A Q&A with comedian Bill Burr

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Stand-up comedian Bill Burr is back on the road after another successful year of fed-up wise guy ruminations. The Boston-born Los Angeles transplant has built his audience through recurring appearances on "Chappelle's Show" and as Saul Goodman's go-to guy Kuby on AMC's "Breaking Bad." Since 2007, he has hosted his on-the-fly "Monday Morning Podcast," talking about whatever is on his mind while offering his listeners advice on everything from relationships to fitness routines. More recently, Burr has garnered attention for his role as a co-creator, producer, writer, and voice actor for the Netflix animated series, "F is for Family," now entering its second season. While making his way across the country en route to Nashville where he’s recording his next stand-up special, Burr checked in to talk about everything from his prolific cursing to how he handles American politics.

You co-created the animated series "F is For Family." Do you prefer writing for television to stand-up?

Nothing’s better than performing live. I’ve never done a play, but I know damn well that doing a play is more exciting and more fun than doing a movie. With a movie, it’s like everybody has to be quiet while you shoot and everybody’s holding back the laughs or the emotions and all that because they don’t want to ruin the take. Performing live is just the best — when it’s going well — because you’re feeding off the crowd. There’s a crazy energy going on, and there’s nothing like it. But I do enjoy the collaborative thing of doing a show, as tedious as it can be when you start working out snags in the storyline. I already had respect for writers, but nobody who performs works as hard as the writer who wrote what they’re performing.
You also recently finished a European tour. Do you change your act for international audiences?

Not really. When I started thinking like that, “Are they not gonna get this?” I’d be on my heels and it would go off the rails. But if I tell a joke that bombs in another country I can always say, “I guess you don’t have that here!” People always laugh. Obviously, if you do that every other joke they’re gonna think, “This guy’s a moron!” But everybody kind of knows about everybody else now. People at least pay attention to American politics.
Right, but you steer clear of politics.

I’ve got my Hillary and Trump jokes, but I’m not well-read on politics. I’m more into the conspiracy theory aspect of it. When you talk to people about politics, they have 9,000 different opinions. Right now, there are so many people asking, “How can you vote for Hillary?” And there’s so many people asking, “How can you vote for Trump?” It’s a waste of time that becomes this screaming match. That’s where my conspiracy theory comes in: “That’s what they want, man! They don’t want us talking to each other.” Then I put on a football game and silently hope that it all doesn’t collapse in my lifetime.
How do most of your fans know you? Is it through your live act, TV, Netflix specials, your podcast?

TV is a distant third. I would say it’s mostly through stand-up and podcast. Nowadays there’s so much content out there, in order to get on people’s radar you need a two or three-pronged attack. Unless you’re lucky enough to get on a hit show, whatever that is now. The number for a hit show now is the number that used to get you cancelled. I put out a half-hour special with Comedy Central, in maybe 2002, and, my numbers might be off here, but if it was like 600,000 or below they’d throw it into their pile of a zillion specials they had. But if you got up to, I forget, maybe a million, they’d considered it a hit. I never hit that number, and I don’t know that they showed my special again. Netflix is great for me because I curse so much. When I cursed on Comedy Central it sounded like Morse code. I think they were trying to cut costs so they used that beep from the 1950s. It was a horrible experience, for me, to watch one of my shows. Thankfully, Netflix just showed it the way I did it.
You’ve been doing podcasts in a stream of consciousness-style since 2007. How do you keep it going?

That’s the only way to do it, if you ask me. I’ll just sit down and wing something for a half-hour and that’ll be it. My life is just fun. I guess some of the writing on “F is for Family” gets tedious, I’m not gonna lie. Eight to 10 hours a day for like three months straight. But once that’s done it eases up. Then there’s the period of “Why isn’t something working? Is it us? Is it the way they drew it?” You get into the minutia and that’s where — with my ADD and all my zillion hobbies — I start thinking, “I could be playing drums right now. Why am I doing this?” I’m a spoiled brat because my life is so much fun that whenever there isn’t fun I immediately start thinking, “Why am I here?” But then I remember, “Hey stupid, you’re getting paid to do this. There’s somebody out there paving a road right now, you can’t edit a cartoon?” Then I laugh at myself and plow forward for another three minutes before I have another hissy fit.
Bill Burr. $52.70. 8 p.m. Thurs., Oct. 6. Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St. N.E. 404-881-2100. www.foxtheatre.org.