Episode 1430 - David Mandel
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what's happening how's it going out there seriously how's it going what's happening
Marc:Today, I talked to David Mandel.
Marc:He's a writer, director and producer.
Marc:He worked on Veep and became the showrunner in the final three seasons.
Marc:He also worked on SNL, Seinfeld, The Simpsons and Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Marc:He's the director and producer of the new HBO limited series White House Plumbers, which I enjoyed because like on just right up.
Marc:On a base level, I kind of like anything Woody Harrelson does.
Marc:I don't know when that happened or how it happened, but he and Justin Theroux, quite good.
Marc:But I didn't realize, you know, I thought it was, it is a comedy to a degree.
Marc:It's sort of shot like that.
Marc:But apparently, Gordon Liddy,
Marc:G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt were kind of clowns.
Marc:I didn't really know that, but I enjoyed this series and I'll talk to him in a minute.
Marc:So what I'm trying to say here is that I just...
Marc:I'm always surprised by other people doing things.
Marc:I know that my life is relatively small and what's coming in and what's going out is finite.
Marc:There's a context to it.
Marc:I don't stay in touch with the big picture unless it comes up on my news feed in terms of peers doing things or unless I hear things.
Marc:But there's some part of me that's always surprised when people are doing things because some part of my brain thinks that because I don't hear of something going on, that it's just not happening.
Marc:It's sort of like the opposite of FOMO.
Marc:Whatever the inverse of fear of missing out is, I have that.
Marc:And what I have after that feeling is like, oh, I had no idea anybody in the world was doing anything wrong.
Marc:You know, other than, you know, what my direct experience is.
Marc:And I'm always pleasantly surprised.
Marc:And not everybody every day is just not functioning on some sort of pause mode.
Marc:And but sadly, as soon as I hear somebody doing something or something going on, I'm like, then I go right into FOMO.
Marc:And I'm just sort of like, how did I miss everything?
Marc:Like an example that's sort of a stretch.
Marc:But I, you know, I started watching Rami Youssef's show.
Marc:Because I'm going to talk to him eventually.
Marc:And also I had the same experience when I was watching Dead Ringers because I was going to talk to Rachel Weisz is that, you know, both of these shows like Rami shows been on for three seasons and I kind of knew about him and I kind of I kind of knew the show was there.
Marc:but not really.
Marc:So then I watched his comedy special.
Marc:It was pretty good.
Marc:And then I watched his show and I'm like, this is fucking amazing.
Marc:And I'm just overwhelmed with some sort of relief and gratitude that great things are being made by diverse communities, by ethnically diverse communities.
Marc:I watched a season and a half or so of Rami, of Rami Youssef's show,
Marc:And I realized, like, I'm a grown man, I'm 59 years old, and I had no idea what the lives of Muslim Americans are like, or someone brought up by first-generation Muslim Americans, or immigrants, or what being Muslim in even a casual sense was like.
Marc:You know, you assume a religion's a religion, but, you know, I didn't know anything about the Egyptian-American experience.
Marc:And on some level, why would I?
Marc:But my first thought is...
Marc:Well, God damn it.
Marc:Am I just old?
Marc:Am I out of the loop?
Marc:I mean, how did I not know this?
Marc:Well, why would I know it?
Marc:It was the same experience with with Reservation Dogs.
Marc:You know, I knew that show was one of a kind, first of its kind of a Native American owned and operated and created show.
Marc:But I was like, this is a whole world of of life that I had no sense of.
Marc:And in a different sense, you know, Dead Bringers is different in that, you know, it deals specifically with a sort of spectrum of women's issues around reproductive rights and treatment in a way.
Marc:So, like, I have this weird thing where I'm like, I had no idea any of this was going on.
Marc:It must be because I'm old.
Marc:But also, as Brendan pointed out to me, it was more because...
Marc:A lot of people, their life is they go to work, they come home, they eat and they watch TV for a few hours.
Marc:Many people watch three or four shows a week, if not more.
Marc:I barely watch television.
Marc:I don't know what I'm doing.
Marc:I guess I'm working.
Marc:I guess I'm out doing comedy.
Marc:I guess I'm taking in movies, but I don't really watch shows regularly that often.
Marc:And I certainly generally outside of succession am not on the pulse of what the culture is up to.
Marc:It seems like a lot of people are watching that and that's pretty great.
Marc:But these other shows are hitting me in a different way where I'm like some part it gives me hope somehow.
Marc:It's a weird thing.
Marc:And I'll probably talk about this again later.
Marc:You know, when I talked to Rami, it just sort of like it gives me hope that these voices are out there in the face of what we're kind of dealing with as a country politically.
Marc:It makes me happy that.
Marc:that it's happening, that these voices are being heard, that there's something about the nature of entertainment and their need for content, streaming content, that a good deal of money is being spent on content or shows or limited series that are provocative, progressive, aggressive, new, extreme in a way.
Marc:And I keep seeing them as some sort of political reaction.
Marc:Maybe they're not.
Marc:You know, it's not like everybody's going to watch Rami or everybody's going to watch Underground Railroad, which is another example of this.
Marc:But I think that given the nature of the political situation we're in, that these are voices.
Marc:I mean, I'm not going out into the streets or maybe I'm being...
Marc:Maybe I'm just being some weird, excitable old man that's just sort of learning about something, you know, but we're in a world where like the Montana State House just voted to bar the state's only transgender lawmaker from the House floor for the remainder of the legislative season because they spoke out.
Marc:in defense of their constituents and in defense of their gender status.
Marc:And they were shut down by the state government being part of the state government happened in Tennessee.
Marc:So,
Marc:This is what is happening, a sort of aggressive, shameless, GOP-driven fascism that has no patience or desire for democracy.
Marc:And I have thought about this before, and I'm going to think about it again out loud, that once you remove tolerance from
Marc:From the national discourse or political discourse, there's no hope for democracy.
Marc:When you just have assholes doubling down on drawing lines and shutting another party out without debate, without respect, without tolerance, there's no future for democracy.
Marc:So when I see shows that I think represent...
Marc:Voices that aren't generally heard or aren't generally integrated into the entertainment entertainment paradigm.
Marc:I think it's some grand political statement, but I don't even know if it's big enough.
Marc:Hopefully there's other things that will guarantee the future of democracy.
Marc:But in a lot of states, the shit is coming down.
Marc:abortion restrictions and bannings in some sort of hope, I guess, on their part to populate the state with like-minded people.
Marc:Maybe they have a better shot at enforcing fascism with people who were born unwanted, unparented properly, poorly parented, angry.
Marc:Maybe they're just thinking of the long game of harnessing that anger to their political means and othering anyone who doesn't believe like them.
Marc:So that on some level, and maybe I'm being too sort of old man lefty-ish, I think that these voices are resoundingly political, even though it's just a limited series.
Marc:I may have jumped a gun in my reaction to my blood numbers.
Marc:I know this is maybe only an ongoing tale for the people that might be interested who are of a certain age that are obsessed mildly or totally with their health.
Marc:But because I was given my test results,
Marc:Without doctor commentary, I assumed that an LDL cholesterol, bad cholesterol, they call it, of 102 was bad.
Marc:And after doing a little more research, I found that after talking to my friend James, who is an amateur doctor, who asked me about my triglycerides, and when I told him that my triglycerides were 54, he was like, holy shit, what are you worried about?
Marc:You're healthy as fuck.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And when I told him about my good cholesterol, 72, he was like, oh, my God.
Marc:But I was only preoccupied with the red 102 and the flagging of my test results before doctor input that I was on the bad path.
Marc:But apparently, according to the doctor, everything's normal.
Marc:I guess there's a ratio to all this and that my total cholesterol of 185 is fine, if not good.
Marc:But because I'm me, I'm still going to reach out to my cardiologist to make sure, given my history of arterial plaque, that I'm okay.
Marc:So I guess this is all to say I will be remaining a vegan for the undetermined future, whatever that word is that you put there, for the indeterminate.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:What is the word?
Marc:See, how's it going to help my brain?
Marc:So look, this show, The White House Plumbers, which premieres Monday night, May 1st at 9 p.m.
Marc:on HBO, and it'll be streaming on HBO Max, is pretty great.
Marc:I enjoyed it, learned new things, watched some good acting.
Marc:It was very precise about the time period.
Marc:It's a great show.
Marc:And David Mandel, he's the director and producer of this of this new show.
Marc:And I talked to him about writing comedy and other things, life stuff.
Marc:So this is me talking to David Mandel.
Marc:So you think I, where would we have met?
Marc:When were you?
Guest:I was at SNL 92 to 95.
Guest:And I guess I, and then, and I was, and then I was also friends and my, he was, I guess my mentor a bit, uh, Al Franken.
Guest:And so, and then obviously you guys crossed over sort of in the air.
Marc:So I felt like that was until 2004.
Guest:So I thought somewhere in there when, cause like I was around.
Guest:Because there was that moment where Sarah Silverman and Dave Attell were on the show.
Guest:And I felt like stand-ups and people were coming to the show.
Guest:I could be wrong.
Marc:I never went to an Afro party.
Marc:And I never went to the show.
Marc:But I was definitely around.
Marc:Maybe somewhere.
Marc:I think Luna Lounge started in the mid-90s.
Marc:You never did stand-up?
Marc:No, never.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:The closest I ever came was I gave the humor oration at my college graduation, and that was it for me.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Always comedy, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Where'd you grow up, though?
Guest:New York City, 70th and West End.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:The whole time?
Guest:The whole time.
Guest:My folks are still there, Lincoln Towers.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And so you're a New York kid?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it's middle-class projects.
Marc:That's what it was.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:What were your folks in?
Guest:My dad to this day, because he's one of those guys that just, he's going to go to his office until the day they carry him out.
Guest:How old is he?
Guest:He's 1938.
Guest:That's my dad too, 84?
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:And he just, office every day, sometimes on Saturdays too.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:And he's like- What office?
Guest:What goes on there?
Guest:Nothing.
Guest:Calls and piles of paper.
Guest:What's his job?
Guest:He sort of has, he does taxes and trusts and estates and he still has clients that are even older than him that he's helping.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:But you know, it's like, I don't know what he does there.
Guest:Is it one of those old offices?
Guest:It's not because his old, his old office, like eventually just sort of shut down.
Guest:So he found some newer, younger people that like, like he rents an office from kind of a thing.
Marc:So he's like the old guy in the hip works.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know if it's that hip, but yeah, he is definitely the old guy that occasionally they come in and go like, hey, we have a tax question.
Marc:And your mom, was she?
Guest:She was a teacher.
Guest:She started as a public school teacher.
Guest:So you remember the old New York.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Public school teacher in New York.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, we're talking, and I'm not making this up, the first, I think it was her first principal that she ever worked for.
Guest:And I will preface this with this guy eventually, I think, murdered his wife and went to prison.
Guest:But he, on day one of her getting there,
Guest:He explained to her that the best method was you back a kid up against a locker, basically.
Guest:And then you flinch at them, but you don't touch them.
Guest:But then they hit their own heads on the back of the locker.
Guest:And that's how you get away with it.
Guest:That was day one of public school teaching.
Marc:In terms of disciplining?
Guest:Disciplining and how to, that was his theory on education.
Marc:And that guy ended up killing his wife?
Guest:Yes, I believe so.
Marc:And yeah, exactly.
Marc:Excellent story.
Marc:We try, we try.
Marc:Bring a little New York to your show.
Marc:And you have siblings?
Marc:I got a younger sister, yeah.
Marc:So where did... So you're just running around the city when you were a kid?
Marc:Yeah, just running around the city.
Marc:That was like your... It's amazing when... That there was a time in New York where you grew up there.
Marc:Like, parents are just like... Because I got... My buddy Sam's a teacher up at Columbia.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:And he's got this New York kid.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Two New York kids.
Marc:And they're different than any other kid.
Guest:It is so different.
Guest:And when I take my kids back to... I don't think about it out here, but when we go back to visit my folks, and as I said, they're still there, 70th and West End...
Guest:Like when I watch my children walk on the street, oblivious.
Guest:Oblivious.
Guest:As if everyone's gonna move, as if traffic isn't there and whatever.
Guest:And it's a different species.
Guest:And I do it out here.
Guest:And my wife laughs at me out here because I'm constantly like, not that we're on the streets that much, but I'm constantly like seeing something and moving to one side, like way ahead or like all of a sudden my hand's in my pocket.
Guest:Because I'm a little nervous, like someone's coming near us or something like that.
Guest:And she, of course, thinks it's hilarious because she grew up in Maine.
Guest:We're like basically right now.
Guest:You could drive to her parents' house in Maine.
Guest:The door is open.
Guest:It is unlocked.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And those kind of places, you just got to worry about the one guy.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Marc:And they all know who he is.
Guest:It's so-and-so's son.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:But yeah, I mean, when New York City is your backyard, you have a sensibility.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:My buddies and I, and I was talking with one of them the other day, we used to go like, you know, our Friday nights, there was always a movie involved and then different places.
Guest:And one way or another, we'd end up at like, you know, bleaker Bob's or something like that.
Guest:But one of the things we used to love to do, and it was so crazy.
Guest:And we were, we were sort of sometimes trying to write stuff.
Guest:We didn't know what we were doing.
Guest:You know, we were just sort of
Guest:Playing around with shit.
Guest:But we would go to the, uh, the Hyatt on 42nd, uh, across from the Chrysler building, the one, the grand Hyatt there.
Guest:We'd sit in the lobby and we'd sort of shoot the shit and play around with ideas.
Guest:And then we would kind of mark the prostitutes, the high end prostitutes.
Guest:Basically the guy would come down the elevator, meet her in the, meet her in the lobby, take her up and then come down like an hour later without his jacket.
Guest:And that was like a Friday night in New York city.
Marc:Before you could drink.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I'm talking like we're 16.
Guest:This is what we're doing.
Marc:That sounds like perfect.
Marc:Counting prostitutes.
Marc:Of course that's what you'd be doing.
Marc:Yeah, why not?
Marc:You've got to be creative.
Marc:Where do you want to hang out?
Marc:That was the early comedy attempts, yes.
Marc:But we're close, I think, in age.
Marc:So you kind of remember, as I get older now, I kind of remember there was a menace to...
Marc:Because I used to go to New Jersey to visit my grandmother when I grew up in New Mexico, but all my people were Jersey.
Marc:Take the bus into Port Authority at 14 years old and just spend the day in the city.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it was more dangerous then.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I can, what I remember menacing.
Guest:And I don't know if you had this because of, again, this was living there at the time, which was, as I got older, I had my, I had these borders that would disappear.
Guest:So like when I was a little kid, it was like, I was on 70th and it was just like not allowed past 72nd.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Then it was 86.
Guest:Then it was 96.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it, honestly, it never went past 96.
Guest:Like my parents didn't care what I did below 96th Street, but it was like, don't go above 96th Street.
Marc:Unless you're going to Columbia.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:But I was not going to Columbia.
Guest:So yeah, exactly.
Marc:But it was like literally just do not go above 96th Street.
Marc:Well, that was the...
Marc:Slightly racist interpretation.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Of the city.
Marc:Yes, exactly.
Marc:But, I mean, it's nice up there now.
Marc:And it was nice up there then in some places.
Guest:Well, now I have, like, friends, you know, from high school.
Guest:And one day they'll go, oh, we just bought a place.
Guest:And I'm like, oh, where is it?
Guest:And they'll go, like, you know, oh, it's 187th.
Guest:And my initial instinct, I go, like, wait, what?
Guest:And then I go there and I go, oh, my God, this is incredible.
Guest:Or wherever it is.
Guest:But what is that called up there?
Guest:Is that, like, Spite and Dival or the Bronx?
Marc:Beyond the Bronx, there's that.
Guest:You're kind of right in that area.
Guest:Yeah, I thought there was a name of that area.
Marc:There may be.
Marc:I forget.
Marc:Yeah, but it's nice up there.
Marc:Yes, it is.
Marc:But child me, it just seemed like the Warriors or something.
Guest:Oh, that's funny.
Marc:But in the 70s, it felt a little more dangerous.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And I was, I mean, I've been mugged more times than I care to count.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:We got mugged on the subway.
Guest:You did?
Guest:Got mugged.
Guest:When you were a kid?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Because I went to school up in the Bronx.
Guest:I went to school.
Guest:I went to private school up in Riverdale.
Marc:Riverdale.
Marc:Is that what I'm thinking of?
Marc:Oh, is that what you were thinking of?
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Sorry.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So the Archie comics, but not the real one.
Guest:And we would, I had a school bus, but if we finished early, we could go home or
Guest:you know we could take the subway yeah the one basically it was uh right right up there yeah and uh you know rode home and you know got mugged twice you know and they took like what little money i had in my pocket so they'd roll the kids yes exactly yeah and one other time i had a buddy and this wasn't even like we're not talking like nikes or air jordans but they took his sneakers and they took his jacket and just you know shit like that that's a nightmare yeah
Guest:But by the way, it was sort of normalizing in its own weird way.
Marc:New York's the only place where that's not traumatized.
Marc:Right.
Marc:No, I feel like I'm- It's a rite of passage.
Guest:My crazy father at some point had some kind of a BB gun pulled on him on, I think, 70th by this school park that was there.
Guest:There's a playground.
Guest:Now it's great, but it used to be a troublesome spot.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:pulled a BB gun on him.
Guest:And he told us the story where he just basically went, get that out of my face and just pushed it to the side and kept going.
Guest:And they just let him be because it wasn't worth it.
Guest:And that's the New York that doesn't exist anymore, but that's us.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, it's very funny.
Marc:There are still, like, it is interesting.
Marc:I go back there, but there are still true New Yorkers around.
Marc:I don't know if they live in the city anymore or what, but apparently your folks still do.
Marc:They're there.
Marc:That generation of people is still around.
Guest:And there are people in that building.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know, because it's, you know, non-evict.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:So it's rent control.
Guest:Now it's like, now it's like, it's, it's become a condo, but my folks are still like renting and it's like, there's somebody waiting.
Guest:They get every month, like the owners send them a letter offering them more money to leave.
Guest:But it's like one, where are they going?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, there's nowhere else in New York they could go.
Guest:I,
Guest:I love them, but I don't want them coming out here.
Guest:So it's like, you know, whatever.
Guest:And it is what it is.
Guest:But they have, they have a three bedroom apartment and a parking spot for less than like 800 bucks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's like, it's like crazy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like less than anybody's paying for anything.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's so nice that they have those laws to protect.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So when do you start, were you aware of SNL when it started?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, not probably when it started, started.
Marc:Like 76.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I have those vague memories of like, you know, Belushi doing the Samurai and stuff like that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What I do remember, this is going to sound very weird sideways in.
Guest:My elementary school used to have these book fairs.
Guest:And in like 76 or 77, they published the SNL script book.
Guest:Yeah, I remember that.
Guest:We had Franco on the cover.
Guest:Franco on the cover.
Guest:I have that book.
Guest:And I bought that book at the book fair.
Guest:And that was when I started.
Guest:I'm not even sure I 100% knew what I was buying.
Guest:But you saw it.
Guest:What scripts look like.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Saw what scripts looked like.
Guest:Saw, more importantly than that, the handwritten notes on the scripts and the crossouts and stuff.
Guest:And I definitely... I want to be really... Sorry, this sounds silly.
Guest:I want to be clear about this.
Guest:I don't think I was ever thinking like, I'm going to be a writer.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:There's nothing like that.
Guest:But I was fascinated by...
Guest:entertainment comedy and process.
Marc:I mean, I definitely, I definitely had that same experience with that book.
Marc:I mean, I, I still have my copy.
Guest:I have my copy.
Guest:It's sitting in my parents' bookshelf in my old room that by the way, looks like I died in a boating accident and ordinary people.
Guest:And it's like a shrine to me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It looks like I died and it's a shrine.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:God forbid it becomes that, but yeah, no, I, I, that's interesting that they, it's a pristine environment, the old room.
Marc:Why don't you go get your shit?
Um,
Marc:I got most of the shit.
Guest:And when you open the closets and stuff, it's their shit.
Guest:But the stuff on the walls and the bookshelves, it looks like my room.
Marc:It's like when Albert Brooks in that movie Mother.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:When he goes in and gets all his stuff out of the closet and puts it back up there.
Marc:Puts it back, yeah.
Guest:I don't have to put it back.
Marc:It's just there.
Marc:You know, that movie on paper was tremendous, I bet.
Marc:There are scenes in there.
Guest:There's that grocery scene early on where they keep bumping into her friends and whatever.
Guest:There are moments in there.
Marc:I thought the moment of discovery that she had enough.
Marc:Because that's an interesting moment for any kid to realize that their parents had a life before them.
Guest:Had a life and did things and didn't change their paths and stuff.
Marc:Disappointment.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:I thought that was kind of an amazing part of that movie.
Marc:I think as funny as he is, I think he might have been too old for that part.
Guest:Oh, that's interesting.
Guest:I never thought about that.
Marc:Because she was great.
Marc:She was incredible.
Marc:And he was like a little, you know, he's him.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And, you know, it was written for him and by him.
Marc:But I don't know if he wasn't too old for that one.
Guest:I wonder, this is going to sound strange, is obviously he's always him, right?
Guest:He's always him.
Guest:But like, that was almost one where a little bit of the him, the usual schtick about his cars and all of what he drives, you know, whatever, almost ever so slightly got in the way of the really interesting premise.
Marc:Well, yeah, he was supposed to be a sci-fi writer.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And except it never quite.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because he can't get out of his schtick.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But the schtick works in all the other ones.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, I agree.
Marc:But, you know, but like when I think of that movie.
Marc:But anyway, getting back to that.
Marc:Oh, no, it was me.
Marc:Doesn't matter.
Marc:Getting back to that book, I'm trying to remember now why I was so fascinated with it.
Marc:Because I was a huge fan of the show when I was a kid.
Marc:And there was something about any sort of way into that show.
Marc:Well, there was two things.
Guest:One was the lateness of it.
Guest:And my parents were the gatekeepers in a way.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And they let me...
Guest:They occasionally let me see it, but not all the time.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It wasn't a school night.
Guest:It wasn't a school night.
Guest:How old are you?
Guest:58?
Guest:No, I'm... I'm 49.
Guest:No, 52 going on three.
Guest:I look like hell.
Marc:Oh, that's right.
Marc:I'm 59.
Guest:So you were really young.
Guest:Yes, I was really young.
Guest:So it was very forbidden fruit and also very like...
Guest:special occasions.
Guest:Like I remember being at a friend's house away and my parents were like, you can, you're allowed to watch it.
Guest:So, like I said, that sort of Belushi cast, it was here and there, but it was also like, oh my God, what is this thing?
Guest:And then my real true first cast was really like, you know, Eddie Murphy, where I watched every week.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Where week in, week out, I was watching.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:So or I guess even late, late elementary school, because he was what, 82?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So I'm 12.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, I just I remember that it was that that original cast was a total obsession of mine.
Marc:And that book, like seeing that there was this whole other world behind.
Marc:It was that I think that's what it is, is you don't really realize that when you're a kid.
Marc:And then when you realize it.
Marc:It's like it's a whole other world.
Guest:I wasn't thinking about being a writer or any of that stuff.
Marc:What were you thinking about?
Guest:I have no idea.
Guest:I think I was going to be a lawyer or something.
Guest:Whatever your dad says.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Upper West Side Care.
Guest:To this day, the great disappointment with my folks, it sounds like a terrible cliche.
Marc:Do they understand how much money you make?
Guest:No, they don't understand anything.
Marc:I'll tell you two things.
Marc:Their sense of status is interfering with the reality that you're making a living.
Guest:But even the living, I remember being at SNL and under contract, and I think my first year went well, or my second year went well, I don't know, whatever it was.
Guest:And my agent was like, we're gonna renegotiate.
Guest:And I tried to say to my father, they're renegotiating my contract.
Guest:And he was like, I don't understand, you have a contract.
Guest:And I just was like, I know, but yeah.
Guest:But we were shooting in New York on Veep.
Guest:We were shooting like basically two weeks and my mom came to the set for the first time.
Guest:And it was a scene like at a front door.
Guest:Selena went in with, you know, like Julia went in with like Tony Hale, whatever.
Guest:And we did it like, you know, like a normal thing.
Guest:We did it like, you know, six times.
Guest:And as we did it, you know, as always, I was making changes to it.
Guest:You know, we did it like two times.
Guest:I made some changes.
Guest:We changed some timing, changed the line, kind of locked it in.
Guest:It was good, whatever, whatever.
Guest:And my mother, when it was all said and done, was just like...
Guest:I had no idea you did it that many times and you make changes.
Guest:And by the way, this was like six years ago.
Guest:I had already been doing it for a very long time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, how would they know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, they would come to like SNL.
Guest:Right.
Guest:My mother was a huge Alec Baldwin fan, so always came whenever he hosted.
Guest:She loved that.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:I guess what I was, I was the, here was the good news.
Guest:I always had a job.
Guest:I know that sounds silly, but I, so I never was a comedy writer going, Hey mom and dad, I'm working on scripts and I'm hoping to move to LA and whatever.
Guest:I graduated from college with a job.
Guest:That job led to SNL, SNL led to Seinfeld.
Guest:I was never in those early years unemployed.
Guest:So even as confused as they were,
Guest:They never had anything to- You never asked them for money.
Guest:Never asked them for money, and there was nothing they could complain about, because it was just, here's another job.
Marc:Right, but they still, and sometimes when they don't know the show you're working on, I mean, you were working on big shows.
Marc:They knew the shows.
Marc:They knew the shows.
Marc:That's good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I had grandparents at the time who are now long gone,
Guest:New Yorkers?
Guest:Yeah, New Yorkers, yeah.
Guest:72nd and Central Park West next to the Dakota.
Guest:And their take on John Lennon's assassination, basically being killed, assassination, whatever, was there was just a lot of noise.
Guest:That was just a very noisy, just not really worth it.
Guest:But, you know, they wore their Seinfeld hats with like a badge of honor to tell anyone and everyone that their grandson was working on Seinfeld.
Marc:Oh, that's nice.
Marc:So how did you, like, where did you go to school that you got a job right out of school?
Marc:Okay, here we go.
Marc:Harvard, Harvard Lampoon.
Guest:Are you familiar with my... Let's say I'm familiar with your work and your show and whatever, so go for it.
Marc:Well, no, I got... I got nothing.
Marc:I mean, like, you know, but there is some sort of element...
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:It's not it's not it wouldn't be it would.
Marc:There is an element of the aristocracy.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And the nature of brotherhoods or fraternal orders of comedy that include women.
Marc:Whereas, you know, people from Harvard and move through that system, you know, call people from that system when they get out of school.
Marc:And those people, you know, say, yeah, come work here.
Guest:I don't, look, I never called anybody, but obviously there were advantages to it.
Guest:I don't know what else to say.
Guest:No, I mean, I get it, but it's, well, what was the process for you?
Guest:The process for me, which was sort of different was, but again, there are certainly advantages was, um, look, I was, by the time I got to college, I didn't know, I didn't know what the Harvard lampoon was, but at that point I was very comedy obsessed.
Guest:I knew what the national lampoon was, but I hadn't put it together.
Guest:I didn't understand.
Guest:standard so your obsession with comedy started in junior high yeah exactly so that first snl that first script book leads to the hill and weingard backstage history of saturday night live which i devoured and memorized yeah and then my mom's old comedy albums you know so i had like vaughn meter first family that's not even a great one no no uh not hers but someone in you know turned me on in again in junior high and
Guest:handed me like, you know, Woody Allen's standup comic.
Guest:That album, great.
Guest:Incredible, incredible.
Guest:Steve, I'll put Mr. Allen on the phone.
Guest:And I wouldn't drink vodka, you know, I wouldn't drink it, you know, whatever.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So I was, you know, very obsessed with that.
Guest:Like I said, my mom had these comedy albums.
Guest:She was a fan.
Guest:And she loved movies and TV.
Guest:So she was the one that would take me to like,
Guest:There was that revival theater on 68th and Broadway.
Guest:She was the one that was taking me to Hitchcock revivals and all that kind of stuff.
Guest:So I was just into movies and television.
Marc:Again, the existence of those revival houses.
Marc:you know, is really gone.
Marc:Completely gone.
Marc:I mean, obviously we have a couple of theaters here, but it's just not the same.
Marc:Well, yeah, not the same as like, you know, well, I mean, Tarantino's Place is doing a relatively, you know, a new double feature every night.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:But, you know, it's curated through him.
Marc:So you're going to get that.
Marc:But like, yeah, those theaters where it was just, you know, every week, every day, it was different movies.
Guest:And there was something fascinating, and this is such an odd thing, because obviously you want Tarantino's theater to have success so that he keeps it open.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But there was something to be said for the fact that when you went to those New York theaters, they were always empty.
Guest:Or there'd be like seven people in them.
Guest:You're probably going during the day.
Guest:Yeah, which is not a great business, but it seemed like a great business.
Marc:Look, man, I went to see the in-laws the other night at Tarantino's theater.
Marc:It was packed.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Marc:And there was a lot of people that had never seen it before, so all these fresh laughs.
Marc:I love that.
Marc:I love that.
Marc:Oh, it's great.
Marc:It's such a funny fucking movie.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:how can now is it now can they not do that again or is it just because i have some deep nostalgia for those particular actors yeah i mean you're a guy that generates all this comedy and you generate good comedy but like you watch falk and and uh arkin together and it's a ridiculous comedy but you know it's deeply funny and there's some part of me that goes like they don't make them like that and
Guest:they don't they don't what is it that they don't do i don't think they're interested they're not even interested i mean they're like two like older guys like they're not even interested i feel like they're like even if they made a comedy they're not interested in two guys in their 40s when they do try to do it like the remake they kind of ruined it they ruined it they ruined it and it's a weird thing because that movie the original one yeah there are parts of it that are huge yeah like
Guest:Broad comedy, you mean?
Guest:Yeah, broad.
Guest:Like the Titsi Flies and the General.
Marc:The General, yes.
Guest:No, he's doing it on purpose, but the General is very big.
Guest:Yeah, for sure.
Marc:That whole thing down there.
Marc:But it's hilarious.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, that's because of Wibbertini.
Marc:Yeah, but it works.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:But like, but that's a testament to that performer.
Guest:But I'm almost saying like, I feel like if you tried to put that in a script, they would stop you.
Guest:Like just the, the tonal, not that it's a full tonal shift, but it, it all of a sudden.
Guest:But there was some of that in your movie in the dictator.
Guest:We tried, but again, I'm not sure that that didn't land the way that that landed.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I guess there was something, there was something very specific about Libertini's craziness, you know, with the velvet paintings, kindness to it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The velvet paintings.
Marc:I mean, come on, dude.
Marc:That was crazy.
Guest:And the way Arkin is forced to constantly be complimenting it is just so wonderful.
Guest:And he shows him the flag, the new flag.
Guest:Dude, that was crazy.
Guest:It was very striking, General.
Marc:There's two million.
Marc:There's two million.
Marc:There's another 20.
Marc:There's another 10 million.
Guest:For whatever reason, I'm always obsessed with Billy and Bing, the two pilots, the two Chinese pilots.
Guest:They'd have been huge if we had Kang Chiang Kai-shek had ever gotten back to the mainland.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's like that kind of thing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't even know who wrote that.
Marc:Hiller directed it.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Hiller directed it.
Guest:Is that an early Andrew Bergman?
Guest:I want to say it is.
Marc:I want to say it is.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But getting back to those revival houses, so your grandmother's taking you.
Marc:My mom's taking me.
Marc:Your mom's taking me.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And so it's all of that.
Guest:It's SNL.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And then the biggie also, it's Letterman.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:I don't have a bedtime.
Guest:From the beginning.
Guest:I don't have a bedtime.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I'm watching the 1230 show.
Guest:I'm watching Carson and I hate to say often not watching Carson.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I'm watching The Odd Couple and I'm watching The Honeymooners or sometimes MASH.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:instead of Carson, and then I'm putting on Letterman.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Those sketches early on were great.
Guest:Just obsessed with it on a level of, you know, would write for tickets and all of that kind of stuff.
Guest:I went twice, and I don't know if you remember, they used to have, you know, they'd do the bumpers, and at some point or another, they made these, like, late night with David Letterman, like, kind of collegiate-looking jackets.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I remember.
Guest:That was my, like, when I was a kid, I was like, I want one of those jackets.
Guest:Like, not again.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Not, I want to work there.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:It was like my obsession was, can I get one of these jackets?
Guest:Never got a jacket.
Marc:You never got a jacket?
Marc:Never got a jacket.
Marc:So you're taking all that shit in.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Seeing the old movie.
Marc:But this is the kind of thing that was available to us.
Marc:It was there.
Marc:And it wasn't.
Marc:I mean, look, I guess it's available on the line.
Marc:Yeah, I know.
Marc:But it's different.
Marc:There's something about being brought.
Marc:There's something about having the experience.
Marc:When there was only three networks and you were in on something,
Marc:You know, you felt like, you know, there's not everybody watching this.
Guest:And again, with Letterman, it was a choice to stay up late.
Guest:I mean, my school bus picked me up at 7.30 a.m.
Guest:So, you know, I'm going to sleep at 1.30 because I'm staying up for Letterman.
Guest:But, you know, you got into it and you'd know, like, oh my God, Bill Murray's coming on and he's going to do something.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:And also a lot of those comics that I don't even remember all their names, but those guys that, you know, Letterman loved that he would have on.
Marc:Like Larry Miller and Jay early on.
Guest:Oh yeah, exactly.
Marc:Richard Lewis.
Marc:Lewis all the time.
Marc:Coming doing the panel.
Guest:And like, you know, and again, and I always got into stand.
Marc:Gary Mule dear.
Guest:I didn't do stand up, but I got, I was into it.
Guest:So like I saw Richard Lewis at Carnegie Hall.
Guest:Like I, I was a. Oh, you went down there?
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:I was a paying customer.
Marc:How was that?
Guest:Oh, it was incredible.
Guest:Who'd you go with?
Guest:Your mom?
Guest:No, went with my, my buddy.
Guest:When was this?
Oh,
Guest:When you were in high school?
Guest:88, 87, something like that, I think.
Guest:High school?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So end of high school.
Guest:Oh, how was he?
Guest:Incredible.
Guest:It's like, I think, because, you know, later on, I got to tell him, you know, I saw you there.
Guest:And I think he thinks of it as one of his truly, I think he considers it one of his.
Guest:Because it was important for him to be there.
Guest:Well, it was Carnegie Hall, obviously.
Guest:But also, I think he knows how good he was that night.
Marc:Oh, good.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Because I fucking blew it at Carnegie Hall.
Marc:Did you really?
Marc:Well, I didn't bomb, but it was, you know, it could have been a little tighter.
Marc:Gotcha.
Yeah.
Marc:So, all right.
Guest:So you're, you're, you're obsessed with comedy.
Guest:So I'm obsessed with comedy.
Guest:I get to Harvard.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just take you back.
Guest:I get to Harvard and all of a sudden, like literally freshmen, I'm like, there's this Harvard Lampoon thing.
Guest:Which you knew the history of.
Marc:A little bit, but not really.
Marc:You knew like what I knew, which is like, that's not National Lampoon, but the guys were there most of them.
Guest:I'm not even sure I fully knew that.
Guest:I think I almost learned that when I got there.
Guest:I put two and two together.
Guest:I knew there was National Lampoon.
Guest:And then I went, oh, I see.
Guest:There's this guy, Doug Kenny.
Guest:And I knew the Doug Kenny name.
Guest:And then I put it together.
Guest:And so instantly, I'm like, I got to get.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:So I got to get into.
Guest:I want to be in that thing.
Guest:And again, we're not talking about I want to be a comedy writer because I'm going to be a doctor or a lawyer.
Guest:But then Lampoon was a club.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's, you know, part club, part magazine.
Guest:I was definitely, as they say, more on the magazine side than the club side.
Guest:You know, it's a strange building that's filled with sort of, you know, people like me that are somewhat on the spectrum, right?
Marc:Comedy.
Guest:And then there are people there that are there for the club part.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, they gave me the honorary whatever.
Marc:Oh, cool.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:But, like, I don't drink.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And there's just these kids who are like, you know, I'm going to go through these rituals.
Marc:And I felt bad because I played along, but I don't know that.
Marc:I was like, what are you kids doing?
Marc:Right.
Marc:Like, all of a sudden, the age difference becomes a big thing.
Marc:It's like, oh, my God.
Marc:You're children.
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So, all right.
Guest:So you're writing.
Guest:So I go there.
Guest:I get in.
Guest:I'm in it.
Guest:By the way, it takes me a little to get in.
Guest:I don't get in.
Guest:It's not like I did it.
Guest:Would you have to submit?
Guest:You submit like basically three pieces of writing and then you get to the second round and another three pieces.
Guest:And it took me a couple of times.
Guest:I was figuring shit out.
Guest:I'll be honest.
Guest:And I still have all my stuff.
Guest:I know my bad stuff, and I know my good stuff.
Guest:It got better.
Guest:But I got in, and then that became my college.
Guest:I stopped going to classes.
Guest:I was just there.
Guest:I was writing as much as I could.
Guest:Summer between my junior and senior year, The Lampoon did a project with Comedy Central called MTV Give Me Back My Life.
Guest:It was a fake 10th anniversary documentary.
Guest:And a bunch of- Of MTV.
Guest:Of MTV.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:On Comedy Central.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That they promised us MTV was going to cooperate with, and they did not.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, nothing.
Guest:Zero.
Guest:They were sort of in the same family, Viacom family.
Guest:Yeah, it was the same building, Viacom family, synergy, but just zero.
Guest:No, really?
Guest:Just nothing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, but we wrote it, and then I went down to New York with it and kind of shepherded it through production.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:with two other guys, Jeff Schaefer and Alec Berg, who later on became my writing partners.
Guest:Um, and we kind of went down and we were beyond hooked.
Guest:I mean, it was like, this is what I want to do with my life.
Guest:And then I had to go back for senior year, which was really weird.
Guest:Cause I was, they were done.
Guest:They were seniors.
Guest:They had graduated.
Guest:They basically came, they moved to LA and I had to go back to
Guest:So you met all these guys that you work with now?
Guest:I mean, we don't currently work together, but we worked together for many years.
Guest:But yes, we met a lot of the guys.
Marc:At the Lampoon.
Marc:Yeah, we met at the Lampoon.
Marc:So that's the way it goes.
Marc:Whether you're shepherded in by older members or you just meet each other.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And also, like, you know, you got to be fairly bright to get into Harvard.
Marc:So, I mean, but I think that—I think my criticism—
Marc:Wasn't eventually outside of the kind of connectivity of of the people who went there with the people who were in there is that they there's an ambition that is taught.
Marc:I don't know if it was as much.
Marc:I think back in your day, it was assumed that if you were in Harvard, that you would do what you needed to do.
Marc:But it seems now that it definitely is infusing people with a type of ambition.
Marc:I'll go one step further.
Guest:And again, I start to sound like the old man in my day.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Look, when I was there, I think, you know, look, I think the magazine itself, just to talk about the actual thing that I was supposed to be doing, which is the magazine.
Marc:Are you pre-Conan or is Conan with you?
Marc:He's before me.
Marc:He's earlier.
Guest:And at that point, he's like, I don't even think he's, I think at that point he's at SNL.
Guest:So The Simpsons hasn't quite started yet.
Guest:But when The Simpsons does start, that became everyone's goal.
Guest:Like The Simpsons was like, that was the dream.
Guest:But what I was going to say was, I guess two things.
Guest:One was...
Guest:Like I look at the magazine now, you know, they put out, they still put the magazine out and it's, when I look at it, I see lots of, I always laugh and I tease them about it.
Guest:Like I talked to the kids from the time and I say to them, it's all short dialogue pieces because they're, they're trying to write scripts even in the magazine.
Guest:And I constantly say, stop doing that.
Guest:It's a magazine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:parody things, do books.
Guest:I mean, I know this is gonna sound silly, but when I got into The Lampoon, my pieces, I did a Tom Clancy parody.
Guest:I mean, again, I'm not sitting here going, it was incredible.
Guest:I'm just simply saying, I did a parody of a book at the time, as opposed to basically trying- To write sketches.
Guest:Yes, because I wasn't thinking about, I wasn't thinking about, I'm gonna get in there and get a job.
Guest:And I definitely think, yeah, they do think like that now.
Guest:What I will say, if I may, in defense of the organization for one second, it is being in a writer's room before you're ever in a writer's room.
Guest:And coming out of that place, having had the shitty ideas beaten out of you and encouraging you.
Guest:And again, sometimes in a bad way, because it definitely brings out the alpha comedy in you.
Guest:But the encouraging you to, and again, a bit of a cliche to the idea that thinking outside the box, the idea that someone else isn't going to think about.
Guest:When you then do get into the real world, you are steps ahead.
Guest:And that's the difference.
Guest:It's not- And a collaborator.
Guest:And getting used to collaboration, but also, let me go one step further, getting used to having people like dump on your stuff and learning to take criticism.
Guest:where I have been on so many shows where young writers have never been criticized because they were the funniest kid, and then they were the funniest this, and now they're hired.
Guest:And no one ever told them, this is garbage.
Marc:And what happens when you do that?
Guest:Well, some of them shatter and never work again, and some of them learn.
Guest:But it's a weird combination.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But do some of them buckle and have to leave?
Guest:They buckle and leave.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:On the first show, when I worked at Seinfeld, I got hired along with two other guys.
Guest:And one guy, it was his first gig.
Guest:It was his first job.
Guest:And not because of the criticism thing.
Guest:It just, it was his first job.
Guest:And it didn't go well.
Guest:And he was let go.
Guest:And then he figured it all out.
Guest:And he's gone on to an incredibly great career.
Guest:And he's hilarious.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The problem wasn't his writing.
Guest:The problem at the time was just sort of like he'd never been around like other comedy people and stuff.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:It was just like life.
Guest:It was a life experience.
Guest:And like I said, that when I look back now, that is what I think of as what the Lampoon's actual advantage is.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:That makes sense.
Guest:It was like having a job.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Even though I wasn't technical.
Guest:It's like, you know, I don't know, like college ball or something.
Marc:Yeah, no, I get it.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:No, that makes sense.
Marc:So you get out of school and you go to SNL?
Guest:I get out of school.
Guest:I go back to Comedy Central that summer.
Guest:We do Al Franken hosts Indecision 92.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which is comedy coverage of the Democratic.
Guest:And that's where you meet Franken?
Guest:I had met him the summer before on the, he was a, what was the word?
Guest:He was a consultant.
Guest:And so I'd met him during the MTV show.
Guest:And then he hired me on, he and Billy Kimball hired me on for Indecision 92.
Guest:And that was, again, all those Comedy Central people like Mary Salter.
Guest:And I know you knew some of those folks.
Marc:He's so funny, Al.
Guest:Hilarious.
Marc:And that's what, is that where you enter politics?
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:I mean, again, New York kid, but we had one party.
Guest:But that's where I start to get into the nitty gritty.
Guest:Of writing political humor.
Guest:Of writing political humor and of also, by the way, sometimes as simple as just by actually...
Guest:reading through you know like for example like what these people are saying and then and actually finding the humor in what they actually said where you're not even not even really necessarily crafting a joke unto itself but you're actually you start reading this stuff yeah i was good at that yeah at
Guest:sniffing out the simple thing yes like like isn't that don't those two things fight each other i mean that's it was funny when he was questioning like when he was on the judiciary committee i was always laughing because i was like this is like his old sort of stand up except it wasn't but so funny always funny yeah he basically took me to snl yeah and you know i i look i was a writer but i learned to write and
Guest:With and from Al.
Guest:I mean, and we wrote some stuff that I- For Indecision.
Guest:Yes, on Indecision, but it was when I really got to SNL.
Marc:So that was his second go at SNL or he'd been there?
Marc:I don't know what his timeline is.
Guest:You know, he'd been there till like 1980 when I guess Lorne left the first time.
Guest:And then he'd come back in 85.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And this was now 92.
Guest:And he was there that long?
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:The second time around, he was there forever.
Guest:But not the head writer.
Yeah.
Guest:You know, there was no head writer at that point.
Guest:Jim Downey was sort of the, I guess, producer head writer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was there for three years, 92 to 90.
Guest:Who were the cast?
Guest:When I got there, the main cast was still Dana, Phil, Kevin Nealon, like those guys.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then one by one, they started leaving.
Guest:And at that point, it was sort of the rise of Sandler, Farley, Spade, and Schneider.
Guest:So I was sort of there in that flex time.
Guest:So early on in 92, Phil was doing Clinton.
Guest:Dana was doing Ross Perot.
Guest:and bush yeah and then by the end those guys left and i we had we had you know i remember we had trouble we didn't have like we didn't have a clinton we didn't we didn't have daryl wasn't there people doing no it was before daryl so we you know it was like we at some point michael mckeon ended up doing clinton oh right when during that one year he was there and this was when the the cast ballooned up to like 20 people and he added like mckinney
Guest:Lauren's still there.
Guest:He had like McKinney, McKeon, Janine, Chris Elliott on top of everybody was there.
Guest:It was sort of a nightmare.
Guest:And that was it for me.
Guest:Sarah, David Tal, Jay Moore.
Marc:I mean, it was big, Norm.
Marc:It was huge.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It was like 20 people in the cast.
Marc:And so what was that experience like?
Marc:Wonderful and awful.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, has anyone ever said anything different?
Guest:I mean, it's the best job and the worst fucking job ever.
Marc:I don't think most people cop to it being the worst.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Most people, especially on camera, people are very diplomatic about the family.
Marc:I loved every second of it.
Guest:But, you know, my first year I walked around in fear.
Yeah.
Guest:You know, I've said this to him.
Guest:To Lorne, yeah.
Guest:To Lorne.
Guest:It's like the first year I was there, my initial deal, you know, you're there like on a 13-week deal.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He did not speak to me during... He spoke to me once during those first 13 weeks where he said something to me like, are you having a good time?
Guest:But he said it in a weird way like... Did he say everything in a weird way?
Guest:I guess a little bit.
Guest:But he said it to me like I felt like...
Guest:Oh, am I like, I just felt like I'm, I'm, I'm fucking up and this is awful.
Marc:And I don't know, you know, you know, and I, and I've got, you know, he was vague in his tone and he threw a wrench into the Jewish brain.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It just, it's all I can think about.
Marc:It just kept me up.
Marc:I'm done.
Guest:And at the end of that season, at the end, at the final party, he said, see you next year.
Guest:And I went, and I like, unclenched.
Guest:And I went, okay.
Guest:And then I felt like I was there.
Guest:But, you know, it was miserable.
Guest:It was long.
Guest:The hours were crazy.
Guest:We were, you know, sleeping there, you know, three nights a week.
Guest:And there was always the politics of, you know, you'd kill yourself and someone wouldn't be there, but they were working on a movie for Lorne and then they would pop in.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and I did a lot of scut work, and I was happy to do it.
Guest:What kind of work?
Guest:Like, scut work, like, you know, the crap.
Guest:Like, I did stuff no one wanted to do, so I was writing monologues week after week after week.
Guest:No one wants to do that.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Because you're up there with people that often, like, I'm not talking about, like, I was writing it for stand-ups.
Guest:You know, it's like Nicole Kidman freaked out about doing comedy and convincing her she's going to come running in and do the...
Guest:risky business Tom Cruise opening.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Like shit like that.
Guest:Where there's no, there's not a great upside to it.
Guest:It's very, there's like four monologues.
Guest:Like let's not count standups.
Guest:Like let's not count like Chappelle going on and doing his standup.
Guest:That was, that was rare.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:What I was, but I was gonna say is in the history of monologue monologues, there's like two or three that maybe a diehard fan like remembers as these are great.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Most of the time it's just nothing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's not.
Marc:You just want to get them in.
Guest:You want to get them in, humanize them.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Make them comfortable.
Guest:In some ways it's as much for the host to get them used to the audience and let them make the connection as it is for the audience to go the other way.
Marc:And the live event.
Guest:Yes, and get them into it and then excited.
Guest:But it's very rare that anyone thinks the monologue was so great.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:But so you were there for three years?
Guest:Three years, which, you know, it's like SNL dog years.
Guest:I mean, that's where I started going gray, basically.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And by the end of it,
Guest:I was going to those after parties.
Guest:I was going to the after-after party.
Guest:I was very aware that I was drinking.
Guest:I mean, we're not talking about, like, a problem.
Guest:But it felt like... I remember being aware, like...
Guest:Why am I going to a party and drinking as someone who didn't even drink?
Guest:I had one drink in high school, got to college, was never a big drinker.
Guest:And yet all of a sudden now, I'm like, this is not good.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Like you're aware of yourself.
Marc:Well, you're probably hanging out with some real...
Marc:Well, some wonderful degenerates.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, sure.
Guest:I mean, you know, we were playing, like, blackjack at some weird after-after-hours blackjack club near Bloomingdale's with Norm MacDonald.
Guest:But, like, and it was fun.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:But, you know what I mean?
Guest:Sure, you realize, like, this might shorten my life.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And let me go one...
Guest:and then i would go home i get home at like you know five in the morning but you're not married yet no i'm not married i'm actually this is very embarrassing i'm actually still living i was living at my home still i was living with my folks um so i get home at 5 a.m it was like it was like a weird like billy wilder comedy where we shared an apartment and never saw each other yeah you know what i mean because like yeah i'd come home at 5 a.m i'd go to sleep by the time i woke up they were gone yeah and
Guest:And then I would get up, get my day going and leave before they ever would get home.
Guest:It was just like, but I had, you know, that, but what I was gonna say was I would get home at like 5am.
Guest:I put a, I taped the show every Saturday and I would, before I went to bed at whatever, five in the morning, I would watch the episode.
Guest:And unfortunately, especially in that last season,
Guest:they, they, they weren't great.
Guest:They weren't good.
Guest:I don't know what to say.
Guest:They just weren't good.
Guest:And that was depressing.
Guest:Especially it was depressing when we would leave the show thinking it was good, because it's deceptive with the live audience and whatnot.
Guest:And it wasn't good.
Guest:And I knew it wasn't great.
Guest:And it was, it was, that sucked.
Guest:That feeling just fucking sucked.
Guest:And I don't know, it was making me crazy.
Guest:I don't know what else to say.
Guest:And at the time they were, you know, beginning to give me things, you know, I was getting like,
Guest:I produced a special, you know, little things that they like, I did like, you know, I got to be the producer on like a Mother's Day special.
Guest:So, you know, they, my, my, what's the word I'm looking for?
Guest:My role was being recognized, but I was not happy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I learned a tremendous amount.
Guest:I mean, I got to learn from Al and from Jim Downey.
Guest:And also for writing for people.
Guest:Oh, yes, absolutely.
Guest:And I'll go, the other thing about SNL that people don't talk about, you are like the mini producer, director, showrunner of your sketch, whatever you want to call it.
Guest:So coming out of SNL and going to LA to work on sitcoms,
Guest:I knew how to talk to a director.
Guest:I knew how to talk to an actor.
Guest:I knew how to edit.
Guest:I mean, I learned all these things at SNL that the average, whatever they call them, like baby writer, staff writer has no idea.
Guest:And by the way, you might work on a show for five years and never go in the edit room.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I was, I was doing my own edits at three in the morning.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, so yeah, it was just like, like, so I wouldn't change a goddamn thing about it, but I was definitely not happy by the end of it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, it's interesting that, you know, that coming out of stand up and then and I've talked about this before that that, you know, your experience, you know, gave you this full spectrum of of work experience and also like people who come out of sketch learn how to write and collaborate and direct.
Marc:That's another thing.
Marc:Because you almost can't not pick it up.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you just come to LA.
Marc:This is the first time you leave your parents' house is after three years at SNL?
Guest:It is.
Guest:But again, why my parents never had a nervous breakdown.
Guest:Basically, I was putting together...
Guest:I'll back it up a little bit.
Guest:I was coming out to LA on the breaks.
Guest:You know, the SNL would do like two shows and have two weeks off.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So I was coming out to LA.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was hanging out at the Seinfeld offices because- Because you knew who?
Guest:Schaefer and Berg, who I had mentioned before.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:They're now writers at Seinfeld.
Guest:Towards the end?
Guest:This is season-
Guest:Six.
Marc:Out of?
Guest:Nine.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So Larry's still there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I'm going, I'm staying at their place and I'm basically going to work with them every morning because by the way, well, also I don't drive.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm a real New Yorker.
Marc:I don't drive.
Marc:I drive now.
Marc:I drive now.
Marc:I drive now.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I saw that.
Guest:No, I really do drive, but I did not get my driver's license till 95.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I used to have a non-driver's ID, a New York State non-driver's ID and a passport, which was really, really impressive.
Guest:So I used to just come out.
Guest:I would go to work with them and I would have breakfast and lunch with all the Seinfeld folks.
Guest:And I was like the special guest and everybody there had worked at SNL or been around SNL at some point.
Guest:So I would tell amusing stories about, you know, Lauren and stuff and everyone do their
Guest:impressions and all that kind of shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A little bit of the club, but not a, not a, not a lampoon club, different club, different club.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Um, and, uh, a couple of lampoon, but it was funny.
Guest:Larry had no idea, which is a funny thing about he'd had Gamel and Pross were there and he had no idea that they were in the lampoon and Schaefer and Berg were in the lampoon, but he had no idea about that either.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And when he hired me, I don't think he knew I knew them, but he didn't necessarily, you know, that it was like this other for him.
Guest:What was he, why did he hire you?
Guest:Um,
Guest:Well, I honestly, I think I was a Yankee fan from New York and it just seemed like pretty like, like he liked me because the honest answer, I think this is an okay thing to tell.
Guest:Um, so I was putting ideas together because there was this moment actually where Larry was not even going to come back to the show.
Guest:There was a moment where he was renegotiating.
Guest:So I was working on ideas and then at the final show of that 95 season, he came to New York and
Guest:And he said to me, send me some ideas.
Guest:I re, you know, I re-signed, I'm going to go back to the show, send me some ideas.
Guest:And he was going off to Europe.
Guest:And then about two weeks later, he came back from Europe and he called and he goes, I want to hire you.
Guest:And I go, but I didn't send you any ideas yet.
Guest:He goes, it's okay.
Guest:And then I moved out to LA and I got out here and I was putting together my pitch for my first whatever and whatever.
Guest:I can't remember what I pitched him, but I pitched him something that was all, and I said, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:And he goes, was that on your list?
Guest:And I went, yeah.
Guest:And he goes, I would have hired you.
Marc:That's funny.
Marc:After he did already.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I'd already been working for about a month.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, but you got a bunch of story credits, script credits on that.
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, I mean, once I was there, I was there and I was like, you know, what am I saying?
Guest:I was good at it.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But I, but you know, it's funny.
Marc:When did Larry leave?
Marc:After eight?
Guest:He was there for my first full year.
Guest:So he left after seven.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:And then we did eight and nine without Larry.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Of which I think eight's really good.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Nine is a little more hit and miss.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was time.
Guest:It was time to end it.
Marc:And then, and then so now you have a relationship with Larry.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, and that kind of takes you to the next place.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It does and it doesn't.
Guest:I mean, it certainly does in this because he, you know, let's put, you know, whatever, like Franken and Downey over here for like early writing.
Guest:Larry teaches me how to write a sitcom.
Guest:There's no other way of saying it.
Guest:He teaches me how to outline a sitcom.
Guest:And I am outlining to this day the same way he taught me to do it.
Guest:Which is how?
Guest:Well, the first thing that happened, which I've never forgotten, was I had an act one on the board.
Marc:On the board, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you get your four stories approved.
Guest:You get your, you know, your Jerry, you get four individual stories approved.
Guest:And once you have them approved, all four approved, you, you, I put up my act one and he came in and he took my act one and he just kind of turned it into two scenes, like just stepped on the garbage can and shoved it all down.
Guest:And it was all there.
Guest:but just mushed down into two scenes.
Guest:So now imagine if you think about what my, all of a sudden what I thought my act break was is basically the end of scene two and whatever I thought I was heading towards as an end of a show is barely even the end of act one, which just did two things.
Guest:One,
Guest:every scene advances the plot.
Guest:If the scenes are not advancing the plot, it's not a scene.
Guest:You have to move stuff in.
Guest:So plot is always advancing.
Guest:So that's number one.
Guest:And then number two, by forcing what I thought the ending was into like the middle, you're just forced to explore these other areas that you perhaps would not have initially
Guest:thought to explore, especially when you look at a regular sitcom where, you know, they're arguing about, I don't know, like taking out the trash for like, you know, 30 minutes, you know, whatever.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So that was Larry's style.
Marc:That was Larry.
Guest:That was Larry.
Guest:And how he ran the show, which is very much because he'd never worked at a sitcom, had never been in it, you know, whatever.
Guest:There was no writer's room.
Guest:individual writers got credit for the script that they wrote and pitched the ideas for.
Guest:None of that, you pitched the idea, but it's his turn to write it.
Marc:None of that nonsense.
Marc:But it's still groupthink on the fleshing out on the board?
Guest:Not even that much of that.
Guest:Occasionally, if there were issues...
Guest:Larry and Jerry would call us in and say, hey, this isn't working.
Guest:We're going to split some scenes up.
Guest:Everyone write a scene or whatever.
Guest:So there was some of that, but there was none of that sitting in a room.
Guest:We would have conversations about stories, but never that writer's assistant writing beats down.
Guest:None of that.
Guest:None of that group outline and whatever.
Guest:Now that changed when Larry left.
Guest:There was definitely, it became a- Who came in.
Guest:Nobody.
Guest:We basically, we all sort of just rose up a little bit.
Guest:And so what would happen was Jerry would kind of have like two or three of us and the writer almost doing like a, I guess like a mini room, I guess.
Guest:So still not the crazy, giant, like sitcom shitty room, which to this day, I don't care for.
Guest:I think, look, rooms are great for punching stuff up.
Guest:You can make something funnier with a big group of really funny people.
Guest:But the notion of...
Guest:writing from scratch in a group room, which is how a lot of sitcoms are written.
Guest:I just find, I cannot stand it.
Guest:It's exhausting.
Guest:It's exhausting, but also it's fake.
Guest:You get these like joke-like substances and you get these like room laughs that aren't real laughs.
Guest:And then they all go into the show and nothing, nothing is, nothing's real.
Guest:And obviously Seinfeld is heightened, but yet there is reality.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:You have defined character.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:That aren't shallow.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So, you know, you have to honor that.
Marc:You know, these aren't just puppets.
Marc:I mean, most sitcoms are puppet people.
Guest:Very puppet people who just say whatever they're saying because of whatever's now going on with the garbage or trying to get to the joke.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yes, exactly.
Marc:So, but like you do a couple movies.
Guest:What happens is, so coming off of Seinfeld, we all sign these big development deals because we're all like Seinfeld writers.
Guest:We all sign these development deals and they don't make any of our shows because they didn't actually want what we had.
Marc:They just wanted to hold on to you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They would tell us what Seinfeld was, you know, shit like that.
Guest:And so, but what happened at the time was it was funny.
Guest:All of a sudden start getting calls of, from movie people who were initially looking for punch up and it went further where they were looking to take some of their comedies and they wanted them.
Guest:We were looking for someone to, you know, make it funnier like Seinfeld.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A lot of punch up stuff.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:So Jeff Alec and I started doing punch up together, like sort of,
Guest:I don't know, part-time while we were trying to do our TV stuff.
Marc:This is uncredited revision.
Guest:Uncredited early on, and then eventually...
Guest:I mean, not credited, but eventually credited.
Guest:But like, you know, paid real work.
Guest:Writers Guild, real true work.
Guest:And then eventually we started getting an opportunity to pitch on things and, you know, and that all kind of whatever.
Guest:And it was this weird thing where we wanted to do television, almost couldn't do television.
Guest:And I ended up doing... I was like...
Guest:I think I came in like second.
Guest:I managed to do, I did a Clerks animated cartoon with Kevin Smith, of which two episodes aired on ABC.
Guest:And I'm the second most successful of the Seinfeld writer development deals that got stuff on air.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then, but, but eventually what, uh, what was Euro trip?
Guest:Euro trip is a teen comedy from, uh, 2004, um, with nudity and like a real old school R rated comedy where we were doing all this punch up.
Guest:We were doing a lot of this stuff and we were also getting into this sort of situation, which was interesting where, um,
Guest:They were sometimes bringing us in early on and then bringing us in in the editing, going, can you fix this in the edit room?
Guest:Like, and I'm not even talking about we want to reshoot.
Guest:I'm talking about, can you just look at what we have?
Guest:And we'd be in these situations and we'd be like, yeah, sure.
Guest:What's your coverage?
Guest:Well, they decided to do it in a one-er.
Guest:Well, then you, it's unfixable.
Guest:You can't fix it.
Guest:And once in a blue moon, we're like, wait a second, there's another scene in that set.
Guest:Are there cutaways there?
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:Okay, let's steal those cutaways.
Guest:And we would fix stuff.
Guest:But somewhere in there, we were like...
Guest:These comedy directors are awful.
Guest:The comedy director seemed like a very low bar.
Guest:What were they, when you really break it down?
Guest:They weren't funny at the end.
Guest:They didn't seem funny unto themselves.
Guest:It wasn't a matter of pacing?
Guest:It was just they weren't funny people.
Guest:They were not funny people.
Guest:They did not seem to understand the joke.
Guest:Therefore, they had trouble capturing the joke on camera.
Guest:Literally.
Guest:Sometimes you would just go, this doesn't work.
Guest:You know, again, like we're talking about a cutaway.
Guest:This doesn't work if you can't pace it up with a cutaway.
Guest:Or this doesn't work if I can't see that guy's face.
Guest:Because what's funny isn't what he's saying.
Guest:What's funny is him reacting to it.
Guest:Just no sense of what comedy was.
Guest:No sense of how it worked.
Guest:And also sometimes just tonally wrong so that they were, oh man, did you get another performance where he's not so big and so sweaty and shit like that.
Guest:They just thought, you know, comedy was for them bleached out lighting and everyone yelling.
Guest:And there was just a lot of that kind of stuff.
Right.
Marc:So you guys decided to do your own.
Guest:So we were just like, we want to, we want to direct.
Guest:And what we realized was no one is going to let us direct because we've never directed.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Unless we basically write a script, a spec script and sell it and basically force them to let us.
Guest:So it was sort of, we wrote a spec script.
Guest:There was a, you know, people wanted it.
Guest:There was a bidding war.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we more or less said, we don't care about the money.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We want to direct and we want a, what they call you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Me, Schaefer and Berg, the same, the same three.
Guest:You directed all three?
Guest:We did.
Guest:Although only Jeff got the credit.
Guest:The director's guild wouldn't give us the shared credits.
Marc:We picked out of a hat.
Marc:But you were, it was a learning thing.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:It was fantastic.
Guest:I mean, it's awful and fantastic.
Guest:I change almost every frame of it and I love it at the same time.
Guest:What can I tell you?
Guest:But we definitely learned.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, it was things like, I remember once, I kid you not, we, the three of us, and not in front of the crew or anything, just amongst ourselves, we had a giant argument about a suitcase that one of the characters, like, knocked on a door with.
Guest:And all I can tell you in the final cut is, you don't even see the suitcase.
Guest:We're above it.
Guest:But you know what I mean?
Guest:It was just shit like that.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Nothing you can do is fix that.
Guest:Yeah, you work it out later.
Guest:But, you know, but we learned.
Guest:And when we came back from Eurotrip, when Eurotrip was released, and, you know, it was over in seven seconds,
Guest:You know, that morning they just told us like, you're coming in fourth.
Guest:You're coming in behind the third week of Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore.
Guest:Welcome to Mooseports beating you and this other thing too.
Guest:It was over.
Guest:And we literally could not get arrested.
Guest:Like all of a sudden, like no one wanted, like they'd let us write, but certainly no one was thinking like, you can direct again.
Guest:It was none of that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the honest answer was, Larry was like, hey, I've got this office space over at Curb.
Guest:And we were like, hey, we could really use the office.
Guest:And he's like, do you mind if I come in from now and then and run shit by you?
Guest:Which we were occasionally doing, like having lunch with him.
Guest:And he was doing that once in a blue moon.
Guest:The three of you.
Guest:The three of us.
Guest:And we were like, yeah, sure.
Guest:That sounds great.
Guest:And so...
Guest:I can't remember what season that was.
Guest:It was the season, uh, I think where Larry ends up giving his kidney to, uh, Richard Lewis.
Marc:Right.
Guest:2005.
Guest:That sounds right.
Guest:And basically we hung out in his offices.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We worked on our stuff.
Guest:We were writing, we were, people were letting us write movies.
Guest:And we were trying to write things that we were hoping we might get a chance to direct.
Guest:And Larry would knock on the door and we would, you know, help stuff and whatever.
Guest:So what was that?
Guest:And then he hired you?
Guest:Well, it was funny.
Guest:We were just doing it.
Guest:We were literally just doing it.
Guest:But you were getting credit?
Guest:Well, no.
Guest:At the time, no.
Guest:And at the end of the year, at some point, HBO reached out and they were like...
Guest:hey, we realize what you're doing.
Guest:We want to make this official.
Guest:We were really touched.
Guest:We were like, oh, this is great.
Guest:And they're like, okay, here you go.
Guest:And they paid us, we did 10 episodes.
Guest:They gave us each $1,000, 100 an episode, and no credit.
Guest:It was just they wanted to make sure they legally owned what we had come up with.
Guest:but you know what?
Guest:We were fine with it.
Guest:And Larry finished, uh, Larry finished, like Larry came in one day as only Larry can.
Guest:And was just like, it was like when we had nine episodes and he was like, uh, so, uh, we're going to start production.
Guest:Uh, we need the offices.
Guest:You guys got to get out.
Guest:It was just like, okay, bye Larry.
Guest:And we went off and we did some, you know, we, we got our own offices and we were doing stuff.
Guest:And then, uh,
Guest:About a year later, whenever it was two years.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Forgive me.
Guest:He was doing the next season and Larry Charles, who had been another Seinfeld guy who had been directing and working with him on curve was going off to do, uh, you were on Seinfeld with Charles.
Guest:No, he had left the year before me, but he would show up from time to time.
Guest:So he was going off to do Borat, I think.
Guest:And so Larry then said, hey, do you guys wanna come back and be Larry Charles?
Guest:And we said, can we direct?
Guest:And he said, absolutely.
Guest:And then we came back sort of more, I don't know what the word is, officially.
Marc:The three.
Guest:The three of us.
Guest:And we started directing and writing the show with him.
Marc:Now, what is the process of that?
Marc:I don't know that I've ever talked about it with anybody specifically.
Marc:So was it mostly stories?
Guest:in the in before and before you ever get to the you know whatever it's all it's pitching stories you know and we all used to and this was the seinfeld training you know i'm sure you did it too we all walked around with that little pad of paper you know in weird little scraps where you just write odd things people said or oh my god that guy yelled at me at the best buy you know good guys at the time yeah exactly curb seinfeld-esque stuff yeah
Guest:And I've still got that shit.
Guest:It's on my phone now.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:I saw one yesterday.
Guest:Sorry, I'll tell you this.
Guest:I don't know why.
Guest:But I wrote it down.
Guest:I was like, I wish I could call Larry, but I think they're done.
Guest:It was a guy who had a license plate.
Guest:And I guess he was retired.
Guest:So it was like R-E-T-I-R-D-D.
Guest:All I could think of was, boy, if they didn't put that other I there and it looked like it was retarded, that would be the greatest license plate in the world.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I just, you write that down.
Guest:I took a picture of it.
Guest:I wrote it down.
Guest:And it's just like, that's what.
Marc:That's the nature of that specific style of Seinfeldian writing or Larry David writing is like, you could run a whole episode through the license plate.
Marc:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And it's also, and the great Curb and Seinfeld episodes.
Yeah.
Guest:They all start with real.
Guest:It's all stuff.
Guest:My best Seinfeld episode is an episode called The Bizarro Jerry.
Guest:And in it, there's man hands.
Guest:Jerry dates this woman with man hands.
Guest:That's my wife.
Guest:She doesn't have man hands.
Guest:She has farmy hands.
Guest:She called them, but I changed it to man.
Guest:She grew up on a farm.
Guest:She had like always had like rough hands.
Guest:We, I turned them into giant man hands played by like a, you know, a key grip, you know, like, so you saw this beautiful woman and the hands were a crew guy, but it,
Guest:But every, all the great ones are real.
Guest:And that includes the Larry stuff, you know, like the contest, which was him and the, you know, all the stuff from his life, but all our stuff, the great stuff are just.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Real life.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Moments, stories, people, things.
Marc:I think the last season of Curb was all founded in, in some pretty sordid stuff.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That really happened.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, but that's what's insane and incredible.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So early on, you're just talking about ideas, you know, and he's, you know, going through his pad and stuff.
Guest:And you're also trying to figure out the theme, the overarching... Of the 10 episodes.
Guest:Of the 10 episodes.
Guest:Like, what's going to happen?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And some of them were very natural.
Guest:So that, like, when...
Guest:When Larry had the Blacks on, when we introduced the Blacks and this idea that Cheryl was going to leave him, which at the time was this answer to this huge question because, you know, people that don't like Curb or even people that like it are just always like, how does she stay with him?
Guest:And it was sort of like, well, let's lean into that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so we went down that path and then that led to him going, well, now what if he wants to get her back?
Guest:And then that was the Seinfeld reunion year.
Guest:So sometimes the stories, you know, one led to another and then sometimes they were just, you know, these bigger ideas like the producer, again, the producers predates me, but that sort of was a standalone idea, you know, right.
Guest:So you're talking to him about these things.
Guest:And sometimes, look, I am the first to admit this.
Guest:Sometimes we're just the wall.
Guest:We're just the wall.
Guest:He gets to bounce the ball off of us.
Guest:And that's cool.
Guest:I'm fine being the wall.
Guest:And then sometimes we get to throw stuff in.
Guest:And then as you start going and you start working on the outline, because again, it's all outline, outline, outline.
Guest:You're trying to figure out like what could happen.
Guest:You're looking for these connections.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's just us sitting with him and we're just talking it through, talking it through, talking it through.
Guest:And it's just finding that outline that is, you know, again, you know, you want that perfect everything colliding at the end.
Marc:But ultimately you've got, it also has to be, you know, you're dealing with improvising actors.
Guest:Well, that we're not even up to that.
Guest:So right now this is just in the office.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so when we have this outline that Larry basically eventually just goes through his hand, he does it.
Guest:Oftentimes, the outline is the outline, but we've all got stuff that we remember joking about, but we didn't put in the outline because we want the actors to have sort of that blank canvas.
Guest:And this is what is the incredible part, especially, by the way, about directing.
Guest:With no offense to the other directors who have directed on the show that are not the writers of the show, but when we were the writer-directors, it is the closest thing that I can explain to you.
Guest:It was like live rewriting.
Guest:If you told me that it was just we were rewriting and they were broadcasting, that is what it felt like.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:because you are directing, you are trying to move the camera to capture these moments, and at the same time, you are whispering things to actors, you are try this, we're remembering things from the discussion.
Guest:Hey, Larry, do you remember that?
Guest:And then sometimes it's just shit that happens.
Guest:So like we're shooting somewhere, we were shooting like in Malibu, and Larry sees a dolphin, and he goes, oh my god, a dolphin in the middle of the scene.
Guest:And there's no, you know, there's no, we were shooting once in a restaurant, I kid you not.
Guest:And while we were shooting in the restaurant,
Guest:the guy behind us, the guy who worked there changed the letter, the cleanliness letter from an A to a B while we're sitting there shooting.
Guest:And you just kind of go like, how do you not?
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:One time he and Garland drank from each other, like Larry drank both waters.
Guest:And then the entire scene, and I couldn't tell you what the scene was originally about, but the entire scene became about
Guest:the information that needed to be delivered and, well, now we need more water.
Marc:And that's the show, but it is like a live rewrite.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It's a, it's a, it's a organic thing in, it's a, it grows as you're doing it.
Guest:Yes, it grows.
Guest:And you're just, and as the director, you're running, initially we had two cameras, later on three, sometimes even four, but you got one on Larry at all times.
Guest:I mean, that's how I learned to direct really.
Marc:And also there's a sensibility around directing improvisation is you kind of have to edit in your head.
Marc:You're editing in your head.
Marc:You're sort of thinking about it.
Guest:But especially on Curb, you are always thinking, you know, we were talking about that a little bit before with the bad directors, not Curb directors, but bad comedy directors.
Guest:Sometimes so much of the comedy is someone saying something and either a drift over to someone's reaction or the reaction itself.
Guest:That like watching Susie react to Larry is funnier than whatever it is Larry is saying sometimes.
Guest:Sure, yeah.
Guest:And so you're trying to figure that out.
Guest:And like Larry Charles, you know, again, talking about what people taught me, Larry Charles like laid it out really quickly.
Guest:You know, like this is how you direct curb.
Guest:Keep one camera on Larry all the time and then you'll figure out what the other camera does.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:It's like, thank you, LC.
Guest:I mean, I get it.
Guest:I get it here.
Guest:But there were moments that were just, I remember one time we're shooting in New York.
Guest:We did a New York season or half a season in New York.
Guest:And I was on a truck with Larry Charles.
Guest:We were towing a car.
Guest:And basically the whole storyline was,
Guest:there was something wrong with the front seat of Larry's car, and when the guy, the mechanic, Robert Smigel, didn't fix it because he was mad at Larry because Larry had fucked up in the softball game.
Guest:It was a whole, you know, all these things.
Guest:But basically, the front seat, the passenger seat is vibrating so much that women are orgasming from the front seat.
Guest:And he ends up with Susie in his car who, and he tries to get her to sit in the back seat, but she won't because they got to get somewhere and she gets in the front seat and, you know, and of course she's just starting to whatever.
Guest:And he's getting, she's kind of coming, but he's, and he's getting horrified and upset.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, we did, you know, regular kind of the coverage thing.
Guest:And then we started doing ones.
Guest:And I remember just doing it with Larry Charles where we were, and we were, we talked about like, we had the camera guy.
Guest:It wasn't even like, go, go, go.
Guest:It was just, just, just move between the two of them as fast as you humanly can.
Guest:Just, and it's one of my like favorite things, but there's no plan to that.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:It just, it is an organic growth, but it's organic growth.
Guest:Writing, performance, and directing, just all mushing together.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And that's why it was the best.
Marc:And if that happens, it's great.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So let's get to... Well, I mean, you did... You wrote a few movies.
Marc:The Dictator was...
Marc:It wasn't well received, but it was good in concept.
Guest:I mean, I think there's good stuff there.
Guest:It was a funny thing.
Guest:We'd worked with Sasha.
Guest:We actually had pitched on, we ended up coming in and helping Larry Charles and Sasha with the ending to the original Borat.
Guest:We actually pitched what became the Borat.
Guest:And so then he was like, hey, I want you to pitch me some ideas.
Guest:And we really liked the dictator idea.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It got it gets silly places.
Guest:And there were some higher, bigger democracy ideas that I think we shied away from in the editing.
Guest:What do you mean?
Guest:Like, I think there was there was a little bit more of an indictment.
Guest:And it's in there a bit that that a foreign dictatorship and the American democratic system were perhaps not as different as we like to think.
Marc:Oh, interesting.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And also the fact that America and in this, I think in our movie, we had like Russian gas or something or like gas prom and stuff.
Guest:We're also supporting this crazy guy in that sort of, you know, FDR kind of, well, he's an asshole, but he's our asshole.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:You think you could have hit that hard.
Guest:I think we could have hit some of that harder.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:especially given, you know, in what happened in retrospect.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And then like on, on Veep, you, you did the last two seasons.
Marc:I did the last three seasons.
Guest:So when Armando decided to go, what did he say to you?
Guest:It was interesting.
Guest:You know, Armando's incredible and it was really cool.
Guest:He, he,
Guest:I genuinely seemed happy that the show was continuing and that they had gone out and recruited me for it, as opposed to, I guess, some schmuck.
Guest:And that was the nicest thing in the world.
Guest:And we spoke on the phone.
Guest:I went out to London, met him, met a lot of his team.
Guest:We ended up going up to like...
Guest:the Montreal Comedy Festival and sort of doing, like, a chat together.
Guest:And this was before, like, I hadn't even really taken over.
Guest:I had the gig, but, like, you know, we hadn't made a show yet.
Guest:And he was just so... I don't know what to say.
Guest:Like, there were so many versions of this where he could have been such an asshole.
Guest:And he was so... Not just...
Guest:Not just that he was nothing.
Guest:He was just so wonderful and complimentary.
Guest:And they're his babies.
Guest:And I was always aware of it.
Guest:And I cannot tell you how many times in interviews I always had to stop and just go, I didn't create the show.
Guest:It was created by Armando Iannucci.
Guest:I'm just the... I get to bring it on home.
Guest:And that was important to me.
Guest:It was important to me in general, but also how good he was to me and about it.
Marc:So these are...
Marc:Well-established characters done by great comedic actors.
Marc:Now, and that was a totally scripted show.
Guest:Yes and no.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We had the scripts and, you know, obviously same thing, a little bit like Curb in the sense of the planning of the entire season, the really lockdown, whatever.
Yeah.
Guest:I had scripts.
Guest:I think when Armando did it, there were scripts, but there were definitely, there was more improv.
Guest:There just was.
Guest:And there were times where I think for, and again, I don't want to tell stories out of school, where I think they had things where they weren't quite sure and they just tried stuff.
Guest:And they improv'd rehearsals and they took scripts out of those improv rehearsals.
Guest:That ain't me.
Guest:I mean, I did a lot of that on Curb, but I like to have, and let me just go back to Curb for three seconds.
Guest:If you took one of those curb outlines that I was telling you about, because those are like a 12 page document, you could turn that into a script in under 24 hours.
Guest:That's how rock solid those outlines were.
Guest:So they are not, people over the years all tried to do curb.
Guest:You know, they were all like, well, it's gonna be curb in the music industry, curb here, curb there.
Guest:And they were all garbage because it was like, they had no stories and they had no outline.
Guest:It was just more like, we'll show up in the studio and we'll improv.
Guest:No, it doesn't fucking work like that.
Guest:So with, with Veep, you know, a, a hardcore 10 episode plan, you know, of the season arc arc that also, I always like knowing what my first scene is of the season.
Guest:I like knowing what my last scene is of the season.
Guest:And therefore, because I know what my last scene in my season is, I know what the first season, first scene of the next season is, which, you know, and so I'm always trying to think like that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there were hardcore scripts.
Guest:Now, that being said, hardcore scripts, I have a killer just group of writers and on the set, basically any moment that's not seeming like anything, what else do we have here?
Guest:Any moment that feels like there's air, can we fill it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, let's get Sam to say something.
Guest:He's standing right behind her.
Guest:Let's just throw that in.
Guest:Let's not worry about what people hear or don't hear.
Guest:Let's just fucking do it.
Guest:Yeah, load it up.
Guest:And load it up unbelievably so.
Guest:And then absolutely would sometimes in a scene...
Guest:I don't want to say always like one for fun, but sometimes at the end, like we'd get into the coverage and I would just go stand behind the camera and just yell new lines out, throw stuff out.
Guest:I would just say, say what you want, do what?
Guest:And then they would say, you know, so we kept improv alive, but it was definitely more scripted.
Marc:And you had to adjust to the Trump presidency.
Guest:Well, Trump presidency basically hits in season two and we kind of get of my run.
Marc:Sorry, my run.
Marc:I'm sorry.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:So season, uh, what is it?
Guest:So it's five, six and seven, five, six and seven.
Guest:So season six.
Guest:And it's in, in our show, she had lost the presidency and was now former president of the United States, which I thought was, I was always very proud of that.
Guest:I love the idea that you were doing a show about called Veep about a former president of the United States.
Guest:Sorry.
Guest:I just did it.
Guest:But where I was going with it is the fact that she wasn't in office, we dodged a bullet because technically she was dealing, even though she was plotting a comeback, we were dealing with presidential libraries and fundraising and might she get invited and be on the Supreme Court and all these kinds of things, which thank God,
Guest:didn't mess and didn't bump up against Trump quite as much.
Guest:When we came back for then, at that point, we eventually knew it was gonna be the final season.
Guest:And I don't know if you can remember this moment,
Guest:When you think about those four years of Trump, as bad as year one was, when he got to that State of the Union in year two, it's like he felt comfortable and it really got a lot worse.
Guest:And that kind of hit and...
Guest:This is like a bad joke, but luckily Julia got cancer and we shut down and I rewrote basically the final season.
Guest:And really what I realized was what we had been planning was irrelevant in the world of Trump.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that final season is, it just is very Trump influenced.
Marc:Because of the, what's his name running?
Guest:Well, if you, it's just, if you think about it, it's him running, but also her behavior as president, where, where, how she is willing to use the power of the office, you know, in the sort of, you know, again, Nixonian, if the president does it, it's not illegal.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you have to, and when you think about what Veep was, if you were a fan of it, so much of it was...
Guest:She says the wrong thing and pays a price.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, all of a sudden there's a guy in the White House that doesn't seem like he's ever paying the price.
Guest:Still.
Guest:And a guy and the show was still exactly.
Guest:And there was a show about somebody who talks one way in public, but privately is foul mouthed and whatever.
Guest:That's gone to that.
Guest:That weird Chinese wall, that paper wall that's gone.
Guest:He says what he wants.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So all of the, I hate to say the first, you know, five, six seasons of Veep, if you actually look at it, they seem like they're from the 1800s.
Guest:It seems like, you know what I mean?
Guest:It seems like from a different time.
Guest:And so that final season, the behavior, we got the Chinese involved, foreign powers.
Guest:What it really became about is how much are you prepared to sell your soul to be present?
Guest:Because look, I've always believed that if you decide to run for president, there's something wrong with you to begin with.
Marc:There's something wrong with almost all politicians.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's a weird thing.
Marc:I can't figure it out.
Guest:It's whatever that drives you to be that guy.
Marc:What do you think it is?
Marc:I'm looking at this woman, the one from Arizona, Carrie.
Marc:Carrie Lake.
Marc:What is that?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And by the way, and she also, I mean, just look at the transformation.
Guest:She went from like newswoman, these people that have gone hardcore.
Marc:But it's almost like that sort of power of positive thinking gone wrong.
Marc:It's almost like that.
Marc:That sort of that, you know, these new agey kind of Anthony Robbins
Guest:Yes, that weird smile.
Guest:If I think it and I say it enough, it will happen.
Guest:Like the promise or some nonsense.
Guest:But it is like pod people.
Guest:It's like alien pod people.
Guest:And look, I think a lot of the problem is Fox.
Guest:I mean, I don't think these are original.
Guest:thoughts, but it's that thing of, there's no one that you're doing it, but no longer is anyone, is there a system where anyone calls it on it?
Guest:Because even if obviously the New York times, you know, my father was always like, aren't these people reading the op-ed in the New York times?
Guest:No, they're not dad.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that it's like, it's that desire of like thinking,
Guest:fame and importance, but also some weird, almost Jesus-like belief that you are that important?
Marc:I don't even know.
Marc:It's not even power.
Marc:When you start to really look at what these... Well, but I think they think it's power.
Marc:No, I know, but when you look at the short-term grifts that some of the Trumpian cabinet was doing, they're bending all these rules for $8,000.
Marc:It's like, what the fuck is that?
Marc:Well, it's when stupid people are criminals.
Guest:And by the way, not that we're looking for...
Guest:Whenever you want to talk about it, but like Watergate, I mean, when stupid people are criminals.
Marc:This is a great thing because I watched the new series.
Marc:I watched all of them.
Guest:Oh, my gosh.
Marc:No one told me that.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I watched all of them.
Marc:Fantastic.
Marc:And it was great.
Marc:It was a very interesting approach because I said to my producer, I said, you know, he's really portraying these two as clowns.
Marc:And my producer goes, they were clowns.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:That's exactly it.
Guest:I've tried to explain this to people because, you know, obviously they put it up, you know, from the whatever.
Guest:This is Jay Gordon-Liddy and Howard Hunt.
Guest:And Howard Hunt.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, they always are like, you know, from the whatever, from the people from Veep and whatever.
Guest:And I've tried to make it clear.
Guest:We didn't write jokes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No.
Guest:We just told a story.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:That is fucking stupid in parts.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It's kind of great.
Marc:Well, I love those guys.
Marc:You know, I think Harrelson and Thoreau did, you know, a great job.
Marc:Everybody, the supporting cast, it was all very funny.
Marc:And it was all based on truth.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you just, but there's a sort of the underlying story, you know, outside of Watergate was that, you know, Hunt was involved with the JFK assassination.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It's basically, look, he was this CIA operative.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was there for Bay of Pigs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was involved.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, we say, you know, at the end, he may, on his deathbed, he may or may not have confessed.
Guest:Is that true?
Guest:The, the, I believe, I believe.
Guest:In Rolling Stone magazine, it was printed that his son said he confessed.
Guest:I believe.
Guest:I want to be- Whatever that means.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:What does that mean?
Marc:Yes, exactly.
Marc:But I just really like the depiction of, you know, because you didn't involve Nixon that much.
Guest:On purpose.
Guest:And I'll tell you something interesting.
Guest:I don't know if you'll care about this.
Guest:Originally-
Guest:I'd shot this thing where you were going to sort of get a weird, almost like tape, almost microphone view of Nixon, like under the desk.
Guest:Like I wanted to see the tape recordings in the basement of the White House and then almost like come up and then like you never see a face, but you'd see the microphones and you would whatever.
Guest:And what I realized was we only know about these tapes now.
Guest:Nobody knew about them then.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Nixon, they didn't know what Nixon was thinking.
Guest:And so why should the, I know this sounds silly, but it was very much about, this is not the White House story.
Guest:These are these guys.
Guest:They're be given this weird mission and they don't really know what to do.
Guest:And so in a weird way, Nixon is who they're working for, but they never got to meet him.
Guest:They never had interactions.
Guest:So why should people removed?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So why should the audience?
Guest:Anyway, it was just an interesting little thing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I get that.
Marc:And that's the way sort of power works.
Marc:And that's where these guys protect themselves.
Marc:It's the way power works, the way the mafia works.
Marc:It's also the way show business works.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That, you know, you get into the executive structure of things.
Marc:They're just deflecting blame.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Tell him to.
Marc:To tell him to tell him.
Marc:Because then I'm like, I had nothing to do with that.
Marc:But like I just, you know, the dynamic, the comedy team of Liddy and Hunt, you know, and that, you know, G. Gordon Liddy, you know, was this sort of like ideological, you know, he was a go, you know, a nationalist guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And a team player and a guy who wanted Nixon's approval.
Marc:And Hunt was like, this is, you know, this is the way this goes.
Guest:It was a fascinating thing because...
Guest:Lydia at the time was desperate, desperate to be like part of it, but also like on some level wanted to be James Bond.
Guest:Like he wants, he wants.
Guest:And Hunt is the guy that's been through the ringer, may or may not have killed Kennedy, you know, but you know, yeah, exactly.
Guest:Or knew something about it.
Guest:And, but at the same time has been put out to pasture and he knows it's bullshit on some level, but yet he's also desperate to,
Guest:And his wife's an ex-operative.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:But he's desperate to get back to it.
Guest:And all that desperation is also, I think, what fuels their relationship, but also... They're both... So it makes it funny.
Guest:But they're also both believers.
Guest:Well, that's the thing.
Guest:It is very much... This is the story of the birth of the modern Republican Party's true believerism.
Guest:Where you...
Guest:Don't worry about what it's doing to you or your family or anything in the name of a president that will basically cut bait on you and throw you to the side.
Guest:I mean, it's the Michael Cohn story, but it's not Michael Cohn.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:And also, you know, there's something about, you know, the look of the thing is very good.
Marc:The detail is very good.
Marc:And also the sort of reality of technology at the time is very good.
Marc:And these guys, what you just sort of had to do to sort of cover your ass.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:was limited to the technology.
Marc:But I like that there is a through line of conspiracy, you know, even at the time.
Marc:And never answered, but certainly raising it.
Marc:No, I thought it was great.
Marc:It was very funny.
Marc:I'm glad we got to have the conversation.
Guest:Yeah, no, this was fantastic.
Marc:Thanks, buddy.
Marc:Okay, so that was good.
Marc:I have no foresight.
Marc:Occasionally I have moments of slight foreshadowing, but not much foresight.
Marc:And I never plan to write, so I'm always happy to hear about how people do it and come about it in that life.
Marc:His show, White House Plumbers, premieres Monday night, May 1st at 9 p.m.
Marc:on HBO, streaming on HBO Max.
Marc:Hang around for a second, will you people?
Marc:Okay, look, the full Marin is full of material that didn't make it into regular podcast episodes.
Marc:There's extra stuff from J. Smith Cameron, Kelly Reichart, and Ray Romano.
Guest:Phil Rosenthal's been on, you know, Phil.
Marc:I do.
Marc:I do.
Marc:I've interviewed Phil years ago in the other place.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And now, like, you know, I pass by the eating show.
Marc:Can I tell you how funny it is?
Guest:It's funny.
Guest:You know, I love Phil.
Guest:Me and Phil are friends.
Guest:You guys worked together for years.
Guest:I wouldn't be here.
Guest:He wouldn't be where he is without me, and I wouldn't be where I am without him.
Guest:But, you know, he's always wanted to be on camera also.
Guest:And he's a foodie.
Guest:And now he's living.
Guest:It's like God came down and said, everything you want, I'm going to give you.
Guest:And he goes on tour now.
Guest:He plays out theaters all over the world and sells them out.
Guest:Just talking about food or showing clips?
Guest:About the show, clips.
Guest:There's a Q&A at the end.
Guest:Somebody moderates it.
Guest:And I did a guest appearance on one in Long Island.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I came around.
Guest:The crowd was into me, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I said to Phil, I got a question.
Guest:How did this shit happen?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I go, I've been doing stand-up for 35 years.
Guest:You go to Poland and eat meatloaf, and you're selling out theaters.
Guest:Anyway, I stayed for the Q&A, and I learned my lesson.
Guest:I'm going, if I ever do that again, leave before the Q&A.
Guest:They didn't ask me one question.
Guest:They didn't care.
Guest:It's a whole film, and I love it.
Guest:I mean, good for him, you know?
Marc:Yeah, it's all there at the Full Marin.
Marc:To sign up for the Full Marin, click on the link in the episode description and you'll get all the weekly bonus content plus ad-free access to all WTF episodes.
Marc:You can also go to WTFpod.com and click on WTF+.
Marc:Next week, we have Titus Burgess on Monday.
Marc:That's a heavy one.
Marc:And comedian Shane Moss is back on Thursday to talk about his journey with bottoming out on psychedelics and his supportive science in the face of lunacy, which I thought was a good conversation to have.
Marc:That'll be Thursday.
Marc:And now I'm going to play, you know, you'll recognize it if you recognize it.
¶¶
Thank you.
guitar solo
Marc:Boomer lives.
Marc:Monkey, La Fonda, cat angels everywhere.
Marc:All right.
Marc:All right.