Episode 119 - Adam McKay
Guest:Lock the gates!
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Really?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Pow!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:And it's also... Eh, what the fuck?
Guest:What's wrong with me?
Guest:It's time for WTF!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:With Mark Maron.
What the fuck?
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:What the fuck Knicks?
Marc:How is everybody doing?
Marc:I am Mark Maron.
Marc:This is WTF, the podcast.
Marc:It's my podcast.
Marc:Thank you for listening.
Marc:Thank you for all the feedback and all the influx of new people who got on board during the Ira Glass interview.
Marc:I appreciate it.
Marc:Welcome.
Marc:Hope you enjoyed the Maz Jobrani interview.
Marc:Let me just get a couple of things out of the way as we begin the show here.
Marc:Let me just tell you one thing before I start is that it's now about 12 midnight.
Marc:I don't usually record at this time, but I think it might be a good time to record because my brain, I don't know what's going on.
Marc:It's quiet.
Marc:My brain is not quiet.
Marc:I just went and did a spot at the comedy store in the main room.
Marc:I did okay.
Marc:I did well.
Marc:I didn't drive away feeling like I sucked.
Marc:I don't drive away feeling like I sucked, but I drive away angry at the situation.
Marc:This is the month of November.
Marc:This is what's happening.
Marc:I've already told you some of them, but this week, November 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th, I will be in Cincinnati at Go Bananas.
Marc:Check it out.
Marc:They have a website.
Marc:Go to it.
Marc:I think it's gobananascomedy.com.
Marc:If you're in the area or you're close, you can find it.
Marc:Go Bananas.
Marc:How many Go Bananas comedy clubs are there?
Marc:And then on the 11th, 12th, and 13th, I will be at the Punchline in San Francisco.
Marc:Very excited about that.
Marc:And November 15th, I will be in Pontiac, Michigan at the Crowfoot Ballroom.
Marc:That's it for now.
Marc:I'll keep you up to speed on that stuff.
Marc:What else is going on?
Marc:Oh, what was I going to talk to you about?
Marc:You know what, folks?
Marc:I got to be honest with you.
Marc:I seem to be in a relationship.
Marc:Is that okay?
Marc:Is that all right?
Marc:I didn't think it would get here.
Marc:I tried to fight her off.
Marc:I tried to ruin it.
Marc:I tried to scare her away.
Marc:I've not been able to do that.
Marc:This woman has remained steadfast in the face of all my childish bullshit.
Marc:And I don't know how to handle it.
Marc:But here we are.
Marc:You know, I can't seem to scare away.
Marc:And I have feelings for this person.
Marc:I care about her.
Marc:I said it.
Marc:I care about it.
Marc:It's choking me up.
Marc:But now I'm concerned.
Marc:Here's the problem.
Marc:And maybe you guys have had this happen.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So you care about somebody.
Marc:You've got you've gotten through the rough spots, the beginning where all the sex is just fueled by, you know, insane like, you know, need and and just sort of like you want to prove yourself.
Marc:You just want to fuck all the time.
Marc:Then you want to fight.
Marc:If you don't want to fuck, you know, fighting works good.
Marc:because that's just as satisfying and then if you fight and fuck then you got the makeup sex and the you know the post fighting fuck is the best but you can't get hooked on that and then you just go at it day in and day out and then all of a sudden you just level off and all of a sudden it's like wow now we really know each other sure oh you just farted right great good job
Marc:no that's okay yeah you can uh okay yeah just leave the door open uh no i'm all right it's just the intimacy starts to be forged just by behavior and then all the drama goes away because they can see past your bullshit and they can just see oh look look at the man child look at the she treats me like a child sometimes i deserve it but what i'm saying is what now
Marc:How what are we supposed to have?
Marc:You know, intimate sex, like real stuff.
Marc:We supposed to have emotional trust like that kind of shit.
Marc:I mean, I know what happens then.
Marc:That's where you start eating instead of communicating.
Marc:You start eating instead of fucking.
Marc:You start sneaking out to the garage to masturbate instead of have, you know, an open relationship with an open communication with the person you're with.
Marc:I don't want to get fat.
Marc:number one, and I don't want to jerk off in my garage.
Marc:So I'm just going to have to man up and deal with this relationship and just let myself like this person.
Marc:Is that all right with you guys?
Marc:That's all I'm saying.
Marc:And I'm not going to get fat.
Marc:I'm going to get intimate.
Marc:That's the decision I've made.
Marc:Today on the show, Adam McKay.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:I went over there to Funny or Die slash Gary Sanchez Productions to the offices, and I sat down with Adam McKay for about an hour or so.
Marc:And if you don't know him, he's the director of The Other Guys.
Marc:He directed Step Brothers.
Marc:He directed Talladega Nights, Anchorman.
Marc:He co-wrote a lot of those.
Marc:His production partner is Will Ferrell, and they're doing...
Marc:eastbound and down he's a big force in the comedy world right now a funny or die is uh is his website well look so i sat down with him at his office we had a good conversation here's something else i want to bring up i've been doing this show a while people enjoy the show people like to be on this show people i like to have on the show are on the show
Marc:That's the way it works for me or people who are interesting to me or something exciting.
Marc:That's who I put on the show.
Marc:Now, I do get requests to be on the show.
Marc:Some comics, they email me and they politely say, I don't know if you know me.
Marc:Take a look at my stuff.
Marc:I'd like to be on the show.
Marc:And I talk to them.
Marc:And I'm very excited that people want to be on the show.
Marc:And I'm excited that people like to listen to the show.
Marc:But I got a series of emails the other day that just blew my fucking mind.
Marc:Blew my mind in the sense that, look, I know comics.
Marc:I've been doing this a long time in one form or another.
Marc:You know, I've been around and in this business for a long time now.
Marc:And there's a lot of guys I know.
Marc:There's a lot of guys I know who know guys.
Marc:You know how it is.
Marc:I mean, it's a community.
Marc:We've established that from you listening to the show.
Marc:I get a series of emails out of the blue from a guy I don't know, nor have I ever heard of.
Marc:And I'm not going to mention his name.
Marc:For a couple of reasons.
Marc:He was a fucking dick on these emails, and I couldn't quite believe his angle.
Marc:Look, I'm very proud about what I'm doing here.
Marc:I finally figured out something that I'm pretty good at outside of comedy, and I'm enjoying it, and I'm enjoying talking to comedians.
Marc:But I get these series of emails.
Marc:Here's the first one.
Marc:Subject line.
Marc:Prick fuck alt comics who don't earn any money doing comedy who give advice.
Marc:I'd like to be on your podcast.
Marc:Subject, how I stopped listening to bitter, jaded, angry, dysfunctional prick fuck alt village comics who tell me not to do my style of comedy and now earn over $250,000 a year without ever having a drink, drug, cigarette, or prescription drug and without a single credit card.
Marc:in quotes, meaning a TV credit, without a manager or agent and without being passed at a single club in the city.
Marc:So this guy is basically saying, put me on your show.
Marc:I've done nothing that normal comics do to pay their dues and find their own voice.
Marc:And I have somehow figured out a way to make a quarter million dollars a year and having nobody heard of me.
Marc:Congratulations.
Marc:Then I get another email because I didn't respond to that one.
Marc:P.S.
Marc:One of my YouTube videos is about to hit 900,000 views.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:There are cats that have more views than that.
Marc:Then this.
Marc:This is the one that got me, by the way.
Marc:We'll pay you $1,000 cash if you put me on your podcast.
Marc:And I'm dead serious.
Marc:I did not respond to these things.
Marc:Because I went and looked at his stuff.
Marc:There was a lot of him opening for other people.
Marc:A lot of celebrities bringing him on.
Marc:He's got a lot of footage of corporate gigs that he does with people bringing him on at corporate gigs.
Marc:Did not respond to that.
Marc:To the we'll pay you $1,000 cash.
Marc:P.S.
Marc:$1,000 should buy lots of coke.
Marc:The audacity entitlement of this fucking guy just drove me nuts.
Marc:So I wrote, not going to say his name.
Marc:I appreciate that you want to be on the show.
Marc:I will not have you on the show.
Marc:Your tone is entitled and insulting and you can't buy your way onto my show.
Marc:If you listen to me or the podcast, you would know that I don't do drugs and haven't for years.
Marc:I'm excited to share your emails in this email exchange on the show and talk about how I feel right now.
Marc:I hope that will get you the attention and validation you were looking for.
Marc:Thanks, Marin.
Marc:So after I wrote back to him, he goes, ha ha.
Marc:But as you yourself would say, they're just words, right?
Marc:Funny how that's what it took to get a response.
Marc:Just make sure you spell my name right.
Marc:How about $5,000?
Marc:And then he goes on to write, I'll give you a little background.
Marc:As a working comedian who makes a living, do what I love, earning as much as $15,000 for an hour's work, I'm absolutely sick and tired of quote unquote comedians who tell me that I shouldn't be doing the material I'm doing.
Marc:They tell me I shouldn't be doing ethnic comedy, that I shouldn't be doing impressions, that I shouldn't be doing corporate stuff.
Marc:And what makes this ironic is that many of these people have never earned a single dollar doing comedy.
Marc:So let me interject here.
Marc:So they're willing to take the risk and not making money in order to honor or service their voice.
Marc:Whereas this gentleman would prefer just to sell out completely and then justify himself and still be angry.
Marc:What makes these people who are only doing comedy as an unpaid hobby experts on the art of comedy?
Marc:What gives them the right to tell another artist the type of material he or she shouldn't or shouldn't be doing?
Marc:It's like a heavy metal artist telling another musician that he shouldn't do country music or Rembrandt telling Monet not to do impressionist paintings.
Marc:This guy's got a pretty lofty idea of who he is in the world.
Marc:If this were an occasional problem, I could deal with it, but I'm sick and tired of being hammered day in and day out by these negative loser drug addicts and alcoholics.
Marc:Last time I checked, this is a free country and I have the right to do whatever kind of comedy I feel like doing.
Marc:And I wrote back to him.
Marc:I said, I know exactly who you are and what you are saying.
Marc:And congrats on all your success.
Marc:It is a free country.
Marc:And I will never put you on my podcast.
Marc:You arrogant, entitled, miserable person.
Marc:If you are a comic, I'm glad that you're doing so well with it.
Marc:And it's...
Marc:It's sad that you're so angry and that you have no credits and nobody knows who you are.
Marc:And it's weird because, you know, you were at SNL for years.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I mean, what, from 95 to what, 2001 or something?
Marc:That's right.
Marc:That's very correct.
Guest:And, you know, that environment used to be just a drug hole.
Guest:It was funny.
Guest:We came there and the drug hole times had faded.
Guest:Also used to be a very cutthroat environment and the people the veterans there used to always comment like Where did all these nice people come from like they were almost pissed that we were all so nice because it was like Will Ferrell Molly Shannon.
Guest:Yeah, yeah It was actually a good gang of people.
Guest:Yeah, so the first two years we were there we didn't drug hole it but we drank hole it we did some major drinking and we all got fat and unhealthy and
Guest:And then year two, all of us started working out.
Guest:That's hilarious.
Guest:Everyone lost 30 or 40 pounds because we realized we were going to die if we kept doing what we're doing.
Guest:But, yeah, we had two years of good debauchery for sure.
Marc:But it's just interesting that I don't know if it's –
Marc:Yeah, I don't know if it's by, I guess it wouldn't be because I was thinking your background, did you ever do stand-up?
Guest:I did stand-up in Philadelphia.
Guest:I actually started doing stand-up with Paul F. Tompkins in like 87.
Guest:I was doing stand-up with him.
Guest:In Philly.
Guest:In Philly.
Marc:It was only the two of you in that comedy scene and a bunch of black guys.
Guest:Oh, you're not far off.
Guest:There was a big black comedy scene there.
Guest:I know some of those dudes.
Guest:Yeah, Rocky Wilson was really funny back then.
Guest:I don't know what he was doing.
Guest:Keith Robinson.
Guest:Keith Robinson's around.
Guest:Yeah, Keith was fantastic.
Guest:He's great.
Guest:So yeah, I started doing... I was nothing great.
Guest:I was like an emcee and I middled a couple times.
Guest:And actually my act just got worse and worse every year.
Guest:And by the end I had an act that worked but was terrible.
Guest:So I was like...
Guest:enough of this and I moved to Chicago and did Second City and so it was just that but you knew you didn't want to get out of comedy yeah no I loved comedy and I was a pretty good writer back then I'd done some college radio stuff and I knew I could write sketches and a buddy of mine went to Chicago and studied with Del Close and he came back and he said there's this old hipster teaching this forum where you get on stage you can do whatever you want like you improvise plays and anything you say happens oh we're on the moon and
Guest:And literally, I was just like, I'm coming out there.
Guest:Hold on.
Guest:And I was in my senior year of college.
Guest:I dropped out and sold my comic book collection, got a Chrysler New Yorker from my mom used to work with the elderly.
Guest:A guy died.
Guest:So I bought his Chrysler New Yorker for 800 bucks with a Jethro Tull eight track and listened to Skating Away on the Thin Ice and drove to Chicago and then did improv.
Guest:How long did you grieve the passing of your comic books?
Guest:Not for one second.
Guest:I thought it was the best exchange ever.
Guest:I was like, oh, this is perfect.
Guest:Because you always hear the stories, oh, my mom threw out the comics.
Guest:And it's like I knew exactly what I was getting for him.
Guest:The trade was a car, so I could go do this thing.
Guest:I was like, this actually makes, there's a balance to this.
Guest:What titles did you give up there?
Guest:You know what I had?
Guest:I had a ton of new X-Men.
Guest:I had X-Men 94 all the way through like 140, like doubles of a lot of them, mint condition.
Guest:I had Captain America 100, the new Captain America number one.
Guest:I had a bunch of that kind of stuff.
Guest:I had the Hulk with Wolverine's first appearance.
Guest:That was probably my best book.
Guest:So I got 800 for it.
Guest:If you actually listed it, it might have been worth 3,000, but you never get the list price.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:I was fairly savvy about it.
Marc:That's good.
Marc:I'm talking to Adam McKay at the offices of Gary Sanchez Productions.
Marc:Why that name?
Guest:You know, that is a great, great question.
Guest:I still don't know why.
Guest:Will on his Blackberry put a fake name on his Blackberry.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And just randomly said Gary Sanchez.
Guest:And we were trying to think of a name of the company.
Guest:And I said, what about Gary Sanchez?
Guest:And then only like four months later did I realize most people thought it was a dirty Sanchez reference, which I hate.
Guest:I didn't think that.
Guest:Oh, good, good.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:All right.
Guest:I get that a lot.
Guest:And I'm like, no, not at all.
Guest:I thought it was probably more likely a story like you just told me.
Guest:Now I feel like that's even kind of dull.
Marc:No, it's not dull, but it just had to be something ridiculous, but not dirty.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So Will's your partner in this?
Guest:Will is my partner in this.
Guest:Chris Hensche runs the day-to-day.
Guest:And we have Owen Burke of Upright Citizens Brigade fame is also a producer here.
Guest:Kevin Messick, Jessica Elbaum.
Guest:And yeah, it's like a nice little group of seven or eight people.
Marc:So when you went to Chicago...
Guest:Now you immersed yourself, and Del was still alive.
Guest:Del was still alive, so I had the incredible fortune of getting to study with him.
Marc:Now was Besser, were these contemporaries of yours, Besser, named Polar, and Walsh, and the Upright Citizens of Gay People, is that where you met them?
Guest:That was my group, yeah.
Guest:We started on an improv team, and it was...
Guest:Besser wasn't on.
Guest:It was this guy, Rick Roman, was my friend who had told me to come out.
Guest:And there was a guy named Miles Stroth.
Guest:And then we started recruiting from other groups.
Guest:We'd see someone and go, oh, they're funny.
Guest:So we found Besser on this other team.
Guest:He's like, I want to join you guys.
Guest:And then we saw Ian Roberts on some lower team.
Guest:And we're like, he's funny.
Guest:So we got him.
Guest:And then Neil Flynn came in.
Guest:And so we had this group called The Family that did like, we became Dell's experimental team.
Guest:And we would do kind of new forms for him.
Guest:And
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:So Del, this was towards the end of his life.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And so was he trying to reinvent himself along using you guys?
Guest:He was always reinventing himself.
Guest:I mean, he was always trying new forms and stuff.
Guest:So he was definitely using us to get more elaborate with it.
Guest:You know, we did one called The Deconstruction, a form, an improv form.
Guest:We did one called The Improvised Movie.
Guest:I mean, he always had new forms for us, and we would do them as kind of long-form three-act shows would be what we do.
Guest:And then out of that, we loved doing improv, but Ian, Matt, and myself, and then we met Horatio Sands, decided to go do a group together, the Upright Citizens Brigade.
Guest:What was Deconstruction?
Guest:Deconstruction was you start with a long, fairly serious, improvised scene, and then you break the scene apart through a bunch of other scenes.
Guest:You go backwards, forwards, you take elements, and you kind of shatter the opening scene.
Guest:So if it's the scene between the two of us talking on microphones, then the scene I would go to is you buying the microphones.
Guest:Or I would do, if you asked me about the name for Gary Sanchez, and I said I wish the story was better, then we would do an amazing story about Gary Sanchez.
Guest:So you just take pieces of it and kind of regurgitate it.
Marc:Not that complicated.
Marc:But you don't state the form.
Marc:That's what you start with.
Guest:I think the first couple shows we did, we actually had a program.
Guest:So people that do the deconstruction in Chicago still call it the deconstruction.
Marc:You were there at the beginning of the deconstruction.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:You were an original deconstructivist.
Guest:We were.
Guest:I named it, actually.
Guest:I was an English major, so I had my pretentious English major speak at the ready.
Guest:You were an English major?
Guest:I was an English major.
Guest:As was I.
Guest:Were you really?
Guest:Temple University I went to.
Guest:That's a good one.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I went to BU.
Guest:Did you go to BU?
Guest:I almost went to BU.
Guest:Who were your guys?
Guest:My guys, I was early 20th century American, so I was, who did I love?
Guest:I love Thomas Wolfe.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:A lot of Thomas Wolfe, a lot of Faulkner.
Marc:Yeah, the Faulkner, dude.
Marc:It's just like laboring over the sound and the fury.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, I remember doing that.
Marc:I thought Faulkner had, you know, everything you need to know is in there if you can figure it out.
Guest:If you can figure it out, it's all there.
Guest:And John Dos Passos was big, Sherwood Anderson, all those kinds of dudes.
Guest:And then...
Guest:As I stopped reading what was required, I got more into Henry Miller and the kind of early 20th century stuff.
Guest:Because I was in my early 20s.
Guest:You have to read Henry Miller.
Guest:You got to read about fucking.
Guest:You got to read about fucking so you can slowly approach it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And learn how you're not going to be Henry Miller.
Guest:No.
Guest:You're not.
Guest:In fact, Henry Miller wasn't Henry Miller.
Marc:Takes a lot of energy and a lot of charm to maintain the tropics.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You got to be able to wear a fedora, which I couldn't do.
Guest:So.
Guest:So, yeah, so we got to work on these forms and then we started the Upright Citizens Brigade, which its initial incarnation was more of like a street kind of performance prank group.
Guest:Like we would take audiences back to my house and do a scene in my living room.
Guest:And I advertised my own suicide at one point and actually got on top of a building with like 300 audience members.
Guest:And it was a lot of like leaving the theater and doing live kind of scenes.
Guest:Any arrests?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We had one arrest.
Guest:Horatio Sands got arrested for leading the entire crowd onto North and Damon, busy, busy street, by the way, with tiki torches and plastic guns and calling for the head of Congressman Dan Rostenkowski on a platter.
Guest:And I was supposed to drive by in a car and hit him to end the revolution.
Guest:And as I pulled around, I saw that he had handcuffs on and a cop car was pushing him in.
Guest:And we actually have video footage of it.
Guest:He actually yells, fight the powers.
Guest:He's pushed into the cop car and 300 people cheer.
Guest:And then, of course, as soon as they started driving away, I went, I'm an actor.
Guest:I'm an actor.
Guest:And the revolution was ended the real way.
Guest:Improv over.
Marc:Improv over.
Marc:I assume that the cops did say no and ended the improv.
Guest:They ended the improv and quickly realized Horatio was not a dangerous guy and let him go.
Guest:They did?
Guest:Yeah, they did.
Guest:They did.
Guest:Well, you know what?
Guest:They were scared of cameras.
Guest:That's what it was.
Guest:At that time?
Guest:Because I got pulled over once.
Guest:We used to do an improvised scene where we'd pull an audience member out.
Guest:I'd take him on a car ride like it was a Kerouac trip across the country.
Guest:And one time I got pulled over for doing an illegal turn and the cameraman was next to me and the cop came up yelling at me.
Guest:What the fuck are you doing?
Guest:You can't do that.
Guest:And then he saw the camera and instantly was like, just be careful.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Just be careful.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So but yeah, we had a couple encounters with the police.
Guest:Definitely.
Marc:Now, in terms of like this, like I'm always fascinated by, you know, guys like you have an office.
Guest:and a life and you seem to be you make a lot of movies so as you were you know creating you're pulling together the ucb at the beginning i you you then got a job at snl well yeah i never i mean one of the great advantages i had to doing this kind of work was i had no expectations of grandeur none i was like i love doing improv i love teaching i used to teach
Marc:So you never saw yourself as a guy who ran an operation or as somebody who was getting into show business as a business?
Marc:Never.
Guest:Never.
Guest:Not for one second.
Guest:And any time I would make money from doing it, I'd be like, oh, my God.
Guest:I made $35 teaching improv.
Guest:It felt weird to me.
Guest:I mean, I guess I grew up with...
Guest:working class enough parents that it just didn't jive.
Guest:But I didn't care.
Guest:I was like, I'm broke.
Guest:I have a mangy roommate.
Guest:So what?
Guest:And then so the real turning point was I was in Upright Citizens Brigade.
Guest:We're making no money, but it's fun as hell.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Second City has auditions.
Guest:And at that time, they had just gotten a new artistic director.
Guest:So they were starting to hire some pretty cool people.
Guest:They had hired like Dave Koechner and Brian Stack.
Guest:I know Koechner.
Guest:Yeah, and Stack and Kevin Dorff, who writes for Conan.
Guest:And these were guys who were really respected in the improv world.
Guest:So I was like, you know what, man, I'll just go do an audition.
Guest:Like, how many times do you get to audition with improv?
Guest:So I went by and I got in.
Marc:Now, with Second City at that time, it seems to me that given that the Upright Citizen Brigade were just starting out and that they were doing radical stuff, I mean, Second City was still a more attractive game than you?
Guest:It was the only... I was not thinking I would ever get in.
Guest:I knew they paid, which was just an insane concept to me.
Marc:You were still in Chicago.
Guest:Still in Chicago.
Guest:And I knew that they were starting to do cooler stuff.
Guest:I mean, before that, it was a lot of musical comedy, blackouts.
Guest:Even though they had crazy talented people.
Guest:I mean, they had Colbert.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Colbert was there too?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:So they were all in Second City at that time?
Guest:It was.
Guest:That was one of the other reasons I was interested.
Guest:Because I saw that main stage cast and was like, holy shit, man.
Guest:There's some good stuff going on here.
Guest:And it was Sedaris.
Guest:Colbert, Carell, Paul Daniello.
Guest:Mitch Rouse.
Guest:Mitch Rouse.
Guest:Was he in it?
Guest:No, he was not.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:He had done more of the improv road.
Guest:And then there was a woman, Fran Adams and Ruthie Rudnick.
Marc:Was David Sedaris part of it too?
Marc:No.
Guest:No.
Guest:And so I saw that show and we were blown away.
Guest:Carell was the guy.
Guest:We were like, holy.
Guest:Carell and Colbert.
Guest:We're like, wow, these guys are really sharp.
Guest:And so suddenly it wasn't as square to go to Second City.
Guest:It was like, all right, well, they're doing some cool shit.
Guest:Some of my friends just got hired.
Guest:I'll audition and see what happens.
Guest:That was my thinking.
Guest:So I auditioned.
Guest:I got into the touring company.
Guest:And you tour around the colleges and you do these little shows and stuff.
Guest:And it was pretty fun.
Guest:I was with Jay Johnstone from Mr. Show, was in my group.
Guest:He's a genius.
Guest:I love Jay.
Guest:We became really good friends.
Guest:We did a lot of stuff together.
Guest:I introduced him to Paul Tompkins later, and they ended up doing Mr. Show together.
Guest:We had a guy named Pat Finn was in our group.
Guest:We had really funny people in our group, and Correll would sometimes come with us.
Guest:So I did that, and then it became apparent that it was taking too much time, so I had to quit the Upright Citizens Brigade.
Guest:I remember Besser was very pissed at me, but I'm like, dude, I'm broke.
Guest:I have no money, and this is actually kind of fun.
Marc:And so that was before they put the school together and everything else.
Guest:Oh, well before.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:We were a, you know, we had gotten really good reviews in Chicago.
Guest:We'd done some shows that had sold out, so we had a little name going for ourselves.
Guest:But, you know, at the most you're making $40 a weekend or, you know, it's just not enough to do anything.
Guest:And I'm starting to get to my mid-20s, so, you know, sleeping on the friend's couch is getting a little...
Guest:I have pretty high tolerance for shitty living, but it was starting to push that.
Guest:So I got into Second City, and then, lo and behold, had a lot of fun.
Guest:They let us write original material for The Road.
Guest:We were doing long-form improv, which they hadn't really done there before.
Marc:And sketch.
Marc:I mean, you guys did write sketch.
Marc:Jay and I wrote a ton of stuff together.
Marc:That you'd perform on stage.
Marc:It wasn't strictly improv then.
Guest:It wasn't strictly improv.
Guest:It was original written pieces, greatest hits, and then we would do our improv.
Guest:So we were doing stuff like Mini Heralds and Deconstructions and...
Guest:Doing them in like, you know, St.
Guest:Louis or, you know, North Dakota Teachers College or something like that.
Guest:Were there bad gigs?
Guest:Oh, plenty.
Guest:We did one at a Christian university and the previous act that had come the year before was Carrot Top.
Guest:And it was dead silence the entire show and some booze.
Guest:And when we got off, the first thing the guy said is, well, I should have hired Carrot Top again.
Guest:I mean, you know, so we had those.
Marc:You offended them with the opening Jesus as a woman bit?
Guest:They did not appreciate that.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Da Vinci Code hadn't come out.
Guest:You know, the ideas weren't in people's heads.
Yeah.
Guest:So, but we had a fucking blast, man.
Guest:It was like we would laugh our asses off in the van.
Guest:We would just do bits all day long.
Marc:It's funny that like a lot of people don't realize that because I talked to Paul Scheer about this as well recently that, you know, the improv guys do this same road shit.
Marc:I mean, I always draw these lines between stand-up and improv, but there is a world of improv where you guys go out and do shitty gigs.
Guest:No question.
Guest:No question.
Guest:I've done my fair share.
Guest:I mean, we did one with the family with Besser and Ian that was at like a Catholic carnival.
Guest:And we used to do an improv game called The Dream, where you would bring a guy up, he'd tell you about his day, and then you'd do his dream that night.
Guest:Pretty simple game, always kills, because it's audience involvement.
Guest:And you could actually do cool stuff with it.
Guest:So we bring a guy up, and about a minute into it, we realize he's got a learning disability.
Guest:And he's just a sweet, like, 19-year-old guy who's really slow.
Guest:And we're all looking at each other like, what do you do?
Guest:You can't make fun of this guy's stuff.
Guest:And it was one of those great moments I compared to like 12 Angry Men where something wonderful happened that no one will ever know about.
Guest:We all just did verbatim his day with no laughs whatsoever, ate it, and then just ended the show.
Guest:And it was like we all kind of looked at each other like we did the right thing.
Guest:But yeah, you get crazy jobs off of that.
Marc:And then at a Second City, that's where you got the opportunity for SNL?
Guest:Well, I had a great experience where Tom Giannis was a director there who later went on to write for SNL Live.
Guest:And he came to me and he was doing the main stage show.
Guest:And I was doing, they have a second theater there called Second City ETC.
Guest:And I was in there.
Guest:And it was all right.
Guest:I was kind of missing Upright Citizens Brigade.
Guest:By now, I think they had started using Matt Walsh.
Guest:Missing him why?
Guest:Because of the structure?
Guest:Yeah, because we were doing crazy great shit with the Upright Citizens.
Guest:But the Second City had sort of a work ethic.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:I'd just done a show that was so-so.
Guest:It was okay.
Guest:It had some funny stuff, and there were some good people, but it just...
Guest:I wasn't excited about it.
Guest:I wasn't telling my friends, like, you've got to see this.
Guest:So I was actually thinking of quitting.
Guest:I was actually thinking, like, you know what?
Guest:The only reason I do this, if I just want to make money, I'll be a bank teller, so I might as well quit.
Guest:And I remember my friends going, you can't do that.
Guest:You're, like, on a stage.
Guest:People die for it.
Guest:I'm like, I don't care.
Guest:I want to do cool stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:tom janice came to me and i kind of got to be friendly with him and he said look i'm doing a main stage show i want to break every rule and i want you to do it to do it and they have a pecking order there you're supposed to kind of go in order of seniority for who gets on the main stage and i'm like well i just got here he's like i don't care i'm gonna bring you on the main stage and i said you're for real like we can really do whatever we want to do and he's like yes i mean it and so we started having lunches and he would ask me like if you could open a show any way you wanted what would you do and i'd say well
Guest:I'd put the cast in gas masks and I'd accuse the audience of crimes against humanity.
Guest:And he'd go, all right, great.
Guest:And they'd go, what else would you do?
Guest:And he would just ask me these crazy questions.
Guest:And I would give him dream answers like I've always wanted to do this.
Guest:And then there was already a little bit of a holdover main stage cast.
Guest:But then he went and he picked other people like John Glazier from Delocated.
Guest:I know Glazier, yeah.
Guest:Rachel Dratch.
Guest:And he started handpicking other people.
Guest:And he told everyone, we're not doing a traditional show.
Guest:And so we did this show called Pinata Full of Bees.
Guest:It was heavily political, aggressive, strange.
Guest:Tina Fey too or no?
Guest:Not yet.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:And so we did this show and it was sort of like the show that broke the rules at Second City and half the people hated it and half the people loved it.
Guest:It ended up being their longest running show and they still talk about it today.
Guest:You know, it's kind of got a little.
Guest:Political themes?
Guest:Huge political themes.
Guest:There's a scene where I played Noam Chomsky as a substitute teacher for a second grade class.
Guest:Oh my God, I just got tired.
Guest:It killed, though, because I would explain the real Thanksgiving and the kids would be horrified by what I'd say.
Guest:And we sort of figured out how to do kind of that kind of comedy in the right dose and size.
Guest:So the whole audience was laughing.
Guest:And out of scenes, we would just freeze the scene and pop up and give statistics about, you know, defense spending versus welfare spending.
Guest:And then, boom, go right back into the scene.
Guest:You'd actually get laughs off the timing of it.
Guest:And we didn't do any, like, musical theatery stuff.
Guest:We used all, like, cuts of songs we liked.
Guest:You did real satire.
Guest:We did real satire.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:As opposed to entertainment.
Guest:And we ended the show by getting the audience to throw their blockbuster cards on stage.
Guest:And we cut them in half because they're editing movies in a right wing family.
Guest:And by the end of the run, we had like 20,000 blockbuster cards cut in half.
Guest:So, yeah.
Guest:So it was one of the I call it one of the greatest creative experiences to this day I've ever had.
Guest:It was like complete freedom.
Guest:a cast in sync, a director in sync, and we got to do exactly the show we wanted to do.
Guest:We had no lights up, lights down.
Guest:We smashed down the stage.
Guest:It was just a brick wall, and it was like, yeah, it was one of those amazing experiences.
Marc:And you were able to get audiences around it over time.
Marc:Packed.
Marc:Yeah, because we had enough laughs.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that's when I kind of started to learn.
Guest:If you get laughs, you can do anything you want.
Guest:You can shove anything you want into someone's head.
Guest:You really can.
Guest:If you get laughs.
Guest:It's true.
Guest:And so then I got hired for Siren Live off of that.
Guest:They came and saw the show.
Guest:Lauren loved the show.
Marc:Well, it's probably reminded them what the show used to be on some level.
Guest:I think so.
Guest:I think that early 70s kind of had that vibe to it.
Marc:It's interesting.
Marc:Have you watched the first season of SNL lately?
Guest:Yeah, I don't know what you're going to say, but I'll say this.
Guest:It's surprisingly shitty.
Marc:Well, not only is it shitty, but there's very little comedy.
Marc:Very little comedy.
Marc:You know what it was?
Marc:It was more about cool people...
Marc:It was based on the variety show model.
Marc:I think it was sort of based on Catch a Rising Star where you'd have a singer, a comic, and then like several commercial parodies and maybe one sketch.
Guest:Exactly, exactly.
Guest:And when I say shitty, I just mean the one sketch would last 16 minutes and would go long stretches without laughs.
Guest:And so I don't mean shitty because it was really cool.
Marc:I remember when I was 13.
Marc:I don't know how old you are.
Marc:How old are you?
Marc:I'm 42.
Marc:I'm 47.
Marc:So I remember watching it.
Marc:And in my mind, it has this mythic place.
Marc:And then when I jumped through the hoops with Lauren, you know, at some point, you know, an audition process.
Guest:Oh, you were going to maybe do update at one point.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I remember hearing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And and what happened was what I remember in conversation with him, he's very careful.
Marc:He's very deliberate in saying that.
Marc:He doesn't want that first cast to be held as mythic as they are.
Marc:Because he's very careful to say, look, we've had a lot of good casts.
Marc:It's true, though.
Guest:Oh, no, it is true.
Marc:At that moment, I was like, fuck you, man, Belushi.
Marc:There's no Belushis.
Marc:And then I realized I'm limited in my thinking.
Guest:I say the best seasons are the Phil Hartman, Mike Myers, Jan Hooks.
Guest:Those seasons when Jack Handy was in his prime.
Yeah.
Guest:Those seasons were amazing.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:That's when, like, Downey and Conan and Odenkirk and all those guys and Smigel were all in rare form.
Marc:I think that the weird thing that I start to realize, and even talking to you and sort of how your career has evolved, is that...
Marc:Initially, the success of it was no one knew that would happen.
Marc:And Lorne was taking a chance.
Marc:And he was dealing with these drugged up, wacky kind of Second City people and some New York radio people and whoever they were.
Marc:And it worked out.
Marc:It got a following.
Marc:But then as it became a machine, the demand for new and real comedy talent, writing, sort of people that take chances.
Marc:Sure, sure.
Marc:I mean, it sort of evolved into that and became the place where people sort of cut their teeth.
Guest:Well, all of a sudden it became monetized, monetized, because it's like, well, the Bees were a big hit.
Guest:Samurai Deli was a big hit.
Guest:Why aren't you doing more of that?
Guest:That's the stuff that's making the money.
Guest:And so that easygoing early vibe of, hey, here's Leon Redbone.
Marc:Where is Leon Redbone now?
Guest:Lazy boy.
Guest:Paul Tompkins and I used to joke that there have been seven Leon Redbones that he's like the Philly mascot.
Marc:Yeah, that's funny.
Marc:I'm close to Leon Redbone now too with facial hair.
Guest:Yeah, that's right.
Guest:Right now it's the Tom Gion Leon Redbone, who I like a lot.
Guest:It's like the first Doctor Who, you know?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:He's a good one now.
Guest:He's a little more wiry and more in his nose.
Guest:Have you seen him recently?
Guest:I saw the Dave Jangers Leon Redbone in 82.
Guest:And then I saw the Steve Tamez Leon Redbone, who I liked a lot.
Guest:But this guy now is my favorite.
Guest:So...
Guest:But yeah, that easygoing kind of we're smoking pot between scenes kind of vibe, which was really infectious.
Guest:You could feel it, that these were some of the coolest people in New York.
Guest:I like that too, yeah.
Guest:That definitely went away.
Guest:It got tighter and more aggressive.
Guest:Who was there when you got there?
Guest:Who was the crew?
Guest:I was during the turnover.
Guest:I was there.
Guest:I came in 95 when they had done the New York Magazine Saturday Night Live dead cover that said the show was done with.
Guest:So they had to let a lot of their cast go and a lot of their writers go.
Guest:So there was like a group of, I'm going to say 12 new writers and like seven new cast members came in.
Guest:It was a total changeover.
Guest:The only holdovers at that time were Fred Wolf, who's one of my favorite sketch writers.
Marc:I remember him as a comic.
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:He's a funny dude.
Guest:And then we had Tim Meadows was still there.
Guest:Molly Shannon was a holdover, but not really.
Guest:She had been a featured player.
Guest:And Steve Coren was a holdover.
Guest:Jim Downey was a holdover.
Guest:There were a couple left, but basically it was a new group.
Marc:Who was in that cast?
Marc:I can't remember.
Guest:That was Will Ferrell.
Guest:That was Molly became a big player.
Guest:That was, oh God, Sherry Oteri.
Guest:That was Tim Meadows became a big player in that cast.
Guest:We had Jim Brewer, who hates me, by the way.
Guest:Why?
Guest:He thinks I'm the one who fired him from Saturday Night Live.
Guest:Were you a head writer or just a writer?
Guest:Well, I did one year as staff writer, and then the next year I got promoted to head writer.
Guest:How long did you hold that?
Guest:I was head writer for three years, and then I was going to quit.
Guest:I thought, time to move on.
Guest:And then my manager, Jimmy Miller, said, well, you should make a really unreasonable demand.
Guest:So I said, I want to raise, I don't want to have to ever go to a production meeting.
Guest:I won't be head writer anymore, but I want to name my credit and I want to make short films.
Guest:And he said, yes.
Guest:So I was coordinator of Falconry for two years.
Guest:My last two years.
Guest:Coordinator of Falconry?
Guest:Yeah, I actually have it framed right there.
Guest:The actual credit.
Guest:They put that on the credit?
Guest:And they actually put that in the credit.
Guest:And that was my job for my last two years.
Guest:I made short films, wrote sketches and just hung around.
Guest:It was a blast.
Guest:And creatively, what was the impetus that you wanted to have the freedom to start doing movies?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I had done the head writer thing for three years.
Guest:What you learn pretty quickly is it is Lorne's show.
Guest:I mean, you know, I would fight.
Guest:I got tenacious D on the show.
Guest:I did some good stuff.
Guest:I pushed for more political stuff.
Guest:But ultimately, it's his show.
Guest:He has a way he wants to see it, which I totally understand.
Guest:He freaking created it.
Guest:And you realize there's only so much pushing and shoving you can do within that.
Guest:And I had ideas for how I wanted it to be.
Guest:And at a certain point I'd look at myself through Lauren's eye and goes, God, I must be so obnoxious to him.
Guest:Like, you know, I'm telling him like, let's just swing the camera over and go into another scene right away.
Guest:Like stuff like that.
Guest:Like he just must be like, Oh God.
Guest:You know?
Guest:So I was like, yeah, I'll leave and I'll go work on a, maybe I'll pitch my own show.
Guest:I had some ideas and start writing screenplays and, um,
Guest:Uh, and then I stayed and did those shorts and those ended up being the greatest thing ever.
Guest:Cause it was like, I got to learn how to make movies, you know, and I had a real crew and I worked with Steve Buscemi and Willem Dafoe and Ben Stiller and shot 16 millimeter.
Guest:And then the second year I did digital shorts and any crazy idea I got to shoot, uh, I got to do.
Marc:And, uh, and you had people, you had, you know, you could draw from the, the, the crew as a cinematographer and that kind of stuff.
Guest:I went and got an independent producer, this guy John Irwin, who now produces the celebrity rehab shows, which I haven't talked to him in a long time.
Guest:You might want to talk to him.
Guest:I think he might need an intervention.
Marc:A TV intervention.
Guest:By the way, if you're John Irwin, don't you get a drinking problem just so everything collapses on itself?
Guest:And so he got me a DP.
Guest:This guy, what was his name?
Guest:Anthony Clark, I think his name was.
Guest:And he went on to shoot the Bruno movie.
Guest:He's actually been pretty successful.
Guest:He was an amazing DP.
Guest:And I had my own crew, and it was an amazing experience.
Guest:Now, so you met Will Ferrell at SNL?
Guest:Yeah, we met.
Guest:We were both hired on the same day, 95, but we all thought he was the straight man for the cast because he's a very normal guy when you meet him.
Guest:He seems very unassuming, and he's not a bad-looking guy.
Guest:And we thought we must've needed like a Brad Hall guy.
Guest:Like that's who he is.
Guest:And meanwhile, we're all rambunctious, loud from Chicago.
Guest:It's Kechner, it's me.
Guest:Tom Giannis is a hockey player and we're doing constant bits and drinking beer and just, you know, being jerks basically.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Will's pretty quiet, pretty normal guy.
Guest:So we're just, hey, whatever.
Guest:You know, nice guy.
Guest:Don't even think anything of it.
Guest:I start writing with Norm Hiscock, who's the former head writer for Kids in the Hall.
Guest:He and I hit it off.
Guest:And we kind of have our little group.
Guest:And then the first read-through, Will just uncorks.
Guest:And you hear these characters come out of him you can't believe.
Guest:And he's written sketches.
Guest:And we're like, holy shit, this guy's...
Guest:But that's even still not how I started working with him.
Guest:Then we just started hanging out.
Guest:And he was one of the few LA guys who would do bits with us, who would, you know, we'd go to a bar and he would wear like some cardboard Stanley Cup hat that had been sent to SNL as a promotional item.
Guest:And I would tell the bartender he's Cuphead from the Rangers games.
Guest:I don't know how you want to handle this.
Guest:You got a celebrity in the place.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we'd all chant Cuphead and act like he's this guy from Rangers games.
Guest:And so he was just game.
Guest:We do crazy shit like that all the time.
Marc:Well, I think he's like, you know, I picture myself.
Marc:I'd like to interview him.
Marc:But I find him so funny.
Marc:I don't really even know who that guy is, which is one of the reasons I do this show.
Marc:He seems to have this rare gift of being able to just turn something on in himself, and everything is just funny.
Guest:I always think the spirit of it is that he likes to fuck with people.
Guest:That's basically it.
Guest:He's a crank phone call guy at heart.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so nothing makes us laugh harder than playing ridiculous shit with the best deadpan you can play it with.
Guest:He's a prankster.
Guest:He is.
Guest:He, I would say all of our movies are a joke that we're even making them as movies.
Guest:That's like part of the inherent joke of him is that they gave us this equipment and let us do this.
Marc:But he also has a lot of heart to his comedic persona.
Marc:It's just sort of, it's sort of interesting that like, I, for some reason there's that moment in, uh, I don't, I don't think it was one of your movies though, but I'm going to bring it up anyways.
Marc:The moment in old school,
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Where, where he's about to take that first drink.
Marc:Oh, it's the best.
Marc:You know, when it hits your lips, it's good.
Marc:It's bitter when it goes down, but it tastes.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Just that moment.
Marc:It's so human to me.
Marc:I, it's like, like out of a lot of moments and he just, uh, he seems like a heart, a heart.
Guest:Well, he's also an incredibly decent guy.
Guest:I mean, he's a very healthy dude.
Guest:He doesn't have a runaway ego.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He loves his family.
Guest:I mean, he likes to, you know, and he's also one of those guys who's not such a good guy that it's annoying.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He's, you know, he'll drink too much sometimes and, you know, gossip and,
Guest:But he's a good-hearted guy.
Guest:But he's a really decent guy.
Guest:So the relationship just evolved out of a friendship?
Guest:We finally wrote a sketch together.
Guest:I think it was late in our first year.
Guest:We wrote one called Neil Diamond Storytellers, which was him as Neil Diamond doing the old storyteller show.
Guest:And all the stories behind his banal pop songs were just hideous stories of hit and runs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we hit it off.
Guest:We wrote that sketch.
Guest:It worked really well.
Guest:And we're just easy writing with each other.
Guest:We're not big overthinkers.
Guest:I mean, you know, we rewrite, but we're not crazy wringing your hand kind of guys.
Guest:We're like, look, it should have fun.
Guest:It should have a flow to it.
Guest:And then we just started writing together.
Guest:And then he had a slot.
Guest:He owed a movie to Paramount after one of those early SNL adaptation movies he did.
Guest:And so we wrote a car salesman script together called August Blowout, which never got made.
Guest:But it was so much fun writing it.
Guest:He's like, let's do it again.
Guest:And we wrote Anchorman together, which also we couldn't get made.
Guest:You couldn't get it made?
Guest:Oh, God, no.
Guest:That took like every studio in town said no to it.
Guest:How strong was his celebrity at that point?
Guest:He had not hit.
Guest:That was it.
Guest:He had had like Roxbury had made a profit.
Guest:Everyone in the comedy world knew he was the next big thing.
Guest:But the studio heads aren't as connected to that.
Guest:From them, it's just purely about the numbers.
Guest:What has he done?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Then our script was crazy on top of it for that time.
Guest:So we rewrote it.
Guest:It was actually really crazy when we first wrote it.
Guest:And then we toned it down, and it was still pretty crazy.
Guest:And several studios said, we already said no to this.
Guest:Don't ever send us this again.
Guest:They were mad.
Guest:And then Old School hit.
Guest:And right after Old School hit, DreamWorks called us and said, let's do it again.
Guest:We want to do Anchorman, and we got to make it.
Guest:So...
Marc:And it's funny as hell.
Guest:Oh, thanks, man.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, it was fun.
Guest:That was that and the Second City show are two of the great creative experiences I've ever had.
Guest:I mean, we just improvised and it was all friends and it was just we once again did whatever we wanted to do and DreamWorks was very cool about it.
Marc:And the cameos, too, were pretty big.
Marc:Vince Vaughn had a big part in it, but Ben Stiller, Tim Robbins.
Guest:Stiller, Tim Robbins, Luke Wilson.
Guest:Once again, these are all people we kind of knew.
Guest:I knew Robbins through my wife had worked at his theater, and I'd met him a couple times.
Guest:Stiller had loved our car salesman script, so I knew Ben, and when he hosted, I wrote some stuff for him on SNL.
Guest:Luke, obviously, was old-school connect for Will, and it's just, you know... And Vince Vaughn was a... I didn't know... Is he an improv guy?
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:He took a little bit of improv in Chicago, but he's a dynamo man.
Guest:You wind him up and watch him go.
Guest:He can flow, so...
Guest:Everyone was on the same page.
Guest:We all knew what we thought was funny.
Guest:And we got the look right.
Guest:We knew it was going to be the 70s, but we didn't want to go bell bottoms and high heeled shoes.
Guest:We wanted to look fairly real, which still looks ridiculous.
Guest:And just had a freaking blast.
Guest:We had enough money that we could make it look not too crappy.
Guest:We had 20 million bucks, which for us was a king's ransom.
Guest:And just shot.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And at that point, is that when you realize like, you know, we've got, we've got a machine here that we've got, let's, let's feed this thing.
Marc:Let's do as many Farrell or both the McKay and Farrell projects as possible.
Marc:I mean, at that point, it was pretty clear that it was a business.
Guest:No, no, because here's what you forget about Anchorman.
Guest:Anchorman did pretty good, but it didn't do great in the box office.
Guest:It made $85 million, which definitely made a nice profit.
Guest:It wasn't until a year, but we did go off the good buzz on it before it was released.
Guest:We set up a deal for our next movie at Sony.
Guest:So we're like, we still felt like, oh, maybe we can do another one.
Guest:We're still in that mindset.
Guest:And then it was a year after Anchorman came out that it started to click.
Guest:I started seeing people on Halloween dressed up for it.
Guest:We started hearing quotes.
Guest:And then in the middle of shooting our next movie, Talladega, it all of a sudden started getting to be like, oh my God, I'm hearing a lot about this movie.
Guest:Like...
Guest:this is getting a little weird.
Guest:Like, and then I read about a Anchorman festival in England where they were like meeting once a year and like, and then it started to, and then Talladega was working.
Guest:And then off of that, we started thinking maybe we should form a production company.
Guest:This is actually getting pretty good.
Guest:We work so easily together.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:At that point, I don't think we ever said the word business, but we just thought, let's keep doing this and let's do more fun, crazy shit was kind of our approach to it.
Marc:Now, Talladega, you also pay a lot of attention to detail there as well.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And how much of that?
Guest:Did you get a lot of active sponsorship?
Guest:We got no money for that.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Sony won't take money for product placement.
Guest:I don't know where that integrity came from in a corporation.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:Maybe it's because they're Japanese-based or something, but they will not allow you to take it out.
Guest:They didn't want to do the paperwork.
Guest:Yeah, that's it.
Guest:Because they still do it by hand over there.
Guest:They have a mimeograph machine.
Guest:I wanted real products because real products are disgusting.
Guest:When you see them pop up in movies, they make me actually twist a little bit when I see them.
Guest:And that's all NASCAR is, is just products everywhere.
Guest:And it's a little gross.
Guest:It makes you a little vomitous.
Guest:So I kept saying, I got to get real products.
Guest:And they're like, well, they don't pay for it.
Guest:I was like, I don't care.
Guest:Like, will they give us permission?
Guest:So we had written in the script Wonder Bread for him and Old Spice for Riley.
Guest:And both companies said yes.
Guest:Why not?
Guest:And then, well, you know, are you making fun?
Guest:I mean, we kind of were making fun of it a little bit.
Guest:And it's interesting.
Guest:Old Spice changed their ad campaigns after that movie.
Guest:They became the tongue-in-cheek product.
Guest:Before that, they were just legitimate Old Spice.
Guest:And then all their commercials are jokes.
Guest:So they kind of went with it.
Guest:So, yeah, we got all these grotesque products.
Guest:We literally interrupted a scene and played an Applebee's commercial at one point.
Guest:And it was funny because after it came out, there were a lot of people like...
Guest:You sell out.
Guest:She took money for it.
Guest:And how much money did you make for it?
Guest:We didn't make a dime.
Marc:But you were trying to capture really what defines Americana and what defines that culture.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Like the opening dinner scene where you pan across the table and it's KFC.
Guest:It's Taco Bell.
Guest:It's Burger King.
Guest:It's Coke.
Guest:It's...
Guest:And then they're wearing jackets with sponsors on them, Powerade, and that's their dinner table.
Marc:Yeah, it's so funny because I imagine I would have been one of those people that thought they made a fortune.
Marc:They paid for the movie with these sponsorships.
Marc:But the more you think about it, it's just weird and over the top.
Guest:You have to do it because it's disgusting.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Now, in terms of like, you know, because I know that, you know, your politics, I've read some of your stuff on Huffington Post.
Marc:I've seen some of the stuff you've done the death panel shorts on Funny or Die.
Guest:Oh, thanks, man.
Marc:You're pretty outspoken.
Marc:It's great stuff.
Marc:Now, obviously, we draw lines around NASCAR fans.
Marc:Like NASCAR fans is sort of a way of saying red state.
Marc:It's a way of saying, you know, those people.
Guest:Or red state is a way of saying NASCAR fans.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now, what was the reaction?
Guest:So we went down there.
Guest:You have to go live there.
Guest:So we're in North Carolina.
Guest:We're in Alabama.
Guest:Here's the trick.
Guest:Will and I have tons of family from the South.
Guest:I got nothing wrong.
Guest:I love the South.
Guest:There's cool cities, Asheville, Athens.
Guest:And there's good people.
Guest:Louisville, great people.
Guest:Very friendly.
Guest:Nothing but good times.
Guest:Somehow when they go into the voting booth, they lose their minds.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So my big thing when I walked away was, like, why don't Democratic candidates go to these NASCAR races?
Guest:Take the booze on the chin.
Guest:Because the big trick is they're just not even exposed to the idea that, like, free market is bullshit.
Marc:They're not even exposed to the idea that, you know... When I talk about that in my act, I say it's interesting that, you know, you have these people who we categorize, like a NASCAR fan, who are, you know, so quick to call Obama socialist and afraid of socialism, but that really have no...
Marc:a problem supporting a communist government through product purchase.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:That, you know, they, they, most of their NASCAR gear, I'd imagine a lot of it is made in China and that more of what they think.
Guest:Oh, 100% probably.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And they, and for some reason their intellect doesn't cross that line.
Guest:Or they, they somehow have no problem giving 48 billion in oil subsidies to companies that are the most profitable in the world, but yet they hate welfare.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, like, and, and really, I mean, let's face it.
Guest:The whole thing that's led to this insanity we're in is an information blockade.
Guest:That's what it is.
Guest:I mean,
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:It's an information blockade.
Marc:And we live in a world where now people can really cherry pick the information they decide is true.
Marc:Yep.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's untethered.
Guest:It's untethered.
Guest:And they got very comfortable with certain myths that are fun myths.
Guest:God, I wish they were true, by the way.
Guest:Myths are powerful.
Guest:If the right wing was true, it'd be really fun.
Guest:It would mean we're the best in the world.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You just got to be tough.
Guest:You can pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
Guest:There's no systems at work.
Guest:It's all about heart and character.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:That'd be fucking awesome, by the way.
Guest:It's a fair playing field.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I love it.
Guest:And if you have a gun, you can protect your family.
Guest:You're not 60% more likely to get shot if you have a gun in your house.
Guest:You're going to fucking... Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's Charles Bronson.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So I wish that was true.
Guest:But so these myths are so comfortable and they were all marketed and advertised.
Guest:And, you know, it's the Marlboro man just went into politics.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so now the information has been so cut off.
Guest:You just talk to people that have no idea that like the second biggest owner of Fox is a...
Guest:Sheik, who contributes to suicide bombers' families.
Guest:I mean, that's jarring if you hear that.
Marc:Yeah, and also they can go, that's just the way they're spinning it.
Marc:You notice that's not on Fox, but then you're like, no, it is.
Marc:The guy was on Fox.
Guest:Yeah, but that, you guys are spinning it.
Guest:No, it's a fact.
Guest:Here's the actual shares that he owes.
Marc:Sure, he's called a fact, but...
Marc:I know the difference between spin and fact, and that's spin.
Guest:Well, you know what they'll do?
Guest:They'll do the move at that point, which I call the jump out, which is you jump out of the conversation and then go completely, so you go, oh, all right, here the shares are.
Guest:You know what, though?
Guest:You liberals, let me tell you something.
Marc:Oh, yeah, change the subject.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, change the subject.
Guest:So Talladega Nights, we- So you're down there as assassins.
Guest:We a couple times felt like it, but here's the thing.
Guest:Like I said, I love the South.
Guest:It's frustrating to me that nine of the 10 poorest states are in the South.
Guest:Like why, why?
Guest:So we said we don't want to be attacking these people.
Guest:We want to just be looking at what's going on and having fun with it.
Guest:And if we have fun with it, if we poke fun as opposed to attack, we'll be okay.
Guest:We wanted to make Patton.
Guest:We wanted to make the movie that you could go see it.
Guest:And if you loved Patton, you thought it was great.
Guest:If you hate Patton, you thought it was great.
Guest:So that's what we did.
Marc:So Talladega Nights is really Patton.
Guest:It's Patton.
Guest:It is.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And George C. Scott is in several scenes if you look closely.
Guest:And so, yeah, and that's the way it played.
Guest:People down south loved it, laughed their asses off, knew we were poking fun at them.
Guest:There were a couple extreme right wing things that were like, these liberals are attacking us.
Guest:But it seemed like you had respect for the sport.
Guest:In the movie, almost.
Guest:Well, you know, I'll tell you, walk onto a NASCAR track, and when those cars start up, you're like you're on the deck of an aircraft carrier.
Guest:It's pretty fucking awesome.
Guest:Now, here's where you lose me is five hours into the race.
Guest:I'm getting a little tired.
Guest:You're used to the sound.
Guest:I get it.
Guest:you've acclimated nobody crashes what's happening the colors are you gotta keep drinking adam you just gotta sit there in the middle and keep drinking and hope and hope a car when it flips over and flies into the stands doesn't hit you and you know what that doesn't happen anymore because they've made it all so safe so the wrecks aren't even that they ruined it they ruined it by saving human lives um so uh yeah i suddenly am checking cricket scores on my iphone at that point oh boy yeah you should i'm glad you didn't make that public
Guest:No, no, no, no.
Guest:I had to wait before I said, no, I'm still not a NASCAR fan.
Guest:Because everyone would ask you, go, yeah, it's pretty cool.
Guest:No, I never have watched it since that movie was done with.
Guest:I like the NFL, I like NBA, and I like soccer.
Marc:Now, with John C. Reilly, he's sort of like their kindred spirits, it seems, Will and John.
Guest:Oh, my God, yeah.
Marc:But, you know, he wasn't, he didn't, is it true in saying that he didn't really see himself as a comedic actor initially?
Yeah.
Guest:Well, you know how it is, Mark.
Guest:It's like people always say, oh, you're a comic.
Guest:You're into politics.
Guest:You're a drama.
Guest:I mean, there's tons of technically dramatic actors who are wickedly funny, like John Hamm from Mad Men is another guy like that.
Guest:And Alec Baldwin was always funny, but then he finally started doing comedy.
Guest:John C. Rowley is one of those guys.
Guest:And Boogie Nights is really kind of a comedy, if you look at it.
Guest:Oh, no, absolutely.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we had him do the initial read-through for Anchorman when we couldn't get it made, and he killed us.
Guest:He was so frickin' funny.
Guest:So right at that moment, Will and I were like, we got to get him in something.
Guest:We got to get him in something.
Guest:So we had to get on the phone and kind of talk him into doing Talladega.
Guest:And then when we hit that set, we were just blown away.
Guest:The guy can improvise.
Guest:Everything's grounded.
Guest:He's wicked smart.
Guest:He shows up when it's not his scene to throw out ideas because he knows I like to collaborate like that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's a monster, man.
Guest:Oh, that guy is one of the best creative creatures on planet Earth.
Marc:So you did Step Brothers with him.
Guest:And then we went into Step Brothers and we said, all right, we've had a good little run here.
Guest:Let's do a movie that probably isn't going to do as well, that's filthy, dirty.
Guest:You knew that?
Guest:We actually said that.
Guest:Will and I sat down.
Guest:It did all right, though, didn't it?
Guest:Oh, it did great.
Guest:It actually did better than we thought it would.
Guest:Will and I sat down and we said, we're making an R-rated comedy that's absurdist.
Guest:We might only make $60 million on this.
Guest:Are you cool with that?
Guest:Only $60 million.
Guest:Well, but that would be a failure given the budget.
Guest:Basically, we said we might lose money on this.
Guest:And he said, I'm good with that.
Guest:And I said, I'm good with that, too.
Guest:Let's do it.
Guest:And then we actually did great.
Guest:We made $125.
Guest:The studio made money.
Guest:The DVD sold great.
Guest:Blah, blah, blah.
Guest:So it worked out great.
Guest:But that was kind of our, like, let's really cut loose.
Marc:And what was the thinking around Land of the Lost?
Guest:I was not a writer.
Guest:That wasn't me.
Yeah.
Guest:Here's the thinking, though, I'll tell you, because I certainly hear about this stuff.
Guest:But you produced it.
Guest:I was listed as a producer because I paired the screenwriters who wrote it.
Guest:And they wrote this great, crazy script.
Guest:And then immediately it became apparent this movie was torn between being a geeky, funny, sci-fi comedy and a family movie.
Guest:Well, the weird thing was... And that crushed it.
Guest:That killed that movie.
Guest:That's what it was.
Guest:Oh, because it wasn't clear?
Guest:It was not clear.
Guest:And they tried to cut it both ways.
Marc:But what I couldn't understand is, like, as a... I grew up with Land of the Lost.
Guest:I love Land of the Lost.
Guest:Well, my brother did, and I didn't like it.
Guest:I got a sleeve stack on my wall right there.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, shit.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It's autographed by... Because my brother loved it, but I couldn't understand because when I was a kid, it didn't resonate with me why you'd make a movie out of it.
Marc:Why you would make a movie out of it.
Guest:Well, it turns out you were right.
Guest:And the shame of it was is the middle 40 minutes of that movie is wickedly funny.
Guest:There's really original crazy shit in it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But because it was framed as, is it a family movie?
Guest:Is it crazy geeky?
Guest:The truth is they should have made it for $35 million.
Guest:They should have made it super low budget.
Guest:And they should have made the greatest stoner flick ever.
Guest:And that's the way to do it.
Guest:But, you know, sometimes you fuck up.
Marc:Now, when that happens, I talked to Judd Apatow.
Marc:I know it's touchy, you know, with you guys who make the big movies like the last movie didn't do that well either.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Which one?
Guest:The virgin hit.
Guest:Oh, virginity hit.
Guest:Oh, we produced on that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That wasn't.
Guest:That's a weird one, though.
Guest:You know, we made that for two million dollars.
Guest:So you did.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it's going to it'll make its money.
Guest:You can't lose money when you do a two million dollar movies.
Marc:And you know what?
Guest:It's a great movie.
Guest:That's the weird thing.
Guest:But we advertised it like Porky's and it was a giant mistake because it's actually a really smart little kind of nuanced movie.
Guest:Yeah, I got to see it.
Guest:I mean, I apologize for not seeing it.
Guest:Oh, no, no, that's all right.
Guest:No one's seen it.
Guest:So you're not you're not in the wrong.
Guest:But no, our last movie was the other guys.
Guest:That was the that did all right.
Guest:That did great.
Guest:Yeah, we're just starting international.
Guest:We could go over 200 on that.
Guest:So I hate to talk about numbers, but the only reason I talk about numbers is because it means do you get to do another movie?
Marc:Right, and it's also your business.
Marc:And I think as somebody who runs a production company, when you start to take into account where you start to learn something other than creating and having a good time and making sketches and directing and the fun on the set, that you have to really sit there and go, well, we didn't advertise this right.
Marc:Or this movie didn't define it.
Guest:Yeah, we fucked up on virginity.
Guest:We didn't advertise it right.
Guest:And it's a shame because I really stand by it.
Guest:It's a great.
Guest:But we also did Eastbound and Down, which just opened.
Marc:I just watched the premiere last night.
Marc:You know, I really came around.
Marc:That guy's really fucking funny, man.
Marc:He's funny, man.
Marc:Now, what was the story with that?
Marc:Because I know you and Will championed him from the beginning.
Marc:And you found that movie of his, the kickboxing movie?
Guest:There's a little movie called Foot Fist Way.
Guest:They made it for like $100,000 that we just loved.
Guest:And, you know, it's raggedy.
Guest:It's a handmade movie.
Guest:Danny McBride's a guy.
Guest:Danny McBride is the guy with Jody Hill who directed it.
Guest:And this other buddy of theirs, Ben Best.
Guest:So they had this TV show idea.
Guest:We got behind it.
Guest:And everyone thought it was idiotic and awful.
Guest:And then it just grew and grew and grew.
Guest:And now it's kind of become a big hit.
Marc:When I first saw it, I was like, this is the weirdest thing.
Marc:I mean, where does this go?
Marc:I mean, I like the setting.
Marc:It made sense.
Marc:The fallen hero has got to teach Jim.
Marc:But then now all of a sudden we're in Mexico.
Marc:And the character, he's another one of those guys, too, that...
Marc:You know, like as weird as he is, he's very aware of his heart and that, you know, his heart is actually in the in the right place.
Marc:It's a fucked up place.
Marc:But the character's heart is pretty big.
Guest:He's I think it's another case where I mean, let's face it.
Guest:America is pretty fucked up right now.
Guest:We're a much meaner country than we've ever been.
Guest:We've just attacked the nation for no reason.
Guest:We've done all this fucked up shit.
Guest:So you really have to look hard to find our heart right now in our country.
Marc:But his vulnerability is his ego is so shattered and his narcissism.
Marc:He has this level of self-awareness that America actually doesn't have.
Marc:We can only hope that they get more of it.
Guest:Is he self-aware?
Guest:I mean, he has little flashes where he'll say, you know, I'm kind of depressed right now.
Guest:But listen, what I'm trying to do is...
Marc:Well, I think he has that same thing that is part of narcissism, where is that your ability to really be empathetic is limited by your ability to really see yourself clearly and connect to those feelings.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:But yet, you know, when he has those moments where, you know, they hold the camera on him and with his face contorting and this weird shame, like he's got a lot of emotions in his face, that at the heart of it, he knows he's a complete fucker.
Marc:Yeah, McBride's so good.
Marc:I mean, he's-
Guest:He's doing something there's only like five people can do.
Guest:I mean, it really goes to the key mystery of the last 30 years of America is does Dick Cheney at night when the lights are off have one second of realizing what he is?
Guest:I mean, that's the question.
Guest:And this is the argument we have all the time.
Guest:Yeah, but Dick Cheney, unlike Danny McBride, would never say he was wrong.
Guest:But does he know it?
Guest:Because I don't think Danny McBride ever says it to anyone.
Guest:I don't think he ever says to other characters.
Guest:We just see him at night when he's masturbating to the picture of the girl he loves.
Guest:We see it in his eyes, the way he looks.
Guest:I just had this argument the other day.
Guest:Does Dick Cheney, when he's about to die, when he's about to release his mortal coil,
Guest:And are released from this mortal coil?
Marc:Or do you release the mortal coil?
Guest:From this mortal coil.
Guest:Does he have that moment of awareness?
Guest:And that's Danny McBride's play in that game.
Guest:Because he's a drug addict, racist, steroid user, abandoned everyone, has no empathy for anyone.
Guest:And he's showing us those moments.
Guest:I mean, it's kind of amazing.
Guest:And he's pulling it off.
Marc:No, I mean, the premiere was great.
Guest:Amazing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And well, let's talk about Dick Cheney, because I think that I don't know that he sees himself as a criminal.
Marc:I think that his his his engagement in politics has always been to protect, you know, to give the executive as much power as possible without, you know, if you have to work loopholes, do it.
Marc:But, you know, he wanted he wanted a king and he wanted to be king.
Guest:Well, here's the thing, though.
Guest:Like I actually because we did the George Bush Broadway show, you know, Will and I. And that's great.
Marc:You know, did you write that with him?
Guest:I did.
Guest:He was he wrote the first draft, but then I rewrote it with him.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know, because I wonder about this, you know, given some of your politics and you seem to be sort of like brimming over with the desire to do it more aggressively than you actually do.
Marc:And I'm curious as to what holds you back and what do you think the power of comedy is in relation to it?
Marc:it's it's tricky you you probably haven't seen the other guys because it's probably the most well yeah i know what the the about the deregulation of the banks and stuff yeah yeah i was gonna go see it but it's only i got it i apologize no don't worry but my producer brendan said that you know you really attempt to to explore that and to explain it to people
Guest:Yeah, we hit a bunch of beats throughout the movie about the guy blowing off his union, and it turns out they're getting ripped off, and there's mentions of the SEC and Federal Reserve, and then we do this crazy credit crawl at the end with this really cool animation in this original song that's all about the shell game that the banks just pulled on us, draining 401ks and stuff.
Guest:So we were probably the most overt with this one.
Guest:But here's the reason I actually don't support the more overt kind of approach, because I look at Talladega Nights as a political movie.
Guest:I look at it as a political movie.
Marc:I see that as we talk, that your analogies, and these are metaphors, that you see America as an entity, and you draw comparisons to the characters and the rest of the film.
Guest:Yeah, you look at the scene where Sacha Baron Cohen is the gay Frenchman, has Will's arm behind his back and says, say you love crepes, or I'm going to break your arm.
Guest:And Will says, break my arm, and he breaks his arm.
Guest:To me, that's like a living political cartoon.
Guest:That's not...
Guest:literal.
Guest:I think you reach more audience.
Guest:These movies get to play in like Mississippi and Alabama and we're going into those worlds because we have laughter and they're comedies as opposed to if I made In the Loop, which is one of my favorite movies.
Marc:No, I understand that.
Marc:In my mind,
Marc:My question is that after doing political radio for a long time and then getting away from it, because ultimately being involved in politics is very easy to get disillusioned with all sides of it.
Marc:No question.
Marc:And that the compromises these guys make, either because they have to to maintain office or because they're morally bankrupt or not really committed to the people, is very disillusioning over time.
Marc:There's very few guys that actually stand for the people.
Marc:So my question is that given the culture we live in now,
Marc:did the idea of actually changing minds like the one trick about comedy is like some people are going to take it as just a comedy other people are not going to resonate with this stuff that you know is is you know of course to have some thrust sure so you know how effective is comedy like for instance dr strangelove is is a great political satire yeah you know in terms of how that changed minds how do you change minds
Guest:Well, here's the thing.
Guest:I don't think there's ever a snapping point where you see a mind change.
Guest:I think it's a slow accumulation of experiences and information.
Guest:No one ever wants anyone to change their mind for them.
Guest:And probably that's a healthy instinct.
Guest:I don't ever want to be, I want to hear information that's going to question my beliefs, but I don't ever want to go, all right, Mark,
Guest:Make me believe this.
Guest:You don't ever want that moment.
Marc:But a lot of guys listen to stuff that defines their anger.
Marc:Like plenty of ditto heads, Rush Limbaugh followers, are very comfortable with him guiding their minds and giving them their thoughts.
Guest:And that's really dangerous and clearly really dangerous.
Guest:So what I think happens is I think you get to do these comedies.
Guest:If people are laughing, if you're laughing at something, you know there's some truth behind it.
Guest:You don't laugh at stuff that's bullshit.
Guest:You genuinely laugh at
Marc:Or you have something that's ridiculous.
Guest:Or ridiculous.
Guest:But there's a truth behind that because you're making an observation about the existing pattern and routine and you fucked with it in a way that's aware of the original pattern.
Guest:So there's still an observation going on.
Guest:So my thinking is that you do these comedies and the videos we do on Funny or Die, if people are laughing and engaging with it, no matter what their beliefs are, there's at least something being transmitted.
Guest:I'm not saying they're going to be... Strange Love was probably a much bigger, more monumental statement, but especially in this time we live in, Michael Moore was very clear.
Guest:I love Michael Moore.
Guest:I used to write for one of his shows.
Guest:He was very clear about Awful Truth.
Guest:I wrote for it for a little while.
Guest:The problem is you become a very easy target at that point.
Guest:Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on marginalizing Michael Moore.
Guest:He's a target.
Guest:right and to the point now where he has no voice and If you're able to deal with people in a more unified kind of way and through sort of common things like sports Laughter sex like yeah these kind of common buttons the Republicans have mastered those common buttons But the one they can't fake is comedy because the truth is what they're saying is not funny because it's bullshit You can't laugh about someone going Oh a liberal who wants to increase tax and spend free market because you know even the people that believe it know it's bullshit It doesn't ring true to the core so
Guest:All the comics we laugh at are all at least centrist.
Guest:I don't think you're going to find one single comic walking planet Earth who's a reactionary right-wing guy.
Guest:It's funny.
Marc:Well, if they are, not unlike extremely left-wing comics, they're preaching to the choir.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:And they don't have the public recognition that others want.
Guest:All the good music, all the good comics, all the visceral experiences are...
Guest:are going to be progressive in nature.
Guest:I don't think there's any way— No, I think that's right.
Marc:And I think that once the war was won around the First Amendment in comedy in the 50s and late 60s, that it seemed like the one liberal cause was about we can say and do whatever we want.
Marc:And that actually, as the screw turns, the liberal agenda was the one to start to stifle that.
Guest:Yeah, that's true.
Marc:It's true.
Marc:But I mean, what I'm sort of baffled by is that there is this fundamental denial of truth and denial of facts and this commitment to bullshit that I think is really comedy has a tremendous amount of power to dismantle that shit.
Guest:Well, I mean, I think you probably agree with this, and I think any extreme is wrong.
Guest:I mean, all it is is about adapting and doing what's necessary.
Guest:I would argue that after Jimmy Carter, one year of Ronald Reagan wasn't a bad idea.
Guest:We needed a little kick in the pants.
Guest:We needed to wave some flags.
Guest:We were feeling really shitty at that point.
Guest:One year would have been great.
Guest:Unfortunately, we got eight years and he destroyed our country.
Guest:And I think it's true now.
Guest:I mean, we're talking about the transnational monopolies.
Guest:You have to raise trade tariffs.
Guest:We only pay 2%.
Guest:India pays 40.
Guest:They have a 40% tariff.
Guest:China has 22%.
Guest:We only have a 2% tariff.
Guest:That's crazy.
Guest:You notice no one talks about that.
Guest:I mean, you could almost say that one issue alone could change our whole nation if we went to a 10% trade tariff.
Guest:Because it would encourage manufacturing?
Guest:all the manufacturer would come back here.
Guest:Walmart couldn't be making that money anymore.
Guest:You'd see factories spring up all over this country and you get rid of all those subsidies, the 48 billion, you get rid of the Bush tax.
Guest:By the way, we could literally balance the budget and fix the economy right now in 10 minutes.
Guest:That's how easy it is.
Guest:The problem is the wall of white noise and misinformation and anger that gets in the way of it where they justify everything.
Guest:How about Mitch McConnell in Kentucky voted against the Made in America provision for the stimulus package?
Guest:And he's in the poorest state in the country against the Made in America provision.
Guest:But no one talks about that.
Guest:Instead, it's about liberals.
Guest:It's about gay marriage.
Marc:Because what you just talked about to most people is like, ah, la, la.
Guest:You know, politics as usual.
Guest:Well, that drives me crazy.
Guest:I've been getting mad at people lately when they say that to me.
Guest:They'll say like, hey, on the press lines for the movie.
Guest:Oh, Adam McKay, you're into politics.
Guest:And I'll literally go, what are you talking about?
Guest:They go, well, don't you write about politics?
Guest:No, I read about unemployment.
Guest:I read about our country, the debt.
Guest:What do you mean politics?
Guest:You mean like back chamber deals and stuff?
Guest:Because that's what politics is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I read about murder.
Guest:I read about stuff like that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:No, politics bores me.
Guest:I don't care about that.
Marc:So do you have any movies or ideas in your head that would be what you would consider radical that you'd like to do?
Guest:Well, we're working on a script right now with Jesse Armstrong, one of the writers on In the Loop, about Lee Atwater and sort of a comedy bio, sort of in the vein of 24-hour party people about Lee Atwater.
Guest:And he's going to be delivering that script pretty soon.
Guest:And I'd love to do that as like a little...
Guest:$8 million movie or something for HBO and that'd be amazing and then you know the coolest thing I'm working on now is one called the boys ever heard of this it's a Garth Ennis graphic novel comic book series where the superheroes are all essentially owned by corporations They're fascists who do cocaine and have orgies, but the whole country loves them So the CIA a fringe faction of the CIA is afraid they're gonna take over the government So it has to bring in this group called the boys that are like
Guest:a frenchman an asian woman an english guy and kind of a nerd who they inject with the super soldier formula and these guys have to take the superheroes out through blackmail direct fighting like all that kind of stuff so i'm super excited about this that sounds really smart and then that's what i like about that is it kind of goes towards what we were talking about it's a visceral understanding as opposed to kind of a pedantic you know well yeah i think watchman tried to do some of that
Guest:Watchmen, Zach Snyder is one of my favorite directors right now.
Guest:But the problem with it was it was a period piece.
Guest:It was Cold War politics.
Guest:I think that's true.
Guest:It didn't relate.
Guest:But goddamn, what a beautiful looking movie he shot.
Guest:Yeah, that's for sure.
Guest:I think this one's right on the square.
Guest:It sounds like it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And how far along are you in the process?
Guest:We're in the middle of rewriting the script right now.
Guest:It's a pretty, there's a copy of the comic right there, actually.
Guest:Oh, no, no, that's a photo thing from the other guy.
Guest:Sorry.
Guest:We're in the middle of rewriting the script right now, and I'm going to take a pass at it, and then hopefully we get a green light by December, January maybe at the latest.
Guest:But this one, we're not walking into it like it's Will and me, so it's kind of a different kind of movie.
Guest:It's not really a comedy in a lot of ways, so fingers crossed it'll happen.
Marc:Well, that sounds great.
Marc:Adam McKay, thanks for talking to me.
Guest:A pleasure, I got to say.
Marc:And also, if you had a good time, tell Will.
Guest:I'm not going to do it.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I hate for you to put me on the spot about if I had a good time, but not a good enough time to tell Will.
Guest:Well, what do we got to do to change that right now?
Guest:Beers and music.
Guest:All right, let me make a call.
Guest:I got it.
Guest:I'll definitely tell Will.
Guest:Yeah, he's around.
Guest:You know what he's shooting right now?
Guest:What?
Guest:A movie that's all in Spanish.
Guest:I'm not kidding.
Guest:Does he speak Spanish?
Guest:He learned Spanish in two months, and you hear him speak on the dailies, and it's like he's been dubbed.
Guest:He's so good.
Guest:And it's with Diego Luna, a bunch of famous Mexican actors, and the whole movie's in Spanish called House of Our Father.
Marc:Is Danny Trejo in it?
Guest:Oh, I wish he was.
Guest:He should be in everything.
Guest:I think he should be right here.
Guest:You have him here, and I tell everyone to do this show.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I could probably call Danny Trejo.
Marc:All right, man.
Marc:Good talking to you.
Marc:Pleasure.
Marc:Okay, I hope you enjoyed that.
Marc:I certainly like talking to Adam McKay.
Marc:It was kind of interesting.
Marc:I thought it got a little dicey there when I brought up Land of the Lost, but maybe not.
Marc:Maybe it was just me.
Marc:Momentary discomfort.
Marc:But I hope you enjoyed the show.
Marc:Thank you for listening.
Marc:Please go to WTFPod.com.
Marc:Get on the mailing list.
Marc:I've been pretty diligent about that.
Marc:Go to WTFPodShop.com to pick up those premium episodes.
Marc:And if you go to iTunes, you can get the new WTF app.
Marc:Just search Mark Maron, WTF, and you can stream the first 50 episodes on that.
Marc:Quick recap on my dates.
Marc:November 4th, 5th, and 6th, and 7th, Go Bananas in Cincinnati.
Marc:November 11th, 12th, 13th, The Punchline in San Francisco.
Marc:November 15th, Crow Football Room, Pontiac, Michigan.
Marc:I hope to see some of you there.
Marc:Come say hi.
Marc:I'm going to try to bring some shirts.
Marc:All right, I'm done.
Marc:I'm done.
Marc:We done?
Marc:Good.
Marc:Okay, talk to you next time.
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