Episode 141 - Kevin Smith
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 Marc Maron.
Marc:Okay, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what-the-fuckers?
Marc:What-the-fuck buddies?
Marc:What-the-fuckineers?
Marc:What-the-fucking-ots?
Marc:I like to say hello, a special hello to my only self-identified what-the-fucker-ican.
Marc:I don't know how many times I'll do that, but I like doing it right now.
Marc:This is Mark Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:Thanks for coming.
Marc:I'm very excited today.
Marc:I actually am pretty excited.
Marc:Kevin Smith is going to be on the show.
Marc:Now, this is what happened.
Marc:I know Kevin Smith from being Kevin Smith.
Marc:I don't know how many of you identify him with a movie or a comic book writing or one of the many things he does is podcasts.
Marc:I just know Kevin Smith is being Kevin Smith.
Marc:I saw Clerks when it came out.
Marc:I think I saw Chasing Amy.
Marc:And then I just sort of, you know, then Kevin Smith was just everywhere for a while.
Marc:And I know as a podcaster, he put together one of the first sort of podcast networks, and I became very aware of him then.
Marc:And I actually reached out to him on Twitter, and he said he would come by.
Marc:So that's happening.
Marc:The problem with that is I had to cram.
Marc:I had to cram some Kevin Smith into my head.
Marc:I had to rent Dogma, and I had to get up to speed on Kevin Smith.
Marc:What do I want to talk about today?
Marc:Look.
Marc:Something has happened in my life, and I don't know if it can be helpful to you, but it's happened to me.
Marc:And don't get afraid.
Marc:Don't get afraid.
Marc:I'm not going to go changing, all right, to try to please anybody.
Marc:Did I just quote a fucking Billy Joel song?
Marc:You know what?
Marc:The Stranger was a great record.
Marc:You know, to seventh grade Marc Maron, that was a great record.
Marc:All right.
Marc:What I want to say is this.
Marc:Some of my fears dissipated.
Marc:And along with that has come a true and deep feeling of not giving a fuck about certain things.
Marc:And it is such a relief, I can't even begin to tell you.
Marc:Now, the area that this usually appears in is that it comes to me in relation to haters or in relation to people that want to instigate shit or in relation to people that come at you with negativity.
Marc:Now, look, I'm as negative as the next guy.
Marc:Believe me, I've got to watch myself.
Marc:I mean, for years there, my name could have been Buzzkill, Mark Buzzkill Marin.
Marc:I come from a family of buzzkillers.
Marc:My father is the greatest buzzkill of them all.
Marc:You could have any conversation with him.
Marc:And eventually, within minutes, the conversation will turn around.
Marc:And all of a sudden, you're talking about the possibility of maybe having cancer.
Marc:And perhaps you should pay attention to that.
Marc:No matter what you're talking about.
Marc:It could be food.
Marc:It could be a movie.
Marc:It could be, hey, look, there's a hot air balloon.
Marc:Within five minutes, it's going to be like, really?
Marc:You think I should get that checked?
Marc:That's the way it works.
Marc:But there are people that out of their own insecurity will just, you know, they will transfer it right onto you.
Marc:All of a sudden you're hanging around with somebody and you're wondering like, Jesus Christ, why does it feel like some of my soul is being sucked out of the side of my head?
Marc:because you're with a psychic vampire they may not know it but they are taking your chi they are stealing your life force i've talked about this in different ways before because with a little more recognition now look i don't have a lot of recognition it was a nice article in the new york times some nice things are happening but no one is is uh you know i haven't been given an office not that i necessarily want one i'm very happy here in the garage but with any sort of minor amount of
Marc:of a promotion and recognition all of a sudden you get more people saying you suck hey fuck you oh you got nothing whatever I honestly don't give a fuck anymore I even go to comedy clubs now and there's someone in the room that's giving me a hard time or being a douchebag I truly don't care I know how to handle that it's not a problem it doesn't mean anything about me
Marc:This little incident happened.
Marc:A good example is this.
Marc:I had Greg Fitzsimmons.
Marc:Greg Fitzsimmons was on the podcast last week, and I think I brought up a story about Bubba the Love Sponge, about having the one time I did his show, he walked out of the studio.
Marc:For whatever reason, whatever my paranoid reasons were, it might not have anything to do with me.
Marc:So then a couple of Bubba the Love Sponge followers, Bubba's soldiers, tweeted a couple things like, hey, man, if you're going to start a radio war, you better have content.
Marc:And you know what was amazing when I read it?
Marc:And this is true.
Marc:I really didn't give a shit.
Marc:I don't give a shit about them.
Marc:I don't give a shit about him.
Marc:He can have his little world.
Marc:I can have my little world.
Marc:We can all exist in our little worlds now.
Marc:There's really no reason to have these ridiculous fights based on what and for what.
Marc:What am I going to do?
Marc:I can't appeal to everybody.
Marc:If I appealed to everybody, I would be a much different performer.
Marc:And I can't do it.
Marc:You know why?
Marc:Because I can only do what the fuck I do.
Marc:I'm not here making balloon animals.
Marc:I'm not writing poetry.
Marc:I'm not making big Hollywood movies.
Marc:I'm in my garage talking about myself and writing jokes about the way I think.
Marc:That's all I could do.
Marc:Maybe I could do those other things, but for me, the journey has always been to arrive at me.
Marc:And that is a profoundly difficult journey.
Marc:And I don't want, I'm not getting all spiritual here, but it's so easy when you're a creative person for someone to undermine you just by instilling a little doubt in what you do and who the fuck are they anyways?
Marc:Seriously, we're also goddamn hypersensitive, myself included.
Marc:One idiot says one thing that throws me into doubt about something I'm doing or something I've said or something I'm involved with.
Marc:And I'm like, holy shit, maybe I'm right.
Marc:My fucking soul just feeds on the opportunity to fester in self-doubt.
Marc:I'm fucking done with it.
Marc:I'm done with it.
Marc:I'm too old for that shit.
Marc:How many more years do I have left to fester about that shit?
Marc:To sit around and wonder why a Bubba the Love Sponge soldier has a problem with my content?
Marc:Good.
Marc:Good.
Marc:I'm happy that my content is not for you.
Marc:But you know what?
Marc:You know it's great.
Marc:A lot of other content out there.
Marc:Go somewhere else.
Marc:You don't even have to write me about it.
Marc:You don't even have to reach out to say, I don't know.
Marc:You know what?
Marc:Okay, don't write me.
Marc:If you don't like the tweets, don't follow me.
Marc:If you don't like the podcast, and it's like all this stuff, I seem to be getting it, and it's only taken me 45 years to get it.
Marc:I was always a little bit thin-skinned, and I think that just comes from the fact that you want approval, and there's no way around that.
Marc:Most people want approval.
Marc:Some people want it less like people who have appropriate boundaries and were properly parented by at least one good parent and and perhaps, you know, learned a healthy sense of what competition is and nothing.
Marc:Everything wasn't some sort of, you know, life threatening event or self-defining event.
Marc:But I had a pretty thin skin and it just seems to be getting a little more resilient.
Marc:I think a lot of it has to do with me talking my mouth off, you know, talking my head off here twice a week and processing stuff and talking to other people.
Marc:And realizing that you don't have to walk around all day waiting for somebody to confirm your worst thoughts or your worst feelings about yourself.
Marc:If you're sitting around going, I suck.
Marc:I'm a fucking idiot.
Marc:My work sucks.
Marc:This is ridiculous.
Marc:Life stinks.
Marc:If that's your inner dialogue, all it takes is one person to go, I don't know.
Marc:It's okay.
Marc:And you're like, I fucking knew it.
Marc:It's not just okay.
Marc:It stinks.
Marc:It's the fucking worst.
Marc:They just fed your fucking inner engine of shit.
Marc:Just a shit processing factory.
Marc:I don't want to digress too much.
Marc:I just, it's just an interesting guest that Kevin Smith, uh,
Marc:is willing to do this show because I know him to be Kevin Smith.
Marc:And he is an example of a guy that despite whatever shit storm has come at him and despite whatever you may think about him, he still sort of plugs away doing the shit he wants to do and doing it his way.
Marc:And when you do that, you face a tremendous shit storm.
Marc:So let's talk to Kevin Smith.
Marc:Can we smoke?
Marc:Can I smoke?
Marc:Yeah, absolutely.
Marc:I enjoy this, man.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, well, it's weird.
Marc:I mean, it seems that you kind of invented this in some weird way.
Guest:No, man, it was Gervais.
Guest:Well, I've never heard the Gervais one, but everyone's like, Gervais is the king of podcasting.
Guest:That was the first time I ever heard that word podcasting was off of him.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And everyone kept saying, you should listen to his thing.
Guest:You should listen to his thing.
Guest:I said, what is it?
Guest:And they're like, it's kind of like he just does a radio show.
Guest:And I was like, what, like Stern?
Guest:And they said, yeah.
Guest:And I was like, all right, that's a podcast?
Guest:They said, yeah.
Guest:I was like, radio?
Guest:A radio show is a podcast.
Guest:And they're like, yeah, it's just another name.
Guest:And at that point, I was like, well, I don't need to hear anybody else's.
Guest:I've been on a radio show.
Guest:We just go.
Marc:And that was that.
Marc:But I mean, do you think, though, it seems to me that, like I did radio for a couple years, and it seems to me that the podcasting thing gives us a little more freedom
Marc:I mean, huge freedom.
Guest:Well, that's the thing.
Guest:I've never been on the side of the table where, you know, I'm riding a button or something like that.
Guest:I've always been the guy in the chair who has to watch his language.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So for me, I'm a quarterback.
Guest:I'm a visitor.
Guest:I come in and I just try to keep it tight.
Guest:And every once in a while they rush over themselves and press the button.
Marc:the guy makes the guy in the button panic yes yes i'm the guy that he's been working out for for all these months we had what we had of all people paul haggis on a show i did once the director director and uh he just kept saying fuck it was a phoner and literally the guy tapped out on the delay like he did it three times and you're out of time you can't catch back up we had to hang up on you're playing jeopardy with the button clicking it so hard trying to be we had to hang up on him because you have no more delay left
Guest:For me, though, I, yeah, I guess there's total freedom, right?
Guest:Because, like, I would leave those interviews and those cats still have to, like, they can't, I could go and say anything I want and I'm on the air, they can't.
Guest:And, like, there's all, every time I sit down in a radio station, there's more,
Marc:uh structure more constrictive kind of attitude there's no choices being made if there's any music involved no one's making any choices with this thing the thing i noticed about between that and doing radio is you're always driving towards a break to push something that you don't really want to push and then uh and then you don't have any real freedom to say what you want it's all about momentum and i i sort of resent podcasts that sound like afternoon radio
Marc:Though I have no disrespect for radio people.
Marc:It's its own skill.
Marc:But if we're going to be out here, if I'm going to be sitting in my garage doing this, why the fuck not?
Marc:Why do something that sounds like everything else?
Marc:Why not?
Guest:This is as free as it gets.
Guest:I can be myself here.
Guest:Exactly, exactly.
Marc:So look, I was...
Marc:The first time I saw you, it's weird.
Marc:I haven't followed a lot of what you've done lately, but I know who you are.
Marc:But it was interesting because I was at that restaurant across from the Scientology Celebrity Center that's owned by John Gotti's brother.
Marc:Do you know that restaurant?
Marc:It's in the mall right there.
Guest:Is it Bird's?
Marc:Not birds, behind birds.
Guest:It's like a diner.
Guest:Oh, hold on.
Guest:It's Victor's?
Guest:Yeah, Victor's.
Marc:I saw you sitting in Victor's with Jason Lee.
Marc:Wow, this is going way back.
Marc:It must be.
Marc:It's got to be five or six years.
Marc:And I do that thing where I see somebody who I know is a celebrity where I look at you to see if you know who I am so that would validate my place in the world.
Guest:I didn't know people play that game.
Marc:And I approach it with resentment.
Marc:No, I'm sure you get a lot of like, fuck, that's Kevin Smith with me.
Marc:It's like, why the fuck doesn't Kevin Smith know who I am?
LAUGHTER
Marc:It's a different game I play with celebrities.
Guest:I like your game better.
Marc:And of course, you didn't register anything.
Marc:But then I started thinking like, all right, well, there's Jason Lee.
Marc:They must be talking about a movie.
Marc:Were you at that time?
Guest:I'm guessing, to be honest, Mark, it would have to be circa 97.
Guest:But back when I used to, I used to go to Victor's.
Guest:birds that whole strip yeah when i was dating joey adams and that was right around the uh chasing amy era so jason maybe i did meet jason lee over there sometime in the aughts like in i can't believe he used the term the aughts but somewhere in the 2000s because he did live sort of over there at one point before he moved even into a arty neighborhood like this well my first my first thought was like you know all right are are they both scientologists
Guest:No.
Guest:In fact, Jason, I love Jason to death, but one of the only times we ever had friction was over Scientology, and not because I was like, hey, man, why are they so wacky and shit?
Guest:Who's a Jedi in your religion?
Guest:How do you get the special hat?
Guest:I don't understand.
Guest:Where's your spaceship?
Guest:I had written this script called Dogma before I even knew Jason.
Marc:I was actually just watching it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:There was a joke in there, one throwaway joke that the Loki character had.
Guest:And that was a character that I was going to have Jason Lee play.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Ben was playing Bartleby.
Guest:Jason Lee would have played Loki.
Guest:How good is fucking Matt Damon?
Guest:Matt Damon took the role of Loki, and yeah, that's one of those instances of don't get up, because when you get up, somebody else can sit down and take your job.
Marc:But I'm watching him in your movie, and I'm always amazed at just like, out of that whole crew, I mean, that motherfucker can act.
Guest:He's a pro, dude.
Guest:He's such a pro, and it's weird because...
Guest:you know this is a dude who's gone on in life yeah i was a footnote in this dude's fucking history and to see like you know i just watched true grit again right i've watched it now twice i did come out same thing fucking love it and i love it for his performance especially like i could sit there and watch him build ever stalwart you know at the end yeah he's just the dude is the goods and when i pay when when i pass him this earth like or even before i pass him this
Guest:I'm going to be like, wow, I worked with a great.
Guest:Yeah, he really is.
Guest:Oh, he's the good.
Guest:He's fucking sick good.
Marc:Are you like me, though, man?
Marc:If I watch a Coen Brothers film, I need to watch it at least twice before I can even register the humor in it, the brilliance of it.
Marc:I mean, I've never watched movies where literally the last few Coen Brothers movies, you end the movie and you realize, oh, shit, it's on me to figure it out.
Guest:Yes, and that began for me, and this is going to sound really weird because most people are going to be like, what?
Guest:That's an easy one.
Guest:Big Lebowski was the first bump in the road for me.
Guest:Yeah, me too.
Guest:I didn't get it.
Guest:Oh, I'm so scared to admit that because this is a Big Lebowski world and generally people are like, what do you mean?
Guest:I did not get it.
Guest:I went to see this movie at a movie theater in Pittsburgh while we were shooting Dogma.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was me.
Guest:It was the only time I've ever gone on a celebrity movie date.
Guest:But it was Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Chris Rock, me, and Jason Mewes, my friend Scott Mosher.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Chris Rock is like openly heckling the movie while it's happening.
Guest:Because he thinks it sucks?
Guest:The fact that we were just sitting there and Chris was kind of tearing into it, it wasn't, I think it had everything to do with Fargo.
Guest:We'd all went in looking for Fargo.
Guest:Fargo had been the one right before it.
Guest:So we were like, we know these motherfuckers inside and out.
Guest:We know everything the Coen brothers could do.
Guest:They're geniuses.
Guest:And then we come in and we see essentially like a movie that I would have made, a stoner movie.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, just slightly smarter.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I think all of us were just kind of gut punched by the first screening.
Guest:Like Chris was literally, as the movie was ending, he was booing.
Guest:It was really weird.
Marc:I had not a booing reaction.
Marc:I just didn't get it.
Marc:When, though?
Guest:When did you get it?
Guest:When did you rewatch it?
Marc:Well, I give them the benefit of the doubt, because even when I watch... Well, it's not my favorite Coen Brothers movie, and I'm not sure it completely resonates with me, but even when I watched Burn After Reading, because I didn't like it, the first viewing, I watched it a couple times, and I can at least appreciate it.
Marc:I thought Malkovich ate too much of the movie a little bit.
Marc:I think he was a little miscast, and it kind of distracted shit for me.
Marc:But Serious Man and True Grit and No Country for Old Men, I'll watch four or five fucking times.
Marc:Get a bunch out of them.
Guest:I mean, look, the highest compliment I can pay any filmmakers, I still watch Raising Arizona.
Guest:Oh, it's the best.
Guest:I get popping in and never, it's not one of those movies where I'm like, we've done it too much.
Guest:Let's move on.
Guest:Fargo, Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, Miller's Crossing.
Guest:These movies are religion to me.
Guest:So much so that, like, look, it's, I think a lot of, there's a movie we made that's coming up soon called Red State.
Guest:And some people have seen a teaser for it online.
Guest:Looks drastically different from most of the stuff I'm used to doing because most of the stuff I'm used to doing is comedy.
Guest:This looks more grown up.
Guest:And the Coen brothers were a huge influence.
Guest:That was nice.
Guest:But at the same time, and I'm sure you know this because you described it to some degree before or at least described a mindset that I would understand.
Yeah.
Guest:In our heads, we're always skating way ahead of everybody else, and it takes people a little time to catch up.
Guest:So for me, I've seen a lot of people reacting surprised to the teaser of the movie.
Guest:Who knew we had it in them?
Guest:And me, I'm like, well, I always knew I had this.
Guest:Didn't you guys know?
Guest:And you realize, no, you're alone out there.
Guest:knowing what you can do and what you can't do or the talents that you've yet to actually even put on display.
Guest:Like people want to pigeonhole you quickly as possible.
Guest:Go like, Oh, he's got disc clerks.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:Nothing more.
Guest:Don't do anything more.
Guest:So much so that when you do a podcast, people like, well, who do you think you are now?
Guest:When I started doing Q and a on stage, like put out that DVD.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I got so much shit.
Guest:You think you're a fucking comic?
Guest:You're not a fucking comic.
Guest:You're a filmmaker.
Guest:People want to keep you in one identifiable little box, which is totally fine, but because of this cool little box, I got access to all these other cool boxes.
Guest:Where it's like, please don't hold me back.
Guest:I'm not saying I'm going to be a great comic book writer, but giving a chance to write a comic book, I'm
Marc:to do it well i think what happens is is that if you're not going to self-brand which is what you're talking about you've done and and you know you've had the fortitude to sort of take the hits and keep moving in your own direction uh what they want to do is box you to brand you and so and and especially if the expectations are met you know that's why you know certain bands make the same record over and over again and why shit movies are shit movies dude i played to my audience and i still i still believe i play to my audience but let me ask you though i made those viewers human abuse universe yeah
Guest:And within the world of people that like those movies, man, I could keep going.
Guest:I could keep doing it.
Guest:I never had to stop.
Guest:You got your people.
Guest:Outside?
Guest:Holy shit.
Guest:You would have thought I was sitting there.
Guest:I was doing earnest movies.
Guest:Well, did it hurt your feelings?
Guest:Of course it did.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:I mean, I saw Quirks.
Marc:I knew the buzzer on Quirks.
Marc:And I've always talked to people when they bring up Quirks.
Marc:I think the one thing that was inherent and the one thing that the studio saw was like, this guy's got a sense of comedy.
Marc:I mean, he's got a sense of pacing.
Guest:He's got a sense of timing.
Guest:Nobody watched that movie and said, this guy's a great filmmaker.
Guest:This guy's just Orson Welles.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:They were just like, look, here's the secret of quirks.
Guest:It has continuity.
Guest:It made us laugh.
Guest:Right, exactly.
Guest:Like, we don't give a shit what it looks like.
Guest:If it truly makes you laugh, like, in many ways, that was the Harbinger.
Marc:for like youtube and shit like now you didn't even have to work at a feature level now you can bring that shit down to three minutes the diy world done yeah well my question is and we're going to get back to scientology because i want to talk about dogma a little bit is then that so you may have just grown up a little bit i mean i it seems to me that that you were hitting some some of the same bells that there wasn't adolescence to it but i think that was you being aware of who your people were but that's that's what i'm talking about like some people would be like
Guest:Well, he just needed to get that out of his system, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:It's like, no, that's all I wanted to do.
Guest:And honestly, if people would have left me alone about it and stopped making fun of me for it or telling me I was a bad filmmaker or I'm not growing, if people would have stopped being my fucking mother about it, I would have made those Views Universe movies until I fucking pushed up Daisies.
Guest:It was fun.
Guest:It was awesome, dude.
Guest:It was like literally being able to play God and create your own universe.
Guest:So who told you to grow up?
Guest:No.
Guest:fucking internet was all over my balls about like he just keeps making the same fucking movies over and over which is bullshit I defy it go watch all those movies which one is absolutely different even the one that sequelizes the other yeah doesn't look a thing like the fucking other one right lately it's not even about the same thing but what was the primary criticism that you're adolescent
Guest:I'm adolescent.
Guest:I mean, look, I don't care if people look at those movies and only see the surface where they're like, it's just dick and fart jokes.
Guest:It's like, great, yeah, I understand that.
Guest:But don't begrudge an audience that finds everything else that's underneath.
Guest:Some people look at the surface, read the cover of the book.
Guest:That's not for me.
Guest:Some people actually read the book and find...
Guest:riches and right like the coen brothers movies well i mean it was that what dogma was an answer to no dogma was written before anything else dogma was actually the first screenplay i wrote even before clerks but i never would have been able to make it because i was you know so were you like at that time were you like you know hung up on the idea that like this is bullshit
Marc:With Dogma?
Marc:Yeah, where you did your homework, where you brought up Catholic?
Guest:I was, I was Catholic, lifelong Catholic.
Guest:I still identify Catholic, but I don't go to church.
Guest:Right, because I mean... Practicing, I got it right, as they say.
Marc:Well, it's sort of interesting to me that, you know, in that movie, what you sort of do is, with your sensibility, you made, you broadened it out to almost a comic book universe.
Guest:Yes, that for me, Dogma is the product of a Catholic school kid who every time he's sitting in church, and they're like, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Guest:I'm the one like...
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So dogma is an extension of that.
Guest:Also mixed in with the juvenile conversation that comes in the college years about religion.
Guest:We're sitting around smoking weed going, hey, man, do you ever think that Jesus was black?
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Stuff like that.
Guest:I mean, if you can't really explain how air works, where did it come from?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:So navel gazing and then mixed in with a comic book sensibility.
Guest:And it did happen to have something to say about beliefs and about faith and spirituality.
Guest:Clearly, you can say anything you want about dogma.
Guest:And you can say how bad it is or if you're on the religious side or how poorly it's made if you're a film critic or something like that.
Guest:That movie is devout.
Guest:It's insanely devout.
Guest:There's a movie.
Guest:Make fun of it.
Guest:This is the one thing it never really got made fun of for.
Guest:It actually believes in God.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:Like we got attacked by the God people.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And maybe in many ways that was kind of what needed to happen.
Guest:Otherwise we would have been attacked by the non-God people for being like, hey man, didn't you make clerks?
Marc:Are you saying you believe in this God bullshit?
Marc:That's interesting that you say that because that's not the first read you're going to have of it because you've got all these broad comic characters that are representing angels and demons and devils and speaking for God.
Marc:But I didn't even think about that.
Marc:That the actual broader premise is that this all exists.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:all devout that's the thing you know and it's if you start picking it apart like if I was a member of another faith I would have found that movie like ridiculous and also insulting which is like so the entire end of existence predicated on this dopey fucking faith on Catholicism more than anything else they could have attacked that movie from any different angle the fact that there were a bunch of religious people attacking that movie I always found very ironic because I'm like this movie does your work for you this movie is actually reaching out to a new crowd yes and it's espousing the same beliefs that you more or less believe in big picture stuff not that
Marc:minute but they'd have no sense of humor about it none these people can't take an ass fucking joke so they miss the big picture it's amazing too have you been to italy never dude you gotta go man if you're a catholic i mean i'm not a catholic but i would you know in every city there is a huge cathedral in these poor peasant cities they built these monster cathedrals and everyone every cathedral has its dead wizard god knows how many popes are there there's always like some body part that's enshrined that people pray yeah they keep bones
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:They got to have their pieces.
Marc:There must have been a huge business in body pieces of Saints.
Guest:It's totally.
Guest:I mean, and it still exists.
Guest:It's like any other market.
Guest:But the spectacle.
Guest:Like people who want a piece of Gretzky's sweater.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, there's an alternate version where you want a piece of like St.
Marc:Lawrence's tuna.
Marc:Right there.
Marc:That's St.
Marc:Catherine's head, bro.
Marc:On that picture right there.
Marc:Is it a picture?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's a photograph.
Marc:There's a shrine with St.
Marc:Catherine's head, I think, and I can't remember what town it's in, but what I was saying is that I'm not a religious person.
Marc:I was brought up a Jew.
Marc:I'd been to synagogue.
Marc:I was bar mitzvahed.
Marc:I'm not familiar with Catholicism, but you stand in these cathedrals, and I don't care who you are.
Marc:I mean, I'm me, not some poor person who works in the fields, and you're literally like, holy shit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:We want to drop to your knees just the amount of affectation and the amount of elaborate sort of mind-fucking that went into getting people to believe.
Guest:And that's why stuff like that could always work, man.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:On an uneducated populace, particularly, you know, when the origins of this all... Because you're talking about people going, wow, it's so big.
Guest:God must be behind this.
Marc:Of course, yeah, and that was the big trick on maintaining power.
Marc:But even people like, I know you knew Sam, or you were a fan of Kennison, I think.
Guest:Loved Kennison.
Guest:That's why you wore the overcoat.
Marc:That's why I wore the overcoat.
Marc:Did you know him?
Marc:Yeah, I did my graduate work in cocaine cutting for Sam from 1986 to 87.
Guest:Were you like an outlaw of comedy?
Marc:No, the Outlaws were before me.
Marc:The original Outlaws were from Texas, and I was a doorman at the Comedy Store in 86 and 87, and he sort of took me under his wing and made me psychotic from cocaine, and I had to leave running.
Guest:Hold on, but is there good stuff, too?
Guest:Oh, of course, yeah.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:Sam Kinison, well, you're going to make me cry, because I rarely get to talk about Sam Kinison.
Guest:Sam Kinison was the guy that in high school you could look at and be like, holy shit, like...
Guest:he looks like me right you know what i'm saying and he was uh i mean i wouldn't want to say fallen but he he'd left faith behind so he came from a background full of fucking faith but there he was telling insanely risque insanely wonderfully he had his own time zone that guy yeah he was definitely american original i mean you need you never seen it before did you read carlin's sort of biography the last one that came out
Guest:He, uh, in it, he talks, there's a passage that talks about Kenison where he's like, Kenison was one of the only comics that ever came up that made him uncomfortable where he not uncomfortable.
Guest:Like I don't like Kenison, but made him go shit.
Guest:Why didn't I do that bit?
Guest:Like the bit about, you know, why don't you go with a move with a
Marc:Well, that bit's great.
Marc:My favorite bit of his was actually out of all of them.
Marc:I mean, I understand the brilliance of a lot of them, but there's a line in that Manson bit that I fucking just I never forget it because, you know, as as a drug user and as somebody, you know, who who had some sort of weird reverence for the 60s and some morbid fascination in in Manson.
Marc:right that bit where like you know he's got the dead artist at the door you know you haven't stick to chainsaw and then that line where he goes glad to see you fuckers can handle your high that to me he just i stole that line recently negated the entire 60s experience yes with one line and he negated all of the manson thing it took all the mysticism out of it right with one fucking line just by being like these guys weren't mystical they just couldn't handle their fucking high exactly
Guest:I stole that line recently this year.
Guest:I've only recently become a stoner within the last two years.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And prior to that, nothing.
Guest:Just an eater, obviously.
Guest:Not even a drinker.
Guest:You lost some, though, huh?
Guest:I did.
Guest:I did lost a bunch of weight fairly recently.
Guest:So anyway, for me, when I got into weed, for years and years, I was a guy who had to battle my friend Muse, who plays Jay to my son, Bob.
Guest:He's a hardcore junkie.
Guest:he has been he's been almost clean now one year oh big time big time and he talks about we got podcasts we talk about all the time um but he uh after seeing that i was like drugs no use for him plus i was always busy doing stuff yeah when i got into to weed it was tough for me to kind of like and weed is innocent we all know fucking weed is nothing at worst it's a will killer yeah yeah yeah
Guest:For some.
Guest:And for me, it blew my will up.
Guest:Well, I think what it was, was I decided to tie it to productivity.
Guest:Because I'd looked at all my heroes and all, like Kenison, and fucking, you know, went down to drugs more than once.
Guest:And ultimately, I don't know what the car wreck was about, but somebody said that that, wasn't that involved in something?
Marc:Well, I mean, Sam, the weird thing about stand-up and then doing what you do is like, you know, all the kernels of creativity we're looking for, you know, really are like three to four minute pieces.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know, so, I mean, really, you know, as a comic, you know, who's fucked up and sleeping all day, you know, if you wake up and, you know, you spend four hours, maybe you don't get nothing for a week, but if you get on stage one night...
Marc:Out of your week of like doing nothing but getting fucked up and you get one new bit, you've done your work.
Marc:I mean, I would think that, you know, somebody like you who's got to write scripts and, you know, draw up storyboards and, you know, call people.
Guest:There's a lot more responsibility.
Guest:So there is.
Guest:But I mean, the beautiful thing about that job is like anything else is it's top down position.
Guest:Everyone supports your job.
Guest:But the interesting thing... Your job, you just basically have to say yes or no to people or point them in a direction.
Guest:Everyone else is doing the hard work for you.
Guest:You're like a leader.
Marc:You've got to pack.
Marc:You're in a production.
Marc:Well, the reason I brought up Sam was primarily because I was thinking about it before, and I knew, I don't know how I knew.
Marc:You must have said it somewhere that you sort of wore the trench coat as Silent Bob as a kind of... As an ode to Sam Kinnis.
Guest:I wore a trench coat throughout high school.
Guest:I had a big Sam Kinnis poster on my wall.
Guest:He did this weird...
Guest:i mean probably before anybody realized who he was and what his comedy was about he did this stay in school read kind of in school poster thing for this in school scholastic system and i guess they tapped him right before he fucking broke so they were like here's an upcoming comic and he was just you know let's take those posters down yes and i got one i was like i'll fucking take that i like this guy yeah and him in the trench coat on sarah ain't live like uh
Guest:I mean, I think I'd seen him.
Marc:Well, that was wild to see him on TV because he was so visceral and so kind of electric that he almost didn't fit on fucking television.
Guest:He literally just fucking took the stage and choked it down.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I'd never seen anything like it.
Guest:I was a huge comic nerd.
Guest:I was a Bill Cosby guy, and I was a Carlin guy, and I was a Red Fox guy, and I was Bob Newhart guy.
Guest:And Sam just erased it.
Guest:Suddenly, Sam was just like, oh, my God.
Guest:It was like punk rock comedy.
Guest:No, definitely.
Guest:And it was...
Guest:It came from a really awesome, painful place.
Guest:Like you can't talk about relationships.
Marc:Came from an angry place, certainly.
Marc:And I guess beneath the anger is pain.
Marc:But but why I brought him up was because, you know, when I was with him, you know, I spent a lot of fucking hours, you know, doing blow with that guy and talking to that guy.
Marc:Right.
Marc:He liked to hold court.
Marc:And, you know, there was this – he had gone back.
Marc:You know, he comes from a family of ministers.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And he had gone back home after he'd been in L.A.
Marc:a while before he made it and preached.
Marc:You know, and he played a tape of that preaching, of him preaching.
Marc:And it was really kind of weird as his sort of fall became more defined.
Marc:He was preaching about his guitar being stolen and how it affected – and it was sort of weird and not quite –
Marc:And then, like, later as I talked to him, he talked about, like, you know, I could have went for the satellite station.
Marc:Like, it was interesting to me that there was always this business model in his mind, even about his relationship with God.
Marc:But then, as he got older and as I talked to him more, I don't think he ever stopped believing.
Marc:I really think that at the end, he knew.
Guest:I mean, there's a story.
Guest:I don't know if this story is true, but.
Guest:When he died, apparently his dying words were like he was speaking to.
Guest:I mean, everyone says, ah, people see lights and they just mutter.
Guest:But he said he was calling and he was saying, not yet, no, not yet.
Marc:Yeah, I got it.
Marc:Well, yeah, because he probably needed time to ask for forgiveness.
Marc:Because I really think that he was the kind of guy that knew, okay, here are the terms.
Marc:I know these terms better than anybody.
Marc:I can recite the Bible.
Marc:I know what the deal is.
Marc:And if I ask for God's forgiveness at that last minute, if I ask for Jesus to save me,
Marc:I can get in still.
Marc:So I think his whole disposition was like, I'm going to push the envelope on this.
Marc:Have my cake and eat it too.
Marc:Yeah, and then get in under the wire.
Guest:Especially if he had done time on the Lord's behalf already.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:You put in enough years on the Lord's behalf, I guess he must have felt like, I'm fucking do some R&R, man.
Marc:So getting back to Jason and the idea of Scientology, what makes you united?
Guest:Well, in that instance, let me finish that way back there.
Guest:i had a joke in the script for dogma yeah and it said uh one of the characters the loki character said uh what occurs the lord's wrath these days uh i think barterby said that then loki said uh i don't know scientology yeah and jason had called me up and he was like look um i can't do this movie if that joke's gonna be in there i was like what are you talking about he's like you know i'm a scientologist and it's just we take enough shit already and it's just like
Guest:to have a joke you know kind of poked at their expense i was like hey buddy man don't worry about like your friendship means more to me and don't be joking yeah took it out he didn't wind up playing that role he went and did another movie instead but then he came back and did a different part yeah the asriel part yeah but that joke never made the flick because of that now at the same time like did it hurt the movie no would it have changed one fucking thing about dogma no but years later i sit there going like well
Guest:At least you were a good friend, you know, considering that dude's feelings to some degree.
Marc:But what's interesting to me is that, you know, being a thoughtful person that you are and given the friendship and clearly he's not ashamed of his position in that organization that I mean, how do you approach that as an intellectual person and as somebody who's critical of my system?
Guest:because i can't expect him i i mean i'm literally i still represent as christian you know what i'm saying at the end of the day he's like all right kevin you want to criticize my fucking sci-fi god how about your mystical jewish carpet of the nails that fire at his fucking hands so they're both comic books that's you know at the end of the day i've always kind of given him the same consideration he's always given me which is never to sit me down and be like you know your religion's full of shit right and it's like yeah well i guess
Marc:So you acknowledge it then?
Marc:You're willing to give it some sort of like, well, it's just a new version of structuring a religion?
Marc:Which one?
Marc:Scientology.
Guest:Absolutely, I guess.
Guest:It's not my religion to comment on.
Guest:It's his, but yeah.
Marc:I'm not talking about him.
Marc:I'm just talking about in general.
Guest:In general.
Marc:I mean, you're one of the few people that, you know, people don't talk necessarily about religion, but he's sort of been outed as a Scientologist, and you guys are buddies, and you honor the friendship over the argument about it, and you don't really talk about it, and he's just a normal guy.
Guest:That's the thing.
Guest:At the end of the day,
Guest:let me see how many Scientology I'd be I've had maybe two discussions about Scientology with Jason because like he read dogma you know he knows where I stand on my own religion what chance does his have so is your is your connection to your religion now more just the tradition absolutely and also just I you know I was indoctrinated as a kid I'm not saying that in a horrible way like oh I would I wouldn't have it any other way do you believe in hell yes oh of course
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it depends day to day.
Guest:Some days I'm like, I'm with Scott Mosher.
Guest:Nothing happens when it ends.
Guest:Cause that makes sense.
Guest:That, that feels more comforting than the notion of he's a Jew.
Guest:No, he's just, he's one of those cats.
Guest:It's like, I'm nothing, man.
Guest:You guys are all crazy.
Guest:Um, but for me, I'm, I'm, I'm more hopeful.
Guest:There's a heaven than scared.
Guest:There's a hell, I guess.
Guest:Does this heaven seem a little boring?
Guest:Yeah, it does.
Guest:I mean, look, the older I get, when I was younger, I could defend it wholeheartedly.
Guest:Like, no man, heaven's awesome.
Guest:Cause it's ice cream forever.
Guest:But the older you get, the more you're just like, that doesn't do anybody any good ice cream forever.
Guest:I don't know, man.
Guest:I'm still down with that.
Guest:But no, the older I get, there are days, Mark, where I'm just like,
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:Thank God I didn't waste my whole fucking life on that faith.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then there are days where I'm like, I'm at night in bed.
Guest:I hear it's dark throughout the house.
Guest:I hear the rising, falling breath of my wife next to me.
Guest:I live in what I would consider a mansion, especially considering where I came from.
Guest:and all is right with the world, at least for that moment in time, and I still pray.
Guest:I'll still sit there and give thanks and beg not to be killed in the night and live to be a happy, healthy, old... I mean, I know the game's rigged.
Guest:I'm going to lose eventually, but it's just like I want to run the score up as much as possible.
Marc:It doesn't end well for anybody.
Guest:No, no, no.
Marc:It's all very predictable.
Guest:Yeah, it really is.
Guest:I mean, but it's like the career of any great athlete.
Marc:You watch them shine for a while, but sooner or later...
Marc:Everything goes and I think that realization is a sign of a mature person is it you know Sort of acknowledging your limitations what your skills are working within them not judging yourself against other people all the time Yeah live in misery I mean the best here's there I've talked about a little bit on our podcast fairly recently But then my wife is one of these yoga broads and shit and at one point she fancied turning one of the rooms in the house into a
Guest:Yoga cave, I don't know what they're called.
Guest:But she bought some wall hangings.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And from like a Buddhist type stores and whatnot.
Guest:And one hung on a wall forever.
Guest:Never really noticed it until this year when I looked at it and processed it.
Guest:And it said, may you realize your divinity in this lifetime.
Guest:And it just sounded like a yoga thing for years hanging on the wall.
Guest:And then only recently I was like, oh, I get this.
Guest:Yeah, like that is the greatest blessing in this world.
Guest:If you can truly realize your own divinity in this lifetime, treat yourself with some goddamn reverence.
Guest:Yeah, that's true.
Guest:Self-love is not a bad thing.
Guest:Oh, not a bad thing.
Guest:It's a beautiful thing.
Guest:Yeah, but I'm not wired to do it.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Are you?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The weed in a big way.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I'm not one of these dudes that I hate myself.
Guest:I'm a big fan.
Guest:I'll be honest with you.
Guest:But not necessarily hate yourself.
Guest:No, Mark, it's shameful how big of a Kevin Smith fan I am.
Guest:I'm the biggest Kevin Smith fan on the planet.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:totally if i was not kevin smith i would be the guy leading his fan club maybe killing him you know open a jealous rage or something i i love the shit kevin smith's into and that he's done like i like the shit he says i'm a big fan of that character i it is a fairly well-defined character it seems that you put effort into defining it and i try to change it all the time it's like look i've looked at people who went before me i i
Guest:Now that I got my foot in the door or something, and it's been in 20 years, now I feel relatively okay and secure, safe now.
Guest:First 15 years of the career, you're always like, I better keep dancing to figure me out.
Guest:But once I got in, I spread my shit like herpes and just made sure I was in a bunch of spinning plates.
Guest:So film is one thing.
Guest:Over here, I like to get up on stage, talk to people.
Guest:That's another thing.
Guest:Over here, now we do this podcast.
Guest:Over here, comic books.
Guest:Over here, cartoons.
Guest:I like to spread it all around.
Guest:I talk to Rollins is like that.
Guest:Oh, I realized very quickly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This is what I want to do for a living.
Guest:I want to be paid to like make pretend to be silly.
Guest:Be me.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:That's the that's the I think that better than that fucking realize your own divinity in this lifetime.
Guest:Get paid to be you in this lifetime.
Guest:Believe me.
Guest:It's all I've been trying to do.
Guest:It gets no better than that because we're going to fucking die.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:They can't.
Guest:You can't stop that so you might as well make what happens before that as comfortable as possible and what's more comfortable than like being paid to be you.
Marc:Well I mean but then let's talk about like before I get past it I just want to reflect on that moment that you were laying in bed and it was quiet and you're
Marc:you're a hollywood hills home and all you hear is your wife's breath i mean that is one of those you know those perfect sort of i'm alive quiet moments where you know either you have a choice there where you can either go like fuck it's it's gonna be over so soon and this is all there is but you know you choose gratitude i used to do but i used to do that i used to be the fuck it's gonna be over so soon panic yeah and now but i'm a stoner and now i'm just like whenever i feel that come in even if i i mean number
Guest:Number one, whenever I start to feel that come in, I can just light a joint and be like, goodbye.
Guest:But even if I'm not smoking, whenever I feel panic, doubt, all that negativity kind of jump up, because that's created, right?
Guest:It's like hasn't happened yet, so it's fictional.
Guest:We all work ourselves up about a fiction.
Guest:I'm a writer, so I can identify reality from fiction.
Guest:I don't let myself get out of sorts about shit that hasn't come to pass yet.
Guest:No saying you can't be prepared for some shit, but it's like getting all that out of sorts about an event that hasn't even occurred
Marc:that's it that's it like you know most of the time what you're reacting to if you're freaking out is a dream it's yeah it's your head yeah it's proving you're a great writer right then and there the world is full of great writers because think of all the stress we all live with and all that stress is a it's a fiction i mean yes there's financial it's a fiction but you know that means everybody would write the same book and it'd be called i'm fucked yes yeah so yeah
Guest:and a lot of people fucking do of course but it's like you can be and that's it we're all fucked so you can choose to be fucked or you could just fucking fight your way out the ghetto as hard as you can like we know we're gonna wind up in the fucking death camp we've seen the fucking we read the books I mean it doesn't have to be a camp well it's like you can't like I saw Toy Story 3 yeah
Guest:schindler's toy box as i call it that movie fucking made me okay with my own death because i'm watching these puppets heading toward the furnace man and they are reacting like i would which is just like whose dick do i gotta suck to stop it i don't want to go and finally they just calm down and
Marc:hold each other's hands and they're just like fuck it we had our shot we're together at least that's interesting that that revelation you know after it's been documented in holocaust movies for the last 50 years you got through toy story that's what i got that's a sign of great art let's talk about this this idea of of being all that you can be and and uh and and brand kevin smith and and fucking you know uh sort of embracing as much as possible and
Marc:You know, well, how did that, how did the compromise, you've made compromises in your career.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You've had disappointments in your career.
Guest:Oh, God, yeah.
Marc:So, I mean, how does the vessel hold up in light of that while it's happening?
Guest:Well, I mean, it depends.
Marc:What I figured out was- Like the last movie, let's talk about Cop Out.
Guest:Cop Out, yes, yes.
Marc:I mean, this was a movie that, you know, you didn't write.
Guest:Not at all.
Guest:It was a gig.
Guest:That's why I was kind of bulletproof at the end of the day.
Marc:Right.
Guest:I felt like, well, this isn't a quote-unquote Kevin Smith film.
Guest:I don't write this.
Guest:I'm directing this.
Guest:For years, I'd been told by the critical community.
Marc:Did you have to rationalize that, though?
Guest:To some degree.
Guest:Okay, go ahead.
Guest:Yeah, but when it was presented to me, it was the right time.
Guest:I was coming off of Zack and Mary, and Zack and Mary should have done a lot better than it did.
Guest:What do you think happened?
Guest:Bad marketing, bad title, bad whatever, bad date.
Guest:All fucking Halloween, dude.
Marc:You had your funny guy.
Guest:We had the fucking funny guy.
Guest:And that took the wind out of my sails big time.
Guest:Seth Rogen.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Giving Seth his first commercial disappointment, that fucking killed me.
Guest:Because I was a huge Seth Rogen fan.
Guest:You don't never want to be the guy who fucking tarnishes.
Guest:Sinks the ship.
Guest:At all.
Guest:I mean, thankfully, fucking Observe and Report would do that way better a couple months later.
Guest:But for a while there, I was just like, how could I have done this?
Guest:Because I believe in that guy in a big, bad fucking way.
Guest:But it hit me hard, because that movie was supposed to do 50 or more, and it wound up just doing a standard Kevin Smith 30.
Marc:But what does that look like, though?
Marc:I mean, what does it look like to hit you?
Marc:I mean, what was going through your head?
Guest:What was going through my head?
Guest:Let me see.
Marc:Were you wandering around your house yelling through the walls?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:But I remember I woke up the morning of the opening.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Guest:And I'd started smoking weed on a regular basis a couple months before.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:July.
Guest:And we opened in October 31st.
Guest:This was a couple months later.
Guest:And first I started like, you know, I'm going to start smoking like once, you know, at night, like 8 o'clock at night once all my work's done and shit like that.
Guest:Take the air job.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, watch a movie and shit.
Guest:Old school.
Guest:I did that for like two days.
Guest:I was like, what the fuck?
Guest:in my way until eight o'clock for like i got nothing to do man let's roll that back and it became two then it was like noon no nothing before noon it'd be shameful to get high before noon morning that zach and mary opened up yeah saturday morning we get the grosses and shit yeah uh the the number is 2.2 million yeah now if you factor that by three for the friday just the friday so you've times that by three projecting ahead it ain't even gonna make 10 million right it ain't even gonna make seven right
Guest:At that point, I was ready to fucking put a gun in my mouth.
Guest:That was the moment I looked at my wife.
Guest:I was just like, I'm going to smoke.
Guest:And I became a waking baker because I was like six in the morning.
Marc:So it came out of the stress of failure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But to me, self-perceived failure.
Guest:At the end of the day, that movie did well.
Guest:They made money off of the YC company.
Guest:And it did the standard Kevin Smith 30 million.
Guest:Did a little bit more.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Um, but it ultimately, like we didn't spend a lot making it.
Guest:It wasn't, but me, that was supposed to be the a hundred billion.
Guest:That was supposed to be the, this is going to do the Apatow money right here, man.
Guest:So I was like, Oh shit, you got everybody saying that.
Guest:And the Apatow guy is saying, Hey, I'm going to be in this.
Guest:So it must be the fucking Apatow money, money type vehicle.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:Like, I think I got Apatow's guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I got Apatow's guy.
Guest:I got Apatow's fucking formula, which was kind of my formula, but whatever, you know, and then now it's, it's been made commercial.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Let's give this a role.
Guest:And, you know, it just didn't happen.
Guest:For whatever, I could sit here and be like, the marketing was this, it was this, it was this.
Guest:Look, the audience just wasn't quite there.
Guest:But it still, at the same time, did what it was exactly designed to do for everybody else.
Guest:For me, I had higher...
Guest:aspirations that was the moment in that in that dark night of the soul the morning after i went to my library with those 2.2 numbers ultimately it opened to 10 million so finally bumped a little better on saturday but i went into the library which was my office at that point and uh and kind of became a wake and baker and for the next uh three four months it stayed off the internet i couldn't go near the internet because i was like i've ruined seth rogan
Guest:Like everyone on the internet.
Guest:You just didn't want to take the hit.
Guest:Oh, I was going to go on.
Guest:I was going to enter the internet that morning.
Guest:People were going to be like, you fucking fat piece of shit.
Guest:You ruined Rogan for us.
Guest:He was all we had.
Guest:And I was like, I can't do this.
Guest:I stayed off the internet.
Guest:And that created an incredible fucking growth of...
Guest:time to watch shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I just started watching, um, a lot of hockey videos and whatnot.
Guest:And in that moment, that's when I got the call to do cop out.
Guest:Um, a script was sent to me.
Marc:So, okay.
Marc:So your movie in your mind had tanked.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Uh, you've just started, you committed your life to pop because you didn't want to feel the pain and self afflicted criticism of, of the, I, you know, of the, of the aftermath of your movie tanking.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then, and then no point in being not high.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And, and then,
Marc:And then the devil calls.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And that's when the devil did call.
Guest:I hadn't even noticed.
Guest:It was so obvious I couldn't even call.
Guest:But I knew the devil was calling.
Guest:When the devil called, I was like, show me your dick.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I'm ready to go.
Guest:Well, I had a plan at that point.
Guest:By the time the devil called me, I'd already smoked enough weed and kind of been reorganizing.
Guest:The script for Red State was already locked and ready to go.
Guest:I needed to find money for it.
Guest:I had a plan lined up, which only fucking in about two weeks everyone gets to see.
Guest:But I had a...
Guest:I had to get in there.
Guest:As much as I'm not going to say it was a noble fucking cause, but I didn't make any money to make that movie.
Guest:It was a job.
Guest:Well, it wasn't barely a job.
Guest:I took an 84% pay cut to make that movie.
Guest:To make Cop Out?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I made less to make Cop Out than I did to make Dogma.
Guest:um in 1998 so why'd you do it i wanted to work with a i wanted to work with bruce willis yeah um that to me was like wow i love bruce willis i'm a huge bruce willis fan if i was in a if i was making a bruce willis movie my father was alive then he would be like oh you do make movies yeah yeah this isn't just a stupid thing it's not just you and everybody's talking about star wars and the fucking getting laid and shit like that
Guest:So there was that.
Guest:I needed to understand marketing really well for some shit that I got coming up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I wanted to get inside.
Guest:I had seen marketing from the Miramax side very intimately.
Guest:And, you know, for years heard Harvey Weinstein go like, well, a studio is 40 million is my 20.
Guest:Like I can do with 20 what they can do with 40 and shit.
Guest:So I saw what he can do with.
Marc:20 40 and less i'll tell you honestly i i might make an argument that marketing of cop-out might have diminished your ticket sales because that that pilster was that billboard was fucking everywhere and i gotta be honest with you kevin i mean i looked at that that billboard and i said i've already seen that movie yeah of course of
Guest:yeah there was nothing about that poster that was screamed like holy shit am i right original but to be fair yeah nothing about the movie was the whole movie is it's an homage picture it's not one of those uh spoof movies right it but it's definitely an homage we just wanted to make an 80s beverly hills cop it had to look like right something you'd seen before
Guest:um that at least that's what I hope they were thinking right but I probably look I know the real story the one guy wouldn't even sit for a fucking poster shoot so essentially they have to go like okay we got one guy names all of a sudden everybody knows it ain't let me put it this way remember the really funny guy in the movie it ain't him he's a fucking dream Tracy Morgan I would lay down in traffic for the rest of my life for Tracy Morgan his word not for Tracy I might have killed either myself or someone else in the making of fucking you were disappointed
Guest:Beyond disappointing.
Marc:Because that's why you went into the movie.
Guest:It was one of the main reasons.
Guest:I mean, look, while I was there, I was able to accomplish everything else I needed to accomplish.
Guest:And as much as learn about marketing, understand how to work on a team with others and shit.
Guest:And you know what?
Marc:Honestly, you were given the gift of not having to tell your dad that Bruce Willis was a dick.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Ultimately, there's that.
Guest:But let me tell you, I'm sure he knew.
Guest:He knew from the fucking jump.
Guest:I wish he just could have communicated to me from the afterlife.
Guest:Yeah, it was tough.
Guest:It was difficult, dude.
Guest:I've never been involved in a situation like that where...
Guest:one component does not come he's not he's not in it he's not in the box at all yeah it's not he's just doing a job so he can get by i i've heard of yeah it was it was fucking soul well i'm sorry about that really so but again that's not a lot of people are you're just trying to blame the movie on him no but look i had no fucking help from this dude whatsoever
Marc:But the sad part of that story on a personal level is as a kid who grew up in New Jersey, who loved fucking Bruce Willis, and you get this big opportunity, and you get disappointed by your fucking hero.
Marc:I mean, that is really the worst moment, and it's something that you're probably going to have to do again, given the business that you're in.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:He changed everything for me, though.
Guest:No, I just mean meeting people that you respect.
Guest:No, but that's the thing.
Guest:I'm saying he changed that for me, because now I'll never meet anybody.
Guest:Like, that was it.
Guest:I was just like, there's no point.
Guest:Shattered it.
Guest:Yeah, forget it.
Guest:Like, I'd rather like people from a distance.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So then after you made that movie, were you setting your alarm to wake up to smoke pot in the middle of the night?
Guest:No.
Guest:So you'd wake up high again?
Guest:Yeah, so I could just be... Well, at that point, I've been smoking so much weed.
Guest:I knew a guy in college who did that.
Guest:I'm just a THC.
Guest:Like, it's always going through my body, so I'm fine.
Guest:Well, you seem like you're almost a... I'm also a functioning stoner.
Marc:No, no, no, no.
Marc:I know.
Marc:But it almost seems like you're talking about it with a nearly religious reverence.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, that is something.
Guest:Yeah, that is.
Guest:Oh, this opened the third eye in such an insane fucking way.
Marc:Really?
Marc:At this point in your life, that's amazing.
Guest:It really does.
Guest:I'm a firm believer.
Guest:I advocate smoking weed to everybody as soon as they reach age 38 and they've built something.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:So you don't fall into the pit.
Guest:Yeah, if I found this when I was a kid, I wouldn't have left the house.
Guest:It would have been this and masturbation.
Guest:And comic books.
Guest:Fuck that.
Guest:This and masturbation.
Guest:I don't need to be imagining dudes in capes.
Guest:I would just be like, women everywhere.
Guest:Three labias at once.
Marc:That kind of shit.
Marc:Well, I guess it's a gift because given that... Well, it was also interesting to me that when I asked you to come over and you asked me if it was okay if you can smoke here and I said I didn't smoke, you're like, oh, shit, are you a friend of Bill?
Guest:Well, hey, I didn't want to... Well, I mean, I got sober friends, so I didn't want to come in.
Marc:I got a lot of sobriety, but it's just interesting that my frame of mind is being a guy that smoked pot every day and knowing my nature.
Marc:It just... My outlook on it, I certainly appreciate what you're saying because I had the same experience.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And but like I just know that, you know, to my core, there is a compulsive nature that is designed to avoid me at every turn.
Guest:Right.
Marc:How do I get out of me?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, that's really the agenda here.
Marc:It's like, you know, I feel squirrely.
Marc:I know I didn't want to feel squirrely.
Guest:Tell me about the coke, though, man.
Guest:Like what was I'm not a coke guy.
Guest:You don't need to start that one.
Guest:No, I would never be that dude.
Guest:But it's it's like I know what weed does for me.
Marc:Well, the Coke thing was like, you know, weed for me was like- Is it just a party drug?
Guest:Was like cigarettes.
Marc:Is Coke like drinking a lot of Yoohoo or something?
Marc:No, no.
Marc:I think Coke for me would really serve the same purpose is that like, you know, I could do two lines, you know, and also like you get into a sort of rodent mind with that shit, you know, you're like- Explain.
Marc:Well, I mean, like when I wanted to do Coke, you know, like, you know, you'd sort of get up that day and be like, I got to call the guy.
Marc:I mean, when the fuck is he going to be open?
Marc:You know, how am I going to get my shit?
Marc:Because, you know, you can't hold.
Guest:Oh, that's like Muse with the heroin.
Guest:Right, you can't hold on to Coke.
Marc:You spend most of your time looking for it.
Marc:Well, that's what addiction does.
Marc:And the great thing about pot is that, you know, if you get a nice bag, you're good.
Marc:And you know you're good.
Marc:And, you know, you can always smoke so much pot.
Marc:But with dope and Coke, I mean, you're going to burn through that shit.
Marc:Your tolerance builds up and you need more shit.
Marc:And it's a lot more expensive than other shit.
Marc:And also the price you're paying on it.
Marc:on a karmic and soul level is a lot higher.
Marc:Explain the karmic soul payment.
Marc:Well, because, you know, you get into something, you know, certainly, I mean, your friend would know better than me because dope will take you down to a lower tier.
Guest:And it has, but he's one of those dudes, fucking million dollar heart, nickel head, million dollar heart.
Marc:Well, most junkies, you know, most of us, we get into the racket because we're hypersensitive.
Marc:We can't fucking, you know, a good heart is a sensitive heart.
Marc:And a heart that's too sensitive, you know, can't quite handle the shit.
Marc:You can't handle reality.
Marc:After a certain point, when you get the kind of relief that that drug in particular or even Coke or anything offers you, why wouldn't you do that?
Marc:Because then you don't have to live with that sort of weird pain of not fitting in and feeling other people's feelings and that kind of shit.
Guest:See, this fucking, for me, weed just fucking turns it all up.
Marc:weed turned well it embraces the sensitivity yes suddenly it turns on every nerve end well the karmic level i'm talking about is that you know when you're doing hard drugs and depending you know you're not you know you're not usually dealing with a high class of people that you know and once you start entering that world it is a it is its own world uh you know and it's a criminal world and the possibilities of you being you know on the wrong end of a bullet or you know at the end of a bad at the hot
Marc:shot you know and and then also the compromises you make for what you will do to get drugs you know that your moral barometer gets way fucked up depending on your economic situation so that's really what i meant by that right but the thing that coke gave me is that you know and i smoked pot like people smoke cigarettes i was a daily pot smoker and and i was not like one of these sort of guys sitting around smoking coke or buying kilos or anything to have that kind of money but if i could do a bolt
Marc:you know like at seven or eight at night you know before i go on stage or go to a party or something i just wouldn't be thinking like oh god i'm fucking uncomfortable this sucks i'd be thinking like i'm fucking here let's do this we're all here aren't we yeah yeah and i and i but i also got kind of angry and righteous and you know the bitterness didn't go away but the i was more of a confident bitter right
Guest:Where you're like, it goes from righteousness to self-righteousness.
Marc:Oh, real quick.
Marc:But I also want to say, in the sense of how you're sort of a born-again stoner, I mean, is there any connection you make?
Marc:And this is not a guy in recovery talking to you.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:But I mean, is there any sense, given your issues with food in the past, and given the way that you deal with disappointment and your own anger, which I assume is there, though you seem to hide it pretty well.
Guest:I'm just not angry.
Yeah.
Guest:I'm not really.
Marc:But I mean, was there a point where you sense that that food and pot and these things were filling a void as opposed to being proactive pot?
Guest:Well, I mean, food was food.
Guest:It was will always be.
Guest:I'm just I'm a very sedentary person.
Guest:I don't I don't have a sport of choice like I can go out and do fairly regularly or that I would go out and do fairly regularly.
Guest:Um, I don't, I'm not an exercise guy.
Guest:I never have been.
Guest:And I wasn't raised to eat properly.
Guest:Uh, my parents, by the time I rolled around, literally, they were just like, Oh, I'm going to force him to eat fucking vegetables.
Guest:If he's done money, I'm fine.
Guest:Don't let me raise two kids.
Marc:They're fine.
Marc:Oh, so you're never like a compulsive eater.
Marc:Like give me a third pint.
Guest:I'm no, we didn't have enough money to be that.
Guest:We were lower middle class and older guy and cheese as a grownup.
Guest:As a grown-up, dude, I'll kill a box of cereal, too, in a sitting.
Guest:Like, I'm made up for all the years of really not, like, we go to the grocery store and, can we get Cheerios?
Guest:Like, no, you get toasted oats, you know, the food store brand toast.
Guest:For the bag.
Guest:The bag, yes.
Guest:The humiliating fucking bag.
Guest:The moment it goes up on the fucking belt, anybody in the vicinity go, poor.
Guest:so that's interesting so a lot of this comes from because i not having my father's the same way my father's wife's the same way they they're literally hoarders yeah because come to my house dude like it's a i'm a pack it's almost like a reaction against poverty yeah i would say and again we're not we weren't like you know my parents were fighting off rats with fucking forks and shit he worked for the post office
Marc:So he had a pension, though?
Guest:Yes and no.
Guest:He wound up retiring without.
Guest:He gave it up.
Guest:He didn't also, for some strange reason, they didn't take out fucking Social Security.
Guest:It was such a weird time.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, very strange.
Guest:Was he at postal?
Guest:No, he was a guy canceling your stamps.
Guest:He was in a sectional center.
Guest:So he went out there, you know, friendly postal dude.
Guest:Did you ever go to work with your dad and go, holy shit?
Guest:Only outside the building, and he would never let us in.
Guest:My father hated work.
Guest:That was the greatest impact in my life was not my father ever sitting me down and saying,
Guest:go into anything other than the post office but watching him go to work every night he worked the night shift and he would go to where he'd wake up like nine o'clock and bitch until 10 o'clock when he left start his work at 11 o'clock where he worked uh leave at seven in the morning come home see us and then he'd go to sleep we'd go off to school we'd come back from school he'd just be getting up he'd have a few hours during the day to hang out take me to the movie show like that
Guest:then he'd have to go to bed like six seven o'clock again and it's like doing morning radio yeah and then he'd wake up at fucking nine o'clock and he would hate it dude he would just beg my mother like call in for me please call in for me and she was just like she used to do it and then she'd be like you just call in and he was too terrified he couldn't pick up the phone and i literally called in for the dude and you would think that on the other end of the phone it was gonna be fucking hitler yeah but you know you were just like hello and they're like yeah i was like i'm calling in for don smith like yeah okay bye
Guest:that's it and i'm like why wouldn't he ever they wouldn't even know if it was him or not he was such a chicken shit but he'd be like please call in for me he hated working he had such a sense of responsibility had the wife and the three kids and shit like that so he did the job but he hated it so much and he would try to get away from it as often as possible like and he had strokes because of it and retired early he hated work man that made a big impact on me where i was like okay i get it but to every point where you don't want to do that why do you go
Guest:Yeah, because he was like, who else is going to earn?
Guest:Yeah, he hated the job.
Guest:But he was from that fucking school of thought.
Guest:Our parents, dude, was like, unless you were fucking to the manor born, you get a goddamn job.
Guest:You have a wife and three kids and a little house, and that's your American dream.
Guest:And he was happy with his dream part of it.
Guest:He just hated having to work for it.
Guest:but he didn't take it home he was happy never he was he that was home was paradise and like and now the older i get the more i understand about him like he would sit in his room he's a big country music fan i god knoweth why because we were all from new jersey um but he would sit in his room and just play these fucking george jones and tammy moynette and willie nelson if anything's gonna make you feel better about your misery it's george i guess so man he stopped loving her today probably one of the three most depressing songs ever fucking made
Guest:But he would sit there and listen to us all.
Guest:My father was not a musical guy.
Guest:He would sit there sing at the top of his lungs and shit, caterwauling.
Guest:And only now as I'm 40, I get it.
Guest:That was his, I just need to zone out.
Guest:He didn't have a podcast.
Guest:He couldn't express himself in a fucking movie or this, that, or the other thing.
Guest:He would just shut himself into a room with records and fucking sing, and that's how he'd let it all out.
Guest:Did he live long enough to see any of your success?
Guest:Yeah, very much so.
Guest:He died right before Jersey Girl, so some people would argue that he died right before.
Guest:before he saw any of the failure he loved it though he did see Jersey Girl we dedicated the movie to him but yeah he was a great guy we had a fantastic relationship and he was fantastic it was a really good relationship like I never really got to know him at the end of the day but you never fought him
Guest:never i was never like come on you piece of shit on the front lawn yeah yeah some of my friends me not at all i would have i was not that guy i saw my father slip and fall with a something of a pushing fight with a neighbor once and it was fucking mortifying i knew i would have beat him i mean like in that moment i'd always suspected like i could take my old man if i have to and that in that way you think i guess at a certain when you're a teenager and they get loud with you at a certain point
Marc:But it's weird because I did some poking around the internet.
Marc:My family's from Jersey.
Marc:What part?
Marc:Well, my mother's from Pompton Lakes in Bergen County.
Guest:Oh, Bergen County, I know.
Marc:And my old man's from Jersey City.
Marc:But my aunt, who I visit a lot, is in Oakhurst.
Marc:So like, you know, when I'm not going to work, right.
Marc:Where I look where you came from.
Marc:I mean, I used to spend summers and we go to Asbury Park.
Marc:We go to deal beach.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My grand.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:My grandparents lived right on the fucking boardwalk in that.
Marc:There was a building like at the end of the boardwalk in the, in the seventies.
Marc:That was just, it was almost the tallest building there.
Marc:And the boardwalk had already died.
Marc:And it was old people live there.
Marc:And my grandparents were in that haunted place.
Marc:That spooky fuck.
Guest:Right, but I remembered.
Marc:I'm old enough to remember my grandparents taking me there when that fucking little, you know, that little boat ride worked and the casino.
Guest:What year were you born?
Marc:63.
Guest:All right, so I'm 70, so you got seven years on.
Guest:Right, so like when I was like five or six.
Guest:Yeah, most of that shit was gone by the time I was fucking of age.
Guest:Like, I remember...
Guest:the um the paramount uh you know the the thing you could walk through yeah um still had some games operating right when i was a kid and now it was just the casino building yes yeah right and like and then i went back there like years later it was just like then it was spooky yeah it's spooky we shot chasing amy there we got a great deal at that big hotel you know like what was it johnny cash owned that hotel or somebody somebody of influence some country western guy i think it was johnny cash maybe that's why your dad liked the music go to that hotel
Guest:But that hotel, it was at Berkeley, Carteret.
Guest:It's called this massive old fucking hotel that was down in Asbury Park where lots of famous people had stayed back when it was a jewel in the crown of the show or something like that.
Guest:They gave us this massive ballroom to shoot these Chasing Amy comic book convention sequences at.
Guest:And that hotel dude was like walking through the fucking Overlook Hotel in the Shining.
Guest:You just expected two little twin girls at any moment to be around.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:It was spooky.
Marc:Or some weird deteriorating woman in a bathtub.
Marc:Or perhaps Scatman Crothers.
Guest:Or some dude using racial slurs in a bathroom.
Guest:You feel uncomfortable.
Marc:You don't know what to say.
Marc:I mean, there's something that New Jersey creates.
Marc:Very much.
Marc:And were you very aware of creating a definable comedy team that you would have as much legs as you decided?
Guest:No, those two cats, I put him in because I always thought he was really funny.
Guest:He was a dude I knew from town.
Guest:And he played the character.
Guest:His character was named pretty much after him.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I always thought he was funny.
Guest:I was like, man, somebody should put him in a movie one day.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then one day I decided I wouldn't make films.
Guest:I'm putting him in it and stuff.
Guest:He was supposed to stand next to somebody named Silent Bob.
Guest:Wasn't necessarily me.
Guest:I wanted to play Randall, the guy that Jeff Anderson plays in the movie.
Guest:That's why Randall's got all the best jokes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I was like, I can't memorize these lines.
Guest:This truly takes a performance and stuff.
Guest:So I was like, well, if this is the only movie I'm going to make, I'd at least like to be in it as well.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I was like, I could take Silent Bob, which I'd give into a friend of mine, because he doesn't have any lines to read.
Guest:And I'll look good standing next to Muse.
Guest:Muse's thin.
Guest:I'm the opposite of Muse.
Guest:And I can wear my trench coat.
Guest:Badass.
Guest:All right, yeah, I'll do that.
Marc:But it is sort of a classic comedy team.
Guest:Never thought about it.
Guest:That wasn't the intention.
Guest:It wasn't anything like it.
Guest:It was only after people started seeing it and talking about it.
Guest:I remember, I forget who it was.
Guest:It wasn't even me.
Guest:I think it was some French journalist who was the first one that was like,
Guest:These two, they're like C-3PO R2-D2 of your Star Wars.
Guest:And at that point, I was like, I'm going to start saying that.
Guest:I sound smart.
Guest:Yes, of course.
Guest:I always knew that it would be seen through the eyes of Jay and Bob, just like the Star Wars saga was seen through the eyes of the droids or something like that.
Marc:How do you feel as a, what's your confidence level as an actor?
Guest:It's okay.
Guest:I mean, if I can play me, I can do a good job.
Guest:I was in this movie called Catch and Release where I had the killer part, just all the fucking go-to jokes and shit like that.
Guest:And I played me.
Guest:I don't know what else to do.
Guest:I just played me.
Guest:And every review said that I played Jack Black, which I was kind of insulted by.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because then I was like, maybe Jack Black's been playing me all this time.
Marc:Huh, let me do another bong hit.
Yeah.
Marc:been that around for a while.
Guest:Yeah, I'll dance with that for a while.
Guest:I could do three podcasts about that.
Marc:Nine hours later, it's like, I am Jack Black.
Marc:I've got to call him.
Marc:But Jersey, like, you know, Jersey gets such a bad rap and I, you know, I spent a lot of time.
Marc:I remember when the Willow, when the Paramus Park Mall opened.
Marc:Oh my God.
Guest:I remember the first.
Guest:I worked at the Paramus Park Mall for two weeks.
Marc:When I was a kid, I'd go to my grandma's in Pompton Lakes, and we'd always go to Willowbrook, and then all of a sudden there's a new fucking kid on the block.
Marc:There's Paramus Park.
Marc:And I remember when I was a kid, there was this promotion.
Marc:My grandmother said, and upstairs they have food from around the world.
Guest:And that was- A veritable food court.
Marc:court right but there that was when it was kind of invented yeah it was at parameters park mall yeah now you know new jersey in my recollection new jersey was like always weirdly hot only in new jersey are people like let's go eat foreign cuisine right at the mall yeah yeah but it was it was uh really marketed as something spectacular but i remember it was uh it's like when people used to fly in suits can you imagine getting onto those planes to travel across i can't imagine getting onto a plane at all this year that kept kicking me the
Marc:fuck i heard about that i just flew your favorite airline how was it well you're all right so it's no problem yeah but you're not you must have been heavier no i was pretty much this size dude it was a bullshit it was it was uh you know what it was it was like explain it for people who listen to my show that may not know that you were kicked off a plane on southwest airlines because you couldn't fit into the seat yes that's what they said right one true right i mean they literally pulled me out of a seat that i was sitting in with my armrest down with the seat belt fucking closed
Guest:That's fucking embarrassing.
Guest:Really embarrassing, but it was just one of those things where it's just like, I can't... They've got me dead to rights.
Guest:I am fat.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I ain't too fat to fit in your fucking chair.
Guest:But they were like, oh, he was, he was.
Guest:And then they lied about it.
Guest:What was the fight that you fought?
Guest:Did you win...
Guest:I mean, who could ever win in that situation?
Guest:I won in as much as I exposed them for being, like, sizists.
Guest:And apparently I wasn't the first by any stretch of the imagination.
Guest:And I haven't been the last.
Guest:That's a really sickening thing.
Guest:I get at least a report a week from people going, like, same thing just happened to me.
Marc:On that airline.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:They're the worst, dude.
Guest:If you're over 200 pounds, you have no business going anywhere near Southwest.
Guest:Because you could randomly just get pulled off the plane.
Guest:That's what happened, dude.
Guest:Like, I was randomly fucking pulled off the plane.
Guest:Had nothing to do with my weight, my size, anything like that.
Guest:I feel just because it was a dude in the jetway thought that a comment I made was a little untoward or something like that.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, I was coming down the fucking jetway.
Guest:I had been the last guy on the plane.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They gave me a standby ticket and shit because I was supposed to be on the next flight.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I got a standby ticket to fly earlier, and I had two seats for the earlier flight because my wife was supposed to come with me and shit.
Guest:So I came to the desk with two seats, and they were like, we can only get you one if we get you on at all.
Guest:I said, okay, I'll just take the one.
Guest:All I need is one seat.
Guest:And she's going, are you sure?
Guest:And I was like, yeah, I don't need the two seats.
Guest:And she was going, what about the safety requirements?
Guest:I was like, what are you, safety?
Guest:What's going on?
Guest:Another 9-11?
Guest:What's happening?
Guest:And then I was like, oh, are you saying I'm fat?
Guest:I was like, lady, I'm fat.
Guest:I'm not too fat for the seat.
Guest:No.
Guest:And she goes, oh, okay.
Guest:So when I get down to Jetway, finally everyone's boarded.
Guest:She's like, go, go.
Guest:You can go right now.
Guest:Go down the Jetway.
Guest:The dude in the Jetway goes, who are you?
Guest:And I was like, she just told me I could come.
Guest:I'm the standby guy.
Guest:And he goes, are you my, my, my?
Guest:And he said something I didn't understand.
Guest:And I said, what is that?
Guest:And he goes, are you revenue?
Guest:And I go, dude, did you just reclassify me as luggage?
Guest:And he goes, and he didn't think that was funny.
Guest:I said it jokingly.
Guest:He had this face on it.
Guest:He goes, I said, revenue.
Guest:And I was like, what is that?
Guest:And he goes, revenue means you paid for your ticket.
Guest:Did you pay for your ticket?
Guest:And I said, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I'm revenue.
Guest:I'm total revenue.
Guest:So I go to the plane, and the dude is behind me, right on my heels.
Guest:And the chick at the fucking door of the plane, the stewardess, all smiles.
Guest:Like, hi, she recognized me and shit like that.
Guest:Um, I get to the one seat where the right up front in the bulkhead seat to the left middle seat between two chicks, an older, older grandmother type and like a 50 year old woman or something like that.
Guest:I'm like, this is it.
Guest:I don't give a shit.
Guest:It's a 45 minute fucking flight.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Put my bag up, sit down, go and to click my fucking seatbelt.
Guest:And I look and I see the chick who had been at the desk coming toward me on the plane.
Guest:And she was just like, I, for some reason I thought she was going to tell me my mother had died.
Guest:Um,
Guest:I don't know why.
Guest:Some official person coming right at me.
Guest:That's the first thing that occurred to me.
Guest:I was like, oh my God, my mother died.
Guest:And they're telling me now, before I leave.
Guest:Yeah, I was like, this service is amazing.
Guest:That red plastic heart means something.
They care.
Guest:And she was like, Mr. Smith, you have to come with me.
Guest:And I was like, why?
Guest:What's going on?
Guest:She's going, it's just you can't stay on the plane.
Guest:We got a phone call from the captain.
Guest:I was like, what are you talking about?
Guest:She's like, the safety issue.
Guest:And I was like, what?
Guest:I said, oh, my God, lady.
Guest:I said, look, I'm sitting here.
Guest:Look, the hand rests are down.
Guest:What are you talking about?
Guest:She's going, yeah.
Guest:Can you please just come with me?
Guest:And I was like, why?
Guest:I'm fitting just fine.
Guest:I was like, ma'am.
Guest:And I turned to the old lady to the right.
Guest:Ma'am, am I crushing you?
Guest:No, first it was the lady to the left.
Guest:Turned to the lady to the left, the 50-year-old woman.
Guest:I said, ma'am, am I crushing you at all?
Guest:And she's going, it's only an hour flight.
Guest:And I was like, I said, I hope I was on the floor.
Guest:But I turned to the old lady to the right.
Guest:And I was just like, ma'am, am I squishing you?
Guest:And she goes, what?
Guest:And I was like, squishing you?
Guest:She goes, what?
Guest:I said, squish.
Guest:And she's going, no.
Guest:And I was like, oh, OK.
Guest:See, there's no problem here.
Guest:And the stewardess is going.
Guest:And she's not stewardess.
Guest:She's a ticket counter.
Guest:Right.
Guest:She's like, yeah, I'm sorry.
Guest:You're just going to have to come with me.
Guest:And that's when I hit her with the fucking, like, all right, I'm going to take it all off.
Guest:I'm going to take the shirt off and show you my man boobs.
Guest:I was like, lady, please don't do this to me.
Guest:Like, when I sat down, I saw four people looking right at me, smile, know exactly who I am.
Guest:If they see you coming here and taking me off, like...
Guest:somebody's gonna talk this is humiliating yeah and she's like yeah can we just have this discussion in the jet way she didn't know who you were it didn't matter right she didn't give a fuck bullshit she didn't do she didn't give a fuck no i know but i mean if they did i don't know well i mean look in retrospect now i'm sure she wishes she had just been like go my feeling is the dude in the jet way have been like you know as soon as that guy exactly because i had not been in that plane
Guest:fucking not even a minute i got my bag up and shit and went to sit down then didn't sit because i went to get my walkman my fucking ipod and my headphones and then went to sit down got comfy and shit and just went to click and that's when that chick showed up and she kept telling me like the pilot's telling us that we you know he sees you and i was like how can the pilot see me i can't even see the pilot she's like well the plane has mirrors
Guest:And I was like, yeah, in the bathroom.
Guest:What are you talking about?
Guest:Like, lady, for me to see the pilot, I would have to lean all the way over this lady here and look down.
Guest:How can the pilot possibly see me?
Guest:It was just bullshit.
Guest:And then what happened?
Guest:You had a war with him?
Guest:I sat there at the desk and they were like, we can put you on the next flight, give you a travel voucher.
Guest:I was like, you're out of your mind.
Guest:I was like, I was supposed to be on that plane, man.
Guest:Like, you guys gave me a ticket.
Guest:Why would the next plane be any fucking different?
Guest:No, because she would give me two seats on the next plane, she was saying, or something like that.
Guest:I said, lady, I was clearly fitting in the one seat.
Guest:She's like, well, what can we do for you?
Guest:And I was like, give me a private jet home because I would have been home now if it weren't for you guys.
Guest:And she's like, we can't do that.
Guest:I was like, all right, helicopter will do.
Guest:It'll be like a two-hour flight, but yeah, I'll take a private helicopter.
Guest:And she was like, you're being ridiculous.
Guest:I was like, am I?
Guest:I was the one who was seated on the plane with my ticket.
Guest:seated and you guys yanked me off even though I was fucking I was buckled in I don't know how many times I can say it the armrest are down and she was just like giving me no purchase man she's like all I can do for you is this I said look can you give me your name she's like no
Guest:I was like, why not?
Guest:And I was like, you know, my name.
Guest:She's like, well, we're not supposed to give out our names.
Guest:I was like, this is worse yet.
Guest:You know my name.
Guest:You know where I live.
Guest:You have all my personal information.
Guest:And she's like, I just give you my name and work number.
Guest:I was like, all right, give me an organ.
Guest:I'm copying all the information down and shit.
Guest:And I literally said to her at one point, I was like, lady, I'm something of a journalist.
Guest:Like, I'm just going to talk about this.
Guest:You realize that?
Guest:She's like, well, I don't care what you do.
Guest:And your manager comes over, he says, what's the matter?
Guest:And I was just like, dude, you knew the situation up and down.
Guest:And he goes, we can offer you a voucher.
Guest:We can offer you this address.
Guest:This is who you write to.
Guest:This is who you call.
Guest:And I said, buddy, hold on to your brochure.
Guest:In about one hour's time, you're going to come looking for me.
Guest:I left a bit of a swagger and I went and sat down and I, you know what?
Guest:Fuck anyone who's like, oh, cocky son of a bitch.
Guest:I needed that cocky man in that moment.
Guest:They must some, an airline told me I was fat dude in front of a plane full of fucking people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And this chick at the desk, she put no fucking salve on the wound whatsoever.
Guest:It was almost like she was like, come here, pour some lemon on.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I walked away going, oh, I got this.
Guest:I know who I am.
Guest:I sat down and I started fucking tweeting.
Guest:Bang, bang, bang.
Guest:Just fucking banging at the legs of that company.
Guest:And it was comedy.
Guest:I was like, I'm a comic and I know what to do with my pain.
Guest:I turned it into something funny.
Guest:and you had their fucking tweet address yeah their tweet of course because they consider themselves audience friendly right i did that with virgin america and i was upgraded immediately so what happened i went at them and i i wait i was there in the lobby you got a lot of followers so it means fucking business it just went everywhere who knew i didn't know it'd be as uh covered uh it's slow news day or whatever i should have figured out right away fat guy in a little seat that was the story
Guest:So it started.
Guest:I just sat there tweet after tweet, just hitting him, just mocking the fuck out of him.
Guest:Shit like I'm making fun of me, making fun of them.
Guest:And then some dude is it's close to boarding.
Guest:So I get up and I go over to my gate and I'm leaning on the wall right across my date.
Guest:And I see the man, the manager guy from the other gate book fucking past me.
Guest:And then he doubles back, and he goes, Mr. Smith.
Guest:And he fucking races over, and he goes, stop tweeting, please.
Guest:And I was just like, I told you you were going to come find me, man.
Guest:How are you?
Guest:And he was like, listen, I just want to apologize.
Guest:I said, save it, buddy.
Guest:It's too late, man.
Guest:And he's like, well, look, we're just going to hook you up.
Guest:We're going to make sure you get on first on this plane over here.
Guest:I was like, I'm already getting on first.
Guest:I have a ticket.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The voucher.
Guest:Yeah, I have number one, too.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Thanks.
Guest:Your time's passed.
Guest:I needed help back there.
Guest:That's a good feeling.
Guest:You handed me a brochure?
Guest:Oh, it was fucking awesome.
Guest:It was so awesome.
Guest:And then I got on the next flight and then they tried to, they were sick, dude.
Guest:This organization's pretty bad.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They've grabbed a girl who was very chubby, like me.
Guest:We did a podcast about her right afterwards.
Guest:And sat her next to me in the seat where I was, like on the other side.
Guest:And she... Talk amongst yourselves, fat people?
Guest:I don't know what it was.
Guest:Other people paraded passes, but it was just like, why do they have the fat people up front?
Guest:There were two of us.
Guest:Then they pull her from her seat and take her out in the jetway.
Guest:She comes back.
Guest:She's crying.
Guest:And I don't talk to strangers and shit, but I'd already fucking been through hell that night.
Guest:So I was just like, what's this all about?
Guest:And she goes, they said that I wasn't going to be able to fly because I didn't buy two seats.
Guest:And I would need to buy two seats.
Guest:Otherwise, you would be mad.
Guest:And I was like, they brought me into this?
Guest:She said, yeah, because you just went through something.
Guest:I was like, these sons of fucking bitches.
Guest:They took this poor, overweight chick.
Guest:And I don't say she's poor because she's overweight.
Guest:But they just haplessly picked this fucking broad to sit her next to me to try to prove a point.
Guest:Like, well, we do this to all fat people.
Guest:It ain't just you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How fucking mean is that, dude?
Guest:Somebody had to okay that.
Guest:Somebody in a position of power at Southwest said do that and then pull her out and yell at her.
Guest:Because the girl was like, they literally told me to sit in that seat.
Guest:She's going, I'm fat.
Guest:I sit in the back of the plane.
Guest:I get in line first so I can race to the back of the plane so I don't have to have everyone parading past me.
Guest:They made me sit in this chair and then they yelled at me telling me I have to buy another seat even though there are plenty of empty seats everywhere.
Guest:And they did it just so it could be in front of me.
Guest:what a deplorable fucking reign of Nazis these air marshals are at Southwest.
Guest:They're the worst.
Guest:I mean, that's just, I get it.
Guest:We're all in business trying to make a buck, but like I ain't fucking over my fellow man to get a fucking buck in my pocket.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:Humiliating people in public and shit.
Marc:Now I got to start flying Virgin more often.
Marc:I don't want to hurt your feelings, but you know how they used to have the Orca plane?
Marc:Did they have a fat plane?
Marc:No, I flew down on the Kevin Smith.
Marc:What?
Marc:Dude, I thought about for a minute.
Guest:It's just your face at the head of the planet and a trench coat going all over.
Guest:It flaps in the breeze.
Guest:Please tell me there's a theme song.
Guest:Like a Batman, like Tim Burton's 89 Batman.
Marc:I think they're going to probably ask you to write it given that they have no fucking sense.
Marc:Ugh.
Guest:Oh, these people.
Guest:I think if there were some wise fat people out there, they would all get together and hire me as their spokesperson, the front man, and we would just do air tubby or whatever the fuck.
Guest:Air fat fuck.
Guest:And just... We would all... Fat people would travel on their own fucking plane.
Marc:Well, I think you probably heard them, which is good.
Marc:The Southwest?
Guest:I mean, that's the thing.
Guest:It wasn't even like... I didn't want to hurt them.
Guest:I just want to warn... Like, fuck them.
Guest:At the end of the day, they're a fucking footnote.
Guest:They're tacky.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:Classless, fucking tacky pieces of shit.
Guest:But...
Guest:You just don't want anyone to go through what you went through.
Guest:So you just want to spread the word for other fat people.
Guest:Like, don't look.
Guest:I understand it's a cheap ticket, but look someplace else.
Guest:Because it ain't worth it.
Guest:That shit will hang with a motherfucker.
Guest:Honestly, that was defining.
Marc:Being ostracized and being embarrassed.
Guest:It was a defining moment for me, dude.
Guest:Because it was like, you want to talk about humiliation.
Guest:By the time I got home, it started to germinate into this news story.
Guest:And because I had called myself fat in so many tweets...
Guest:Every news agency felt utterly at liberty to use those words about me in the headlines.
Guest:So it was just like fat director, way fat director, morbidly obese director.
Guest:That kind of snuck in the ass a little.
Guest:Holy shit, dude.
Guest:Like you want to talk about 5,000 press articles all screaming how fat you were in the headlines.
Guest:And then there were some that weren't even clever about it.
Guest:Philadelphia Daily News, dude.
Guest:The worst fucking rag on the planet.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:has on the cover a picture of me and it just says blimp landed holy shit you know what i'm saying dude like that's not even they didn't pull those words from my words so what's the morality tale in that um at that point i just realized i hate the media with everything that i am because all these people who for years a lot of these people i had done stories with you know what i'm saying that wasn't hard news people covering this fucking too fat to fly story
Guest:It was the same motherfuckers who I'd sit down with and do entertainment pieces who'd call me at any time of day to be like, hey, I need a line for this story about nothing has nothing to do with you.
Guest:I was always there for anybody.
Guest:Doors always open.
Guest:And all of a sudden, all these motherfuckers wanted to write the lie story.
Guest:Just tell the story about a little fat guy on a little plane.
Guest:Nobody wanted to.
Guest:There's one dude on the Huffington Post, Lee Stranahan, who actually wrote the right story.
Guest:The story is like...
Guest:The story is that this dude got fucked by a corporation, just like you have gotten fucked by a corporation.
Guest:But rather than fucking go quietly into the good night, he made a big stink about it.
Guest:And instead, you know, dude's getting fucking harassed for his troubles and shit like that.
Guest:I felt alone, dude.
Guest:I really realized that at that point, we'd do it alone.
Guest:I always thought there was a team effort out there somewhere, that we were all in this together somehow.
Marc:People are frightened, and the media are piranhas.
Marc:I mean, it just was a feeding frenzy.
Guest:It was nasty.
Guest:But it was also coming fucking like what would happen a month later is like a cop out would come out and the critics would just tear into this movie in a way that it was like it wasn't even film criticism anymore.
Guest:It was like watching bullies beat up a retarded.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:you know in a in a parking lot did they call you fat again it wasn't even that i mean there were literally some that did where i'm like oh my god look call me fat all you want i bet you i can fuck your wife dude you know what i'm saying if i can't fuck her i bet you i could buy her like you want to play on that level like the base kind of like you're fat i'm like i'm fat and hugely successful yeah i'm fat with success what do you want me to take away from you yeah to prove that i'm fucking not this feeble fat man you make like and you never want to you never want to
Guest:uh what is what is it called hit them on that level meet them on that level but sometimes you can't help it yeah you know what i'm saying when somebody like pulls your fucking physicality into the review of a movie it's like the fuck does that have to do so what happened with cop i mean what were they doing
Guest:in which i mean like you brought up that you know when cop-out came out that the same was just nasty it was just basically people like like beating the beating a movie to death dude saying it was like the worst movie ever made i mean whatever i don't care about shit like that it was just like so nasty like i sat there going all these people that i sit down and do time with like happily whenever they want to you know why am i bothering like none of them have my fucking back right so why should i have any of their fucking back right and also at this point
Guest:I don't need any of these people.
Guest:I've been doing what I've been doing for nearly 20 years.
Guest:And in the beginning of the job, we were always bred to respect and like, hey, man, you need these people.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:You need the press to get the word out.
Guest:Glad handing.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:But at the end of the day, Mark, I've been doing this for nearly 20 years.
Guest:And when you do something for 20 years and you build an audience all your own, you don't need the press.
Guest:You are the press.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So essentially at that point, why am I sitting down with these people?
Guest:And it used to be because like, well, you just reach your audience, sit down with the press and who knows who you can reach.
Guest:Well, guess what, man?
Guest:I've done my homework in the last two years and I'll be on a website and read some fucking horrible article about what a dickhead I am and fucking holy terror behind the camera.
Guest:I am an abortion of cinnamon, all this fucking stupid bullshit.
Yeah.
Guest:And back in the day, I'd read that and I would go like, oh my God, who's reading this?
Guest:Like everyone can read this now.
Guest:This person just put this in public.
Guest:And if it's in print and it's newspaper, I mean, this counts.
Guest:Somebody's going to think this is fucking real.
Guest:And you would sit there and you would pull your hair out and you would be like, you would be crippled.
Guest:I would lose days wondering how much damage can these pieces do?
Marc:I can't imagine the paralyzing, just paralyzing.
Guest:Now?
Guest:You just click on their little Twitter account button and see how many followers they have because that's how you figure out how many people they're reaching.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And when I see like somebody tearing my fucking throat out and click and see they've got like 300 Twitter followers, it's like, dude, I block 300 Twitter followers a day just for being assholes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I know I reach more people than you.
Guest:At the end of the day, majority fucking rules.
Guest:And it's like, I now know that I reach more people than these people can influence even.
Guest:So for me, it's like, why do I have to play this game anymore?
Guest:I'm not going to be polite to people who just want to shit in my mouth at the end of the day.
Guest:That's all they do, dude.
Guest:They want to sit there and be nice to you in person and then write a story where they try to be clever about your fucking foibles and the ups and the downs.
Marc:They're always trying to cut their own teeth.
Marc:They just want to take the upper hand.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, why?
Guest:It's fucked up.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Because basically it's like, let me show people how clever I am in my writing.
Guest:You want to show people how clever you are in writing?
Guest:Write something original.
Guest:They're smart.
Guest:Create something from scratch.
Guest:Go write a movie.
Guest:Go write a book.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Go record a podcast.
Guest:Well, they're parasites.
Guest:They're parasites.
Guest:Whatever.
Guest:I mean, it's just like, it irritates me.
Guest:And now they're all mad at me because I don't want to talk anymore.
Guest:Because I'm just like, after fucking nearly 20 years, I mean, you guys have frustrated me to the point of like, what's the point of having a conversation?
Guest:For years, all you said was, he should stop making VSQ movies.
Guest:And then I did.
Guest:And they were like, oh, this is terrible.
Guest:He shouldn't do this either.
Guest:He should just try.
Guest:He's no director.
Guest:And I go and I try to direct a movie only.
Guest:And they don't focus on that.
Guest:Though he made a bad movie, as if I wrote it.
Guest:You can't win.
Guest:Dude, you cannot win with these people.
Guest:And that's when I realized how much time.
Guest:I'm so resentful because of all the time that I've lost, creative time, wasted fighting battles of opinion with people that don't fucking matter.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:They don't even matter to me because they only buy tickets to my shit.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:They go see it for free.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then shit in its mouth.
Guest:Bullshit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm going to sit here and play to the people that are happy to see me there.
Guest:And there are a lot of them, dude.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Back in the day, people go, oh, go play to your fucking audience.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Guess what, man?
Guest:I've lived off that audience for nearly 20 fucking years.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I know I said it before and I don't mean this in a braggy way.
Guest:I live in a bigger house than anyone in my entire lineage ever thought existed in this world or would ever be open to someone like us.
Uh-huh.
Guest:I think I know what I'm fucking doing.
Guest:Back off.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:After 20 years, you'd imagine they'd just be like, he knows what he's doing.
Guest:You know why?
Guest:Because I'm only doing what I do.
Guest:I don't do what they do.
Guest:I don't follow anyone else's path.
Guest:I follow them on and make a flick.
Guest:And then I'm like, hey man, let's create a podcasting empire.
Guest:And then it's like, hey, let's go over here and write a comic.
Guest:All these doors and opportunities are open to me.
Guest:Why should I limit myself to one tiny fucking thing?
Guest:I could suck at everything.
Marc:But you know what?
Marc:I get to try it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And also, I think there's just a part of us as people who are creative that we still look for that approval and fighting with that motherfucker.
Guest:Well, that's good.
Guest:Do you have that?
Marc:No, it took me a long time to realize that, hey, there isn't a little me in everybody.
Guest:That's brilliant.
Guest:I wish I'd met you a few years ago.
Guest:I would have taken that one and ran with it, man.
Guest:That is a sound piece of advice right there.
Guest:There isn't a little me in everybody.
Marc:Because there's that part of you.
Marc:I would be saying what I say the way I want to say it, and if people didn't get it, I'm like, you're not going deep enough to find your inner mark.
Marc:You all look exactly like me.
Marc:Yell at the world.
Marc:And, you know, and at some point I sort of I got away from it.
Marc:But now do you realize it doesn't matter?
Marc:Like, dude, honestly, they couldn't write anything they want.
Marc:You can't be happy if you live in that fucking mindset.
Guest:Because you can never live.
Guest:It's like trying to live up to an evil step parent.
Marc:What's trying to live up to?
Marc:It's like it's literally, you know, you don't have any freedom to be happy with yourself.
Marc:No.
Guest:Because you're judging yourself on their fucking terms.
Guest:And also, they just basically, the thing that works for me has also worked against me many times in life.
Guest:And I'm not bitching because I've had a great run.
Guest:But I'm them.
Guest:I am from them.
Guest:I am literally a guy.
Guest:If I wasn't making movies, I'd be writing about them on the internet.
Guest:When I'm not making movies, I live on the fucking internet.
Guest:So they recognize me because I came from them.
Guest:I'm one of them made good, quote unquote.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That has been a boon for me.
Guest:On other times, it really hurts because you get judged against a different curve than anybody else.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Hometown Boyd makes good doesn't work.
Guest:Oh, shit.
Marc:Because when Hometown Boyd comes home, they're like, you're just the same fuck you were when you were here.
Guest:You're not the Coen brothers.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So Red State, do you want to talk about it?
Guest:I can if you want.
Guest:I mean, it's not funny.
Guest:It's not a comedy at all.
Guest:It's okay, man.
Guest:you're like fucking uh you're like the the psychiatrist of goodwill hunting it's good you're like it's not your fault it's not funny man it's not funny you don't have to be funny all the time i'm like don't be like that mark don't don't you be that way no if it comes from your heart not you mark not you i start swinging and shit um it is it's not a comedy it's uh it's it's pretty uh it's pretty out there it's gonna be fun to watch it with an audience how would you classify it then
Guest:I don't.
Guest:It's tough.
Guest:It's tough to put it into a genre.
Guest:What's the angle?
Guest:I keep calling it a horror movie.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:To me, it is a horror movie.
Guest:Some people would argue- Are you a horror movie fan?
Guest:I like them quite a bit.
Guest:I've never made one before.
Marc:So in a sense, it's a horror movie you kind of studied a little bit and you- No, it's a horror movie in as much as the elements are horrific.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:The elements at play are truly, truly horrific.
Marc:So it's not a genre horror movie.
Guest:But it is at the same time.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:Yeah, it's this weird kind of... I don't know.
Guest:I honestly don't... How are you setting it up?
Marc:How are you pitching it to people today?
Guest:I don't.
Guest:We've been talking about it for so long.
Guest:For three years, I've been trying to make it.
Guest:Finally found the money, and then we made it really quickly.
Guest:We got into Sundance.
Guest:We debut in less than two weeks on the 23rd up at Sundance.
Guest:And let me see.
Guest:Michael Parks is in it.
Guest:I put up a teaser for it.
Guest:There have been posters that we've been releasing into the world.
Guest:all of which have pointed to a very unsettling flick.
Guest:And even people who normally are like, fuck this guy and his terrible fucking movies are like, this might look interesting.
Marc:What are the themes?
Guest:It's about religious fundamentalism.
Guest:It's already creepy.
Guest:When you see the teaser too, it's really unsettling.
Guest:It's kind of cool for me in a Rosemary's Baby horror movie.
Marc:Oh, right.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So you play your cards close to your chest and it's not making a statement about religion.
Guest:It's just making... To me, I made statements about religion and dogma.
Guest:That's what everyone seems to think.
Guest:Everyone keeps saying the movie's political or religious or something based on the title, and people are like, how can you not see that?
Guest:I'm like, yes, I understand, but it was a double entendre title.
Guest:I'm not a political person in the release.
Guest:Red, to me, is blood.
Guest:It's a horror movie.
Guest:Red State, Blood State kind of thing.
Guest:And then people are like, why not call it Blood State?
Guest:I'm like, well, that's not clever.
Guest:Red State is fucking clever.
Guest:And also, wouldn't you rather take that movie for a fucking horror title than have somebody make it with a meaningful movie of some sort or something like that?
Marc:Well, it's good.
Marc:It sounds like that even before it gets out of the can, people are like, what the fuck?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And once you look at it, you're like, ooh, it looks unsettling.
Guest:And it's got a nice, it's in fighting shape because it does get people bobbing and weaving.
Guest:Number one.
Guest:you look at it and it doesn't look like anything I've ever done before.
Guest:And you don't, you have a hard time processing that I'm involved in any way.
Guest:So there's that.
Guest:Then it's just like, what the fuck is this about?
Guest:Man, this looks dark because we don't give anything away in the teaser.
Guest:It's just all imagery with, with, with a spoken religious song.
Guest:um and then uh there so that's unsettling and then it it's a date of march for release and you're like it's coming out what the fuck's going on and then it's on smodcast on our podcast network website so it's it's it gets you bobbing and weaving you don't quite know what it is and in two weeks everyone gets to kind of know what it is at least you know the people who are up there yeah for sundance and stuff but that'll be i'll spend most of the year working on working on that getting that out in the world yeah yeah yeah well awesome it sounds like a completely new thing
Guest:It'll be fun, man, to do that.
Guest:I mean, the nice thing is for me, I've gotten to a place with the films where I'm kind of almost done.
Guest:Like I have one more movie I want to do and then I think I'm finished.
Marc:And then what happens?
Marc:What do you mean you're finished?
Marc:You go back to New Jersey?
Guest:No, man.
Guest:I got lots of other stuff.
Guest:I like doing the podcast thing.
Guest:Yeah, me too.
Guest:I spend way more time doing that than anything else.
Guest:It's very engaging.
Guest:it's engaging and it takes you know how much time it takes so it's not like my job here is done i leave the room you still got work ahead like this show ain't done like you know i'm i'm for me i i'm on five of the seven shows that are on weekly and i cut any show i'm on so it's not only just recording i gotta sit there and fucking cut them too so i live the shit yeah so for me it's like if i could do this for a living and i can i you know i can monetize it and blah blah
Guest:I'd much prefer to do that.
Guest:I mean, look, I know we're not supposed to say it out loud, but it's like getting to be Howard Stern for me.
Guest:I mean, you know what I'm saying?
Guest:That was always a dream.
Guest:I sat there as a kid listening.
Guest:That's what I think the 21st century is kind of about.
Guest:People finding out, like, we used to all want to go outside, put on clothes, and do professional things.
Guest:And I think 21st century is finding, like, we'd much rather... Smart Money does it from its house.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:The closer you can get to...
Marc:never leaving your house the better you know and that's that's how you win that's how you stay alive and that's how you can you know work from home yes work in slippers and pajamas i've done that well shit it's been great talking to you i've been told that uh i don't uh by one person like it's weird when something happens on the internet even if it's one email you're like the internet has said right that uh i don't close my shows with a nice sort of uh you know kind of ease people out you know where you go out harsh
Marc:No, I just sort of usually the guy I'm talking to goes, is that it, or can we eat?
Guest:See, that's the difference with me.
Guest:You'll never get a guy going, are we done?
Guest:Because I just assume it'll go on for hours.
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:No, I mean, it doesn't always happen, but I just want to thank you for coming.
Marc:I'm glad you made the trip up here to the hills of the barrio.
Guest:I was telling you when I came in, this was a discovery for me.
Guest:You always think you live in a place until somebody invites you three miles from your house, and you're like, where the fuck is this?
Guest:I know.
Guest:It always happens when people come here.
Guest:It's like,
Guest:i've never been here it was i was telling you when i came in i was like this is the los angeles of that movie cyrus like i watched that movie cyrus and i'm like it looks like la but this doesn't look like any la this is old this is old la like there are hills and houses and yeah i mean i find that if you're in southern california if you're in a hill it's a it's like living in the hills like right over there is pasadena eagle rock's up there glendale's over there i'm familiar with we we shot uh some of clerks too there's a a
Guest:Policeman's Museum.
Marc:No, that's right down here.
Marc:That's on York.
Marc:That's in Highland Park.
Marc:Yeah, it's down by York and Figueroa.
Guest:And across the street down the road a little bit is like a soda joint.
Marc:Galco's Pop Shop.
Guest:Yes!
Guest:Yeah, I know that area.
Marc:Go get some old-timey candy and some esoteric soda pop.
Marc:Yes, they had shit from that grape knee high.
Marc:Yeah, you can go get some right now.
Marc:Thanks for coming, Kevin.
Guest:Thanks for having me, man.
Marc:Folks, please.
Marc:I hope you enjoyed that, and I hope I tailed off well.
Marc:Please go to WTFPod.com.
Marc:Kick in a few bucks if you got them.
Marc:Get on the mailing list.
Marc:I mail a thing out every Sunday.
Marc:Go to WTFPodShop.com.
Marc:Pick up some premium episodes.
Marc:Buy some T-shirts.
Marc:Got new American Apparel T-shirts.
Marc:available under the merch button at wtfpod.com.
Marc:What else can I tell you?
Marc:I believe my book, Jerusalem Syndrome, is in the second printing, so you can go to Amazon and get that if you haven't gotten that already.
Marc:If you don't have enough Marin in your life, go get the book.
Marc:Oh, God, I feel like a pitch man for me.
Marc:But that's all right.
Marc:Kevin sort of talked about that.
Marc:That's the world we live in.
Marc:It's a good product, all right?
Marc:It's a good product.
Guest:Okay, see you later.