Bryan McCree: A Flintstone Comedian With Joy in His Bones

 Stand-up comic Bryan McCree shares Flint stories, family humor, and the Michigan grit behind a life on stage. 

Is it possible to make Flint laugh?
 If anyone can, it’s Bryan McCree — nationally touring comedian, actor, writer, and proud Flintstone. Known for his sharp insight into American culture and his uncanny ability to make us laugh at ourselves, Bryan brings a humor that is both fearless and deeply rooted in real life.

In this interview, Bryan shares personal stories from his Flint upbringing, his family’s remarkable legacy, and clips from his act that poke fun at race, poverty, stereotypes, and the everyday absurdities of growing up in a blue-collar Michigan town. His timing, physical comedy, and stage presence are unmatched — a skillset built partly on the school bus, where he delivered daily comedy routines to his classmates.

Bryan McCree has appeared on Comedy Central, MADtv, NBC, and Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen.
He has shared the stage with Sinbad, George Wallace, Robert Schimmel, and even The Isley Brothers.

Bryan comes from a legendary Flint family.
 He is the nephew of Floyd J. McCree, the historic Flint Mayor and Michigan civil rights icon; his father was a jazz virtuoso; and his great-aunt was a Broadway legend. With roots like these, it’s no wonder he became one of Michigan’s most beloved comedic performers.

McCree cut his teeth at the historic McCree Theater, where he honed his stagecraft and learned to turn everyday struggles into laugh-out-loud gold. In this episode, he reflects on life in Flint, blue-collar culture, race, music, family, and why he never gave up on his hometown.

This is Bryan McCree.
 Unfiltered. Unapologetic. Unbelievably funny.
 A true Michigan original.

👉 Visit Bryan McCree’s Official Website for tour dates & merch
👉 Watch Bryan’s comedy on his YouTube Channel
👉 Follow him on Facebook for upcoming shows

Watch Bryan McCree's comedy shows on his YouTube Channel or visit his Facebook Page.

If you would like to receive new podcast episodes by email please subscribe on our Home Page. All new episode are Free!

👉 Subscribe to Radio Free Flint Podcasts at The Mitten Channel:

• YouTube Full catalogue of podcasts for Radio Free Flint, Flint Justice: America on Trial and Work in the Mitten

Subscribe to our mailing list at the Radio Free Flint Podcast.

Also Follow us on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Linkedin.

Chapters

• 0:44 Bryan McCree Talks About Flint
• 3:06 Silent Auction Skit by Bryan McCree
• 4:13 Is it Possible to Make Flint Laugh?
• 6:05 Growing Up in Flint, Michigan
• 9:35 My Neighborhood and the Game of Dozens, The School Bus
• 13:04 Moving to LA, Comedy Central, Mad TV, Comics Unleashed,
• 14:01 Comedy Skit #3 Flint Pimps Ride Bicycles
• 17:44 Role Models
• 22:07 Does Flint Love and Laugh?
• 26:08 The Moment I Decided to do Comedy for a Job
• 28:54 What Make You So Funny?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 1:18

I am glad to be here tonight with you. Um, I live in Flint, so I'm glad to be pretty glad to be alive today. My uncle was the mayor of Flint back in 1966 under the weak form of government, which means he was elected from within the city council. So there were like eight white guys on the council, and then my uncle. And it's almost like the white guys got together and said, It'd be funny if we made the black guy mayor.

SPEAKER_03: 3:03

Okay, this is Arthur Bush. You're listening to Radio Free Flint, and today we have a treat. We have Brian McCree, a comedian from Flint, Michigan, who is here to tell us uh his story. He is, I think, I gotta ask this first. Are you a Flintstone? Am I what? Are you a Flintstone? All day. All right then. And he's a Flintstone. And it's my honor, Brian, to have you as my guest on Radio Free Flint.

SPEAKER_01: 3:30

It's an honor to be here with you, Art.

SPEAKER_03: 3:32

Most people don't like to find the prosecutor. They usually would prefer not to meet them.

SPEAKER_01: 3:37

Especially if they're black.

SPEAKER_02: 3:42

But they scared me a little bit because I always had these silent options.

SPEAKER_03: 4:51

I wanted to ask you a couple questions now that I got your introduction out of the way. If if you have some more things that you want to brag about, let me know right now. You got anything else?

SPEAKER_01: 5:00

Oh, I don't know. I've been doing stand-up comedy for 41 years now. Actor, writer, flint native.

SPEAKER_03: 5:06

Brian, you've also appeared on Comedy Central. I got that. And then there's Mad T. Is it Mad TV?

SPEAKER_01: 5:12

Yep, Mad TV.

SPEAKER_03: 5:13

Like Alfred Newman type mad TV? Well, you know, yeah. Yeah. I guess I got that channel. I didn't I'm not rich enough to have that channel, I guess. Oh, it's Fox. I don't watch that either. A lot of reasons. It has nothing to do with comedy.

SPEAKER_01: 5:29

Yeah, it didn't used to be that way.

SPEAKER_03: 5:31

My biggest question to you is it possible to make Flint laugh?

SPEAKER_01: 5:35

Oh, yeah. Flint has a great sense of humor.

SPEAKER_03: 5:37

They do?

SPEAKER_01: 5:38

Yes.

SPEAKER_03: 5:39

How does it compare to some other places you've been?

SPEAKER_01: 5:42

I I don't know. I will tell you this about Flint that uh Flint as well as Detroit, if they love you, they love you hard. If they hate you, they hate you even harder. But there's much love in this city.

SPEAKER_03: 5:57

Now, does that mean when they hate you harder, does that mean they jump up on stage and slap you?

SPEAKER_01: 6:02

I wish I would. No, uh, that's a new development. I and I've actually been bum rushed before on the stage, but uh been very fortunate to have great weight staff and great security come to my rescue. But uh no, they don't tend to jump up on stage like that.

SPEAKER_03: 6:21

Well, you you also come from a town with some great boxers. So just watching those guys over the years, you had to learn a step or two.

SPEAKER_01: 6:29

Yeah, well, right. I got pre-existing conditions, so I'll fight you for about eight seconds. I gotta get you quick. What neighborhood did you grow up in? Southside, right up the street from Coca-Cola on Lapier Road.

SPEAKER_03: 6:45

And that that just missed the bombing of Flint.

SPEAKER_01: 6:48

I don't know about bombing. I-69. I remember when I-69 went through there when I was a kid, and we used to ride our bikes down I-69 when it was just dirt.

SPEAKER_03: 6:59

I remember that too. But the bombing refers to I interviewed Norman Bryant, who you probably have heard of before, was former school board president, Flint School Board President, and also the founder of the African American Hall of Fame. And he says, Art, they bombed this thing. The city was good until they bombed it. And uh said, What do you mean Norm bombed it? He meant that they they built the expressway through Floral Park in St. John's. I had never heard this expression before. And I found out, interestingly, that it's used by a lot of people of Norm's age, which is now in his 80s, and to describe that period of time. But when you look back at it, that single act may have changed uh a whole lot of things in Flint. Flint might have been a whole different story if that hadn't have happened.

SPEAKER_01: 7:49

It might have been. That was quite a little uh community, from what I understand.

SPEAKER_03: 7:53

In some ways, that I-69 propelled Floyd McCree uh into the national spotlight with uh fair housing uh activity.

SPEAKER_01: 8:02

Fun fact about that my doctor at the time, T. Wendell Williams, he was the uh thing that ignited that. He wanted to buy a house in this neighborhood, and they would not sell it to him. And that started the whole conversation.

SPEAKER_03: 8:17

Yeah, then then they all moved to Grand Blanc, right?

SPEAKER_01: 8:20

Yeah, or Flint Township, which wants to be something else now.

SPEAKER_03: 8:25

The Great White, being known as in French as Grand Blanc, has as virtually an all-African American basketball team, which if you've been around Flint for any length of time, is is sort of makes you kind of chuckle a little bit.

SPEAKER_01: 8:39

Yeah, it's ridiculous, but they yeah, we used to have great ball teams, and it's really a shame that it's all moved to the burbs now.

SPEAKER_03: 8:47

So, did you go to Southwestern high school? Or central?

SPEAKER_01: 8:51

No, I went to Southwestern. I took uh, but this was back at the time where they were starting the magnet program. So I did uh have the pleasure of uh going to Central for a period. Uh I had took acting over there.

SPEAKER_03: 9:03

And what was there a teacher there that influenced you?

SPEAKER_01: 9:07

Yeah, but don't if I had to call their name, I couldn't tell you. But yeah, I had a great time over there at Central uh doing plays and whatnot.

SPEAKER_03: 9:14

Is there somebody in your family? I mean, obviously your uncle's well known uh and I'd even say famous in the Flynn area, but is there somebody in your family that influenced you to become a comedian?

SPEAKER_01: 9:27

I would say that uh my neighborhood and my junksta position in the family. So I'm the youngest of three boys, uh, the grunt of the litter, as a matter of fact. And my brothers were giant. You know, my brother, my oldest brother was like, he would ended up being six, seven, but growing up, he was the tallest person any of us knew. And then my other brother was tall the other way, he was wide, he was uh 300 pounds, played football, you know. So here's this little scrawny kid with pre-existing conditions fighting for his life out there. And uh I think that's where my sense of humor came from. And, you know, the period of time when I grew up uh back in the 60s, playing the dozens was how we had fun. And that's why I attributed a lot of my humor to my neighborhood where I grew up, because everyone was funny, everyone played the dozen, and you had to be able to play the dozen to survive out there.

SPEAKER_03: 10:24

Now tell tell us the dozens. There's some people might not know what that is.

SPEAKER_01: 10:28

Yeah, so for you white folks that don't know what the dozens is, the dozens is your mama joke when you talk about somebody's mama. You can get your ass kicked if you're not smooth with it. But luckily I was smooth with mine, and uh luckily I had big friends too. I had a woman uh on social media who I grew up with, evidently, and actually I grew up with her cousin, and she heard legend about me on the southwestern school bus talking shit. So she skipped school from central. She told me that she skipped school from central to get on our bus to hear me talk shit in the morning because that's how funny I used to be.

SPEAKER_03: 11:09

I guess your roots in comedy go back to your neighborhood, apparently, to your camp or your hut or whatever it was that you guys made over there.

SPEAKER_01: 11:17

Yeah, the tribe.

SPEAKER_03: 11:18

There you go.

SPEAKER_01: 11:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 11:20

We had our own in the south. I grew up in the south end as well. We had our own. Okay. I l I grew up on Pengalley Road.

SPEAKER_01: 11:29

Yeah, I live I actually lived in Pengalley apartments.

SPEAKER_03: 11:31

So you got it. Oh, yeah. And where Pengalley apartments were was uh was an old wooded part of the General Motors dump. In fact, uh I'm not telling any secrets, it ain't already out, but that apartment house was built on top of the dump. Oh damn, and when we were kids, and some of that stuff's still underneath there, like hoods and fenders from cars, and they were working their way up through the soil, and we would make camps there. We played in this stuff, which was which was a place where the General Motors had dumped paints, lacquers, thinners, other kinds of chemicals laced with lead.

SPEAKER_02: 12:10

That sounds about right.

SPEAKER_03: 12:12

Yeah. So so that's what they did in that playground, and then they came along and cut down all the trees, and then they built the beautiful Pinkelli apartments right on top of the dump.

SPEAKER_01: 12:23

So nice. Nice. Was uh Sicily's pizza over there when you grew up?

SPEAKER_03: 12:28

Yeah, I was weaned on that stuff.

SPEAKER_01: 12:30

Oh man, it you know it closed, right?

SPEAKER_03: 12:33

Yeah, I know. And that Patricia just passed. Uh Patricia, Patty and John. She she and her husband uh owned that place for many years, and she just passed away here recently. Is that why they closed? No, they closed because they wanted to retire, but and it ended maybe one of the greatest pizza joints in the whole in the whole region. The best, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 12:55

Yeah, we were all heartbroken when it went down. We had Sisley's at least once a week.

SPEAKER_03: 13:00

It made it warmed my heart a little bit to know that you are a true Flintstone. And the fact is, I've asked every guest that I've ever talked to on this thing, which is about 140 now or 50 or something like that. And I asked everyone whether they're Flintstones. I only had one say they were a Flintstone. How do you know somebody's a Flintstone is if they pay union dues?

SPEAKER_01: 13:22

Yeah. Well, I paid different union dues. I paid SAGF.

SPEAKER_03: 13:27

Do you s do you still pay dues or did you decide that that wasn't necessary?

SPEAKER_01: 13:32

Uh I don't pay them anymore. I'm not really I'm doing more comedy than acting anymore, but I used to do a lot of acting. Actually moved out to LA uh back in 1999 to pursue acting.

SPEAKER_03: 13:44

I see. Now, did you get in any good get any good gigs?

SPEAKER_01: 13:48

I did. I got the uh Mad TV when I was out there, uh, made a lot of connections. You know, it's interesting though, because uh I've had breaks happen to me that didn't happen for me out there actually happened for me here. Like uh when I did uh Byron Allen's Comics Unleashed with uh Byron Allen, I got that from Flint.

SPEAKER_03: 14:08

Really?

SPEAKER_01: 14:08

Yeah, a buddy of mine had done it, and they were looking for black comics to be on the show, and he referred to me. And I actually had to do an audition over the telephone, uh, which was kind of funny because they the producer called me at dinner time, and we're all sitting down to dinner, and he's like, Hey, this is so-and-so from Mad TV. Uh wanted to talk to you about doing the show. And they were like, Let me hear you. I'm like, What? Okay. So I started doing my act right there on the telephone uh at the dinner table.

SPEAKER_03: 14:37

And you can just do it like that. It's just all improvisational off the cuff.

SPEAKER_01: 14:41

I mean, it's written material I was doing for him. I wasn't improving, you know, I was doing my act.

SPEAKER_03: 14:47

Let's talk about that for a second. Your roots are are in the city, obviously. That's the city of Flint in particular. You do have, you know, bona fides in in the urban community. Is is that reflected in your act?

SPEAKER_01: 15:02

Oh, yeah, yeah. How? Yeah. Uh well, I have a bit, and this is a true story. Uh I have a bit that goes uh the economy's so bad in Flint. Last week I saw a pimp on a bike. Good to see you, man. Good to be here tonight.

SPEAKER_02: 15:19

I'm from Flint, so I'm glad to be pretty much anywhere. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 15:27

Yeah. Where my Flint people at by applause. Make some noise, Flint. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 15:35

Look, Flint people just glad to wake up without a bullet in the ass. Jesus, yes, we made it through the night.

SPEAKER_01: 15:46

Man. Flint, man. That's my crib, but it's hard living there. They make it hard for you to be loyal to Flint now. Don't they? Water bill so damn high. Suddenly I'm bathing in Merlot. See, I grew up in Flint when we had the best of everything, you guys. I grew up in Flint when we were the home of General Motors. Right? The Buick. Yeah. The Buick was invented in my hometown.

SPEAKER_02: 16:26

Yeah. Now the economy is so bad, you guys. Last week I saw a pimp on a bike. Ring ring bitch.

SPEAKER_01: 16:45

Don't make me put this kickstand down.

SPEAKER_02: 16:56

And I don't know the last time y'all wrote a testy with a with a pimp pad on, but that shit is not aerodynamic. It is hard to regulate your hoes while you holding your pimp hat on your head. You talk to a hoe lately? He'll be like, I ain't giving him shit. Because that's how hoes walking in. Any hoes here tonight?

SPEAKER_01: 17:43

And true story, I was picking my daughter up from Eisenhower. Uh no, I take that back. She was going to Southwestern at the time. And we dropped her little friend off near uh Chevy and the Hull. And we're coming back up by the point right by La Azteca, Taco House. And we literally saw a pimp on a bike, and his girl was in the bike path walking, and he was on his bike talking mad shit. Like, you better get my money, like you see on TV, bitch. You better get my money. So that's how that bit was born.

SPEAKER_03: 18:17

Obviously, you're a student of this comedy genre. Who's your favorite comedian? Richard Pryor is my comedy god.

SPEAKER_01: 18:26

No one's funnier than Richard. What do you think his funniest act was? His my favorite of his, of course, niggas crazy, which was his huge breakout album. And we used to sneak down in the basement and we had it on eight-track at the time. And we would sneak down in my parents' basement and listen to Richard Pryor on A-Track. How'd your mom how'd your mom and dad take that? They never they didn't hear us. They, you know, though they worked hard. My dad had like three jobs, and mom was working all the time. So we had a lot of time by ourselves. So yeah, we had a lot of time to be able to listen to that stuff.

SPEAKER_03: 19:03

Richard Pryor became a great actor over time. What was it about him that you liked the most?

SPEAKER_01: 19:09

He he was just so real. He changed the game, Art. I mean, you know, comedy used to be a little stuffy and take my wife, and you know, and one-liners, and uh, he just broke it down to the rawness and just exposed that that rawness of oneself that that we do now. Like if you do comedy now and don't share anything about yourself, it's like you're not really even doing comedy.

SPEAKER_03: 19:36

Yeah, he has a lot of self-depreciating humor, doesn't he? So let me ask you one more question. Richard Pryor uh obviously paved the path for a lot of other people in comedy, and along comes uh Chris Rock, who I like. And I think my favorite joke of his is that his solution for crime is that we need a bullet tax.

SPEAKER_00: 19:56

Yep.

SPEAKER_03: 19:57

We need thousands of bullets. Because if it was five thousand dollars a bullet, there, as he says, there wouldn't be any innocent bystanders.

SPEAKER_01: 20:07

That's right.

SPEAKER_03: 20:08

How do you attribute his success? I mean, the American people obviously love that guy.

SPEAKER_01: 20:13

He uh was fortunate enough to have the co-sign of uh Eddie Murphy. So Eddie Murphy uh saw him in New York, from what I understand, and flew him out to LA. And uh Eddie Murphy helped a lot of comedians and Chris being one of them.

SPEAKER_03: 20:27

Now you worked with some pretty uh well-known people over the years. So tell us about that. Tell us some of the names of people that you've worked with and maybe give us an antidote or two.

SPEAKER_01: 20:37

Oh man, I worked with uh the first uh famous person I worked with was Sinbad. And uh Sinbad is was the most down-to-earth comic I've ever worked with in my life. And you know, he was pretty famous at the time. He had was freshly off winning Star Search. And uh I walked in the dressing room to meet him, and he was ironing, you know, he used to wear those big parachute pants, and he was ironing his own parachute pants there. You know, it kind of surprised me that someone of his stature would be ironing his own clothes that way. George Wallace, George Wallace is an amazing guy. Uh met George Wallace for the first time in Kansas City at a place called Stanfords and Sons. And uh George Wallace is so fucking cool, man. He uh sent word down. He was up in the uh green room upstairs at the comedy club that I didn't even know existed. So he sent for me. He said, send me a feature act up here to meet me. So I went up there and talked to George and he had all this soul food, like huge platters of soul food. And he he wanted me to eat some. He's like, dude, eat some of this soul food. I'm like, George, I can't eat that right now. I'm about to go on stage in about five minutes. He said, Man, wherever I go in the country, these these black church women, they cook for me and they bring these platters of soul food to the show, you know, and I can never eat it all. So and uh worked with him again on uh Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen. Uh Robert Schimmel. Robert Schimmel was an awesome dude, man. Uh now Robert Schimmel's Jewish, and we worked together in Dayton, Ohio. And as a black comic, people come up and tell you the most racist ass jokes and think that you'll find them funny. So one night after a show, this guy comes up and just told me the most racist fucking joke, and uh he walked away. And Robert Schimmel was so he was madder than I was because I'm used to it. Schimmel was steamy. He looked at me like, does that shit happen all the time? I'm like, yeah, pretty much. But yeah, he Robert Schimmel was a really good dude too.

SPEAKER_03: 22:44

You were raised in a home that you know was really an advocate during the heart of the civil rights movement for civil rights and human rights in a city that you know where it was all real. As you go around the country and you you do a national act, I understand. Um do you see places like Flint or is Flint unique in some way?

SPEAKER_01: 23:07

Or do you uh now there are other industrial cities like Flint, but I I have to say Flint is very unique in the fact that uh I don't know, there's just a sense of humor that's different here. And I will say this about Flint, even though we had that time in the 60s where things were bad, um, we're in a place right now, especially after the water crisis, where race isn't an issue anymore. People don't care about race around here anymore. We're we're we're we're trying to survive as a whole community. And you might be somewhere else in the country and somebody might yell a racial epithet at you, but they yell something else at you here. It's not about race and Flint anymore. That's the cool thing I find about Flint.

SPEAKER_03: 23:49

Yeah, there's also a sense of activism in this city. I mean, it's part of the DNA of Flint. I mean, people get here, they get pissed, they don't just start walking away and say that's too bad, or I'm sorry to bother you.

SPEAKER_01: 24:00

No, they'll fight.

SPEAKER_03: 24:01

They fight. Yeah, they did.

SPEAKER_01: 24:03

Yeah, that's that's another thing about Flint is uh we're a town full of fighters, man. And the other thing I love about Flint art is that we can talk about Flint, we don't let other people that aren't from here talk about it. You you can't live out in Holly and talk shit about Flint, you'll get your ass fucked up.

SPEAKER_03: 24:20

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Somebody somebody else told me exactly in those words the same thing. Rico Phillips. I don't know if you know Rico, but Rico Phillips is an interesting guy. Oh, the fireman? The fireman, and now he works as a diversity, he's a diversity director for the Ontario Hockey League.

SPEAKER_01: 24:37

Yeah, yeah, I'm Hiptor Rico. Yeah, we don't play that shit, man. I was at the Holly Hotel once, and this lady was steaming. She comes upstairs and she tells one of the owners, she's like, that comic down there is talking about Flint and she's ripping it to do ass. And she looked at him very calmly and was like, Well, he pays his taxes there. I think if anyone can talk about Flint, it would be him.

unknown: 25:01

So yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 25:02

So we did lose the Holly Hotel. What what impact does that have on comedy? They've had comedy out there for a long time, haven't they?

SPEAKER_01: 25:08

Oh, yeah, God. I uh one of the first comedy stages I was ever on was on was probably Holly Hotel. Yeah, I I lost an August date there. Yeah, Holly was uh significant in uh comedy around here. I mean, you know, people like Tim Allen performed there. There was a guy from Florida uh named Jerry Elliott. He was very popular at the time, used to come up here. But yeah, Holly was everything to comedy.

SPEAKER_03: 25:35

Yeah, you know, I had another friend that lost a gig there too. Uh Mustard's Retreat, Dave Timolovich and Libby Glover, who's a southwestern grad, uh, were supposed to play there. They were all jack jacked up, excited about it now that the pandemic's over and lost their gig.

SPEAKER_01: 25:49

Um I did I did actually uh they booked me uh back when they started up again, and I actually did get a date in there. And uh if you ever get the chance, they uh they've redone the basement where the comedy club is. It is the one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

SPEAKER_03: 26:05

Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 26:06

So it'll be fabulous when they fix it.

SPEAKER_03: 26:08

Who are some of the who are some of the up-and-coming comedians in the Flint area, if if you could give us a couple names?

SPEAKER_01: 26:16

Uh man, there's a lot of people that do comedy around here. Um not I can't say of anyone really that's doing it on this level that I do it at, but there's definitely a uh underground scene taking place here. And I couldn't tell you any names right off the uh top of my head. But yeah, there's a lot of people trying to break in around here.

SPEAKER_03: 26:39

I mean, what what was the moment that you decided, you know, I think I really want to be a comedian?

SPEAKER_01: 26:44

I think I really want to So for me it was all about acting for a long time. And a good friend of mine, uh Tony Ennis, who was an actor, uh comedian friend of mine, and actually grew up a block away from me. I was on Little C, he was on Shallan, and he was actually my brother's age, four years older than me. So I had heard that uh Tony was doing some comedy things. Uh he was with a comedy troupe, and uh he came to speak to us at Southwestern when I was still in high school. Uh came and spoke at in my English class. One of my favorite teachers, Mary Earling, was my English teacher, and he came in to speak to us. So he kind of planted the scene then. So we ended up doing a play together in 1981 at McCree Theater, a play called The Mighty Gents. Uh, I was the protagonist and Tony Ennis was the antagonist. And after a rehearsal, sometime we would go down to Doobies. You remember Doobies downtown? Yeah. So Doobies used to have a Monday open mic night. And we used to go down there and hang out, have a few drinks. And one night, Tony looked at me, he's like, Man, you're funny, Brian. Why don't you go up and do some stand-up? And I'm like, Yeah, why not? So I went on stage and just off the top of my head started doing some things and they liked it. So I started coming back weekly, and that kind of wet my whistle, man. I always thought I was just gonna be an actor, but then uh I'd always liked comedy, but I didn't know if I could do it professionally. But when I saw uh Tony as his friends making some money doing it as a troupe, I'm like, yeah, I can do stand-up, I can make some money. So that's what uh made me get into it.

SPEAKER_03: 28:18

Now Flynn has had uh a history of having some some people who who made their way to the to the big screen and also uh to stage. Uh and they've had some famous and maybe not even so famous. Wendell Harris is one.

SPEAKER_01: 28:33

Uh Andre Bernhard.

SPEAKER_03: 28:36

Yeah. Uh and I think of some of those back in the day. Uh, but your reputation as an actor in Flint, I mean, that's what I thought you did.

SPEAKER_01: 28:45

It it is. Uh, but then uh, like I said, back in 1981, uh, I kind of shifted gears and uh was doing a lot of acting and uh wasn't as good at stand-up as I wanted to be. So I'm the kind of person that has to focus on something to get really good at it. So I kind of pulled back on acting some and started hitting the road doing the comedy thing and get getting my 10,000 hours in.

SPEAKER_03: 29:13

Like flying a plane, yeah, you have so many hours.

SPEAKER_01: 29:18

Get good, you gotta have those hours, man. And these kids now, you know, they wanna they want a headline right out the gate.

SPEAKER_03: 29:24

What makes you so funny?

SPEAKER_01: 29:26

Uh you know, so like I said, the youngest, being the youngest of three brothers, and also pain makes comedians funny.

SPEAKER_03: 29:34

Pain?

SPEAKER_01: 29:35

Pain. Some either physical or mental, some type of strife. And that's not always true. There are comics like Seinfeld that kind of had a perfect, nice life and still managed to find the funny, but I find that most comics have something painful that triggers the funny in them. So I suffer from sickle cell disaster, sickle cell anemia, and I think that pain uh triggered something in me to make uh it's a coping mechanism to deal with my illness.

SPEAKER_03: 30:05

And obviously you've overcome it. If you had to talk to young people today at Flint Southwestern or whatever they call it these days, what would you say to somebody that was interested in getting involved in either acting or or comedy?

SPEAKER_01: 30:19

Start learning. If you want to do stand-up, there's no real easy path. So these days they have comedy classes, but I'm not a fan. I mean, I I guess that's okay. But to me, you you you gotta get up there. You you just gotta you gotta get on stage, you gotta write. You gotta write your behind off. And I would say if you want to get in a stand-up, start with writing three minutes of material that you think is funny, and then start going to open mic nights and start working it out and record yourself to see how you look, how you sound, uh, how your words go together, because one little word can throw a joke all the way off. So I would say find a mentor also and stand up as far as acting. You can go to acting schools. You can learn how to act. Knowledge is the key to any of these uh professions.

SPEAKER_03: 31:11

Well, that's it for today. Thank you for joining us. I hope you enjoyed Brian McCree, comedian from Flint. Please rate us, review us, and subscribe to our podcasts at radiofreeflint.media, our website, or wherever you get your podcast. Until next time, thank you for joining us. This is Arthur Bush from Radio Free Flint. Goodbye.