Episode 1379 - Armando Iannucci
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what the fucking ears what's happening today on the show armando iannucci yeah that genius now look we recorded this in london on the day liz trust resigned as prime minister it had just happened
Marc:So there was that energy going.
Marc:But what a joy to talk to this guy.
Marc:He's got the new season of his HBO series Avenue 5, but we talked about his early BBC radio stuff and television shows, his work with Steve Coogan, Veep, a lot more.
Marc:Great talk, great guy.
Marc:So, look, folks, I don't really know exactly...
Marc:how to explain this, but I'll tell the story.
Marc:I can tell the story.
Marc:I'm not... I have been in my life a mystical person.
Marc:I have let my brain get away from me at times.
Marc:I was in a fairly severe drug-induced psychosis back in the day.
Marc:It took a long time to reel it back in, but I try to wrangle my mind as much as possible.
Marc:It does wander, you know?
Marc:Predictable places and patterns, usually not otherworldly, just paranoid patterns, just...
Marc:fears, neurosis, anxieties.
Marc:It'll make some random connections occasionally and try to make sense of things that are beyond my comprehension.
Marc:But I don't want to drift.
Marc:I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist.
Marc:I don't want to have delusional beliefs in things.
Marc:I mean, I've been delusional before.
Marc:I know what it feels like to lose your fucking mind.
Marc:Okay, I know.
Marc:But something happened in Ireland.
Marc:Okay, something happened there.
Marc:As many of you know, the last time I was there, I was with Lynn, Lynn Shelton.
Marc:We both had some unexplained draw to the country.
Marc:We both shared this weird connection to Ireland that I certainly couldn't explain for myself, but she couldn't explain either really.
Marc:We both loved it.
Marc:It held a magical space for both of us.
Marc:I mean before we knew each other it was actually something we found out that we shared when we got to know each other we just we both wanted to be there we wanted to spend time that we loved Ireland it was magic to us we had the exact same vibe about it so
Marc:The trip that we took there was after we went to the Giron Film Festival in Spain where they showed Sword of Trust.
Marc:I was given Best Actor at the festival.
Marc:It was very exciting.
Marc:We were there for a few days.
Marc:And then we went to Ireland.
Marc:We had this big plan.
Marc:She had, you know...
Marc:She had been there once before and stayed at this house that we were able to rent again.
Marc:And we rented another place up in, where were we?
Marc:County Donegal and some other place.
Marc:But we went and it was for almost two weeks and it was beautiful.
Marc:And it was the first and sadly, you know, now the only time that we really traveled together.
Marc:It was the first time we were able to be a couple together out in the world on a vacation.
Marc:It was the first and only time.
Marc:And I knew that going back there would be tricky in a way.
Marc:It would be difficult.
Marc:I knew I would feel her absence.
Marc:I stayed at the same hotel we stayed at in Dublin.
Marc:I have pictures of her there.
Marc:There's this weird kind of old-style kind of bench in the elevator, and I have a picture of her laying down on it in the elevator with her hat and her signature hat and her green leather jacket, both of which I have.
Marc:But I have pictures, and I could see where I took the picture every day I was in that elevator.
Marc:I could see her absence.
Marc:I took a picture of the bench where she sat, empty.
Marc:I have both pictures now.
Marc:Now, I've been to Ireland many times.
Marc:I've played at Vicar Street a lot.
Marc:I like the venue.
Marc:I like the crowd almost always.
Marc:Always.
Marc:Why say almost?
Marc:And they were great last Wednesday night when I was there.
Marc:And something happened.
Marc:Okay?
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So as I made my way through the act, it was all going over great.
Marc:I was getting laughs.
Marc:I was riffing.
Marc:It was great.
Marc:Then I came to that part where I switched tones and go a bit deeper and talk about grief and talk about Lynn's passing and talk about my feelings around that.
Marc:It's funny, but it's a shift.
Marc:Now, toward the end of the main piece from that section, which describes in detail the day that she died.
Marc:And I talk about visiting her at the hospital after she had passed.
Marc:And when I was talking about that, the stage lights started to fluctuate.
Marc:They started to go on and off, not strobing quickly, but almost like waves of like...
Marc:They come on and then they go almost all the way dark and then come on and almost go all the way dark, like fluctuating, going on and off.
Marc:Right at the time I was talking about her.
Marc:Being dead.
Marc:I mean, it was jarring.
Marc:It was it was beyond understanding.
Marc:And it was one of those moments where.
Marc:The audience felt it.
Marc:I felt it.
Marc:And it was just happening as I was talking about her dying.
Marc:And it kept happening for like five minutes.
Marc:So in the moment I said, hey, Lynn.
Marc:Hi, baby.
Marc:And my eyes started, you know, tearing up and the audience was emotional.
Marc:I could see they were emotional.
Marc:It eventually stopped, but it was it was.
Marc:pretty fucking intense and pretty unexplainable.
Marc:And when I got off stage, the lighting person said that it had never happened before.
Marc:It was not something that happened.
Marc:So I'm, I'm sort of sitting with that, you know, and I go back to my hotel room and I walked in, I swear to you, I turned on the lamp on the desk and the bulb fizzled out.
Marc:I turned it on.
Marc:It was like, and it just fizzled out.
Marc:And I was like, Oh my fucking God.
Marc:And I said, okay, Lynn, I miss you too.
Marc:I'm glad you're here.
Marc:You wanted to be here.
Marc:I mean, I had to invest these moments with the mystical meaning they commanded, didn't I?
Marc:I mean, I had to look at them as good magic.
Marc:I had to believe she was just saying hello, just sharing her presence with me.
Marc:I have to believe that.
Marc:I could just write it off as, that was weird.
Marc:But why?
Marc:Why not believe it?
Marc:That's where she resides now.
Marc:Ireland.
Marc:That's where she wanted to be.
Marc:And that is where she is.
Marc:Why not?
Marc:Why the fuck not?
Marc:Right?
Right.
Marc:And they demand to be contextualized in a way that we may not want to do it.
Marc:But I'm going to let it be.
Marc:I'm going to let it be.
Marc:A couple other things I wanted to throw out there.
Marc:A parade of termites with wings and without wings of all sizes was making its way across my bathroom ceiling two times this month.
Marc:In the morning, they're all gone.
Marc:I even think they collect their dead.
Marc:What does that mean?
Marc:I got to get a guy over here, but are they here?
Marc:Are they eating my house or are they moving on?
Marc:Is this just an exercise?
Marc:Is it a military exercise?
Marc:Help me out.
Marc:The other thing, Drew Friedman has a new book out, Mavericks and Lunatics, Icons of Underground Comics.
Marc:These are portraits of all the wizards and geniuses that have made underground comics for the last however long they've been around.
Marc:It's quite a beautiful book if you're a fan of Drew.
Marc:It's amazing.
Marc:And if you're a fan of underground comics, they're just great.
Marc:The pictures just great.
Marc:Everyone's in here.
Marc:Everyone's in.
Marc:If you're an underground comic person, they're all in here.
Marc:And half the reason I'm pushing it is because I wrote the forward.
Marc:I wrote the filthy forward for the filthy underground comics book that introduced my brain to filth and blew my mind when I was 12 years old.
Marc:So very proud of that forward.
Marc:And I was also very excited to hear from Drew.
Marc:Drew emailed me to remind me to maybe plug the thing.
Marc:But he said, hey, Mark, everyone loves your forward to the underground comics book.
Marc:Every day I get raves about it.
Marc:Crumb wrote and told me it was pitch perfect.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:R. Crumb enjoyed my introduction.
Marc:That makes me very happy.
Marc:I've never been able to talk to that guy.
Marc:You know, that guy's responsible for about half of my disturbed psyche or maybe a third laying the groundwork outside of the parents with all that faulty wiring and all that selfish insanity.
Marc:You know, when I'm 12 years old, you know, underground comics, I'm like, oh, I want this to be my parents.
Marc:And look where I am.
Marc:This is who I am.
Marc:I blame underground comics and my parents.
Marc:And, you know, but there's some good stuff about both of those things.
Marc:The book is called Mavericks and Lunatics, Icons of Underground Comics, Drew Friedman, forward by Marc Maron.
Marc:It's got a whacked out R. Crumb on the cover.
Marc:Is it possible that this entire new trend of Kanye generated anti-Semitism is just his profound jealousy of the size of a comic's cock?
Marc:Is it possible that the realization or the information or what has been reported that when Kanye found out that Pete Davidson has a 10 inch cock, that he lost his mind and now anti-Semitism has increased noticeably because of a clown's cock?
Marc:I guess it's always a clown's cock that causes the problems, isn't it?
Marc:But look, you guys, enough about that.
Marc:Armando Iannucci.
Marc:The current season of Avenue 5 is airing on HBO.
Marc:New episodes airing on Monday nights.
Marc:All previous episodes are streaming on HBO Max.
Marc:And again, this conversation happened in London on the day Liz Truss stepped down as prime minister.
Marc:Within hours of that happening.
Marc:This is me talking to Armando Annucci.
Marc:So now we might as well put a time mark on this, that the Prime Minister has resigned after, what, six weeks?
Guest:Six weeks and just two minutes before we've started talking.
Marc:Now, because of your position in British culture as somebody who understands.
Guest:There's actually no constitutional role that I fulfill.
Guest:No.
Guest:uh but we don't have a written constitution right but traditionally i'm seen as the one who comedically can understand completely understands and indeed some would sometimes comment yeah interprets please sometimes uproariously satirize what's going on does that get more difficult as it becomes absolutely it's impossible yeah
Guest:Only because they are, I mean, they're walking, talking jokes in themselves.
Guest:Yeah, shamelessly.
Guest:Absolutely shamelessly.
Marc:I don't understand how they don't.
Marc:Do they know that?
Guest:I mean, the great theory, the great question people ask about someone like Boris Johnson is, does he know, is he doing this deliberately?
Guest:Is it all part of a Machiavellian act to be all sort of, oh, gosh, gosh.
Guest:Yeah, he's a performance artist.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think part of him knows that, but also I think part of him is going, I don't know what to do or say, so I'll just do this for a bit until I can think of something.
Marc:But the shamelessness around positions and doubling down on completely unpopular, sometimes racist positions, I have to assume after a certain point you have to believe that they believe that.
Guest:I think they believe that their supporters will support it.
Marc:So it's still a hustle.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, absolutely.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Because Liz Truss came in saying she was going to do X, Y and Z. And then when she did it, it was terrible.
Guest:So suddenly she said, I'm going to do one, two and three instead.
Guest:As if that was always her position.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:This is just phase two.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This is, you know, I've got a 50-year plan here.
Guest:So, really, what you're seeing at the moment is just the antechamber to the room of horrors that await.
Guest:And I think also they get kind of, they forget that the people who are voting for them
Guest:is not everyone you know it's just an assortment of very very odd people right yeah you know and and so they speak to that assortment of odd people thinking everyone must be like that so if i keep on talking to them right but then they get the press yeah that brings in and maybe uh sort of radicalizes new odd odd sorted oh yes yes and and and and they they find a voice of confidence
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yes, that's right.
Guest:And the hustle continues.
Guest:But the press, you know, our Great British Press, 12 days ago was saying, Liz Truss is fantastic.
Guest:Her budget is the best budget I've seen in years to today, which is, fuck off.
Guest:Fuck right off.
Guest:Liz Truss.
Guest:Liz, fuck.
Guest:It's that.
Marc:They have no shame either.
Marc:And no principles.
Marc:No.
Marc:So no one has any principles.
Guest:Nobody has any principles.
Guest:Which is a point I'll be exploring as we talk.
Guest:I mean, they don't.
Guest:I think they have the principles beaten out of them just to kind of...
Marc:last another what doesn't it make you a question like i mean with i'm so glad we've got straight into it and we haven't done any small talk that's great no i don't know yeah it's good for me yeah because it seems like it's complicated to me here i can barely yeah yeah you know keep hold of whatever the fuck is going on in my country yeah
Marc:But I think what we learned and I think what you see and what, you know, Veep sort of represents is that they've always been sort of craven.
Marc:I don't know that there's ever been a civil servant in recent memory that had any success because they wanted to represent their constituents fairly.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's all some sort of weird corporate sellout.
Guest:It's a sort of, you know, to get to the higher up and kind of the greasy pole, as it were, you have to kind of make compromises to your own principles.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there's part of you that says, but once I'm there, you know, all those principles will come flooding back.
Guest:But of course, it's taken you so long to get there.
Guest:You don't know what the principles are that you've compromised.
Guest:In fact, you've forgotten most.
Marc:Yeah, even if the original ones might have been a posture.
Marc:it might absolutely yes yeah i went into politics to do x yeah yeah and they didn't know i didn't know yeah yeah they're 25 years old just i just wanted to get some money from a lobby firm and and you know some oil money would be good you know as time goes on you i believe that that's because i don't know who would want to do it that's the other thing it's a self-selecting thing and it just selects you either have to be like an autocratic fuckwad yeah
Marc:Or somebody who's sort of like, well, this is my grift.
Marc:This is my hustle.
Guest:You know, I can I can run money through me.
Guest:And in the UK, it's people who they never watch television.
Guest:So they just think television is the news.
Guest:And occasionally, occasionally, you know, their young advisor would say, oh, don't forget put in a Game of Thrones reference here in your speech or a strictly come dance, you know, just.
Guest:But fundamentally, they just watch the news.
Marc:well if it looks like the news it's the news i might you know my father watches you know he doesn't know if there's a guy sitting at a desk saying jews are horrible as a jew he'll be like none of this guy seems to know what he's talking about
Guest:I think Liz trusts, she's gone out and she's resigned.
Guest:She's probably gone in now and just said, did you see me on the news?
Guest:Did you see me?
Guest:I'm ringing my mum.
Guest:Did you see me?
Guest:Yeah, I was on the news.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Stop shouting at me.
Guest:Why are you crying?
Guest:Why are you crying?
Guest:No, that's just abuse.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, so they're very self-selecting.
Guest:And...
Guest:I mean, when I did research on Veep and on Think of It, it was like, I would meet these like 12-year-olds who had degrees in terrorism studies from Georgetown University.
Guest:And who were kind of basically telling a senator what the country's energy policy should be.
Guest:But how do you know?
Guest:You're only, you know, they were only like 21, 22.
Guest:Some of them, when we were doing In the Loop, some of them had gone out to Iraq to help set up the constitution.
Marc:So these are just whiz kid wonks from, you know, straight out of maybe a graduate program of political science and whatnot?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They don't know what life is.
Marc:No, but thank God somebody knows what policy is.
Guest:Well, but they get off on policy.
Guest:That's the thing.
Guest:They call it product.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Do they really?
Guest:In Washington, they call it product.
Guest:Yeah, there was some very nice product from that think tank on energy caps.
Guest:Very nice.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's just a weird, it's a weird kind of like, I don't know what the equivalent is.
Guest:It's an obsession with one thing.
Guest:Which they treat like a kind of hobby or a pastime.
Marc:So it's like a nerd-ism.
Guest:Well, like you don't get to dinner for a quiz night or something.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:A game night or something.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Except it's running the country.
Guest:Or the world, yeah.
Guest:It's people's lives.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But they don't quite get that.
Guest:They just think, if I did this...
Guest:If I sat down and made this equation on a piece of paper.
Marc:Yeah, I'm not sure any of them get it anymore.
Marc:That it has real implications in the world.
Marc:Or else they're just willing to sort of see it as part of their bottom line.
Marc:That, yeah, well, we're going to lose a few.
Marc:You know, there's that sort of like corporate think of like, you know, what's more cost efficient to recall the car or just take the hit?
Marc:Take the hit.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:500 people will slam into a wall because of the faulty steering system.
Guest:I mean, it's a big country, 500 people.
Guest:We can write that off.
Guest:Four of our space shuttles will, at some point...
Marc:blow up crash yeah yeah into the moon but you know fundamentally yeah yeah i every day for me is a struggle with you know my own discomfort and then you know i i look at the macro you know global discomfort and it's just a navigating you know how does uh how does humor how is it going you know what am i doing if you don't feel like you're some facilitator yeah of uh of of changing minds somehow yeah uh then you're just a fucking clown
Marc:I know.
Guest:Who's helping people avoid the... You're like the person if a couple are having a very serious conversation and then someone comes up to them with a violin and you just think, just please, not now, please.
Guest:Just... Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Just here's some money.
Guest:Go and play to them over there.
Guest:We already know it's sad.
Guest:But we're trying to sort something out here.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I deal with that.
Guest:No, I know.
Guest:Whenever I think of like a new subject that I think, oh, that would be a film or a TV show.
Right.
Guest:I don't automatically think, and it's a comedy.
Guest:I mean, I have to think, is it a comedy?
Marc:How did you get to space?
Marc:Let's start at the current situation.
Marc:How did you end up?
Guest:Space seems good.
Guest:I've always been a sci-fi fan.
Guest:You have.
Guest:And Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I loved it.
Guest:There was a reboot of Battlestar Galactica that I really liked.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But then because they made it about politics and just, you know, hierarchies of power and so on.
Guest:You know, it didn't have aliens.
Guest:It had the silence.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But there was no magic involved.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I kind of like that hard sci-fi.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:You know.
Marc:The kind that seem like, oh, this is sort of possible.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And most sci-fi, people who write sci-fi will tell you it's really about today.
Guest:It's not about the future.
Guest:It's about, it's just taking some aspect of today and cranking up.
Guest:And I thought it would be interesting to, I was really more interested in
Guest:groupthink and you know leadership and false leadership and conspiracy and isolation so I thought let's think of an isolated and I thought space okay what about big cruise space tourism was beginning to you know it was the height of Branson and Musk and not Musk yeah Musk and Bezos all kind of out launch each other who the fuck is gonna go to space I know I mean like even if you can't
Marc:It looks terrible.
Marc:I can barely handle going to England.
Marc:Only because I'm so dug in.
Guest:Oh, right.
Guest:I see.
Marc:It's like anything that's mildly different, I have to deal with the adaptation.
Guest:I what I can is the whole Mars thing.
Guest:I can't, you know, the planet is dying.
Guest:You know, we need to move.
Guest:Oh, let's go to a radioactive airless ball.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:See if we can make that make it seal the bubble properly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Why don't we just put all those resources into sorting the planet out here before we move to this dump, this radioactive dump.
Marc:They know how to make money and their belief systems are you're bankrupt or ridiculous or childish.
Guest:The thing we said to Josh Gad about Judd that we both say to each other is that
Guest:his character he was probably got one thing right which is holidays yeah and as a result he therefore thinks i can do anything and that's that's it you know we have richard branson here yeah we went i remember for the research for avenue five i went round virgin galactic in their office their offices they just let you like no i applied and i said i'm doing a show about space tourism would it be possible to see you know i will take photos but i just love to get have you met branson
Guest:No, I haven't.
Guest:No, he wasn't there.
Guest:But they showed us round.
Guest:And it was like a kind of organised... There were five or six other people who'd all similarly asked to see it for various reasons.
Guest:So there was a group of us.
Guest:The guy was taking us round.
Guest:And I remember someone in the group asking very specific questions.
Guest:Because the guy showing us round was saying, you know, the idea is... And then you shoot up.
Guest:You hit that point where you're gravity free.
Guest:You've got about three minutes, four minutes floating around.
Guest:You can take your pictures.
Guest:You can get your set...
Guest:And she said, oh, in those three minutes, will people have been trained how to orientate themselves in gravity?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:We want them to experience this firsthand.
Guest:And she said, OK, I think the bulk of those three minutes are going to be spent with them just trying to get the right way up, being a bit confused and possibly vomiting.
Guest:And he kind of like his eyes just wide and went, oh, well...
Guest:I'm sure it'll be fine and she turned to me.
Guest:I don't think it's gonna work and she and at the end of it She gave me her card.
Guest:She was an astronaut.
Guest:She'd been on the space shuttle.
Guest:She does Space station.
Guest:Yeah, you know, she knew what she was talking about Well, then do you remember when Richard Branson went up?
Guest:Yeah, really funny trying to dig the footage out.
Guest:Yeah, because when he went up and
Guest:As everyone else is untethering themselves and floating around, you could see him desperately trying not to throw up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he suddenly stopped speaking.
Guest:So he did his prepared kind of, what a glorious fence.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:For like a minute, and then he come back down.
Guest:And he hasn't talked about it since.
Guest:Oh, really?
Marc:Well, it's sort of like the people that you're talking to, these are the publicists.
Marc:These are the... What do you call them?
Marc:These are the people that represent the company to talk it up.
Marc:And they sort of improvise in the same way politicians do.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:So the first person we came...
Guest:At Galactic, she came out and introduced us and said, hello, everyone.
Guest:My name is X and I'm a Jedi.
Guest:I like to try and instill Jedi attitudes in the workforce.
Guest:And we're all looking at it and goes, did she just say Jedi?
Guest:That doesn't exist.
Guest:It's a fiction.
Guest:Star Wars is not real.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:it's sort of all the same thing it's all the same is like is uh you know once you get past the the actual architects and engineers yes they were great right it's just a bunch of bullshit artists yeah the best talking of which the uh the jet propulsion laboratory in pasadena yeah
Guest:That was proper.
Guest:That was engineers.
Guest:That was problem solvers.
Marc:That's old time shit.
Marc:Those guys are making rockets for a long time, right?
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So they know, you know, give me a problem.
Guest:How can we get something up around Saturn and back over here and down there and, you know, limited amount of weight.
Guest:Right.
Marc:They're not worrying about, like, how do food trays stay down?
Marc:No.
Guest:And it was to them I said, what about long voyages to Mars and so on?
Guest:How do you cope with the radioactivity?
Guest:And they said, human waste.
Guest:Human waste is a very good absorber of radio.
Guest:So those ships, once we go to Mars and so on, they will be coated.
Guest:They will be with a lining of compacted human matter.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:Yeah, and so so so that's that's gonna be part of it like, you know, anyone's on this is yeah Is that did you cover that so we covered that in season one?
Guest:Yes, there's a what episode?
Guest:Oh, there's a puncture in the oh, yeah The wetsuit they call it and shit is flying out and so Q Laurie has to go out and seal the the the pipe otherwise they'll all die and
Marc:Well, that's the interesting thing about, I think, science fiction and smart science fiction.
Marc:Because for me, even going back to your earlier TV stuff, it seemed like everything was grounded really in either modes of reality that we understand, genres we understand, or just regular life.
Marc:So you're drawing whatever sort of humor, whether it's absurd or not, from something that we've all sort of experienced.
Marc:So now you're kind of untethered.
Marc:in space.
Marc:But you know that you've done all this research.
Marc:So if anyone questions you about the shit thing, you can sort of like, well, you have to understand.
Guest:Yeah, we had an episode the first season where they'd shoot a coffin out, but not with enough force for it to get away from the ship so it curves back and just orbits the ship.
Guest:And I got a tweet from the science consultant on Star Trek saying, yeah, I stayed up through the night working out.
Guest:Yeah, it works out.
Guest:It works out.
Guest:Yeah, I did the math.
Guest:Yeah, that would work.
Marc:And you were like, yes.
Marc:Yes, sir.
Marc:He's our audience.
Marc:He's the only one trying to please.
Marc:No one's going to call me out for not doing my homework.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And do do you find like in terms of like the way your brain works?
Marc:I mean, I imagine this is more liberating than almost anything.
Marc:Is it because it's space, right?
Guest:It's space, but it's kind of grounded in.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, the hierarchy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Deep fakery.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All sorts of things.
Marc:Is there a big reveal at the end of the second season where they're not in space?
Guest:No, you know the one in the first season where the passengers went out of the airlock saying, it's not real, it's a game show, and just kept going.
Guest:No, there's various other things happened.
Guest:But the deep fakery, and in the second season, we've got a TV version, a dramatization of what people think might be happening on a real ship.
Guest:Okay, which in fact becomes more I think becomes more popular than the actual ship and therefore people on the ship have to start behaving like how they're represented on the Glow rise TV version that's happening on earth And that's well, that's well that's sort of that that head fuck.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, that's it's Is the word I don't know if it's preaching but I mean in the same word way that I think I
Marc:that a good majority of intelligent people began to understand politics by watching Veep.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Is that, you know, most people, you know what I mean?
Guest:Right in the golden age when politicians and things sort of worked objectively.
Marc:I find that most people don't understand anything, you know, and their grasp on how government works is limited.
Guest:I think, I mean, to be serious, I think we...
Guest:I think the media does a very bad job of explaining how democracy works.
Marc:I don't just assume the schools, everybody.
Marc:There's no, you know, I don't, I didn't really learn it.
Marc:It was probably my fault.
Guest:I think people just are told that's what it is.
Guest:They don't know anything.
Marc:They talk to regular people and they're like, I don't know what's going on.
Marc:It's boring.
Marc:It's boring.
Marc:And then when you see the people involved in it, you're like, well, of course they're getting away with sort of like... Because you're all going, ah, whatever.
Marc:Yeah, fascism is digging in because there's a diligence to it for like 30 some odd years.
Guest:The thing about... I've got to be careful what I say here because it could be construed as controversial.
Guest:But the thing about fascism is it's very, very clear.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:It's people going.
Guest:It's satisfying.
Guest:I'll tell you what's wrong.
Guest:Those people are wrong.
Guest:We should get rid of them.
Guest:These people are right.
Guest:We should have them in power forever.
Guest:Are you with me?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And these people shouldn't be able to say anything if they're going to live here.
Guest:They should say nothing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And especially, they shouldn't be allowed to tell me what I can't say.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:So I'm going to stop them from saying that.
Marc:That feels good just saying it, doesn't it?
Yeah.
Guest:Am I wrong?
Guest:Am I wrong?
Marc:Yeah, but I mean, that is why it's appealing.
Marc:It simplifies everything.
Guest:And democracy is complicated, you know, because different opinions.
Guest:Because of tolerance.
Guest:Tolerance is complicated because it allows different opinions and different nuances of opinion.
Guest:And you have to respect the majority, no matter how much it hurts.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And what we're losing is that sense of nuance and tolerance.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:Once tolerance goes, there's no lubricant for democracy.
Marc:No.
Marc:It's just like there's just a clash.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And tolerance is like they're just shameless.
Marc:That's what doubling down on bullshit.
Marc:It wears down people, especially fragile people, vulnerable people.
Guest:Tell me, are half the people who are saying the election was stolen and there was no insurrection on January the 6th?
Guest:Do they actually believe that?
Guest:Well, that's what I was asking you at the beginning.
Marc:I think that if they don't believe it, they believe that minority rules should exist by any means necessary.
Marc:And they're just not willing to either put that together for themselves or say it.
Marc:That if they believe that the propaganda is this was not an insurrection and the election was clearly stolen, if they've got that locked into their head...
Marc:the fbi was just playing the tape backwards it was actually people leaving but because there's no right because there's no and all what's happened reminds me of a joke that this guy chris kelly wrote about walking through the holocaust uh museum backwards and you know it just the end of the joke is like and then hitler built these factories that manufactured jews oh god
Marc:This is a brilliant joke.
Marc:But the – well, I mean, I don't know whether they believe it or not, but they believe in the cause of fuck everybody.
Guest:Oh, yes.
Marc:And there's not – they have no barometer for journalistic integrity.
Guest:And they know that they're hoovering up people who are just genuinely disenchanted because – And morons.
Guest:They're out of a job or –
Guest:I think we've got to be careful about saying that.
Marc:No, I'll separate them.
Marc:I'm saying there's a large contingent of brain-fucked morons who are willing to believe QAnon and believe anything because they're not grounded in the capacity for rational thought.
Guest:That movement relies on a larger group of people who are just angry and are hurting and are just, you know, have tried everything else and it hasn't worked.
Guest:What do we do now?
Marc:They want to feel that their anger is satisfied somehow.
Marc:And if it's by, you know, putting Mexicans on trucks or planes and sending them to liberal cities and getting a laugh.
Guest:But I was reading a terrifying thing today about Bannon trying to get a constitutional convention going.
Guest:Apparently you can rewrite your – everyone thinks amending the U.S.
Guest:Constitution has to be done two-thirds of the Senate and the House and then.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Two thirds of states.
Guest:There's another way, apparently, which is to have a constitutional convention which could just rewrite it.
Guest:And it just needs two thirds of states to agree.
Marc:These fuckers who are just like, all they do is sit around.
Marc:These are the sort of more malignant adults of the kids that you were talking about that are these political nerds.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Or some of the kids even who are going that way, who are looking for these loopholes that nobody ever thought to deal with, you know, to undermine democracy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Exciting stuff.
Guest:And that's all in season two of Avenue 5.
Guest:But so were you always politically critical in the comedy?
Guest:I was always interested in politics.
Guest:Do you come from it?
Guest:Nerdish...
Guest:Well, only in that my father left Italy in 1950.
Guest:But as I, you know, 16, 17, 18 year old, he wrote for an anti-fascist newspaper and he became a partisan during the war.
Guest:So he fought against the fascists and Mussolini.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Came to Britain, you know, for work, but also it was, you know.
Marc:To get out.
Guest:The democracy.
Marc:It's weird to understand, like, you know, what it must have felt like.
Marc:I've been watching stuff.
Marc:I'm watching this Ken Burns about the Holocaust.
Guest:The American.
Marc:What's going on here and how it's not dissimilar.
Marc:It was even more anti-immigrant then.
Marc:FDR couldn't even deal with the State Department because they were like, no.
Marc:But I also watch.
Guest:There was a law at some point in the early 20th century to to expel Chinese people.
Guest:All of them.
Marc:There was totally isolation.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I don't know.
Marc:Like, did you talk to your father about what the feeling was like?
Guest:A little bit.
Guest:I mean, he was always a bit.
Guest:And also, he died when I was about 16, 17.
Guest:So I never got that chance to have that.
Guest:And this was in Scotland.
Guest:This was in Scotland.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I was always aware of, my God, somebody actually put his life on the line for democracy.
Guest:And we take it for granted here.
Guest:So I've always been interested.
Guest:I've always loved being drawn to the drama of American politics.
Guest:I would strangely stay up very late into the...
Marc:the british night to watch u.s elections more so because when i watch parliament i'm like holy shit yeah that's exciting yes i don't know what's going on but you should do that wouldn't be great if your president had to go down to the senate every wednesday and yell at people and have take questions from all of them oh yeah so it always seems so lit up i know and when you see c-span of our senate and half of them are gone i know yeah
Guest:it's i don't know how anything gets in yeah so you had a fascination so it's starting with what administration uh let's see so i grew up on the the oldest one i can remember is probably edward heath who was conservative edward heath and then became harold wilson here yeah what about american uh oh sorry administration i was already thinking that's a weird name for what we call our government so that must have been what tail end of nixon oh wow yeah yeah yeah i can
Guest:I just about remember the Nixon resignation.
Guest:I can remember it a little bit.
Guest:How old are you?
Guest:I'm 58, probably 59.
Guest:I'm 59.
Guest:By the time this goes out, actually, it's quite soon.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I just turned 59.
Marc:So, yeah, as a kid, I kind of remember the sweaty Nixon.
Guest:Tail end of Vietnam.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I remember seeing the body count.
Guest:Last chopper out of...
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then Jimmy Carter coming in, he was going to turn the whole thing around.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And didn't.
Guest:And didn't.
Guest:But gave us a pause.
Guest:Gave us a break.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:A little bit of a break.
Guest:And, you know, has done quite well as an expert.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:Out of all of them.
Marc:But sometimes you just need a break.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:You know?
Marc:We're having a break now a little bit.
Marc:It's just sort of like, let's regroup and relax and see what happens.
Guest:As we're recording, it's a progressive process of electing of the party is electing the next prime minister.
Guest:Is that going to happen today or tomorrow?
Guest:I think that's going to be in the next five or six days.
Guest:Do you know who's in the... No.
Guest:No.
Guest:I think everyone's thinking, do I want this?
Guest:Because they're going to get absolutely stuffed in two years' time.
Marc:Well, that's the fucking problem with all of it.
Marc:It's like, who the fuck wants to do these?
Marc:Who wants to do it?
Guest:You're only going to be left with grifters and lunatics.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:So you get the weirdest person imaginable who's going to do it.
Guest:Convinced that they're going to be able to turn it all around.
Guest:Or just want the attention.
Guest:Oh, seriously, we might get Boris Johnson again.
Marc:Is that possible?
Guest:It is possible, yes.
Guest:He's still an MP, so he can still stand.
Guest:So, you know, what's that going to be like?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I have no idea what happened here.
Marc:I don't know if people are happy.
Guest:Are they happy?
Guest:No, everyone is furious.
Guest:Absolutely furious.
Guest:Because everyone's hurting.
Guest:You know, the cost of living has gone through the roof.
Guest:What Liz Truss and her budget did, and I put the interest rates up here so bad that people's mortgages.
Guest:That quickly?
Guest:Yes, absolutely.
Guest:Yes, yes.
Guest:Because it was awful.
Guest:And the markets just thought, what the hell are you doing?
Guest:You're borrowing money to pay for tax cuts at a time when nobody has any money.
Guest:That pushed the interest rates up.
Guest:So the money she was borrowing was actually borrowing at a higher rate of interest.
Guest:So it just became this loop.
Guest:It became like a feedback loop.
Marc:Well, I think you're fortunate in that it's a smaller country and a little more intimate.
Marc:And it seems like more of the population is somewhat engaged with the process than my country.
Guest:Yes, and everyone is not too far from the sea that they can walk into when things get worse.
Guest:Everyone's made that little journey on their app, worked it out.
Guest:Yeah, I'm about an hour from the sea.
Guest:I'll just see how it goes.
Guest:Well, yeah, as long as it's voluntary.
Marc:I'll give it another week and then...
Marc:Off I go.
Marc:Off I go.
Marc:So when you were growing up, did you speak Italian?
Guest:No, my parents spoke Italian to each other.
Guest:And they brought us up just speaking English.
Guest:I think partly because they wanted us to feel fully integrated.
Guest:Partly also because it gave them something to talk about private money and stuff.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:My grandparents used to do that with Yiddish.
Guest:Right, yes.
Guest:But did you hear Yiddish spoken?
Guest:No.
Guest:No, it was my grandparents.
Guest:It was your grandparents.
Marc:My parents, no, they didn't.
Guest:Because having heard it, I took it at school.
Guest:It came quite quickly.
Guest:I think because I was used to hearing the rhythm.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I bet.
Guest:But was comedy part of your life?
Guest:Yeah, radio comedy specifically.
Marc:See, that's what's so interesting.
Marc:Just the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy had just come on and that was just like I just thought through the BBC through the BBC Yeah, it's a radio show It's not what I was thinking about this today in terms of approaching the you know your kind of creative evolution is that You know radio in America, you know, it was just what led to television Yeah, whereas it stayed vital in the UK forever.
Guest:It still is it still is I mean
Guest:You know, a lot of careers have grown up comedy careers have started in radio.
Guest:Here.
Guest:Here.
Marc:But in that generation in America was like the 40s.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:No, it's still it's still crucial.
Guest:And Hitchhiker's Guide was.
Guest:Because you thought, oh, it's not just jokes.
Guest:Comedy isn't just jokes.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Or sketches.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's story and it's ideas.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and you can make them funny.
Guest:You can come up with a funny idea.
Guest:And radio, the space is someone's mind.
Guest:Yeah, imagination.
Guest:And you can do so much more.
Guest:Exactly, yeah.
Guest:So I grew up listening to all these shows.
Guest:Like what other ones?
Guest:There was a news quiz, which is just a quiz of the week.
Guest:And, you know, there was a show called The Berkus Way, which was like another surreal sketch show that just played with the form a lot.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So I was a bit of a... And then, you know, at school and at university, I would perform and write comedy and...
Guest:stand-up or sketch a little bit of more stand-up character rather than okay you know yeah like um you know do you remember your characters i like characters i had this slightly disturbed comedian called ken theft yeah who spoke very slowly yeah and i mean he did lots of visual stuff he he called himself an impressionist impersonator but he would do like capital letters of the alphabet
Guest:This next one requires a volunteer.
Guest:It's a diphthong.
Guest:And get them to actually mine being a W and stuff like that.
Marc:That's always the way your brain works.
Marc:Because I watched a bunch of the Armando Annucci shows.
Marc:Because it seems to me that you are dug into a British tradition of comedy in terms of that, in terms of presentation.
Guest:Oh, I'm sure.
Guest:I think it's that kind of
Guest:Sound sensible, but say stupid things.
Marc:Well, it's like a type of absurdism, right?
Marc:And I'm not like, you know, I like the pythons enough.
Marc:But like I was getting genuine laughs.
Marc:And apparently, yeah, it was great.
Marc:I think primarily because what we were talking about before is that so much of it is planted in a reality that is accessible.
Marc:And it's not like historic riffs or just repetition.
Guest:Just play it for real.
Guest:It's like what I'm saying with science fiction.
Guest:You just take one thing and just... The home for middle-aged men.
Guest:So you just... Exactly.
Marc:So you do... But going back to early stuff in the stand-up presentation, you were able to do that by creating a character who is a stand-up who does these peculiar things.
Marc:And that was sort of the beginning of the evolution.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And you were writing sketch in college?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yes, yeah.
Marc:With people that we know or no?
Guest:No, I mean, I performed a lot with David Schneider, who I've done stuff with on the Amanda Nucci shows, and we wrote Death of Stalin together.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So, yeah, yeah, a long time.
Guest:And I knew Rebecca Front.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She had a comedy kind of double act at college.
Guest:In which college was it?
Guest:So this was at Oxford.
Guest:She was at, I don't know which college she was at.
Guest:You were at Oxford?
Guest:I was at University College, Oxford.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:But was that graduate school or undergrad?
Guest:Undergrad.
Guest:Well, I stayed for six years.
Guest:So I did undergraduate.
Guest:And then I stayed on to do a PhD in Paradise Lost by John Milton.
Guest:You did?
Guest:I did.
Guest:Did you finish it?
Guest:I didn't finish it at all.
Guest:No.
Guest:Because I spent all my time doing comedy.
Yeah.
Guest:And then there came a point when I realized that the opening line of Paradise Lost of man's first disobedience and the fruit of that forbidden tree has the same rhythm scheme to the theme tune to the Flintstones of man's first disobedience and the fruit of that forbidden tree.
Guest:And that's the point where I thought, do you know what?
Guest:I think I'm more the comedy type than the academic.
Guest:Just because of that thought.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:That was the kind of Damascene moment when I thought, okay.
Marc:Because you could have wrote a thesis that begun that way.
Guest:I could have, yes.
Marc:And you could have interpreted Paradise Lost as a comedy that no one really understood.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:There was one article I remember talking about humor in Paradise Lost, and there isn't much of it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they called it Jehovah-lism.
Marc:Yeah, you know, when you commit to the life of being an academic, it's a weird life.
Guest:It's very insulated.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I think it was because I didn't really know what I wanted to do.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:I always thought, but doing comedy is not a real thing, is it?
Guest:It wasn't a real thing yet.
Guest:That's a whim, isn't it?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It would be great if it happened.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, I remember when you'd see it on TV or you'd hear it on the radio and you're like, you know, how does that happen?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But there is a moment where you realize like, oh, there is a path.
Guest:There is, yeah.
Marc:And you figured that out?
Guest:Well, just by coincidence, in that...
Guest:As I was thinking, I really ought to move on and do comedy properly.
Guest:Radio Scotland was looking for some fresh young talent to present a music show.
Guest:I'm the most uncool, fresh and young person ever.
Guest:But anyway, but they were also looking for comedy and I sent them some of my stuff and they liked it.
Guest:And I went out and chatted and whatever.
Guest:You went back home.
Guest:Back home.
Guest:And then I was presenting this music show on Radio Scotland.
Marc:What bands were these?
Marc:Do you remember who you were presenting?
Guest:Dick and Blue and whatever.
Guest:So late 80s.
Guest:I was living at my mum's because actually the BBC was literally down the road from my mum.
Guest:So made sense.
Guest:But writing comedy for the radio and actually being allowed to work with the sports journalists and the news journalists to get them to do parodies of stuff, to do all that, play around with sound effects.
Guest:So you were sort of like...
Guest:Like, hey, buddy.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:So using the studio and the facilities to direct people.
Guest:So it was a real training ground in doing full-on radio comedy.
Guest:And you were the only one.
Guest:So it was me, yeah.
Guest:But I would write people in.
Marc:No, but I mean, you didn't have another comedic conceptualizer.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:So I was doing it.
Guest:And I did that, you know, I had to do about five or six quite well-produced bits of comedy once a week for about eight months.
Guest:So it was just an amazing.
Guest:So you got that opportunity.
Marc:They found a window for it.
Marc:How long were they?
Marc:Were they within the music show?
Marc:Is that when you would?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:So they would drop in.
Marc:And you pitch that and they're like, OK, let's give it a try.
Guest:But I would also be like presenting the show.
Guest:Seriously.
Guest:And that was Deacon Blue with Steely Dan.
Marc:Was that was that name of a band?
Marc:Deacon Blue?
Marc:Deacon Blue.
Marc:Oh, no.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's a that's a Steely Dan song.
Marc:Oh, I see.
Guest:Right.
Marc:So that's how it started.
Guest:That's how it started.
Guest:And then I applied to be a comedy producer for radio down at the BBC in London.
Guest:OK.
Guest:And then I got that gig.
Guest:So there I was now making the programs that I grew up kind of listening to.
Guest:Really?
Guest:So who were the people that were working down there when you first started?
Marc:Well, was that when you were working with Stuart Lee?
Guest:No, Stuart and Richard I knew at university because they were performing together as a separate team at university.
Guest:But I got them to write for some of the shows I was making for Radio 4.
Guest:Richard Herring and Stuart Lee.
Marc:He does a podcast.
Marc:I don't know him, but I interviewed Stuart many years ago.
Marc:It was sort of life changing.
Marc:yeah yeah in terms of uh uh you know his his struggle with audiences and then you know to the point where you know he quit yeah for a while right and then but now he's become this like elder statesman oh yeah but his like the thing that got me was that like he realized you know instead of getting angry at audiences yeah which was sort of that's the comics way yeah you know you know them or you especially if you're doing stuff that is difficult for them yeah
Marc:is that like he's shifted into an empathetic position where he realized like you know i'm sorry this was not the night you planned but that's his sort of character that he's developed yeah the stuart lee character right he's developed but i mean i think it was honest it enabled him to come back instead of getting angry at them you know like yeah you really didn't know what you're getting into yes
Guest:And I think that's a good way to look at it.
Guest:Yeah, so Richard and Stuart wrote an awful lot.
Guest:And then I put together the show On the Hour, which was like a fake news show with Steve Coogan and Chris Morris.
Guest:That's where you first started working with Coogan?
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Yeah, and we came up with Alan Partridge to do the sports.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And the idea was it sounded like a news programme, slightly BBC, slightly commercial radio.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Absolutely straight.
Guest:Chris Morris being very, very straight and authentic.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But I was just talking nonsense all the way.
Guest:So it was just... Really, it was a sketch, broken comedy show, but it had a guise of being... And actually doing jokes about radio styles.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Because I figured we all, you know, we were that generation who... Grew up with it.
Guest:Who grew up with it, who knew how...
Marc:you know, I dance worked and why do you think that like, do you think it was because there wasn't a lot on television when you were growing up or like, cause it seems crazy that a whole generation of fairly sophisticated, creative young people were, were locked into the radio.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, well, it might be, I think at the time, the only two types of comedy we had were either the sitcom or, or the sketch show.
Guest:And that, that was it.
Guest:You couldn't do anything else, which is why some of the Hitchhiker's Guide was so important because it was saying, no, you could do a narrative.
Guest:That is sort of a sketch, but it's not really.
Guest:It's a story.
Marc:Was there American TV coming in?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, but very limited.
Guest:It was coming through through the filter of the BBC.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:And the commercial.
Marc:So there's only like three or four states.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:So we're getting, you know, MASH.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that's interesting.
Guest:So it was actually the radio.
Guest:Rhoda and Mary Tyler Moore show and stuff like that.
Marc:So the radio was almost like punk rock in a way.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, that makes sense.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which is why, you know, Monty Python was such a kind of bizarrely disruptive thing when it came on because it just didn't follow any of the rules.
Guest:Do you remember seeing it for the first time?
Guest:I don't.
Guest:I remember watching it, but I must have been about...
Guest:I remember still being at primary.
Guest:So I must have been about 11 or 12.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And thinking, I think I get this, but I'm not quite sure.
Guest:It was only when I actually became a student and I went back and listened to it.
Guest:I thought, God, this is great.
Marc:Oh, so you listened to it or you didn't watch it?
Guest:Oh, sorry, watched it.
Guest:Did they do radio?
Guest:first no they didn't no no no but they themselves were writing teams on various radio shows but i remember my son when he was about 14 coming up to me and going dad yeah i've been on youtube you've got to watch it's a great though you'll love this it's a group on youtube they're called monty python's flight and i said oh that's great he's sort of discovered them by himself yeah
Guest:And realized they're really good without anyone telling them.
Guest:But he did make a connection that you might know them?
Guest:Or that it was from a long time ago.
Guest:Yeah, that's all he knew.
Guest:And that's the great thing about Staffan.
Guest:There's no sense of the era it's from.
Guest:There's no context.
Guest:There's no context.
Guest:It's the same with music as well.
Marc:Yeah, it's like people are something, you know, it's bizarre.
Marc:I don't know if it's good But but it is true that you know there that there is a movement towards not having any context for anything Like I think I wrote a bit once about how eventually, you know, you're gonna hear people say things like wait Hitler was the guy with the mustache, right?
Guest:So Yeah, yeah, that's that's the power was that style guys with a mustache one had a bigger mustache.
Guest:Yes, that's right.
Guest:That was a Russian guy the Russian guy
Guest:Hitler was the small mustache.
Guest:Yeah, yes, yes.
Guest:But I don't, you know, do people have a conception of what 2020s music is?
Guest:Is there a style to, is that, will we recognize it and it has to come as that soul 2020s?
Guest:That usually takes a few years.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I'm way out of the loop.
Marc:I looked at a roster for a music festival and I like, I don't know, there was 50 fucking accents.
Marc:And I don't know any of them.
Marc:It's just words now.
Marc:Any of them.
Yeah.
Marc:It's like, I guess that's the natural order of things, though.
Marc:I can't keep up.
Marc:No.
Marc:So, all right, so you do the radio, and it was the dynamic with you and Coogan and... Chris Morris and all that team, really.
Guest:That kind of got you into... And then they became TV shows.
Guest:So we did On the Hour and Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge on the radio.
Marc:Now, Alan Partridge is sort of this, it's an icon here.
Marc:Like, of a time, right?
Marc:Still around.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:He still... Coogan still does parties sometimes.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What is it that resonates with the people?
Marc:I think everyone recognizes someone like him.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Like their dad's generation.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:No one will say it's me.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They'll say it's that guy.
Marc:But the younger people are like my uncle, my father, had a friend like that.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So, and we've always kind of done Partridge every four or five years rather than every year.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it's had this, and so therefore every time you revisit him, it's a new format, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's kind of tried to understand where the media's going and is then...
Guest:So now he's doing podcasts.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:So he's a proxy for people our age.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So you can kind of put your own sort of thoughts in there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he starts off as a radio thing.
Marc:Well, Herring actually has a pretty popular podcast, right?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Live from Leicester Square Theatre.
Marc:I've never met that guy.
Guest:You should go on his show.
Guest:He didn't ask me.
Marc:And I haven't asked him, but a lot of times because I feel out of the loop with British comedy and the more I talk to people like you and I can learn the history of it, I still missed it.
Marc:It's not part of my DNA.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, so like sometimes I feel like it wouldn't be respectful.
Guest:But I similarly, I have to stand up now.
Guest:Yeah, I wouldn't know because it's just that thing of you can't keep up, you know, the older you get.
Marc:Well, also now you have to keep up with what determines it, though.
Marc:You know what determines it?
Marc:I mean, you know, they have to like they're the entire system that is kind of been disrupted in that there are people that have can have tremendous success that absolutely nobody knows.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And it's just the way it works.
Marc:The business is not what it used to be.
Marc:You know, as you see these late night shows disappear and no one gives a shit.
Marc:You don't even know how anybody knows people.
Marc:But like when we were coming up, it was like, well, that guy's, you know, selling out an arena.
Guest:There was a period, I think, when standups would then get their TV projects.
Guest:Right, and it was a smaller media universe.
Guest:When there was three channels, everyone was sort of on the same page.
Guest:And then when it sort of exploded, when the stand-up scene exploded as a result, almost you could predict not all of them were going to get TV shows because it just doesn't work.
Guest:So then the stand-up world was full of...
Guest:really bitter stand-ups.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Doing shows about how they never got their TV show.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Well, now they can just do it on their Instagram.
Marc:They can talk directly and just say, like, I'm fucked.
Marc:Still fucked.
Guest:Hey, guys.
Guest:Yeah.
Hi.
Guest:Today, I'm just going to open some Lego and talk through as I open it up.
Guest:I thought that's what I'd do today.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:It works for all those young fucks.
Guest:Yeah, those fuckers.
Marc:Why isn't this going viral?
Marc:Help me.
Marc:So if you like it, don't forget to give me a review.
Guest:I'll do a cameo.
Guest:You want me to say happy birthday to your uncle?
Guest:But now, here's a bit I have to read out.
Guest:We're sponsored by... Right, right, right.
Guest:Squarespace.
Guest:Anti-nappy rash.
Guest:Because I think, was it that political thing, the podcast show about American politics with...
Guest:uh god was it god yeah the the ex-obama people who do a podcast oh yeah yeah yeah pod podcast america pod bless america or less america some part across america they might not do it now but i do know they do it's popular quite intently going and i think about the democrats is they've got to but first of all um are you old and maybe a bit worried about um urinating and not being able to hold a year with these nappies they're very discreet you know i do your whole
Guest:thing about discrete men for a minute.
Guest:But back to the midterms.
Guest:You say, what happened there?
Marc:You sort of got to pick and choose your sponsor.
Marc:You have a choice.
Marc:I'm sorry they made that choice.
Marc:I've never done nappies.
Marc:I've done a couple nothing that embarrassing.
Marc:But I do ads.
Marc:But you've got to feel it.
Marc:Sure, sure.
Marc:You don't want to
Marc:I've actually turned down ads because I'm like, this is not for my audience.
Marc:They're not going to buy into this.
Marc:I don't want to do it.
Marc:What products?
Marc:Well, there was one called the Mangrate, which was not as kind of weird as, not weird, but it wasn't medical.
Marc:It was this thing you put on a grill to cook steaks.
Marc:Oh, right, okay.
Marc:so it's sort of a bro meathead item and i and when they were like they really wanted us to do it and i'm like this is not my people no they're not they're not the meat no you know cigar people yeah and uh they were sort of like no it's gonna be great and we did one ad and they were like it didn't work and we're like i know just just we'll cancel the rest of the ads you know don't worry about it yeah
Marc:but you know you got to know your audience so once you start doing tv because like you know in talking about american tv it seems that you know your influence and gervais's influence on american tv has been profound and i don't even know that people really realize it i didn't realize that no for sure between veep you know veep is singular right you know and the office is singular
Marc:And these are, you know, conceptually from British minds, you know, and it does have an effect.
Marc:I mean, there's always something that almost like the Larry Sanders show.
Marc:Oh, I love the Larry Sanders show.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Sort of it dictates a high bar and then people spend, you know, a decade trying to replicate it somehow.
Guest:When I was pitching Veep, I said it's like the Larry Sanders show, but in Washington.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's what I said.
Marc:But you also did the movie, which was American, which kind of was the foundation of it, right?
Guest:Yes, that's right.
Guest:It was Brits being used by the Americans to support a war that in the end was stupid.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And as a result of that, HBO said, look, we've been trying to do a Washington show for a while.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Do you want to have a go at it?
Guest:and you were like that's oh so it was sort of their idea yes and again you know i said well hbo i loved and i said you know i larry sanders show for me is like you know again yes it was a sitcom except it wasn't right it was about you know unlikable people swearing yeah um naturalism what's the show within the show which is the show within the show you keep getting into which which happens it's about the front and the
Guest:Isn't it the space show?
Marc:Actually, it's a little different with the because you know You have a fictionalization going on on earth that becomes more interesting than the actual event.
Guest:Yeah, whereas in Larry Sanders It was like the behind the yes, exactly was more interesting Wow, so it's an evolution there, but I just thought that was and what they managed to put in oh, yeah 30 minutes.
Guest:Yes, it's great.
Guest:It's fantastic.
Guest:Yeah, but 30 30 minutes.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yes 28 28 minutes and 30 seconds so we average
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So when you put it together.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What was in casting?
Marc:I mean, you know, Julia Louis-Dreyfus is a genius.
Guest:She's fantastic.
Guest:Amazing.
Guest:The best.
Guest:And when you work with her, you realize if we were looking for a physical moment, she'd say, well, there are three ways we could go with this.
Guest:And she would do each of the three ways.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Each one of them.
Guest:Hilarious.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you just thought, there's someone with a kind of working knowledge of that heritage she's had from Seinfeld onwards.
Marc:It's astounding.
Marc:There's such a natural gift and control over her comedic instrument.
Guest:And it's our body.
Guest:It's told every cell.
Guest:And how she's thought about every moment, every scene, how Selina's going to do it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And just by about the fourth season, you're thinking, surely there can't be anything new.
Guest:yeah to see from her then she will do this amazing you know you think my god it just keeps going so funny you know yeah so so we wrote veep as we wrote it as a female vice president as the pilot script without having anyone in our head yeah and i think julia had just done the
Guest:The Seinfeld Reunion.
Marc:Oh, she had a sitcom on for a while.
Guest:Yeah, but with HBO, she'd just done the Seinfeld Reunion curb season.
Marc:Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:So she was in the loop there.
Guest:So HBO was saying... Try her out?
Guest:Try it, try it.
Guest:And I thought, of course.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I met her in L.A.
Guest:We were down to meet for like tea at three o'clock.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Thinking it'll be 45 minutes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It'll be very polite.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just to get to know...
Guest:And it was just her.
Guest:I just thought there'd be a whole group of people, as it were, arriving with.
Guest:It was just her.
Guest:And honestly, we sat and made each other laugh for about four hours.
Guest:She's great.
Guest:And I had already mapped out where it could go and I'd sit here and whatever.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:So we just knew, well, this is it, isn't it?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And the broader casting, I mean, everybody is good.
Marc:I worked with Dan, back to hell.
Guest:All right.
Marc:Yes on a on a movie.
Marc:He's great.
Marc:Yes, and all it Sam Richardson.
Guest:I talked yeah, and it's great Yeah, but you know like somebody like Hugh Laurie Sam is the only one who does his character rich split is the only one who never swears He's a very so well-meaning subtle sense of comedy is great But but Hugh you you go back with him
Guest:Not really.
Guest:I mean, we'd always, you know, I loved Fry and Laurie as a show to watch.
Guest:It was always hilarious.
Guest:And, you know, I think he was aware of me and liked the shows that I'd done.
Guest:He's a little older than us, right?
Guest:A little bit, but not much.
Guest:But he was definitely somebody you were familiar with.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Oh, yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I had been told he was a fan of Veep.
Guest:He'd finished House.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I thought, well, I think he's great.
Guest:So we just chatted and it came together.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you did how many seasons with them?
Guest:uh four i did four there was seven seasons so i left after season four you just split yeah i was just tired i was sort of and i also my last episode was the electoral college tie okay and i thought that's my ending really because that's what i have to say what's interesting about that is it's like i guess it's a mystery for some people but like in terms of british television yeah you were done i was done yeah it's like oh yeah
Guest:Right?
Guest:You do four seasons.
Guest:Once you've done 12 episodes of something in the UK, you're kind of done.
Guest:So by season four, I was like, this is unheard of.
Guest:I've never done so many episodes of a show before.
Marc:Well, that's interesting that, you know, what do you think that, I mean, because in America,
Marc:as you know now, they'll keep something going forever.
Guest:Until everyone is dead.
Marc:But there's something about maintaining, if something is good in the UK, it sort of becomes almost mythically good.
Marc:You leave on a high.
Guest:You're always engineered to leave on a high.
Guest:Three to four seasons.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I thought I'd left at the right time because we'd had the electoral tie.
Guest:It was the show that won the Emmy for the first time for Best Comedy.
Guest:I thought, this is a good point for me to go, actually.
Guest:And I was just so jet lagged and just I couldn't.
Marc:How did you feel like in terms of the two different styles of business?
Marc:I imagine like once here, you know, with the television business that you are a known quantity, a senior producer in a way with a certain amount of pull.
Marc:But also like, you know, with with solid relation, it just seems like a smaller business here.
Marc:In terms of how business is done.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But that business in the States.
Guest:In the States, yes.
Guest:I do remember when I said to HBO, the guy's no longer there.
Guest:But I got him very well.
Guest:But I do remember when I said to him, I don't want to do any more of it.
Guest:He actually just made a noise.
Guest:He just went, oh.
Guest:I suppose that you say it's not it's not the done thing.
Guest:It's like you're meant to just carry on and yeah, you've run out But I said look, you know You can carry on we'll get someone else in were you happy with our show Remaining yeah, it was great.
Guest:Yeah, I just thought I said to Dave Mandel because he said do you want to stay on as I could say I said no because
Guest:you've got to know it's your show.
Guest:And I don't want to be like, you know, the other new show runner.
Guest:You mean?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't want to be like, it's the Pope next door.
Guest:The one who resigned, but it's still in the Vatican.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You can.
Guest:And also I'll want to get involved fully if that happens.
Guest:I can't do that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So just get on with it.
Guest:So is that when you went off and did the Stalin?
Guest:So I did death of Stalin.
Guest:And that's a very funny movie.
Marc:And I don't, you know, the, the, the idea,
Marc:To find comedy in this sort of group revolving around this corpse, it would seem that it was... But it's part of, like, Russian literature is like that, isn't it?
Guest:It's very, you know, Gogol, and it's all big satirical.
Guest:It's that kind of... But it's like a really...
Guest:dark, miserable humor.
Guest:Not miserable, but it's a kind of deathly humor.
Guest:It's a kind of laughing at the dark, really.
Guest:And a lot of people said to me when I was researching, it was out in Moscow and speaking to people who'd grown up under Stalin.
Guest:And they said, you know, there were joke books about Stalin that people had.
Guest:And you could be killed if you told one of those jokes.
Guest:And yet people felt it was the only way you could process what was going on.
Guest:I think that's interesting.
Guest:So that's a real thing.
Guest:By telling a joke about
Marc:Yeah, because I've been doing a joke on stage about people who do jokes coming from a dark place.
Marc:Because you have to.
Marc:There's a tremendous relief in it to contextualize things humorously.
Marc:And I just say out loud, I said, I know there must have been hilarious people in Auschwitz.
Marc:I mean, first of all, it's all Jews.
Marc:And then you've got to have one guy who's like, have you seen Murray do the Nazis?
Marc:It's hilarious.
Marc:He nails it.
Guest:So but there's also that thing of it's it's sort of it means you have some life left if you're making a joke about something.
Guest:I mean, it's mind hasn't been controlled.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:And also like it is it's not it's almost the companion, but but not to hope it's not.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But it's relief.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And it's enough to get you through a minute or two.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And if you say something and lots of people laugh, that's a kind of like... Human spirit.
Guest:Human spirit.
Guest:But also there's a spontaneity there that, you know, the guards with the guns haven't been able to quash.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think that's why dictators don't like artists and poets.
Guest:Or to be made fun of.
Guest:Because they just don't like that.
Guest:They don't like being in control of the result.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Of not being in control.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, I think that's true.
Marc:I think that it's interesting because in hopeless situations that, you know, that humor replaces hope as as some sort of relief and also some sort of, you know, radical.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Fuck you.
Guest:So the politicians to be wary of are the ones who dislike having jokes about themselves.
Guest:So like Trump, every week after Saturday Night Live, another lame show, really lame.
Guest:It's just because he doesn't like people making jokes about him.
Guest:But that's a terrible trait to have in a politician.
Marc:Right, but that's how fascism, the only jokes become at the expense of the oppressed.
Marc:yeah and until they're gone and then there's just no humor just a lot of uh yelling and sports it's just all heckles from then on it's it's scary so do you feel like that's a good way of um summarizing fascism yelling and sports
Guest:It's fundamentally what it is.
Guest:It is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, it's a sort of I don't know.
Guest:There's a homoeroticism about fascism.
Guest:Oh, dude It's just all that take your shirt off and show us your muscles.
Marc:It's totally I can't even What's his name?
Marc:Was it Wilhelm or was it Reich the the therapist the renegade therapist just talked about how it was just this, you know Totally based on homoerotic repressed right clusterfuck of men
Marc:you know, who get worked up about, you know, fascism.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I, but do you, so you see what you do as satire?
Guest:Well, I do, except, you know, is Alan Partridge satire?
Guest:Was that, you know?
Guest:I think, yeah, but it's not, well, I mean, I think it's easy to.
Guest:Amanda, you know, she shows, was that satire?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I don't know if that was.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:But Alan Partridge is because it is sort of a kind of slightly amplified version of a time.
Guest:But I kind of think, I just think,
Marc:What's the next funny thing I want to make well, but you were clear though in that but you know your understanding of what the Imperative of the Stalin movie or where it comes from yes that the power of humor in the face of authoritarianism.
Guest:Yes
Guest:And it was made at a time when, I mean, it was before we shot it before Trump was even nominated.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it was made at a time when you had like Berlusconi and Putin, Erdogan in Turkey.
Guest:No sense of humor.
Guest:Any of them.
Guest:Well, but also these authoritarian people elected, but then using the rule, changing the rules to make it harder to get them out.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, and I thought there's a whiff of 1920s, 1930s again here going on.
Guest:So I wanted to do something about a dictator, going into it thinking maybe a fictional dictator today.
Guest:And then the story, the book, it was based on a graphic novel, The Death of Stalin.
Guest:They sent it to me.
Guest:Well, there's the story.
Guest:I mean, I don't need to invent this.
Guest:There's the story.
Marc:But it's sort of interesting that with Veep, too, to sort of reveal in a genuine way the sort of farce of American politics.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:It's powerful.
Marc:But I like the idea of continuing to put it up the fascist ass.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:yes because i think that's going to be the challenge now because things become so tribalized yeah like how do you do that because like you know and what effect does it have if people are living in different media bubbles yes like if you're sitting here satirizing something or we're saying you to the to the powers that be yet all the people that follow them don't even know you're on exactly i know you know what happened and if they had anything you did we just say well that's that's intolerable you shouldn't be saying things like that
Guest:Yeah, they would say, who's watching that?
Guest:No one cares.
Marc:But the Saturday Night Live thing, I mean, he said it again last week.
Marc:Oh, did he?
Marc:Because he came up on Saturday Night Live.
Marc:With the January 6th thing.
Marc:He said it was going to be canceled, I think, this week.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But see, the thing is, is that people hear that, and they don't have any context of what's going on in the other world.
Marc:So for weeks, they'll think, like, was it canceled?
Marc:Did it get canceled without even checking?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:What do we do?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Do you know?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:What are you working on now?
Marc:Just the space one?
Guest:No, I've just finished that.
Guest:I'm doing...
Guest:I'm writing, recall writing a script for a film set in the world of social media.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:That'll do it.
Guest:I know.
Guest:That'll fix it.
Guest:Because just looking at where power lurks now, it's like these guys who, from the age of 22, have been multimillionaires.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Starting off thinking, well, starting off thinking, I just want to set up a website that rates how hot college girls are.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'll now sort of work back, you know, reverse the narrative and say that actually I set up a network so that we can all communicate better.
Guest:Major 25 are billionaires owning all our data.
Guest:And our thoughts.
Marc:Having a tremendous sway on the brains of the... Yeah.
Guest:And they're convinced themselves that because they are good people, therefore there can't be anything wrong with what they're doing.
Marc:yeah okay they can't well that's that thing they don't see how it's gotten away from them necessarily and they don't really have the moral infrastructure personally no they don't yeah you know within five years they've had to become like experts in ethics and democracy but then there's people like peter thiel who are full fascists yeah and just want to you know change it all yeah you know being
Marc:Who the fuck are these people that want to like you know these people that buying bunkers in New Zealand?
Marc:I mean who wants to live in whatever world?
Guest:The only other people left alive are the head of social media organizations And Jeff Bezos.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah What's that community gonna be like you've got a neighbor on the other island who owns that island?
Marc:do you think they ever will ever get together to like plan the christmas fair and there's only going to be a few of them the school show and in weird mutants in tribal situations there's another movie well look yeah it was great talking to you there we go uh i appreciate you taking the time we may have another prime minister by the time this goes out uh i would think you would i'm not sure when when does the new season start
Guest:Oh, it's just started.
Guest:So we've done two episodes already.
Marc:Oh, it's going to be pretty soon.
Marc:So maybe we'll still be waiting on a new prime minister.
Marc:We'll see.
Marc:Good talking to you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Oh, here's the prime minister.
No.
Yeah.
Marc:All right, that was Armando Annucci.
Marc:What a great guy.
Marc:What a smart guy.
Marc:What a funny guy.
Marc:Avenue 5 airs Monday nights on HBO and then streaming on demand on HBO Max.
Marc:If you could, please hang out for a second, will you?
Marc:Would you?
Marc:Would you?
Marc:Would you please?
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Hey, folks, I'm back for our look back in the archives today.
Marc:It seems appropriate to highlight the episode with Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
Marc:This is from episode 700 done in 2016, which was during the fifth season of Veep.
Marc:She is the best, the funniest comedic actress I think this world has ever produced.
Marc:That's my belief.
Marc:That is my belief.
Marc:Listen to this clip.
Guest:I got an overall deal.
Marc:Imagine that.
Guest:At NBC?
Guest:No, at Warner Brothers Television.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:And so I developed a script there, and this is right after Day by Day, and it was a script for me to start in.
Guest:Then the script came in, and they paid me money, Warner Brothers, to do this.
Guest:The script came in, and it was not what I had envisioned, and it didn't seem fixable to me.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so I said, I don't want to do it.
Guest:I can't do it.
Guest:And I had a window.
Guest:Legally, there was a window in which I could pull out of this thing.
Guest:And then about three days later, or even maybe not, maybe like two days later, these four Seinfeld Chronicles scripts come to me.
Marc:Okay?
Mm-hmm.
Guest:from Larry and I read them.
Marc:He sent them to you, Larry did.
Marc:He remembered you and you guys, were you maintaining a friendship?
Marc:No, but he just sent them.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And so he sent them to me and in two of the four scripts, my character didn't really have very much to do.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And the other two more so.
Guest:But this was definitely a supporting role and the other show was like a starring role, right?
Guest:But I thought, ooh, this writing is so great.
Guest:I mean, I was able to recognize.
Guest:It was all Larry.
Guest:I mean, I don't know what the writing credit is on that, actually.
Guest:It's a good question.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:But I mean, it's definitely.
Marc:Maybe Larry and Jerry.
Guest:Larry and Jerry together.
Guest:But certainly Larry's voice is present as a writer for whom I had known third year at SNL.
Guest:And it was the same kind of tone.
Marc:Did you guys have a relationship at SNL?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yes, we were friends there.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:We bonded over unhappiness.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Really, truly.
Guest:And so I read this, oh my God, this sounds really good.
Guest:And so anyway, I got this, I went in, I hung out with Jer, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:And that happened.
Guest:But let me tell you something, what happened?
Guest:Warner Brothers threatened to sue me.
Guest:Because they thought I had done something illegal or unethical.
Marc:By just meeting with them?
Guest:No, they were suspicious of the fact that I pulled out of my deal with them and then so quickly on the heels of that became involved with this gig.
Guest:And I was terrified.
Guest:This was just, I was like nothing.
Guest:I was a little person.
Guest:And this was a huge studio and they were threatening and they said they wanted their money back.
Guest:And it was a lot of money.
Guest:I mean, it was a lot.
Guest:I'm going to tell you right now, $75,000.
Guest:That's a lot of money, particularly back then.
Guest:It was huge.
Guest:And I thought, well, but I didn't do anything wrong.
Guest:I didn't break our contract.
Guest:And I got advice from one of my attorneys who said, you've got to just give it back.
Guest:I'm like, but if I do that, it doesn't imply that I've done something wrong.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Where's your sense of, you got a sense of justice.
Guest:Yeah, because I didn't do anything wrong, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And I called Gary David Goldberg, who's the creator of Family Ties in Spin City, and he subsequently passed away, but he was a mentor of mine and a very good friend.
Guest:And I told him this.
Marc:You knew him from day by day?
Marc:I did.
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:Actually, I knew him from before that because I'd done this spinoff of Family Ties.
Marc:Oh, right, right, right.
Guest:And I told him that Warner Brothers was threatening to sue and what should I do?
Guest:And I was so scared and I'm being told by lawyers to give the money back.
Guest:And he said, you know what?
Guest:I don't respond well to bullying.
Guest:Keep the money.
Guest:And so I took his advice.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I never heard from Warner Brothers.
Guest:Nothing.
Guest:Is that wild?
Guest:That was so scary.
Marc:It's touching in a way.
Guest:It's touching because I love Gary Goldberg.
Marc:Yeah, he was great.
Guest:Such a good man.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:If you had met him, you would have died.
Marc:So that's all.
Marc:They obviously didn't have any legal grounds.
Guest:They had no legal grounds.
Marc:And they were just being dicks.
Guest:They were being dicks.
Guest:And I called their bluff.
Marc:What a great thing.
Guest:Yeah, it was a great thing, actually.
Guest:It was a good lesson.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Guest:You know, I don't respond to bullying.
Marc:Again, that's from episode 700, which is available for free on all podcast apps.
Marc:If you want to get the archive episodes without ads, sign up for WTF Plus.
Marc:Just click on the link in the episode description or go to WTFPod.com and click on WTF Plus reports.
Marc:For full Marin subscribers, I posted a spontaneous audio diary during my trip in Dublin last week.
Marc:And this week we have more producer cuts going up, including stuff that didn't make it into episodes with Jeremy Strong and Adrian Ballou.
Marc:This week I'm in Oklahoma City at the Tower Theater on Wednesday, November 2nd.
Marc:Dallas, Texas at the Majestic Theater on Thursday, November 3rd.
Marc:San Antonio at the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts for two shows on Friday, November 4th.
Marc:And Houston at the Cullen Theater at Wortham Center on Saturday, November 5th.
Marc:Then I'm in Long Beach, California at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center on Saturday, November 12th.
Marc:Eugene, Oregon at the Holt Center for the Performing Arts on Friday, November 18th.
Marc:And Bend, Oregon at the Tower Theater on Saturday, November 19th.
Marc:In December, I'm in Asheville, North Carolina at the Orange Peel for two shows on Friday, December 2nd.
Marc:And then Nashville, Tennessee, I'm at the James K. Polk Center on Saturday, December 3rd.
Marc:And my HBO special taping is at Town Hall in New York City on Thursday, December 8th.
Marc:Go to wtfpod.com slash tour for all dates and ticket info.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Here's some simple blues.
Thank you.
Marc:Boomer lives.
Marc:Monkey LaFonda.
Marc:Cat angels everywhere.