is luck.
For you it seems the next step has been keeping all your success going. Obviously you have your wife’s help with all that. But do you think about how to carry that into the future and how you want to continue to grow your empire?
You know what’s so funny — no. I’m actually trying to think how to go backwards a little bit into more fun creative play. I got so overwhelmed in the media company landscape of brand deals and producing other people’s specials and producing other podcasts and building and trying to keep all the plates spinning, that part of me was missing. LeeAnn said this to me: “I miss the days when you would come up with a promo idea and we would shoot it as a family, and it was so fun.” And that is what I’m trying to get back to — that fun. The fun in the early part of comedy, the fun in creating stuff, the fun in making stuff. What’s the point of a media company if it’s not fun?
By the end of the special, we’ve taken so many trips with you through your stories and your ups and downs. There’s an emotional core to this special that I don’t think I’ve seen in some of your previous work. What’s one thing you would want people to take away from this after watching it?
My one takeaway is sometimes with having a family, you’re so in the weeds of time that you can’t really enjoy the little stuff that one day you’ll laugh about. And I think that’s what my special is. It’s those things drive you nuts in the moment, those things where you act like an idiot in the moment with your family, and your wife’s pissed that you ordered 64 traffic cones, and she’s really upset because now she knows she has to return them. Try to enjoy those chaotic, hectic moments as a family, because you will be sharing them 20 years from now.
