0:01
Oh, there they are.
Search this video
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They're cute, too, right?
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And they have like a cute sound. Oh, boy.
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Hey, what's going on, everybody?
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For First We Feast, I'm Sean Evans, and you're watching Hot Ones.
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It's the show with hot questions and even hotter wings.
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And today, we open up season 16 with Jimmy Kimmel.
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He's the Emmy Award-winning elder statesman of late night.
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Catch Jimmy Kimmel Live weeknights 11:35 10:35 Central on ABC.
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He also executive produced Once Upon a Time in Queens, a four-part documentary on the '86 Mets, available now on ESPN Plus.
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Jimmy Kimmel, welcome to the show. Thank you, Sean. It's great to be here.
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I brought you a gift because I know what you need is more hot sauce, but this is my favorite hot sauce, Cutino. So, that's for you.
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Not that you need more hot sauce, but it's a tasty It's not really a hot hot sauce.
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And let me tell you something about this.
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Maybe you don't know this, but Jacob Cutino, a mutual friend of ours in the hot sauce world, he actually made our first ever Hot Ones sauce. He told me that.
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Generally speaking, how are you around the spicy stuff? I'm pretty good with it. I like spicy stuff.
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I was um You know, when I was in high school, I I wasn't quite that adventurous.
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So, we'd go to this place called Billy's West in Las Vegas. I grew up in Vegas.
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Me and my friend Tommy, we'd get a 50 wings apiece, and he'd get them extra hot. I'd get my medium.
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And one night, we got both of them, we went home, we're eating them, we're drunk, of course.
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And I'm going, "Gosh, mine are really really hotter than usual."
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And he's like, "Yeah, mine don't even feel hot at all."
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And I think we got through like half of the bucket each before we realized we had each other's buckets.
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Well, you ready to relive that trauma today? I'm ready. I think I'm ready. I don't know.
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I'd rather drink this whole bottle of hot sauce than drink milk. It's disgusting to me.
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I'm also going to try to do it without the water. Okay.
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Cuz I know Matt Damon drank a lot of water and I just I'm part of why I'm here is to teach him a lesson. There we go. There we go. Okay. Tasty. Mhm. It's a nice start.
2:30
So, I want to start with your latest project Once Upon a Time in Queens, which you describe as a must-see story of a team in a time whose antics and even existence now seem unimaginable.
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Beyond being a Mets fan and the team winning a World Series, what is it that you find most compelling or everlasting about that particular clubhouse?
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This was a group of crazy people.
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This was a group of I mean, the guys who got in four fight they this team got in four on-field fights in one season, which is unusual.
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This is a team that was popping pills and doing all sorts of drugs.
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And even more so, it's like New York in the mid-80s and what that was like.
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And it seemed like people were having a lot of fun.
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And then, do you have an all-time favorite Jimmy Kimmel fantasy baseball moment?
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Because between having Vin Scully announce one of your celebrity softball game homers and facing Mets pitcher Pedro Astacio for Man Show Bit Oh, that's right.
3:25
Yeah, you have some big-ticket items in the bucket list.
3:27
Well, oh boy, yeah, I've had a lot of I have to say hitting that home run on ESPN in that softball game was top five greatest things ever to happen to me.
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And I've showed that clip and I would love it if you showed that clip right now.
3:40
I've showed that clip no less than 150 times on my show.
3:46
Well, you know, maybe you can use your clout in the Disney family here to help us license the clip.
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Yeah, that clip will be granted free.
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Not just to you, but anyone who wants to use it.
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Against one of the great softball pitchers in the game.
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As usual, he was always guilty of talking too much before he actually had an at bat, but he's a little nervous considering this.
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Here's a long fly ball to deep right center. He's back, IT'S GONE!
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OH, I HAVE THIS SAUCE AT MY HOUSE AND IT'S GOOD.
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SO, I'm really drawn to your small market radio war stories, which to me are like the true broadcaster's corollary to like the comedian's comedy circuit. Mhm.
4:33
Early in your career, can you give me one firing from a radio station that you look back on and agree was totally justified?
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And then another one that you would say that you would regard as BS even to this day.
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None of them were totally justified.
4:45
Um all of them were somewhat justified, but still I can't believe and this is the sort of thing that keeps me up at night.
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I I think about how hard I was working and like what I was doing, which was not particularly polished, but pretty good and the fact that I kept getting fired over and over again and I can only come to one conclusion.
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It's that I did not have any common sense when it came to how to get along with your boss, with your superior.
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One time, I had this boss named Mark Todd at KRQ in Tucson, Arizona and there was a hot dog sitting out somewhere.
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So, we took it and we shoved it in his desk and we closed the drawer of the desk.
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The next day, um we're in his office and we see the hot dog in the garbage and we wait till he goes out and we take the hot dog and we put it in like a another drawer in it.
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And we this kept going on and on for like 11 days.
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At night, we actually pushed up the ceiling tiles and climbed over the wall into his office which was locked.
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I got on his desk and the desk collapsed under my weight.
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The whole bookshelf came down.
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The office was absolutely destroyed.
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This is our boss completely destroyed.
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And we're like, "Oh shit."
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So we just kind of walked out the door and left and left it like that.
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He came in to work he's like, "What was there breaking my room?"
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Still doesn't He probably to this day doesn't know what happened but now he does. Hops.
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This is no relation to No, not D. Hop. Okay.
6:23
It's getting a little harder. Mhm. Mhm.
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Yeah, it's good too though. Tastes good.
6:29
So from building out a custom pizza oven to an immersion circulator for sous vide cooking, it's clear that you have an obvious affinity for food.
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What's the best home cooking lesson that you've ever learned about making pizza at home from Chris Bianco?
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And do you likewise have something that you've picked up on the art of grilling from Adam Perry Lang?
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As Chris Bianco goes and as far as making pizza goes, it's almost impossible What Chris does is magical.
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It's like, you know, you could he could train you for a month and you still won't be able to do it, you know?
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But from him I learned that it's better to be sparing with ingredients.
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Like, you know, I remember as a kid like ordering extra cheese on the pizza and of course yeah, of course I want the extra cheese.
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But the truth of the matter is the best pizza has just the right amount of sauce and just the right amount of cheese on it.
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If you put too much, the dough doesn't get cooked properly.
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So you need to have the real estate needs to be arranged in a nice way.
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And from Adam, I've learned a lot of different things about meat.
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One of them is that you can take a baseball bat and you can pound a steak mercilessly and then throw it on the grill and it's going to probably taste better.
7:41
Oh, and a little cathartic as well. Yeah, for sure.
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I make a nice chicken wing myself.
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Mhm, yeah, talk me through it. Mhm.
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What I do is I make a combination of hot sauce barbecue sauce, uh blue cheese dressing.
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I'll smoke the wings in my smoker and then I finish them on the grill to crisp them up.
8:06
That sounds on Super Bowl Sunday.
8:09
Do you remember at what point you fell in love with the prank call?
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Like how far back does it go and do you have any memory of your first successful one?
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Yeah, uh in fact, I have tapes of uh being like 10 years old and making prank calls with my best friend Cleto who's now my band leader on my show.
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Cleto carried on a full sexual relationship with an adult British man pretending to be a woman for like a month's time.
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He'd say, "Oh, meet me at uh the Flamingo.
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I'm going to be at the barn."
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Then this poor guy would go to show up at thing and it worked well for us.
8:42
And then what was it like to fly out to Detroit for a weekend and shoot Crank Yankers with Eminem?
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I read that he he reached out cuz he had to be on the show because he loved it.
8:50
He did, yeah, he loved the show and um we went and recorded at his studio with him which was a lot of fun and this is like uh gosh, I don't know what year.
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I think it was like maybe like 2001 or something.
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And um you know, at the time we thought maybe he was a scary character, but he was very nice and really into it.
9:07
He loved the show and then in fact he he used our Crank Yankers puppets in a music video that he did. Right.
9:13
Yeah, that was pretty great.
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Oh, Richard Pryor was a fan of Crank Yankers. Woah.
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When he was toward the end of his life and he was very ill and his wife called us and said Richard is a big fan of the show and he wants um to know if you have any more episodes that he can watch and we've been working on the next season and so we sent him all the rough cuts of our our crank calls which he watched and apparently enjoyed.
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And that for me was I mean that's awesome.
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That's about as good as it gets. Okay. All right.
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Yeah, that's a little step up. Mhm. Good though.
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Are you guys taking it easy on me or is Matt Damon just as big a wuss as Oh. I thought he was? Dropping it. All right, Jimmy.
10:09
We have a crane segment on our show called Explain That Gram, where we do a deep dive on our guest's Instagram, pull interesting pictures that need more context. Okay.
10:15
So, we'll pull up the picture on the monitor.
10:16
You just tell us the bigger story. Oh. The Don, Tommy Lasorda. Oh, man.
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I've had so many funny experiences with Tommy Lasorda.
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One time I was at a spring training game.
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Tommy was coaching, but Tommy was sound asleep in a folding chair on on the field. And he's like this. He's snoring.
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And anytime something would happen, the the third base coach, Joey Amalfitano, would give him an elbow.
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And Tommy, when he woke up, he was already cursing. He go like this.
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LIKE GOD DAMN IT, you YOU.
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And then he dozes back on THE SEAT. YOU SON OF A YOU. IT WAS UNBELIEVABLE.
10:56
AND then there was that time that you actually tried out for the Dodgers.
11:00
We tried out for the Dodgers, Adam Carolla and I.
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And we didn't make the team.
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You'll be shocked to learn, but we had a great day, and I kept I think we kept saying to Tommy like we're going to go out there and give 110%. That drove him insane.
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He's like, yeah, there's no such thing as 110. Just 100%.
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Like, we like to crank it up to 110.
11:21
And then what is the key to making the perfect simple weeknight marinara?
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I don't know why I didn't realize this sooner, but it's to have great tomatoes.
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And the best tomatoes are Bianco Di Napoli canned tomatoes.
11:31
They are the best tomatoes and um Chris Bianco grows them California. New York Times agreed.
11:38
They did a They rated all the tomatoes and they said they're the best.
11:41
But we want to do it's pretty simple.
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You get a little bit of olive oil, you crush some garlic cloves, you get them till they're just golden, you remove them from the olive oil, you throw the tomatoes in, you bring it to a boil, you put a little bit of salt in, set it to simmer, you throw some basil in, wait a half hour, you got a great meal. All right, pretty good. Nice work, Honduras.
12:10
So, I know that you've long dreamed of having a late-night show and I was tickled to read that your first ever car, an Isuzu I-Mark, actually had the vanity plates late night. Yeah.
12:18
And I think that late-night show hosts, they have such a unique vantage point into the changing face of celebrity culture.
12:24
In what ways has the nature of famous people coming in to do press?
12:26
In what ways do you think it's changed the most from when you started to now? Huh, interesting.
12:31
Well, for me, I know a lot of things have changed like you know, I used to have terrible guests.
12:39
For the most part, I mean, I get like I wouldn't even get Joe Millionaire, I'd get like the third the girl he rejected fourth on the show, you know?
12:46
So, um but it's a little bit competitive with the other shows because you want to get these guests first, but we've worked out such an arrangement now that it's like, all right, you get Jennifer Aniston first this time, next time we'll swap you know, or whoever it is and um I think it's a friendlier environment than maybe it used to be.
13:07
And I think part of that is probably because most people don't watch our shows at 11:35.
13:14
They watch them online whenever they feel like it, so you don't have to really choose between shows.
13:18
You can watch all of them.
13:21
Yeah, I've heard you say something kind of interesting about how like when the idea of that competition gets brought up, how you think about when you were working at radio and like these smaller markets, how that was much more competitive than what you'd think of in like the late night wars of yesterday.
13:34
to kill those guys at the Yeah.
13:34
Because you can only listen to one radio show driving to work every day at a time. You can't listen to two.
13:40
But now you can, you know.
13:44
And then you were on to YouTube really early, like way before any other of these late night show hosts. Yeah.
13:49
After we made this video, I'm Matt Damon, Right.
13:55
people started posting it on their YouTube channels and it was getting millions, many, like tens, a hundred million views, something like that.
14:03
Some people would like add stuff to it or they didn't have and I didn't like the way they were presenting it and so I said, "You know what?
14:10
I didn't think there would ever be any like revenue associated with it, but I said let's have our own YouTube channel so that we can make sure we have like a good quality copy of the video."
14:19
And that just kind of became what it was and then, you know, now everybody has one. No problem. I'll even eat the bone. Yeah, no. Pretty good.
14:40
Oh, now it's making Yeah, now it's Yeah, now it's coming through. Okay, yeah.
14:46
Yeah, it's like a little delayed. Yeah, delayed reaction.
14:48
It's like getting kicked in the nuts.
14:49
You know, it doesn't hurt right that second.
14:53
But the lingering effect.
14:54
about 11 seconds and you're going to be on the ground. Blooms a bit. It blooms.
14:58
So I'm thinking it's safe to say that you wouldn't be doing what you're doing now if not for the inspiration of of living legends like Howard Stern and David Letterman.
15:05
And I think if you were to ask Letterman fans what it is about him that makes him great, you'd get a different response from everyone that you ask.
15:12
But I'm curious from your unique perspective, what do you think was his strongest trait as a talk show host? Oh.
15:18
Well, I think that they seem to be doing the show without any regard for the audience and it seemed to be like nobody's watching, which was not true.
15:30
Let's do what we think is funny.
15:30
And I think that's the first time I saw that on network television, you know, and they just do these long, weird bits that could only exist in the middle of the night.
15:43
And I just remember falling in love with the show and not mentioning it to anybody.
15:49
I'm starting now right now. too.
15:51
And and the first person I mentioned the show to was my grandfather who was like 80-something at the time.
15:57
I said, he said to me actually, "You ever see this guy Letterman?"
16:00
I was like, "Yes, I love that guy."
16:02
And that's when I realized that I love that guy.
16:07
And then I think one thing that you and Howard Stern have in common is a fascination and sort of a soft place in your heart for individuals with very odd personalities. Yeah, yeah. We're weirdo magnets. Yeah, yeah.
16:20
In what ways do you think he's influenced you most as a broadcaster? Oh, in huge ways.
16:25
Um I will say the one distinction is Howard has an affinity for those people on the air.
16:31
I welcome them into my home.
16:34
He really taught me without expressly teaching me that the show is what's most important.
16:40
And I just remember hearing him one day going on and on about his brother and one of his in-laws visiting and he was brutal describing it.
16:46
And I was just thinking like, "Oh, this guy has to go home." This guy has to go home.
16:51
His wife's going to be like, "That's my brother, you asshole." Right.
16:56
But it was wor- it was worth it to him.
16:58
He made that sacrifice for us.
16:58
And that honesty and really that philosophy of just saying whatever you think you shouldn't say, saying it.
17:09
Um I really just went nuts for it.
17:16
This is the one that's like the prank, right? Yeah. Yeah, okay.
17:21
The Bomb Beyond Insanity. Oh, yeah.
17:29
My nose is starting to run. Yeah.
17:31
And when the sauce gets hot, I'm going to warn you, I get the hiccups.
17:36
So Sometimes I do as well.
17:39
So, we'll start singing back and forth here.
17:43
Oh, now I got the hiccups, okay. Oh, there they are.
17:46
It's like I summoned them. And those are deep. They hit.
17:51
They're cute, too, right?
17:51
And they have like a cute heart. Oh, boy. Wow. Yeah, that's that's hot. Yeah. Yeah.
18:02
That's the Bomb Beyond Insanity. Okay. I'm right with you. I'm right with you. I'm still going no milk.
18:10
I might have to blow my nose a little bit. Let the record show.
18:14
Before Before your career in Hollywood took off, how would you distill the experience of being a wedding DJ?
18:17
Is that a gig that you remember fondly?
18:20
love we're supposed to ignore the fact that you're poisoning your guests.
18:24
You're killing your guests.
18:24
Then we're supposed to have a conversation.
18:28
Man, as a wedding DJ Oh my god.
18:33
Just be careful around your eyes, you know, you'll sweat a little bit.
18:36
Be careful around the eyes. yeah.
18:38
Uh it's a lot of pressure because if you screw up, you ruin somebody's wedding day.
18:45
Mhm, this is hitting me in a big way. But it was fun to do.
18:47
And if I was somebody who was skilled at picking up girls, it would have been a great way to pick up girls.
18:54
What would you say is the number one guaranteed to get the dance floor jumping wedding anthem of all time?
19:02
Money, money probably is one that cuts across all age groups. All right, Jimmy. How you feeling? Bad. Yeah. Yeah.
19:13
Are you ready to move on to the next? Very much so.
19:20
I'm drooling and crying at the same time. This is the first.
19:24
You're like Barbara Walters.
19:24
You know, you make your guest cry, but in a different way.
19:28
I I'll take that I take that as such a compliment coming from you, Jimmy.
19:32
All right, so this is Hellfire, the crank sauce. Okay. Hellfire. The crank sauce, huh?
19:51
So It sucks, but I think coming off the heat of the last one I don't even know which one is burning me now because I'm still buzzing like a like there's a like a nest of bees in my mouth right now.
20:08
They stung me a thousand times from the inside.
20:11
I'm going to have lips like Kylie Jenner at the end of this.
20:17
So, there's a film that you made that very few people have heard of, but for my money, not being hyperbolic in any way, I think is the funniest movie I've ever seen in my life.
20:27
And that's Windy City Heat. Oh, thank you. Yeah. Uh-huh.
20:31
And I'm just curious, how do you regard that project?
20:34
Like what's the significance of that project?
20:37
I mean, it's uh it's a prank that was going on for 20 years, and when and when we made this movie, and it's still going on 20 years later.
20:47
And uh there's a a guy named Perry, and it's almost impossible to explain, but one thing I could tell people before they watch it is it's 100% real.
20:54
Not a bit of it is is phony.
20:59
I mean, it's all phony in that everyone is playing a prank on one guy, but uh thank you. Yeah.
21:05
Uh that is I I could watch that movie seven times a week.
21:10
I can and and you know what I'll say is, uh, you know, I could probably quote the whole thing. Oh, really?
21:15
And it's one of the It's trouble brewing, you know, I got a lot City of broken shoulders. big dreams.
21:23
All right, well, I'm glad to hear that. Uh-oh, here we go. Last dab. All right. Here we go, dabbers.
21:37
I'm going to put a couple dabs. Woah. All right. All right. Cheers, Jimmy. Cheers to you, Sean. Here we go. My sinuses are clear. My lips are on fire.
22:01
My tonsils will never be the same.
22:04
And I'm going to get your phone number so I can call you when I'm in the bathroom tonight.
22:08
I'm going to purge at you.
22:09
A baptism by fire through Hot Ones, but thankfully, Jimmy, we've reached the finish line of our spicy meal together, and you're a man of many hidden talents from clarinet to drawing to pizza making.
22:20
So, we're hoping right here you'll be generous enough to show off another one of those hidden talents. Uh-oh.
22:27
And we've brought you a harmonica. Oh, wow.
22:30
And we're hoping if you would be so kind to give us a musical expression of how you're feeling right now. harmonica? Sure. Beautiful.
22:40
A musical expression of how you're feeling right now with your mouth, lips, and tongue ablaze. All right.
22:46
Yeah, all right, let's see. Here we go.
22:57
It's hard to play harmonica when your tongue is twice its normal size. Oh my goodness. Absolutely beautiful.
23:20
Jimmy Kimmel closing it out with the harmonica solo.
23:23
And now my friend, there's nothing left to do but roll out the red carpet for you.
23:27
This camera, this camera, this camera, let the people know what you have going on in your life.
23:33
What do I have going on in my life?
23:34
Well, I'm going to go to the Cedars-Sinai Hospital.
23:37
Um I'm going to get a mouth transplant.
23:39
And uh no, you know what I'm going to do?
23:43
I'm going to drink some uh what is this? Came out of a cow? What do they call this? Yeah, little milk.
23:47
Yeah, I'm going to go home and I'm going to have a little milk.
23:50
Not right now though, because I want to make sure it's very clear I drank no milk and no water during this torture session. Let the record show. THANK YOU. GREAT JOB, JIMMY. GREAT JOB.
24:05
HAVE you ever had to shoot more than one show in a day?
24:08
Never more than one in a day, but I've done like I've I've strung together like three in three days or like four in four days before, you know.
24:15
And then and does it ever become very very unpleasant?
24:20
Could be the said like the same thing about like an NFL linebacker or something.
24:24
You know, like the the the physical toll and the sacrifice.
24:26
Like eating the chicken wings, it can't be worse than that, right?
24:29
So, I feel like I can run it out on some level.
24:33
All right, that's a good way of looking at it.
24:35
That's how I compare myself.
24:43
Hey, what's going on Hot Ones fans? This is Sean Evans.
24:45
I just wanted to say thank you so much for watching today's episode.
24:48
Season 16, we're back and we missed you.
24:52
Thank you so much for watching. Woo!