[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Writer and comedian Gabe Mollica begins his show, Solo, at the Soho Playhouse by announcing that he has no friends. It's not really true. He does have friends. Guys he can hang out with, play video games with. He calls them bros. When Gabe's mother spends some time in the hospital, she's doing much better now, Gabe realizes that his bros aren't really providing the emotional support that he would want from friends.

Gabe used to have that emotional intimacy with one friend, a college classmate named Tom, but let's just say that did not end so well. Thus begins Gabe's combination of comedy, storytelling, and interrogation into the nature of male friendship. He ruminates on questions like, why do straight men love to rank things? What's the best way to find a therapist? What should you do when a friend breaks your heart? Let's listen to a little bit of Solo now.

Gabe Mollica: I remember saying to myself, "I'm a 30-year-old man. Do I need to make new friends?" Because I go to parties. I try to meet guys.

[laughter]

Gabe Mollica: It's very hard to meet guys-

[laughter]

Gabe Mollica: -because I have judgments. I'll meet a guy at a party, he's like, "Hey, I work in tech," and I'm like, "Well, we had a good run."

[laughter]

Gabe Mollica: Everyone my age just wants to talk about money, and I don't like to talk about money for the same reason that I don't like to talk about threesomes. I don't want to discuss things that I've never had.

[laughter]

Gabe Mollica: I'm not saying I have no money, but I am saying if you knew the number, you would tell a friend about the show.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Solo has played at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and debuted at the Soho Playhouse last November. It was extended and extended and extended, and it finishes up its extended run on Saturday, February 25th, so you still have some time to see it. Gabe Mollica, welcome to the studio.

Gabe Mollica: Thank you so much for having me. This is so exciting.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, we want to hear from you, especially our dude listeners. Have you found developing intimate relationships, friendships difficult? What do you think male friendships-- why do you think they can be tricky? Maybe you have a really great group of male friends, what's been key to developing emotional intimacy in those relationships? Maybe you've experienced a bad friend breakup, we can hear about that too or maybe you just want to give a shout-out to your best friend.

212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC, or you can hit us up on social media at All Of It WNYC. You start the show, Gabe, by saying I turned 30 and it occurred to me that I don't have any friends, which is quite a way to start a show. First of all, was that always the first line?

Gabe Mollica: It was not the first line. It took a long time for me to figure out that the show was about friendship. I had a main story, me and our friendship broke up. For years, I would tell the story and at a certain point in my life, I was like, "This happened seven years ago. I was 22 years old, who cares?" I needed to contemporize the story a little bit. I started thinking, "Why does this matter to me now that I had this really great friendship and it dissolved?"

Then my mom got sick, and I didn't have the support from the bros. I thought, "Oh, what if I don't have any friends?" Once I put a 30-year-old lens on a 22-year-old story, everything started to click. It was the feedback that made me realize I was in the right direction.

Alison Stewart: The audience has that nervous laughter when you say that. What do you think is behind the nervous laughter?

Gabe Mollica: One, I think people are a little skeptical at the beginning. They're like, "What does this guy mean? He's on stage. He's talking to people. We like him. What do you mean nobody likes him?" I think another part is like, "Oh." I think some people are quietly tacitly agreeing, like, "Oh, I felt that way, that I'm not connected to these people." There's a little bit of nervous agreement to start the show.

Alison Stewart: It's been interesting the past few months, the past few years actually, we've seen some more of the story-- real people who are really funny telling poignant stories, the Mike Birbiglia School of storytelling, Hasan Minhaj's Homecoming King. What's going on in the world of comedy and comic writers that people are feeling okay or want to present vulnerability?

Gabe Mollica: I think part of it is that jokes are so accessible now. You can go to the bathroom and pull up Instagram and just watch joke after joke after joke, and some people prefer that. I've had some bros come see my show and get into arguments with their girlfriends and the girlfriend will go, "I really liked it." The guy goes, "I'm more of a stand-up purist. I just want jokes and jokes and jokes."

For me, I started doing stand-up knowing I wanted to do this type of storytelling. Most comics, Birbiglia, Hasan Minhaj, they'll do stand-up for 10 years and then they pivot. Where I started, I'm like, "I'm swerving 10 lanes to get to this thing." I'm learning to tell jokes and stories at the same time. In some ways, it's like this shortcut, but it was just very painful to get there because normally these people are so good at jokes already that they just throw them into stories. I had to navigate those first few years doing both.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, we want you in on this conversation, especially our male listeners. Have you found developing intimate male friendships difficult? Why or why not? Or if you have a really great friendship or a group of male friends, what's been key to developing that emotional intimacy? 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. We want to hear your thoughts on male friendship.

212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC, or maybe you just want to shout-out your bestie, that's always good too. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. Our social media is @AllOfItWNYC. Our guest is Gabe Mollica. The name of the show is Solo, and it's running at Soho Playhouse through February 25th. You said the bros, explain what a bro is and why a bro is different from the real friend.

Gabe Mollica: A bro, in my show at least, are these boys that I play video games with during the lockdowns, and I describe them. We hang out once a month, we watch an Adam Sandler movie and we throw stuff at each other's genitals. That's how I would describe what a bro is. I've known these guys, some of them since kindergarten. They're high school guys. It's funny, we fell out of each other's lives during college and then post-college, we're all in the New York City area.

They're from Long Island originally. They're just guys we watch Adam Sandler movies with. There's not a ton of depth to that. For a long time, it didn't bother me until my mom got sick and I was like, "Oh, wait, I think I'm alone. I don't have anybody right now and that stinks."

Alison Stewart: What did you need that you weren't getting?

Gabe Mollica: I needed people to have a better instinct about what to do in that situation. What you really want-- because the bros were trying to fix it. They were sending me medical articles. They were sending me their opinions on bulging discs, and money we might be compensated for for my mother's illness. I talk about it on the show, it's like, "Men love to fix things without listening first." I know that that's a problem because I've dated women and you guys have told me that that's what men do.

Alison Stewart: We're right.

Gabe Mollica: You're right. It's a really great observation, because the instinct is to fix and that's not wrong, but what you want really is somebody to just listen and internalize and know how to navigate that. The show, it's about that moment of me-- I literally throw my phone because I'm so angry that these guys don't know what to do and just ask me if I'm okay. You get frustrated where you're like, "I want somebody to read my mind. I want somebody to know exactly what I need."

One of the takeaways, and I'm not a friendship influencer. I don't have the solution to all friendships. One of the things is just telling the people in your life what you need from them because some people are dumb, and me too, I love being told what to do. Give me instructions. I can do that. That's what I need from them.

Alison Stewart: You talk a bit about what you see as the differences between female friendships and male friendships, and that with male friendships you felt it was about doing stuff together, activities together, not necessarily feelings. Let's listen to a clip from the show Solo, where you talk about this.

Gabe Mollica: I think women are raised in our society to be a little bit more social, a little better at making friends. My sister goes to the bathroom and she comes back with three Instagram followers. Truly, hand to God, I don't think I've made a new friend since the Obama administration.

[laughter]

Gabe Mollica: Really the first term.

[laughter]

Gabe Mollica: [unintelligible 00:08:17] the yes we can Obama, not the yes, we tried.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: That's Gabe Mollica from his show, Solo. Women, we go bathroom, we come back with Instagram followers, phone numbers, and plans for brunch. Why not for fellas?

Gabe Mollica: I think we, in general, just don't want to bother people. At least me, I'm pretty introverted for somebody who performs every night, but I actually studied this. I met with a professor. The show has become very collaborative.

I met with a professor, Dr. Greiff, who wrote a book about friendship, and he describes this in his studies, that male friendships are shoulder-to-shoulder, typically, it's gendered of course, but for the most part, female friendships are face-to-face. What that means is, and I see my mother and my sister go out with their friends, they have a cup of coffee or they get a glass of wine and it's dark. For them the activity is each other.

For us, the activity is just something else. Anything to not talk about ourselves, fantasy football, movies, just messing around. That's on the border.

Alison Stewart: That's on the border.

[laughter]

Gabe Mollica: We don't communicate in a mature way. I don't think it's a bad thing, but I think it's something to be aware of to overcome in possible ways.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Rod calling in from Ridgewood, New Jersey. Hi, Rod.

Rod: Hi, how are you? Thanks for taking my call.

Alison Stewart: Sure, you're on the air.

Rod: My background is I went to a ton of schools growing up, counted 20. I never really made lifelong friendships. I had friends when I was younger. I never had a problem making friends with a kid, but when I got into adulthood, I found it much more difficult to make that connection. People that I've known for years now, I'm still sometimes a little bit like, "What? Should I commit fully to this?" There is a lot of reservation on my part, but I do want it. I want those connections, and I have some brothers-in-law that we found ways to connect in ways that I never thought would happen. I've got friendships in that respect, but I'm unusual in that I have nobody from back in the day, back when I was a child.

Alison Stewart: Rod, thank you so much for sharing your story. We really appreciate it. We're discussing Gabe Mollica's show, Solo, which is leading to the discussion about male friendship. We'll have more of your calls. We'll hear what happened with Tom, sort of. I won't give it too much away. After the break, more calls. This is All Of It.

[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart. Gabe Mollica is my guest. The name of his show is Solo. It's at Soho Playhouse through February 25th. You were really searching for this friend connection, and then you met Tom. What was different about the friendship that you were able to build together?

Gabe Mollica: The thing about Tom, and I talk about this, is he was my first face-to-face friend in my life, where I was like, "Oh, this person gets all the different parts of me. We can stay up late and play video games and drink Mountain Dew." Also, the first time we met, I was going to go sing. I was going to go sing opera with my accompanist, and he goes, "Can I come?" I remember being like, "Who is this guy that's in my poetry class, bearded, flip-flops? This is different." It felt different. Truly from the first moment we met, we were basically inseparable. We lived together, we worked at summer camps together, and we just became really, really, really close, as close a relationship I've ever had in my life, I think.

Alison Stewart: I don't want to give anything away, but you're no longer friends.

Gabe Mollica: We are no longer friends.

Alison Stewart: How did you cope with the breakup?

Gabe Mollica: Part of it was I was living in Edinburgh at the time that we broke up as friends, and I started to perform comedy. Mostly because I needed something to do all day, I bought these notebooks and I'd never had coffee before, and I would just sit in coffee shops all day, and suddenly I had a thing to do. I could write, I could call up comedians, I could listen to comedy podcasts, and it was just this encompassing thing that I could do alone and feel connected to these different people. I still have those notebooks. That's a very sacred time in my life. One of the things I talk about in the show is sometimes when you lose intimacy, you gain outimacy, which is this idea of just sharing your life with more people. It's not one for one, but it is one way to cope.

Alison Stewart: All right. I have two follow-ups, but I want to get to calls. Let's start with two big follow-ups. Mike is calling in from North Bergen. Hi, Mike.

Mike: Hi. I just wanted to say I think the reason men don't have long-lasting men relationships is because we're meant to keep it superficial. It's like we're trained to keep it superficial. If you get too deep, you automatically make a joke out of it. I have two friends that I'm close friends with, and I think the reason that that broke that barrier is because when we were younger, we went through issues around the same time that bonded us. We worked together in an incredibly hard environment or another one of my friends when we were together hanging out a lot, had some severe family issues that I was there to help him through, and once those bonds are made, it helps make it last longer.

Alison Stewart: Mike, thanks for calling in. Let's talk to Rich from Rosemont, New Jersey. Hi, Rich.

Rich: Hey, Alison. Love the show and the topic. From the discussion of the movie Close, which I'm going to track down even out here in the frontier of rural western New Jersey, and the notion of intimacy as a child, almost, to being a 72-year-old retired guy. I now have time to actually think about what a friend is, where I never really considered it before and to the first caller from Ridgewood, I think, who said-- I could be wrong. I don't mean to be misstating him, but at least for me, it's a really, really short list if you think carefully about what the definition of a friend is.

I'm not wallowing in the notion that I feel almost friendless, and the dearest man in my life passed of cancer a couple of years ago, and I miss him, but I learned a lot from it. The other person I learned a lot from about male friendship is my son. He turned 30 a little while ago. He doesn't need to lecture or preach, but by how deeply he considers and interacts with a short list of men in his life, I learned from that, and that's really all I have to say. Thanks for the show. The topic, it's fresh, considering we've been the topic of conversation and power, that is to say men for all of time. Back to you, guys. Thanks for the show.

Alison Stewart: Rich, thank you for calling in. You smiled when we were listening to Rich. Why did you smile, Gabe?

Gabe Mollica: Talking about his son, I think is really, for me, notable because a lot of older people come up to me and they say like, "Oh, I can't believe you're talking about this." It's not a thing that I ever put a label on, and it seems less taboo now, especially post pandemic, to just be like, "Yes, I'm lonely. I have this phone, and I'm connected to all these people, and I feel totally alone." Once I started saying that on stage, then people would come up to me afterwards. Sometimes you just follow the feedback. People will tell you what the show is about.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Patrick from Edison. Hi, Patrick. Thank you for calling All Of It. You're on the air.

Patrick: Hey, guys. Thanks for having me. I recently had to end a friendship of about eight years with a male friend. We would go backpacking together, we would go ice climbing together, but recently, I realized it was more of a broship than a friendship. It didn't really meet what I needed out of a friend. He wasn't able to fill the roles that I needed, and found that it was not worth it for me. Actually, an emotional deficit to maintain that friendship. It was hard to go through that breakup considering we'd been through so many fantastic times on the sides of cliffs, and it's still difficult, but I needed to do it.

Alison Stewart: Sounded like you needed to take care of yourself and maybe getting out of this broship was the way to do it. Patrick, thank you for calling in and being so candid. I'm hearing from our callers a little bit, it's quality, not quantity. Right?

Gabe Mollica: Totally. I've had bros in my life come see the show, and at first they were kind of uneasy. They'd see the logline and be like, "What are you talking about? We hung out last month. We had fun, didn't we? Don't you like us?" Then they see the show and they're like, "Oh, I get what you mean now," and they're a little bit more supportive. I think the number for me is small. Again, I don't have all the answers. I'm not like, "Join a bowling league." That wouldn't work for me. It's a little bit about sometimes I'll just call my friends now way more often, the bros, and just pick their brain for 20 minutes. It means a lot more than just being on my phone.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Gabe Mollica. We're talking about his show, Solo, running at Soho Playhouse through February 25th. You're my guest as well. We want to hear from you, especially male listeners. How have you found developing intimate friendships, still difficult, or if you've managed to have a really great friendship with another guy, we want to hear what you think the key is to it, or maybe have a group of friends and you are all really tight, tell us how, 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC, or you can reach out on social media at All Of It WNYC. Here are my two follow-ups, which are tangents. You never had coffee before that moment?

Gabe Mollica: No, I made it all through college no coffee. Now I need it every day, I can't function, but until I was 22-- then I was like, "I get it. I'm an adult now. Every day I have coffee."

Alison Stewart: You said, "I was just going to sing some opera."

Gabe Mollica: Yes.

Alison Stewart: When did you take up opera?

Gabe Mollica: I was a music student in high school, and a big part of my show is actually my love for Stephen Sondheim.

Alison Stewart: Yes, it is.

Gabe Mollica: I became completely obsessed with Sondheim musicals in high school, and when you get older, in college, I was a music major, and I focused on voice. I was in musicals in high school and college, and it was around this time that I became a pen pal of Stephen Sondheim, and that's a big part of the show. My Sondheim heads out there who feel similarly, I would write to him and he would respond. I have about six letters from him written on a typewriter, hand-signed. Thematically, Sondheim is an important part of the show, and there's certain lines in the last half of the show that are just for the Sondheim people, which I really appreciate.

Alison Stewart: Can you sing 15 seconds of your favorite Sondheim song?

Gabe Mollica: Oh, my goodness. Could I? Yes. Will I? Yes. Just for you. You got me. [sings] I don't remember the lyrics. [sings] it's so funny. You listen over and over again, and then you get put on the spot, and you're like, "Am I the baker? Could I do this?" There's a few people in my life who are going to be like, "You've got to nail all those lyrics, Gabe." Thank you for the opportunity. I haven't done that. We debate all the time whether I should add singing to the show, and you got me to do it in about four seconds. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: I thought maybe you might be able to. Let's talk to Karen calling in from Red Bank, New Jersey. Hi, Karen.

Karen: Hi- how are you?

Alison Stewart: Doing great. You're on the air.

Karen: Good. I just wanted to mention briefly that I think there's a lot of hope for the future. I have a 20-year-old son who has an amazing group of friends, really, since they were little, their bond is so deep. I think it was even intensified during the pandemic, where they really had to find ways to be together outside of school and outside of our homes. They would just bundle up in freezing cold and play football, and sit around each other's fire pits. I think that their friendship is going to last them their lifetimes. They've been through so much together, and it makes me so happy to see them together.

Alison Stewart: Karen, thank you so much for calling in. How is the pandemic? How did it affect this show in your creation of the show and the way you thought about this show?

Gabe Mollica: Before that, I did everything by myself. I wrote it myself. I edited all the jokes myself. During the Pandemic, there was a part of me that's like, "I think I've gotten as far as I can go alone." I started reaching out to people to work on the show. One of them was a recent guest, Ophira Eisenberg, is a creative consultant on my show. We've done hourly sessions about the stories and characters, and getting things right.

I've also started to work with a man named Greg Walloch, who's a very talented storyteller in his own right and directed Hasan Minhaj's Homecoming King off-Broadway all the way to Netflix. I heard Hasan and Mike Birbiglia talk about their collaborators, and Hasan was like, "Oh, Greg's so great. We work together. I've known him since before The Daily Show." We started doing these hourly sessions. Then when the show started to get some momentum and we started to bring some money in, I hired him as my director. God, the show has changed. Even if you saw it in November, when people see it now, they're like, "It's so different." I said, "Yes, because I work with really great people on the show."

Alison Stewart: What is one response that has really stayed with you?

Gabe Mollica: One of the fun things about the show is you never know what people are going to say, but sometimes it's a really quiet detail. It's like, "Oh, I used to be a singer." Or, "I worked at summer camp," or, "I had a friendship breakup that didn't work out." That's one of my favorite things because sometimes you peg somebody. Somebody comes up to you, and you peg them, "Oh, they're going to want to talk about this." It's just totally different.

Alison Stewart: Nice.

Gabe Mollica: Or it's a woman who said, "I had a woman friendship breakup, and it's just as hard." That stuff is really valuable to me. I rush out after the show. I take off my microphone. I'm still wearing my microphone when I get outside. I wait for everybody to come out and I thank them because I want people to feel like they know me and they have access to me. I'm not some fancy person. [chuckles]

Alison Stewart: The name of the show is Solo. It is at Soho Playhouse, running through February 25th. It is from my guest, Gabe Mollica. Gabe, thank you so much for coming in.

Gabe Mollica: This was a blast. Thank you for having me.

Alison Stewart: Thanks to everybody who called in with their stories. That's All Of It for today. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening, and I appreciate you. I will see you next time.

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